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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De-weaponizing Language, Death To Labels

I’m sure I’ll ponder this  some more, but on my IA journeys I believe I see the insidiousness of “Political Correctness” more clearly. 

In my youthful Baptist world, all one needed to do in order to dismiss people was to label them — “a drinker, a smoker, an evolutionist, worldly, etc”, and they were devalued. They were “not of the body”. I read Orwell and even a lot of deeper stuff (“Ideas Have Consequences”, “Road to Serfdom”) that make the power of words and labels eminently clear.  Then came Trump — racist, homophobe, misogynist (now THERE is a word that recently got A LOT of life!), imitator of people with disabilities, the next Hitler, etc.. 

A “new word” needed to be invented ....  “deploreables” — it was a complete orgy of labeling by the great dragon of PC, now possibly seriously wounded? Even mortally? 

Are we on the path of breaking free of simply labeling people and being done with them? I’m not sure the youth can imagine a world so strange that every human is a complex mix of good / bad / indifferent / paradox / hope / despair / love / hate / prejudice / fear / courage / compassion … etc, and it would be wrong to apply a label to someone and discount them as a human. 

It would be so HARD to deal with each other as flawed humans, but each worthy of diverse, complicated and imperfect thought! Much harder than applying a label and being done with them! (perhaps even, or especially? if they are a family member?)  

What if we found others worthy of respect even (and maybe ESPECIALLY?) when they disagree with our views?  What if a Muslim and a Christian that both believe through their religion that homosexuality is a sin, would be valued the same by a "liberal" ... as two humans with different, but in some ways similar religious beliefs?  

What if the associational freedom for a designer to be able to decide if they wanted to design a dress for Michelle Obama but not for Melania Trump, or for a musician to play for Hillary Clinton but not Donald Trump would be thought of the same as for a baker to bake a cake for a Christian wedding, but not for a gay "wedding"? 

At one time, it was allowed to simply label a person an "N-word", Jew, etc and dismiss them. We supposedly passed from that into what I think all hoped was a better world where labels were not acceptable. Sadly, the labels returned, proliferated and begin to be hurled at larger and larger groups of individuals -- each unique, and NOT defined by the labels increasingly applied to them. 

Was "basket of deploreables" the point and which the magical power of labels "jumped the shark"? Might we have hit "peak labeling"? One can only hope. 

It would be wonderful if the great dragon of Political Correctness has been mortally wounded and we start dealing with people as people as opposed to labels. 

Such a subversive thought for our times!

"Once you label me, you negate me". (Kierkegaard) 

Decius, Eternal Principles

Restatement on Flight 93:

I must admit that I am really enjoying "Decius", we think MUCH alike, he writes better, and he is even wordier than I (ok, well maybe not by much). Most of my focus will be on our differences and some of the larger themes. My recommendation is to take the time to read him.

"One must also wonder what is so “immoderate” about Trump’s program. As noted, it’s to the left of the last several decades of Republican-conservative orthodoxy. “Moderate” in the modern political (as opposed to the Aristotelean) sense tends to be synonymous with “centrist.” By that definition, Trump is a moderate. That’s why National Review and the rest of the conservatives came out of the gate so strongly against him. I admit that, not all that long ago, I probably would have too. But I have come to see conservatism in a different light. To oversimplify (again), the only “eternal principle” is the good. What, specifically, is good in a political context varies with the times and with circumstance, as does how best to achieve the good in a given context. The good is not tax rates or free trade. Those aren’t even principles. In the American political context, the good is the well-being of the physical America and its people, well-being defined (in terms that reflect both Aristotle and the American Founding) as their “safety and happiness.” That’s what conservatism should be working to conserve."

In my view, the principles that a conservative seeks to "conserve" are eternal -- reverence for God, truth, wisdom, cultural heritage, family, community, and the ability to pass these from generation to generation. Animals "breed", man seeks to pass on transcendent meaning to successive generations. "The good" doesn't change, and "happiness" is at most a byproduct, and really never a goal for a Christian. Christ promises "peace" and "joy", but neither are really the sort of "peace and joy" that secular people imagine. They are more the sort of a joy a parent gets when their disabled child makes some progress, or the peace of exhaustion after a day of of chasing a toddler.

I'm not sure when "safety" ever became a supposed value. First or all, it is always an illusion, and secondly, the believe that you have it is like the rich man in the Bible that had stored up all sorts of earthy wealth and then finds his soul is required of him that very night.

It seems that Decius believes that a a secular good can suffice and somehow the old America can be rebuilt on that foundation. He definitely disagrees with the founders on that -- John Adams in particular. Yet, he links to an argument by John Marini which would seem to point out the perils of the secular bureaucratic rule of elite intellectuals. 

Understood in this way, what is central to politics and elections is the elevation of the status of personal and group identity to something approaching a new kind of civil religion. Individual social behavior, once dependent on traditional morality and understood in terms of traditional virtues and vices, has become almost indefensible when judged in light of the authority established by positivism and historicism. Public figures have come to be judged not as morally culpable individuals, but by the moral standing established by their group identity. Character is almost unrecognizable and no longer serves as the means by which the people can determine the qualifications for public office of those they do not know personally. As a result, it is difficult to establish the kind of public trust that made it possible to connect public and private behavior, or civil society and government. When coupled with the politicization of civil society and its institutions, the distinction between the public and the private or the personal and the political has almost disappeared. Anything and everything can become politicized, but things can only be understood and made intelligible—or made politically meaningful—when viewed through the lens of social science and post-modern cultural theory. In short, the public and private character of American politics has been placed in the hands of the academic intellectuals.

Our lives have been subsumed by the great political machine, and the experts are in charge, what is more, our past has been found to be a horror. 

Post-modern intellectuals have pronounced their historical judgment on America’s past, finding it to be morally indefensible. Every great human achievement of the past—whether in philosophy, religion, literature, or the humanities—came to be understood as a kind of exploitation of the powerless.

So we live in a culture and nation judged evil by it's own elites -- who run it, but like to pretend that they don't. 

Members of the vital center understand the world through their attachment to their professions: academia, science, economics, business, media, entertainment, and even religion. They often lack political consciousness of themselves as a class. Many of them do not even think of themselves as political. Their interest and loyalty is to what it is they profess to study and what they think they know, and what establishes their intellectual and political authority is their production of what is seen as useful knowledge in the administrative state. Indeed, it could be said that without the policy sciences, the administrative state would be almost impossible to operate. It is the technical requirements of the modern administrative state that have made it possible to politicize the elites in a manner that disguises their political role. When nearly every social, economic, scientific, religious, and political problem is decided in a bureaucratic or legal way—and always from a central authority, usually Washington, but sometimes New York or one or two other places

"The Party" (TP-D) really doesn't consider itself to be political, certainly not a party, and absolutely not a "class". It is is "correct" and it's hierarchy is based on "merit" -- 30% technical merit and 70% the merit to parrot the party line with conviction and even "leadership". 

It is not surprising, therefore, that few are willing or able to praise Trump in an unqualified manner. Insofar, as Trump has refused, to “walk on paths beaten by others,” as Machiavelli would say, “he has all those who benefit from the old orders as enemies, and he has lukewarm defenders in all those who might benefit from the new orders.” But it is not “fear of adversaries” alone that makes it difficult to bring about change, Machiavelli writes, but “the incredulity of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they come to have a firm experience of them.” In our post-Machiavellian age, which is open to every kind of novelty, we are faced with a new kind of incredulity—one that prevents men from believing in the old things of which they no longer have any experience. It has become far easier for modern man to accept change as something normal, almost natural. What has become difficult to understand, let alone preserve, are things that are unchanging or eternal. History, understood in terms of the idea of progress in politics, economics, science, and technology, has made change, or the new, seem almost inevitable. As a result, the desire for the newest has become almost irresistible.

Since the moderns are steeped in the propaganda that the new is always better, and the latest drip from the still is better than 20 year old aged Scotch, Trump's slogan to "Make America Great Again" seems perfectly selected to anger the modern sensibility -- they have judged America and found it evil, and the concept of "greatness" in the past is antithetical to modern liberal dogma. 

The most controversial aspect of Trump’s campaign, his slogan to “Make America Great Again,” goes to the heart of the problem. Trump’s view presupposes that the old America was good and established the conditions for its greatness. Is this true? Or is America something to be ashamed of, as the protestors against Trump have insisted, having accepted the teaching of post-modern cultural intellectuals?

The standard left view is that America was the definition of immorality -- taking land from native peoples, slavery, unequal rights for women, income inequality, destruction of the environment, etc. It was NEVER great, and indeed BOistan is far greater.

Lincoln was aware that the only proper defense of the tried and the true—of tradition—was a defense of the unchanging principles of political right understood in terms of an unchanging human nature. This presupposed a distinction between theoretical and practical reason, which made it possible to distinguish unchanging principles from policies that must change according to circumstances. This understanding assumed the benevolence of nature and nature’s God, as well as the capacity of human reason to comprehend and impose those rational limits on human freedom that are necessary to ensure human happiness. It is only if the old can also be defended as the good that conservatism, or the tried and the true, can remain a living thing. The historicist understanding of freedom purports to reveal that nature itself is tyrannical, and has attempted the self-destruction of philosophic reason by liberating the creative individual from the chains imposed by nature and reason.

There is that idea again, to "ensure human happiness". Even the founders only suggested the right to PURSUE happiness -- a quarry that slips from your grasp the more it is pursued. Human happiness is a SIDE EFFECT of family, community, worship of God, right living and a good deal of luck. For a Christian, the "pursuit" is better service to Christ -- only by putting Christ does "faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love" come into focus. Happiness doesn't even make the list.

It is possible that the Trump phenomenon cannot be understood merely by trying to make sense of Trump himself. Rather it is the seriousness of the need for Trump that must be understood in order to make sense of his candidacy. Those most likely to be receptive of Trump are those who believe America is in the midst of a great crisis in terms of its economy, its chaotic civil society, its political corruption, and the inability to defend any kind of tradition—or way of life derived from that tradition—because of the transformation of its culture by the intellectual elites. This sweeping cultural transformation occurred almost completely outside the political process of mobilizing public opinion and political majorities. The American people themselves did not participate or consent to the wholesale undermining of their way of life, which government and the bureaucracy helped to facilitate by undermining those institutions of civil society that were dependent upon a public defense of the old morality.

 America was founded on ideas, not territory, ethnicity nor religion. It is true that it developed a specific territory, it's main ethnicity was european, and it's religion Christian, but the idea of a government LIMITED by a written Constitution which created a separation of powers to hold government in check was an innovation in government.

BOistan has none of these -- save to some extent "territory", but even there, the borders are largely open. We are not ethnically European, we are certainly no longer a Christian nation, and BO has countervailed the Constitution through using the IRS as a weapon, creating a product that "must be bought" (BOcare), decrees on immigration and gun control, and spending money on BOcare never appropriated by congress (to name a few).

This isn't a crisis in "America", it is the creation of a new junta in this region of N America that I call BOistan.

Decius has apparently failed to perceive the level of destruction wrought by BO, or finds it far more reversible than I. He also apparently thinks that "the good" can be recovered without any transcendence, but rather through the pursuit of "happiness" with no reference to a religious or philosophic framework that provides a meaning to "happiness".

But he recognizes peril and perceives that something need be done -- we certainly have many areas of agreement.

I've very much enjoyed reading and commenting on these articles.
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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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God And Man At Yale, WF Buckley

The version of this book I re-read was the 2001, golden anniversary edition of this 1951 book written at the same time as Lionel Trilling uttered this: 

In the United States at this time Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

While "liberals" certainly thought that way, there were a lot of folks that took huge exception to WFB's (SUPER Initials!) assertion that Yale had become essentially atheist and collectivist, rather than Christian and Capitalist, which are the ideals it was founded on.

As WFB put it:

"The duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level".  

He did not write the following himself, but quoted it in his introduction to the 25th anniversary edition and said it would have saved him the trouble of writing the book:

"Unless the great concepts that have been traditional to the western world are rooted in a reasoned view of the universe and man's place in it, and unless this reasoned view contains in it's orbit a place for the spirit, man is left in our day with archaic weapons unsuited for the problems of the present" 

In the chapter on "Individualism at Yale", after pointing out how Yale in 1950 believes in socialism, high taxes on business and individuals, 100% inheritance taxes and a host of well known leftist nostrums, he arrives at the following as to the effect that this will likely have on future Yale graduates after they decide it is useless to try to make it in small business:

So he finally decides to go down to Washington and get a job with some government bureau. Or maybe AT&T (his first question to the pension officer at both will be about pension provisions).  

And Dean DeVane was astounded, puzzled, and shocked in 1949 when he read that the graduating class seemed more interested in security than in enterprise. 

The word "enterprise" was once so revered that US ships and even imaginary starships were christened with the name. Today, maybe "fortress",  "lock box",  or possibly just "security".

"God And Man At Yale" (Gamay) was the book that launched the modern conservative movement that reached its pinnacle in Reagan and it's 2nd act in Newt Gingrich and the Republican House of '95-2000.

WFB was able to hold the darkness at bay with the power of his ideas and communication skills. Yale and the entire educational system was lost along with law and media, and the federal and state bureaucracies exploded in size and power, but as long as the Constitution and Separation of Powers held, it was still possible to keep the great nation from being completely being destroyed.

"Enterprise" -- "the AMERICAN Enterprise", to honestly believe in the future, in building something to PASS ON to one's own children as an inheritance in a nation assumed to get BETTER from generation to generation. Those dreams were in danger in the '50s, they are dead today.

Today we suffer the sadness of the predictions of Gamay come true and with the evil kicker of BO taking out the Constitution and Separation of Powers.

If the warning of the book had been heeded, it might be similar to the result if Admiral De Robeck had decided to continue the attack at Gallipoli on March 19th, 1915, rather than withdrawing, WWI would have been over shortly, Eastern Europe would have been stabilized under British power, and Churchill would have continued on to likely become Prime Minister and have thus been in a position of power to stop Hitler before Hitler became anything but a local madman in Germany.

America did not fall because we lacked the information on the danger. No, we fell because we willfully chose the path of sin and "security" over the path of God and enterprise!

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.

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. 

"I Don't Care" vs "What Difference Does it Make?"

Donald Trump perfectly summed up his life philosophy in just 6 words - The Washington Post:

The WaPo feels that Trump's life philosophy is summed up by "Why antagonize? I don't care."

The same WaPo had this to say about one of Hildebeast's summaries in Oct of 2015 ...

When she last testified before, I think, a Senate committee, she got exasperated. At one point, "What difference does it make?" came out. [Ed. note: The exact quote is "What difference, at this point, does it make?] I felt right there and then, that’s not the right answer. People died, let’s not forget, so that has to be treated with a good deal of sensitivity.

Here the same WaPo is cheering on the gay / bisexual / transgender movement.

But all of these factors — the increased acceptance, the increased behavior and the trend toward sexual fluidity — make Twenge think she knows the real driving force behind this cultural shift: We care more about ourselves. She believes this comes from an increased sense of individualism.

As I've often argued, BO, Hildebeast, and Trump are all perfectly representative of a "culture" dedicated to "whatever I think is what counts"! One of the other nicknames for Hildebeast is "Herself" -- as with BO, EVERYTHING always comes back to her (or in BO's case, him). Trump, Hildebeast and BO definitely DO CARE -- about themselves. As do the WaPo writers and what they see as "all reasonable Americans".

The WaPo believes that thousands of years of culture can be thrown out the window so individuals care only about their own pleasures, peccadillos and personal views on everything from metaphysics to politics. They naturally find this to be abhorrent when they see it in Trump, have some mild concerns when they see it in Hillary, and are completely blind relative to BO or themselves.

"Some thinkers have made the case that individualism has been increasing in Western culture since the Renaissance, but that this change accelerated beginning around 1965 or 1970," she explained. As societies become more comfortable in terms of resource availability, one doesn't need to worry as much about fitting in to the rules and expectations of the larger group.

A historian might look at this and say that "nothing fails like success". When MATERIAL needs ("resource availability") is assumed to be guaranteed, as a "right" -- like gravity, or your next breath, the normal human, absent any "higher ideals", will revert to looking out for the pleasures and assumed happiness that such pleasures will bring for them personally -- and "not care". Because, "What difference, at this point, does it make"?

God must always have a little chuckle -- the person they quote in the gay cheerleading study is named "Twenge", painfully close to "twinge", which is a feeling that it is clear that they have started to have as they have watched the rise of Trump. Absent any truth that transcends mere physical information, the only arbiter is power -- so they have had 2nd thoughts about democracy and have advocated using the Electoral College to overturn the election.

This is BOistan -- this is what we have created, and now we live here. It's every person for themselves and the nastiest tribe "wins"!

Thankfully, the life of a place like this is "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"  .... the context from Hobbes is here -- I believe he was commenting on the current state of BOistan.

"During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. 

"To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.

"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

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Better A Fascist With Opposition

This is how fascism comes to America - The Washington Post:

In a world with no such thing as "truth", definitions for words, especially incendary ones becomes very problematic. I and Thomas Sowell cover the "fascist" term here.  At the high level:

Communism -- The State owns everything, nobody has any "net worth" since there is no private property.

Socialism -- The State owns most of the means of production, but people have SOME private property at the pleasure of the State -- it makes things "equal" as it and it's voting blocks see fit.

Fascism -- Crony Capitalism / Socialism mix. The State has at least near dictatorial control as in Communism and Socialism, but it keeps "private" industry to be blamed when there are economic problems. All totalitarian states use "scapegoating" since the state is NEVER "the problem", Fascists tend to use this the most.

Capitalism -- An attempt to reduce the government to "referee only". Economics is intended to be free and under private control.


We then have the "Hitler Factor". Even though "Nazi" stood for National SOCIALIST, we were fighting on the same side as Communists (although they ALSO called themselves "Socialists"), so "Fascist" was selected as the appropriate term -- and since Communists are certainly "left", Fascists were made to be "right" -- I cover this here.  While Hitler killed 6 million Jews, the communist / socialists in the USSR, China, Cambodia, etc killed over 100 million -- STATISM KILLS, in this country, 60 million babies so far as well as ever increasing suicides.

The whole linked article has been written about BO multiple times -- the Grecian columns, the cheering masses, the vacuous "Hope and Change", the BO "symbol", the narcissism -- all of it there. The "we are the people we have been waiting for". We already had 8 years of Fascism.

And he came through. He trampled the Constitution, he used the IRS to prosecute his enemies, he opened the borders, he purchased GM and then "sold it back" under effective government control,  he unilaterally declared that men can be in women's bathrooms and locker rooms, he spent unappropriated money on BOcare  -- he did what he wanted and ignored the Constitution and any feelings that the "Bitter Clingers" might have.

Of course Kagan (author of the column) LIKED BO's brand of lawless state control, so he saw no problem with BO being a Fascist. Interestingly, the Republican Establishment is more concerned with Trump than they were with BO. They have been "Statist Lite" -- effectively doing what the columnist suggests and now worries about with Trump:

In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon.

A solid description of the "Tea Party" vs the "establishment" Boehner, McConnel and Ryan. The establishment Republicans crawled on the bandwagon and licked BO's boots, while some of the Tea Party, Ted Cruz being an example, did not. The Tea Party never really developed a coherent position beyond they didn't enjoy the idea that they were just a speed bump for his most odoriferous excellency BO!  For not jumping on the bandwagon, they were naturally labeled "racist" by guys like Kagan .... in his mind, there was simply to other reason to fail to kneel before the stench of BO!

So we already crossed the Fascist rubicon, and it is now certain that either Trump or Hildebeast will attempt to be as lawless as BO. Hildebeast has already promised to ignore the Constitution and attack the 2nd amendment with executive action. She will clearly appoint SCOTUS judges that will rubber stamp what she does and continue to shred the Constitution on their own.

One thing seems very clear. The DC and MSM opposition to Trump will be GIGANTIC, while Hildebeast will be given the same sort of free ride that BO has received. The Democrats and Republican Establishment will be looking to make him a one-term wonder as well as the entire MSM, education, etc.

I could go on, but for that reason alone, the choice of Trump is HUGELY important vs Hildebeast. A Fascist with strong opposition is going to be very limited in what mischief they can accomplish to the negative -- and MAYBE, just MAYBE, they might be channeled to doing some good.

Yes, I know, that is probably rose colored glasses, but it is hard to ALWAYS be as negative as these times call for, and it is a BEAUTIFUL day here on my deck!

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Congress, Not BO, Shall Appropriate

http://www.wsj.com/articles/vindicating-congresss-power-of-the-purse-1463094840

The link to the article might not work for you. The WSJ puts a code in the link so that it is a one-time access -- at least for me. When that happens however, just Google "Vindicating Congress Purse" or some such and you will get access through google for at least one read.

When I get behind on my blogging I put draft entries out that sit for awhile sometimes -- this ruling was in early May and it has NOT gotten much in the way of reporting. It is a SIGNIFICANT setback for BO, or would be if he wasn't above the law, because it says that if Congress does not appropriate money for BOcare he can't spend it -- which is what the Constitution has ALWAYS said, but is yet another place in which BO has explicitly broken his oath to support the Constitution.

Judge Collyer takes 38 pages to eviscerate the Administration’s claim that it can infer an appropriation if Congress has merely authorized a program. Congress authorizes all sorts of programs without spending money on them in one year or another. Presidents before Mr. Obama have understood that no money can be spent without an express appropriation.

This brings us to the Iran Contra debacle. The LEGAL issue at stake, and the one that TP was certain would have been impeachable had they been able to prove it, was if Reagan directed the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua when Congress had not appropriated funds -- and if Congress could control the executive movement of monies that were not directly appropriated, but in this case "black", as they came from the sale of arms to the Iranians.

"The Party" (TP-D) was 100% certain back then of "Constitutional limitations on executive power", and how CRITICAL it was to STRONGLY enforce such things against Reagan, up to and including IMPEACHMENT for transfer of money that may have been in violation of the "Boland Amendment",  an attempt by a Democratic Congress to limit Reagan that they repealed before it could be tested in the SCOTUS for Constitutionality. (the President can't spend money not appropriated, but can Congress explicitly control his FOREIGN policy via controlling even "off budget" spending? It gets into things like CIA, espionage, secret programs, etc -- before you say "we don't need them", consider the "Manhattan Project" which built the bomb ...

Strangely, BO smells differently to TP and it's media propaganda arm. In the Reagan days, the House of Representatives was POWERFUL. The head of the House Ways and Means committee, Dan Rostenkowski , was one of the best known names and most powerful men in Washington until he went to prison -- like many Illinois politicians.  Can you even tell me the chairman of Ways and Means? It's Kevin Brady -- I didn't know and you didn't know. The MSM doesn't talk about them because the Constitutional power of the purse no longer resides there -- it resides with BO!

Do you have any idea what the deficit is projected to be in 2016? I didn't, so I did a Google -- the MOST striking thing is how VERY few articles show up on the deficit. During the Reagan years and the W years, the deficit was one of the biggest stories going! EVERYONE knew how the "failed policies" of Reagan and Bush caused high deficits, which were VERY bad! It's supposed to be $544 B, up $104B from last year. Nobody cares!

The media is very strange on deficits, CONGRESS controls the power of the purse! Clinton gets credit for all the deficit cutting that Gingrich did, and Newt is blamed for being mean and nasty for cutting the budget. Similarly, W gets the blame for the rapid rise in budget deficits after the D's took over Congress in '06, yet once the deficits when over $1T and even to $1.6T in 2010, the deficit story simply disappears! The media however LOVES to call '09 the "Bush budget", with Nancy Pelosi running the house and Harry Reid the Senate, plus BO adding $900B of pork in March of '09 -- but hey, that is a BUSH budget!

The highest actual W budget was $413B in '04 -- when the same party is in the WH and Congress, THEN it is FINE to blame the President.  The R's took back the house in 2010, and by 2013 the deficit had dropped from the $1.6T in 2010 to $679B in 2013 -- and although we no longer heard about the deficit, we DID hear about how MEAN the Republicans were!

Up until BO started spending money on BOcare unconstitutionally, CONGRESS did ALL the appropriations! Now, since we no longer follow the Constitution, such a breach as BO has committed for BOcare subsidies is barely news, but at one time during Iran - Contra it was headlines news every day!

We live in a media echo chamber and we are fed what the media wants to feed us -- all of us, me too. Sure, I run across these things and blog on them, but it is humanly impossible to not be affected by the mass of people and our day to day interactions. TP has got us under their spell -- all of us, and unless there is a miracle of some sort of a "movement", "revival", etc, we will continue to fall prey to "well, this is just the way it is".

NY Times Reports Iran Nuke Deal A Sham

The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru - The New York Times:

The linked article is not a bad read. The punchline is that America's foreign policy is being run  by a wanna be novelist who has mind melded with a community organizer and are purposely misleading everyone else about what they are up to.

It opens with the drama of said novelist (Rhodes) trying to manipulate the press on the day of BO's SOTU address when  "our friends" the Iranians have taken a couple patrol boats and ten sailors.

"Now, from the flat screens, a challenge to that narrative arises: Iran has seized two small boats containing 10 American sailors. Rhodes found out about the Iranian action earlier that morning but was trying to keep it out of the news until after the president’s speech. “They can’t keep a secret for two hours,” Rhodes says, with a tone of mild exasperation at the break in message discipline."

If we lived in a real world everyone would know what is obvious -- the idea of "hard liners" and "moderates" in Iran is complete fiction. Here is Leon Panetta, who served as both CIA director and Secretary of defense under BO when asked about said fiction:

“No,” Panetta answers. “There was not much question that the Quds Force and the supreme leader ran that country with a strong arm, and there was not much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any traction.”

We won't go into the "background" our chief of foreign policy has other than a Masters Degree in Fiction and smoking a lot of weed -- just like our President.  But at least according to this NY Times writer, he DOES have power!

On the largest and smallest questions alike, the voice in which America speaks to the world is that of Ben Rhodes.

If you ever wondered about the veracity of the Iraq Study Group and 9/11 Commission, wonder no more ... FICTION! He did fiction well, so he was a great person to work with BO -- the fictional leader! 

“The idea of someone with a masters in fiction who had also co-authored the Iraq Study Group and 9/11 Commission reports seemed perfect for a candidate who put so much emphasis on storytelling.”

Readers of this blog already know the following paragraph, but now the NY Times concurs: 

The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency. 

So Congress, Israel, the UN and the American people were purposely misled by the BO administration, and now the NY Times is even willing to report it! Still, it seems that nobody cares. 

So when Panetta talked to Israel about the nuclear deal, here is what they wondered if BO could be trusted to stop a nuke from being produced. He after all as SAID that he would take action many times. It is one of his "red lines", and we KNOW how much he can be trusted on those!  

“They were both interested in the answer to the question, ‘Is the president serious?’ ” Panetta recalls. “And you know my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they’re developing an atomic weapon, I think the president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.”
Panetta stops. 

“But would you make that same assessment now?” I ask him. 

“Would I make that same assessment now?” he asks. “Probably not.”

So Leon Panetta, past head of CIA and SECDEF and lifelong Democrat does not believe that BO would act to stop an Iranian nuke and the freaking NY Times is willing to print it! And STILL, nobody cares! 

Iraq is his one-word answer to any and all criticism. I was against the Iraq war from the beginning, I tell Rhodes, so I understand why he perpetually returns to it. I also understand why Obama pulled the plug on America’s engagement with the Middle East, I say, but it was also true as a result that more people are dying there on his watch than died during the Bush presidency, even if very few of them are Americans. What I don’t understand is why, if America is getting out of the Middle East, we are apparently spending so much time and energy trying to strong-arm Syrian rebels into surrendering to the dictator who murdered their families, or why it is so important for Iran to maintain its supply lines to Hezbollah. He mutters something about John Kerry, and then goes off the record, to suggest, in effect, that the world of the Sunni Arabs that the American establishment built has collapsed. The buck stops with the establishment, not with Obama, who was left to clean up their mess.

 See, BO was all about "Hope and Change", and he was an "outsider" before Trump came along. If it wasn't for BO, Trump would be horribly inexperienced. Compared to BO, Trump with his years running business as an executive is a model of solid experience! Compared to Slick Willie, and even Hildebeast, Trump is a pretty much a paragon of virtue. 

One thing we are certain of, NOTHING is BO's fault! With BO, the buck NEVER stops! All of this was known in general (not the details) by anyone paying attention. What is new is that the MSM is apparently a TINY bit concerned that they too were played for patsies -- although not all that concerned. They have loved the stench of BO from the start.


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Responding To Senator Ben Sasse's Open Letter

Ben Sasse - AN OPEN LETTER TO MAJORITY AMERICA TO: Those who...:

Senator Sasse,

First of all, thanks for writing the letter. As we see in the protestors at Trump rallies, in Black Lives Matter, and many other places in this country, we are approaching the time of violence being seen as a solution. If we don't start talking, violence will almost certainly be one of the answers to our crisis.

I'm a 59 year old Christian father of two boys, blessed grandfather of one beautiful granddaughter, married for 31 years, 34 year career in computer software, raised on a dairy farm, now retired and trying hard to write about what I believe matters in my blog and pieces of a book.

You mention the political parties, Washington DC, and what a third party candidate might look like. I believe that American problems always start with IDEAS. We are a country based on ideas, not territory, race, or cultural origin.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I believe the origin of our current problems are in that sentence:

These truths -- What is truth? Possibly the majority of people today think of "truth" as either empirical, the scientific "truth" of numbers and experiment, or as power. The "might is right" of the ballot box or bullet. Many believe that there is no such thing as truth.

created equal -- Our founders thought equality of OPPORTUNITY was the obvious meaning of that term. Today, possibly more than half our nation thinks it is equality of OUTCOME, and even believes that it is the responsibility of government to define and insure that equality of outcome.

endowed by their Creator -- We were founded on TRANSCENDENT values. Not "situational", not "whatever polls say".  "Ideas Have Consequences"  is a book that every educated American ought to understand, because it provides the definition of transcendent truth and the consequences of not having it. The phrase makes clear what our founders knew about our nation, best stated by John Adams: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other".

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness -- A nation that has slaughtered 60 million babies in their mothers wombs has certainly abandoned the protection of life. We could talk of the loss of liberty forever, but the simple fact that everyone talks about "what is happening in DC" vs what THEY are doing in their families, community, churches and states tells the tale.

Sadly, I believe that our founders made a grave mistake in adding "the pursuit of Happiness" to the Declaration. Happiness is a side effect of meaning, and without maturity and meaning, it is not possible. As with most of "my thoughts", this too is stolen, the book that makes it most clear and concise in my experience is "Happiness Is a Serious Problem"

Our nation lost it's way long ago. In recent times, the failure to remove Bill Clinton from office showed that the presidency could be held by a person of no moral character. The election of Barak Obama showed that the office could be held by someone who had no demonstrated competence in leadership or executive function. Being able to campaign and win became the only qualification for leading the area of North America founded on ideas that are no longer known or understood.

George W Bush was the last president of "The United States of America". What we are now is unknown -- and either Trump or Hillary clearly meet the "standard" of "no standards".

We don't need a "candidate to campaign 24/7", we need A NATION! Right now, we don't have one, because the one we had was founded on IDEAS, which our people no longer understand, let alone believe, and a Constitution, which apparently we will demonstrate yet again that we do not follow, with the case of the North Carolina law that specifies males and females using the proper bathroom.

We need a "Movement", a "Revival", a return of the spirit that was America to sweep the land and restore the bulk of our heritage, and yes, maybe correct a few glaring errors like "pursuing happiness". I fervently believe that such a revival may happen -- it may well form a new nation rather than the old one. It may well be that the coasts demand a centralized government, massive dependency, open borders, the exclusion of God from the public square -- in short what is seen as "progressive" by many today.

Most of all, we need to understand what it is that we once were, and what it is that we are seeking to be! Protecting this broken immoral shell of a once great nation from Jihad, getting the books balanced, restoring education, and putting fresh politicians in DC seems a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I have made a personal shot on arriving at what an agenda for restoration might look like here.

Again, thank you for the seed of dialogue. Somehow, we must save at least a remnant of the light that was America, even if it is a new nation made up of what is today "Red America". We need humble ourselves and pray mightily while following the words of Churchill in England's finest hour and Never, Never, Never giving up!

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Fundamentalism Of The Smug Liberal

The smug style in American liberalism - Vox:

This article is a long but AMAZING read. Not so much for what is in it but because it exists at all. It is written by a liberal for a liberal site PLEADING for the liberal intelligentsia and hangers on to try their hardest to develop the merest hint of actual empathy!

I've covered all of this ground seven ways from Sunday, but to see an actual LIBERAL realize that maybe there is more to dealing with something possibly over half of the American Electorate than dismissing them with derision and smugness is a real treat.

This, I think, is fundamental to understanding the smug style. If good politics and good beliefs are just Good Facts and good tweets — that is, if there is no ideology beyond sensible conclusions drawn from a rational assessment of the world — then there are no moral fights, only lying liars and the stupid rubes who believe them.

Much of this goes back to "What's The Matter With Kansas" -- a book that SCREAMED about how STUPID poor people were to not be voting D and still clinging to tired old ridiculous Christian values to boot! "Good Facts" are critical -- liberals are sure of nothing if it isn't that THEY have ALL the FACTS on THEIR side! The following paragraph is a rare view of what a liberal might realize if they were to be a high school educated white Christian in some hick town in flyover country.

I am suggesting that they instead wonder what it might be like to have little left but one's values; to wake up one day to find your whole moral order destroyed; to look around and see the representatives of a new order call you a stupid, hypocritical hick without bothering, even, to wonder how your corner of your poor state found itself so alienated from them in the first place. To work with people who do not share their values or their tastes, who do not live where they live or like what they like or know their Good Facts or their jokes.

It's a worthy read, but we pretty much know it already -- liberals are smarter, better educated, better people, better looking, more tasteful, kinder, gentler, more moral, more culturally advanced, well, just BETTER! They are absolutely certain of it and they are even more certain that they have every right to be SMUG about it!

The thing that I would add from my experience is the quite large number of people who don't have the education, intelligence or money to actually be solid smug liberals, but they hang their entire sense of moral goodness on their embrace of liberal morality. They LOVE gay "marriage", they HATE the NRA, Faux News, they obsess about Climate Change -- they don't know a lot about many of these issues, but it gives them a chance to feel morally superior to their "hick neighbors". Often, it is the only sad "superiority" that they have.

Here is the Trump angle (doesn't everything have that these days?) :

Here's the conclusion I draw: If Donald Trump has a chance in November, it is because the knowing will dictate our [the liberal] strategy. Unable to countenance the real causes of their collapse, they will comfort with own impotence by shouting, "Idiots !" again and again, angrier and angrier, the handmaidens of their own destruction.

The smug style resists empathy for the unknowing. It denies the possibility of a politics whereby those who do not share knowing culture, who do not like the right things or know the Good Facts or recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of their own ideas can be worked with, in spite of these differences, toward a common goal. 

It is this attitude that has driven the dispossessed into the arms of a candidate who shares their fury. It is this attitude that may deliver him the White House, a "serious" threat, a threat to be mocked and called out and hated, but not to be taken seriously. 

The wages of smug is Trump.

The part of the Smug style that hurts personally is the requirement for "separation". I grew up in a Fundamentalist Baptist church that encouraged Christians to "be ye separate" -- not in heart and behavior only, but actually to separate yourself from the "world churches" and people who attended them -- which was basically everyone. ONLY the little General Association of Regular Baptists had the truth -- all else was error and sin.

Smug liberals can't associate with people who have "empathy for the unknowing", or even worse can enter a discussion with the smugly superior liberal in which the liberal ends up tongue tied and sputtering. They end up tongue tied and sputtering because their entire moral value as a person is tied up in the metaphysical correctness of their liberal world view, yet, since their view is dominant in media and culture, they have no knowledge of how to defend it. Like the fundamentalists of my youth, when faced with difficult questions, they have no choice but to say "get behind me Satan!"

The Fundamentalists of my youth put a lot of their self image into being "the ones in the right", but they DID believe in a God that was far superior to even them. The modern liberal is sure that somewhere between John Stewart, the NY Times, BO and a few really smart professors SOMEWHERE it is "all known and worked out" ("settled").

When liberals have trouble defending that faith, it gets VERY uncomfortable for them -- especially since they fervently believe that what they believe is not a "belief" at all, but proven and obvious FACT!  ("Good Facts") People who disagree with them MUST be either stupid or very poorly educated, and probably both. It makes it supremely embarrassing to not be EASILY winning a discussion with someone whom your entire world view depends on being as dumb as a box of rocks!

The urge to smugness is endemic to the human condition. Christ definitely came to discomfort the smug (ALL of us!) -- he was a LOT harder on the Scribes and Pharisees than he was on the immoral poor. The immoral poor knew they sinned -- the Scribes and Pharisees were very sure they didn't! (in those days / Jewish culture, they had the "Good Facts")

If Christ is in heaven and we will all be there for a lot longer than we will be here, we can enjoy earthy discussion about pretty much anything. Our worth as people is not be about our politics, our brilliance, our education or much of anything beyond God's Grace! Christian's could enjoy those discussions -- but "liberals" absolutely can't . They MUST be correct, and OBVIOUSLY / SMUGLY so!

The fact that a tiny fraction of liberals seem to understand how smug their movement has become and see it as a bad feature might be cause for hope, but I don't believe that humans can really cure their own smugness without God's Grace.

My soul weeps at the barrier that has been erected by the fundamentalist and smug secular humanist religion. It has destroyed the love of families far worse than even the divisions in the Church once did.

'via Blog this'

Zero to One, Peter Thiel

http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460935376&sr=1-1&keywords=zero+to+one+peter+thiel

A book that FAR exceeds it's promise. It has a LOT of great experiential documentation on startups, but the astute observations on attitudes around the world, misconceptions people have and just plain pithy contrarian wisdom is what really sets it apart. Thiel "failed" to get a SCOTUS clerkship (barely) and thus ended up founding PayPal which merged with Elon Musk's X.com to become a very successful business -- many good stories about how those things happened.

First the title -- Doing more of what we already know takes us from 1 to N, creating something new takes us from 0 to 1. "Today's "best practices" lead to dead ends, best paths are new and untried.

The question that Thiel asks when he wants to understand someone is "What important truth do few people agree with you on"? His answer is; "Most people think that the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more".

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE technology, but I think the future of the world will be defined by MEANING -- the West won't survive Islam (or the next "meaningful opponent") if we don't define a meaning and purpose for our existence -- and yes, expansion. To have a purpose, you have to believe, and if you believe, you believe that others would be served by believing. "I'm OK, You're OK" is not a meaningful philosophy!

I loved this line: "Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in shorter supply than genius". Again, it IS TODAY, because bowing to the "standard PC position" is more important than it was prior to the Reformation! Modern thought turns smaller and smaller molehills into mountains -- see NC!

My top favorite big ideas of the book are:

1) Monopoly is GOOD, competition is BAD. (in a static world, monopoly would be bad) I'm not going to argue the whole position here, but he does it very well. "The history of progress is the history of a better monopoly business replacing incumbents".  Think about it -- when Apple came along and created the expensive iPhone, people got violent in waiting lines to get at it. THAT is monopoly power, and you in fact WANT it -- badly, and it is the only way that our world will improve (technology wise).  "Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding completely new categories of abundance to the world".

2). You are not a lottery ticket --  but first a couple one liners (I love one-liners!) "Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them."  ... thus,  "All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past"

" ... if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you'll give up on trying to master it. Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what's most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance..."

HELLO -- see "diverse financial portfolio", "well rounded education", etc, etc.

He covers 4 basic global attitudes and makes EXCELLENT cases for each:

• Indefinite Pessimism -- something bad is going to happen but not sure what. This is where Europe is "Europeans just react to events and hope things don't get worse". 
• Definite Pessimism -- The future is bleak and we know why. China is the prime example -- they know they are copying, they don't see how they can innovate their way to true prosperity, so they try to get their money out of the country. 
• Definite Optimism -- The future is bright and we know why. Western Civilization from the 17th century to the Moon Landing. 
• Indefinite Optimism -- The future is bright but we have no clue why. "He expects to profit from the future but sees no reason to design it concretely". The United States today.  "Indefinite optimists are so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it". "A whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning". 

For those of you that were sentenced to serve in an institution like IBM for some period of time, there is this: "...arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future".  Oh, and you can "reorg" and have new buzzwords too! ;-) 

It's hard to believe this review is getting long. The whole book is a small 195 pages and I'm really only covering the first 75! IMHO, unless you are doing a startup, you COULD skip the last 90 or so pages, but that is not what I recommend. 

I'll close with what I think might turn out to the biggest mistake of human history so far -- Darwinism. "Actually, almost everybody in the modern world has already heard an answer to this question [how Indefinite Optimism MIGHT work] progress without planning is what we call "evolution"". 

Thiel goes on to point out that we may have a good deal more faith in this concept than is warranted. As I've pointed out, "it evolved" has become the modern answer to "it's God's will!", and while Western Civilization was optimistically marching to the real "God's Will" from the Reformation to the Moon Landing, we haven't really "evolved" all that well since -- or as Thiel puts it. 

"The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since midcentury."

He summarizes on Darwinism ... "Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best". Startups don't have a billion years to get it right ... does Western civilization?

I'm NOT doing the book justice -- he has some great stuff on "power laws",  computer "substitution" vs man / machine partnership (his company Palantir), what founders of companies (or lots of things) ought to be like, and some great thoughts on what kinds of futures we may be choosing from as we check our smartphones.

READ IT!

Newt On Trump, A Little Reality

Newt Gingrich discusses the merits of Donald Trump.:

It's very much worth just going off and reading this -- it is entertaining and insightful. I've always liked Newt relative to his intellectual grounding and quick wit. Yes, yes, I realize he is far from a moral paragon especially relative to women. King David actually wasn't either, and he was a "man after God's own heart" (I Samuel 13:14).

I especially like this exchange:

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about a possible president here.You are talking about a guy who was smart enough to build Trump Towers, build lots of hotels, build lots of casinos, and own the Miss Universe contest. He is not stupid. For many people, that seems to be inconceivable because they have a university Ph.D. theory of being smart.

Didn’t you write your Ph.D. thesis on the Belgian Congo?


I did, and I wrote my master’s thesis on Japanese and Russian railroad construction in the 19th century.

So why are you bashing people with Ph.D.s?


Because I have been in the real world, doing real things, and I understand the limitations of academic knowledge. I think it’s greatly overrated.

Look, you read a lot of books about how the world works, you are an educated person, you care about policy. When you hear Trump address subjects like NATO, it doesn’t worry you—


No. I read what he said about NATO, and I think it has been grossly taken out of context. What he said about NATO was the Bush–Rumsfeld position, which is that the Europeans ought to pick up more of the slack.

I'm a country bumpkin from Northern Wisconsin, but I consistently find people trying to show that they are intelligent by how well they can parrot "the standard narrative".  Really? If it is the "standard narrative" isn't it by definition something that is understood by those of "average intelligence",  if not less than average? As Paul Harvey used to say, what's "The rest of the story?!".

I want to get back to what Trump is doing, and we both know he is playing on impulses
—No, no we don’t. 

We don’t?
What we know is that Trump has had the nerve to raise questions in a clear language because he represents the millions of Americans who are sick and tired of being told that they have to be guilt-ridden and keep their mouth shut. 

So why are Trump’s negatives so high, if he is giving a voice to the masses?Look, Trump has been campaigning in a Republican primary with harsh language and has been routinely attacked by the elite media as much as they can. Reagan went through the same cycle. Do you know how many points Reagan was behind Carter in March? 

It was double digits, right?Twenty-five. Not just double digits. Twenty-five points. So if you had talked to me in March of 1980, you would have said, “How can I support this crazy right-winger who makes movies with chimpanzees and is 25 points behind Carter?” And I would have said, “Because I think he can win.” Which, by the way, he did. 

Is there really nothing that worries you about this guy? The way he deals with reporters, his campaign manager, etc.? You are not at all worried he has authoritarian tendencies?
No. No. [Laughs.] Which part of that is supposed to bother me?

We ALL have very selective memories -- Moose memories are just less selective because we don't have the intellectual capacity to do as good a selection as others -- and even worse, we tend to not want to just remember what everyone else does.

Reagan was WAY behind -- NPR was CERTAIN he could not win right up to 5:30 or 6PM Central on election day when I was driving home from work listening and NBC called the election for Reagan. Listening to NPR you would have thought that Christ had just returned and informed them that killing babies in a mothers womb was a sin!

Just as they likely would then, they referred to a "poll of their listeners" taken that day that they were POSITIVE was "representative" that showed Carter winning with 75% of the vote, so they were able to completely discount the "obviously wrong" NBC call! As people at CBS HQ in New York commented, "It couldn't be true, we don't  know ANYONE that voted for Reagan"!!

That is the sort of brilliance that a PHD will give you if you are not careful.

Oh ... the MSM didn't enjoy it very much when Newt was elected Speaker of the House. Try to even imagine a major US media source attacking BO before he even took office at this level!

'via Blog this'

PLEASE READ! ... The Reason for God, Belief in the Age of Skepticism

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594483493/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=53943455438&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7298185130422206397&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7vqca73v59_b

This book, by Timothy Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan may save a lot of souls, and possibly even provide a downpayment on saving America and Western civilization. It truly is THAT GOOD!

I tend to write direct and often "in your face". Quiet, reasoned, caring conversational style is not my natural mode in writing -- but I **DO** understand that it is important, and I **DO** very much respect it when I see it. Keller very much has that, plus he has an extremely well stocked brain coupled with the gift of writing both well and compactly with enough personal anecdotes to make this book more reachable than many of similar depth of content.

In part 1, called "the leap of doubt", he covers a series of objections to God with great insight and hard philosophical backing. They are:

1. There can't be just one true religion. 
2. How could a good God allow suffering? 
3. Christianity is a straightjacket
4. The church is responsible for so much injustice. 
5. How can a loving God send people to Hell? 
6. Science has disproved Christianity
7. You can't take the Bible literally. 

In an "intermission" between parts 1 and 2 he discusses the various arguments for and against -- "Strong Rationalism" -- essentially "proof of God", which is no more doable than proving our own existence. We then arrive at "critical rationality", the idea of "best fit". Evolution can't be "proven" in a strong rationalism sense given the time scales involved, yet most scientists find it compelling. 

"The view that there is a God, [Richard Swinburne] says leads us to expect the things that we observe -- that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate in it, that it contains human beings with consciousness and with an indelible moral sense. The theory there is no God he argues does not lead us to expect any of these things. Therefore, a belief in God provides a better empirical fit ..."

He then moves to Part 2, The Reasons for Faith

8. The clues of God.
9. The knowledge of God
10. The problem of sin
11. Religion and the Gospel 
12. The true story of the Cross
13. The reality of the Resurrection
14. The Dance of God 

At the end of chapter 9, which is basically my old belief that if you look in your heart, you already know there is a God, he summarizes: 

If you believe human rights are a reality, then it makes much more sense that God exists then that he does not. If you insist on a secular view of the world and yet you continue to pronounce some things right and some things wrong, then I hope you see the deep disharmony between the world as devised and the real world (and God) your heart knows exists. This leads us to a crucial questions. If a premise ("there is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ("Napalming babies is culturally relative") then why not change the premise? 

As frequent readers know, Nietzsche and a lot of other lesser philosophers have decided long ago that "God is dead, so power = morality" (might=right)".  The baby of morality goes out with the bathwater of God, and the world ends up arguing in strange gibberish that has been known to be gibberish since the Greeks. It seems to be getting clearer every day that our civilization is dying rapidly without God.

The review could go on forever -- the book is a treasure trove of understanding what the COSTS are for creating a God in our own image. How God is the sworn enemy of the smug -- both the smug because they believe that they "do a better job" of following rules, being successful, etc, AND of the smug that "have a more open and sophisticated mind than the unwashed masses". Christ came to comfort the "poor in spirit" (comfortable), and more-so to  make the comfortable UNcomfortable ! ... no matter what it is in this world that they believe is to their comfort other than serving the REAL Christ, not one of their imagination.

He makes it clear that ONLY in giving our WHOLE life to Christ is there a way out of our broken state.

"It is only Grace that frees us from the slavery of self that lurks even in the middle of morality and religion. Grace is only a threat to the illusion that we are free, autonomous selves, living lives as we choose". 

He quotes a lot of CS Lewis, who I love, he also is high on Jonathan Edwards who is now on my reading list. There are others. This book is a TREASURE to anyone who seeks God and restoration of our broken nation and world! I can't recommend it highly enough!!!

I'll close with this quote from Lewis on love that is oh so true:

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.