How To Not Be Secular; Reading Charles Taylor, by James K A Smith

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JJ1RIO2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I often describe my pilgrimage as from a 1974 tiny rural HS, 1978 no name university BS graduate, culturally flat technical hick; to autodidact idiot savant pseudo-intellectual student of Western civilization, Christianity, Philosophy, Literature and Science hick, as a series of pitches going up a mountain on which I often THINK that I have seen the peak, but realize at various junctures that all I have seen are outcroppings, many of which involve yet another LONG pitch I must traverse to gain a glimpse of the next dizzying (to me) height. I've ceased to imagine it will be the peak -- that will be in the life to come. 

This is a review of  Smith's sort of of extended cliff note narrative summary of Charles Taylor's 874 page mountain of a book, "The Secular Age" which I now have on order (don't expect the review blog anytime soon)! Here is a review of The Secular Age"  if you want a different / more extensive take on the larger work. 

Smith says that Taylor "gives us an account of our cross-pressured situation -- suspended between the malaise of immanence and the memory of transcendence". Immanence meaning "matter and the physical is everything" and transcendence meaning this is not all there is -- there is a higher Platonic /  spiritual / metaphysical reality that is more real than what our imperfect senses can apprehend. 

Taylor perceives and makes plain to us "that transcendence and immanence bleed into one another; that faith is pretty much unthinkable, but abandonment to the abyss is even more so;" ... 

"Employing a kid of intellectual colonialism, new atheist cartographers rename entire regions of our experience and annex them to natural science and empirical explanation, flattening by disenchantment. ("Graveyards of the gods" are always highlights of this tour)."

My favorite diagram from the book is this one -- I apologize for having to resort to taking a picture of it. 

I think a reasonable attempt at tiny summary of the Smith book is that Taylor tells the story, AS A STORY, of how it became possible to exist in a disenchanted immanent world where the most important thing is the Buffered Self -- meaning the self devoid of attachment to culture, history, religion, or even family. A detached self that is never the less haunted by being "pushed by the immanence of disenchantment on one side, but also pushed by a sense of significance and transcendence on another side, even if it might just be an echo of lost transcendence". 

We all live by a narrative -- the pure humanist narrative of "progress" is that we once lacked physical vs metaphysical explanations for what we saw around us, so we imagined "enchantment". Spirits and  gods were all around, but we were only children. The definition of "progress" or "maturity" is NO ILLUSIONS ... we live in a cold meaningless universe that is ONLY matter. Meaning is only about matter ... man is the measuring creature, measurement is meaning. If it can't be measured, it is an illusion, and therefore does not exist! 

"If one were to preserve God's sovereignty, one would have to do away with "essences", and with independent "natures". And the result is a metaphysical picture called "nominalism" where things are ONLY what they are named." 

If you can name it and measure it, it exists. If not, it doesn't. So, with the Nietzschean "demise of God, we are the only authorizing agency left" ... these two paragraphs give the barest thumbnail of the "CWS", Closed World View -- it's matter and us, that is all the material available to try to construct meaning.

And so, the disenchanted immanent "meaning" constructed is the "Modern Moral Order" (MMO) -- it is pure humanism, bootstrapped from matter and human thought and ruthlessly applied to all as a dogmatic religion,  with much more restrictive dogmas, pervasive in all areas of society, especially schools, media, and law ( like gay "marriage", transgender grooming for kids, etc).  

"Because of an inadequate appreciation for moral sources, modernity fixates or moral articulation -- a fixation on more and more scrupulous codes of behavior .... we don't know how to make people moral, but we do know how to specify rules, articulate expectation, lay down the law. This happens in policy, but also informally in cultural codes of political correctness ..."

What is lacking is any sense of inner motivation -- it is all external, we will yell at you if you fail to meet the ever growing MMO -- or maybe worse, we will pass more and more laws, you MUST NOT use plastic grocery bags, you MUST recycle. you MUST drive an electric car"! Thus saith the MMO. 

It becomes clear that the CWS / MMO / Buffered Self, etc ARE a form of metaphysic, and thus effectively a "religion" -- the self is not actually "buffered", unless they can exist as an effective modern hermit of constant distraction, escape, and self-delusion.  The Buffered Self must BELIEVE that all of this is "the good", but part of the CWS itself is that it is a "good" completely made up of whole cloth.

Man STILL cannot live by bread alone, but must have a some sort of "social imaginary" (Taylor term), metaphysical dream, or every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So what exactly is the advantage of the certified manufactured illusion with ZERO parts transcendent content of the MMO, over thousands of years old moral order that at the minimum leave the thought of transcendence open to the psyche? 

Well, in an immanent sense, of course NOTHING -- since there can't be anything that isn't made up by randomly developed creatures out of nothing except "stuff" (matter). Taylor -- and Smith believe that there actually aren't any honest humans that fail to sense the haunting of the transcendent. Is it real, or is it just side effect of some old caveman brain circuits that would be best excised in our modern world to allow us to be completely "grown up" as a Nietzschean disenchanted, immanent buffered self that deserves to be tamped down and unacknowledged -- even if it means they must lie about it to make it seem that the fiction of pure rational atheism exists (which it doesn't, at least since Quantum Mechanics). 

Unsurprisingly, no answers are given. The task of the book is to make Christian faith POSSIBLE in our flattened, disenchanted meaningless world, essentially by just making it clear that EVERYONE has "faith", it is only a question of "faith in what". The intellectual playing field of the world today is purely secular. Taylor sees us at the possible cusp of faith no longer being "allowable", although he does not predict that will be the actual outcome ... he believes that even the merest ghost of the transcendent cannot be ignored because "this heavy concentration of the atmosphere of immanence will intensify a sense of living in a wasteland for subsequent generations, and young people will begin to explore beyond the boundaries ..." 

Even for the subject Smith book of a mere 139 pages, I have but scratched the surface lightly. Yet again, I find myself regularly running to the Internet to bone up on my definitions in order to begin to understand what I am looking at. I feel as a non-english native speaker, who after a couple semesters of English is thrust into reading Shakespeare and asked to provide commentary. And this AFTER 100's of books over decades of my attempted intellectual improvement.

In the 500 years since the Reformation, science, philosophy and religion have sold us the chimera of "reform / progress" with no concept of "to where"? It seems that in some circles the thought was "to a mature human vision of a morality built on "facts" rather than "superstition" -- however, morality is more than a set of rules, and mature human vision is perpetual change toward an unknown objective rather than a "goal" ... and it likely is merely going in circles chasing its tail.

We remain lost so tragically we often fail to even detect our lostness. Does my quest for knowledge lead me forward, or into the abyss? My prayer is that with Christ holding my hand, there can be no truly uncharted abyss (Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me). I know the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Can this mountain of human knowledge be somehow be translated into a form that allows modern man to see the truth of transcendence in Christ? or is my quest just an old guy attacking the Everest of knowledge alone without oxygen? 

Better to die on a quest than in disenchantment? 

Catholic Wisdom, Truth; Perspective For Our Time And God's

What’s next: Catholics, America and a world made new – Catholic Philly:

If you have ANY time and inclination, BYPASS ME and just GO READ THIS! It may well be the best reading of this length that I've read this year, and as you know, I read a lot. 

I grew up in a church that thought Catholics were devil worshipers -- joined with the Harlot. I've come to believe that they are "THE Church". As a Lutheran, I'm still staking my faith that they are not the ONLY church.

What I love about the Catholic Church is HISTORY and PERSPECTIVE -- and the linked article is a great example of both. A huge failing of Protestants is that our churches are all certain that Christ is returning "soon", which is certainly true in God's time. After over two thousand years however, the Catholic Church well understands that God's time is not our time (which is also true). One would hope that in this 500th year anniversay of the Reformation, perhaps Protestants could begin to fathom this other important truth. 

The Protestant failing that is destroying Western civilization is the idea that everyone deserves and can fashion their own god. Sure, they may often do it in a myriad of sects, splits and schizms, but at base it comes down to what I see as a heresy -- although Jesus saves each of us personally, God the Father is ONE GOD, eternal and unchanging -- we do not get to make him, and futhermore, fear of him as the **I AM** is the beginning of wisdom.

Thus ends my short paen to the Cathoic Church. The linked column is WAY too deep and rich for me to summarize. I see it as nothing short of basic blueprint of what is required for Christians to save the remnant of a tattered and bleeding Western civilization, as well as the realization that it is ONLY Christ and his followers that can save it if that is Gods plan. If we want to recover, have to find a foundation of meaning to build on, and it is not "information" or even knowledge.

Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom, not knowledge, is the framework of a fully human life; the architecture of interior peace. Scripture is the Word of God, and Ecclesiastes tells us that “the words of the wise in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.” Wisdom is more powerful than might and better than the weapons of war (Eccles. 9:16-18). Wisdom is more precious than jewels, and once we have it, then knowledge becomes pleasant to the soul (Prov. 8:11; 2:10).

I VERY grudgingly select this 7th point to share -- I want you to READ IT ALL, because this point is in no way a summary.

Here’s a seventh point: Democracy advances equality by flattening out injustices and social inequities. But it goes much further than that. It also tends to flatten out distinctions and hierarchies of every kind. Unguided by religious faith, democracy flattens out even the human spirit because any kind of divine transcendence or human excellence also implies a kind of inequality. This is why Alexis de Tocqueville said that democracy creates not just a new and different kind of political order, but a new and different kind of humanity.

Much of our people and culture are like a cartoon person flattened by a cartoon steamroller. God's universe is infinitely dimensional, hierarchical, celebratory of TRUE diversity -- diversity of spirit, gifts, thought, experience, blessing. Spirit can't be manifest in a flattened cartoon projection of being human, and so very many of the people in our age have been totally and tragically flattened.

I can't resist one last quote, however, please realize that overall, the column is POSITIVE, unlike what my quotes might lead you to believe.

If you want to see the face of Europe in 100 years, barring a miracle, look to the faces of young Muslim immigrants. Islam has a future because Islam believes in children. Without a transcendent faith that makes life worth living, there’s no reason to bear children. And where there are no children, there’s no imagination, no reason to sacrifice, and no future.

Read the linked and ponder the richness of Grace and possibility that God wants us to live!

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I Still Love America, I Just Miss Her

America: Can You Stop Loving Her if She Changes? | National Review:

Jonah Goldberg is having a tiff with the editors of NR over "What is America" (Rich Lowrey is editor in chief). The editors declare they would still love America even if it had a completely different set of ideals -- and Jonah apparently doesn't realize that the area of N America where the nation of America used to exist DOES have a completely different set of ideals -- which is why I call it BOistan.

Rich started by saying that America is a nation, not an idea. He then went on to demonstrate the ways in which America is a nation (it’s got borders and a people and a culture and the like). That’s fine with me, I suppose. I concluded a while ago that the “Nation vs. Idea” argument is poorly framed. If all you have to do is cite borders, roads, and a post office to prove it’s not an idea, then what’s the point?

Every philisopher understands neccessary vs sufficent. Philosophers all breathe, sweat, defecate, etc -- which are neccessary conditions. NONE of those is SUFFICIENT to call yourself a philosopher. All nations have borders, people, culture, post offices, etc -- those are neccessary conditions, not sufficient to being called "America".

"Idea, ideals, values, principles" -- The TRUTHS that America held  to be self evident and endowed by GOD. To believe in America is to believe in divine founding -- else there are no transcendent truths, and America could not exist without transcendent truth. The founders certainly allowed people to live in the territory of America (the neccessary but not sufficient borders) without acknowledging God -- they were just to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and declare that the founding principles were self evident "just cuz" ... like created equal without any creator, rendering "equal" just another man made thought changeable by the only remaining moral authority when God dies -- power. "Might is right" with a ballot or a bullet.

Roe V Wade, Obergefell, BOcare, not impeaching Bill Clinton, 20 trillion in debt and a few hundred other things finally convinced me that "We weren't in Kansas (America) anymore".

The unwillingness of someone of Goldberg's stature to even recognize that we are fish swimming in a BOistani rather than American pond is traumatizing -- failure to recognize and accept reality is not a good sign for ability to remedy our situation. Jonah ends his column rather whimsically for such a serious matter.

Imagine one person tells you that his ideal form of government would be to get rid of the Constitution and make Kim Kardashian queen. You’d think that person is silly, probably even deranged. Now imagine that 270 million Americans believed that and, having the necessary supermajority to pull it off, voted away our Constitution. As the coronation of Queen Kim, First of Her Name, unfolded on every channel, would you not change your view of America, her culture, and her people? Might you not fall out of love with America as it is? 

My hunch is Rich et al. would still love America, but you know what America they would love? The America That Was. They might even join the resistance to the regime of Queen Kim (I’m fairly certain Charlie would) in an effort to restore self-government to America. And here’s the funny thing: They’d be fighting against the American nation in the name of that great and glorious cause, the American Idea. And that’s the crucial difference.

It would really be nice to have a discussion about what ideas/values/truths/etc that we seek to return to -- I think we need a much clearer picture of the America that we see receeding away from us ... sort of a philosophical version of this shot of Queen Kim ... only in this case a picture of  "The America That WAS" (TATW) receeding -- what would she look like in your mind?

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Civil War or Divorce ?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448069/memorial-day-united-states-armed-services-unity-political-fragmentation-james-mattis

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448385/americans-left-right-liberal-conservative-democrats-republicans-blue-red-states-cultural-segregate

I spend a good deal of time ingesting media from the left and far left -- more than half of my media life, since knowing what those that I tend not to agree with are thinking is more difficult and less natural than listening to echoes of my own thought. I have a strong belief that spirit / thought / consciousness are what makes us uniqely and eternally human. To me, race, gender and sexuality are FAR less important. "Culture" is however critical, because everyone has one, and in the US, we now have two radically different cultures.

I find this quote from James Mattis from the top linked article to be spot on:

When I asked what worried him most in his new position, I expected him to say ISIS or Russia or the defense budget. Instead, he said, “The lack of political unity in America. The lack of a fundamental friendliness. It seems like an awful lot of people in America and around the world feel spiritually and personally alienated, whether it be from organized religion or from local community school districts or from their governments.”

Frequent readers of this blog understand that I consider meaning to be really the only thing that matters in human life -- and I regularly harp on "Man's Search for Meaning". I believe that the reason for the alienation in Western civilization is because we have put pleasure or "happiness" in the top position rather than meaning, so freedom has been corrupted to being "freedom to have as much pleasure as possible".

For a Christian, the realization of our ETERNAL purpose as serving Christ is the ongoing discovery of his eternal leading. As covered in Frankl, great suffering has far more meaning than even the most desireable pleasure in even the temporal sense, let alone the eternal.

Since personal pleasure has become the "holy grail" of the west, alienation is inevitable. Most people find it difficult to see "good" in people who do not share their world views. Christ's admonishion to love our enemies goes totally against our sinful human nature. When the highest goal is "happiness / pleasure", why bother to even associate with anyone who does not see eye to eye with us on virtually every detail?

When my own pleasure is the ultimate goal, then whatever gets in the way of that is clearly "evil". "Progressives" consider their chief recent accomplishments to be pursuit of largely sexual pleasure -- sex outside of marriage, abortion on demand, same sex relationships, gender bending, etc.  This is nothing new -- this script goes back to the Old Testament. Let's break out the golden calf and the ashera poles. In the search for pleasure. "Progress" is considered to be removal of restraint and ultimately all responsibility -- everything becomes "a right", including the "right" to not even be exposed to anyone who is not in lock step with your world view. (those people are intolerant!)

The "progressive" world view demands that those who do not agree be removed from any association with "progressives" -- the god of personal pleasure is CERTAINLY not in any way shape or form going to suggest that you "love your enemies",  but rather that you destroy your enemies -- cut them off by any means possible. Make no mistake, Christians are definitely the chief enemies of "progressives" in this world. Muslims are OK, but NOT Christians!

Tiny little things like a Constitution are not going to stand in the way of "progressives" rooting out Christian doctrine. Here is Bernie Sanders applying a religious test to someone nominated for office in BOistan. Bernie was especially offended by the nominee having written this line in an internet post:

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

BOistan has no operative constitution, so at least half the country has no problem with this. Christ states in John 14:6 "... I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me". Practicing Christians not only agree with Christ, they WORSHIP him! Bernie concluded his remarks with; “This nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.”

America had a Constitution that demanded in Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

BOistan clearly does not honor the laws of the former Democratic Republic of America ... to "progressives", what was fundamental to America is now "not what BOistan is about".

David French concludes the second linked article above (both are excellent, well worth reading) with this:

If we seek to preserve our union, we’re left with a choice — try to dominate or learn to tolerate? The effort to dominate is futile, and it will leave us with a permanently embittered population that grows increasingly punitive with each transition of presidential power. There is hope, however, in the quest to tolerate. Our Constitution is built to allow our citizens to govern themselves while protecting individual liberty and providing for the common defense. It’s built to withstand profound differences without asking citizens or states to surrender their strongest convictions. We can either rediscover this federalism, or we may ultimately take a third path — we may choose to separate.

Is it remotely possible that the left will relent and decide that using the federal government to dominate is "futile"? As the Deep State, dominant media, legal system and educational system pull out all stops to overturn the presidential election, it seems awfully pollyannaish to me. Is it REALLY "futile"? The left has forced abortion on demand in all 50 states as well as gay "marriage", and they are pushing hard on the "whatever" vs gender front. Their climate doctrine is holy writ, well beyond Biblical levels of inerrancy for even most of the leftist post Christian "christian" churches. The Virgin Birth? Probably not ... Climate Change? Yea verily! ... oh, and forget that John 14:6 stuff, Muslims, Wiccans, "whatever" ... "it's all good'.

What I'd LIKE to believe is that we will have an honest to goodness REVIVAL of actual practicing Christainity in this failed area of N America. There ARE hopeful signs ... a person I work with attended the graduation at Liberty University this spring -- around 100K students enrolled on campus and online. Huge growth, Christ centered, very much appreciated and supported the graduation speech by Trump. Have attended a couple services at RedRocksChurch in Denver with our son ... packed services, all ages, very Biblically based with a young adult focus. Rapidly growing.

In general, the "sliding leftward" traditional protestant churches are dying. The Evangelicals, and to some degree Catholics are growing. Interestingly, Trump DID win the Catholic vote -- which is a story that is not talked about much. As I wrote about here, I firmly believe that 2016 was our first truly "post Christian Nation" election. Practicing Christians finally realized that we no longer live in "America", which culturally WAS Christian, but now live in BOistan, which desires to be pagan, and is more than happy to exclude any practicing Christians if possible.

I agree with Mattis. While I very much enjoy the free exchange of ideas and relish the chance to debate matters of religion, politics, philosophy, scotch, and cigars, we increasingly live in the age of shrinking tribal alienation. ALL relationships are increasingly "my way or the highway" ... friends, family, work, neighborhood, church, etc. I personally work to maintain relationships with people who do not share my world view, but in order to do that, the relationships become increasingly shallow. The worst thing about the Climate Change religion is that it has made even something as innocuous as the weather a religious issue. There is no god but man (man is the measure of all things), and even the weather is due to man's power in the climate religion.

I've been away from my blog for a bit while becoming grandpa x 2 with the birth Graham Walden in Denver, and I've rambled yet again. I believe that increasingly fractured lives are the wages of losing a shared transcendent vision of meaning ... we will atomize to ever smaller "tribes" if we don't "revive". Is that a "decision", or is that "Grace"? Given free will, I see it as both -- there must be a daily decision to stay in the Grace or to reject it in favor of man's "thought of the day".

My prayer for my "enemies" on the left is that even if you can't imagine loving those whom you disagree with, is it really too much to ask that you tolerate them rather than seek to dominate them to the point of preventing even a tiny "trim" of the massive Adminstrative State which rules BOistan?

When elections are not honored, the "separation" at a minium seems all but certain. Perhaps that is God's will. 

Word Deniers, Meaning Deniers

Climate Changes Activists: Science Deniers | National Review:

Jonah gets into my topic a little bit in the linked column. We all understand that the term "denier" is intended to bring up the image of a HOLOCAUST "denier" and thus mentally put those whose opinions on climate change differ from those who see it as an immediate existential threat in the most horrid light imaginable.

The word "denier" ties people labeled with it to those who would deny the closest thing to metaphysical evil recognized in the post-modern, post-truth materialist west. It is the medieval equivalent of labelling someone "demonic or satanic" ... it is "beyond the pale", and any remotely decent modern person should be willing to do ANYTHING to avoid that label from the POV of the priesthood of the left.

But does it work?

It has an effect. As Orwell covered so well in "Animal Farm" and "1984", language control by the powerful has a HUGE effect on the human psyche. The level of indoctrination of the youth is certainly the reason we see riots at Berkley over the very IDEA that they would be "exposed" to the horrors of speech from people identified as being as close to metaphysical spiritual evil as our insane modern world can imagine.

So they riot. Their actions are similar to burning Joan of Arc or witches in the past. They see the horror of what has been conjured to be "the ultimate evil" as simply beyond their capacity to resist -- it must be STAMPED OUT!  Like Odysseus having his ears plugged with wax and being tied to the mast so he would be saved from the siren's song, they do their modern version so they can resist the horror of Ann Coulter. What if some heard her siren wail? It is too horrible to even contemplate.

The insanity of this world however is that on one hand, post-modernism would tell us that words are only meaningful in terms of power. There is no "truth" ... not philosophical, not scientific and certainly not transcendent / theological. The only "truth" **IS** POWER, thus the riots.

Is the descent into violent physical power being the only coin of the realm being carried out by intellectuals that understand all of this, or is it merely an accident of leaving the world of transcendent meaning behind?

Since I refuse to look at my opponents on the left as idiots, I'm forced to pretty much assume malevolence on their part -- unless they can read, understand, and refute "Ideas Have Consequences".


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NPR, Binders of Cluelessness

'The Boston Globe' Obtains Mitt Romney's 'Binders Full Of Women' : NPR:

I got to hear this lament from NPR this PM about "how did we get to Trump from this?" as they pined away for the "good old days" when they tarred and feathered Mitt Romney with this story because "it seemed insensitive".

So they found the thick binders full of data on women that Mitt dutifully and honestly used  to place women into positions in state government when he was governor. He was a decent and honest guy, aghast at the way politics was played against him, and aghast that it was leading to Trump in 2016. Even after what happened to him, he still had the illusion that the political game was somehow "fair", or "honorable".

One only needs to listen to the NPR story to understand that it isn't -- at least not if you have any ways of thinking that don't align completely with "The Party" (TP_D) in NPRs case.

The response of the Trump voters, including a whole lot of white women was "F**K your binders and the women populating them -- we understand your game now. We don't listen to you!"

If not for the "Binders", "the '80s called and want their foreign policy back", the lies about Benghazi being due to a "movie", the dog on the car roof, and a few other odds and ends, most likely Romney would have beaten BO and be in the 2nd term of his presidency now. Trump would have never been necessary -- America would not have fallen solidly into BOistan as it did in BO's 2nd term. We might have made some pretty decent progress the past 4 years!

Ah, "the good old days" of 2012 when crying wolf over "Binders of Women" was still listened to by many more sheep out in the hinterlands than "grabbing p***ey" was listened or cared about by 2016. No rules means NO RULES!

If you cry wolf enough times, eventually NOBODY is going to believe ANYTHING you cry! No rules means NO RULES ... and then everyone just screams whatever is on their mind LOUDER. Until they turn to violence ... which usually doesn't take that long.

Not that I really expect anyone at NPR to be able to understand that. They just don't understand how smearing Romney with a lie back in 2012 contributed to them being not listened to now, and they REALLY don't understand it, because they report with glee how in fact Romney actually was the kind of rube republican who thought if he "did the right thing", he would be treated "fairly". NPR knew what was happening and poor stupid Mitt didn't ... but what that hell happened?

Hopefully Trump explained it to him when he gave him the head fake on Secretary of State. "Hey Mitt, you are completely clueless, but it is nice to have dinner with you. How did you enjoy being a speed bump out there on my path to the White House last fall? Damn, you are one slow cookie -- when they slapped you up aside the head with those Binders of Women didn't you even wake up a TINY bit?

Hey, no harm no foul Mitt. Want a position in my administration? GET A CLUE MITTENS!".

Many of us saw this coming for a LONG time ... it's here.

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Carefully Taught To Hate The Past

George W. Bush Gave Us Donald Trump. Now He Wants To Be Forgiven. | The Huffington Post: 

The title is a play on "You've got to be carefully taught" from the musical "South Pacific". 

You've got to be taughtTo hate and fear, you've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught
To be afraid of people
Whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught.

My belief (and world views are ALWAYS "beliefs" vs "facts") is that we are spiritual beings living  in a created universe with a purpose defined by a loving God, who have an eternal future in the loving presence of God and fellow believers through the death and sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. 

To the extent that I can understand the world view of the authors of the top linked column, it is "We live in a randomly evolved universe with no inherent meaning but that which we will into being by some process which will evolve in the future to be "better" by some unknown standard". I'll label that "Secular Humanist" (SH). 

To some extent, up to say "1950-60", America and even Europe still somewhat followed my world view. Since then, we have been increasingly following the SH world view, and according to the author of the column, the results so far, well, suck. The worldview of Western civilization put men on the moon, the worldview of SH has a lot of trouble identifying men, but it has put them in women's bathrooms. 

"Hazy nostalgia for George W. Bush carries broader risks. If Bush really wasn’t so bad, then Trump is more of a dramatic switch from ages past than he’s already been judged. His administration is a comet carrying alien life, as opposed to the edge of a continuum stretching back through decades of Democratic and Republican misrule. Normalizing Bush weakens our already weak grip on history, making it that much harder to see how today’s political harvest was also cultivated by the administrations of Clinton, who signed NAFTA and unleashed Wall Street, and Obama, who continued the Wall Street bailouts and allowed 90 percent of wealth creation during his tenure to accrue to the top 1 percent.

If Bush had never been president, or an execution-happy Texas governor, he might be a great buddy to talk baseball with. Even now, despite everything, it’s possible to empathize with his anguished conscience and maybe grant him whatever fleeting solace he finds in his paints and his bubble baths. But that’s really between him, his minister and his therapist. The country cannot afford any more sentimentalized politics."

They included Nixon in the column as well, and I'm quite certain they could go back for all of US and western history, the Founders, the Reformation, and Enlightenment, DaVinci, Augustine, Christ, Plato, Abraham, etc and point out that it ALL sucked! And we can't afford any sentiment about it -- the past SUCKED ... ergo the future is so bright we need to wear shades by comparison -- except for this nasty current "Trump bump" in the road ... and of course all the crap that preceded it.

Now that we are clear on that, let me make a couple comments.

First, you actually DON'T have to be "carefully taught" to prefer same and dislike different, which can be fanned into "hate" by things like wars, flying planes into buildings, losing your job, others voting for Trump, or reading articles like the linked.

We are born preferring "like" over things, creatures and people that are different, unfamiliar, strange, etc. I'd call it the way God created us -- evolution would just say "it has generally led to survival". What you DO have to be carefully taught is to love your enemies, which Christ teaches and clearly SHs do not.

We are also born with a built in natural affection for our parents and our "kin" as in blood relatives, even shoestring ones. Somewhere in that set of "good feelings well met" is the draw of our "tribe", "homeland", etc. Things like love, and yes that awful "sentiment" are also a part of us (in my world view), even MORE wired into our spiritual selves than our physical. Ideas that SHs find completely abhorrent like  "love your father and your mother", "love of God and country",  are part of that "sentiment" that is "unaffordable".

So you DO have to be VERY carefully taught to hate your past, your country, your civilization, your system of government, your parents, your relatives and people that voted for Trump. The linked column is an attempt at our old friend the INVERSION -- the place where Satan lives. It is an article that asks you to believe the OPPOSITE of what built Western civilization, and therefore tear it down and start over.

The SH world view has been being taught nearly exclusively in this country since at least the '50's (see  "God and Man at Yale") and it has flowered into increasingly mainstream embrace, especially among the "millennials" of views like the linked column. One of the features of the SH worldview is that it tends to lead to not having children. While there is the vague promise of "a better future SOMEHOW", the SH message coupled with the inductive "proofs" of science ( It worked great the last X times in a row!) is hard for them to sink their teeth into -- as evidenced above, even "The One", BO, turned out to be just one more failure, that like W and Slick before him led to the horror of Trump. Thousands of years of world history and all just crap! (well, except for that article I'm sure -- perhaps THAT is what mankind was leading up to, thus providing the "hope" to bring new life into the world).

Somehow, once you throw out sentiment, hope, love, etc tend to leave the now declared to be spiritless body with them. Oh, and "forgiveness" and "redemption" -- as evidenced in the column, certainly there is no room for those in the clear eyed SH view of reality.

And that folks, in one relatively short column and a few extra words is a class of world views.

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Tolerance, Apathy, Aristotle

The following quote has shown up in a number of internet memes ... mostly conservative, so it has been roundly claimed to NOT be from Aristotle in lefty quarters.

According to this site https://probaway.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/philosophers-squared-aristotle/, it is.

"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society."

So assuming that the quote is NOT from Aristotle, does that make it false? My take on reading it would be that if somebody has a strong belief in their culture / country / society, they would feel that it is "good, exceptional, just, important, positive, etc", and therefore not be apathetic, and would thus not be likely to simply "tolerate" views that were not aligned with that society / culture that they believe in. They would seek to challenge those views and arrive at what they see as the truth. 

In other words, the statement seems tautalogically true to me. If one stated that "Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying man", again, it seems tatualogically true -- if someone is dying, they are likely to tolerate a lot, and be apathetic about a lot. 

Conversely, "Tolerance and apathy are the first virtues of a strong successful man" seems clearly false at least in ancient times. Are not strong and successful men confident in their values and energetic rather than apathetic?

As men go, so goes society. 

In the cases where I've seen lefties get all bent out of shape about this quote it is obvious that they are NEITHER "tolerant" nor "apathetic" ... they are down right bent out of shape that "tolerance" would have ANYTHING bad said about it, and are thus completely INtolerant of anyone questioning tolerance. And they are excited about it. 

Which makes sense -- they came very close, or possibly succeeded in killing America and creating a new society of BOistan ... tribal, immoral (in the old sense of morals), non-competitive, declining economically, oriented toward leveled distribution of wealth vs the creation of wealth, etc. 

AND, they are very EXCITED for the prospects of that society, so they are NOT "apathetic". 

This seems so clear to me that it defies discussion. In general, they seem to want to go to great lengths to claim that Aristotle DID NOT make the statement that I believe to be tautalogically true. Do lefties respect Aristotle? It seems very doubtful many know anything about him. The idea of the left is that nearly anyone on the street today is more intelligent / wise / smart / etc than Aristotle, since we have "progressed" and will continue to as long as we continue to "be progressive". 

Naturally, if you are progressive, you can't have a "society / culture" because those things require values that are fixed over time and "progressivism" (regressivism) says that the latest thing thought up is BOUND to be superior because of all our added "knowledge / wisdom / smarts / etc". In the left view, BOistan is but a stepping stone to a less stable, less "moral" (old sense), less success oriented, more levelled future which is in turn is but a stepping stone to the next stage in valueless "progressiveism". 

AND THAT IS PROGRESS! 

Care Of The Spiritually Disabled

Peter Singer Thinks Intellectually Disabled Less than Pigs | National Review:

Singer is a an easy target for anyone with remote conservative or religious leanings. He is a purely godless materialist philosopher of "ethics", so his "morality" has things like:

• "humanity" is pure intellect, so your "value" is how smart you are. 
• All "life" has the same value ... any other view is "speciesist". 

From these basic premises, he concludes that abortion or infanticide are both fine up until the child  reaches some level of appropriate intellectual capability for Peter to call "human". Sex with animals is fine as long as it is "consensual", but eating meat is morally wrong. Downs children, elders who have lost cognitive function to some level, or any traumatic brain injury that drops the individual below Pete's standards also warrants extermination. Keeping them alive is "immoral". And so it goes. 

As a human with a sinful nature, my first reaction to Peter is not particularly Christian:

I imagine Peter in the wrong bar, a couple large gentlemen hearing him out in his pronouncements, informing him that they are brothers and their other brother is a Downs person. They deck him, drag him outside and tell him that they are giving him a wonderful chance to test his theories. First they will give him a beating he has a chance to recover from, then they will ask him some easy questions -- who is the current title holder in the WWE, who won the last Indy 500, which bourbon is better, Jack, Makers or Jim (and why), and who sings "Bad to the Bone'.

If he wakes up, and gets the answers all right (as any sentient human "should" using their "standards"), then he just got a cheap lesson in getting along with folks. If not, well then he is in for a long night, but his worries will be over by the time the sun rises. Naturally, he MUST agree with them that they are being "moral", because it is "all about intelligence" -- and he is obviously significantly less smart than he had estimated as judged by those with the power he is currently subject to!

My second reaction however is that Peter is clearly Spiritually Disabled -- in the extreme. His condition is more severe than many in our world, but not unusual. It comes from "losing your sense of small".  Loki may think "he is a god" ... he may be immortal even, we really all are after all. Spending eternity in a small cell with the Hulk would likely make him question if immortality was really quite as wonderful as he first thought.

As an aside, I believe that our belief in eternal punishment is a requirement for us being (imperfectly) created in God's image, to believe in God's justice. If we don't see justice as being ultimately certain, we will feel ourselves forced to judge in the here and now.

However, I believe that God cares enough for the Spiritually Disabled (which is ALL of us) that he was willing to sacrifice his Son to give us hope of recovery from our much more serious than Downs disability. Through the gift of Grace, we are to love the fellow Spiritually Disabled and repent of our natural reaction to treat them in a manner similar to the way they would treat us given the chance. Being able to recognize that we are all Spiritually Disabled, immortal, and DESPERATELY in need of Jesus is really all that is important to "get" in this life!

Why have transcendent values rather than human selected ones? Well, because Pete, the bar guys might be the ones deciding who lives and dies rather than you if you leave it up to mere human generated "values" -- the only one that actually counts without God being "Might Is Right"!

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A Climate Dump

https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-climate-alarmist-scientific-talking-points-to-win-the-debate/

The article has a lot of nice charts, some of which I've read books on and am somewhat convinced of. The bottom line is that C02 doesn't historically correlate with temprature, climate has been cycling for millions of years, and all the climate models have and continue to be spectacularly wrong.

Some thoughts on this issue in this time of everyone on every side being certain.

First, Our lives are but an instant. Our childrens lives a bare 20-30 years longer, our grandchildren another 20-30. Predictions made for a century or more into the future have been laughed at for generations as the current generation looks back at the predictions of the last. Global famine, flying cars, living on the moon and mars, artificially intelligent computers, everyone dead of nuclear war, the petroleum supply of the planet utterly depleted, Christ returning,  the USSR controlling the entire planet, Japan ruling the planet economically, a new ice age and now the inverse. Such are the predictions made over the course of just my lifetime.

Some of them are still out there, and some of them I believe. I certainly believe that Christ will return. Everthing I know aobout climate (covered in some of the charts above) indicates that we WILL have another ice age at some point. We have been warming since the last one (in general, it is like the stock market, ups and downs but generally up (we HOPE in the case of the market!), the only real big picture climate questions are how warm it will get before the next ice age, and when will it start.

Second, Argument with "true believers" on predictions is futile at best and often downright nasty. If you wanted to convince me that I was a fool for believing that Christ will return, what would you use as evidence? As Yogi Berra supposedly intoned "Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future".

So far, all the climate models have been very wrong (plenty of info on that in the dump if you want to look), but has that really changed any minds? Do you expect it to? We are talking about FAITH here, not anything remotely related to "science". The fact that the continued failure of the predictions on Global Warming forced a branding change to "Climate Change" have changed few minds tells us that we are dealing with FAITH. There were few people that gave up on Christ's return after the "Great Dissappointmnet of 1844" as well.

So third, We ALL live by faith, the only difference is if we want to acknowldge that fact or not. We also are all going to DIE, as is everyone we love -- either before or after us ... yet another fact we choose to ignore. BOTH of these facts are facts like 2+2=4. They are irrefuteable. You might think you could refute the first, but what is your evidence? How would you "prove" that you are a human that DOES NOT live by faith? You might "believe" it, but, like well ... that is just your opinion man!

Like I believe that I'm going to have dinner in Des Moines tonight -- I BELIEVE that, but since it is the future, I may die, the vehicle might break, I might have an accident that prevents me from getting there, or any of the people that are to be at the dinner might have something come up that prevents it -- sickness, sickness of a loved one or child, THEY might have an accident or die, Des Moines might be wiped out by a meteor ... we could go on and on to events both great and small that would destroy my "factual prediction about the future".

Our beliefs about the future are useful if they help us live our lives today. Believing in Christ's return helps me deal with the fact of death for myself and loved ones. It gives my temporal life eternal purpose  -- eternity makes the next moment, year, decade, millineum small in comparison to my hope for the future.

"Climate Change" provides much the same purpose for the secularist today. It gives their life meaning -- they are "saving the world" by being "believers", voting accordingly, maybe even saving a bit of energy themselves when it is convienient. Their belief in Climate Change allows them to have a "shared transcendent value" that puts them on the side of "good" and allows them to contrast themselves with "deniers" who obviously are evil and have no concern for the future of the planet. All the while being able to convince themselves that their "belief" is "truth" -- which of course everyone always does with all their beliefs, just don't tell secularists that!

Their beliefs are not beliefs, but rather FACTS and TRUTH to them -- and in that, they prove their humanity while they try to deny it. Don't expect that any sort of "data" will have any effect on them but to increase their resolve. That is how faith works -- look into your own soul, you know it to be true.

I'm certain of it!

Brokaw and the Liberal Detector

Tom Brokaw, liberal Democrat | Power Line:

Bill Buckley's boast that he could always detect a liberal got my brain a whirring. I've had one case for sure in my life where I had pegged someone 100% as liberal and turned out to SPECTACULARLY wrong. Nice looking, single woman few years younger than me, walked to work rather than driving a car, happy, outgoing, intelligent, obviously caring -- she just looked and seemed, well, "liberal". She was and is not --  mostly likely to the right of me a little bit (not that there is anything wrong with that)!

The term "Gaydar" might we related -- I've had to be told on multiple occasions "they're gay", when it never crossed my mind. Oh, sure, the flamboyant obvious case -- "Liberace, Elton John, etc", but Rock Hudson? Nope. Lesbian, no hope, I'm totally oblivious.

Here is what I believe.

I suspect that females have "Gaydar" that exceeds even the gay. They are wired to realize if they are "being checked out", and to realize if another female is being "checked out", especially by "their guy' (targeted or captured). Much like it is claimed that our 688 attack subs would figure out where our "boomers" (missile subs) were at because there was a "sonic hole in the water" (we built them TOO quiet, they were a sound screen), the "Gaydar" is really detecting that the male in question isn't giving off any level of female attention reading for ANY woman in the group ... ergo.

I believe that the default person is "liberal", meaning that they believe that humans are generally good, or if not good, easily educated to be good. When someone has been properly educated and socialized, they will as a matter of course be a fellow liberal. The more intelligence, communication ability, creative ability, artistic ability, social grace, etc a person has, the more likely it is that they are liberals. Liberalism is the natural state of political belief for a healthy happy human that wants to get along in society and be successful. Given basic intelligence, a normal desire to get along with others, and even fairly minimal education, any sentient person is liberal. It is a core liberal matter of faith.

As a conservative Christian, I agree liberalism is the natural human state. People like to see themselves as good, and they like to see those that agree with them as good. I was a liberal until I was 21 myself -- it is often said that if you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. I agree with the generalization humor in that, but I disagree with the other part that if you are not a conservative by "40", you have no brain. I believe that high intellect and especially a high level of education, skill in a field, and even financial success (depends on type, small business will tend to turn people conservative) will generally encourage one to be and stay a liberal. The increasingly leftward direction of the US to BOistan, where liberalism is increasingly the state religion as well as just a good idea, makes it painful to not follow the crowd in especially the coastal areas and large cities.

My belief is that the biggest differentiator is belief in God ( the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God). Certainly not all conservatives are Christians, but in order to be a conservative, you need to hold to a set of values that can't be constructed by reason. They have to be, "felt, intuited, discrned". Modern brain science shows that unless we are a psychopath, sociopath, asbergers, etc person, we all DO feel the moral impulse.

Where does it come from? As we might all guess, that is a matter of faith. Hard work has been put into coming up with a narrative that might allow evolution to create it (eg "group selection"), however at best, that is always going to be highly speculative (as an atheist would say religion is).

Modern BOistan has gotten so lost that there are indeed a number of people who are supposedly God believing "christians" who don't believe much of the Bible or in the diety / redemptive power of Christ. Brokaw may even be one of those. It allows one to intellectually call themselves "chrisitan", while believing none of the tenets of the faith (Christ is Gods son, died for our sins, which we admit to, and will save us if we accept his life, death and resurrection and follow him as a result). The "secular christian" is essentially no different from the "secular humanist" in thinking that there may or may not be an afterlife, but since I'm certainly better than most people, I don't need to worry about it.

Again, this is a GENERALIZATION, so there are definiely "many" cases where it doesn't apply -- atheist conservtives, actual political liberals that somehow manage to correlate that with real faith (although I can't explain it, I'm not the judge, Christ is), the point is that in general, the conservative view follows quite naturally from "looking for God" ... or at a minium, the transcendent. The idea that this isn't all there is.

So as a conservative, I believe that man is flawed -- he has a moral nature, but he has an animal nature as well, and that is too prone to take over and cause short term evil that tends to begat longer term evil (cover-up, attachment to the evil, attempts to justify, etc). Also, without faith in a higher power, attention to long-term gain and willingness to accept short term pain for the long term benefit is difficult at best. Eternity is the longest of long term -- so foregoing questionable earthly pleasures in light of eternal gain makes a lot of sense to people with that outlook, obviously NONE to people without it.

If we didn't die, get sick, have to work in order to be fed clothed, etc, then liberalism would be the clear ticket. No responsibility (at least none except voting for "good people"). A world with a TON of "rights" ... freedom to say exactly what you want and recently to not have to hear anything that you don't like, free health, free education (to learn how to have greater pleasure ... like study the Karma Sutra), free shelter, free food, free beverages and recreational drugs (at least they SHOULD be covered!), guaranteed respect and participation trophies, freedom from war, violence (unless beating up a conservative for pleasure), etc, etc. A good reality if you can get it.

As PJ O'Rourke once said, liberals believe in Santa, conservatives belive in God. The only problem with liberalism is that there is no Santa!

It is clear why the young tend to be liberal -- in BOistan up to 21, and lately even 26 and beyond, many of their lives are close approximations of the previous slightly whimsical description. For a wealthy guy like Brokaw, it at least "seems" like the proper alingment of large beauracracy just "might" be able to keep things rolling in general, and it has certainly worked out GREAT for him! Yes, the "sickness and death" thing has started to intrude, but modern medicine helps keep the sickness thing as somewhat less horrible than formerly, and at least mostly hidden. Death is a nagging problem, but it MUST be kinda OK -- everyone does it, certainly it has to be graded on a curve at the very least, and "I'm OK". Why, even if it did somehow turn out that I was "personally responsible" (insane, but this nagging feeling ...), hey, I talk way better than just about EVERYONE, and when you get right down to it, I AM a pretty darned nice guy!

After all, I turned down NIXON (of course) ... in the unlikely event there is a hell in Brokaw's mind, I'm certain he sees Nixon as justifiably there. He LIED to the American people! He erased a tape!

Do I think I can usually spot the conservative in the room? Sure, the same way as a 688 attack sub spots a boomer, or a woman a gay. Because there is the absence of "standard liberal chatter" from that person. They avoid politics just a little bit more than is even the average. They never bring up SNL, and laugh only uncomfortably about "the great skit that really put Trump / Sarah Palin / W in their place!"

For some strange roll of the dice, I'm an even rarer breed, the "conservative inconoclast'. I keep silent not because I would not be perfectly happy to have the give and take, but because of the level of discomfort, hatred, and down right leaving the room screaming that will be ingnited if I expose myself is truly terrible. For some reason, the comination of large size, relatively glib tongue, not being totally stupid, and being decently aware of liberal positions as well as COUNTER positions is especially incendiary. if I dragged my knuckles, they could look the other way and go cluck cluck, but as it is, well, "they can't normalize pure evil"!

My thinking is that the reason for this is that it makes them question their assumption that "anyone reasonably intelligent / well read / emotionally able to communicate", MUST be a liberal! Certainly they at some level know this is not the case -- Buckley after all was WAY more intelligent, well read, glib tounged, etc than I, but my sense is they feel that anyone with even a wisp of that sort of madness ought be clearly marked, and not allowed to just walk around in the open. Perhaps the "outlier conservative preserve" should be formed in the interest of keeping liberals safe.

So I stay stealthy. At my workplace, I'm sure there are suspicions ... they know that I'm an Elder and a LCMS church! They haven't heard me say anything nasty about Trump! I've only laughed minimally and probably detectably and uncomfortably at nasty things said about Trump and Trump voters at the office where politics are to be STRICTLY off limits! Of course the executive director went out and marched in the woman's march, a couple of the people have "Vote Democrat" on their cars and in some strategic not too public spots in their office. After all, when you ARE a good person, you have to be just a little proud of it!

... and that's the way it is! As another noted liberal used to say. As a rather funny postscript, I went off to find a Youtube of Walter doing the signoff (easy to find if you want), but instead explained that he came up with it because "other distinguished broadcasters had one, why shouldn't he?" even though his boss correctly pointed out that it might well not be true -- they may have made mistakes, not gotten all the information, drawn wrong conclusions, etc. But, "people liked it" -- as many DO tend to like "authority", so it became part of the liberal manufactured "reality" of the US -- "fake, but true", or at least accepted as "true". "Uncle Walter" was always right, and we could all believe him ... as he signed off each night with something that was suspect at best, and in many cases, a direct lie.

Americans have enjoyed fake news for a very long time!

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Fake News Vs Imaginary News

Imaginary News | Scott Adams' Blog:

A good one from Scott Adams.

Essentially, all any of us ever sees of ANYTHING is "imaginary". Science is now fairly certain that the data arriving to our brains from our eyes, ears and other senses is WAY too sparse to create the movie, much less that meta-narrative that we are all CERTAIN that we "see". We are all living in our imaginations.

For 10's of thousands of years, our movie was our own little area of nature, our family, our tribe, our meta-model of how the "gods", "spirits", etc that surrounded and even lived in us interacted with all that was part of our existence.  Everyone we contacted in other than a battle shared our model ... and if they didn't, they were typically sent packing or simply killed.

 It was an incredibly rich model ... everything fit together. Our place, role, task, meaning, understanding, destiny, purpose, etc all made perfect sense to ALL of our tribe. We lived, we died. Our prey and the plants lived and died, the seasons lived and died. The stars and symbols they represented lived, died and came back each year! Our lives might go on in a "happy hunting ground", or our spirits might return to inhabit the area we lived, the creatures we hunted, or even other family members in future generations. We KNEW our place and our destiny!

Or we were created a shorter time ago, or by a longer term directed process with the same "wetware / spiritware / consciousness" ... we will never know the answer to that question in this mortal coil.

What we do know is that we were NEITHER evolved or created for the "reality" we find ourselves in. If we consider "The Matrix", a Black Lives Matter march, Obama promising over and over to "close Gitmo on day one", the media level of certainty that it was impossible for Trump to win, or virtually any discussion with Trump, it should be very clear that we no longer live in a "shared reality".

Not so long ago we were a Christian nation, we nearly all lived in a created universe that had meaning and purpose. Families were generally made up of two parents, a man and a woman, men were men and women were women. There was once a time when CBS news would not even consider using a forged document to take down a sitting president, and a president having oral sex with an intern in the oval office was unthinkable, and certainly career ending were it to occur.

We don't live there anymore. We live in a tribal state where "truth" is tribal -- as it was for most of man's history if you are an evolutionist. In any case, our nature and grasp of reality is very oriented toward tribal truth.  There are now no transcendent values, so there is no transcendent truth -- truth is whatever your tribe says. You have to agree with that, or you are no longer part of your tribe.

So, as I've beaten to death, in one tribes imagination, how good a fighter pilot W was 30+ years ago was "news", while in the other tribe it was a matter of no concern. 25% of the Democrat tribe considered 9-11 to be an "inside job". A similar number of the Republican tribe considered BO to be a Kenyan (according to his book, he was a Luo tribesman, but who knows, it's all imaginary anyway). We were once told that "if we liked our healthcare, we could keep it". In various imaginations, all of these things were "real / true / important / etc" ... and some of them still are. It all depends on what the imagination of your shaman is.

Outside of trivia like "2+2=4", reality is actually quite obscure and "culturally (tribally) determined". In Native American culture, hearing voices is a GOOD thing -- not so much in what used to be Western civilization ... I'm not all that certain in "post Western civilization" that it won't be just fine again.

So which press conference did YOU see? It is all a matter of your "tribe". I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I saw I kinda liked. The other tribes heads seemed to be exploding, which in a tribal state is always a good thing! (as long as it is the OTHER tribe!)

We worked VERY hard to get here. No shared transcendent truth! Everyone is FREE, FREE, FREE!  If Bernie was elected, even the beer and weed would be FREE, FREE, FREE!

It is all just grand! We have been assured for decades that this is exactly the way it "really is". Truth is an illusion. Your imagination is REAL! Long live Post-modernism and the fruit of it's loins -- Trump!

** Note, again, as a Christian Burkean conservative, I don't REALLY have a tribe. However, I AM a human being -- so I certainly feel the pull of the tribe, just as I get a shiver at Lambeau when the crowd chants "Go Pack GO!". When we used to have a nation to be proud of, I got that same shiver when Star Spangled Banner was played. I'd love to see is get down to the hard business of moving BOistan back toward what we once were ... I have no idea if that is even possible, let alone if there is a ghost of a chance for Trump to start that journey. The fact that pretty much half the country has decided to not honor an election isn't a good sign however.

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Making Sense of God, Timothy Keller

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-God-Invitation-Skeptical/dp/0525954155

My love affair with the writings of Timothy Keller continues. I covet his level of intellect and especially his ability to lovingly yet strongly make significant philosophical and theological points with absolutely no regression to snark and put-downs. It is a level of intellectual maturity that I gaze in wonder at, and which puts me to such shame that I cry out for God's help to better emulate Reverend Doctor Keller's example.

For those familiar with how I read, this book now has a forest of tabs sticking out of it, and the inside is extensively marked. I find it to be nothing less than a potential basis for a igniting a new 21st century revival in the west to correlate with the rapid rise of Christianity in China, South America and Africa. The brokenness of North America and Western Europe in spirit, philosophy and community is glaringly obvious. This book provides a strong laymen's case for:
1). Why belief in God is rational as a basis for society
2). What happens when such belief wanes
3). Why the specific God -man Jesus Christ is the only basis for faith that works in our age (or any age)

The book is heavily sourced, so I'll try to give pages for specific quotes that will often have been sourced into the book ... I'll leave it up to the interested to run down the original authors.

p13 "The ideals of freedom ... of conscience, human rights and democracy are the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. ... To this day, there is no alternative to it". 

What we believe is always built on faith in SOMETHING. Morality must be based somewhere or it does not exist. What the west holds to be "self-evident" is only so because of our Judaeo Christian heritage.

Everyone needs to spend some quality thought time on the idea of the "Critique of Doubt" on page 38. Were this understood, everyone's level of smug would have to drop a ton, and that is ALWAYS great for the prospect of community!

"Polanyi agrues that doubt and belief are ultimately "equivalent". Why? "The Doubting of any explicit statement denies one belief in favor of other beliefs which are NOT doubted for the time being." You can't doubt belief A except on the basis of some belief B you are believing instead at the moment. So for example, you CANNOT say, "No one can know enough to be certain about God and religion," without assuming at that moment that YOU know enough about the nature of religious knowledge to be certain of your statement!

Page 74 reaches the following sad summary of current western culture than goes into a few pages of how it is that Christ is the "logos" (meaning) the Greeks intuited ... to which I would add "Man's Search For Meaning" as a worthy sourcebook.

"Western societies are perhaps the worst societies in the history of the world for preparing people for suffering and death, because created meaning is not only less rational and communal, but also less durable." 

Why is this the worst? Because without shared meaning, there is nothing to say to the suffering, dying, and bereaved. There is no shared community meaning of life, but rather the lack of shared meaning kills any sense of even real community. Thus, many suffer completely alone, bereft of even family as they struggle to seek blessing from the faceless government bureaucracy they realize they ended up worshiping by accident.

On page 105, in the midst of discussing why our attempt to make "freedom" the only moral value ... "Today, it is said, the only moral absolute should be freedom and the only sin should be intolerance of bigotry.", Keller points out  ... "Even in our supposedly relativistic culture, value judgements are made constantly, people and groups are daily lifted up in order to shame them, public moral umbrage is taken as much as ever. It is hypocritical to claim that today we grant people so much more freedom when we are actually fighting to press our moral beliefs about harm on everyone."

As Reagan put it, the secular left will "defend your right to AGREE with them to their dying breath". They will however not acquiesce to your right to DISagree with them, and will seek to silence you by any means including violence  -- because your lack of agreement is a threat to them and makes them feel moral umbrage. They have no admonition in their secular religion against judgement -- in fact, their judgement is one of the things they are most certain of.

On page 125, "We need someone we respect to respect us. We need someone we admire to admire us. Even when modern people claim to be validating themselves, the reality is always that they are socializing themselves into a new community of peers, of "cheerleaders", of people whose approval they crave."

Even more sadly, the requirements of conformance in your secular group are always increasing -- maybe you were fine with everything up to gay "marriage", or even transgender", however you were uncomfortable with that next step. Perhaps you are an atheist who finds Islam no more, and possibly less acceptible than Chritianity. You looked at it's tenets and see that as crusade era Chrisianity was, Islam can be violent, and you feel that it is obvious that a "progressives" should point that out.

You will likely run into this situation somewhere and find that compliance is NOT optional -- if you want to continue to be accepted by your group, sworn to the statement that  "individual freedom is all that matters",  you MUST comply with ALL their positions! Typically, you most often will shut up and comply, but at least subconciously you no longer really believe the group practices what they preach. (No Christian church or Christian does either -- that is why we repent and take communion over and over, we accept that perfect human consistency is impossible).

I'm getting long. The SUMMARY of this book is "simply":

1. It is every bit as "reasonable" to believe in God as it is to be an atheist. Increasingly, even MORE reasonable if one is bothered by the "anthropic argument" (we are here because we are here), or the latest physics asserting that there "must" be something like 10**500 UNIVERSES in order to support our existence being "likely".
2. If you want community and morals, there is scant basis for these elements of human existence outside of religion, and in the format we are familiar with in the west, outside of Christianity. Throwing the "baby" of shared values and community out with God/Christianity for the hope of "perfect freedom" is fraught with peril.
3. It's all about Christ. There is a really good reason that history is split into BC and AD. That difference is the divine person of Jesus Christ.

Outside of Christ, the world quickly descends into weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's going on all around us today -- families fall apart, people kill themselves to end meaningless lives, any tiny sense of community is trashed over smaller and smaller issues -- it is the politics that makes me cry when I look away from Christ. The Jim Jones cult of our age is the worship of the secular state. 

Christ is the BEST summary of the book -- keep looking at Christ and the Cross. Pray for your family, friends and community who have fallen into faith of the secular. 

The Truth Lament Strolls On

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/opinion/sunday/why-nobody-cares-the-president-is-lying.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=fb-nytimes&mccr=FebPostElectionSubs&mcdt=2017-02&subid=FebPostElectionSubs&ad-keywords=AudDevGate&referer=http://m.facebook.com

I've been observing for a very long time that the concept of "truth" in the West has fallen on hard times. Knowledge of Philosophy and Theology are at all time lows. Very few can tell much about the relation between fact, dialectic and rhetoric, understanding of which would help the author of this column a good deal.

During his first week in office, Mr. Trump reiterated the unfounded charge that millions of people had voted illegally. When challenged on the evident falsehood, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, seemed to argue that Mr. Trump’s belief that something was true qualified as evidence. The press secretary also declined to answer a straightforward question about the unemployment rate, suggesting that the number will henceforth be whatever the Trump administration wants it to be.

So in a nation where many states have no voter id, what would qualify as "evidence". Here is some from a 2012 Pew Study:

• About 24 million voter registrations are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.
• More than 1.8 million dead people are listed as voters.
• Approximately 2.75 million people are registered in more than one state.

So that is an OPPORTUNITY of 27 million. If 10% of the opportunity voted, that would be 2.7 million. Up to now, nobody has really looked for voter fraud, nor do we still have a good mechanism. My son voted in Colorado, when I voted in MN, there was his name right above mine. MN requires no voter ID ... anyone that knows his name and the fact that he is registered could have walked in, voted as him, and be completely secure against prosecution and likely detection (they would have to do a cross-check between MN and CO). 

Of course, if one knows about fact, dialectic and rhetoric, they realize that is NOT the point. What Trump engages in, what the linked column engages in is rhetoric -- unidirectional convincing speech. If the author of the column and I engaged in a debate, that would be dialectic, and in both, we may or may not attempt to use "facts". I used a few (assuming you accept Pew as a source) in my response to his rhetorical response to Trump's rhetoric in which BOTH of them conclude that "the number will we what **I** say it is!" ... NY Times columnist asserts zero, Trump and minions assert "millions". 

NY Times columnist asserts that he is believable and Trump is not based on -- er, well, "bluster". A very common tool of rhetoricians.  

The Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov drew upon long familiarity with that process when he tweeted: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

Exactly, always has been, always will be. What difference did it make if W Bush was a great national guard fighter pilot or a mediocre one? None, but the idea of it was enough to take down Dan Rather. What difference did it make if someone "leaked" that Valeria Plame, who drove into CIA HQ everyday actually worked there? None ... but it occupied a lot of media pages for over a year anyway.

The point of rhetoric since Plato and Aristotle has been to convince humans at a level "beyond factual" ... because humans actually never do anything for purely rational and factual reasons, and they never have. As long as "your side" is winning, the standard human tendency is to never even observe the difference between factual basis and rhetoric.

When "your tribe" loses and you understand nothing about truth, philosophy, dialectics or rhetoric, you are suddenly adrift. Your "moorings" are slipped, and it is obvious to you that "the others" have somehow changed.

This may explain one of the more revealing moments from after the election, when one of Mr. Trump’s campaign surrogates, Scottie Nell Hughes, was asked to defend the clearly false statement by Mr. Trump that millions of votes had been cast illegally. She answered by explaining that everybody now had their own way of interpreting whether a fact was true or not.

It turns out that everybody has always had their own way of interpreting wether a "fact" was true or not -- it's just that the column author recently notices that less people than he thought were navigating the shoals of truth and falsehood based on the rhetoric of the NY Times.

Fascism, You Keep Using That Word

| National Review:

Fascism is one of those terms that fits in with "Hitler" on the hit list of left wing name calling that is constantly used by people that don't understand what it means -- they may as well just say "bad", or "evil" to anyone that knows history at all.

While we are at it, let's make sure everyone is on the same meme page. The reference is from "The Princess Bride", the link gives a little background.

I've covered this umpteen times, using "Fascism" and "Hitler" to refer to the political RIGHT is like walking up to me and calling me "Miss" ... for those that don't know me, 6'4", 300ish, bald and bearded. I covered left vs right in detail here all the way back to the French Revolution.

The linked Sowell article has the following:

Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run. They were for “industrial policy,” long before liberals coined that phrase in the United States. Indeed, the whole Fascist economic agenda bears a remarkable resemblance to what liberals would later advocate.

The article also references the excellent work "Liberal Fascism" which I have reviewed.

The bottom line here is that in a post-truth tribal nation, the best myths win, so there is NO WAY the leftist tribe will be giving up the left-right inversion, Fascism, Hitler, etc mythology. They are not about to own "National Socialism", let alone Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, North Korea, etc ...

I'm not sure if Trump will be able to establish any really good mythology that works, but he certainly keeps throwing stuff at the wall. The best myths have very tiny pieces of truth and give those that believe in them a "slam dunk" -- "truth" at a general level is antithetical to myth making, since the truth is very rarely anything even close to a "slam dunk" on anything more complex than 2+2=4.

"97% of Scientists" is a great example.

If you want to explore, where you are on a slightly more sensible scale than MERELY left and right, this is an interesting site -- CERTAINLY far from any sort of "perfection", however I think an INDICATOR worth considering.  Here is my result.

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Teaching The Eternal, Five Things

We don’t need to teach our kids to code, we need to teach them how to dream – Startup Grind – Medium:

 Trying to reduce what to pass on to the next generation to "5 things", or even one thing, is a time honored desire of mankind. At some point in our short lives, we realize that we won't be around long in any case, and usually realize through the death of a friend or family member that "short time" may be our next breath.

As in much of modern life, the author jumped right by meaning on the way to his list.

We’ve prioritized the acquisition of knowledge around what we assume society would deem most “worthy”. For much of history, knowledge was rooted in theology: it was about explaining the world in a supernatural way, seeing goodness as a tenet. The industrial revolution saw a vast shift away from this to a way of maximizing return on investment in a production-centric environment.

His list is:

1. Relationships
2. Curiosity
3. Agility
4. Creativity
5. Compassion 

I'd argue that for all of history -- past, present and future, a meaningful life is, has, and will be about MEANING. The core of all life in the past and all life in the future consists of birth, family and death. Some may want to remove family, however we are all born into one, and if a majority decides that having children and raising them well is not a priority, then their and our future history ceases. This fact has been lost on Western civilization today. 

My life is still based on "theology" in the sense of faith. All lives are -- including the list author, the only question is the realization of that fact. He has faith in a meaningless godless universe / world, and that his five items can make a life worth living. He chooses to either ignore philosophy or just lump it in with theology as no longer applicable to the world he believes he lives in. A scientific world that denies human consciousness, love and beauty because none of those are measurable. 

My list is as follows: 

1. Faith -- "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God". The base of all meaning to is the tenet of a teleological universe that is created by a PERFECT God and fallen through misuse of the gift of free will. We all have a faith -- if you believe you don't, study some basic philosophy to understand what your faith is (solipsism, empiricism, determinism, positivism, etc)
   
   Faith and hope cover "agility" from the other list. By accepting our true place in the universe, the things of this world can be considered in the perspective of God's perfect love and the fact of eternity.
   
   It all has a purpose, and that purpose is greater than me. (although, God wants it to INCLUDE me!)
   
2. Hope -- Of redemption for me, redemption for those I love, and eventual redemption or re-perfection of the world and universe by a sovereign God. The story of life the universe and everything has a universal class happy ending, insured by God.
   
3. Love -- Love for God, love for family, love for others, and love for myself as I know God loves me. Relationships and compassion on the other list are covered by love.
   
   "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs ..."
   
   Christ (and the Beatles) tell is love is all we need. "Love the Lord thy God wIth all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbor as yourself" (even (especially?) if your neighbor is your "enemy").
   
4. Wisdom -- As I believe I live in a meaningful universe, God has provided me with a desire to know him and to grant me wisdom. Some now, much more in eternity. The pursuit of wisdom is one of my greatest joys.
   
5. Vocation -- God has given me a purpose, and if I seek him, that purpose is made clear to me. As I work at my purpose, God directs the universe to help me to "succeed" in achieving of that purpose.
   
   That purpose may be the bearing of great pain and suffering -- even unto death, or it may be ruling the world. To look at these and accept the sovereignty of God so that my ultimate purpose is the achievement of God's will, not mine, is the way to the most coveted prize of every life "Well done my good and faithful servant". 

It was an interesting exercise to try to do my list of five. Christ knows it best -- the greatest is love! ... and I'm obviously a work in progress since that came in 3rd on my list. 

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