Christianity Invented Children

http://theweek.com/articles/551027/how-christianity-invented-children

One of the major reasons that he left must destroy history is to destroy the historical record of not just Christ himself, but of the myriad of ways in which modern culture itself would not be possible without Christianity, and where we are already in the process of returning now that we have largely abandoned this main thread of what allowed Western civilization to once flourish.

I'm not really going to encourage you to read through this if you are bothered by disturbing facts, but, the bottom line is that abortion and homosexuality are only part of the horrors of paganism that we have started to sample -- it DOES get worse, including infanticide, abandonment of children and rampant sexual abuse of children.

The illusion that "modern is better" is one of the saddest of the lies taught by "progressives". It is possible that the very elite of the left believes that an "inner circle" of  erotic license is actually going to be "better" for them, but for the bulk of the population, pagan society is a dystopian hell of meaningless violence, hatred, hopeless debauchery and ugly early death. As Christianity rose, it gave the IMPRESSION of things improving only because Christianity is not only moral, but blessed. When we started turning from Christianity, Western civilization started declining, and the decline is getting steeper!

Good to at least be aware of the Christian Difference that is being destroyed so that "pleasure" can reign.

But really, Christianity's invention of children — that is, its invention of the cultural idea of children as treasured human beings — was really an outgrowth of its most stupendous and revolutionary idea: the radical equality, and the infinite value, of every single human being as a beloved child of God. If the God who made heaven and Earth chose to reveal himself, not as an emperor, but as a slave punished on the cross, then no one could claim higher dignity than anyone else on the basis of earthly status.

A deeper understanding of how Judaism and Christianity improved the lot of women and children is covered in the excellent column linked in this post -- it is also disturbing, but truth often is.

Franken Endorses Sucker Punch At Trump Rally

Trump followers defend the sucker punch: ‘Just a little poke on the beak’ - The Washington Post:

Way back in 2004, the (embarrassingly) current sitting Senator from MN, Al Franken, body slammed a heckler at a Howard Dean rally.  ... oh, never mind, no story there! (nobody made any deal about it then either -- Franken bragged about it!)

I can't imagine that Al would not be consistent on this, right?

A little contrast here. Some 78 year old guy punches a 26 year old guy at a Trump rally -- BIG deal in the media!

The reason they manipulate us is because it works! (generally)

Rule of law and consistency are how people live in peace -- either Franken and the 78 year old guy are right, or they are wrong when law and consistency hold sway.

When "The Party" and "situational ethics" hold sway, then "might is right" -- by ballot, by bully, by bullet, it is all just POWER!



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Falling From God to Tyranny, Burke

From Edmund Burke, to a member of the French Assembly, 1791: 

Great nations have fallen before and they will fall again and again. The principles are well known, but readers of this blog realize that Western civilization has made a very conscious choice to bury the knowledge and principles that caused it to once rise.

In the excellent note linked above (just before the end), Edmund Burke has this to say:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

"Their passions forge their fetters".

The passion to be entirely free from moral strictures, free from work, free from a need to live within our means -- "free" in the sense of "free stuff", ignoring the facts of even science that "there is NO free lunch". Everything has a cost, and that which appears most "free" often has the highest cost!

The passion for an earthly savior -- "Hope and Change", with whatever imaginary policy or progrom one may choose to project on such vacuous words. "Make America Great Again" is "Yugely" specific in comparison -- it asserts a specific nation, with "greatness" for a goal, a specificity far beyond "Hope and Change", however it is still irrationally imprecise.

The slogans of BO and now of Trump are very thinly disguised appeals to hand over the nation to a "strong man". BO has already crossed the rubicon of usurping the Constitution on immigration and EPA regulation (stayed by the court for the moment). Trump. Hillary and Bernie have all declared they will do the same on various topics -- guns, income, jobs, walls, etc.

We are absolutely a nation that has lost the internal controlling power of religion -- as John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other"!

So deeply in debt, morally corrupt, and in mass, totally unschooled as to the the requirements of what keeping the nation bequeathed to us operating, we stumble toward an election which might provide us with the most vile alternatives in American history. It is a situation we richly deserve -- these things have been TOTALLY KNOWABLE for at least centuries, and to a significant degree millennia!!

We have no excuse!

John Adams, Our Constitution

I have been devoting a good deal of time to making the 3,500+ blog posts more accessible to ME if nothing else.

Some fine day I shall write a bit on my "schemes" ... one example is using the label "AAAA" for what are either highly popular, or I believe to be critical posts for developing a transcendent world view, rooted in revelation, history, science and tradition, while remaining cognizant and sympathetic to our fallen human nature, and the needs of our fragile selves in this mortal coil.

This quote from Adams is one which I return to frequently in the present dark times.

Included here in text so I may clip it, and in a graphic form for inclusion in a more eye catching form.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" (John Adams)

Recent History, For the Left Eye Only

Turned Around - The New Yorker:

I have a deep appreciation of the superior ability of the general lefty brain to generate narrative, if I ever complete my fiction work, it will be a MIRACLE!

From the POV of the left, "the big story of the last 50 years" is the rise of the RIGHT!

The biggest story of the past fifty years in American politics has been the ascendancy of the right, and it’s a story of apostasy. At each stage of the conservative movement’s long march to power, crucial aid was provided by heretics from the left. Progressives recoiled from the New Deal and turned reactionary; ex-Communists helped to launch National Review, in the nineteen-fifties; recovering socialists founded neoconservatism in the sixties and seventies; New Left radicals turned on their former comrades and former selves in the Reagan years.

Yes, forced bussing, Medicare, massive increases in welfare, Abortion on Demand, affirmative action, feminism, Political Correctness, gay rights/"marriage", open borders, massive increases in government regulation of all aspects of our lives, BOcare, states legalizing pot, etc, etc, all took place during the "rise of conservatism"!

The article really needs to be read to be imagined -- let alone believed. The idea that "people tend to move from left toward the right"  as they age is covered, with some of the standard epitaphs like "mugged by reality' inserted, but then the creative brain waves this as the meaning of the commonly noted left to right movement with age:

It’s like blaming your spouse for your own unfaithfulness. Political conversions are painful affairs, as hard to face up to as falling out of love or losing your religion. Or maybe harder. Religious faith, being beyond the reach of reason, doesn’t have to answer gotcha questions about a previously held position. There’s a special contempt reserved for the political apostate—an accusation of intellectual collapse, an odor of betrayal.

Got that? There IS no reason for people to move right -- it is embarrasing (to them) that some do. They are "apostates", "betrayers" ... or maybe they just had an "intellectual collapse"!

See the left has been unable to achieve utopia (yet), and there is no question that MUST be due to "the rise of the right"!

Chambers thought he was defecting to the losing side, and even now conservatives feel like a beleaguered minority; meanwhile, the right has secured power in just about every American institution except the academy. Political correctness is, in part, a reaction to the defeat of the left’s egalitarian dreams, the kind of mutation that occurs in isolation from the larger gene pool. If you can’t overturn Citizens United, you can at least rename a university building.

See, the "right" has "some position" in most institutions -- "except education". They have "media",  Fox and Talk Radio, and it is hard to shut them completely off on the Internet!  Note how the idea of a Constitution is simply GONE -- the idea that "free speech" means that you have to have MONEY if you want to speak to 300 million plus people is simply bunk! Citizens United just needs to be "overturned" -- the fact that there are ANY conservatives around is too much of a "rise".

And so, for "The Party", any vestige of conservatism is WAY too much! Oh, and our country has slipped so far RIGHT that we are overdue for a giant "backlash" -- that will no doubt usher in the utopia that the left is certain is just around the corner!

Perhaps BS?

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Hilly Comes Clean!

http://nypost.com/2016/01/31/this-was-all-planned-former-ig-says-hillary-state-dept-are-lying/

The following is a transcript from the NSA interview with Hillary after putting her under the influence of truth serum so they could assess the damage to national security.

NSA: "Tell us about your home-brew email server."

Hillary: "What's to tell? I had it set up, I had people run it, I deleted all that I could. Nobody told me that you had to empty the trash! It's the damned stupid tech weenies fault!"

NSA: "Why did you set it up?"

Hillary: "Are you idiots? We run a major criminal operation! I can't be having my e-mails subpoenaed and viewed by some flunky prosecutor! I collect tens of millions in bribes and pay millions in bribes and hush money.  "BBB" (Bill's Bimbo Bill) alone runs into the millions every year, and that is petty cash!"

NSA: "What about National Security?"

Hillary: "It can be lucrative at times, sure, but I make more money on just plain old quid pro quo."

NSA: "You sell national secrets?"

Hillary: "I sell everything. I buy a lot of stuff too."

NSA: "Aren't you concerned about treason? Agents and others losing their lives because of leaks?"

Hillary: "People die all the time, you expect me to worry about that? Nobody is going to prosecute us! There is NOBODY of any level of power that we don't have the goods on, and that includes the scum in my White House and his ugly wife that has the gall to call me "Hildebeast". Her days are numbered!"

NSA: "What about the information you are giving me now?"

Hillary: "You really don't get it do you? We own judges, prosecutors, heads of agencies -- the head of YOUR agency! You remember Ron Brown? He forgot who owned him! This interview is OVER! Jack ... "

..... sound of silenced gunshot.

Hillary: "Thanks Jack. Pity to see a decent young guy who doesn't know the ropes have to take his own life like that. He could have learned what matters with a little more time. Slow learner, wrong place at wrong time."

"Take me home. I need a warm bath and a good glass of wine ... oh, and get, ah, Ken ... er"

Jack: "You mean Keith Alexander, NSA head?"

Hillary: "Yes, him ... I want him at my hotel at 8 sharp. We are going to make sure that this kind of screwup doesn't happen again! ... oh, and Jack ... make sure someone cleans up this mess. "

Jack: "Yes, ma'am!'

******** end transcript

From the article:

Either way, there would be an audit trail for investigators to follow. The SIPRNet system maintains the identity of all users and their log-on and log-off times, among other activities. 

“This totally eliminates the false premise that she got nothing marked classified,” Krongard said. “She’s hiding behind this defense. But they [emails] had to be classified, because otherwise [the information in them] wouldn’t be on the SIPRNet.” 

Added Krongard: “She’s trying to distance herself from the conversion from SIPRNet to [the nonsecure] NIPRNet and to her server, but she’s throwing her staffers under the bus.”

We ALL know that the only reason she set up a private server was to avoid prosecution for her "business as usual". She also happens to be incompetent -- so she didn't get it really wiped and some e-mails got out. She STILL was allowed to go through them and pick which ones "could be released", and yet she allowed some of those to be Top Secret after testifying there was no "classified information" on that server.

The bottom line is that the Clinton's are above the law. All of this stuff was well known way back in the '90s, but nobody cared then as nobody cares now. If you want to run down the rabbit hole, here is a link http://www.arkancide.com/. Sure,  there are complete cranks, conspiracy theorists and a host of other folks "out to get the Clintons", but how many people can die around a couple "accidentally"?

I did look up a few of the deaths back in the '90s -- at least many of them ARE real people that suddenly stopped being alive. Just scan down the list and think about how much national attention was given to W Bush being in the TX National Guard 30 years before his presidency. How about the amount of time spent on Valerie Plame and the fact that it turned out that they even got to the bottom of it and it was Richard Armitage who accidentally leaked her name ...  he wasn't one of the guys the Democrats wanted to take down, so the investigation was over at that point!

It isn't just a "double standard", it is a complete takeover by a single corrupt political party  ... and I think  anyone that has paid MINIMAL attention knows that. The fact is that in general, we are so corrupt as a nation that nobody cares -- keep us entertained and distracted, keep the free stuff coming. Our only values are dollars and comfort -- gladiator Rome was a fount of virtue compared to America today.

God Help Us!

January 28, 1986 -- 30 Years Since Challenger

Space shuttle Challenger's final voyage is remembered, 30 years later - CBS News:

JFK Assassination, Moon Walk, Challenger, 9-11 ... those are the days I remember for sure right where I was and what I was doing from a "national event" perspective in my life so far.

Thirty years ago today we were married less than a year. I happened to be home from IBM sick at our place in Chatfield for one of the very few times in the first 20+ years of my career. I wasn't feeling good enough to be watching TV, so got a call from a friend at work that "people were saying something happened to the Shuttle. Those were the days before Internet and there were not any TVs around the site and radios were wither prohibited or frowned upon.

Being the space buff I was, it was shocking, but technically certainly not hard to believe. I understood that the Shuttle system was flawed at best -- solid boosters and tiles for re-entry being big examples. 2.5 million parts and 400K lines of code to keep it flying. There is some detail on the mission hardware and software here. I did feel horrible for the families -- but I can still remember feeling guilty for how sad I felt for the Challenger and the engineers. The shuttles were an embodiment of a spirit and capability that may never return to this nation. It was a privilege to be alive and experience both the highs and the lows of that era.

As always, Reagan had some of the best words possible and remembrance of him certainly brings back nostalgia for that spacefaring nation of heroes that built and flew marvelous machines.

In 1986, Japan was flying high -- you can glance at one article here, but the assumption was that they were an unstoppable economic force ... better methods, harder working labor force, better social programs,  you name it. We HAD to copy Japan, or they would just buy us up.  Japan's economy has been essentially in a recession since '92 -- it turns out their sure fire policies that we were supposed to copy didn't pan out so wall. Starting in '06 with Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, we finally started to copy them.

I'd say the Japanese policies DO "work"! It's just that the definition of "work" isn't maybe what some had thought!

Kids were still in the future in '86, now a Grandchild is the earthy center of our universe. There was lots of IBM career ahead in '86, now it is in the rear view mirror.

Time marches on for the living. The USSR is dead ... but then, the US that we knew and loved in '86 is dead too. Now we have no space capability and hitch rides with Russia, whose leader is listed as the most powerful man in the world.  (BO was third, indicating stench isn't everything!)

My tendency to pine away "for the old days" is getting stronger -- I must REALLY be getting old!

If you are feeling as nostalgic for that time as I am, I might suggest checking out the book "Riding Rockets"

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The End of Modernity

The End of Modernity | Hoover Institution:

A bit intellectually stilted, but worth the read. If you keep up with this blog you have read it all here in my own tech-weenie autodidactic intellectual wannabe prose -- these guys are the real deal.

Some priming before you begin ...

"Westphalian" -- Peace of Westphalia, 1648. The end of the 30 years war, the agreement between Rome and the European States to recognize and respect the state as the source of government. Could look at it as the REAL end of "The Holy Roman Empire" and the rise of the Protestant dominated nation-state west.

"volkerwanderung" -- "The Migration Period". From the perspective of Roman Empire, the invasion of the barbarians ... with  the obvious metaphor to today.

The end follows. I maintain that we DID (or at least W did) however make a SUCCESSFUL but very expensive "turning point" from 2001-2008. If the path set had been maintained, the world may well still be at peace, ISIS never rising, and Iran contained. The left could still lament a small contingent of troops in Iraq with deaths on the order of what we see in Afghanistan and claim "it was all unnecessary" -- but instead ... 

And turning points were not recognized or taken, most notably the moment in late 2015 when the U.S. could have inventoried the region to determine those states and parties in or on the side of world order and those who would destroy and replace it so as to firmly support the former and resolutely oppose the latter. 

It was not to be. The collapse of the Westphalian state system meant that the foundations for the values they upheld—open trade, open expression, consent of the governed, and universal human rights—crumbled as well, and the remaining states of the core region of the world withered away. 

As the historian Edward Gibbon mused when writing about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, perhaps the time would come when the interpretation of the Koran would “be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed.” 

It has come to pass.

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The "We're Not Worthy" Civilization

Seeing the West as worse - The Orange County Register:

A society that no longer believes in its core beliefs cannot prevail against rivals who, although less wealthy and far less technologically advanced, embrace their core ideals. A West that rejects (and sometimes is unaware of) its own heritage cannot overcome those who, for religious or national reasons, have a powerful belief in theirs.

Seems pretty obvious does it not? What is it that we are supposed to believe in here in "middle north america?". Global Warming and Republicans are the greatest threat to our "civilization"? You mean the baby killing gender confused cult of shopping? THAT "civilization"?

As the great 15th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun observed, societies that get rich also tend to get soft, both in the physical sense and in the head. Over the past two centuries, Western societies, propelled by the twin forces of technology and capitalist “animal spirits,” have created a diffusion of wealth unprecedented in world history.

Soft in body and soul -- the current essence (such as it is) of the tattered remnant of a once great civilization. The linked article could have been trimmed a good deal in my opinion, but it is generally well done. It closes as follows ...

Ultimately, we can only confront the challenge from authoritarian forces – whether in the Middle East, China or Russia – when we once again embrace our cultural values as important and worthy of protection. Our opponents – and that’s what they are – may be fundamentally weaker than us, but can count on the advantage of belief in their destiny. To save ours, Western culture needs to stay, not be put away.

For those that don't understand the title reference, a bit of comic relief ... because when you have a ringside seat for the end of Western civilization, a little laughter is REQUIRED!

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Trumping A Conservative Party

If Trump wins the nomination, prepare for the end of the conservative party - The Washington Post:

When one steps back and looks at the bigger historical picture, certain crisis and cleavages at least appeal to trying to make sense of things. Perspective will always vary, and history is never tidy, so caution is required.

In the linked column, George Will channels his (in my opinion justified), disdain for Trump into a potential ending of the current Republican party. It is worth reading, but in general I do not agree with all that much of it.

His short history includes Teddy Roosevelt's attempt to convert the Republican party from a somewhat conservative party into a "progressive" party, failing, running under the "Bull Moose Party" banner and giving us Woodrow Wilson as a result. Wilson was the most "progressive" anti-Constitutional president up until BO. A little background on that debacle is covered in "Liberal Fascism" . The idea of a "conservative party" was preserved in Will's mind, but it was far from pure.

Will then considers the Goldwater run the point at which the Republican Party became a "true conservative party". I disagree ... we elected Nixon twice. Nixon took us off the gold standard, founded the EPA, agreed with Keynesian spending, put in wage and price control, and went to China -- none of which are in any way "conservative".

Reagan TALKED about being conservative, but given the entrenched D congress he had to deal with, he settled for ending the USSR and lived with huge deficits and a giant FICA tax increase! HW Bush raised taxes ... nuff said. W Bush created a vast new medicare drug program.

Reagan DID slow the GROWTH of government spending, but Newt and the '94 congress were the only truly "conservative influence" that the R's have managed to muster in a LONG time ... and it requires some twiddling on what one means by "republican".

The Republican party of Lincoln was ANYTHING but "conservative"! It wielded vast centralized government power and FORCE in order to edict it's will upon the South. While my review of the book "The Conservative Mind" doesn't go into much on that aspect, the book does in it's discussion of the effects of the Civil War on the conservative principle of states rights.

We really have to go back to Jefferson and Madison to find a "smaller government" party, that interestingly enough was called "The Democratic Republican Party" -- for it wanted small government AND more democracy, while the Federalists (Washington, Hamilton, Adams, ...) wanted more government and more centralized government.

A major source of our problems is our loss of understanding of the human condition, and the ultimate conservative position of "transcendence" -- ultimately correct values over "what looks/feels good today" which comes from "man being the measure of all things". This is possibly best and most succinctly covered in "The Ethics of Rhetoric".

So in summary, I disagree with Will that we have REALLY had a "conservative party as a constant presence", but I agree that Trump is a clear marker post on the fall of man and the specific fall of what was America. While not "likely", I consider it "possible"  that Trump may win, and in fact, I'd claim it hard to really explain "who is worse"? Yes, both are exceedingly bad, but it is more a question of "What do you hate worst" ... complete fecklessness, total incompetence, total disdain for vast swaths of the American public (R's) that you declare them "enemies" in the same class as ISIS (Hillary) ... or Trump, which the article and day to day media now castigate with justified regularity.

So, I think things are already a lot worse than Will seems to think for "conservatives" ... and given his thought that we have had a "consistent conservative presence" in the R party for a long time, I question what he means by the term "conservative" ... (here is what I mean if you need a refresher).

His closing ...

 "In 2016, a Trump nomination would not just mean another Democratic presidency. It would also mean the loss of what Taft and then Goldwater made possible — a conservative party as a constant presence in U.S. politics"

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Can the Left Love ISIS?

Can the Left Learn to Love ISIS? | Frontpage Mag:

An interesting discussion of similarities between the embrace of Communism in the past and the developing comity between the left and ISIS.

Islamic terrorism is excused on the same grounds that Communist terror was excused; as a response to our imperialistic foreign policy, as the outcry of the oppressed and an attempt to secure equality. Some atrocities are dismissed as myths, worries over terrorism are written off as fearmongering and terrorists are transformed into victims who were singled out by paranoid politicians for their political beliefs.

The left is using the same exact playbook on Islamic terrorism as it did on Communism.

America was founded as a Center RIGHT Republic (Left being control, right being chaos)  -- The Left continuously grows the centralized power of government until that power is TOTAL (thus "Totalitarian"). The "faith" of the left is that once complete centralized control is achieved, "utopia" is sure to result. The objective is POWER, the means are completely unimportant, and as has been seen around the world again and again they often include the killing of huge numbers of people, torture, oppression, imprisonment, etc -- ALL methods are permissible (even REQUIRED) in the creation of "heaven on earth".

Obama and Hillary contend that ISIS cannot be defeated militarily. And if it cannot be defeated militarily, the only options are Cold War containment or diplomatic outreach. It’s not too hard to imagine the arguments that will be made for the latter at the expense of the former. They were the same arguments that were made and are still being made by the left for engagement with Communist terror regimes.

 ISIS has not done anything that the Soviet Union did not do. Its ideology is thoroughly different, but both were built on swamps of atrocity, mass murder, mass rape, ethnic cleansing and raw butchery. If the left could serve the Soviet Union, who is to say that it won’t learn to love the Islamic State?

How often do we hear today that "Fighting/resisting ISIS is the worst thing we can do! They use it as a recruiting tool!" ... translation, they MUST be accommodated, we have no other choice! The refrain is exactly the same as that heard about the USSR up through the Reagan administration, when any attempts at showing strength were "playing into the hard-liners hands and going to get us all blown up!". "Better Red than Dead!"

Of course when the USSR fell, while the left tried to be as quiet as they good be as they sobbed and cried alligator tears, they attempted to calmly confuse us "oh, we KNEW this was going to happen all along! Reagan and the warmongers just slowed it down" ! (sob, sob, please pass a Kleenex, my cat just died! ....)

How often were Republicans accused of "playing into the hard-liners hands" as BO worked out handing the Bomb to Iran so they could eventually give us the "Missile Finger" with a mushroom tip!

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28 Year History of Conservative Media

Rush Limbaugh & National Review -- Conservative-Media Revolution | National Review Online:

We often forget just how short a time there has been any sort of a conservative "popular media" answer to the massive amount of left wing outlets. National Review was around as a magazine, but with a very small readership ... it peaked at just over 250K readers an issue in '94.

So Limbaugh came on the national airwaves 28 years ago in 1988, Fox News showed up in 1997, not quite 20 years ago.

Would there have been a 50 year period with no Republican control of the House of Representatives if the American people had been able to listen to conservative mass media over that time? How much did Rush Limbaugh have to do with the Republicans finally taking the House in '94?

I know that when Jimmy Carter convinced me that there HAD to be a different and better way to look at the world than he espoused, I had to SEARCH to find National Review. I've certainly "converted" more than a few people to at LEAST QUESTION what it is they hear drummed into their heads each day by the standard left wing mass media -- "The Mainstream Media" or MSM. Rush definitely allowed millions more to be aware that pretty much all issues have AT LEAST two sides -- if not many more.

Sadly, at nearly 30 years into a major revolution of choice in media, conservatism is LOSING -- badly, and along with it, the ability to maintain anything recognizable as "America" --  God, Family, hard work, delayed gratification, personal responsibility, thrift -- all those "old time" values.

It isn't hard at all to see how the conservative light could be easily extinguished -- a return to a government administered "fairness doctrine" where the FCC decides what is "speech", and what is "propaganda" and has to give the other side "equal time".  Citizens United being overturned -- so the NYTs, NPR, Michael Moore, CNN, etc can say all they want, but conservative political speech is strictly controlled. "Net Neutrality" -- where blogs that are considered "biased political speech" (in the eyes of the government) are blocked, slowed, sanctioned, removed from search, etc. ... the list could go on.

The calls for "doing SOMETHING about the disruptive right wing media" by the left are fairly constant. The hatred of "Faux News" oozes from those who lean left -- and when those from the left hate something, it is not enough to turn the channel, it means that what they dislike should be destroyed!

A lot of prayers and a lot of hard work will continue to be needed to at a minimum slow the leftward slide as much as possible -- and to hope against all odds, the tide will yet be turned!

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Mindless SCOTUS / Religion Meme

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207283969040245&set=a.1082209898215.2014464.1315355655&type=1&fref=nf&pnref=story

This has popped up on a few lefties FB feeds. It is inane, pedantic and false -- so appealing to leftists, but it may confuse some, So a few words.

First the really easy standard lies:

In fact, one religious party believing they know the truth for all humans is how terrible oppression starts - that is how Naziism started, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Klu Klux Klan, Al-Qaeda and now ISIS - the most destructive, hateful, murderous periods of human history have arisen directly out of one religious group (ironically, most of these examples were lead by Christians) believing their religion and religious beliefs were THE truth, and therefore they had the right to take away the rights (and lives) of those who lived or believed differently than them.

Naziism had nothing to do with religion other than Hitler hated Jews -- but as a "race", not particularly a religion. The Crusades were a DEFENSIVE action -- Islam was the aggressor party, once they were in France, Christendom finally woke up. The other items listed are pretty much "noise" -- humans like to do stupid and often violent things independent of creed (read the column), we could point out equal and longer lists on the left -- without even counting abortion.

The bottom line is this paragraph shows the author as a hater of Christians so her comments directed at such ought be taken in that context. The LEFT (meaning centralized state control) is the champion killer by FAR after the 20th century with over 100 million dead -- Communist, National and other Socialists. They KNOW they have "the truth" -- just like the column author, and their "truth" quite commonly sets millions of souls free from their earthly body in a violent fashion. Why not? They have no moral foundation beyond "might is right" -- and the author wants to make sure there is no "law" save power to stand in the way of their promethean objectives.

The problem with the whole article is just that -- "truth and power". The old US was founded a set of ENUMERATED WRITTEN RIGHTS that were "endowed by our creator" -- therefore transcending human power. Without something being transcendent -- God, a document, laws, then POWER is what determines "morality" -- might **IS** right! The SCOTUS gay "marriage" ruling is pure POWER. Our "truth" once transcended "man" (as in 9 in robes) -- and the earthy power was reserved to the people (often people too "Christian" for the author's taste, thus the preference for statist power)

"Marriage" was not one of those enumerated rights in our Constitution  -- so it was therefore left to States and Localities to determine. **IF** it was determined that a Constitutional Right to marriage was desired, the procedure to attain that in what was America was a Constitutional Amendment -- 2/3 of both houses of congress (or a convention), ratification by 3/4ths of the states. That was law.

What any law abiding person -- Christian or no, should be concerned about is the SCOTUS itself being lawless as it has on this and other cases -- Roe V Wade being the prime example. Slavery was abolished by the 13th-15th Amendments -- the law of the land was followed! Women received the vote via the 19th Amendment ... legally! To compare what just happened with real rule of law is dangerous ignorance -- or possibly blatant lies to mislead the less intelligent.

The gay "marriage" ruling was NOTHING to do with "church and state" nor the establishment clause -- and the SCOTUS never claimed that it did. Purely a fantasy of the author of the piece. Lots of wasted text.

The combination of lack of knowledge and basic reason on the part of the author of the piece is breathtaking -- although, I strongly suspect that a thinly veiled rage against Christians is really what is speaking here.

Rights are not and should not be up for a popular vote or up to the states to determine. Rights are absolute and cannot be dependent upon anything other than the fact that the person is a human being and is a citizen of the US. If those two conditions are met, YOUR belief system about what is MORALLY or spiritually right or wrong does not matter and should not. You should be glad that is the case, because it would be just as easy for another religion to take over and curtail your rights as a Christian (something that has happened throughout history).

If the author has a belief system, it must be that "government is great, government is good -- and we trust that it and it's practitioners are omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent".  We DID have a written Constitution based on "self evident truths" and "being endowed by our creator". We HAD a rule of law, not of men -- complete with a known procedure to amend the sacred document if such was needed over time -- and we DID it for things like slavery and women's suffrage!

To equate 5 people in robes conjuring a new "right" out of thin air with the actual amendments that abolished slavery and women's suffrage is to show a level of willful ignorance that proves us to no longer be worthy of the freedom to govern ourselves. "Religion" is not what the winsome lass ought be concerned about -- what 5 people in robes giveth, 5 people in robes can take away! Without respect to anything save raw power, and THAT is the power that definitely corrupts!

When we had a country called America, the authors concerns about "somebody's morals mattering" were pretty much correct -- it was LAW that mattered, and if you wanted a RIGHT, there was a LEGAL PROCEDURE to achieve that called a Constitutional Amendment.

What the author of the piece exhibits is a bigoted and poorly informed outlook with little ability to reason. It is no wonder -- our schooling has for the last 50-100 years been turning out robotic crowd following mental serfs with no concept of critical thought -- and often even no thought of doing even a Google on a fact or two rather than just making it up. Memes like this are driven by nothing deeper than knee jerk adherence to the mass "word of the day" in true Orwellian fashion.

"It made me feel good when I read it, so it MUST be true!".

So, if you see this noxious meme -- now you know a bit more of the truth. That such things can be taken seriously in this now lawless area of North America, formerly the USA, is yet another reason to wax nostalgic for the wisdom of our founders and the country we once had.

Proof Of God, The Inhumanity of Western Civilization

Dennis Prager -- Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality:

This is a somewhat longish but highly important article, VERY worth the time to read. It is uncomfortable, because it paints human (especially male) sexuality in a light that we would prefer not to be painted -- but it makes a very strong case for the truth of that painting.

The basic proposal of the article is that Judaism created the concept of "homosexual" -- in all other ancient life, sex was a power relation between penetrator and penetrated. Gender was just one of the many things that didn't matter to the ancient male.

The revolutionary nature of Judaism's prohibiting all forms of non-marital sex was nowhere more radical, more challenging to the prevailing assumptions of mankind, than with regard to homosexuality. Indeed, Judaism may be said to have invented the notion of homosexuality, for in the ancient world sexuality was not divided between heterosexuality and homosexuality. That division was the Bible's doing. Before the Bible, the world divided sexuality between penetrator (active partner) and penetrated (passive partner).

Prager covers a lot of ground in the piece -- the ancient civilizations and sexualized religions that surrounded the Jews as well as the Greeks, the Romans and others. Quite in contrast to the idea that Judaism and Christianity "subjugated women", he points out the obvious fact that males are more powerful -- they take what they want by force, and what they often want is sex. Without restraint, the world they create bears little resemblance to Western Civilization -- even in its rapidly declining form.

I've often stated the things that most convince me of Christianity:

1. Nobody dies for something they know to be false. Many of the disciples that bore witness to the Resurrection would have had to know it to be false if that were the case, yet they went to their painful deaths as martyrs testifying to it as truth. Not human behavior if it were not true. 
2. Nobody would make up the New Testament -- it is full of things that are simply extremely poor salesmanship. Peter denying Christ, the bickering among the disciples, the differences in the accounts. Including the testimony of women as witnesses (they didn't get the vote in the US until 1920, their status in the 1st-2nd centuries was nada). Sure, TODAY, we understand that a too pat story with too perfect hero's is a sign of fabrication, but the ancient world did not see that -- they wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, etc ... a suffering saviour that dies a horrible death on a cross? Not a good founding story for a religion!  

To these, I will now add the following proof. Without intervention from a higher power,  powerful men are not going to give up total sexual license and limit themselves to one or even a small number of females. Even today, young men regularly destroy their lives or die because they are completely unable to trade short term pleasure / power / thrills / experience for longer term gain. This is with the influence of thousands of years of attempted civilization. Praeger puts it better:

"In all my research on this subject, nothing moved me more than the Talmudic law that Jews were forbidden to sell slaves or sheep to non-Jews, lest the non-Jews engage in homosexuality and bestiality. That was the world in which rabbis wrote the Talmud, and in which, earlier, the Bible was written. Asked what is the single greatest revelation I have derived from all my researches, I always respond, "That there had to have been divine revelation to produce the Torah." The Torah was simply too different from the rest of the world, too against man's nature, to have been solely man-made."

We can pick up a living thing and instantly know "this is not of human construction". Or we can go to any of our stores and pick up items that are clearly "not a construction of nature".

Just as we can look around us at the universe and know in our soul that this was created, even more so, we can realize that without the hand of God, none of what we call Western Civilization today would exist. Thanks be to God that he has promised that his Word and Church will endure, so it will not ALL be lost -- but only the most blind can fail to see that massive pieces of the once great civilization are falling around us.

As Praeger says in another part of the article, even if most people were blinded, we will never look at blindness as "normal"!

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Gallipoli 100, History, Humanity, Churchill

Gallipoli, 100 Years On | Power Line:

First the "basic story" -- The British attacked Turkey at the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25, 1915. Over 8 futile months 252,000 allied lives were lost before they gave up. Churchill has sacked from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty in May as a new coalition government was formed. The event came to be known as "Churchill's Folly".

I read the section on the Dardanelles Strategy in the "The Last Lion: Visions of Glory" (the first book) last night -- so now, "The Rest of the Story".

First point -- when you are a bigger than life figure that talks a great game like Churchill, you make all sorts of enemies and when there is a chance to blame you for something, you likely get blamed. The flip side is that if the proper moment arises in history, you may also get credit for something huge that will also be the result of many other events than just you -- Lincoln freeing the slaves, TJR building the Panama Canal, FDR ending the depression, Churchill winning WWII, Kennedy getting us to the moon, Reagan defeating the USSR.

The likely story is that on March 19th, had Admiral De Robeck continued the very successful attack of the previous day, the naval force would have succeeded in opening the both straits and taking Constantinople.

The previous day, the French battleship Bouvet hit a mine and sank quickly with the crew of 600 being lost. Three British battleships were also damaged by mines. These losses caused De Robeck to break of the attack and the strategy converted to land attack which was out of Churchill's purview and under the command of Lord Kitchener, in charge of land forces.

It turns out that the ships that hit the mines hit the same string of 20 mines that had been placed close to the shore on the eastern side. They could have been easily avoided or swept. The Turkish forces were certain they were defeated -- Constantinople was being evacuated. Instead, the attack was halted and 34 year old Mustafa Kemal was given given credit for defeating the mighty Royal Navy and five weeks to prepare to battle and defeat allied forces, allowing him to become the legendary "Ataturk". 

Had De Robeck succeeded, WWI would likely have been over in less than a year, saving more than a million lives, and the shape of Eastern Europe relative to Christian / Muslim and Russian influence would have been MUCH different.  It is likely one of those moments in history of great leverage. But part of that seeming leverage is of course the fact that we can postulate on what MIGHT have happened to our hearts content, but there is no way to actually KNOW that. It is maddening -- it is what God surely knows, but we cannot see. 

As one reads a detailed account like the Churchill  bio, the people involved are fleshed out. Churchill thought he had a good relationship with the Sea Lord, Jackie Fisher, but it was likely a mistake to appoint the old man to the position. He had a love/hate relationship with Winston and was at too advanced an age for the responsibility -- he resigned in May in protest over the Gallipoli campaign which brought down the Government and Winston was sacrificed, losing his position as First Lord of the Admiralty. 

Churchill also had history with Lord Kitchener which likely contributed to troops not being part of the March plan. Then there is Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, who had a long running affair with young Venetia Stanley, a woman 35 years his junior to whom he often wrote three times a day and was hugely emotionally attached to. She broke off the affair and suddenly eloped in the midst of the Fisher resignation and political crisis, leaving Asquith a basket case. They tended to keep their love letters in those days -- over 500 from Asquith to Stanley for example. 

Looking at history in the manner that our public schools choose to teach it, it appears as a dry collection of somewhat ordered and tidy events. It appears that a "good government", or "experts" could just get their heads together and make things run "smoothly". It sometimes even appears to be a "story" -- to have some sort of a "narrative". 

All this is illusion.  From our perspective it is at best a  Rube Goldberg jumbled mass of conflicting ideas, personalities, foibles, visions, hallucinations and events, splashed on a cosmic palette by a God whose ways nor plan is possible for us to fathom. Some of us believe his plan is one of hope and truth, while others deny that there is any plan at all -- as said best by Shakespeare: 

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

 

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Mourning Winston, Last Lion, Defender of the Realm

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0345548639/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

After now having finished 1800+ pages of Last Lion over the last few weeks (Alone, then Defender of the Realm), last night, with a glass of brandy in hand to honor his memory, I reached Winston's death shortly after his 90th birthday and the end of the defender book. I love to read. Given retirement and the weather over the last couple weeks, it feels a bit like I lost an old friend today.

 His birthday was on Nov 30th and he celebrated 90 as he liked to with family and friends, roast beef, oysters, Pol Roger champagne, brandy and cigars late into the early morning hours. Over a decade prior he had commented to Jock Colville on another January 24th that "today is the 24th of January, that is the day my father died. It is the day that I shall die too."  On the night of the 9th of January he refused to take either brandy or a cigar -- very rare. He had a stroke and went into a coma that night. He passed on the 24th.  I believe the image above is of the crowd outside on his 90th and him giving them the V for victory.

I don't think there is any question that he was the greatest man of the 20th century. Without him, we may well be all speaking German today and being forced to revere Hitler as that man. Next to Winston, FDR, Stalin, Truman and Eisenhower are just "other statesmen".

He was great because he was always Winston. Here he is calling socialism want it was and is:

"I hope you have all mastered the official Socialist jargon which our masters, as they call themselves, wish us to learn," he said in 1950. "You must not use the word 'poor'; they are described as the 'lower income group.' When it comes to a question of freezing a workman's wages the Chancellor of the Exchequer speaks of 'arresting increases in personal income'....Homes are in future to be called 'accommodation units.' I don't know how we are to sing our old song 'Home Sweet Home.' 'Accommodation Unit, Sweet Accommodation Unit, there's no place like our Accommodation Unit.'"

The level of tyranny and millions of subjugated and dead at the hands of Stalin and the USSR could likely have been significantly reduced if not nearly avoided had FDR been willing to listen to Churchill and had not had the idea that "he could talk to Stalin". Here is a little glimpse of comparison between Churchill and FDR:

... Roosevelt "always enjoyed other people's discomfort." Harriman recalled. "It never bothered him much when other people were unhappy."

Churchill did not rise to the bait until Stalin proposed to shoot at least 50K German officers after the surrender in order to ensure Germany's docility well into the future. "I would rather," Churchill replied, "be taken out to the garden here and now and be shot myself rather than sully my own and my countries honor by such infamy." Roosevelt then chimed in with a compromise; he suggested that only 49K officers be shot". 

There are a number of places that one realizes that FDR often gave weasels a bad name -- siding with Stalin and reducing his number by a thousand allows you to understand the REAL FDR vs the "Fireside Chat" fake.

In reading the book, one is shocked by how much FDR and others in his cabinet sidled up to Stalin and the USSR while taking a decidedly anti British Empire stance. For some strange reason, FDR had massive concern for what he saw as "injustice" to people in India, but was completely sanguine about many millions of Poles, Slavs and Germans being butchered, raped starved, and eventually imprisoned or virtually imprisoned as the machine of the Red Army blugeoned it's way west.

Or perhaps FDR just didn't like Britain and what he saw as her "interests". When there was a huge famine in Bengal and the demolished Brits had no ships, but 350K tons of wheat in Australia, FDR dithered for a month when he had the ships, then sent "regrets". At least a million more Bengalis died in the next twelve months. The book makes it very clear that American politics were what FDR cared about -- whatever it took for him to win elections was what he was committed to -- not matter what the cost in lives or the risk of loss to Hitler.

Churchill's life is a drama that exceeds any that could be imagined -- made more dramatic by being real. He heroically fought the monster Hitler, and won without becoming evil himself. And then his people turned him out of leadership because they wanted the "free stuff" promised by socialism less than 2 months after VE day. How is that for gratitude?

But he persevered, the socialists were a disaster as he had predicted, and he returned to the Prime Minister position in '51, laying it down in '55. His last 10 years were spent writing, painting and sailing the world on Aristotle Onassis' yacht.

His son Randolph was a source of disappointment, it was said that he inherited all of his fathers bad characteristics and none of the good.  -- as Winston once said with a tear in his eye "I love my son, but I don't like him".  Randolph died in '68 at the age of 57. His first wife, Pamela bore a son Winston who was a joy to old Winston. Pamela, eventually Pamela Harriman was is a study in herself -- it was once remarked that she was the worlds foremost expert on rich mens bedroom ceilings.

His daughter Sarah had success as an actress, struggled with alcohol her whole life and died at age 67, apparently having relapsed to alcohol.

His wife Clementine remained his love to the end and outlived him by over a decade.

I wish he had been a Christian -- I like to believe that God had a long talk with him from January 9 to the 24th and convinced him that he had one critical error in life. Inside Westminster there is supposed to be a fairly large block on the floor that says "Remember Winston Churchill" -- I certainly will, and I intend to see that marker in about a month!

The Whig Theory of History

Mises Daily | Mises Institute:

A little side-trip to the link can assure you I'm not nuts. There really is a "Whig Theory of History", and it is essentially as simple as the belief that "things are getting better".

You likely haven't thought about it much, but you probably have this theory as an unconscious belief. It is hard not to, it is after all the basis of "Progressivism", the dominant stated political theory of "The Party" (TP-Dem) which controls all our media and educational system. It has LOTS of support! It is also something that seems very nice to believe -- things will be better ten years from now, life will be grand when you retire, your kids will have a better life than you did, etc, etc.

It might FEEL nice to believe, but is it true? If you are a Christian or really any kind of a religious person, you ought not really believe it -- God has a plan, but the goal of that plan is eternity in heaven. The earth will explicitly pass away, and the predictions for whatever time the old ball of rock has left are for wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, floods, famine, etc, etc. So no go for a Christian on the "it's getting better and better for sure" outlook.

Atheist? How exactly would there be a "plan" or "direction" of history?  And why oh why would it be inevitably toward "better"? Not to mention what "better" might mean in a purposeless universe.  The atheist creed ought to believe in NOTHING, as in nihilism. Clearly to them  the universe is some grand accident, and since at least a huge number of atheists claim to arrive at their "faith" (the faith they are soulless) because of "the problem of pain and suffering in the world".

Since they can't accept a God that would allow any pain and suffering, they are stuck with a universe that they admit has pain and suffering, but also has no purpose. I always wonder how they arrive at the conclusion that meaningless pain and suffering is far superior to meaningful pain and suffering that they don't understand?

Or maybe the purpose IS pain and suffering? A number of prominent historical atheists seem to decide that INFLICTING pain and suffering may be at least their personal purpose -- see Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the people that outlawed DDT, etc.

"Progressives"? We might refer to these as people that decided to ignore most of the 20th century, where the leading "progressive" ideologies of Socialism and Communism (including National Socialism - Nazi) managed to murder something over 100 million and cause a good deal of property damage while doing it. I suppose it would truly be a "Progressive world" today had Hitler won -- in which case I would dare not be writing this, thus proving (to some) that history had "gotten better".

So, most of us run around believing a theory that has no philosophical or religious grounding, and is absurdly false based on empirical evidence (see middle ages, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, 9-11, lite beer, etc, etc).

Why?

The biggest reason is that we WANT to see history that way and there are certainly a goodly set of people that would like to take our money to tell us that they are making "progress" (See Hitler, Stalin, BO, etc). What's more, they are very happy to indoctrinate us with a specific way of teaching "history" that makes it SEEM like the Whigs produced holy writ -- doubly dangerous, because it is what we "feel" might be right. It is like someone taught you day after day that the sun goes around the earth, and since it looks that way, you are VERY CONFIDENT that you KNOW the right answer!

Only you don't know the right answer!! You need MORE DETAIL. Which is where books like the Churchill biography come in. If you sit down and read DETAILED history about virtually anything, the "inevitability illusion" fades like morning mist at sunrise. You see that history is made up of individuals, countries, events, ideas and "fate" interacting in highly unpredictable ways. It is completely the opposite of "inevitable"!

In fact, what appears to be inevitable even moments before it happens OFTEN turns out to not even happen as it is OBVIOUS minutes, hours, days, etc before that it MUST happen!

The French could have ended Hitler by having one soldier march across the border to into the Rhineland, nearly everyone but Hitler thought that was "inevitable", but they failed to act.

Same with Britain making a treaty with Stalin prior to Poland being invaded -- it was OBVIOUS, only they didn't make it and the opportunity was missed.

Had Hitler not called a halt to offensive panzer operations on the 24th of May 1940, rather than 330K British and French troops being evacuated from Dunkirk, there could have been 330K allied forces killed or captured, enough at that stage to likely swing the war to Hitler.

I could go on and on from this book -- but there are A LOT of options -- Six Frigates, 1776, and Coddington: The Gettysburg Campaign  are a trio I would personally recommend ... and the linked reviews can give you a little ammo to take on the Whigs!

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"A New Science of Politics": Eric Voegelin

http://www.amazon.com/New-Science-Politics-Introduction-Foundation/dp/0226861147/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420587063&sr=1-1&keywords=new+science+of+politics

A very important work that I'm not going to claim to understand -- a great book for developing some personal intellectual humility.

Although not particularly long, the scope of the book is vast -- describing the problem of developing and discussing a theory of politics, "Political Science" if you will, as part of history. The idea that through the use of political symbols and texts, man tries to create a meaning for his political systems / cultures / etc in history as some sort of representation of a transcendent truth.

The attempt is to make political science a study of the context of how humans exist and develop politically in various epochs of history in which the symbols and thus the order are relatively stable.

Three are identified:

1. The Hellenic Crisis -- Plato and Aristotle. 
2. The Crisis of Rome -- St Augustine and Christianity
3. Hegel's philosophy of Law and History

The assertion is that man will demand SOMETHING that extrapolates his very limited existence into some whole that transcends his life -- religion, politics, society, culture, etc. There are 3 ways that man has historically defined this -- in some ways each is the same, we just like to think the current is more "advanced". These are Rite, Myth and Theory. Depending on context of course, a person will think one or more of them vastly superior due to "tradition", "emotional content", "science" (really "scientism"), "sacredness", or some other value system, which will include emotional attachment. 

My biggest learning from the book (outside of looking up a bunch of long words, latin words, etc) relates to the the vast changes caused by Christianity and it's bastard child Gnosticism (the worship or divinization of "special knowledge").

Prior to Christianity, the entire world and everything in it was "divine" and cyclical. There were "gods" everywhere which explained everything, and history nor even existence had much "direction" other than cycles -- seasons, life, etc. However the "meaning" of everything was "divine". 

Then came Christ with a a separation of past and "known" future in that it had an end, a way for man to be completely unique and eternal, OUTSIDE of "nature", and even more, with an ending -- the eschaton (end of the world, heaven on earth), and the idea of eschatology -- the study of how things would (if you were a believer) end, or OUGHT to end, if you were not a believer. (much of this is also in Judaism, but it wasn't universal -- it was just for the Jews). 

Christianity "de-divinized" the world. God/Christ/Holy Spirit were divine -- and the idea of the Trinity itself as a symbol was applied to many things. Including many cases of "three epochs" "ancient, medieval, modern", Hegel's dialectic, the three phases freedom, Marxism with primitive communism, class struggle and final communism, and of course one of the most "successful" applications of gnosticism, "The Third Reich". 

One of the connections made very clear is the application of "divinity" / "teleology from some unknown source" in the case of Marxism -- history is supposed to "inevitably" be going the communist direction, because "that's the way it is". Much like "science", or really "scientism", it is an application of gnosticism -- attempting to make the secular somehow "divinely" (and therefore uniquely correct) "known". 

All of the supposed "modern" isms -- communism, socialism, etc are about "immanentizing the eschaton" -- using gnostic magic to create "heaven on earth". The last greatest attempt was Germany, but the attempts go on, including Obama's "Hope and Change" here early in the 21st century. 

This book was published in '52, I'll close with his quote on the German attempt to create heaven on earth -- you can see if you see any similarity with attempts today: 

"The German Revolution, finally, in an environment without strong institutional traditions, brought for the first time into full play economic materialism, racist biology, corrupt psychology, scientism and technological ruthlessness -- in brief, modernity without restraint."

The SR-71 Blackbird, The Titanium Spirit That Was America

The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird:

This is one of those articles well worth just ignoring my words and reading in it's entirety.

This was the America that I was privileged to grow up in and enjoy most of my adult life in. The exceptional nation, and undisputed in that exceptional nature for those that cared for freedom vs the tyranny of the socialist system of the USSR. Even with the rise of godless socialists in this country during the sick 60s and the malaise of the '70s, we went to the moon, Reagan defeated the USSR, and we had unmatched audacious technology like the SR-71 that was undefeated. Enemy attempts, 4000, enemy success, ZIP! 4K to zip, American stats! Plus, in this rare case, we never lost anyone even in the ejection cases! Incredible for an aircraft that operated in the environment and mission of this one!

The Author of the article, Brian Shul is also the author of the book "Sled Driver", which thanks to thoughtful friend an autographed copy of which  has set on my shelf and been frequently read / admired for years, but now needs to move to my fireproof safe -- the non-autographed copies are worth $315!

Shul was shot down in Vietnam, assumed to never fly again, but with great personal effort came back and flew over 500 hours in the SR-71, or "Sled" as the pilots often referred to her as.

Just a sample from the article if you didn't take my advice! It is in reference to their penetrating Libyan airspace to assess damage after Reagan's '86 bombing of Libya:

It is a race this jet will not let us lose. The Mach eases to 3.5 as we crest 80,000 feet. We are a bullet now - except faster. We hit the turn, and I feel some relief as our nose swings away from a country we have seen quite enough of. Screaming past Tripoli , our phenomenal speed continues to rise, and the screaming Sled pummels the enemy one more time, laying down a parting sonic boom. In seconds, we can see nothing but the expansive blue of the Mediterranean . I realize that I still have my left hand full-forward and we're continuing to rocket along in maximum afterburner.

Some links:

The definitive SR-71 site which includes a list of SR-71s now on display which made me realize that the one that sat up at the MN Air National Guard Museum at the airport in the cites was "stolen" to sit at the CIA HQ in DC! I've seen that one before it moved, the one on the Intrepid in NYC, the trans-US speed record holder at 64min, at Smithsonian, the one at the US Alabama Museum in GA and the one at Wright Patterson ... so doing pretty well!

As this once great nation descends the path of Rome and Britain before her into the "ash heap of history", the SR-71 remains a symbol of what we once were. When we believed in God, I believe this battle with decline is one that "God would not let us lose" -- we abandoned him, he never abandoned us.


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Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign

http://www.amazon.com/The-Gettysburg-Campaign-Study-Command/dp/0684845695

I've long heard of this book as THE book to read on Gettysburg. I went cheap for the $20 paperback since it is not offered in Kindle, out of print in hardcover, and many of the hardcovers go for over $100 and even over $200 ... large with lots of maps, leather bound, etc. After 2 years of retirement, I have a hard time peering into the future as to where I can really savor a that sort of a book, but if I run into that point, this will be high on my list! 

This one has a LOT of detail, although having read a few on Gettysburg now, it gives just a little idea of how much detail there is when the story of  Colville and the First MN at Plum Run, covered in book length in "Pale Horse at Plum Run" and the subject of many of MN "Civil War History" exhibit is covered in less than a page on 423! The key line being "Now his force of a little over 300 men tore into Wilcox right regiment and stopped it cold". This attack was directly ordered by Hancock saying "My God! Are these all the men that we have here!" The 1st MN took huge losses to buy time -- had they not, again,  the outcome of Gettysburg may have shifted. 

I loved the tidbit that I had never heard about the Federals trying to burn a bridge at Wrightsville PA, the Rebels being unable to stop the fire, but when the blaze tried to consume Wrightsville, ... on page 170 -- "When the blaze got out of control and spread to Wrightsville, to their everlasting credit. Gordon's (the Rebels) men worked feverishly and succeeded in saving the town from total ruin". 

This is in pretty stark contrast to Sherman's march to the sea which introduced the completely non-chivalrous idea of "total war" on the world -- punish the civilians as well as the military! 

On the opposing page, "On Sunday, June 28,  Ewell sent word to the clergy to hold services as usual, for no one would disturb them. Some of the churches opened, and the preachers, though nervous, prayed for their country in peril and their friends in danger;  they also prayed for the strangers that were among them". 

Yes, the South had slavery, but will the future look on abortion in much the same way as we look on slavery now? We WERE once a Christian Nation -- clearly with a huge difference relative to the point of States Rights and slavery, but at that time we DID understand that there was more to life than this vale of tears! We all knew that being a slave in this life and gaining heaven is INFINITELY better than being the most highly educated, richest, most famous and most respected human to ever walk the earth and failing to reach heaven!

That faith and soul based knowledge is of greater merit than all else in this world, and the shared understanding of the truth of that by a people is of utmost value to a nation. It is the nation that we once were -- great beyond what only a very small set of modern minds can even comprehend! 

The other big lesson of the book is to humanize / equalize Lincoln, Lee, Meade and Hooker -- as well as many others. Stuart, Ewell and Sickles stand out. Yes, the North's generals were far short of Lee, but some of that was due to constant micro-management from Washington, ridiculous short sightedness on recruitment and retention, and the rather stupid idea of using The Army of the Potomac as BOTH the defensive force for Washington/Baltimore,  AND the instrument to destroy Lee. (BOTH a floor wax and a desert topping)

The book whetted my appetite to study Lee more. It seems that as brilliant as he was, his "strength and weakness" was his dependence and willingness to grant latitude to his generals. Stonewall Jackson (killed at Chancellorsville) was a critical piece of his ability to operate because of his council and ability to correctly interpret Lee's loose orders. Lee gave orders that could be misinterpreted -- but with the faith and understanding that the flexibility would usually have positive effects. His orders to Stuart were radically misinterpreted at Gettysburg,  resulting in Lee not having the intelligence, communication and speed that his superb cavalry forces had always provided him.

It is EASY to oversimplify what happened at Gettysburg, but it is VERY complex ... the replacement of Hooker by Meade at 3AM on June 28, with the of course unknown at that point battle to commence on July 1!!  The first battle without Stonewall for Lee. Lee being on the offensive, Stuart missing, the forces essentially "blundering into each other" at Gettysburg, etc, etc. 

It is a single battle to which a person could devote their life to understanding, and still not have a clue. Perhaps after a great breakfast of fresh fish with the Savior in heaven, I can sit down with some of those guys and actually understand what happened there!