Abortion, Truth, Satan

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430152/abortion-roe-v-wade-unborn-children-women-feminism-march-life?utm_source=social&utm_campaign=sense&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=matthewes

The last words in Selzer’s essay are, “Whatever else is said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense [i.e., of the child defending its life] will not vanish from my eyes. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?”

Satan is a huge fan of reason -- when he shows up in the Bible, he pretty much sounds like a lawyer. We now know through science that we can't make decisions without emotion. As Jonathan Haidt showed us in "The Righteous Mind", even "liberals" who will TELL you that disgusting things don't disgust them are lying. Put a PET scan on their brain and the moral modules light up just like they do in the person that admits that they have morals! Denying your natural moral nature is very costly.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that if you put a PET scanner on even the most supposedly pro-abortion woman out there, the scanner will show that she inherently knows it is murder as she watches one.  That is going to be hard to prove, but if you take the little time required to watch this video, at least YOU will know that it is murder -- this woman, Gianna Jessen, is a survivor of that attempted murder.

Why did Christ have to come and die on the Cross? For the cosmic version of the reason that Gianna had to survive an abortion. So you could FEEL the TRUTH of Gods Love and Grace! Because thinking about things never actually allowed anyone to make a decision. We don't decide on reason!

Satan wants to give you a long list of "logical reasons" to not believe in Grace, Love, Redemption, Truth, God, Spirit, Eternity, etc. At the head of the list is "If you don't believe in those things you can be "god", or at least your own version of the idea -- and you can be smug".  For a season -- really just an "instant" on the cosmic scale. Pride. You can be proud!

And then you die -- alone. More alone than is possible to imagine from this earthly coil. Satan knows you will be alone. Take the class or the gathering or the trip where you felt the most alone in your life and multiply it by a few billion, and then possibly you can imagine a mere wisp of how alone Hell is. God is surrounding you here -- generously gifting you your breath and your pulse, holding you in this mortal coil and begging you to acknowledge that Grace already won and available explicitly for YOU!

Have you ever noticed how critical it is for Satan to have "more numbers"? Since the election we definitely know that BOistan is ruled by Satan -- both Trump and the left are ALL about "numbers". "We won the popular vote"! "No you didn't, there was fraud!". "The inauguration was sparsely attended"! "No it wasn't"! "We had a MILLION marchers!" ... and so it goes. There are MORE PEOPLE on MY side!

We all know that the road to Hell is wide and easy -- with busloads of marchers.  If you know Truth, it matters not at all if others agree. God and one is an extreme majority.

The linked article is well worth reading. It makes the case in one section that abortion is a sign of extreme sickness in our society. If you were a naturalist who came upon an area where all the creatures were harming themselves, maybe eating some poisonous plants to abort their young, you would not say "this is wonderful, I should help them"! You would realize that something had gone horribly wrong and look for the cause of this clear abomination of nature!

If you were a Star Trek sort of space traveler who saw such a planet where sentient life was killing their young in the womb, I can pretty much guarantee you that you would also find mass killings, rampant and rising, drug abuse, families falling apart and an extreme lack of love and caring for others "outside their tribe". All of these things are endemic to loss of meaning, respect for life, and hope. Welcome to planet BOistan.

I wrote, “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

Much like the animal, the woman who chooses to murder her child lives with the gnawing that she did. Unlike the animal, unless she allows redemption to wash her clean, her wound will fester for eternity.

I close with this.

The pro-life cause is perennially unpopular, and pro-lifers get used to being misrepresented and wrongly accused. There are only a limited number of people who are going to be brave enough to stand up on the side of an unpopular cause. But sometimes a cause is so urgent, is so dramatically clear, that it’s worth it. What cause could be more outrageous than violence — fatal violence — against the most helpless members of our human community? If that doesn’t move us, how hard are our hearts? If that doesn’t move us, what will ever move us?

The Soul Of The World, Roger Scruton

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-World-Roger-Scruton/dp/0691169284

After "Face of God" and this fine effort, I'm a confirmed Scrutin fan. In "Soul", Scruton continues his analysis of what it means to be human as opposed to atoms, cells, chemicals and adaptive evolutionary programming.

"I know that I am a single and unified subject of experience. This present thought, this pain, this hope, and this memory are features of one thing, and that thing is what I am. I know this on no basis, without having to carry out any kind of check, and indeed, without the use of criteria of any kind -- this is what is (or ought to be) meant by the term "transcendental". The unity of the self-conscious subject is not the conclusion of any inquiry, but the presupposition of all inquiries. the unity of consciousness "transcends" all argument since it is the premise without which argument makes no sense."

The paragraph is a bit longer than "I think therefore I am", yet I see it as gaining commensurate meaning from that added length.

As humans, "we" have to start somewhere, meaning we have to find some way to postulate that we actually exist from "nowhere". If we sit quietly, focus on only "our" breathing, watching our breaths happen on their own, our thoughts come and be acknowledged/dismissed as "we" return to watching our breath, our emotions pass through us as we acknowledge them and gently return to calm attention on our breath, the question arises as to "what or who" is doing the watching?

We will discover as millions have discovered throughout history (and millions more have not), that "I", is not our physical body, not our thoughts, and not our emotions. We each "have" all those things, but we, ARE something else. Another version of this realization is covered in an Atlantic article that I reviewed not long ago. Reality IS experience.

So if what we experience IS all there is, then how might we think about that?

"There is a culture of long-term thought and abstract conception, represented by Moses; and a culture of short-term pleasure and easy communication represented by Aaron. The first points to the transcendental ground of being; the second reduces beings to idols.:

In this section of the book, Scruton uses music as the example of how to know the difference. I believe however that this quote goes a long way toward the heart of the matter:

"... the difference is between preventing silence, and letting silence speak. Music in the listening culture is a voice that rises out of silence, and which uses silence as a painter uses the canvas ..." 

Scruton is seeking to capture "the ghost in the machine" of physical creation, as many lovers and believers have before him. (and what are true lovers but believers?)  I think we all understand that if we step back and let the silence speak, it DOES speak -- which is why the forces of Aaron work incessantly to make certain we never stop and listen!

"In music as in sex and architecture, the relation between subjects can be uprooted and replaced by an arrangement of objects. And in a hundred ways the result of this is is a culture of idolatry in which freedom and personality are obliterated by intrusive images, clamoring for an addictive response." 

"We are spirits living in the material world" (as "The Police" once put it). Much of modern man's time is spent trying to anesthetize that knowledge via clicks, games, music, drugs, media, work, relationships, ANYTHING!

"The Fall did not occur at a particular moment in time; it is a permanent feature of the human condition. We stand poised between freedom and mechanism, subject and object, end and means, beauty and ugliness, sanctity and desecration. And these distinctions derive from the same ultimate fact, which is that we can live in openness to others, accounting for our actions and demanding an accounting for theirs, or alternatively close ourselves off from others, learn to look on them as objects, so as to retreat from the order of the covenant to the order of nature."

Why is it critical for the left to cover their ears and scream "safe space! Nah, nah, nah, nah"? Because in a fallen world, even a fig leaf is imagined to provide "covering" of the nakedness of corrupted nature denying it's soul. The unbeliever MUST deny their soul, the pain of it's corruption is unspeakable, so they can ONLY "cover", never account for their fallen state until they accept redemption.

For the lover and the believer, the idea of hiding our true face and soul from others, especially those we love, is painful in the extreme. Many of us must do this in order to maintain any relation at all with family, to hold our jobs, or to interact socially.

The question "Why"? is addressed from I to you. It is thrust upon us in those moments in extremis when the order of creation irrupts around us. It is then that we cry out to God -- who will tell us why we suffer, why we live, and why we die. Within the envelope of nature there are only causes. But for the eye of faith the envelope has a telos, a reason for being as it is. And to have faith is to believe that the worlds teleology will account for my afflictions too.

"Irrupts" -- to enter forcibly or suddenly.

In this week before inauguration day 2017, the year of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I stand in awe of the power of God and of Satan. My sense is that "The Fall" was the "reification" of the spiritual perfection of creation. "Reify" is a dangerous word which I believe holds a paradox within itself. The literal meaning of the word is "to make something abstract more "real" as in "understandable" ".

Since I believe that what we see as "reality" through our fallen senses is what scientists might call a "quantum flux" and God calls "spirit and truth", the act of "reification" is the act of making MORE FALSE -- making something seem to be more physical, or "quantified", "measured", "real".

In my world view, mathematics is closer to "truth" than engineering (applied physics). Reification as  it is commonly used is actually  "making a graven image" from a spiritual perspective.

Scruton has helped me immensely in trying to "un-reify" my world ... as in "sanctify", or "recover the spirit".

HIGHLY recommended to those who seek to recover the spirit.

TP Religious Hatred

Blog: Why the left hates Trump so intensely:

We've been over this more than a few times. The assertion is that "Secular Humanism", "The Party" (TP-D), "Blue America", "progressivism", etc, have become very much a religion, and not a particularly tolerant one. TPism is pretty much like Islam -- It demands that the State and the religion be one in the same -- in Islam, that is called "Sharia Law", in the TP Religion it is called "Secular Humanistic Administrative Law" with Political Correctness enforcement as one of it's branches.

Cults get very unhappy with members that leave, especially if they publicly say bad things about the cult -- and Trump was a definite member in good standing of the TP elite until he "went rogue'.

The whole linked article is not all that long, but still not very worthy, but I found the following to be the highlight:

Blue Team Progressivism is a church, offering you moral superiority and a path to spiritual enlightenment. As a church it's got a lot going for it. It runs religious programming on television, all day every day. Every modern primetime program is like a left-wing Andy Griffith show, reinforcing lessons of inclusion, tolerance, feminism, and anti-racism. 

Watching a 90-pound Sci-Fi heroine beat up a room full of giant evil men is as satisfying to the left as John Wayne westerns were for the right. 

The Blue Church controls the HR department, so even if you don't go to church, you have to act like a loyal churchgoer in every way that matters while you're on the clock. And off the clock, on any kind of public social media platform. 

Jon Stewart and John Oliver are basically TV preachers. Watching them gives the same sense of quiet superiority your grandma gets from watching The 700 Club. The messages are constantly reinforced, providing that lovely dopamine hit, like an angel's voice whispering, "You're right, you're better, you're winning." 

Hollywood award shows are like church talent shows - the skits and jokes aren't really funny, but it's fun to look at the pretty girls, and you're all on the same team.

When you have been ensconced in a blue bubble through all your educational years (and for many, in your comminity and job as well), fully assured that you were on the "right" (meaning correct) "side" of history and heading inevitably to nirvanah, an event like Trump can be REALLY disconcerting!

The "Blue Church" has it's own escatology (description of the "end times") that is rooted in concepts like the old Hegelian / Marxist Dialectic of "Thesis->Antithesis->Sythesis" or "Problem->Reaction->Solution". Since most of the post-moderns are not aware of much of history, theology or philosophy, many of them think this is also "new".

This all assumes that "history" somehow has some sort of "direction" apart for the one in Christianity. Historicism asserts that somehow, not just plants, animals, etc are "evolving" to a "better" state. How did it get this "direction"? ... big mystery. It "just is", or "somehow" in 10 to the 400th UNIVERSES, this one with all these cool Goldilocks characteristics also has some mysterious built in "random teleology" that pushes it toward "better", and "better" just happens to always align perfectly with whatever "progressives" are thinking as being "better"! A very very happy accident indeed!

The bottom line here is that as finite and very limited beings, ANY explanation of our existence is at some level "fantastic, improbable, paradoxical, etc" ... which is why when I went through my greatest faith chllenges, I eventually settled on belief in things that have a history (meaning 100's or thousands of years) of WORKING!
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Statistically Showing Satan

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/12/how-do-americans-stand-out-from-the-rest-of-the-world/

To readers of this blog, there is nothing surprising in this polling other than the US is STILL exceptional on a set of key measures relative to "wealthy nations".

1. Belief in personal control of our lives. 
2. Belief in importance of hard work. 
3. Belief in God
4. Happiness 

I assume that my readers would be surprised because I'm surprised we have not slipped farther. I like to consider myself a "realist", but there is no doubt I err on the pessimist side of reality. We certainly ARE slipping on all these elements, but I would have thought we would have slipped to the point of near alignment with Germany, UK, Canada,  etc, but in general we have not. 

I was gratified to see how close the UK and US were on individualism -- Brexit? 

There is no doubt that the last 8 years have been a strong effort to stamp out all of the top 3 above, and to make us more like Europe. The charts are worth going to look at. Science tells us that believing that what we individually do makes a difference (1),  being dedicated to it (2), and belief in a benevolent universe (3), leads to happiness (4). 

We know those things to be true, yet "progressivism" wants to remove personal control, punish hard work, and remove God --- which leads to China, Russia, Germany, UK, Canada ... roughly 20% happy vs over 50% in the US. 

I believe in God and Satan. What we see here is a definite inversion, bad being willfully substituted for good -- we know what creates lives worth living from both science and ancient wisdom, yet we have a large political contingent dedicated to making lives LESS meaningful and happy!

All of us inherently know what is right, history has shown us what is right,  our science shows us what is right -- and yet, a significant number of people persist in working to create a society that is LESS happy, healthy and productive.

If there is no force of evil in the world, why would this be so? 

Democracy Of The Dead

So little of life, so many great thinkers to understand. Our biases are many, with a great many of them so fundamental that it is very difficult for mere mortals to realize we have them. Along with a profound bias for our own pwersonal POV, the general bias for the small set of people that happen to be alive now is similarly entrenched.

“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” Chesterton goes on to say: “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

In our perverted age, "The Party" ( TP-D) tends to be all in favor of giving the dead the vote, ncompletely secure in their knowledge that they vote 100% TP. They also find that little things like ciicizenship, not being a felon, being able to prove who you are, or essentially any restriction is too onerous to prevent the sacred vote.

Tolerance, Moral Responsibility, Refugees

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/who-we-are-as-a-people-the-syrian-refugee-question/2/?hootPostID=0a9a9841e6c2af5cd8bc7155b67e6683

. First, disconnect rights from responsibility (obligation).

The idea that every right has a corresponding duty or obligation was essential to the social compact understanding of the American founding. Thus whatever was destructive of the public good or public happiness, however much it might have contributed to an individual’s private pleasures or imagined pleasures, was not a part of the “pursuit of happiness” and could be proscribed by society. Liberty was understood to be rational liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was understood to be the rational pursuit of happiness—that is to say, not only a natural right but a moral obligation as well.

When there are no morals, "tolerance" -- allowing relativism becomes the only "moral".

Over the past century and more, this morality grounded in the American founding has been successfully eroded by Progressivism. This erosion is manifested today in the morality of value-free relativism. According to this new morality, all value judgments are equal. Reason cannot prove that one value is superior to or more beneficial than another, because values are not capable of rational analysis; they are merely idiosyncratic preferences. In this value-free universe, the only value that is “objectively” of higher rank is tolerance. Equal toleration of all values—what is called today a commitment to diversity—is the only “reasonable” position. And note that it is always called a commitment to diversity. It is a commitment because it cannot be rational in any strict sense—it exists in a value-free world from which reason has been expelled. The only support it can garner under such circumstances is the simple fact that it is preferred.

Values precede reason. They either exist in the fabric of an ordered universe,  or they do not. If they exist, they transcend existence. If they do not exist, then might is right.

The article proceeds to argue that it is obvious that the admission of Syrian refugees is neither a moral or a Constitutional issue in a world with values. I agree -- self defense is a basic human right. Unless refugees, especially Islamic refugees can be properly vetted, there is not obligation to accept them.

Welcome To Post Truth WaPo

If Nothing Is True, Then Everything Can Be False | RealClearPolitics:

The election of Donald Trump has seen the flowering of the post-truth landscape. Emotion outranks fact; believing makes it so. We are all Tinker Bell now. Clap if you believe in voter fraud. Clap if you doubt a human role in climate change.

The leftist  myths of no such thing as voter fraud (except in Detroit)  and doctrine of HUMAN CAUSED climate change are the gold standard in lefty "truth"?  It seems obvious that the left needs to stick with the doctrine that all truth is relative until they get enough power to make it absolute.

How about barking as opposed to clapping? I like that better.

In the WaPo universe, whatever they say is "true", and it really MUST be believed -- because to them, it IS "truth" ... which is synonymous with power in their dogma.

With facts passe, the next, inexorable move is to reduce all news to the same level of distrust and disbelief. If nothing is true, then everything can be false. So #pizzagate, the dangerously false accusation of a child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton operatives, occupies the same diminished rung as a news report that fails to toe the official line.

Inside "The Party" (TP-D) bubble, "facts" have been passe for a very long time. "Narratives" have been king, and narratives have elements of truth and fiction interwoven to create a story that is highly plausible if you hear it enough. "The vast right wing conspiracy" of Hillary in the early 90's was one such narrative. I'll list a few here, but it the list is SO long and so deep that I'm likely missing some of the best examples.

"Bush Lied, People Died"? The fact that the  CIA said that WMD was a "Slam Dunk" was W's fault rather than the CIAs ... believing the CIA was a "lie" then, now what they say is gospel -- thus saith TP.

Forged documents to "prove" that W's boss when he was in the guard didn't like him? Well, Dan Rather lost his job -- nuff said. W was STILL not a good guardsman  according the the MSM -- not that it matters, but it did to them. The whole W guard thing was complete fake news.

Benghazi was caused by a movie? "What difference, at this point, does it make"? The media just reports that straight up -- no reason to claim that Hillary is somehow "post truth". Same thing with her long list of lies on the email. Nobody PROVED they were lies -- er, well, the FBI said they were lies, but not indictable, so really the same thing as truth if you are TP - in the old "pre-Trump post-truth" world.

"If you like your health insurance you can keep it"? Nothing untruthful there!

Ask the Rolling Stone about the veracity of the Virginia rapes that they and the entire MSM went bonkers on.

I could keep writing forever -- "truth" has been dead in the MSM and the US government for a good long while --  they just hate seeing it come home to roost. This is not new in any sense to readers of this blog -- that WaPo now sees it, but only sees one of the hands clapping, is somewhat new, but completely unsurprising.















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Trump vs Fidel, False Left and Right Personified

https://spectator.org/frightened-by-trump-inspired-by-fidel/

I find that contrast is a great way to understand the vast differences in world view -- Trump vs Fidel is a great opportunity. The top linked article is an  example of those contrasts.

Here, Roger Cohen, a NY Times columnist who has savaged Trump sings the praises of Fidel.

Fidel. A single word suffices to evoke the man who descended from the Sierra Maestra with his ragtag army to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, purge Cuba of American domination, proclaim the empowerment of the poor, and embody Latin America’s thirst for an end to government by the pampered coteries of imperialism.

Here Cohen talks of the joys of "the left".

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer,” Viet Thanh Nguyen describes how, as Communist forces loyal to Ho Chi Minh advanced towards victory in Vietnam in 1975, his protagonist “longed to tell someone that I was one of them, a sympathizer with the Left, a revolutionary fighting for peace, equality, democracy, freedom, and independence, all the noble things my people had died for and I had hid for.”

One of Castro's many "achievements" accorting to the US press was lowering heart disease through famine and fuel shortages, causing his island prisoners to eat less and excercise more!

The food shortage was severe enough that per-person calorie consumption dropped to about 2,400 calories a day in the 1990s, and typical adults lost about 10 pounds. At the same time, they had to exercise more by walking or riding bikes instead of taking buses. The number of Cubans meeting exercise guidelines climbed to an impressive 80 percent.

Even a famine is cause for admiration when the dictator is Fidel!

Fidel was responsible for at least 10's of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees -- some of the people that fled Cuba no doubt helped Trump take Florida.

The key differences between "left and right" jump out here, and (as always) the confusion created by the wartime propaganda making Hitler and Nazi Germany "right", when in fact they were LEFT as all dictatorial and totalitarian regimes are -- the spectrum would better be called "Control vs Chaos" vs "Left and Right" (covered in detail here).

While the MSM in the US has been unremittingly disparaging of Trump, they at best can mount tepid criticism of Fidel. The closing paragraph of the Cohen article is an example.

Fidel was a flawed giant. By the end the only idea of his still standing was the anti-American nationalism taken on by the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. However, this is certainly not the moment to say his stand for the disinherited of the earth was unimportant. Nor, at a time when the United States has elected a charlatan as president, is it the moment to overlook the fact that Fidel was a serious and uncorrupt politician. Nor to leave unsaid the suffering he inflicted.

 For contrast, here is his article claiming Trump a sociopath. No explanation required on why Fido was a "serious and uncorrupt politician". From the left, mass murder does not corrupt you ... but surprisingly, living a hidden luxury lifestyle and being worth $900 million doesn't either! As we have discovered many times, being left means being incorruptible!

The themes that come out through a lot of the writing are:

1. The evil of historical America. Fidel thumbed his nose at America the capitalist/imperialist unjust nation. Putting America in "it's place" made Castro a hero to the left -- no matter the cost to his people. BO established relations between BOistan and Cuba at the end -- a victory for Fido.
   
2. The vision of the masses as "children" -- unable to care for themselves, they need a "strong man" to guide them -- "properly". But if that strong man is not a doctrinaire leftist, he becomes "dangerous", like Trump.
   
   It is here where the left/right dichotomy has some complexity. The ORIGINAL left / right of the French Revolution had "Church / monarchy" on the RIGHT, with "revolution" on the left. As I make clear in the "Left/Right" blog post linked above, my choice of the terms "Control vs Chaos" is obviously imperfect -- as any selection of a single axis to describe the complexities of ideology is bound to be.
   
   Religion is part of "natural" (in my world view). We are created with a spiritual hole to be properly filled by God -- on the left, that hole is filled by the state and leftist ideology. At the time of the French Revolution, the understanding of the "Natural Order" included God, The Church, and The Crown, "natural" was equal to "right" and thus included the church and state.
   
   Our founders separated church and state and allowed freedom of religion in what they saw as a "center-right" nation ... enough control to prevent chaos, but with the "divine right of kings" severed. The people gained power in the form of a democratic Constitutional Republic with a strict Constitution, separation of powers, and a number of anti-democratic measures to prevent shifting to toward democracy and the tyranny of the masses.
   

The MSM sees no danger in moving left continuously, and ideally by force -- you WILL bake a cake, you WILL let this man in the woman's locker room!, you WILL only contribute politically as we decree!.  Even slowing the slide to totalitarianism is seen as "fascist", thus the hatred of Trump. It is an article of faith for the left that "the masses" lack the intelligence and maturity to "make correct choices" without largely state controlled media, massive educational indoctrination, and  demagogic leaders like BO or Fidel -- thus, Trump must be destroyed at all costs. 

30, 60, 90

My father is little over a month short of 30 years older than me and we had his birthday celebration on his birthday, the 21st. He was in fine fettle, even though it really looked like we were going to lose him due to prostate cancer / urinary tract blockages, surgeries, etc this last spring. He bounced back and was able to eat an amazing amount of pizza and homemade ice cream at his party. Based on my data and my mom's roommate at the nursing home that lived to 102, I'm pretty sure that pizza is essentially the fountain of youth.

Readers of this blog know that I am blessed and cursed with a pretty decent memory. I remember well the 30-60 party back in '86 when I turned 30 and dad was about to turn 60. I was 8 years into my IBM career, married a little over a year and still childless, that would not change until March of '88.  The Challenger had exploded in January. It was the year that Iran Contra showed up and the media was certain they could finally get Reagan.

At IBM, business was good -- the IBM PC was still king, although the seeds of demise were visible. The Intel 386 processor started shipping that year, but IBM did not create a machine using it as it had hung it's hat and OS/2, the ill fated OS originally developed "in partnership" with Microsoft, on the 286. OS/2 was "a big deal" at IBM in '86 -- and would never really be a big deal anywhere else.

My Dad seemed pretty old at 60 from the perspective of 30 -- but he was still vigorous and running his farm. His two brothers and their wives were doing well, now all gone including my mom, his sister in Rockford lives on. We joked that I had been 1/30th his age when I was born, but then I was 1/2 his age -- I'd "gained" to being 2/3rds his age at this point. Fractions had been hard for him in school, and they remained so throughout his life (unless he has an epiphany in his 90's !).

Lived fractions show a reality however -- it is BOTH a relative and absolute world. Thirty years remains 30 years, as the length of both lives extend, the relative difference shrinks. If we were blessed or cursed with 300 year lifespans, I could attain 90% of my fathers age. A 30 year old has a hard time imagining long life to be a curse, a 60 year old sees that potential, a 90 year old is well aware of that reality.

Thirty, sixty, ninety are just numbers, and in our modern world, quite small numbers. "70" was a big number in biblical times -- 70x7 was a stand-in for infinity. It doesn't seem so big from 60, neither does 90, and that is impossible to understand from 30. At 30, the amount of time to 60 seemed INFINITE! It was twice my age, and the last time my age had doubled, from 15-30 seemed like FOREVER. From 60, I'd say that in "perceived time", 30-60 seems somewhat shorter than from 15-30 seemed from 30. Thirty to 90 seems shorter still.

I came close to losing my wife in my 60th year, and although her recovery is miraculous, her injury has been life changing for both of us and shows both the fragility of life, and the need to always be grateful for what you have! It only takes a second to be paralyzed ... or gone, and a second is still short at 30, 60,  or 90!

Thanksgiving was spent with family in West Bend, and at our lake place. I've come to love the "home away from home". It is familiar and "home" now, yet very different, in a way that "just going away for a few days" can't be -- it continues to become a place of solitude and reflection as well as a source of new memories with family and friends. It is easy to understand why presidents have their "retreats".

Age is both a blessing and a curse, but only the living of the years really allows that to sink in. It is one of the pieces of wisdom that can't be obtained from books. We inherently understand the blessing, although the wonderful blessing of grandchildren takes living to understand. The curse is also obvious by 60 -- loved ones have passed from this vale of tears by this point, and the rate of passing in those you know starts to accelerate. You see heaven filling with loved and familiar faces, and your prayers for those who ignore or reject the infinite become more fervent.

Then there is the infirmity -- sometimes arriving suddenly as in a fall that injures your spine or a stroke. Sometimes in a diagnosis -- cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. Sometimes it is in the growing circle of the younger that you love. When you were a child, mom, dad and siblings were "your world". You may have lost a childhood friend, but probably not. Sure, losing a grandparent, aunt or uncle was hard, but "normal" too -- the "natural way of things".

As you age in the "old style family", you have in-laws, the in-laws have parents, children, grandchildren, close friends. Your "risk set" is expanding with children / grandchildren for you and others as well. When you were young, visits to hospital or funeral home tended to be rare -- for me, my maternal grandfather's funeral at age 9 is my earliest recollection of sad death. My paternal grandfather passed away before such things registered.

Now, increasingly, there is nearly always someone in your family or acquaintance in hospital or nursing home. Visitations and funerals for co-workers, church friends etc become increasingly frequent. You need to be retired to go to all the funerals and to visit those shut-in even if you are blessed with good health yourself!

As time passes, each lived age "is what it is". When we are young we have plans, dreams ... demands and "rights" even -- at least the we believe so when young. Stand next to (or in) enough hospital beds, next to enough graves, and the message of lived reality becomes ever stronger. We are dust, and to dust we shall return -- as you breath your last, Grace is your only hope -- and neither it, nor anything else are your "right".

We are not in charge of our own next breath -- nor that of any we love. Science is also not in charge, nor government, nor anything in this earthly coil.  We live for a moment in the infinite, and we all have some belief as to the ultimate meaning or lack of meaning in that.

By Grace, I believe in a continuation of the eternal kingdom of God through Christ Jesus. In your belief, maybe a cold cruel random universe and annihilation. Some ignore it, but we are all really all truly and eternally equal in the fact of death!

30, 60, 90 -- all infinitesimal next to eternity. Lord Jesus, thank you for this measure of life, and thank you infinitely more for the gift of eternity, offered so beautifully as the original Christmas gift!

40% Of Americans Unemployable Due To Religion

The Culture War Expands | The Weekly Standard:

It has come to my attention "Post Trump" that apparently many BOistanis have lost the understanding of Freedom of Association as well as tolerance, both of which were critical in the mother nation that was called "America" (1776-2012).

While Associational Freedom is so obvious to most at most times that it is like "air", the US history of slavery and Democrat run Jim Crow in the south led to a dangerous precedent with "Brown vs Board of Education". For whites relating to blacks , Freedom of Association was suspended. It was NOT suspended in the reverse direction -- all black schools, all black organizations, etc were still and still are completely legal. The intent was to use this rather extreme measure to break an egregious case of racial apartheid that allowed institutionalized and political oppression in the old Democrat controlled US South.

Rather than clearly understand the specific abridgment of a deep and natural human freedom as a radical measure taken for a highly specific purpose, the same party that managed Jim Crow has seen fit to attempt to generalize the use of force to apply to other groups to gain further political power via Identity Politics. Women were rather quickly added, then minority religions, gays and now "transgenders".

Sadly, while the coercive totalitarian approach is gaining ground in forcing compliance on one side, the opposite is also taking place as "liberals" disassociate themselves with family, friends and businesses because they  "may have/did vote for Trump". Tolerance and Associational Freedom go together in a "classical liberal" Democracy/Republic ... they are part of "why things worked". In a totalitarian state, "tolerance" is replaced by government enforced compliance.

In the linked column we have the case of a young married couple who are practicing Christians. They have a hit show about fixing up homes (not all that sexual). Their church does not support gay "marriage" -- so it is time for them to be boycotted, taken off the air, etc.. If supporting gay "marriage" is a requirement to be employed, then 40% of americans (including me) are ineligible for employment today, or we need to stay quietly "in the closet" and hope nobody "outs us".

Think about that for a moment. Is the suggestion here that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate— a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?

 We were once a Christian nation -- we had shared values that aligned well with our Constitution. Yes, in the South, Christian values were corrupted and used to further a cultural and political system of oppression. Just because an extreme measure was used to break a specific problem should not make that extreme measure now the norm. Unfortunately, the oppressor political party in the old Jim Crow case still has a political vision that requires oppression and lack of tolerance in order to flourish. The Unconstrained Vision of the world.

The idea of our framers was to LIMIT government so that it would never be big or intrusive enough so we even had to waste time on these discussions. The assumption was that free and reasonably well educated people would interact and work our such issues ON THEIR OWN in accordance with their generally Christian beliefs.

The question of a nation founded on ideas rather than territory, ethnicity, language, religion, etc surviving was one of the things (beside the concept of limited government) that made America exceptional. BOistan has an exceptional heritage it chooses to largely ignore, but it is on completely new ground relative to sustaining itself in a way that Europe does not. Eastern Europe shows us that nations founded on territory, religion, language, etc "survive" in a sense even when they are under totalitarian rule (USSR) for nearly a century. France is very likely to still be called "France" and have the same borders even if it becomes an Islamic state. Probably no wine though.

Americans knew who they were and what ideals they held to be sacred. BOistanis don't think much of all that -- they were certain that they were going to continue to hold political power and thus stamp out any remnant of America once and for all. Trump is at least a bump in their road.

The way back from BOistan is long and arduous at this point -- philosophy and religion, at least the language of both, have to return to be foundational for EVERY person that considers themselves "educated". REAL tolerance -- as in understanding the importance of tolerating, COMMUNICATING WITH,  and even respecting the rights of people who think differently than you is critical. The sad thing is that without divinely inspired, or VERY well thought out transcendent principles, such tolerance is impossible.

We are deeply broken -- we have been losing our way for over 100 years. We took huge losses in the 30's and 60's, and then the combination of decades of losses, mass media and BO pulled the last straw and we absolutely fell into the post-constitutional, post-truth failed state of BOistan. The greatest loss for humans is always meaning. Death is small next to that. As Nietzsche said, "He who has a why can endure any how".  Thus, the primary goal of the collectivist forces is always to destroy the why -- the meaning, and replace it with assimilation to the collective.

I could just keep writing, but will stop here  -- one book if you want to dig deeper ...  "Ideas Have Consequences".

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Reality Is Experience

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

A likely important article that I may return to and dig deeper into. Apparently, the physical universe can be replaced with "a conscious entity" and at least this new model "still works".

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

"Ontological" -- being ... what IS.  The territory "real" as opposed to the map ... those being words like virtual, representation, metaphorical. This computer analogy gives a good idea why seeing "what is the most useful to the designer, or random chance" makes more sense than the "most realistic detail".

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop — it has color, position, and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. 

They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. 

Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

It's always intriguing to me that a super intelligent guy, so non-traditional he is willing to question the MOST fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, still finds "evolution " as somehow a worthy explanation for how we came to be (or maybe "not **BE** as in being physical", but rather "be" as experience only) in this non-physical reality. It is always possible that the computer desktop "just evolved" after all. Actually, if you are an evolutionist, the development of the computer and the desktop metaphor is simply evolution still operating in what we have no doubt mistakenly labeled "consciousness", meaning "something special", but in evolutionary "reality", just more evolutionary adaptive algorithms.

 (column author) But if there’s a W, are you saying there is an external world?

Hoffman: Here’s the striking thing about that. I can pull the W out of the model and stick a conscious agent in its place and get a circuit of conscious agents. In fact, you can have whole networks of arbitrary complexity. And that’s the world.

So, a mathematic attempt to understand consciousness replaces "the world" with "a conscious agent" and it all works ... and it doesn't give him any inking that God would fill that "conscious agent" role quite nicely?

The discoveries of quantum mechanics, the mystery of consciousness and things like the insane small amount of information that seems to be coming in through our optic nerves for us to create what we are "seeing" all point to some fundamental misconceptions about what "reality" is -- if it "is" (ontology again) at all! 

"I think, therefore I am" was always tenuous -- perhaps, a universal consciousness is reality, and "I" am an illusion. Perhaps when God speaks to Moses and says "I am that I am" he was really de-referencing the THAT!  (C++ programming, the "this pointer" is the pointer to the object itself) "I'm THAT" I am" ... the ultimate base of existence.  You (Moses) are another "I am", created in my image.

Roger Scruton has covered this philosophically quite well. 

Politics That Makes Me Cry

10 Reasons Left-Wingers Cut Trump Voters From Their Lives - Dennis Prager:

I don't think there is a Christian or conservative parent that doesn't live in fear of the contents of this article if they have non-Christian children. In America, the nation I grew up in, the idea that children would keep their parents from their grandchildren over politics was unthinkable. In BOistan, it is very real.

In my current line of work I deal with people who were abused by parents with mental illness, substance abuse, and other issues. Forgiveness is not always possible -- but it is recommended, and with a lot more scientific backing than even global warming. If you don't forgive, you are letting the person who you don't forgive live rent free in your brain -- as bad as you may hurt them, you are hurting yourself worse. We live in a broken world, and we all know it has gotten FAR more broken in the last eight years (look at suicides, addiction and crime numbers).

For a Christian, we know it is a hurt that will live on for the prodigal in eternity if they cannot heed the yearning to come home. I know God will wipe my tears away some day, and I also know that I will continue to cry and pray a lot in this vale of tears.

Just go and read it ... it makes me weep for how we allowed our schools to be totally destroyed and created a system that indoctrinates fragile minds rather than building them into mature lifelong learners eager to be independent, caring,  discerning adults. A sample ...

9. The left tends toward the totalitarian. And every totalitarian ideology seeks to weaken the bonds between children and parents. The left seeks to dilute parental authority and replace it with school authority and government authority. So when your children sever their bond with you because you voted for Trump, they are acting like the good totalitarians the left has molded.

Prager happens to be Jewish, conservative, and a model of erudite intellect. Anything he writes is well worth the time to read. This one is way short and WAY worth it!

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The True Believer, Eric Hoffer

https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

The subject book is a classic published in 1951 by a rather interesting gentleman who was once homeless as well as being a longshoreman, self taught, read massively, and went on to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.

He believes that all mass movements are interchangeable in that they are driven by the same human needs. He considers the Roman Empire, Christianity, Islam, the Reformation, the Puritans, the US revolution, the French revolution, the communist takeover of Russia, and others to be "interchangeable".

...the vigor and growth of a mass movement depend on it's capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed it's vigorous stage. 

He argues that mass movements depend on the "frustrated". Those that see their lives as somehow "spoiled" and they crave a "new life", a "rebirth". The mass movement let's them lose their spoiled selves in a cause.

"Those who clamor for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society."  

"Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than than freedom without equality" 

In the old USSR there was a lot of "equality" and the small cadre of the "elite" had freedom. Here, at least in BOistan, the constant cry of the supposed mass was for "equality", while the "elite" like Hillary were able to be free from even the law.

"The poor who are are members of a compact group -- a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group -- are relatively free from frustration and almost immune to a mass movement." 

Therefore, those trying to move the mass into their column attack the family, the church and the community and attempt to balkanize races and other identity groups so people are "all alone" except in relation to the mass movement.

"The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority of the middle."

By "best" he doesn't mean "morally best" -- he means powerful, educated, those with resources. "The elite". The elite are "true believers" because they will get the power, the poor are the "true believers" because the elite have promised them the spoils. The "silent majority" are a bunch of stooges still working hard, trying to keep their families together in the face of attacks by the elite, often going to church. You know them -- "The Basket of Deploreables".

"The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole -- the church, party, nation -- and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in loose and relatively free society". 

.... when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy laden with suspicion. there is prying and spying ...  

The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension, but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched, the faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.   

I could go on quoting at length -- it is full of them. He was writing assuming that communism was likely implacable and would nearly certainly "win", but as always (in his mind), it's success would breed complacency in it's upper ranks which would finally be detected as weakness by the masses and result in a new mass movement.

Hoffer considers mass movements to "just be" -- Luther, Hitler, Stalin, Cromwell, George Washington, Jesus, Mohammad -- all "merely mass movement leaders". Sorting out the details on "good or bad" is not his real purpose -- just pointing out that the "active phase" as the movement is growing is "messy", maybe even "evil" (one could think of it like childbirth), but what comes after varies a lot.

I think it is clear that the left in this country has been on a sputtering attempt to create a mass movement in the US since at least FDR, and probably Wilson.

The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity, fanatical faith in a holy cause, an awareness of the importance of the close-knit collectivity, and above all, the ability to evoke fervent devotion in a group of able lieutenants. 

 The biggest thing missing in Bill Clinton, Obama and Hillary was "fervent able lieutenants".  There were simply none to name. It is ironic that Nixon, Reagan and W all had their "fervent able lieutenants", but lacked a "holy cause" and certainly any concept of "close knit collectivity".

Trump? Well, it remains to be seen -- "Make America Great Again" isn't exactly 99 theses!

The book is a classic of political philosophy. As an atheist, Hoffer naturally discounts the idea that "Jesus is different", but as mass movements go, Christianity has been around a LONG time, and actually encourages it's adherents to be worthless but redeemed with infinite worth in Christ. They can "lose themselves" in Christ who is fully God and fully Man, without having to lose themselves in some "mass movement" -- rather than "suspicion, prying and spying" (definitely a factor in hyper fundamentalist sects), they can be blood brothers, watching carefully for the log in their own eye, and being redeemed without losing themselves in some earthly "perfection".  It's only 170 pages long, and more meaty than I can cover in this blog length.

Well worth your time, highly recommended.

Women Are XX and Men Are XY

Transgender Conformity by Katherine Kersten | Articles | First Things:

The linked column is excellent, though a bit long -- the tragic story of the Nova Academy in St Paul is ignored by me here, but well worth the read. It points out that today we explain things through science that were once once fully understood by grade school children.

Every cell in the human body marks individuals as either male or female, with males bearing an XY and females an XX chromosome. Sex is not “assigned” at birth. It is identified anatomically when an infant is in the womb and then confirmed at birth. “In mammals such as humans, the female gestates offspring and the male impregnates the female,”

Much as if you declare yourself to be a cat, your body is still not that of a cat because your DNA is not that of a cat -- every one of your cells is YOURS. Not merely human, but YOURS, as it we spend lots of time with matching and anti-rejection drugs to allow transplants. Wearing a long tail will actually not make you a cat -- no matter what your other friends wearing long tails tell you. We know all of this scientifically, but part of the modern project is to reject pieces of science (the birds and the bees), while demanding that other pieces be converted to holy writ (AGW).

But we can all pretend -- a lot of things. The modern Recovery Movement has decided that "there is a higher power" (they assiduously avoid "God"), we are all here for a purpose, we have each been given unique and important strengths, and the way to live a happy and full life is to recognize this and live accordingly. They have reached this conclusion because people are dying -- in droves, from suicide, drugs, or simply giving up on life and slowly bloating or wasting away. They make it clear they are just pretending because they have to do something -- it would be more effective if they actually believed. 

Those are also things that a typical 6th grader could have schooled the modern PHDs on in 1950.

"“Hardwired to Connect” warns that American children are facing a “crisis” of “mental and behavioral health.” Young people are struggling with anxiety, depression, alcohol abuse, behavioral challenges, and thoughts of suicide, all at unprecedented levels, the report’s authors say. According to one study, by the 1980s, U.S. children as a group reported more anxiety than did children who were psychiatric patients in the 1950s. The report attributes this, mostly, to the breakdown of the family and other fundamental social institutions, which has weakened moral and behavioral norms and deprived young people of the “authoritative communities” that have traditionally provided security, meaning, and purpose.

The modern project of the destruction of God, family, community and interpersonal relationships (via social media, cell phones, games, internet, etc) had already made our youth by the 1980's to be equivalent to mental patients 30 years before. These are of course issues far less likely to be studied by our "science" than say the "crisis" of Global Warming, but I can't imagine that anyone over 50 doesn't realize that today's youth are conservatively 2-3 times worse off than the youth of the '80s.

Today’s transgender crusade can be seen as the latest manifestation of this denial. It is inherently authoritarian, as other latter-day Gnostic projects have been, because it has to be. Nature and common sense oppose it. In the “Gnostic dream world,” as Eric Voegelin once put it, “non-recognition of reality is the first principle.” Critics who persist in drawing attention to reality must be discredited or silenced. Otherwise, the Gnostic fantasy world crumbles.

I don't call "progressivism" regressivism as a joke, I call it that because that is what it is. It makes knowledge once accessible to grade school children into breakthrough ideas from PHDs. What is more, the reason why this is so is also obvious to grade school level thought.

Our natural God given bodies and brains know how to accomplish carrying on our species even though the actual mechanics of it are well beyond even our most advanced science ... eg. we can't manufacture even a dividing bacteria, let alone a human in a test tube.

Similarly, our culture and traditions, which prominently included religion, naturally inculcated purpose, meaning, answers to ultimate questions like death, and structure in which to live lives in "95%" loving and meaningful ways. They worked because they had either been divinely inspired or evolved (or both) over thousands of years. Failing to pass down the "DNA" of culture is as fatal to civilization as if we declared procreation to be "unnatural and restrictive, culturally imposed".

However, our culture was not "perfect" in a regressive sense -- it may well have been "perfect" in the practical sense of "it worked nearly as well as it could". There were always children who were "different", and for some of those children those differences were sexual. There were however acceptable roles for them -- the bachelor farmer, the two old sisters or brothers that ran the farm down the road and kept to themselves while nobody asked any questions, the nun, the priest, old spinster english teacher, etc.

Certainly there was a sanction to "follow society" as there is today -- which is why all who disagree with the regressive project are "racist, homophobe ... deploreables". I believe I will henceforth just use that handy summary word. The sanction allowed 95%+ to find an acceptable way to fit in, today's method alienates half the population and causes huge percentages of youth to be effectively equivalent to mental patients of 30-60 years ago.

The problem is in the numbers. No matter how much regressives like to fantasize about each individuals "right" to "create themselves", it is simply not possible to declare yourself a cat and suddenly become one. To attempt to do so is to consign yourself to a life of frustration.

The Judeo-Christian vision, which shaped Western civilization for 1,600 years, holds that God created man—body and soul—with purpose and meaning in an ordered universe. But the post-Christian worldview fast replacing it has no place for God, and perceives no purpose in nature. Christian man has become “psychological man” and the soul has become the self, in the words of Philip Rieff. The free-floating self—unconstrained by reality—is now believed to forge its own “identity” through a creative assertion of will.

The article closes with this -- none of this is particularly new to readers of this blog, but it is well done and the Nova Academy story is a classic tale for our times.

Over time, public policy making will become impossible if new interest groups attempt to piggyback on the transgender movement’s success, as seems likely. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch now insists that schools accept a kindergarten boy’s self-understanding and treat him as if he is a girl. What happens when an individual suffering from body integrity identity disorder identifies as disabled and applies for federal disability benefits? What if a white male business owner identifies as black and seeks to participate in a federal contract set-aside reserved for minorities? What if a forty-year-old woman regards herself as a senior citizen and demands Social Security benefits? How can policy makers logically deny their claims? As we enter the world of fantasy—when reality ceases to matter—it is impossible to predict where our society will crash against nature, as it inevitably will.

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Reason Is White

Looking 'White' In the Face - The New York Times:

I've got to hear a lot of African Studies, NAACP and Black Lives Matter people talk on MPR in the last year. The following is from a white PHD of philosophy and religion at east coast schools like Villanova.

I think that what modern philosophers call “pure” reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction.

To the extent that the Greeks, Romans and Jews are "white", that would be a correct statement.

Given that racial assumption, Western Civilization is "white".

The author uses the following rather obtuse paragraph to make the claim that "race is destiny" -- who you are, how you turn out, are all determined by your race.

Were I there, there would be “here.” That is a simple thought whose depth we never plumb. In my own work I cite it frequently to criticize the idea of “the one true religion.” We have seven grandchildren and when the last one was born I remember thinking that a little black child was also being born that day, as dear and innocent as our granddaughter, who was going home to a desperate situation where the odds will be stacked against her. We begin with an originary natal equality and then we crush it. “Switched at birth” stories, like Mark Twain’s “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson,” have a deep ethical and political import. Were I there, there would be here. That should transform everything.

If he was correct, the planet would be a homogenous tribal culture devoid of philosophy, science, technology, etc. How you were born would be your destiny and "progress" would be an unknown term -- like the English language, nations like England, writing, etc.

Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Condoleezza Rice, Washington Carver, Martin Luther King, Thomas Sowell, and uncounted other blacks would not exist, because "race would be destiny". I submit that we do not live in that world

People who try to walk a mile in the shoes of the other, to live among and dedicate their lives to working with the oppressed, are also sensitive to the fact of their own privilege. They know they can never truly identify with them. They understand this paradox but it doesn’t paralyze them. This problem also comes up in Christian theology — God intentionally assumed our mortal condition but it wasn’t an inescapable plight visited upon the divine being without its consent.

One of the most cherished aspects of the left is the paradox of the "victim without choice". Blacks are asserted to have no choice, and no chance. Similarly, whites always have "privilege" -- they created the entire framework of the modern world -- the very concept of reason itself. Even God is denied the power to save -- he had a choice, so can't be a "true victim" in the universe created by the professor.

I came to philosophy through religion and theology and as a result philosophy has always had a salvific and prophetic quality for me. It has always been a way to save myself, even as in antiquity philosophy did not mean an academic specialty but a way of living wisely.

God and creation are denied -- free will is very nearly denied, yet somehow, miraculously, the author arrives at the power to "save himself" -- to be his own ultimate, to be his own god.

Postmodernism -- a rather long word for insanity.

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The Flight 93 Election, Decius

The Flight 93 Election:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/an-attack-on-founding-principles-at-the-claremont-institute/499094/

This one is worth taking the time for some extended reading.

It opens with an analogy that I've used and one I haven't -- I still like the revolver vs the semi-auto a little better, but it is worth some thought:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. 

Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

The difference between the columnist "Decius" and I is that he still feels that we are HEADED over a cliff -- I  believe somewhere in the past 8 years we already went over it. I don't see this as America, I see it as BOistan.

If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.

The term "conservatism" needs a precise definition. It IS NOT just hanging on to or pining away for "what used to be" as the article seems to veer close to at times, it the idea that "Ideas Have Consequences" and for humanity, what really counts are ideas, principles, values, meaning, culture, truth and wisdom. I've spent a lot of text on it over the years -- here are 10 principles that are at least a decent summary.

Whatever the reason for the contradiction, there can be no doubt that there is a contradiction. To simultaneously hold conservative cultural, economic, and political beliefs—to insist that our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature and must undermine society—and yet also believe that things can go on more or less the way they are going, ideally but not necessarily with some conservative tinkering here and there, is logically impossible. 

Let’s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them, often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as conservatism.

Decius is painfully close to the realization that I have had -- "We aren't in America anymore Toto", and in fact, neither whatever it is, nor Europe, is working very well. We part ways on the notion that the function of culture and government is to be "compatible with human nature". In my view, and I believe in the view of Burke, the Founding Fathers, and "conservatism", human nature is flawed and the result of a culture that is merely "compatible" with that nature will be significantly and probably fatally flawed as well.

As I've quoted to excess, in the words of John Adams, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". The religion he had in mind, Christianity, does not say "I'm OK, you're OK, if it feels good do it".

How have the last two decades worked out for you, personally? If you’re a member or fellow-traveler of the Davos class, chances are: pretty well. If you’re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or politician, you’ve accepted—perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably—your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid. To the extent that you are ever on the winning side of anything, it’s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.

I need to devote more time to the "Davos class". The quick synapsis is that these are "the top 2,500 people" on the planet (by their estimation) and they know what would really be best for the rest of us. I cover a little more of "Davos Man" here.  Since Reagan, semi-real conservatism has returned to the position of the Washington Generals (the team that always loses to the Harlem Globetrotters).

This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.

Go visit Ireland, Germany, England, or likely pretty much any other country on the globe. They are DAMNED PROUD to be Irish, English, German, etc -- and willing to tell you about it! If Trump manages to win, I believe that is why. There are a whole lot of people living in BOistan that actually LOVED America, and at least want to imagine that they can recover it! Some of them even believe it could be "Great again"! Which brings us to the other article linked above -- a rather long Atlantic piece lamenting that idea that anyone with enough education to write, would be writing something in support of Trump!

The essay is an attempt to change the minds of conservatives who refuse to support the GOP nominee. It doubles as a barely disguised rejection of conservatism itself, stoking panic in hopes that conservatives embrace what is essentially right-leaning authoritarianism. And it begins with an overwrought metaphor about the passengers on one of the planes hijacked during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Atlantic definition of "conservatism" dovetails rather nicely with the Washington Generals metaphor from Decius -- the Atlantic wants "conservatives" that "win" by agreeing with the Atlantic, but primarily just lose -- quietly, and with the proper bows and scrapes to the Davos ruling class.

Even so, the apocalyptic rhetoric of Hewitt and Prager is forgivable in comparison to the more dangerous ideas put forth by Decius and elevated by the Claremont Institute. Decius is rejecting the adequacy of a Constitutional framework that survived a British invasion, slavery, the Civil War, the Great War, the rise of fascism and Communism, Jim Crow––and that will obviously survive four years of Hillary Clinton.

Decius and the Atlantic author seem to agree that "America" survived the IRS being used against political opponents with nobody prosecuted, immigration policy being issued by proclamation from the oval office, being forced to buy health insurance was a "tax" and the executive spending billions that were not appropriated by congress was now just fine.

In my view, that IS NOT "America" because it is not a nation of laws rather than men. It didn't survive 8 years of BO, so what Decius seems to fear, and the Atlantic author seems to think is impossible, has already come to pass for me.

The Flight 93 column is well worth reading in it's entirety. The Atlantic one, not so much. In my world, America is already ended -- better choose a fascist that will have a lot of opposition, and that is CLEARLY Trump!

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The Face Of God -- The Gifford Lectures, by Roger Scruton

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15782118-face-of-god

I finished the EXCELLENT subject book  and had one of my "vast oversimplification aha moments". Let's call the book FoG (Face Of God).

The "Aha" is that Science is psychopathic! It has been staring me in the face for years, but this book finally brought it to the surface.

The psychopath and those high on the autism scale fail to see the conscious entity behind the face in other humans. They are to varying degrees "consciousness blind". Because they are such, they tend to varying degrees to lack any sense of morality -- remorse, shame, etc. They tend to lack a CONSCIENCE ... which is very much linked with human consciousness.

The whole FoG book focuses on subjects vs objects and the "I -You" relation which recognizes that we are all "subjects" (conscious BEings) Objects are not conscious in the human sense. Subjects are US ... or God. We have BEING ... we are little "i am's" ... God is **I AM**! (consider us the eternal dog food version). I suspect that God really enjoyed the joke of Dog being God backward! How funny, considering that we are the dogs!

The book concentrates on the idea of "the face", and how it is a portal for the consciousness behind it.

"My face is a boundary, a threshold, a place where I appear as the monarch appears on the balcony of the palace" ... or the Pope appears to the faithful in St Peter's square. It isn't "I", but if you are not a psychopath or autistic, you can "see"(detect)  the "I" from my face.

"It [the face] shows the incarnate in the object, embraced by it's own mortality, and present like death on the unknowable edge of things".

"... the individual is revealed not only in the life that shines from the face, but in the death growing in the folds and wrinkles ...:".

Scruton prefers "I-You" as the standard human relation, but I would call it "I to I" with the obvious play on words. The whole essence of human life is RELATIONSHIPS between sentient BEings that have human consciousness. Everything else is just mechanism.

He ends the book with this ...

"Our disenchanted life is, to use the Socratic idiom, "not a life for a human being". By remaking human beings and their habitat as objects to consume rather than subjects to revere, we invite the degradation of both. Postmodern people will deny that their disquiet at these things has a religious meaning, but I hope that my argument has gone some way to showing that they are wrong."

For me, his argument is a pearl of great price in a mechanical world.

Science is in the business of "disenchantment", but like some sorcerer's apprentice, it takes pride in the fact that it has NO MORAL SENSE, nor "sense" at all. It doesn't "engender the Terminator" (SkyNet from the Terminator movies), it **IS** the "Terminator" ... of humanity, of morality, of meaning, of life, of love, of "god" ... only GOD is very much it's master, it is just that due to Free Will, our choice of science over God has crushed our sacred *I* (subjectness).

By definition, science totally lacks any recognition of ALL **I ams** ... to science, there are no subjects, only objects. Objects that can be reduced to component parts, classified, ordered and disposed of with "efficiency". "Morality" and "meaning" simply do not compute -- they can't be measured, therefore they are not.

We have released science from the slave status which a TOOL that refuses to recognize the most basic element of humanity needs to be confined to. The fact that we are SUBJECTS, not objects ought to always be conceded by any sentient human who understands the nature of at least man, if not having the beginnings of understanding the nature of God and the universe (the beginning of wisdom).

I can't recommend this book too highly. My review COMPLETELY fails to do it justice. It is quite reachable, yet it is a profound statement on the human condition, and our profound peril in a modern world that has lost the  understanding of what it means to be human.

BOistan Divided, Drowning vs Abortion

DIVIDED AMERICA: Global warming polarizes more than abortion - The Washington Post:

The more people connect on a human level, the more people can “overcome these tribal attitudes,” Anna Jane Joyner says. “We really do have a lot more in common than we think.”

I read an article like this and wonder how the author would answer the following question;

Do you think the natural state of human society is:
A. Tribes
B. Plato's Republic
C. Marxist Communism or Socialism
D. Some yet unknown scientifically based advanced culture?

I'm assuming he thinks "D", but then HOW does one get there? Force?

We once overcame tribalism by believing in a set of transcendent truths that we called "Western Civilization" which was largely rooted in Christian values. Justice, equality of opportunity, individual responsibility, freedom, etc ... that kind of trash.

Science is like engineering on the starship Enterprise .... it lets you go fast, blow things up and make the doors go "whoosh"! It tells you NOTHING about what you "should" do. Annihilate the aliens or go down and see if you can have sex with them like Kirk and Riker might prefer -- those are NOT scientific questions!

On  a "human level", we are all tribalists. On a scientific level, we apparently take a lot of surveys and marvel that we are tribalists -- but somehow believe that if we all get together on a "human level", we will reach a decision that killing off the next generation is better than them drowning in the rising oceans. Or something.

Is the "fastest growing segment" of the population "young earth warmists" that believe that man arrived in the last 10K years after the most recent ice age, thus missing the last warming period equivalent to now 120K years ago, or the previous three other comparable periods in the past 500K years? Will appropriate surveys make the last 500K of geologic and climate history go away?

Science is WHOLLY unable to produce the "myths" on which to base a human society. It may well help a reasonable society, or even "tribes", have more "stuff", move around more, kill each other more efficiently, or distract themselves more completely, but that is ALL it is capably of doing.

No matter how many surveys you send out!

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Facts, Belief, Truth, Convincing

Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters - The Washington Post:

When the USSR and the Berlin wall fell, I learned the absolute depth of "belief over fact" personally. I actually BELIEVED that the US could and would consign the USSR "to the ash heap of history" as Reagan had promised on June 8, 1982. From the time Reagan was elected, and during at least the first six years of his term, I would have been one of those people that the media would have argued "fact's didn't matter".

During those years, papers like the WaPo regularly referred to Reagan as a "madman", "simple minded", "unable to listen to reason", etc. In the world I lived in, the USSR **WAS** an "evil empire" that enslaved it's people, killing millions in Gulags and leaving all but the most elite standing in line for basic necessities. Even the most elite lived lives less luxurious than an average middle class family in the US. It was clear on NPR that the USSR to them was a very reasonable place -- not perfect, but often better than the US in "free education, healthcare, etc".

But by the time the wall fell, those who had once had so much passion for how foolish and "ignorant of facts" Reagan and his supporters were, lived in a different world.  Now, "Everyone had always known that the USSR was in serious trouble and likely to implode". Reagan and his supporters like Thatcher actually DELAYED the end of the USSR with their "bellicose tactics". "It was all Gorbachev ... he was a visionary guy that came along and changed the game". Fools like me were still ignorant and unable to accept facts, that part had not changed.

Being part of "The Party" (TP-D) means that you are ALWAYS right and you can point at the poor unwashed masses and tut-tut about how they completely ignore "facts". How confidently you can support your own candidate, the wholly truthful Hildebeast who has indeed never told a lie!

The article does have some insights into human thought, but they are REALLY not new at all.

The authors wrote: “The more often older adults were told that a given claim was false, the more likely they were to accept it as true after several days have passed.”

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" ... Hamlet, written in 1600. How many times do you REALLY need to tell me how much of a liar Trump or Reagan is? How crazy they are? How they are/were "a danger to life, the universe and everything"? Isn't it surprising that if you are a chain smoking parent (your candidate is at least as big a liar), screaming about the evils of smoking to a teen every day is more likely to make them want to try smoking than to avoid it? Perhaps the brilliant left knows a great deal of the science of human nature, but they have failed to figure out that it has MUCH more to do with emotion than science.

When critics challenge false assertions — say, Trump’s claim that thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey when the twin towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001 — their refutations can threaten people, rather than convince them. Graves noted that if people feel attacked, they resist the facts all the more.

"When accused of killing 3 men and a dog, he promptly produced the dog, alive". The dog is "beside the point" -- producing it doesn't affect the important accusation of killing 3 men. The media is doing a version of this relative to Trump. Pretty much anyone remembers seeing throngs of cheering Muslims after 9-11, Paris, Charlie Hebdo, or virtually any other violent act carried out against the west by Islamists. 

The USUAL locale is "The West Bank", but there are others. Here is that violent right wing spewer of hate Anderson Cooper on the uber right wing networks CNN talking about some in the US in 2009: 

So the "fact" is that Muslims often DO cheer violent acts by others in their religion -- because they feel that their religion is correct and such actions are justified. The same reason that this column feels justified in saying that "facts don't matter to TRUMP supporters" when the article points out that it isn't just "Trump supporters" -- it is everyone human. 

Trump’s campaign pushes buttons that social scientists understand. When the GOP nominee paints a dark picture of a violent, frightening America, he triggers the “fight or flight” response that’s hardwired in our brains. For the body politic, it can produce a kind of panic attack.

All humans attempt to "push buttons", as does this column -- it too tries to paint a "dark picture" of Trump. The way that Western civilization once advanced was by putting it's philosophy "outside humanity" in the realm of Christianity and ancient philosophy to have a position of actual moral authority. Science has the authority of mechanism ... it can make things work, and explain how they work, but it has zero moral authority. "Right and wrong" are not within it's purview ... nor is emotion, other than to study the effects of it as we study the effects of gravity. 

Our only hope to return to civil society and the ability to be able to discuss and sometimes even CONVINCE educated people is to return to knowing what epistemology is.

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When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X

A good and worthy book, and I LOVE the title.

The premise is simple, brilliant neurosurgeon about to embark on his career contracts lung cancer (he never smoked, as if that makes a difference) he fights, he dies. It is a good and worthy read, but while exposure to this particular work might be of special use to some, it is well worth it to read  Ecclesiastes 1 and just ponder a bit even if you ARE going to read the book:

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher,
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
3What advantage does man have in all his work
Which he does under the sun?
4A generation goes and a generation comes,
But the earth remains forever.
5Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;
And hastening to its place it rises there again.
6Blowing toward the south,
Then turning toward the north,
The wind continues swirling along;
And on its circular courses the wind returns.
7All the rivers flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full.
To the place where the rivers flow,
There they flow again.
8All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
9That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
10Is there anything of which one might say,
“See this, it is new”?
Already it has existed for ages
Which were before us.
11There is no remembrance of earlier things;
And also of the later things which will occur,
There will be for them no remembrance
Among those who will come later still ... 

Remember, this is Solomon writing this -- the wisest man that ever lived.

Page 167 begins Paul's (the author) discussion of his Christian faith, and this passage especially hit me:

The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning — to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.

The Biblical definition of "vanity" is anything apart from God -- which is MEANINGLESS! Human life and wisdom is "vanity" ... which apart from our relationship to God (which is ETERNAL) is meaningless. Consider the words of Solomon and replace "vanity" with MECHANISM. If we have no spirit, then ALL is mere mechanism, but if we do have spirit, then we are spiritual beings having a mechanical (physical) experience which is VERY short!

Science is all about mechanism and mechanism only. In programming, I can write a program in any programming language,  a wealth of styles, run it on at least hundreds of operating system / hardware combinations. etc. What counts is "the algorithm" which started in my head and was "expressed" in the program, then "reified" (made real) by the interaction of the compilers, interpreters, operating system, and under it all, the hardware.

I agree with Paul (the author) when he says "Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create with each other and the world, and is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them ... " 

Being the sort of person I am, I realize that it is definitely by the Grace of God that my wife is 3+ weeks into recovery rather than 3+ weeks into the grave. My model has always been that I would precede her in death ... it seems "fair", she is younger, and lord knows that I need her MUCH more than she needs me! 

But I know that is not Truth -- that is a wish, which is as ephemeral as the passing of a gravity wave. 

The author was willing to admit that even two very much in love and committed people had problems in their marriage .. prologue, page 9 ... "But I'm worried we want different things from our relationship. I feel like we are connected halfway. I don't want to learn about your worries by accident". 

"Half way"? Pretty damned good for a relationship. One human brain is the single most complicated thing we know about in the universe -- at least trillions of connections, and mostly we are completely clueless of how it operates. Two brains? And for believers, "spirits", "love",  and connections to the infinite? Perhaps .0001 % "connected" is all even the closest can hope for in the life in which we breath. 

I fear I did not give the book high enough praise. READ IT, there are a myriad of things that make it worthwhile to read -- you get to know a brilliant neurosurgeon on a fairly deep level and understand a TINY bit of what it takes to walk that road. 

In the end though, Plato, Caesar, Augustine, DaVinci, Luther, Einstein -- pick your favorite. Only ONE life and death really matters eternally -- Jesus! ALL of us DEARLY want to be "special" -- The author talked of his expertise, the fact that he had not caused a leak of spinal fluid in a year, and some surgeon trying to help him did. I sometimes feel pride in my writing, or my maybe "imposing presence" in some cases. The author was WAY more special than I will EVER be, and  ALL of our works which we so very much want to be "special" are "filthy rags" --- BUT, in the power of Christ, we are all infinitely loved! (sadly, not all of us accept that love)

My kitties love me, which makes me feel good day to day. More importantly, I realize the greatest theological truth in history -- "Jesus loves me, this I know!" Next to eternity, the length of our lives here is definitely "vanity" -- we have a lot of very dear wishes, but they are not truth, they are vanity. 

So, when my breath becomes air, I'm ready.