Suppressed Truth

The Real Reactionaries in our Midst

2012-01-07T09:33:00.001-05:00

Methodist Circuit Riders - Agents of Progress

According to Wikipedia “reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is radical”. Liberals and leftists, who love labels, are fond of characterizing Christian conservatives as reactionary.

Now the problem I have in agreeing with leftist on this score is that it assumes Christian conservatives desire to preserve the past against the possibilities of a better tomorrow, fashioned by self-proclaimed “progressives”. In matter of fact, all true followers after Jesus Christ take up our crosses daily with the objective of lifting mankind up out of his fallen condition, and leading him to a better future under the governance of our resurrected Master in a restored creation. There is little about the present that any true Christian wishes to preserve. Verily, Apostle Paul wrote that not only Christians, “but the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” for the fulfillment of God’s plan. A proper understanding of history is - 1. God created all things out of nothing; all of it good; 2. Good creation has been subjected to “bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21) by means of sin entering the world through man’s disobedience to God; 3. God is going to restore all things to perfection, including human relations, through the agency of His Son, Who is Savior.

Now, Jesus is seated, at present, in heaven at the right hand of God, Who has granted Jesus authority – headship - over all creation. Under His headship, Christians are to be Christ’s body – the church – here on earth as Jesus executes God’s plan to restore all things. Modern Christians, then, are busy (like Methodist circuit riders of old) about making progress for the kingdom of God, not seeking to preserve some illusionary status quo.

The real reactionaries in our midst are the misled personages inspired by flawed ideologies which would restore some primitive, mythical status quo. Environmentalists imagine a past where man as hunter-gatherer lived in harmony with nature. Hedonists imagine an idyllic biological evolution that forged our sexual impulses, impulses crying out to be experienced; impulses repressed by Christian morality; impulses in need of restoration to rightful dominance in our lives. Socialists, instructed by Marx, suppose that man evolved, like apes, to be natural communalists, but notions of private property (aided and abetted by Christian teachings) ruined the class-less paradise that socialists hope to restore.

Who Says God Has Poor Judgment?

2012-01-01T22:00:00.001-05:00

This is not child abuse?

I don't know about you the reader, but I've heard the charge that if God really cared about humanity, He wouldn't have limited Himself to involvement in human affairs way back in the days of ancient Israel and during the time of the Roman Empire, He'd be doing stuff now.

Well, as the People's Cube sagely observed, if Jesus were born today, the results would be catastrophic - either His birth in a drafty manger would prompt a state seizure of baby Jesus on the grounds his parents are unfit, or the plight of the destitute family would prompt a fusillade of accusations from the Left against the heartlessness of reactionaries around the world who deny the "right" of every man, woman and child to free, government supplied health care and affordable housing.

And think about how modern DNA testing would make life unbearable for Joseph and the courts - how to prove who's Jesus biological father is for purposes of extracting child support payments?

The Great Recession: What Really Caused It?

2011-12-26T12:55:00.001-05:00

Hey pal - want to get rich on real estate?

Not disposed to permit the truth to undermine an opportunity to score political points, the political party, and its allies, who coveted re-capturing the White House in 2008 were not about to lay the blame for the onset of the Great Recession that began in 2007-2008 at the feet of the most deserving - the American middle and upper-middle class [see "What Caused This Terrible Recession?"]. No indeed, their votes were needed.

Now, quietly, behind the scenes, the truth emerges - in a December 5, 2011 study by the New York Federal Reserve titled, "'Flip This House': Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble" it is revealed that it was speculative "investors" in residential real estate - meaning, every American who could afford to buy a home with prospect for appreciation - who "played a very important role in the housing downturn by defaulting in large numbers" when the party (helped along by high oil prices) came to an end:

•Investor shares of home purchases roughly doubled between 2000 and 2006.
•At the peak of the boom in 2006, over a third of all U.S. home purchase lending was made to people who already owned at least one house.
•In 2007-2009, investors were responsible for more than a quarter of seriously delinquent mortgage balances nationwide.

Moreover, in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida:

•While investors were responsible for one third of all home purchases nationwide in 2006, this number is approximately 45 percent in these four states.
•Furthermore, investors with three or more properties constituted 20 percent, which is triple their share from 2000.
•In the years following the bubble burst, investors were responsible for more than a third of delinquent balances in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.

Moreover, this Federal Reserve study fails to account for Americans who were investors" by dint of flipping their primary residences.

Of special note above is that "Investor shares of home purchases roughly doubled between 2000 and 2006". Notice how nicely this coincides with 9/11 and the subsequent collapse/stagnation of the stock market. In short, yuppies saw their dreams of lavish retirement threatened in the wake of 9/11 and placed their bets in the best safe haven they could think of - residential real estate (see "14,164.53 - The Genuine "Most Important Number in the World""].

Sources for this post include: "Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble", National Center for Policy Analysis

Wife Beating - The Truth

2011-12-17T15:24:00.001-05:00

Marital Bliss?

There is a public service radio advertisement being aired in my area that claims one-in-four women have been "violently" assaulted by their husbands [1].

Whether or not this claim is true, which seems improbable, what is true is that a veritable industry has sprung up in the United States surrounding domestic abuse, with most participants signing the same song - "We care the most about women, we are here to help; we are here to shelter you from your big, bad husband.". The bottom line of this spiel is the allegation that all men are suspect; only a few are worthy to be steady companions to women. Lesbians have a significant voice in the anti-domestic abuse industry.

Any thinking person ought sit up and take notice that after so much attention has been showered on domestic abuse over the decades, the problem is alleged to remain so severe. Why should that be?

I think I have the answer - at the end of the day all these persons and organizations clamouring to provide succor for the abused woman are no substitute for an intimate relationship with a flesh and blood male, even an abusive one. The Bible makes it clear that more injurious than blows are words. This is supported by an abundance of testimony of victims of the Soviet secret police - the victims stated that severe beatings were among the least feared methods employed by the KGB.

Which is better, to be physically struck by someone who remains involved in your life, or to be patronized by a domestic abuse worker who is not there to greet you when you come home for work every night, and who isn't there to curl up on the couch with you for a movie and a bag of popcorn at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night?
In our present age, when a man strikes his wife, it's case over - the man is in the wrong, the woman in the right. How many domestic abuse workers force a woman to come to terms with what she, the victim, might have done to provoke the assault? We can all agree that murder is unacceptable, but is every murder victim innocent of provoking the assault that caused his demise?

Disagreements, sometimes serious disagreements, are part of, not foreign to, intimate relationships. Men are prone to lash out physically when upset; women are prone to lash out with cutting words. In all my years I can only remember a handful of the serious physical blows I received through organized sports, accidents, etc. I remember far more of the hurtful remarks that were directed at me, and many of them still smart.

Rather than run to a domestic abuse counselor, women would be far better advised to pick up a Bible and find out what it has to say about living harmoniously within holy matrimony. It takes two to tango.

[1] "Quarter of U.S. women suffer violent attacks by their partners - and one in FIVE is raped, shocking new figures reveal"; read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2074239/Domestic-violence-Study-reveals-1-4-women-violently-attacked-significant-others.html#ixzz1gp5ffKA7

The Death of Judgment, Experience, Inititative, and Character

2011-08-15T18:38:00.001-05:00

There is, I have heard, somewhere around fifty different kinds of intelligence. America's public schools, I have heard, only instruct and test in about thirteen. I tend to believe it. However, my voice alone may not convince the reader. For that reason, I have recorded below the sentiments of French psychologist and sociologist Gustave Le Bon on the subject of instruction and education -

Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931)

Foremost among the dominant ideas of the present (time) is to be found the notion that instruction is capable of considerably changing men (and women), and has for its unfailing consequence to improve them and even make them equal...

(Now), (f)rom the top to the bottom of the social pyramid, from the humblest clerk to the professor and the prefect, the immense mass of persons boasting diplomas besiege the professions...The number of the chosen being restricted, that of the discontented is perforce immense...

One might consent, perhaps, to continue to accept all the disadvantages of our (educational system)...did the superficial acquisition of so much knowledge, the faultless repeating by heart of so many text-books, raise the level of intelligence. But does it really raise this level? Alas no! The conditions of of success in life are the possession of judgment, experience, initiative, and character-qualities which are not bestowed by books.

To under-gird his point, Le Bon proceeded to quote Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), the French critic and historian -

Ideas are only formed in their natural and normal surroundings; the promotion of the growth is effected by the innumerable impressions appealing to the senses which a young (person) receives daily in the work(place).; at the sight of tools, materials and operations; in the presence of customers, workers, and labour, of work well and ill done, costly and lucrative. In such a way are obtained those trifling perceptions of detail of the eyes, the ear, the hands, and even the sense of smell, which, picked up involuntarily, and silently elaborated, take shape within the learner, and suggest to him sooner or later this or that new combination, simplification, economy, improvement, or invention. The young (person) is deprived, and precisely at the age when they are most fruitful, of all these precious contacts, and all these indispensable elements of assimilation. For (ten, or twelve, or sixteen years) on end (she) is shut up in a school...

At least nine out of ten have wasted their time and pains during several years years of their life - telling important, even decisive years...Too much has been demanded of them...(and) on a given day...before a board (of exams) they..be living repertories of all human knowledge. In point of fact they were, or nearly so...on that particular day, but a month later they are no longer...(Soon enough) (s)ettled down, married, resigned to turning in a circle, and indefinitely in the same circle, (they) shut (them)selves up in (a) confined function, which (they) fulfill adequately, but nothing more.

In the three stages of instruction, those of childhood, adolescence, and youth, the theoretical and pedagogic preparation by books...has lengthened out and become overcharged in view of the exam(s), the degree, the diploma, and the certificate, and solely in this view, and by the worst methods, by the application of an unnatural and anti-social regime...by mechanical cramming...by overwork, without thought for the time that is to follow, for the adult age and the function of man, without regard for the real world on which the (student) will shortly be thrown, for the society in which we move and to which we must be adapted...for the struggle in which humanity is engaged, and in which to defend herself and to keep her footing she ought previously to have been equipped...This indispensable equipment, this acquisition of more importance than any other, this sturdy common sense and nerve and will-power, our schools do not procure...

In consequence (the student's) entry into the world and his first steps in the field of action are most often merely successions of painful falls, whose effect is that he long remains wounded and bruised, and sometimes disabled for life. The test is severe and dangerous. In the course of it the mental and moral equilibrium is affected, and runs the risk of not being re-established. Too sudden and complete disillsion has supervened. The deceptions have been to great, the disappointments too keen.

Now the skeptic of this article and of what Le Bon and Taine, both Frenchmen, thought and wrote over one hundred years ago might be tempted to argue that little of what is contained in this article applies to 21st Century America. Allow the author to make the following observations:

What are 21st Century employers saying about the preparedness of today graduates?

A good place to look for answers to that question would be in the recently released book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, which makes the following point (among others) -

According to (the author's) analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, forty-five percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills - including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing - during their first two years of college.

What has changed in American education since Le Bon and Tine wrote the above?

A failed school teacher named John Dewey corrupted America's educational system. See John Dewey & Decline Of American Education: How Patron Saint Of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching & Learning. Things are probably worse in education in the United States since Le Bon and Tine wrote what is quoted in this post.

Primary source for this article: The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon

America's Credit Rating and America's War Against Albania

2011-08-12T11:06:00.000-05:00

I Pledge Allegiance to...One Destitute Nation, Under God

The 1997 comedy motion picture, Wag the Dog, starring Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman, is about a Washington spin doctor who, just days before a presidential election, distracts the electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer to construct a fake war with Albania.

The movies succeeds as farce only because just a tiny minority of Americans could locate Albania on a map, and fewer still would take seriously that America could be threatened by a nation so obscure.

Now, in the 1980's when I was a stockbroker, although a far cry from a power-elite insider, I was at least able to recognize accepted "truths" of that era. And in that era, the notion that America's credit worthiness - rated then at AAA - could ever be called into question seemed as probable as that we might be threatened in war by Albania. Nevertheless, here we are; Standard & Poors has downgraded the creditworthiness of the USA to just AA, in the wake of a doubling of our national indebtedness in just five years, mostly under liberal Barack Obama.

The Bible is very clear that it is God who determines the fate of nations - he holds them in the palm of His hands, to exalt them or bring them low. The breathtaking change in America's creditworthiness is testimony to God's power and unassailable will - God will bring to pass whatever He purposes, and no power in Heaven or on Earth can stand against Him.

Mob Behavior, or Why the Bible Seems So Bizzare

2011-08-09T09:55:00.004-05:00

Jonah and the Fish - History or Fancy?

Anyone who has had occasion to read the Bible has certainly experienced moments when its contents ring insincere, its logic flawed, its credibility suspect. I think those portions of the Bible that inspire such reactions vary from reader to reader. Some persons find it difficult to swallow the resurrection of the dead; others - the notion of a world-wide flood; others - that three men could survive unscathed in a lion's den. I submit that what we, as individuals, perceive to be truth is often largely a function of cultural conditioning. To a typical westerner, dog as food is abhorrent, but dog is delicacy for many Asians. Which "truth" about dog flesh is true? Post-modern man attempts to resolve this dilemma by asserting that all truth is relative, but this so-called insight about the nature of truth easily collapses under pressure - a man who claims all truth is relative will simultaneously insist that it was absolutely wrong that someone stole his property, or violated his wife, or that George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential contest against Al Gore.

I submit that the reason the Bible does seem, in certain passages, bizarre, is that it is the one document wholly true, and truth is a phenomena so foreign to us that we have trouble recognizing it.

The Bible is, of course, a history. About history French social psychologist and sociologist, Gustave Le Bon - in his best selling work, La psychologie des foules (The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 1896) said this:

...works of history must be considered as works of pure imagination. They are fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts...

Now Le Bon, in his opinion may not be easily dismissed - Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and modern mass media have made profitable (for them) use of Le Bon's ideas. Le Bon insist that the very fact of multiple witnesses to a historical event make it suspect -

To say that a fact has been simultaneously verified by thousands of witnesses is to say, as a rule, that the real fact of is very different from the accepted account of it.

Has the reader ever witnessed the transformed behavior of an otherwise friendly dog, once introduced to a pack? Group behavior, group mentality, is something altogether different from the thoughts and behaviors of a solitary individual. Consequently, history, which is usually the record of the accounts of multiple witnesses, often, if not in fact, usually, is the product of a group-mind or recollection, not of individuals. And group-think is unreliable, as is the attitude and behavior of a mob.

What is unique about the process of recording the books that comprise the Bible is that the flawed consciousness of mobs and individuals is purged by the Holy Spirit leaving us with a perfect record of what actually happened, and what is important for us to know. This last has always been a source of marvel to me - the things that God chooses to include and leave out of his history of the world defies logic. The Bible bears God's fingerprints, and we have trouble recognizing those prints; we are accostomed to the man's grimy prints.

Much Ado About...5% of the Population

2011-07-07T19:17:00.003-05:00

Given all the hoopla, one would think Americans visit their doctors every year as often as their local gasoline stations. For goodness sakes, with an U.S. economy on life-support President Obama chose to devote his first precious year in office fighting to get universal health insurance passed into law, presumably since he thinks most Americans are likely to find themselves in need of hospital "life-support" systems. Access to health care is a crisis in America, right?

In fact, according to a National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation report, just 5 percent of Americans are responsible for almost half of all health care spending in the United States and for rising premium rates.

Moreover:

The report stated about half of the U.S. population accounted for only 3.1 percent of all expenditures.
But 10 percent of the population hogged 63.6 percent of all health spending, the survey found.
The top 5 percent of the population accounted for 47.5 percent of all spending, and the top 1 percent accounted for 20.2 percent.

(Suppresst would add this observation to the above facts - 100 percent of the 63.6 percent who hogged all the health care spending will die just as surely the 50 percent of population who consumed just 3.1 percent of it.)

Sources:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/healthcare/report-5-percent-of-people-account-for-half-of-u-s-health-care-spending-20110627

http://nihcm.org/images/stories/NIHCM-CostBrief-Email.pdf

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20825&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncpadpd+%28Daily+Policy+Digest%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

The Death of "Peak Oil"

2010-12-16T21:19:00.000-05:00

New York Times (November 2010) -

Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.

Moreover -

With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas. [1]

[1] North America: The new energy kingdom (theglobeandmail.com)

The Insatiables & The Road to Destruction

2010-10-02T10:45:00.007-05:00

Pie-in-the-Sky

With America running unprecedented, unsustainable budget deficits in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and a failed progressive/liberal $800 billion dollar stimulus plan (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) the American left, under the organizing leadership of the Tides Center, descends on Washington D.C. today in a rally that is the signature event of a project dubbed "One Nation Working Together". At the rally will be a phalanx of leftist rabble-rousing organizations including:

the American Muslim Association of North America, United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, the National Council of La Raza, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Green Party, Planned Parenthood, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the International Socialist Organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the NAACP, the Center for Community Change, the Earth Day Network, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, and more (for complete listing see citation [1]).

Apparently unconcerned about fiscal reality, these rabble-rousers are calling for, in the weeks preceding the 2010 mid-term congressional elections, the following policy prescriptions:

1.) living-wage laws to guarantee that all jobs “pa[y] enough to support a family”

2.) an end to “racial profiling and re-segregation”

3.) “a fair path to citizenship” for illegal aliens, so as to “fix the broken immigration system” and alleviate immigrant children's fears that their “parents will be deported”

4.) “a clean environment, so no child is ever forced to decide between drinking the water or breathing the air, and staying healthy”

5.) an end to “tax cuts for the wealthy”

6.) an end to “unjustified military spending”

7.) “full equality for all women in all communities, indulging an end to wage discrimination”

8.) an expansion of taxpayer-funded unemployment benefits, healthcare benefits, and mortgage assistance, with particular emphasis on helping “populations and communities in the greatest need”

9.) an increase in federally funded “youth summer jobs and training initiatives”

10.) more federal spending to “stimulate job growth and retention”

11.) more federal “aid to states and cities—including direct job creation at local levels—especially in education, health care, social services and first responder workforces”

12.) more federal loans and grants to small businesses

13.) more federal “infrastructure investment,” particularly in “clean energy enterprises” and “green jobs”

14.) federally funded “training opportunities for workers who want to advance their careers”

15.) the provision of “paid sick days and paid family leave for all workers”

16.) an expansion of “access to the polls for everyone, including former felons,” so as to combat “voter disenfranchisement”

17.) an end to “discriminatory practices within the criminal-justice system,” particularly those practices that have a disparate impact on nonwhite minorities

18.) an expansion of federally funded programs “to help ex-felony offenders reintegrate into society, including job training [and] educational opportunities”

19.) “increase[d] federal support to institutions of higher education that provide opportunities for underserved communities”

20.) greater investment of taxpayer dollars “in public education systems, not prisons”

21.) the provision of “more education opportunities for incarcerated youth”

22.) the creation of more taxpayer-funded “affordable housing”

23.) the creation of a “public option” in healthcare, where a government-run health insurance agency would compete with private insurance companies

24.) support for the Dream Act, which would offer illegal-alien students a path to citizenship and would make them eligible for in-state college tuition discounts

These pie-in-the-sky policy prescriptions only underscore this author's contention that no compromise with the left is possible or desirable. It's them, or us.

[1] International ANSWER, the American Muslim Association of North America, United for Peace and Justice, Pax Christi, Sojourners, Color of Change , the American Friends Service Committee, the Campaign for America’s Future, Code Pink, the National Council of La Raza, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Working Families Party, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Progressive Democrats of America, the Green Party, Planned Parenthood, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the International Socialist Organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, Tikkun--Network of Spiritual Progressives (founded by Michael Lerner), Campus Progress, Green for All, the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU, USAction, the National Action Network (headed by Al Sharpton), the United States Student Association, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the NAACP, the Center for Community Change, the Earth Day Network, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Apollo Alliance, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Democracy For America, Women's Action for New Directions, Veterans For Peace, Win Without War, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Reform Immigration For America, School of the Americas Watch, People For the American Way, Physicians For a National Health Program, the Peace and Freedom Party, the National Urban League, the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, the Midwest Academy, Interfaith Worker Justice, the Institute for Policy Studies, Friends of the Earth, Free Speech TV, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, UNITE HERE, Peace Action, Jewish Funds For Justice, the American Association of University Professors, and the AFSCME

Major source for this article: DiscovertheNetworks.org

Free at Last & Guilty No More - the Death of the Rap Across the Knuckles

2010-08-03T14:41:00.074-05:00

Do you recall getting a C- minus in secondary school English-class grammar, despite the fact that you were able to communicate effortlessly with everyone with whom you came in contact? Oh sure, perhaps your spelling needed a little polishing, you needed to improve upon your ability to format a paper or letter, and you were grateful to get assistance with punctuation, but beyond that hardly anyone corrected your speech except to point out teen slang such as "I dunno", or "I ain't gonna do that."

Parts of Speech
Have you ever wondered why you needed to be able to label parts of speech when you are perfectly adept at putting those parts where they belong, have been ever since you can remember, and have learned the hard way that the parts of speech defy simplistic definitions and rules of usage anyway?

Now, this is no trivial matter - parts of speech of speech have dominated grammar instruction for centuries - Lowth's 1762 edition of his influential A Short Introduction to English Grammar devotes 47.8% of its content to parts of speech and just 10.3% to punctuation.

Not every interested party has always supported the teaching of traditional school grammar, its just that your English teacher most likely would have preferred to die before allowing you exposure to dissenting opinions...such as -

If there is one thing I dislike in grammar, it is definitions (of parts of speech) too often met with in our textbooks. They are neither exhaustive nor true; they have not and cannot have, the precision and clearness of definitions found in textbooks of mathematics, and it is extremely easy to pick holes in them...And thus we might go on to the definitions found even in the best grammars: they are unsatisfactory all of them and I do not think they are necessary. [1]

Perhaps you are wondering who wrote the above quote - perhaps one of the Three Stooges? No it was Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (July 16, 1860-April 30, 1943) a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language and was a professor of English at Copenhagen University from 1893 to 1925.

About learning grammar Edgar H. Schuster, author of Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers through Innovative Grammar Instruction, made this observation about persons claming to know the parts of speech:

...what did they learn about English grammar? My guess is that they finally learned how to apply terms to the grammar they already knew. They learned a metalanguage; they learned how to talk about grammar. They'd always known that X was a noun and Y was a pronoun. They did not know that X was called noun and word Y, pronoun. Is this knowledge worth having?

Or how about this from Joseph M. Williams (August 18, 1933 - February 22, 2008) professor Emeritus of English and Linguistics at University of Chicago:

Until we recognize the arbitrary nature of our judgments, too many of us will take bad grammar as evidence of laziness, carelessness, or low IQ. That belief is not just wrong. It is socially destructive. [2]

Now, this last quote might just as well come from the Bible since the book of Acts tells us this about the attitude of the rulers, elders and teachers of the law who stood in judgment of Jesus Christ's disciples -

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus...they...commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard [3].

Notice the Bible does not say that Peter and John spoke with grammar perfectly acceptable to the rulers, elders and teachers - just that Peter and John spoke with courage and power.

Yes, long before traditional school grammar was foisted upon unsuspecting children, great men were shaping the world, not with perfect adherence to arbitrary rules of grammar, but with speech content that mattered.

Standard English Usage
What is standard English? Can anyone define it?

According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language:

1.) It is the standard fare of printed materials - newspapers, books.
2.) It is used by most broadcasters.
3.) It match the average level of attainment of persons who have completed secondary school.

Thus, standard English might best be described as the English employed by those who control the flow of information in society..."those who run things".

This neat little world begins to disintegrate when we realize that spoken and written standard English differ. One cannot gain approval writing could of, or should of (could've or should've is standard) but those-who-run-things speak of with could and should all the time.

Or consider the word ain't - it is unacceptable today among those-who-run-things, although it was used for centuries by educated speakers. Who decided it was no longer acceptable?

Use of double negatives (I ain't got no more) is sure to get bad marks in school and frowns in polite society, but who will quarrel with this usage of double negative - No, I didn't commit the crime -, or strongly object to this usage - You can't not admire those people.

Can anyone imagine a news broadcaster describing an attack by one politician on another thus - That was the most unkindest cut of all? Nevertheless, Shakespeare liked that line, for he put it into the mouth of Mark Anthony, referring to Brutus' stabbing of Caesar.

In 1941 John C. Hodges catalogued 280 standard English usage errors in Harbrace Handbook of English. 57 years later only 65 of those "errors" were still considered errors, as catalogued in the 1998 edition of the same work. If only all the little boys and girls who flunked English in 1941 could get their grades reevaluated!

Can You Identify the Bad Writer?
The following was written, informally, by a fifteen year old girl about King Henry VIII -

It is however but Justice and my duty to declare that this amiable woman [Anne Boleyn] was entirely innocent of the crimes with which she was accused, of which her beauty, her elegance and her sprightliness were sufficient proofs, not to mention her solemn protestations of innocence and the King's character; all of which add some confirmation, though perhaps but slight ones when in comparison with theose before alleged in her favor [4].

Can you find the errors in the above sentence? Find all you can and only then see citation No. 4 below to discover who the author was.

About writing John Steinbeck observed:

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel., and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers too near the sun [5].

As author and educator Edgar H. Schuster has pointed out -

contrast the hours we have spent practicing speech to the hours spent practicing writing...And writing must be practiced...even by those who appear to be gifted writers...We don't correct the speech of eighteen-month-old-children...many eighteen-year-old college students are in the same position (when they write) [6].

Retired English professor Gary Sloan demonstrated in an article published in College Communication and Composition that professional writers make almost as many errors as Freshman English students - the pros had no spelling, apostrophe, capitalization, or subject-verb agreement errors but were twice as verbose and fifteen times more trite. Pros had almost as many comma errors and wrote almost three times as many sentence fragments [7].

Major sources for this article include:
Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction, Edgar H. Schuster

Citations
[1] Cited in Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction, Edgar H. Schuster, p. 19

[2] ibid [1] p.47

[3] Acts 4: 13-20

[4] ibid [1] p. 93; author was Jane Austen

[5] ibid [1] p. 97

[6] ibid [1] p. 96

[7] ibid [5]

Conservatism - The Leading Ideology in America

2010-07-28T14:38:00.000-05:00

Conservatives have maintained their leading position among U.S. ideological groups in the first half of 2010. Click here to view supporting Gallup survey.

The Organic Food Hoax

2010-07-27T18:59:00.001-05:00

Notice the amount of space devoted to organic foods in your favorite grocery store is growing? Thinking about getting on the organic foods bandwagon, but don’t like the higher prices?

U.S. sales of organic food and beverages are growing 20 percent annually, and the increasing shelf space in area grocery stores devoted to organic foods, which cost anywhere from 10 to100 percent more than conventional foods, reflects this trend. Are they worth the higher price?

You should know that while the U.S. Department of Agriculture determines whether or not a food can be sold as officially “organic”, the USDA, does not claim that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional foods because the evidence is conflicting. Nor does the USDA make any claims that organic foods lead to better health, such as preventing certain diseases, since there is no conclusive supporting evidence [1].

One important reason consumers pay premium prices for organic foods is they assume they are pesticide free. This ignores that Sir Richard Doll, the foremost epidemiologist of the 20th century, along with epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto, concluded that “the occurrence of pesticides as a dietary pollutant seems unimportant (as a cause of cancer)”. Their conclusion was corroborated by the US National Research Council, the American Institute of Cancer Research, the World Cancer Research Fund and others. Moreover, Americans consume far more natural pesticides (99.99 percent of dietary intake) than synthetic ones (0.01 percent). Natural pesticides (there are 10,000) make up 5-10 percent of a typical plant’s dry weight [2].

Perhaps you’ve heard that modern high-yield agriculture (employing fertilizers and pesticides) rapes the land and contributes to global warming, so that even if produce from high-yield farms is just as nutritious and is safe to eat, buying it contributes to the destruction of the planet. The truth is the opposite - a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled “Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification” argues convincingly that high-yield agriculture is good for the environment. The study shows that if pesticides and fertilizers had not been used since 1961, an additional 6.8 million square miles of land - area larger than Russia – would have to have been cleared from forests (including tropical forests), and developed for agriculture to keep the world fed. Moreover, the study shows that high yield agriculture avoided 161 gigatons of carbon emissions, an amount equal to 34 percent of the total 478 gigatons of carbon emitted by humanity from 1850 to 2005 [3].

In short there’s no reason to spend more money on organic foods to preserve your health or the planet. Let the guy or gal next to you spend more for no good reason. You go and enjoy affordable, abundant conventional foods and do so free of guilt and worry.

[1] "Nutrition Made Clear", Course No. 1950 @ The Teaching Company, Roberta H. Anding, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital; M.S., Louisiana State University

[2] The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomberg

[3] "Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification", Jennifer A. Burneya,b,1, Steven J. Davisc, and David B. Lobella (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/14/0914216107.abstract)

Americans Haven't Learned a Thing - And They'll Regret It.

2010-07-26T22:05:00.000-05:00

New Barna Group study shows that hard times have not strengthened American's ties to family or faith.

"Has the Economy Influenced Americans' Priorities?"

14,164.53 - The Genuine "Most Important Number in the World"

2010-07-26T21:32:00.004-05:00

Perhaps you've heard it said that 350 parts per million is the most important number in the world.

There's a whole lot of people who think it is.

What is 350 parts per million? 350 parts per million is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that many environmentalists - including James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies - say is the safe upper limit. The consequences of carbon dioxide staying above that level is, according to those same environmentalists, world catastrophe induced by runaway man-made global warming.

However, I say, in truth, a different number is the most important number in the world.

I say that number is 14,164.53.

What is 14,164.53? 14,164.53 is the record level that the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached on October 9, 2007. At that level, with a record percentage of Americans invested in the stock market through the 1980's invention - 401(k) -, a record percentage of Americans found themselves in a position to not only retire early, but retire in luxury. As they examined their retirement account statements their eyes popped.

Then just one year later they found their 401(k)'s worth just over half of what they had been., and they saw all their dazzling hopes fizzling.

For this reason they swept into a power a community organizer with a funny name, because he promised hope and change. The hope and change that this demagogue held out was about ethereal matters such as social justice, but what they thought he really was going to change was the value of their 401(k)'s. And this community organizer knew that the people thought he was really talking about hope for their 401(k) account,, but what he really had in mind was to exploit the people's gullibility so he could usher in an era of big government and control over the lives of the people.

The people sold out everything - their principles, the American Dream, their children's and grand-children's future -; sold out everything for the number 14,164.53.

Proof of a Left-Wing Media Conspiracy to Suppress Truth

2010-07-23T10:27:00.000-05:00

Below is a link to an article on David Horowitz's site DiscoverTheNetworks.org (a site devoted to revealing how the political left organizes and communicates) that exposes a deliberate consipiracy by prominient leftists journalists, via a listserve, to suppress bad news of a significant nature about Barack Obama and cast conservatives in a negative light:

“Journolist”: The Smoking Gun of Leftwing Media Collusion

Did Someone Say "Peak Oil"?

2010-07-14T19:48:00.000-05:00

Scientists working for the US Geological Survey say Venezuela's Orinoco belt region holds twice as much petroleum as previously thought.

This news comes at a time when "Peak Oil" is the buzz phrase among environmental activists, global warming scaremongers and other assorted zombies opposed to human progress. Peak oil is the point in time (alarmists say the time is NOW) when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.

Medical Helicopters, Like Sharks, Have to Keep Moving to Survive

2010-07-03T15:03:00.001-05:00

When you read or hear about the employment of an air ambulance for an accident in or near your community, you probably assume it must have been a bad accident; right? Don't be so sure.

In its infinite wisdom, bureaucrats in Washington mandated Medicare reimbursement for air ambulances in 1997. Since then the number of available air ambulances in the Unites States has tripled. However, in some states close to 50% of patients delivered to hospital via air ambulance are discharged with 24 hours. Can the reader imagine why?

Consider this - a ride as short as 15 miles in an air ambulance can cost $17,000. A helicopter with pilots and support crew is expensive to maintain. A helicopter sitting on the tarmac earns no money. Do you begin to get it?

Moreover, medical helicopters are exempt from many of the safety mandates that keep commercial aviation relatively safe. Employment aboard a medical helicopter is the most dangerous job in America; fatal crashes are common.

In fact it might be safer to swim with sharks than be transported to hospital aboard a medical helicopter. And unlike riding on medical helicopter swimming in the ocean is free most of the time.

Primary source for this article - "Critical Condition", Popular Mechanics, July 2010

Nuclear Battery Buried in Your Backyard - Coming Soon?

2010-06-24T21:44:00.003-05:00

While environmentalists and assorted green nail-biters have been making loud about alleged Peak Oil and a climate they say can't handle one more oz. of carbon dioxide, over in New Mexico a little company called Hyperion Power Generation have been quietly laboring to commercialize a safe, clean, sustainable, and cost-efficient small modular nuclear reactor designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists leveraging forty years of technological advancement.

Hyperion nuclear power modules are about the size of a hot tub. Each produces enough to power for about 25,000 homes (25-30 megawatts). No water is needed for cooling but it is impossible for the module to go supercritical, “melt down” or create any type of emergency situation. The radioactive material inside is unsuitable for use in proliferation.

According to Doug Hoffman, co-author of the book, The Energy Gap, -

...(t)he reactor has a uranium hydride core, surrounded by hydrogen gas. The hydrogen acts as the moderator for the reactor, slowing down neutrons to promote a sustained chain reaction. As the reactor heats up the hydrogen gas expands and vents into a holding area, causing the nuclear reaction to diminish. This allows the reactor vessel, including its hydrogen, to cool, drawing hydrogen back into the reactor and increasing the nuclear reaction. The balance between heat generation and gas temperature makes the whole unit self-regulating—no need for computers or human operators to control things. Think of it as a nuclear battery [1].

Because of its small size the power plant's applications are limitless and could fuel a huge variety of important facilities including: hospitals, desalinization plants, emergency facilities, industrial parks, factories, military bases, and even small towns for many years. Moreover, Hyperion’s module's has the ability to bring heat for industrial uses and electricity for infrastructure and homes to remote locations with no reasonable access to reliable energy. For example: over 25% of the world’s population does not have access to clean water. Hyperion can solve this problem by providing the power to pump, clean, and process water, possibly helping turn the tide on disease, poverty and social unrest.

Meanwhile President Obama, who waxes enthusiastic in speeches about making America energy independent, seems unconcerned that his own Nuclear Regulatory Commission has has stated that it has no plans to review the Hyperion design in the near future.

[1] "America's Atomic Folly", Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth

Liberals to Legislate by "the Word" - No Double Standard Here!

2010-06-15T11:58:00.002-05:00

To comprehend in a moment how much vitriol has been directed from the political leftist in America at the rise of the religious right; to comprehend in a moment how many leftist think the "religious right" intend to establish theocracy in America just do an Internet search for phrases like:

Right-wing theocracy, George W. Bush theocracy, Republican theocracy, Christian Fascism, etc.

But click here to hear and see sitting Speaker of the House, liberal Nancy Pelosi proclaim that public policy ought to be "in keeping" with the Word of God as proclaimed in the gospels.

Of The Gaza Flotilla and Branch Davidians

2010-06-05T12:51:00.001-05:00

Branch Davidians burn and no outrage from the left

The worldwide god-hating left rose up as one man to condemn Israel for using deadly force in the botched boarding of supposed aid-ship Mavi Marmara. The condemnation denounces Israel for, at the minimum, using deadly force against protesters armed only with metal pipes, stun grenades, chains and the like.

Israel on the other hand, in the wake of the incident has reasserted her right to protect herself by inspecting ships delivering cargo - supposed to be loaded with only humanitarian supplies - to her declared enemies in the Gaza Strip under the governance of Hamas. Hamas - classified by the governments of the European Union, Israel, Japan, Canada, and the United States as a terrorist organization - that won civil parliamentary Palestinian Authority elections in 2006 and took over de facto government in the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority by way of its own political maneuvering and armed militia in July 2007, while consolidating power by violently removing the Palestinian Authority's security forces and civil servants from the Gaza Strip.

Now, as the whole world knows it was leftist Janet Reno under leftist Bill Clinton who laid siege to the Branch Davidians at the Mount Carmel Center compound in Waco, Texas culminating in seventy-six Brand Davidians dead, including more than 20 children and two pregnant women. Let the reader try to imagine a scenario under which leftist Reno and Clinton would have allowed humanitarian supplies to be delivered in bulk to the Mount Carmel Center at Waco without insisting on such deliveries being inspected by armed federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents.

Disappointing News for Vegans - God Commanded "Eat Meat", and it Was Good

2010-06-01T19:41:00.001-05:00

A new Harvard University study found no increased risk of heart disease among meat eaters.

However, this conclusion applied only to unprocessed meats - eating one serving per day of processed meats like bacon, sausage, salami, hot dogs or processed deli or luncheon meats was associated with a 42 percent higher risk of heart disease and 19 percent increased risk of diabetes.

Notably, the heart risk in processed meats wasn't the saturated fat or cholesterol - both whole cuts of meat and processed meats contained the same amount per serving The big differences were the levels of sodium and chemical preservatives - processed meats had about four times more sodium and 50 percent more nitrate preservatives than unprocessed meats.

Source: "Don’t Bring Home the Bacon", TARA PARKER-POPE, New York Times, May 19, 2010, linked to from the National Center for Policy Analysis

The Truth About Arizona's Immigration Law

2010-05-19T19:42:00.001-05:00

There are 6,000 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tasked with restoring the rule of law in a country that already contains between 12 and 20 million immigration law-breakers.

By comparison, the New York Police Department, with a current headcount of 35,000, feels itself greatly understaffed in a compact city of eight million residents, only a portion of whom are law-breakers.

The Arizona law, were it to be widely emulated, threatens to disrupt the calculus of illegal immigration...There are 650,000 state and local police officers in the United States. If a significant portion of those officers received the mandate of the Arizona law -- to inquire where practicable into the immigration status of an individual they have legitimately stopped, if they have a valid reason to believe he is in the country illegally -- the balance between law enforcement and law-breaking would be changed enough to likely deter illegal border crossings and to persuade many illegal immigrants already in the United States to return to their home countries rather than face arrest and deportation.

Source: Heather Mac Donald, "Arizona law is hated because it could be effective," Washington Examiner, May 5, 2010

How Could Anyone Conclude the Left is Extreme?

2010-05-05T07:56:00.002-05:00

See beehives? Leftists see "rape racks".

According to author Wesley J. Smith in his book A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement the animal "rights" movement has reached the ideological milestone of concluding that beekeeping ought to be outlawed as it amounts to putting the queen bee on a "rape rack".

H. L. Mencken Exposed

2010-04-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

God-haters love to quote Henry Louis Mencken (an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a student of American English; regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century) when it suits them; particular gems like these:

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth.

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Nowhere to be found among the Mencken quotes God-haters cite, at least in America, are some of his other "gems":

Most ordinary people are contemptibly weak. Only the minority are worth are attention, and only the chosen few can lead or even contribute to civilization.

The existence of most human beings is of absolutely no significance to history of human progress. They live and die as anonymously and uselessly as so many bullfrogs or houseflies...they are robots who leave their mark upon time only by occasionally falling into the machinery and so incommoding their betters. [1]

[1] Source: "Conservative Tradition"; Course No. 4812 (36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture), Emory University. ; Patrick N. Allitt, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley,

"Assuring" Outcomes not Opportunities

2010-04-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

There is no better illustration of the fundamental difference between liberalism and conservatism in public policy prescriptions, and no better illustration of the destination to which liberal policies lead, than the recent announcement forthcoming from the European Union that "Travelling for tourism today is a (human) right", and that to ensure that right to every European, vacation holidays will henceforth be subsidized by the state [1].

FDR was among the first high ranking politicos in America to declare (in his January 1944 State of the Union address) that "employment, housing, health care, education, and a decent standard of living" were "rights" of every person [2].

No doubt, in 1944 FDR would have scoffed at the notion that his view on "rights" would one day lead to a "right" for free vacations, just as Hubert Humphrey declared that he would eat the paper the 1964 Civil Rights Act was written on if it would lead to raced-based quotos (affirmitive action) [3].

[1] http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19248&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncpadpd+%28NCPA+-+Daily+Policy+Digest%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[2] "A Nice WPA Job", Dissent Magazine, Summer 2006 (http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=668)

[3] "It the Senator can find in Title VII ... any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there. "

Oil is Evil, Right?

2010-04-14T12:30:00.004-05:00

One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline, enough to fill up two tanks of gas in a small to mid-sized car, or a full-sized minivan.

The green alternative to a minivan looks like this (actual circumstance in less developed country):

And what if it rains?

The rest of the barrel (over half) is used to make things like:

Solvents
Diesel fuel
Motor Oil
Bearing Grease
Ink
Floor Wax
Ballpoint Pens
Football Cleats
Upholstery
Sweaters
Boats
Insecticides
Bicycle Tires
Sports Car Bodies
Nail Polish
Fishing lures
Dresses
Tires
Golf Bags
Perfumes
Cassettes
Dishwasher parts
Tool Boxes
Shoe Polish
Motorcycle Helmet
Caulking
Petroleum Jelly
Transparent Tape
CD Player
Faucet Washers
Antiseptics
Clothesline
Curtains
Food Preservatives
Basketballs
Soap
Vitamin Capsules
Antihistamines
Purses
Shoes
Dashboards
Cortisone
Deodorant
Footballs

This is to name just a few. For a more complete list see: http://www.ranken-energy.com/UsefulInfo.html

Only the disciples of the environmental faith could consider oil evil.

The Backroom Bailout - Lying on an Unprecedented Scale

2010-04-13T10:11:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder why several states teetering on the verge of bankruptcy following the financial meltdown of 2008 have managed to stay solvent? Look no furtther than the massive $750 stimulus package signed by President Obama in 2009 which allocated $100 billion to public education. This unprecedented federal funding was nearly twice the Department of Education’s annual budget, and was sold to the American people as a vehicle for transforming public education. However, most of the $69 billion released so far has gone to shore up state education budgets and maintain teaching jobs. In effect, Washington has been bailing out troubled states, like California, with direct handouts, disguised as education funding. In the late 2009, according to the Obama administration, the stimulus funded the jobs of more than 329,000 school employees. Rather than reducing benefits or requiring greater employee contributions, California school districts with multimillion-dollar budget deficits continue propping up a teacher retirement system that is running a $48 billion shortfall. This sort of chcanery is going on all over America.

And the above is not all - Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal includes a 6.2 percent increase in education dollars, despite his plan to freeze overall domestic spending beginning in fiscal year 2011. For example, Obama's 2011 budget gives the early education program Head Start an increase of $989 million, even after a January 2010 study by the Department of Health and Human Services that once again confirmed that Head Start does not offer disadvantaged students any advantage.

Source: Post assembled from article: "Obama’s Education Spending Frenzy: After the administration’s first year, it’s status quo 20, reform 1.", Lisa Snell; Reason.com, May issue (http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/09/obamas-education-spending-fren?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reason%2FArticles+%28Reason+Online+-+All+Articles+%28except+Hit+%26+Run+blog%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader)

Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax

2010-04-11T14:50:00.000-05:00

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization...the top 10 percent of earners -- households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

In 2007, about 38 percent of households paid no federal income tax... [1]

[1] Associated Press, April 7, 2010

Too busy making sure AIDS victims aren't tempted by sugary soda to fight crime fairly

2010-04-03T15:33:00.001-05:00

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom notoriously and openly allowed same-sex couples to legally marry in his city despite California law that only permitted homosexuals to enter into civil unions. Mayor Newsom decided to allow the full rights of marriage after hearing President Bush oppose it during his State of the Union address on January 20, 2004. As mayor Newsom also proposed to levy a fee on retailers of sugary sodas.

Now it turns out that while Newsom was mayor (he still is, as of this posting) and while he was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, that city's crime lab was awash in:

a tsunami of incompetence

according to Public Defender Jeff Adachi and many others.

So bad were the practices in the crime lab San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon had this to say:

Anybody who doesn't see the magnitude of this problem is either blind or stupid

According to the Associated Press:

The district attorney's office has already thrown out or not charged 550 cases because of possible evidence tampering, and is reviewing about 1,400 more for possible dismissal...The lab had at least three technicians working there between July and December, each handling about 5,000 to 7,000 cases a year. The state's average is slightly more than 1,000 cases per year...

technicians often left drug evidence in unsecured boxes or lockers ripe for possible theft, and technicians did not record when they may have reopened evidence sampling. The lab also failed to calibrate scales used for weighing drugs, the report said. In a criminal case, the weight of the drug can result in a greater or lesser sentence.

But at least, while San Francisco's crime lab was in meltdown mode, mayor Newsom was fighting to make sure homosexual could marry and that no harmful sugary soda would be served at their weddings.

Source for this posting: "SF crime lab scandal strains justice system" by TERRY COLLINS and BROOKE DONALD: Associated Press, (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gxjNCYUTONPJlCWFfNwasASw5-XwD9ER6NOO3; accessed 4/3/10)

One Thing About Sweden American Liberals Don't Want to Copy

2010-01-23T16:07:00.001-05:00

Public schools in Sweden are built on a voucher system at both the primary and secondary levels. If a public school isn't meeting a student's needs, he or she can take advantage of the voucher system and leave.

Students have the option to switch to another public school or they can leave the public system altogether and opt for a private school.

The government attaches money to each student, which then follows him wherever he goes.

The system is widely popular, and the results have shown rising standards across the board.

The program has also helped desegregate schools in cities with large immigrant populations, such as Stockholm.

Another feature of the Swedish system is that it allows high schoolers to choose from a smorgasbord of high school programs centered on three paths: college preparatory, vocational and a more remedial track. So, Swedish students go to schools they like and are able to follow their interests and passions.

Source: Clayton M. McCleskey, "Swedish schools more American than America's," The Swedish Wire, January 17, 2010.

What Detroit and DC Schools Have in Common with South Africa

2010-01-23T13:54:00.006-05:00

Throwing Rocks More Fun than School

Americans are habitually told the reason that blacks don't perform well in American schools is they are traumatized by discrimination and hence not motivated to learn the white man's ways. So what excuse for blacks in South African schools?

South Africa spends a bigger share of its gross domestic product on education than any other country on the continent. Yet its results are among the worst.

Around 80 percent of schools are "dysfunctional."
Half of all pupils drop out before taking their final "matric" exams.
Only 15 percent get good enough marks to get into university.
Of those who do get in, barely half end up with a degree.
South Africa regularly comes bottom or near the bottom in international literacy, numeracy and science tests.
Whites, who account for 9 percent of the population, gained 42 percent of the degrees awarded in 2007, almost exactly the same proportion as blacks, who are nearly ten times more numerous.

Source: "No one gets prizes: Blacks suffer most, as schools remain ill-equipped and children are ill-taught", 1/14/10, The Economist; cited in National Center for Policy Analysis

Common Sense Health Care Reform for an Insane World

2010-01-23T12:51:00.002-05:00

One voice in the wilderness:

Dr. C.L. Gray [1], president of Physicians for Reform, calls for this:

Sell insurance across state lines:
State mandates drive up costs; health insurance for a 25-year-old male in New Jersey costs nearly six times what it does in Kentucky, largely because of state mandates.

Allowing businesses to purchase insurance across state lines empowers consumers, not Washington, and does not cost a dime.

Let individuals purchase health insurance with pre-tax dollars:
Insurance companies serve businesses, not patients; businesses purchase employee health insurance with pre-tax dollars while individuals purchase insurance with post-tax dollars making their insurance far more expensive.

This reform lets patients buy products that meet their needs and makes insurers more accountable to patients.

Encourage Health Care Savings Accounts (HSAs):
HSAs reduce health care costs without rationing (cutting Medicare); they also let patients control their own money, decreasing health care spending by 13 percent.

During 2005 and 2006, traditional insurance rose 7.3 percent annually while lower cost / higher deductable plans combined with HSAs rose only 2.7 percent annually.

End abusive medical litigation:
Frivolous litigation drives physicians out of medicine; bringing tens of millions of new patients into the system requires more physicians, not fewer.

Frivolous litigation reform lowers cost and improves access to care; Americans spend approximately $124 billion every year because physicians practice defensive medicine.

Cover the uninsured:
We can insure the uninsured without expanding American debt; approximately 25 percent of patients who visit the emergency rooms do not have health care coverage.

A system of tax credits can help the uninsured purchase coverage; this would cost approximately $80 billion annually.

Source: Dr. C.L. Gray, "Five Health Care Reform Solutions That Make Sense," Fox News, January 21, 2010, cited in National Center for Policy Analysis

[1] Dr. C. L. Gray is a practicing Board certified internal medicine physician in North Carolina. Previously, Gray served as Chief Medical Resident at Bassett Healthcare, an affiliate of Columbia University. Upon completion of his training in 2000, he received the E. Donnall Thomas Research Award, presented annually for exceptional research. Gray has two scientific publications to his credit. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1995 where he served as president of the Christian Medical and Dental Society (CMDS) and as an honorary member of the CMDS graduate board of ethics.

A Glimpse Into our Brave "Green" Future

2010-01-10T09:02:00.001-05:00

Obama announced $2.3 billion in tax credits — to be paid for from last year's $787 stimulus package — that he said would create some 17,000 "green" jobs. The money will go to projects including solar, wind and energy management. - Associated Press 1/8/10

Well, get out your calculator. $2.3 billion for 17,000 jobs equals $135,294 per job. (And that’s not including the eventual interest on this deficit spending). - Investors.com

Strip Searching Innocents and, Where is Obama Magic Now?

2009-12-26T12:28:00.002-05:00

When you have a single Muslim man with a name like Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab boarding your commercial airliner, why single him out for special attention when you have an attractive blond you can fondle?

ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) - An attempted terrorist attack on a Christmas Day flight...sen(t) passengers scrambling to subdue a Nigerian man who claimed to be acting on orders from al-Qaida to blow up the airliner, officials and travelers said.

The commotion began as Northwest Airlines Flight 253, carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew members from Amsterdam, prepared to land in Detroit just before noon Friday.

Multiple law enforcement officials identified the suspect in Friday's attempted attack as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab. [1]

And whatever happened to the notion that once Barak Obama was President, a hostile world would suddenly like America?

[1] "Passengers help foil attack on Detroit-bound plane", myway.com, http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091226/D9CR18JO0.html

Outrage Over Restraint, But None Over License

2009-12-08T21:36:00.002-05:00

The following is provoking international indignation -

KAMPALA, Uganda — Proposed legislation would impose the death penalty for some gay Ugandans, and their family and friends could face up to seven years in jail if they fail to report them to authorities. [1]

Of course it is hard to understand why a government responsible for promoting the safety and well being of its citizens would be so severe with homosexuals in a country where AIDS has had a devastating impact.

AIDS has killed approximately one million people in Uganda, and significantly reduced life expectancy. AIDS has depleted the Uganda's labour force, reduced agricultural output and food security, and weakened educational and health services. The large number of AIDS related deaths amongst young adults has left behind over a million orphaned children. [2] What's-to-worry you Ugandan political leaders?

Perhaps the Ugandan government got the idea from reading American history. Thomas Jefferson had this to say about how to deal with homosexuals: dismember them

[1] "Uganda Considering Death Penalty For Gays", The Huffington Post, KATHARINE HOURELD and GODFREY OLUKYA, 12/ 8/09

[2] "The History of AIDS in Africa" (http://www.avert.org/aids-uganda.htm, retrieved 12/08/09)

Why We All Need Exposure to Suppressed Truth

2009-11-28T13:16:00.003-05:00

"In my first university year, the lecturer told us of a fascinating piece of psychological research. Twelve people were shown, simultaneously, two fleeting images (A and B), each a straight line. Then the group was asked, one at a time, which was the longer line.

"In reality, only one of the 12 was a genuine research subject (guinea pig might be a better word!). The other 11 were carefully briefed ‘plants’. The arrangement was that the subject, observed by hidden cameras, would be asked last. Now, despite the brevity of the exposure, no-one reasonably trusting their senses should have been in any doubt that ‘A’ was the longer of the two. As questioning commenced, the subject looked accordingly relaxed and confident in his impending choice.

"The first plant, however, answered ‘B’ as the longer line, as all 11 had been instructed to do. Our subject registered only mild surprise, but as the second, then the third, also said ‘B’, one could see his composure crumble. As the ‘B’ answers continued to roll in confidently and relentlessly, the stress visibly mounted, then seemed to relax as his turn drew closer. Finally, he confidently proclaimed the answer to be ‘B’.

"Reruns showed this to be a near-universal phenomenon, with only the rare individual able, with great difficulty and struggle, to stand against such ‘peer pressure’." [1]

[1] "Herd rule: Standing for truth can be painful in a world in rebellion against its Maker", Carl Wieland (http://creation.com/herd-rule; accessed 11/28/09)

Government Run Health Won't Lead to Nanny State?

2009-11-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A Pennsylvania university's requirement that overweight undergraduates take a fitness course to receive their degrees has raised the hackles of students and the eyebrows of health and legal experts...

"We know we're in the midst of an obesity epidemic," said James L. DeBoy, chairman of Lincoln's (University's) department of health, physical education and recreation. "We have an obligation to address this head on..." [1]

[1] "Pa. university students upset about fitness class", myway.com

What Killed General Motors; What is Killing Michigan

2009-11-14T09:50:00.008-05:00

Fat Cats

Some salient facts about Detroit, Michigan

"It has the highest taxes in Michigan, the highest murder rate in the country, and a dreadful public school system. Only 25 percent of high school students graduate each year. Its tens of thousands of abandoned homes offer safe haven to drug dealers and criminals...there is no longer a single major department store in the city...Detroit's population is less than half of its peak of two million in the 1960s.

With the collapse of the auto industry over the past year and a half, things have gotten a lot worse. Unemployment is now touching Depression levels of around 30 percent—three times the national rate. Businesses that depend on the auto industry are shutting down and more residents are hitting the exits. This is accelerating the erosion of the city's tax base, producing a fiscal crisis that seems impossible to escape. The city's accumulated deficit is currently somewhere between $300 million and $400 million. No one knows for sure because the city has yet to submit its 2008 audit; its annual budget is about $3 billion" [1]

Now, given the condition of the City of Detroit, one would think unionized city employees would be amenable to just about any reasonable set of concessions; think again:

"John Reihl, president of the American Federation of State, Council and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 207, regards...talk of cuts as a personal insult. 'It is just a way to mess with the unions,' he told the Detroit News in July." [2]

American Auto Industry

As a nearly lifelong resident of Michigan this author vividly recalls the dire predictions, during the 1970's, of auto industry excecutives about the eventual toll that outlandish union demands would take on that industry. With Nixon falling into disfavor and Jimmy Carter entering the White House, the nation, and Congress was moving left in the 1970's and the laments of highly paid auto executives carried no weight whatsoever. Ignoring someone, does not mean that their warnings aren't true.

State of Michigan

"According to calculations based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and figures from the Michigan Civil Service Commission, Michigan's state and local government full-time employees are getting $5.7 billion more in benefits than they would if they received benefits equal to those of private-sector employees.

"At the same time, the state disproportionately increased its pay rate. Since 2001, average annual pay has increased by 26 percent for state government workers and by 20 percent for local government workers, compared to 15 percent for Michigan's private sector...in the benefits paid on top of already elevated salaries, (in) 2000, Michigan's civil service workforce received benefits worth an additional 37.95 percent of salary. By 2008, that figure had grown to 58.15 percent. At the same time, Midwest private-sector benefits, the closest estimation for Michigan private-sector benefits available from the BLS, are worth 43.62 percent of salary — meaning that government rates are 33 percent higher than private ones." [3]

Needless to say, not many in Michigan are giving much weight to consideration of cutting back public sector pay and benefits. Apparently what happened to the auto industry and is happening to Detroit is not a clear enough object lesson.

[1]"Dave Bing's Last-Second Shot", from Reason Magazine by Shikha Dalmia (http://reason.com/archives/2009/11/13/dave-bings-last-second-shot?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reason%2FArticles+%28Reason+Online+-+All+Articles+%28except+Hit+%26+Run+blog%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader)

[2] ibid [1]

[3]"Diminishing Private Sector Keeps Supporting Bloated Public Benefits", By Mr. James M. Hohman and Mr. Adam C. Rule | Aug. 3, 2009 (http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=10839)

Who is Running Things, and What are Their Motives?

2009-10-12T18:45:00.004-05:00

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. Many of the ideas that went into constructing America's current compulsory education system were fashioned and implemented in the Progressive Era. Taylor wrote the influential [1] book, Principles of Scientific Management.

Of Taylor Peter Drucker's said,

“Taylor (was) the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work,...Not much has been added to them since (Taylor)- even though he has been dead all of sixty years.”[2]

In regards to the capabilities of the working man, Taylor said this to a congressional committee:

I can say, without the slightest hesitation, that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.[3]

About scientific management, John Taylor Gatto (an activist critical of compulsory schooling and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions) wrote this:

(It) is always on guard against people who don't fit securely into boxes, whether because of too much competency or, too much creativity, too much popularity, or what have you. Although often hired, it is with the understanding that they must be kept on a short leash and regarded warily. The ideal hireling is reflexively obedient, cheerfully enthusiastic about following orders, ever eager to please.

“Educated people, or people with principles, represent rogue elements in a scheme of scientific managements; the former suspect because they have been trained to argue effectively, and to think for themselves, and the latter too inflexible in any area touching their morality to remain reliably dependent. At any moment they may announce, "This is wrong, I won't do it." [4]

Citations
[1] Harvard University, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in business management in 1908, based its first-year curriculum on Taylor's scientific management. book.

[2] Peter Ferdinand Drucker, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker)

[3] Frederick Winslow Taylor, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor#cite_note-9)

[4] Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, John Taylor Gatto, pp. 126, 127

Fantasy over Reality - Modern America

2009-10-10T12:01:00.003-05:00

"Nightmare children are all around us...creatures trained to organize their time around spasms of excitement and amusement...The most curious commentary on these kids is the thousands of hours they spend in not exploring, not playing, not seeking opportunities for personal gain - but in watching other people on television, in video and computer gains.

"Sane children would never do this - the arc of anyone’s' life is too short to accept passivity and fantasy to this degree...in families where the husband and the wife have never been divorced, and where the wife doesn't work, the index of spectatorship - TV and otherwise - drops to one-tenth the big-city average.

"(Compulsory education) create() addictions. It addicts children to prefer thin abstraction and dull fantasies to reality. As I've grown older I've come to believe that good teachers are more dangerous than bad ones. They keep the sick institution (of compulsory education) alive....

"For many years a variety of outside influences - television, computers nd government schooling chief among them - have been conspiring to wean children away from their urgent need to be out and about. The end result has been a nation of angry, frightened, uncompassionate and incomplete boys and girls in place of men and women. " [1]

[1] Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, John Taylor Gatto, pp. 82, 96-97

Dumbing Down; Conforming Up

2009-10-09T09:16:00.001-05:00

"Work in classrooms isn't important work. It fails to speak to real needs pressing on the young. It doesn't answer burning questions which day-to-day experience forces upon young minds. Problems encountered outside school walls are treated as peripheral when in truth they are central. The net effect of making work abstract - "subject-centered - external to individual longings, fears, experiences, and questions, it to render students of this enforced irrelevance listless and indifferent...

"The official (consumption driven) economy we have constructed demands constantly renewed supplies of leveled, spiritless, passive, anxious, friendless, family-less people who can be scrapped and replaced endlessly, and who will perform at maximum efficiency until their own time comes to be scrap...

“School is a religion…When kids come of age they feel certain they must know something, because their degrees and licenses say they do. They remain convinced until an unexpectedly brutal divorce, a corporate downsizing, or panic attacks brought on by the meaningless manage to upset the precarious balance of incomplete adult lives.” [1]

[1] Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, John Taylor Gatto, pp. 63,64, 86

Who Will Write the Next "Grapes of Wrath"?

2009-10-09T04:03:00.002-05:00

A seemingly limitless number of chronicles in the news media, film and literature has brought to life some sense of the reality of daily living for the "forgotten man" during the Great Depression. Could that be because a liberal was in the White House at that time who had safely and successfully shifted the blame for that crisis on conservatives? Now we have a liberal in the White House who has boldly taken responsibility for the economy on his own shoulders; a do or die (politically) task.

So why is it - as Ann Pettifor, New Economist contributor and author of Debtonation - The Coming First World Debt Crisis points out - that as of October 2009, almost a year since the economic crisis began and eighteen months since the recession began:

News of job losses, according to Pew's research (have) "filled just 6% of the newshole." [1]

Could it be that the media is covering up for somebody and for sombody's political party?

[1] "For Today's Media the Economic Crisis Is Yesterday's Story", Ann Pettifor, Huffington Post, Posted: October 7, 2009 02:51 PM (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-pettifor/for-todays-media-the-econ_b_312836.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-pettifor/for-todays-media-the-econ_b_312836.html)

The Pill, Breast Cancer and Hooking Up with a Wimp

2009-10-08T09:37:00.004-05:00

The Pill and Cancer

As was pointed out in a previous blog post everyone except, it seems, American women know that The Pill causes breast cancer. To wit:

Dr. David Longfellow, head of the Chemical and Physical Carcinogenesis Branch at the National Cancer Institute complained that "It’s been an uphill battle to convince the mainstream that estrogen initiates cancer by damaging DNA." [1]

Moreover, The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes combined oral contraceptives and combined menopausal therapy as "carcinogenic to humans." [2]

The Pill and Wimpy Men

Now, not only do we know that The Pill can make the end of your life arrive prematurely and miserably, it can make the prime of your life miserable too. The following is an edited version of an article that appeared in the on-line version of the United Kingdoms's Daily Mail [3]:

Dr Alexandra Alvergne, of the University of Sheffield, and her co-author Dr. Virpi Lumma, say the Pill could be altering the way women pick their mates and could have long-term implications for society: 'There are many obvious benefits of the Pill for women, but there is also the possibility that the Pill has psychological side-effects that we are only just discovering,' she said. 'We need further studies to find out what these are.'

Scientists have long known that a woman's taste in men changes over her menstrual cycle. During the few days each month when women are fertile - around the time of ovulation - they tend to prefer masculine features and men who are more assertive. On these fertile days, women are also more attracted to men who are 'genetically dissimilar', Dr Alvergne said. Picking a partner whose genetic make-up is unlike their own increases the chances of having a healthy child.

On days when women are not fertile, their tastes swing towards more feminine, boyish faces and more caring personalities, researchers have shown. However, if women are taking the Pill they no longer have fertile days.That means they no longer experience the hormonal changes that make them more attracted to masculine men and those with dissimilar genetic make-up.

Dr Alvergne also found evidence from three studies that the Pill can affect the way women are looked at by men. Past studies have shown that men find women more attractive around the time of ovulation...Dr Alvergne said the use of the Pill could influence a woman's ability to attract a mate by reducing her attractiveness to men.

Citations
[1] Miller K. "Estrogen and DNA damage: The silent source of breast cancer?" J Natl Cancer Inst 2003;95:100-2; cited in Coalition on Abortion Breast Cancer, frequently asked questions page (http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/abc.html; accessed 8/18/09)

[2] Cogliano V, Grosse Y, Baan R, Secretan B, El Ghissassi F. Carcinogenicity of combined oestrogen-progestagen contraceptives and menopausal treatment. Lancet Oncology 2005;6:552-553. Also, Press Release No. 167, "IARC Monographs Programme Finds Combined Estrogen-Progestogen Contraceptives (the "pill") and Menopausal Therapy Are Carcinogenic to Humans," World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, July 29, 2005.

[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218808/Contraceptive-pill-women-attracted-masculine-men--interested-boyish-looks.html#ixzz0TM1Oa7Qi

Sheep for the Shearers

2009-10-07T15:36:00.000-05:00

In 16 of 50 American colleges graduating senior knew less than incoming freshmen in five academic areas measured. In the remaining 34 colleges, no measurable change had taken place. [1]

[1] 2006 University of Connecticut study cited in Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, John Taylor Gatto, pp. 37-38

Words that Launched a Revolution and Excuse a Holocaust

2009-10-07T13:57:00.003-05:00

Gloria Steinem - American feminist icon - on feminist rationale for legal abortion:

(Abortion is) the moral equivalent of a tonsillectomy... (The human fetus is nothing more than a) mass of of dependent protoplasm. [1]

Fetus a 10 weeks (left); 14 weeks (right)

[1] "Shrinking Support for Abortion Rights", Mark Shields syndicated column; early October, 2009

Manufacturing Robots for the "Matrix"

2009-10-07T09:40:00.001-05:00

"In the new (systematic method of compulsory education in America), different goals were promulgated, goals for which self-reliance, ingenuity, courage, competence, and other frontier virtues became liabilities (because they threatened the authority of (business) management). Under the new system, the goals of good moral values, good citizenship skills, and good personal development were exchanged for a novel fourth purpose - becoming a human resource to be spent by businessmen and politicians." [1]

[1] Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto, New Society Publishers, 2009, p. 23

The Fourth Estate - Bulwark of Truth & Liberty

2009-09-17T11:17:00.005-05:00

Bernard Nathansan, M.D. (co-founder of National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL)) on using the media:

We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one. Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken a poll and that 60 percent of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion...We...fabricated the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1 million...The number of women dying from illegal abortion was around 100-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many we needed to to crack the abortion law. [1]

Jesus Christ speaking of...journalists?

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. [2]

[1] The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom, David Kupelian (2005)

[2] Gospel of John 8:44

Laughing at Dead Babies

2009-09-17T10:51:00.001-05:00

"Women must have control over their own bodies."

"Safe and legal abortion is every woman's right."

"Who decides? You decide."

"Freedom of choice - a basic American right."

"I remember laughing when we made those slogans up. We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then..." - Bernard Nathanson, M.D., co-founder of NARAL. [1]

[1] The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom, David Kupelian (2005)

Why read Suppressed Truth blogs; I can sleep at night knowing the news is trustworthy, can't I?

2009-08-22T10:29:00.011-05:00

Sumner Redstone (Sumner Redstone and his family are majority owners of CBS Corporation, Viacom, and MTV Networks, BET, and movie production and distribution Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks movie studios, and are equal partners in MovieTickets.com [1]) had this to say to the 1999 TIMEWARNER Global Forum gathering in Shanghai, in communist China:

"(Avoid being) unnecessarily offensive to foreign governments..Journalistic integrity must prevail...But that doesn't mean that journalistic integrity should be exercised in a way that is unnecessarily offensive to the countries in which you operate." [2] [3]

Google Launches Censored China Site
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer, Wednesday, January 25, 2006;(01-25) 13:09 PST SHANGHAI, China (AP) --

Google Inc. launched a search engine in China on Wednesday that censors material about human rights, Tibet and other topics sensitive to Beijing — defending the move as a trade-off granting Chinese greater access to other information.

Within minutes of the launch...searches for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement showed scores of sites omitted and users directed to articles condemning the group posted on Chinese government Web sites. Searches for other sensitive subjects such as exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence, and terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" yielded similar results.

Yet the move has already been criticized by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which also has chided Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com for submitting to China's censorship regime. [4]

[1] Sumner Redstone (Wikipedia; accessed 8/22/09)

[2] Drudge Manifesto, Matt Drudge, p.139

[3] Author's note: Since when did the desire to avoid being "offensive" serve as check upon journalists operating on U.S. soil?

[4] "Google Launches Censored China Site" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/25/international/i130906S60.DTL&type=tech; accessed 8/22/09)

Abortion Linked to Cancer - Can You Imagine Why You No One Has Told You That?

2009-08-20T06:31:00.002-05:00

Anyone who was around in the 1990's and who has a good memory will recall the feminist's attacks on American society in general, and the medical profession specifically, for allegedly neglecting breast cancer in favor of focus on illnesses more likely to impact men. That decade marked the emergence of so-called 'breast cancer awareness', a program still going strong a decade later.

Setting aside the simple fact the incidence of breast cancer has been steadily declining in the United States ever since data began to be collected, it is ironic that male chauvinism should have been implicated in breast cancer - at least the prevention and treatment of it.

Ironic because perhaps no single factor science is aware of contributing to the incidence of breast cancer is greater than those factors which stem directly, inescapably, from feminism.

New research [1] adds to the pile of growing - actually overwhelming - evidence [2]that abortion is linked to higher incidence of breast cancer. In case the reader has lived her life in a cave, the reader should know that the landmark decision allowing unrestricted access to abortion in America (Roe v. Wade) was entirely orchestrated by the feminist left.

If all this is not enough, it is also apparent - except to most women in American since they aren't told the facts - that 'the Pill' causes breast cancer -

Dr. David Longfellow, head of the Chemical and Physical Carcinogenesis Branch at the National Cancer Institute complained that "It’s been an uphill battle to convince the mainstream that estrogen initiates cancer by damaging DNA." [3]

In fact:

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes combined oral contraceptives and combined menopausal therapy as "carcinogenic to humans." [4]

One of the great tragedies of our age is that women have, en masse, "exchanged the truth of God for a lie...(and) receive()in themselves the due penalty for their (actions)" (Romans 1: 25, 27)

Citations
[1] "Study: Turkish Women with Abortions Have Statistically Significant 66% Increase in Breast Cancer Risk / Researchers Likely Underestimated the Risk, Reports Scientist"; Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer; Press Release; Date: July 28, 2009 (http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/press_releases/090728/index.htm; accessed 8/18/09)

[2] "The vast majority of scientific studies have shown that abortion causes an increase in breast cancer, including 16 out of 17 statistically significant studies." Abortion, Conservapedia (http://www.conservapedia.com/Abortion_breast_cancer#Abortion_and_Breast_Cancer; accessed 8/18/09) Also, (http://www.jpands.org/vol8no2/malec.pdf)

[3] Miller K. Estrogen and DNA damage: The silent source of breast cancer? J Natl Cancer Inst 2003;95:100-2; cited in Coalition on Abortion Breast Cancer, frequently asked questions page (http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/abc.html; accessed 8/18/09)

[4] . Cogliano V, Grosse Y, Baan R, Secretan B, El Ghissassi F. Carcinogenicity of combined oestrogen-progestagen contraceptives and menopausal treatment. Lancet Oncology 2005;6:552-553. Also, Press Release No. 167, "IARC Monographs Programme Finds Combined Estrogen-Progestogen Contraceptives (the "pill") and Menopausal Therapy Are Carcinogenic to Humans," World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, July 29, 2005. See . Cited in ibid [3].

Who will buy them, except Green extremists?

2009-05-30T06:57:00.003-05:00

It begins to appear that after emerging from bankruptcy (if it ever does) GM will be 70% owned by the federal government and perhaps 15% by the U.A.W. membership.

What thinking American would plop down $30,000 for a car produced by such a company when alternatives like Toyota, and Honda are available, except an environmental extremist motivated by ideology, not normal consumer discrimination in the marketplace?

The truth finally emerges

2009-05-30T06:41:00.003-05:00

Why did the Big Three American automakers shun making small cars all through the 1990's and early 2000's - only because they were greedy fat-cats selling cars to indifferent, energy guzzling Americans?

No - a key reason they didn't build small cars was because their labor costs were so high, they couldn't make any money on them. This from a Breitbart.com posted Associated Press article discussing the pending bankruptcy of GM:

Smaller costs after bankruptcy should help the companies make money even though compact cars carry far smaller profit margins than pricey SUVs. ("With bankruptcy looming, a new GM begins to emerge" - May 29 04:56 PM US/Eastern, By TOM KRISHER; AP Auto Writer

Anyone would have been hard pressed to find such an analysis of American automakers woes published before the automakers recent troubles. It wasn't worthwhile for most journalists and politicians to state the obvious and offend the unions, union supporters, and environmentalists; the latter wanting big-car production to come to end by whatever means, including bankruptcy.

Church modeled after government and free-enterprise

2008-09-15T11:43:00.012-05:00

This post has been moved to my new blog, which is devoted exclusively to matter of faith and religion, titled: Suppressed Truth in Church and Faith (http://suppressedinfaith.blogspot.com).

See my personal Profile on this page to link to my different blogs, categorized by topic.

What does opposition to truth look like?

2008-08-28T08:22:00.002-05:00

Some will automatically think of the Medieval Church's alleged opposition to science as among the best examples extant - in world history - of opposition to truth. It is worthwhile to acquaint oneself with the words of John Tyndale, the prominent 19th century Irish physicist, as regards his support for the germ theory of disease - then also being promoted by Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister - and the opposition he met with:

"My own interference with this great question, while sanctioned
by many eminent names, has been also an object of varied and
ingenious attack. On this point I will only say that when angry
feeling escapes from behind the intellect, where it may be useful as
an urging force, and places itself athwart the intellect, it is liable
to produce all manner of delusions. Thus my censors, for the most
part, have levelled their remarks against positions which were never
assumed, and against claims which were never made." *

From this one can see that one does not have to be promoting superstition and old wives's tales to meet with adamant opposition. In Tyndale's quote we read what it was like to put forward in the scientific community, sixteen years after the American Civil War and a full 158 years after the death of Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek - the Father of Microbiology -, the idea that microorganisms cause infection in wounds.

* Essays on the Floating-matter in the Air in Relation to Putrefaction and
Infection, by John Tyndall, F.R.S. London, Longmans, Green & Co.,
1881, p. 27.

How many know, and why do we assume?

2008-08-02T06:15:00.003-05:00

Facts about global warming "science"

Whether or not governments will spend trillions of dollars, and businesses and individuals will be forced to spend additional trillions of dollars - dollars that could be spent on improving Third World access to fresh water, or improving access to health care around the world -; whether those trillions will be spent on reinventing our use of energy to forestall so-called [1] "global warming", is largely dependent on the quality of science done for decision makers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1998 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.

Now, most people - at least most Americans - are probably disposed to believe that in regards to climate change policy, while the stakes are high, precisely because they are high they can rest assured that the IPCC is composed of relatively competent scientist doing their critical work in a relatively straightforward scientific manner. It is too bad that people are willing to do for climate change science what they are unwilling to do with most of what is important in their own daily lives - take anything for granted. For, it so happens that the science being done by the IPCC does not even meet the most minimal standards of quality control.

Here are the facts:

The IPCC does not use uniform principles in its forecasts about the future

When most people think about predicting the future they don't automatically think about the word science. They may think about Biblical prophets, or they may think about alleged seers, such as Nostradamus. When the notion of predicting the future, and science, are mentioned in the same context, the average person may be disposed to think about the always uncertain ability of medical doctors to predict the long-term health impact of cigarette smoking, or contraceptive use. In regards to natural phenomena, we naturally think about the "science" of predicting the future of weather.

Now, the phrase "predicting the future" doesn't sound very scientific, so whenever possible the scientific community will substitute a more scholarly word. In regards to weather and climate, the substitute word for the phrase "predicting the future" is forecasting.

One might suppose that, being scientists, meteorologists and climatologists would be disposed to insist on uniform principles in forecasting. Insistence on use of uniform principles is pervasive in the scientific community; that is why all scientist use the metric system in weights and measures, even as all the rest of the humanity does not. It so happens that uniform principles do exist for forecasting, and it also happens that the IPCC, who will decide if the entire world should change its behavior, plus spend trillions to forestall global warming, does not trouble itself to apply uniform principles of forecasting to its forecasts.

Principles of forecasting

Research on the science of forecasting has been conducted since the 1930's. Studies which compare methods and sources of evidence have been conducted to determine which forecasts are the most accurate. In 1997, the Forecasting Principles Project (FPP) was created with the objective of summarizing all useful knowledge about forecasting. The FPP led to the Principles of Forecasting handbook, available in a PDF/Adobe Acrobat file format at http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/researchers.html.

Principles of forecasting ignored and grossly violated

140 forecasting principles have evolved over the decades of research done on forecasting as a science, since the 1930s; they have been codified by the Forecasting Principles Project so that science may apply a uniform standard to apply for all forecasting. 127 of those 140 principles are relevant to procedures used to arrive at the climate forecasts made in the latest IPCC report [2] and those procedures definitely violated 60 principles, and probably violated at least another 12 [3]

Summary

Catholics who took for granted that their children were safe in the custody of priests, and Brit's who took for granted the veracity of Neville Chamberlain's promise of "peace for our times", learned the hard way that when the stakes are high, the best policy is to take nothing for granted. As the world prepares to embark on the unprecedented task of attempting to manage the earth's climate, which necessarily will involve unprecedented expenditures of human talent, energy and treasure, it would behoove us all to insist on good science at the very outset of the adventure. In at least one way, the science that the IPCC would have us move forward on, today, is badly flawed. The scientific proofs of the ability of the IPCC to predict climate are nonexistent. This a prior situation needs to change before anything else is done.

[1] "So-called" because only the northern hemisphere shows any evidence of warming

[2] The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report

[3] "Global Warming: Expert's Opinions versus Scientific Forecasts", Green & Armstrong, NCPA Policy Report No. 308, February 2008; ISBN 31-56808-183-9 (www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st308)

Fear of death, fear of man, fear of God

2008-07-25T22:15:00.002-05:00

A common, even dominant, theme in motion pictures today are scenarios in which a bad person with a gun - or other lethal weapon - compels the hero to act against his will. This theme is not entirely new, but what is new is the ridiculous extremes of coercion demanded by the wicked person. Screenwriters and directors love to force these so-called dilemmas to the hilt, thereby requiring the audience to identify with the hero and ask themselves the question: "Would I eat dog shit if someone was holding a gun to my head?"

I have been examining this phenomena in film and have reached a conclusion - Screenwriters (and Hollywood in general) like to pursue this dilemma because to the extent they can get America to answer yes to the "dog shit dilemma", to that extent they exonerate themselves from lifestyle choices that are increasing devoid of sacrifice and courage, and which also compromise human dignity. After all, many of the screenwriters are from the same baby-boom generation which stared service to their country in South Vietnam in the face, and then blinked. Also, their children who are screenwriters, stare Iraq and he War on Terror and blink.

For the godless, dead generation of the Left which dominates Hollywood these days life, and the enjoyment of it, are the greatest goods to which we can aspire. In a world where there is no absolute truth, there is nothing absolutely worth dying for. Consequently, we can look forward to film heroes debasing themselves lower and lower and lower when faced with a choice of life with indignity, or death with dignity.

Oddly, all the above stems from the fear of God. As the godless man flees from God, like banished Cain, he rushes to embrace life. However, Christ said that in order to find our lives, we must lose them.

How many Christians today would be willing to take a bullet rather than debase themselves (we who were created in the image of God) under the will of evil men? These days, it seems less and less

Lean, cholesterol-free corpses

2008-07-21T13:19:00.002-05:00

The ever progressive politicos of New York City took another giant step forward toward assuring the denizens of their metropolis don't expire prematurely from obesity, clogged arteries or second-hand smoke. This from Reuters:

"Starting on Saturday, health inspectors can slap fines of up to $2,000 on fast-food and casual-dining chains if calorie counts are not displayed on their menus in the same font and format as the name or price of food items.

The move follows the city's 2003 ban on public smoking and a ban on artery-clogging trans fats that began on July 1." - By Edith Honan; Sun Jul 20, 2:13 AM ET

Meanwhile the spread of deadly, incurable sexual transmitted diseases marches forth, not only unabated in New York City; the city fathers aid and abet the epidemic. This from CBS:

"Now might be the time for New Yorkers to take advantage of the free condom campaign the city promotes. A new study by the city's Health Department found more than a quarter of adult residents are infected with the herpes virus.

According to the study, 26 percent of city residents have the virus that causes genital herpes, an incurable sexually-transmitted infection that can cause painful genital sores and can double a person's risk for HIV.

Nationally, 19 percent of the population has the infection, according to the department.

More specifically, the study showed that the rate is higher among women than men – 36 percent compared to 19 percent – and was higher among blacks than whites – 49 percent versus 14 percent, respectively.

It also found the rate was higher among gay men than heterosexual men – 32 percent compared to 18 percent.

'Genital herpes alone will not cause serious problems for most people,' said Dr. Julia Schillinger, Director of Surveillance for the Health Department's Bureau of STD Prevention and Control and lead author of the study. 'But some people will have painful genital sores and the infection fosters the spread of HIV. We advise New Yorkers to protect themselves and others. Using condoms consistently will help you avoid getting or spreading genital herpes.'" - Jun 10, 2008 10:00 am US/Eastern

Now, NYC has been handing out condoms free since 1971. You can read all about it at their "fun" website called, "Get some - NYC" (Get it? "Get Some"). The website address is www.nyc.gov/condoms.

So, since the genesis of the sexual revolution (around 1971) New York City has been leading the way in providing its residents with free contraceptives, and even taxes those residents to maintain a website that encourages them to "get some" condoms (and what else?) All the while the STD infections rate in NYC has been climbing.

New York City might be better off handing out free cigarettes and greasy cheeseburgers, than free condoms. A corpse is still a corpse, no matter what the cause of death.

The Fear That Someone, Somewhere, Might Be Having A Good Time

2008-07-20T09:57:00.002-05:00

The fear that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time is the attitude of heart that secular hedonists - who dominate the media, Hollywood and University faculty - ascribe to Bible believing Christians. If this be so, than it must be equally fair to assert that secular hedonists are persons who:

fear that someone, somewhere, might be acting responsibly.

"The Grapes of Wrath" boomerangs

2008-07-16T16:11:00.003-05:00

Most of us are familiar with the Pulitzer and Nobel prize winning novel "The Grapes of Wrath" of John Steinbeck, force-fed to most high school and college students in America.

The novel ends with a scene in which a man, malnourished and at the brink of death, because he can't get food and drink from the likes of fat and indifferent Republicans, obtains succor from the breast of woman - a total stranger - whose breasts are in milk. Young people are forced-fed this book to acquaint them with the horrors of persons - especially humble working-class folk - being neglected by overfed conservative, Republican, Herbert Hoover types.

Now, almost 70 years later, the American people have seen the price of oil-based energy more than double in price in two year span, and working-class folk are feeling it the worst. High energy costs are spreading to the cost of food, exasperating the pain.

How does the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt respond? It refuses to allow drilling for oil in places in North America where oil is thought to lie in abundance, and reassures real persons who are losing their homes, can't afford food and can't afford gasoline to get to work that, for the sake of the environment, they need to be patient and trust that someday affordable, abundant alternative fuels will be available. In the meantime they can just suffer.

Time for the working class to go find a spare fuel pump to suckle upon.

Is anybody paying attention?

2008-07-15T14:06:00.002-05:00

With gasoline at the pumps now at around $4.15 (national average), Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Barak Obama, is proposing to remedy the problem by giving Americans an "energy rebate", meaning a tax rebate, to help ease the pain. This from a U.S. Treasury whose debt Moody's Investors Services has threatened to downgrade from AAA to AA. This from a candidate who represents a political party who has castigated President George W. Bush for seven years as a leader motivated almost solely by securing our nation's oil interests around the globe. If only the charge were true, than maybe we wouldn't be in the fix we are in.

Why is Barak Obama likened to a rock star? What is the source of his popularity? A nincompoop could come with a better energy policy for America than handing out rebate checks from a sadly strained treasury.

Renaissance + Enlightenment = Light; Christianity = Darkness? What is the truth?

2008-07-11T12:18:00.015-05:00

While it may not be true, I as a graduate of Michigan public schools and a state sponsored Michigan University, and a diligent consumer of mass media, have always been told, and thus tended to believe, that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were intellectual movements akin to the dawning of the sun upon a humanity cloaked in darkness beneath dark clouds of religious superstition, intractability, ignorance and blind faith.

This posting will mark the beginning of an effort to get at the truth and will be updated constantly as information comes to me. Those wishing to comment may find that I will wish to copy and paste their contributions (always attributed) onto the main page.

Here goes;

This from Open University (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/renaissance2/religion.htm; accessed 7/11/08)-
"The Renaissance has in the past been associated with a process of secularisation, an association which now seems dubious in many respects. The church was the inspirer and purchaser of a vast quantity of Renaissance art. To understand man was to understand him in relation to his creator and humanist scholarship was devoted to furthering this end. The enthusiasm for classicizing did not mean an indifference to, or abandonment of, Christianity. Certainly there was a huge increase in the number of works of art, both literary and visual, that were concerned with matters secular. But the tools of the new learning were also applied to a better understanding of God - and used as a means of acquiring salvation.

Renaissance religious art was created to, and still does, inspire reverence and awe. But it also has to be seen as part of an elaborate insurance policy, increasingly funded by a laity that wanted assurance of salvation. Salvation within Catholicism was acquired through a combination of faith and good works, this latter taking many forms: the provision of masses for the dead; the artistic embellishment of places of worship; the provision of charity. Such works bought time off in purgatory, the place where the sinner suffered punishment for sins not fully paid for on earth...

It became customary for families amongst the urban elite not just to pay for single memorials or works of art, but to take over patronage of whole institutions: monasteries, hospitals or churches. In this way an enduring family reputation, eternal salvation and the beauty of the city could be simultaneously achieved. Frequently religious patronage was expressed through confraternities, associations directed to spiritual ends, which ranged from a handful of humble artisans attached to a parochial altar to huge companies of the wealthy and powerful. The Medici effectively controlled the most potent of such associations in Florence, the Compagnia dei Magi, based in the Convent of San Marco; it gave them a vehicle for spectacularly pious donations and unrivalled PR opportunities as they re-enacted each year the journey of the Magi to Bethlehem.

Protestantism brought a revolutionary change... Within Protestant theology there were no intermediaries between man and God, no need to appeal to saints, no purgatory to be escaped. There was a massive hostility to what was deemed to have been the superstition and idolatry that had erected this complex and expensive structure of salvation. Battle lines were hardened as print proved to be a devastating weapon in the ideological war, deployed to devastating effect in the form of cheap visual images and vernacular tracts that mobilised mass opinion. It was a split which came to manifest itself in every aspect of life from life-cycle rituals to international diplomacy.

So the values of the Renaissance were expressed differently in Protestant countries where there was active destruction of, rather than patronage of, religious art, and an emphasis rather on The Word, God as revealed in the text of the New Testament."

So we see from the above that "(Renaissance thinker) did not reject Christianity; quite the contrary, many of the Renaissance's greatest works were devoted to it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life." [1]

[1] "Renaissance" from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#cite_note-starn-10; accessed 7/11/08)
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"'Age of Enlightenment' and 'The Enlightenment' refer particularly to the intellectual and philosophical developments of that age (eighteenth century)...The era is marked by political aspiration towards governmental consolidation, nation-creation and greater rights for common people, attempting to supplant the arbitrary authority of aristocracy and established churches...its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals...Following the revolution of knowledge commenced by René Descartes and Isaac Newton, and in a climate of increasing disaffection with repressive rule, Enlightenment thinkers believed that systematic thinking might be applied to all areas of human activity, and carried into the governmental sphere, in their explorations of the individual, society and the state. Its leaders believed they could lead their states to progress after a long period of tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny which they imputed to the Middle Ages...The continent of Europe had been ravaged by religious wars in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. When political stability had been restored, notably after the Peace of Westphalia and the English Civil War, an intellectual upheaval overturned the accepted belief that mysticism and revelation are the primary sources of knowledge and wisdom. Instead (according to scholars who split the two periods), the Age of Reason sought to establish axiomatic philosophy and absolutism as foundations for knowledge and stability...The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy and reason as primary values of society. [1]

Many, but by no means all, early Romantic writers like Chateaubriand, 'Novalis' (Georg Philipp 'Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg') and Samuel Taylor Coleridge inherited (a) Counter-Revolutionary antipathy towards the philosophes. All three directly blamed the philosophes (in France) and Aufklärer (in Germany) for devaluing beauty, spirit and history in favour of a view of man as a soulless machine and the universe as a meaningless, disenchanted void lacking richness and beauty. Of particular concern to early Romantic writers was the allegedly anti-religious nature of the Enlightenment, even though very few of the philosophes and Aufklarer were actually atheists. (Most were deists.) This view of the Enlightenment as an age hostile to religion is common ground between these Romantic writers and many of their conservative, Counter-Revolutionary predecessors...By the middle of the nineteenth century, the memory of the French Revolution was fading and Romanticism had more or less run its course. In this optimistic age of science and industry, there were few critics of the Enlightenment, and few explicit defenders. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is a notable (and highly influential) exception. After an initial defence of the Enlightenment during his so-called 'middle period' (late-1870s to early 1880s), Nietzsche turned vehemently against it and subscribed to the earlier view of conservative Counter-Revolutionaries like Burke and Maister who blamed the French Revolution (which Nietzsche always hated) on the Enlightenment...It was not until after WWII that 'the Enlightenment' re-emerged as a key organising concept in social and political thought and the history of ideas. Shadowing it has been a resurgent Counter-Enlightenment literature blaming the eighteenth century faith in reason for twentieth century totalitarianism." [2]

What is clear from this is that the so-called benefits of the Enlightenment are hotly disputed. Can anything so hotly disputed by settled truth? It begins to seem clear then that the Renaissance was far from anti-Christian - that it, in fact, embraced religious faith and piety - and that the "Enlightenment" was in part a liberal/intellectual reaction to religious wars in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and like all reactions was not necessarily new truth, just new approaches to human affairs. The consequences of those approaches have not been all good, some terrible. One begins to wonder then how the Renaissance and the Enlightenment can be viewed as undisputed triumphs of godless good over religious evil?

[1] Age of Enlightenment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enlightenment; accessed 7/11/08)

[2] Counter-Enlightenment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Enlightenment; accessed 7/11/08

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Ambroise Pare - pious, devout Catholic, and father of modern surgery

If one really wants to turn the masses against religion, at least get them to take their faith with a grain of salt, all one need do is seek to establish that faith - particularly the Christian faith - stood in the way of the progress of medicine. Naturally, people are very sensitive about their own health, and any threat to it is not taken kindly.

So, how true is it that religion retarded the progress of medicine until the Renaissance or Enlightenment? A study of the life and times of Ambroise Pare is instructive. Born in 1510 into a humble surroundings in a country town in France, Pare never learned Latin or Greek - a requirement to be licensed as a practicing physician or surgeon in that day. Pare gained most of his knowledge and experience of medicine - surgery in particular - by volunteering to accompany the king's troops on their various military campaigns where he mended badly wounded soldiers. His approach to surgery in general, and his innovative solutions in particular, earned him the attention of the royal court, which he enjoyed all his life.

Later in his life he gained royal approval to publish a book containing many of his discoveries and techniques. This approval sidestepped the procedure of submitting medical books for publication to the ruling medical elite, and moreover was written in the native language of his country (France) so it was readily accessible. The publication of this book by the Huguenot Pare stirred the medical elite of his day into apoplexy. Let us allow the "father of modern surgery" to describe for himself the attacks made against him, and the root motive behind them:

"For more than thirty years I have been printing my
treatises on Surgery ; which not only have been opposed
by no man, but were received by one and all with favour
and applause ; which made me think, if I gathered them
together, I should be doing a thing very agreeable to the
public. Which I having accomplished, and that at an
expense past thinking — when I would make them see
the light, lo and behold, the physicians and the surgeons
have set themselves to obscure and quench them, for this
sole reason, that I wrote them in our mother-tongue, in
phrases quite easy to be understood. The physicians
feared lest all who should get the book into their hands
would be advised how to take care of themselves in time
of sickness, and would not be at the pains to call them
in. The surgeons were afraid lest the barbers, reading
these my works, would receive full instruction in all the
operations of surgery, and would come to be as good as
themselves, and so trespass on their domains. For the
rest, both parties in general were moved by wilful hate,
envy, and jealousy, to see Ambroise Par6 in some reputation
as a man well esteemed in his profession. . . .
Let me tell them I can pay them back. And I ask you,
Gentlemen, touching this charge of indecency, to remember
it is one thing to treat of the right conduct of
life, according to moral philosophy, for the instruction
of tender youth, and another thing wholly different to
speak of natural things, like a true physician or surgeon,
for the instruction of full-grown men." [1]

So, we see that at bottom, the objection to Pare among the medical elite was that he threatened their pocketbooks; those objecting were not motivated by serious religious objection to Pares advances. Indeed, Pare was among the most religious and pious of men, always being careful to describe his work thus:

"I treated him, God healed him."

[1] Ambroise Paré and His Times, 1510-1590 By Stephen Paget; Published 1897
G.P. Putnam's sons (http://books.google.com/books?id=s2PsYxqqiSIC)

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Joseph Lister - Quaker and son of Quakers, and father of antiseptic surgery

Joesph Lister was born and raised in a Quaker household in Essex County, England, at a time when Quakers were almost as distinctive in English society as Amish are in America today. This included the donning of special clothing absent of color and of simple design. While he would eventually relinquish his membership in the "Friends", he would subsequently join, with his wife, the Episcopal Church.

In his 30th year, after performing his second public* surgery is his capacity as assistant surgeon at University of Edinburgh, Lister wrote the following in a letter to his sister:

"I feel, I may say, truly thankful I was able able to go through it as I did. Just before the operation began, I recollected that there was only one Spectator whom it was important to consider. One present alike in the the operating theatre and in the private room; and this consideration gave me increased firmness...I trust I may be enabled in the treatment of patients always to act with a single eye to their good, and therefore to the glory of our Heavenly Father. If a man is able to act in this spirit, and is favored to feel something of the sustaining love of God in his work, truly the practice of surgery is a glorious occupation." [1]

Many people suffer under the delusion that somehow, by the late 1800's (Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859), while the church, and persons of faith, labored in darkness and suffered the consequences of closed minds and superstitious thinking, the natural sciences were plowing ahead into a shimmering light, spreading abroad a bounty of benefits for humanity. The reality is quite different. This account of conditions in typical hospitals in the 1860 in Great Britain:

"Accordingly more cubic feet were allotted to each bed ; the accumulation of suppurating cases in close proximity to one another was discountenanced ; and the ordinary rules of cleanliness, as they were then understood, were more or less rigidly enforced. But even in the cleanest wards this did not amount to much. One or possibly two jugs and basins and a few towels were considered sufficient for the ablutions of the staff, and nothing more potent than soap and water, possibly tinted with a dash of Condy's fluid, was used to purify their hands. No more efficient means were employed for the cleansing of instruments, including the common probe which circulated from patient to patient, or for washing the marine sponges which were then in common use. But if these futile attempts at surgical cleanliness excite a smile, still more would the habits of the staff, acting according to their lights, have astonished a modern observer. The nurses indeed presented a neat and clean appearance in that limited number of institutions which had felt the influence of Florence Nightingale. But no such attempt to satisfy the proprieties was made by the surgeon and his assistants. When a dresser or a house-surgeon entered upon his term of office he hunted up an old coat, in the lapel of which he probably carried a wisp of ordinary whipcord for tying arteries. This garment did duty for six months or a year, and was then very properly discarded. There was no such time limit however for the surgeons themselves. Their operating coats lasted from year to year, and eventually acquired an incrustation of filth of which the owners appeared unconscious, or even proud. This set the tone, and some who were then young can remember the scorn with which they were greeted when, in their reforming zeal, they broke away from ancient custom, boldly took off their coats, and operated with up-turned shirt-sleeves. Nor was this all. Although cases of erysipelas were removed to special erysipelas wards, when these were provided, patients stricken with the other hospital diseases were left side by side with the healthy patients, the nurses and dressers passing indiscriminately from one to the other. Dusty pictures lined the walls. The sanitary arrangements were primitive ; in Glasgow Lister complained that the closets communicated directly with the wards, — by no means an exceptional arrangement. The supply of water in the theatres and other parts of the hospitals was often wholly inadequate. Finally, and perhaps worst of all, the duties of the house-surgeons often included the making of post-mortem examinations, from which they might be called away to assist at an operation or to deal with some accidental wound after such slight purification as decency appeared to demand. All this shows that our fathers, in spite of their advocacy of cleanliness and pure air, had succeeded unconsciously in providing the best possible forcing houses for the propagation and transplantation of hospital diseases. They were not ashamed to speak of 'a good old surgical stink,' and hardly noticed the sickly odour which at all times pervaded the wards." [2]

In the mid-1860's Lister finally began to penetrate the mystery - a mystery that had bedeviled man since the dawn of history - of why wounds (lacerations, cuts, punctures) to the human body frequently - usually - became infected, resulting in loss of limb or life. Early on in his medical career Lister had made the study of inflammation in injured flesh his particular preoccupation. For that reason, he was able to discover - where no one else could - in the work of a certain French chemist, one Louis Pasteur, a key to the mystery. By reading about Pasteur's work, Lister was able to see that infection in a wound is a species of fermentation. And just as Pasteur had been able to control and manage fermentation by excluding micro-organisms or, alternately, introducing select micro-organisms, so too could Lister influence and manage infection in a wound. Lister began by the application of carbolic acid, first undiluted, later diluted in water or mixed with oil or putty. The results were revolutionary and Lister began to publish his findings. He had found a way to limit or eliminate infections in most wounds whether incurred by accident or inflicted by surgeon in the course of treatment. Nevertheless:

"For years afterwards many (surgeons) who had not seen Lister's practice or obtained similar results themselves positively did not believe that his account of it could be accurate. They had been accustomed to see the opening of such an abscess followed in a day or two by a profuse and evil-smelling discharge, instead of which under the new treatment they were told that only a small quantity of inodorous clear serum, perhaps only a few drops, escaped at each changing of the dressing. They had been accustomed to see the patient pass at once into a hectic state, from which he was too often only relieved by death. Under the new treatment they heard instead of a gradual improvement in general health, while case after case was brought to a successful conclusion. It was perhaps naturally thought that Lister's enthusiasm had made him forget failures and exaggerate successes." [3]

Indeed, while by 1869, students at Edinburgh University and Medical School could write these words of encouragement to Lister over the prospect of his coming to that school to teach:

"We the undersigned students of medicine of the Edinburgh
University and Medical School, beg most respectfully to invite you to
become a candidate for the Chair of Clinical Surgery, now rendered
vacant by the resignation of our venerated Teacher, Professor Syme.
We take this step from a conviction that you are the man most
capable, from your high attainments and achievements in Surgery,
to maintain the dignity and renown which have been conferred upon
the Chair and the University by Mr. Syme.

We believe that your researches in various departments of Science,
and your contributions to its Literature, have caused your name
to stand next to that of Mr. Syme amongst the living Surgeons of
Scotland.

Your method of Antiseptic Treatment constitutes a well-marked
epoch in the history of British Surgery, and will result in lasting
glory to the Profession, and unspeakable benefit to mankind.
We feel sure also, that, if you are appointed to this Chair, the
benevolence of your character, and the urbanity of your manners,
will speedily draw around you a large band of attached and devoted
followers." [4]

While they could write these words, only six months later the Secretary of the Infirmary that Lister had labored at for ten years prior to leaving for Edinburgh, and where most of his pioneering work in antiseptic surgery had been performed, had these remarks published in a newspaper and an influential medical journal:

"in their opinion, which is shared by those of their number belonging
to the medical profession, the improved health and satisfactory
condition of the hospital, which has been as marked in the medical
as in the surgical department, is mainly attributable to the better
ventilation, the improved dietary, and the excellent nursing to which
the Directors have given so much attention of late years." [5]

So, we can see from the above that as late as 1870, the progress of medicine was not being blocked by men steeped in religion, but by men of science - surgeons -,who had everything to gain by applying Lister's discovery to their own practices. 1870 is precisely 369 years after the advent of the Renaissance, and approximately 80 years after the end of the Age of Enlightenment. Furthermore, Louis Pasteur was a devout and lifelong Catholic. How then, can Christian faith be construed as an obstacle to the advance of science, at least in medicine, based on the above evidence?

More on opposition, within the medical community, to the germ theory of disease promoted by Pasteur and Lister -

"I am dealing," he said, " with a question on which minds accustomed
to weigh the value of experimental evidence are alone competent
to decide, and regarding which, in its present condition,
minds so trained are as capable of forming an opinion as regarding the
phenomena of magnetism or radiant heat. ' The germ theory of
disease,' it has been said, ' appertains to the biologist and the physician.' Where, I would ask in reply, is the biologist or physician,
whose researches, in connection with this subject, could for one
instant be compared to those of the chemist Pasteur ? It is not the
philosophic members of the medical profession who are dull to the
reception of truth not originated within the pale of the profession
itself." - John Tydale [6]

----------------------------

"In Great Britain the first cordial reception of Lister's
announcement that he had discovered a new principle of
treatment was...followed by sharp criticism from
some eminent and some less distinguished surgeons.
After this not much was said till the year 1869, when the
British Medical Association met in Leeds. Mr. Nunneley, a
well-known surgeon of that city, gave the Address in Surgery,1
the larger part of which (occupying eight columns of the
Journal) was devoted to a strong condemnation of the antiseptic
system, couched in the flowery language which too
frequently took the place of argument in the speeches and
writings of the older surgeons of that time. He referred to
a paper by Hughes Bennett,* the well-known Professor of
Physiology in Edinburgh, in which he opposed the germ
theory. Nunneley professed himself more convinced by the
arguments of Pouchet and Hughes Bennett than by those
of Pasteur and Lister. He said, however, that he had never
tried the antiseptic treatment, but that his colleagues had
done so for three years without obtaining better results than
his own, and that its employment in Leeds was now the exception." [1][7]

"On the whole, as time went on, there was a tendency for
apathy (towards Lister's antiseptic system) to pass into
opposition. To mention antiseptic surgery was to cause irritation,
or at least to elicit a scoff or a sneer; and Lister's name
became to London surgeons like that of Aristides the Just
to the Athenians...Lister, at the time, found it hard to
understand the indifference of his fellow-countrymen. Referring
to the " flask experiment " in the Plymouth address, he says :
" I confess, Mr. President, I am ready to blush for the character
of our profession for scientific accuracy when I see the loose
comments sometimes made upon this experiment ; and I am tempted
to doubt whether some of the commentators can have enjoyed
the advantages of sufficient education either in chemical
physics or in logic." And again, after pointing out that his
own successes were amply confirmed by some obtained
abroad and some in the Naval Hospital at Plymouth, he adds: "
After statements of this conclusive character have been
published regarding what is generally admitted to be the most
urgent medical question of the day, when I consider the
apathy with which they have been received in many quarters,
I cannot avoid being reminded of the language of Macbeth:

'Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder?' (Collected Papers, vol. ii. p. 175 and p. 197)[1][8]

[1]Lord Lister: 2.ed. [Illustr.], by Rickman John Godlee; Published by Macmillan, 1918

[2] ibid

[3] ibid, pg. 190

[4] ibid, pg. 241

[5] ibid, pg. 248

[6] Essays on Floating Matter in the Air in Relation to Putrefication and Infection; London, Longmann, Green & Co., 1881, p. 42

[7] ibid, pg. 311

[8] ibid pgs. 320 & 330
* In the presence of student onlookers

Welfare of the body versus the welfare of the soul

2008-07-10T15:32:00.004-05:00

We are assured by modern secularists that religious faith and superstition were, and continue to be, obstacles to human rights in that they pose a barrier to mankind realizing the full potential of the natural sciences.

These secularists posit that, in the old days, people of faith and superstition opposed a right understanding of the universe by opposing men like Galileo and Copernicus, thereby hindering developments that eventually led to harnessing of electricity, space travel, the Internet and so on. They further posit that religious opposition to a scientific approach to biology - preferring instead to attribute illness to demons and witchcraft - prevented advancements in medicine that might have built and improved upon the works of Hippocrates and Galen at a much earlier date. Finally, they posit that in modern days this stubborn, ignorant, religious/superstitious opposition continues to wreak havoc on humanity, and cite religious/moral opposition to the use of embryonic stem-cells in gene therapy as one example to back their claim.

So, to the secularist, tangible benefits to mankind, such as victory over terrible diseases like Parkinson's Disease, are still held in abeyance by the same insidious forces of religion and superstition that have been operating since before the Dark Ages.

In making these arguments these God-haters fail to explain why, if the good of the body trumps the good of the soul - religion (at least Christian religion) posits the opposite - why do homosexuals and sexual offenders in general, place the good of their souls before the good of their bodies? For, no one would deliberately risk diseases devastating to the welfare of the body - HIV, herpes, hepatitis and many more - if he or she did not believe that the soulish benefits of sexual experience (intimacy; ecstasy; sense of fulfillment, meaning, belonging, approval and acceptance; etc.) outweighed the material risks.

The effectiveness of the "disobedient"

2008-06-23T08:56:00.002-05:00

Yours truly just completed a study of enemies of God, particularly those enemies who have been in operation since the advent of the Modern Era. Those enemies have been in operation principally from the far left of the political spectrum (exceptions include Hitler), and certainly the liberal/progressive wings of literature, the natural sciences, philosophy, religion and more.

One can easily marvel at the inroads they have made, and damage they have wreaked, on Christian authority in the minds and hearts of men, and in the laws of nations. However, upon reflection, it is not so remarkable after all. How difficult is it, really, to persuade men that no concrete proof can be put forward for the existence of, or at least in the involvement in human of affairs, of God?

God must be accepted on faith. The first error man ever made was to doubt God, and it was an enemy of God who sowed that first seed of doubt, which quickly sprang up into a root of rebellion. The disobedient are active in the same way today, and they think their task easy - simply prove that God can't be proved.

Nevertheless, the consequences for man and nations for dismissing God will be real enough. If only people could be made to see that in advance, before the hammer falls.

Teachers as gods

2008-06-20T18:30:00.002-05:00

Leftists understand very well that they will never accomplish their aims if America's children grow up free to think for themselves. That is why communists have always been keen to censor outside information and influences, and inculcate kids in protected environments. Of course, kids now get condoms in school, without parent knowledge or consent, and kids are increasingly brainwashed to accept deviant lifestyles; likewise to be "tolerant". In consequence, I am going to publish a quote below from a 1925 United States Supreme Court decision now, before it is illegal to do so. This quote serves to remind us - even as we are quickly forgetting - who children actually belong to:

"The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."

Let Them Eat Sunshine

2008-06-13T15:48:00.005-05:00

Most of us have heard the callous words allegedly spoken by Marie Antoinette - on the verge of the French Revolution - as people were starving all over France. She is alleged, principally by people on the political left, to have quipped - "Let them eat cake." Never mind that biographers and historians have found no evidence that Marie uttered these words, or anything like them. Small details, like hard evidence, have never hindered leftists.

The lack of evidence about Marie Antoinette makes recent comments by liberal Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, all the more remarkable, since there is no question at all that she uttered them. With the world teetering on the verge of a global recession brought on by an unprecedented rise in energy costs - most especially the cost of crude oil - Speaker Pelosi, in response to pressure from the Right to open up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf haughtily proclaimed:

...the fact is, we CAN'T drill our way out of this problem. But we do have unlimited amounts of sunshine, wind, bio fuels, biomass, and geothermal heat...

Ms. Pelosi failed to explain how sunshine and wind are going to fill up the gasoline tanks of needy Americans (or fill up the government supplied jet she has at her disposal, in her capacity as Speaker); nor does she seem to realize that the near-naked tribesman of Paupa New Guinea also have access to unlimited sunshine, wind, biomass and geothermal but are also among the poorest people on earth. So, if you - the reader - are looking forward to living in a wind and sun beaten grass hut next to a semi-active volcano, laden with lush tropical plants (bio fuel), than Nancy Pelosi and her political party affiliates are the right people for you.

Oh, and regarding the bio fuels -; well, bio fuels are actually made from food crops like corn and sugarcane and the increased demand for those crops for fuels, thanks to hype from people like Pelosi, has led to dramatic increases in food costs, such that people are rioting in the Third word. But what does Pelosi care. After all why not just let them eat sunshine?

Where are we in the cycle?

2008-06-09T14:39:00.004-05:00

The Cycle of Unbelief
by Jeff Miller, M.S.
- published in "Sensible Science" section of Apologtics Press; used by permission -

Societies throughout human history have tended to cycle through the same patterns: acknowledging God, denying God, embracing moral depravity, receiving punishment and destruction from God, repenting, and then recycling again. The Israelites of the Old Testament repeated this cycle several times as recorded in the book of Judges. The pattern starts with human eyes looking upward, worshipping God. As time goes by, we tend to lower our eyes from God, gaze at ourselves, and proclaim that we are more wise and intelligent than God. Many decide that He’s unnecessary and pretend that He does not exist. Humans are then idolized—Caesars, popes, Hollywood stars, American idols. This phase of the cycle commenced in America in the last half century and is illustrated in the world around us in a myriad of ways.

Society claims to be wiser than God in saying that spanking your children is bad because it teaches them to be violent and hurts their self-esteem. Yet God, through Solomon, said that “he who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly” (Proverbs 13:24). Society has arrogantly elevated itself above God. Many in society say that capital punishment is cruel and unusual, yet God required the Israelites to inflict capital punishment for over 15 different crimes, and stoning someone to death was a typical form of capital punishment (Miller, 2002). By deluded human thinking, God is guilty of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Society says that God and government should be separate, but God says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalms 33:12). Society says that homosexuality and other forms of sodomy are acceptable lifestyles that should be endorsed, even encouraged. But God listed homosexuality as a crime worthy of death in the Old Testament (Leviticus 20:13), and said that homosexuals and sodomites will not “inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Society has elevated human beings to the status of gods capable of deciding what is morally right and wrong. Humans do not have to bow down to each other literally, to be guilty of self-worship. Elevating ourselves to the status of gods by disregarding the true God is sufficient. We are arrogant when we dismiss God’s directives, as if we need to understand the reasons behind everything that God tells us to do or not do in His Word. He says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). We are expected to trust Him (Hebrews 11:6).

As the cycle toward spiritual depravity progresses, humans move their eyes still further downward to elevate the animal to a status higher than humans (who already are considered higher than God). The reverence bestowed on animals by the animal rights movement of the last few years, illustrates to the world that America has reached this phase of the cycle, too. Think about it—in the last few decades, activists have splashed paint on women who wear furs, devoted themselves to saving the whales, encouraged using human embryos for testing to promote human welfare while seeking to outlaw the use of animals for research purposes, advocated going vegetarian, etc. It is a crime to break a bald eagle egg before the eagle has hatched, but killing a human baby before it has left its mother’s womb is acceptable to society (“Bald Eagle,” 2002). “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25). God’s approach works. However, the end result of elevating animals is seen in many of the impoverished, primitive Hindu societies of the world, where people lay starving in the streets while healthy cows roam about freely because of their elevated status. Clearly, humans are incapable of making spiritual decisions effectively on their own. “O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).

Often, within this repeated pattern of spiritual decay, human eyes move down even further from God, and the Earth itself becomes elevated to the status of god. America is there, too. Enter the environmentalists. “Mother Earth” must be protected at all costs. “Save the planet.” “Go green.” “No carbon footprints.” The cultures of the past, those that Christian peoples have always regarded as pagan, are now being extolled for their worship of animals and the Earth. The theory of evolution says that the Earth is responsible for our existence and development—i.e., the Earth is our god. We must save it to survive, and we have the omnipotent power to control its destiny. Society says that we should not arrogantly “lord over” nature, since they are our ancestors and have as much value as we have. We humans have just happened to accidentally evolve further than them. (Consider Hollywood’s message to us about its view of nature and the sin of trying to control and have dominion over it in the movie Instinct). In stark contrast, God says that humans are to have dominion “over all the earth” (Genesis 1:26).

Should we be good stewards of God’s creation? Certainly. However, the Earth should never be elevated to the level of respect that it is being given today. Humans should never think so highly of themselves that they presume to control the destiny of the Earth. Contrary to the teachings of global warming advocates, it is not the almighty human who will destroy the Earth in the end. It is Almighty God (2 Peter 3:10-12). It is not murder in God’s sight to kill a plant, no matter how or under what circumstances it is done. God did not command capital punishment to be implemented on those who cut down a tree. Plants are not on the same value level as humans, regardless of whether a committee of morally confused humans decides such (cf. Willemsen, 2008)

On a positive note, if the typical pattern is repeating itself again, then the cycle may be nearing completion and may return to a sane, sensible appraisal of spiritual reality—returning us to the one true God, the Creator. America’s worship of itself, the animal kingdom, and the Earth has been going on for several decades, while worship of God is expelled as primitive. Unfortunately, divine punishment and destruction always occur before the cycle restarts. Although written 2,000 years ago, Paul’s words still hold true:

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen (Romans 1:22-25).

REFERENCES
“Bald Eagle,” (2002), [On-line], URL: http://midwest.fws.gov/eagle/protect/laws.html.

Miller, Dave (2002), “Capital Punishment and the Bible,” [On-line], URL: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/1974.

Willemsen, Ariane, ed. (2008), “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants—Moral Consideration of Plants for their Own Sake,” Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (Berne: Swiss Confederation), April.

Hate and Barak Obama

2008-06-06T09:46:00.002-05:00

Few have noticed, but the standard applied to Barak Obama - in regards to his faith - by his supporters on the left is vastly different than the standard those same people apply to their enemies on the right. According to Obama's leftist supporters, politician on the right are expected to distance themselves from the allegedly hateful theology and worldview held by so-called religious fundamentalists, while Barak gains a pass for a twenty year membership in a church in which racial hatred was endemic. What chances would any Republican have in becoming a nominee for President, let alone holding a job as dog-catcher, if he held had attended a church for twenty years that espoused hatred of blacks?

The holy writ - "pretty childish"?

2008-05-26T12:55:00.004-05:00

Albert Einstein, in a letter written just one year before his death, described the Bible as "pretty childish". He also said, "I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil." (meaning that Einstein - a Jew who fled the holocaust, while millions of his fellow Jews could not - does not believe in any divine punishment for Adolf Hitler) and, "there is some kind of intelligence working its way through nature. But is is certainly not a conventional Christian...religious view."

Now, apparently, since the contents of Einstein's letter - when sold at auction in May 2008 - was worthy or worldwide press coverage, one can safely assume at least some people think Einstein's view of God and the Bible is important. Perhaps those same people will be interested to know that a greater scientist that Einstein, Issac Newton (author of "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica", published in 1687 and said to be the greatest single work in the history of science), thought, wrote and spoke views in complete opposition to Einstein's.

For example, although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."[1] It is also the case that in his own lifetime, Newton wrote more on religion than he did on natural science. Somehow I doubt the press, and other god-haters, will be as diligent in getting the truth out about Newton as they are about Einstein.

[1] Tiner, J.H. (1975). Isaac Newton: Inventor, Scientist and Teacher. Milford, Michigan, U.S.: Mott Media.

The Hegelian Dialectic - Coming soon to a business, school or church near you

2008-05-06T18:50:00.003-05:00

Even if you have never heard of it, you have probably experienced it. The Hegelian dialectic is an approach to human affairs that seeks to deconstruct dogma and replace it with dialogue. Certain smart ones have finally figured out that if mankind is ever going to achieve world peace (as if that were possible) that not even hated dogmatist like fundamental Christians or Muslims can be left out. Using the Hegelian dialectic persons with fixed views on right and wrong are coaxed into dialogue, which, once that has been achieved, the battle is half won. For example, in the Garden of Eden Eve was given one simple commandment - not to eat of tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If she had refused to even entertain a challenge to God's command mankind would have never fallen. However, Satan drew Eve into dialogue, and in so doing gained the advantage. The United States military services teach their inductees to never discuss with their captors anything more than name, rank and serial number. For, once your captor can engage you in dialogue, you are half way to compromising you integrity. Now, using the Bible Literacy Project, the enemies of God are actually trying to reintroduce the Bible into public schools, because they realize that if you simply marginalize Christianity it will flourish on it's own - it doesn't need government support (as the flourishing of Christianity in China demonstrates). So the Hegelians want to reintroduce the Bible to the public schools so as to engage in dialogue about it, and as Satan always does, undermine it's authority. Hegelian dialectic is all about achieving consensus, and is therefore being employed in churches, big businesses and in schools (the latter, to aid teaching about tolerance and respecting diversity, among other objectives). Understand Hegelian dialectics for what it is and resist it by taking strong uncompromising stands on what you know is true, especially the word of God. Hegelians will try to wear you down by shaming you in a group as being uncooperative, stiff-necked, "not a peace lover" and etc. Group pressure can be overwhelming. It plays on our desire to be liked and respected and accepted. No wonder Jesus asked, "When I return, will I find faith?"

Unheralded implications of same-sex marriage

2008-04-27T09:04:00.003-05:00

Dawn Stefanowicz, a Canadian and author of a new book "Out From Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting", spoke in a recent interview of an implication, now being realized in Canada, of same-sex marriage laws. In supplanting heterosexual biology as a key foundation stone of marriage, and as a key foundations stone for parental rights, with a legal foundation (obviously, the only foundation for parenting among homosexuals is legal, since they produce no biological offspring) the state is implicitly denigrating the rights of biological parents. For, if the foundation of parenting is merely legal, than sooner or later the state will begin to find reasons to deny parents rights over their children based on the parent-child biological connection. It will no longer suffice for a parent to say, "I have a right to direct the upbringing of my child because he is my child (biologically)". The parent will have to show that the way he wants to bring up his child is in accordance with the letter and spirit of the law. For example, if a parent believes it is okay to send his child to school with a high sugar, high fat lunch, and the state decides such food is unfit for that child, the state may find in that circumstance causation to fine or even incarcerate a parent for not feeding that child the way the state deems best. Furthermore, if a parent determines to teach a child that certain conduct, such as abortion or homosexuality, is wrong, the state may, at some point, decide to intervene and forbid such teaching that on the basis that such teaching violates the constitution (so-called right to privacy, etc.). Punishment could include fines and prison sentences and even the loss of custody rights to a biological child. This is already the case in Germany, where the biological parents of a child can lose custody if they insist on homeschooling their children.

Notes from Washington

2008-03-27T07:24:00.003-05:00

What follows are some impressions from my first adult visit to Washington, D.C. -

09/24/06 - Am here in Washington to witness my cousin Paul's Navy retirement ceremony. It seems to me that if one wanted to undermine our government, the best place to do so would be here, in proximity to the corridors of power. Of course, elected reps. are concerned about the view of their constituents, but it seems hard to escape the impression that inevitably, persons can be most, or at least greatly, influenced right where they live and work. Satan works subtly, so here would be the place to influence, subtly.

Marginalized in my own life as being, perhaps, too extreme an advocate for the influence of religion on government, it was truly remarkable to see how closely my views are in accord with Lincoln and Jefferson's, whose views are enshrined in their respective memorials. One inscription of Jefferson's, if applied today, would make hate crimes laws, limiting religious speech, impossible.

Another thing I was struck by was the extreme brevity of Benjamin Franklin's "Articles of Confederation" (on display at the National Archives). It sets an example for me, as an aspiring writer, that wisdom, and documents of extreme import need not necessarily be verbose.

9/26/06 - George W. Bush is president; Under Bush, the Left has been bitterly opposed to certain provisions of the Patriot Act, passed in the wake of 911, and enemy combatant detensions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The question arises, why doesn't the Left seemed to care (based on academic, and media coverage) about the snoopings, the unjust detentions, imprisonments, and executions that go on under, and have gone under Communist regimes. It seems clear that to the Left the latter kinds of human right violations are "okay" since they were/are supposedly done in the interests of the greater good of the respective societies where they occurred.

The Hippies did Teach us Something After All.

2008-03-17T07:49:00.004-05:00

Timothy Miller, in his 1991 book "The Hippies and American Values" regales us with a history of the 1960's counterculture movement, exclusive of the New Left - his focus is on the hippies. Using hippie writings, Miller explains the hippie "ethics" of dope, sex, rock 'n roll, community and cultural opposition. Whether an ex-hippie himself or not, Miller cannot abstain from displaying some bias in favor of the hippie ethics - after all, much of those ethics can be boiled down to a philosophy of love and peace. Love and peace as paradigms for living is nothing to sneeze at. Why then, did the hippie led counterculture fade out, while the politically active New Left counterculture, which does not espouse love and peace, but instead confrontation and insurrection, carries on stronger than ever to this day?

The answer is straightforward; however, some foundation needs to be laid first.

Perhaps the best way to highlight the failure of the hippies to achieve their ends is an examination of their communal movement. Miller estimates that at the height of the hippie movement over 1000 rural and 200 urban communes existed. Almost all of those communes disintegrated with a year or two. Again - why? Well for starters, unlike other experiments in communal living (aka: communism), the hippie communes operated on principles of free expression, hedonism, and anarchy - in keeping with the founders "ethics". To this day, hippies still look back on the rock festival Woodstock as the pinnacle experience of, not only free love, but selfless sharing of material goods (it rained a lot at Woodstock and essential services were overwhelmed and failed, so the concert-goers all shared food, fire wood, medical supplies, etc.). What the Woodstock participants, then and now, fail to acknowledge is that the provisions shared-around had to be acquired somewhere to begin with - those provisions weren't lowered down as manna from heaven. If they had been the hippie movement might have survived. It is in the getting of the means of survival and obtaining space in which to survive, that men meet their greatest challenges. Not only were communal members frustrated by the need to obtain necessities of life, they were frustrated by the high cost of obtaining and maintaining land for communes. Does that sound familiar to you non-communal readers who labor at a 9 to 5 job?

Can the stark realities of getting a living, and getting along with our fellow man, be overcome by love and peace? Perhaps, but not the hippie way.

At the Fall, God ejected Adam and Eve from an environment very like the one that the hippies tried to duplicate. That is one reason the hippie ethic still pulls at authors like Timothy Miller, even across the span of 20 years. God does want love and peace for us. He gave it to us once and WE rejected it, in rebelling against His order of things. God did more than get angry at Adam and Eve - in love He put them out of the Garden into a demanding environment where a person is forced to choose between self reliance and reliance upon God. This choice is true story being played out in all history. History is, in reality, a catalog of people on the one hand, struggling on their own (the history taught in universities) or on the other hand the history of people depending on God (recorded in the Bible and kept out of universities).

The hippie movement failed because it tried to usher in a utopia that can never be realized without the Prince of Peace. Christ said:

"Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." (Luke 12: 51-53)

Until Christ comes again, we will not realize full peace; perhaps in our hearts, but not in our experiences - "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me'". (Matthew 16:24). Christ challenge to carry a cross is not an invitation to rest, but an invitation to struggle - with Him.

The hippies had a good goal in mind but poor timing and poor execution. Peace will come in Christ's time, and by His methods, and by His alone.

God's Truth versus Man's Truth

2008-03-15T08:49:00.002-05:00

How many persons understand that the very founders of the so-called Sexual Revolution that swept the country in the 1960's (and carries on worldwide to this day) were sexist? Timothy Miller, in his widely acclaimed work "The Hippies and American Values" (1991, University of Tennessee Press)begrudgingly acknowledges that when the 60's counterculture called for freedom in sex, they meant for men, not for women (pg. 53,54). The Women's Liberation movement (although present in America in the early 1960's) didn't come into its own until later, partly in reaction to the oppression endemic in the counterculture.

Now all this is very instructive - if the 60's counterculture proponents who were all for free sex didn't get it right, as far as feminists are concerned, on the issue of women's roles, than why should we believe they got anything right? Is not truth, truth? Why listen to faulty men, when we have access to the mind of eternal God on the subject of proper conduct in sexual relations. Instead, the blind lead the blind.

By the way, again (see previous blog post on the subject), how can a generation (those who fought WWII) who begot the largest baby boom in U.S. history, credibly be characterized by a subsequent counterculture, who hasn't produces enough babies to replicate itself, as repressed sexually?

An Insurrectionist Strategy - The Correct Response

2008-03-08T08:05:00.004-05:00

Last night in viewing the 1962 production, "The Longest Day" - the movie depicting the Invasion of Normandy (D-Day, June 6, 1944) - I was struck by the fact that at the critical moment Hitler was asleep, having taking a sedative, and had left orders not to awaken him. Here we see a rare instance, when Hitler was at the height of his powers, of him being taken off guard. If we assume that demon possession, or at least demon guidance, was an influence in Hitler's career, than Hitler's failure on June 6 is stark testimony to the biblical truth that only God Himself is eternally vigilant. Normandy was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, and more than that, was an important part of the process of unraveling Satan's plan, in that era, for all of Eurasia.

It is my contention that through the auspices of the Axis powers, Satan's strategy was to use national might to accomplish his ends - the manipulation of entire governments and people groups with their attendant armies, navies and air forces. Not entirely dissuaded by the ignominious defeat of those plans, when the Axis powers surrendered, Satan carried on his big plans through communist Soviet Union and China. (In regards to the Soviet Union - once again massive toe-to-toe confrontation - Ronald Reagan, the 1980's military build up, and SDI - did the trick, as it had done at Normandy.)

It therefore stands to reason, that Satan, defeated in direct confrontation would seek a new strategy - anything but direct confrontation. It is through examining the various Leftist counterculture/insurrectionist movements that have sprung up over the last fifty or sixty years, that one discovers what the new strategy is - namely, subtlety and guile, underground.

How else can one explain the otherwise inexplicable success of a handful of obscure moral degenerates - men and women like Alan Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Abie Hoffman and Susan Sontag - to completely undermine western civilization with their crackpot ideas? How else can one explain the outsized impact of terrorist organizations like the Hezbollah, P.L.O. and Al-Qaeda? How else can one explain the admiration that Leftists feel for the memory of cowards and murderers likes of Che Guevera and Yasar Arafat, and feel for living despots like Fidel Castro? As God the Father feels for His Son, and all who embrace His Son, so Leftists feel for the minions of Satan. Trouble is, there can be no question that, at least in America, Leftists feel more affinity for their own Satanic kind, than so-called Christians feel for their own kind. The apostle Paul commanded believers to: "Greet one another with a holy kiss." (Romans 16:16; 1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12;1 Peter 5:14). All of this is why Christ commands his followers to love one another and be unified. As we Christians fail in keeping these commands of our Commander-in-Chief - fractured as we are over fine points of theology and the tradition of men - Leftists are unified and display more admiration and love for one another, than we the children of the very God of love!

The disintegration of Christian unity is just one more reason for Christians to come out of divisive institutions and into the embrace of true relationship, first with the Father, and second, with one another. Assembled in the desert - so to speak - God can begin to rebuild us as the unified church He intended, so as to stand tall against the enemy - "I (Jesus Christ) will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." (Matthew 16:18b)

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An Insecure Rabble

2008-03-04T10:34:00.002-05:00

The apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Rome (Romans 1:20)
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Not many think about that scripture in terms of weather. Oh sure, people see all kinds of evidence of God in great storms, floods, and the like. What I mean by weather is the changeability of it. Here where I live, near the Great Lakes, water levels are at, or near, historic lows. Despite incontrovertible evidence that Great Lakes levels are variable and subject to cycles, a chicken little mentality prevails; as if the levels will never rise again, or worse again, the levels will continue to drop until the lakes become parched desert. I am convinced these fears are borne of deep seated security fears, identical to those borne by Cain (see "Institution or No Institution? - That is the Question" post) and when found in persons, are proportional to their faith, or lack of faith, in God. In Genesis 8, verses 21, 22, we read of God's promise to a shaken humanity that he, man, can depend on God to maintain nature (not that we deserve it - which is the whole point):

Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

"As long as the earth endures,
seed time and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."

No doubt, it is god-hating liberal fear that makes Leftists so concerned about the environment. Whenever nature seems to be straying out of bounds, liberals react in horror that, "nature is about to turn on us". Of course, like spoiled children trained up in Freudian psychology, liberals want to blame their parents (in this case God) for every threat to their well being, real or imagined. God-fearing persons, who tend to be conservative in outlook, by extension become targets of liberal wrath. It is conservatives who are, of course, to blame for so called "man made" global warming. Not able to get at God in heaven, they pick on His representatives here on earth.

Low Cost Righteousness

2008-03-04T10:13:00.002-05:00

Ever met anybody who took pride in being inhuman? Every culture sets up a standard for what it takes to be a worthwhile human being. Mayan priests, who sacrificed human beings, were looked up to in their culture as persons to emulate. Today, in the West, one dominant standard of perfection is to be caring (for humanity and the earth); generous (with other people's money) and tolerant. Don these priestly garments and one is made righteous. This is low cost righteousness. All one has to do, according to this Western standard, is think a certain way and one becomes righteous in the eyes of his fellow man.

Conversely, the righteousness the comes from God carried a steep price. It was purchased for us by God with the incomparable treasure of His only son. Furthermore, Christians are called to mortify the flesh, taking up their cross daily as they follow in Christ's footsteps. Liberals, who imbibe low cost righteousness, do just the opposite - indulging the flesh and reveling in their existence with every ounce of their strength. They are the cotton candy merchants of morality. What they offer is low cost, tastes sweet and is a poor substitute for real food.

Obama for pope or for president?

2008-03-03T18:45:00.003-05:00

According to CNSNews.com, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. If so, it perplexes me as to why it is okay for a Democratic candidate for President of the United States to baldly quote scripture as an argument for making laws in the United States, and it is unacceptable for a Republican to do the same?

What to Kill

2008-02-28T20:50:00.003-05:00

It has evolved, thanks to the Left, that it is unconscionable in warfare not only to kill non-combatant women and children, but soldiers as well, if it can be at all helped. The current thinking is, that usually people groups are only the hapless pawns of their leaders, whose deluded thinking they have been conned into agreeing with, and whose leadership they have been compelled into following. The Leftist argument is, that we must think of people as human beings first, and political animals second. Political views can be moderated, human life cannot be recovered from the dead.

The problem with such thinking is that unique among animals, only humans can hold viewpoints. There can be no other repository. If a man holds a view contrary to ours that threatens our way of life, and if that man takes up arms to enforce his will upon us, we have not choice but to kill the man to get at the idea. Like it or not, to extinguish ideas that threaten freedom; ideas that threaten what is true and just and lovely, we must kill the vessel containing those ideas.

Leftists place an undue value on the flesh. It is ideas that matter. Perhaps this is why Christ admonished His disciples, "... do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." Christ understood that it is better to stand for what you believe, and yes, stand against what you hate, than to preserve the body. No - when necessary we must kill anyone - man, woman or child - who threatens what is true, what is lovely, what is good.

One Standard

2008-02-28T12:07:00.002-05:00

Prior to the 1980's, it was acceptable in this country to force treatment on persons admitted to hospitals for whatever the doctor diagnosed.[1] Coerced medical care is unthinkable today. Limitless examples of changing standards of right and wrong could be added. That is why changeable man must acknowledge the one standard of right and wrong handed down by an eternal God. Consequently it was "right" when the Israelites obliterated man, woman and child in their conquest of Canaan, under God's command, despite how it offends modern sensibilities.

It is against God's one unchangeable standard that the world rails, and Satan stands in the background cheering the dissenters on.

[1] Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill, Rael Jean Issac & Virginia C. Armat; The Free Press, 1990

The blame game

2008-02-27T12:39:00.006-05:00

America is a great nation. Unique in world history, she has been a beacon of light to the entire world for over two hundred years. It has become fashionable, of late, to argue that freedom itself is the source of that light. However freedom is merely a consequence of the light. America is great, and is a beacon, not because of freedom but because her Constitution is a body of laws based on God’s word, and this constitution is the instrument that best reflects His will for the governance of men.

It is incomprehensible to most Americans that any of his or her fellow citizens should despise this country. That difficulty to comprehend should not exist among bible-believing Americans. Bible-believing Christians should understand that: Whatever it is that God is for, evil will be against. Again, whatever God has created, evil will seek to destroy it. Certainly, America has always had external ememies, but a biblical worldview demands that, doubtless, an internal, traitorous threat has likewise been present all along.

The apostle Paul wrote about the kind of person that, today, though they are officially American citizens, are, in reality, among America’s worst enemies. He called them “God-haters” (Romans 1:30). It stands to reason that this first "nation under God” should be a special target for Satan, and his offspring - those “God-haters” among us.

However, as long as America remains strong, she obliges her enemies to use indirect means to bring her down. For the time being, God-haters are no match for a country still populated by a Christian majority. Therefore, they work from within, employing stealth to keep their activities hidden, less they be discovered and crushed.

One of Satan’s favorite tools in crippling a strong adversary is to weaken him with guilt. Doing their master’s bidding, the God-haters employ the same tactic. In no area have the God-haters been more effective in producing guilt among Americans than the issue of race. They have convinced the American people that they are responsible the poverty and disenfranchisement of black Americans. This came to pass because “God-haters” roam about looking for any aspect of American life which is less than perfect, in the hopes they can find a way to blame a nation “under God” for any evil or injustice they find. Happening upon the economically depressed conditions of black Americans in this country, God-haters discovered fertile ground for cultivating the lie of prejudice and injustice perpetrated against the black by “Christian” America. Christian America, confronted with the spectacle of a people-group living in close proximity, but not sharing in the expanding blessings of America, was easily convinced that it was Christian America and our way of life, and our laws, that were to blame for the suffering.

143 year after emancipation it is time for blacks to step up and shoulder their share of the blame for conditions in the black community. With the influx into America of millions of illegals - mostly people of color - in the last few decades, and with most of them finding jobs and building satisfactory lives, it will not be long before the race baiters find themselves in the same unemployment lines as the people they now try to exploit.

Win at all cost Democrats

2008-02-27T11:04:00.003-05:00

I won't say that Republicans aren't sometimes guilty of the same, but there can be no question that when it comes to the desire and the objective to win in American politics, Democrats stand alone in their willingness to pull out every stop, bar no holds, and stoop to whatever level. (At least when Republicans are caught doing the same, they are shamed out of office (ie, Richard Nixon). Among Democrats, cheating is a point of honor - think Bill Clinton). What is the source of such a mentality among Democrats? Well, this author maintains that the ulitimate source for Democratic skullduggery is their collective father, the devil, who is, as Jesus pointed out, "The father of lies". For those unprepared to connect the spiritual with the temporal - never mind, I have enough for you.

Now it is no secret that among the various competing political theories of the last hundred or so odd years, the one that Democrats have been most sympathetic too is communism. (While Marxist communism may be out of fashion among Democrats, Trotskyite Communism retains a foothold). The following quote from Lenin explains, to a large degree, where Democrats get their win at all cost mentality:

As long as capitalism and socialism exist, we cannot live in peace: in the end one or the other will triumph--it’s funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet republic or over world capitalism…We have to use any ruse, dodge, trick, cunning, unlawful methods, concealment, veiling of the truth…Communist morality is the morality which serves this struggle. - Lenin (source: Fields of Light: A Son Remembers His Heroic Father, Joseph Hurka; W. W. Norton & Company, March 2003; pg. 72)

Alleged crimes against humanity by Chrisians in world history

2008-02-27T10:37:00.002-05:00

To my mind, one of the most damning allegations against Christianity is that adherents to the faith mercilessly abused and butchered indigenous persons in the Americas in the wake of the Columbus's voyages of discovery. Others interested in this subject may be be surprised to learn that much material exists which substantially defends the conduct of Christendom in the post-Columbus New World. I haven't had time to do an exhaustive study yet, but this primer material, larger taken from Hugh Thomas' Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan ; Random House Trade Paperbacks, May 31, 2005 (which itself is replete with citations) may be helpful to helpful to some who are trying to penetrate this subject. Some, or most, of what follows may have been lifted whole cloth from Hugh Thomas' book. I hope in time to build on my knowledge of this subject and write my own observations. In the meantime I think Mr. Thomas and Random House can forgive my publishing copyrighted material to a limited extent, for the greater purpose of furthering knowledge on this subject.

1.) In the fifteenth century Fray Francisco (Alfonzo) de Bolanos secured a papal statement if favor of slaves and critical of the slave trade. Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, page 60.

2.) Critical support for Columbus’ journey of exploration and inquiry came from the church. Principal among them were the monks at La Rabida and Mendoza, Cardinal of Castile. Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pages 60, 62.

3.) Formal instructions from the monarchs of Spain to Columbus, issued May 29, 1493, on the eve of his second voyage of discovery to the New World stated that Indians were to be treated “muy bien e amorosamente” (language similar to that used in the surrender of (Muslim) Granada, whose terms were very liberal.) - Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, page 122.

4.) The first battle between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the New World was lost by the Europeans. Settlers left behind on La Espanola by Columbus, on his first voyage, were wiped out by natives. - Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pg.134.

5.) Syphilis was transmitted from the New World to the Old, not vice versa. Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pg. 137; original source: Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini (1483 - 1540) wrote of the “first” appearance in Europe in 1494 of a “malady” now known as syphilis. Further buttressing the truth of this assertion, that it was a New World disease carried east, is the fact that doctors had no idea how to treat it, even though it affected the upper classes more than the lower. In short, it had not “been around”. Rivers of Gold, pg. 151.

6.) The first discipline administered in the New World was at Columbus’ order in his capacity as governor upon members of his own (2nd) expedition, for treason. Members were whipped or had their ears, or noses, cut off. Later, while exploring Cuba, Columbus had prepared a notarized statement, signed by virtually every member of the crew, swearing to the Monarch’s that Cuba was mainland ,la terre firme, (not an island) on pain of having their tongues cut out. If this kind of punishment was acceptable among Spaniards of that era, what kind of treatment might the newly discovered people expect. We cannot judge people of that age by today’s standards. Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pg. 139, 146.

7.) Whatever in fact happened on the ground, it is the intention of the monarch’s that perhaps matters most regarding indigenous American people. On April 16, 1495 the monarch’s suspended the trade in West Indies slaves saying “We want to inform ourselves…from theologians and canon lawyers whether we can sell those [slaves] or not…”. That was while Columbus was still in the New World in the midst of his second expedition. When Columbus left again for the New World, on his third voyage in the Spring of 1498, his instructions were to “try, with all diligence, to inspire and draw the Indians into the paths of peace and tranquility…and, above all, that they may be converted to our Holy Faith…” Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pgs. 157, 171.

8.) Columbus’s third venture into the West Indies was cut short by the arrival of Francisco de Bobadilla with orders from the Crown to execute the monarchs vision of dominion is opposition to Columbus vision of trade (and resulting exploitation, including slavery). Columbus was shipped home in chains arriving back in Europe in the fall of 1500. While the monarchy thought chains to harsh a treatment for Columbus (he was immediately freed), nevertheless they consolidated control by sending Fray Nicolas de Ovando to replace Bobadilla, and with expanded authority (and means) to colonize and establish beneficent local rule including this instruction:

We wish the Indians be converted to our Holy Catholic faith and their souls be informed of the details of our faith. You are to take great care in ensuring that the clergy so inform them and admonish them, with much love and without using force, so that they may be converted as rapidly as possible.

11.) Queen Isabel died on November 26, 1504. A codicil to her will dated November 23added: “At the time when we were conceded by the holy apostolic see the islands and mainland of the Ocean Sea…our main aim was to arrange the introduction there of our holy Catholic faith and to ensure that the people there accepted it, and also to send prelates, monks , priests, and other learned people who fear God to instruct the people in the faith and to teach and indoctrinate them with good customs.” Her instruction was not always carried out but her intent could not be more clear. How easy would it be for us to command nobleman and other people of high connection, who invariably led the expeditions to the West Indies in those days, at a distance half-way around the earth, with no other means of communication than by ships that left only infrequently and took thirty days to reach their destination, if they arrived at all. Expeditionaries had to function as they found things on the ground. Isabel had never been to the West Indies.

12.) Isabel granted freedom to all her personal slaves upon her death (in addition to having ordered the return of West Indies captives to their homelands on numerous occasions). How many personal slaves did Jefferson free, three hundred years later?

13.) “Slavery… was well known in the America’s before the Europeans arrived. The two main settled monarchies, the Mexica and the Inca both had substantial slave populations. The Caribs, too…used slaves.” Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pg. 290. This was not the idyllic paradise imagined by Leftists.

14.) MONTESINOS, Antonio de (mon-te-see'-nos), clergyman, born in Spain in the 15th century. While sub-prior of the convent of St. Stephen of Salamanca, he determined to engage in missionary work in America, and went to Rome, in 1510, to ask permission and the necessary powers for his future field of labor, he arrived in Santo Domingo the following year, bringing with him a number of Dominicans, with whom he established schools for the colonists and the natives. But, as soon as he attempted to free the Indians from the slavery to which the Spaniards had reduced them, he became an object of persecution. At first he tried quietly to make the conquerors understand the injury they were doing the king and country by their tyranny' but when this failed he denounced their crime in a sermon before the governor and the principal authorities of the colony. This discourse excited great indignation, and he was accused of preaching heresy. As his superiors refused to interfere, and as he was more vehement in his denunciations in his other sermons, the proprietors of the island resolved to denounce the Dominicans to King Ferdinand, and sent a Franciscan monk with a letter to the Spanish court. As soon as Father Montesinos was informed of the charges against him and his order, he went to plead his own cause, and to enlighten the king on the abuses of which the Indians were the victims. On his arrival at Madrid he found every one against him, and had the greatest difficulty in obtaining an audience with the king. When he finally succeeded, Ferdinand refused to settle the question himself, and referred it to an extraordinary council. This body decided that, while in principle the Indians were free, the interests of the colony required that matters should remain as they were for a time. Although all his hopes were destroyed by this decision, Montesinos returned to Santo Domingo, whence he was sent to the continent with two other Dominicans. During the passage he became very ill, and was landed at Porto Rico. As he showed" no signs of recovering. his companions continued their voyage. He finally recovered, and resolved to remain in Porto Rico. He became the first apostle of this island, and converted the greater portion of the inhabitants to Christianity. (www.famousamericans.net/antoniodemontesinos/) Text of the famous sermon available on internet (google search).

15.) One hears a great deal about the cruelty displayed by the Spanish in their conquest of the New World. One hears much less about the struggles within the Spanish Empire to clearly delineate right from wrong with respect to their new dominions. Fray Antonio de Montesinos sermon led to his return to Spain and an audience with King Fernardo. The result was the King established a royal commission of theologians and officials (in Burgos) to study the matter. In fact, legal arguments about conquests were not unusual in Spain. The committee met more than twenty times. In the end the committee decided that Indians all had to be treated as free beings. Furthermore these debates led to the so-called Laws of Burgos. These laws, and a later revision spelled out in great detail the rights and responsibilities of all the Indians in the New World. While these laws did compel them to engage in productive labor (not slavery, except under certain conditions) and not resist conversion to Christianity, they also granted extensive freedoms and protections against abuse to the Indians. Rivers of Gold, Hugh Thomas

16.) Pedro Arias Avila, better known as Pedrarias, the man who had Balboa beheaded, was perhaps the cruelest of the early conquistadors. (He was incidentally, a converso, that is a convert from Judaism to Christianity). However, in 1518 when word reached King Fernando about Pedrarias’ conduct in the New World he sent a new governor to replace him. Unfortunately, that new governor died on the exact day of his arrival in Darien (in what is now Central America). Rivers of Gold, Hugh Thomas

17.) In the wake of Fernardo and Isabel came Charles I at the ripe old age of sixteen. He was crowned King in San Pablo, Valladolid. Within two months of his assent to the throne he was grappling with the problems of the Indies and attempting to respond to petitions from church leaders (Las Casas prominent among them) for radical changes in treatment of Indians. Where are the historic parallels to this agonizing over just treatment of discovered and or conquered peoples in antiquity or among atheistic, Muslim, Hindu, etc. governments? Rivers of Gold, Thomas, pg. 406-407

18.) The Atlantic slave trade (in Africans) can trace it’s origins to license granted by eighteen year old Charles I on August 18, 1518 (though some small movement of black slaves across the Atlantic had occurred prior to this). This license was granted, in part, as a measure to protect Indians who were diminishing in number (principally in the islands of the Carribbean, mainland exploration was limited at this point). Rivers of Gold, Thomas pg. 411-413.

19.) At age twenty Charles I (also known as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor) left Spain after securing (he thought) the loyalty and the treasury of that country. Within a month of that departure much of Spain rose up in revolt against his rule, in part because of the money they feared he would take out of the country. And Charles badly needed cash to contend for the ultimate goal of status as Holy Roman Emperor. Nevertheless despite these incredible pressures twenty-year old Charles spent much of his last days (literally) before leaving Spain discussing the Indies. On May 17, 1520 (three days before he left Spain) he issued a decree. Article 12 declared that God had created the Indians as free men, subject to no one. Nor were they obligated to carry out any service to Spaniards. Article 13 agreed, stating “the Indians were free men, ought to be treated as such and persuaded to accept Christianity by the methods that Christ had established”. (This language was in large part the result of the persistence of Las Casas, who gained approval for almost every beneficient plan towards the Indians he submitted to Charles; although executing his theories proved difficult). Eleven months later Charles faced off with Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms. Clearly these were not times when Christian’s were oblivious to human suffering, intent only upon gain and mammon. Rivers of Gold, Hugh Thomas pg. 440, 444-446

20.) Perhaps the greatest and most tireless advocate for the Indians in the New World was Las Casas. He wrote and argued for the Indians tirelessly. His reforms, if enacted, would have granted the Indians complete freedom, albeit within a new Catholic Spanish Empire in the New World. Against enormous opposition he succeeded in convincing the highest ranking prelates and policy makers of his day, including the King Charles, to institute his reforms and to carry them out personally. Nevertheless, most of the opposition to Las Casas was not on moral, religious or ethical grounds, it was because of practicality, or the perception of it. Most people familiar with the Indies simply did not believe Las Casas’ ideas would work. Indeed, Charles had never been to the Indies.

In the event Las Casas years of heroic efforts at court and within the church on behalf of the Indians came to nothing, or at least much less than he hoped for. His momentous idealistic voyage which began December 14, 1520 ended in total failure and for Las Casas, total disillusionment. Most of the persons he selected to voyage with him deserted him at various points along the way, or were murdered by Indians when they reached their destinations. Las Casas proved inept at mastering the political maneuvering necessary to implement his ideas among the Spaniard already in the New World. In 1522 he retired from the world and became monk in the Dominican monastery at Santa Domingo. Rivers of Gold, Hugh Thomas, pg. 452-456.

Exploding the flat earth myth

2008-02-27T09:09:00.002-05:00

It is a pillar of liberal/Leftist thought that Christians have been so opposed to progress throughout world history that they even resisted evidence of the sphericity of the earth. Simple logic argues against this position. After all, throughout history the sun and moon have borne 24 hour testimony, for every man, as to the sphericity of planets.

Nevertheless if we do accept, for the sake of argument, that Christians were somehow prone to deny the evidence provided by their own senses, then the persistent accuser must also convince us that Christians were also unmoved by the evidence of their own scripture. In Isaiah 40:22 it states: "He" (meaning God the Father) "sits enthroned above the circle of the earth" (emphasis mine). If we do accept the notion that Christians didn't accept the testimony of their own scriptures, there remains even more evidence to dispute the notion that Christians were immovable flat-earther's.

It is a fact that:

1.) The church (meaning Catholic Church, since there was no other in Christendom at the time) accepted the hypothesis that the earth is round by about 750 A.D., and in the fifteenth century (when Columbus sailed) the “sphericity” of the planet was generally agreed (by people both in and out of the church) - Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan; Random House Trade Paperbacks, May 31, 2005, pgs. 54-55.

2.) A Milanese businessman, Anibal Zennaro (Iamuarius), in Spain upon Columbus return, wrote a letter to his brother (the text survives) about the discovery and about how “the world being round, he (Columbus) was bound eventually to reach the East.” - Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, page 102

3.) On May 4, 1493 Pope Alexander issued a statement granting Castile (Spain) all land discovered one hundred “leagues” west of the Azores and Cape Verde on a line “from the Arctic Pole which is in the north, to the Antarctic pole which is inthe south”. Use of “Poles” certainly makes it clear Columbus’ contemporaries understood the world is round. - Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pg. 119

The reader will appreciate that the dates of the above three pieces of evidences either predate the Renaissance or are contempoary with it. So, how then can it be stated, truthfully, that the Church and Christians were opposed to the concept of a round earth?

An Inconvenient Truth - The other side of the story.

2008-02-27T09:07:00.001-05:00

1.) Several types of gases in our atmosphere trap heat, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, laughing gas, CFC gases and ozone. This is good since without their presence the earth would be approximately 59° F colder than it currently is, much too cold to sustain life as we know it today. (a).

2.) It is difficult to be certain that global temperatures are high for the climate period we are now in, known as the Holocene Period. (b). Scientist estimate that the Holocene Period began 10,000 years ago, but thermometers have only been in use systematically and globally since the 1850’s. Therefore scientists are forced to rely on “proxy” temperature data from less reliable sources, such as tree rings and ice cores.

3.) There have been two periods of significant temperature increase in the last 100 years: one lasting from 1910 to 1945 and a second lasting from 1975 to the present. Manmade pollution probably can’t account for the earlier rise so climatologists point to solar irradiation. Manmade pollution is blamed for the more recent rise and evidence that solar activity may again be the culprit is downplayed. (c)

4.) If scientists are correct the cost, in terms of money, to the world as the result of damage caused by global warming will amount to about 2% of Gross Domestic Product annually (about $500 billion) beginning in 2050. However the cost to control manmade pollution blamed for global warming would also cost the world about 2% of Gross Domestic Product annually by about 2050. That would be a fair trade, except that even if all that money is spent to reduce so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions back to pre-1990 levels (in accordance with the Kyoto protocol) global temperatures will still rise by almost the same level by 2100 (1.92° Celsius) than if we had done nothing (2.1° Celsius). (d)

5.) Former Vice-President Al Gore, the producer of An Inconvenient Truth, lives in a home in Tennessee which, at 10,000 square of living space, is roughly 5 times the size of the average American home and which uses at least 12 times the electricity per year. By his own standards Mr. Al Gore’s own home is very environmentally “unfriendly”. (e)

a.) Lomborg, Bjorn: the skeptical environmentalist
b.) 1999 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
c.) Proceedings of the Royal Society A – Svensmark; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research – Sami Solanski, PhD.
d.) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (United Nations)
e.) Gore called ‘hypocrite’, Muskegon Chronicle/Associated Press, 02/28/07

Naked Lunch

2008-02-24T12:39:00.002-05:00

Declared by Time magazine to be among the best 100 English-language novels from 1923 to 2005, Naked Lunch is a literary work so degraded that for me to republish here any of it's contents, so as to illustrate my point, would make me a party to it's shame. Thus the book remains perched upon it's pedestal, inviolate, because decent people can't discuss it. It must remain for God to undo the damage so skillfully wrought by Satan through the agent of one William S. Burroughs.

In the mean time, capitalism is the best we've got

2008-02-22T09:07:00.002-05:00

It stirs indignation to see a luxury car in proximity to a street beggar. It evokes a sense of injustice to see persons decked out in finery enjoying haute cuisine in upscale restaurants, while some people - even in America - want for bare necessities. Nevertheless, such disparity begs the question: Where, then, should capital reside, if not in the hands of individuals?

Leftist, driven by envy and a rejecting God's superintendence of the universe, chafe at capitalism. Disposed to the view the here-and-now as the sole reality of existence, Leftist have no patience for the unfolding of God's plan or the timing of His justice. Yet confined by the reality of life on earth, there is no better alternative to private property. It is best that men, as individuals, should control wealth, not governments. Indeed, corporations exist, in part, in recognition of the fact that the concentration of too much wealth in the hands of any one person tends toward abuses. It is fascinating that Leftist even revile corporations which, in fact, distribute wealth broadly. Furthermore, when publicly traded, corporations enable all person to participate in their wealth.

God had a plan for mankind, outside of the Garden, the outline of which was revealed in the socioeconomic structure He established for post-exodus Israel: Private property held under a system of moral laws tending to the fair treatment of every member so society. Under God's governance,when social injustice eventually arose God responded by sending righteous prophets and eventually his own Son for remedy.

Leftists, who always seek instant gratification, would throw the baby out with the bath water. They would chuck private property in exchange for some kind of communal arrangement, imposed by the state. No matter how often they try this scheme, and no matter how long such schemes endure, they will eventually fail, for they fly in the face of God's truth. Leftist would make far better use of their time if they embraced God's moral law and sought to eradicate injustice under God's standard, a the same time recognizing that until He comes, some injustice is inevitable.

Governance by poll

2008-02-18T10:06:00.002-05:00

In the aftermath of 911, Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq. Many prominent Democrats agreed to this authorization, including John Kerry, who would go on to run for President in 2004 and be defeated, in part, because of his backtracking on the use-of-force authorization. Almost since the moment the United States actually invaded Iraq many, if not most, on the political left have reviled that use of force, and have sought to make politcal hay out of their anti-war position.

Now, most objective observers can grasp that the reason certain pols became so vehmenantly opposed to the war, after authorizing it in the first place, is that they thought that voting NO would displease most of their contituency. In short, they voted by poll, instead of by conviction. Now isn't it fascinating that the very politicians who get upset with voters, when said voters get angry at them for voting by poll and not conviction, also get upset when the President of the United States actually excecutes the will of Congress - as expressed in a use of force Authorization - as if Congress actually meant it when they authorized it?

Howl and other Poems, Allen Ginsburg

2008-02-17T18:07:00.003-05:00

Lauded, at least on the Left, as a great poet, and recognized on both the Left and Right as a founding father of the beat/hippie counterculture that swept the U.S.A. in the late 50's, 60's, and 70's, Ginsburg's most famous poem, Howl, is a legitimate protest against the status quo, while at the same time evidence of twisted, frustrated man who, while he might well have been encouraged and prayed for, should never have been followed.

It's a sad commentary on the human condition that a man who embraced communism, and was kicked out the communist countries he did visit, should turn and savage the culture that, more than any other, tolerated his protest.

Somewhere in Howl and other Poems, the Jewish born Ginsburg claims to be Catholic. That is hard to believe. His rants read a lot more to me like a Jew protesting against the state of civilization - specifically Christianized, American civilization.

The tragic thing about Ginsburg's life was that he seemed to miss the fact that Christ himself said that if we do not hate this world and our very lives, we have a wrong attitude. This is why I call Ginsburg protests "legitimate". The world is not a good place, and even its creator said we should hate it. The hope for man is not in this world, but in the person of Jesus Christ, who plainly offers to be our all-in-all, if only we will embrace Him.

People like Ginsburg, and those who embrace him, are condemned to a perpetual rant, a life of discontentment. There is no world-order, no way of thinking, no way of being that can bring contentment, short of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote of sincere religion that: "Godliness with contentment is great gain." No one needed that truth more than Allen Ginsburg. Today it is Ginsburg's spiritual legacy that need that truth. To those who have followed and abided in Ginsberg, and the whole 60's counterculture movement, I urge you to understand that Christ does not call you to embrace the status quo. If you don't like the world you see around you - fine; Christ won't disagree with you. Turn to Him and He will provide you succor, and means to make changes that matter, and will be have eternal significance.

Ann Coulter bashing

2008-02-14T10:53:00.002-05:00

Last night I watched a documentary on conservative author and commentator, Ann Coulter. In one segment she is lecturing at John Hopkins University and is heckled by the crowd. One female student blatantly calls her an "assh*%@", and all Ann did was state the truth as she sees it. It occurs to me that what makes Ann so controversial is that she comes against liberal sacred cows: things that liberals like to believe are "settled law" - such as that Joe McCarthy was evil. This highlights how secular-liberalism is so very much religious in nature. These liberals get as excited about attacks on liberal orthodoxy as Catholics do when someone attacks the divinity of the Virgin Mary.

A welcome stranger

2008-02-12T15:56:00.001-05:00

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.

My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?................................... We just call him, "TV."

Source: BaptistVoice Online Magazine - author unknown

Super Corruption

2008-02-07T08:47:00.000-05:00

The day before yesterday was so-called "Super Tuesday" on the road to nominating candidates for president of the United States. Hillary Clinton has been a candidate for over a year (at least unofficially), and the press has been relentlessly saturating Americans with coverage of her campaign. Super Tuesday was billed by the press, and candidate Clinton, as the moment of truth. When the result was nearly a dead-heat with rival Barak Obama, the press had little to say, as if the candidate they have been covering like a blanket not taking a commanding lead is not news. The simple fact is, Hillary is the press favorite and anything less than victory is not going to be covered. How anybody who calls themselves a jounalist can maintain a modicum of self-respect is beyond me. They are nothing but jackals.

Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"

2008-02-02T11:19:00.000-05:00

Jack Kerouac, an obscure figure until he found, in 1957, a publisher for his work "On The Road", became famous almost overnight and was heralded by the New York Times as the voice of a new generation. Much was and has been made of Kerouac's suppossed new innovative style of writing, including that he wrote "On The Road" on a single uninterrupted roll of paper, in a sort of stream-of-consciousness burst of inspiration. Having read the book, which I acknowledge is a captivating piece of literature, I have broken it down into elements, which I think account for the book's appeal, an appeal having little to do with it's supposed counter-culture content and innovative style. If anything, the success of "On The Road" is mostly a testimony to the greatness and goodness of the American people, who certain Beats, and the later Hippies so vociferously denigrated (echoed by the Left of the latter days).

First, in "On The Road" Kerouac displays a genius for identifying literary devices that capture and hold an audiences imagination. Whether, in the work, his excercise of genius was premeditated or unconcious is debatable; I lean toward the latter. Let the reader remember that that another unlikely genius, Daniel Defoe, wrote a work - "Robinson Crusoe" - that diplays a similar breakneck pace, utilizing captivating people and/or events which keep the reader glued to the story. "On The Road" is basically an inspired travelogue. Everyone is interested in a good travel story. Travel stories, as a topic, must be second only to the weather, politics or matters of health in casual conversation. About other people, we all want to know, first, who they are, and second, where they have been - that is, what they have seen and done. Even God - no slouch as storyteller - employs this technique in describing the life of Jesus (and Abraham, and Moses, and etc.). Life is not just about being, it is about action, and Kerouac blends these two themes masterfully. Most people grapple with issues of personal identity all their lives; that same struggle is at the core of "On The Road". Kerouac genius (as was Defoe's) was in placing people, who are in the midst of searching for their identity (which is an internal, nonvisible, process) in a setting ("On The Road's" multiple road trips) which gives physical substance to their internal search - the physical substance needed for a story (althought Russian authors, and some others, have succeeded with describing mostly the internal searching). Lefists, then and now, have distorted the widespread acceptance of "On The Road" to mean that most Americans are (or were in the 1950's) disgusted with their lives and personal identities, and that Kerouac was a pioneeer helping them to break the mold. That characterization is wrong on two counts. First, Americans, by virtue of being a pioneering people are uniquely willing to hear any credible argument that might lead to a better future. Few Americans are entirely satisfied with their lives; most want something better, and Kerouac challenged readers to look within themselves, rather than to externals. That Americans were willing to consider Kerouac's point of view, and bought the book to learn what his view was, doesn't mean the majority accepted it. Second, 2,000 years before Kerouac, an itinerate preacher - who many think is the Son of God - said "If anyone comes to me and does not hate...his own life life - he cannot be my disciple"(Luke 14:26). So, we can see that we have been warned by God that if it don't hate our own life, we are in trouble. Leftists who think that Kerouac tapped into some hidden malaise - a discontent with life in American in the 1950's, exposing, as it were, all the hypocrisy of life in what was then mainstream America - are deluded. Discontent with life is part of life, and is literally commanded by God. That is why a healthy people, the American people, are open to critiques of the prevailing culture in every generation.

Second, American love their country and the freedom they enjoy, and they enjoy the diviristy of life that freedom begets. Most Americans enjoy meeting authentic individuals different from themselves, as long as those individuals are not a threat to their freedoms, and their personal and corporate saftey and welfare. For example, prior to his most heinious crimes, Charles Manson, a distinctive person if there ever was one, was welcomed in Beach Boy's Brian Wilson home and life precisely because he was "different". In "On The Road", Kerouac, like Marco Polo, exposes Americans to a steady stream of geninue characters, mostly inhabiting the lower socioeconomic strata - and often part of the counterculture - of American life. That most Americans were and are willing to read about those characters is not a testimony to a latent desire to be like them, as much as it is a testimony to Americans love and embrace of the panorama of the American experience. The objective reader of "On The Road" will take note that Kerouc is careful to not turn off his audience by exploring in graphic detail the abuse of drugs, deviant sex, theft, and other anti-social behaviors skirted over in the book. If Leftists are so sure that Americans want to throw off restraining mores and embrace liberalism bordering on anarchy, then why didn't Kerouac, who died from complications related to alchohol abuse, give us much more detail about the aforementioned anti-social behaviors, which make up so much of lives of the people profiled in this work? The truth is, Kerouac sanitized his characters to make them palatable, which is intellectual dishonesty. It is not honest to invite people to embrace a way of life without explaining the costs. Jesus Christ, on the other hand was scrupulously honest with his disciples: Matthew 8:20 - "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" is just one example. And, what if most Americans are attacted to the freedom of expression and lack of inhibition displayed by the cast of character in "On The Road"? Again, Americans are a freedom-loving people and are always looking for safe, tasteful ways to enjoy more of it. Leftists distort the American love of freedom to argue that most Americans would willingly descend into moral depravity if only they could be coaxed to unfetter themselves. This is a lie. The trouble is, Leftists have succeeded, through the auspices of tomes like "On The Road" to lure many a fool into life and soul threatening beliefs and actions.

"On The Road" is not a bad book; it might even be a good book, in its way. It is good for all people, in each new generation, to question the way of life handed down to them from their ancestors. Social conventions can and do evolve which stifle freedom of expression and a healthy way of life. But as we examine our lives, we must be careful about which standard we use for evaluation. I recommend Christ as the standard, not the latest intellectual fad, false religion or moral degeneracy.

Am I missing something here?

2008-01-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

Begat in the 1950's and flourishing in the 1960's, and beyond, the so called Sexual Revolution sought, we were told, to overthrow the inhibiting mores of the WWII generation. Now, what I am wondering is this: It is self-evident that the generation who suffered through the depression and fought WWII displayed the greatest libido in world history. After all, didn't that generation deliver us the as-yet-unequalled baby boom? Isn't it also a fact that the baby boom generation, the progenitor of the Sexual Revolution, has been characterized by some of the lowest birthrates in world history? So why is that those who have demonstrated low libido seem to feel that they have (and had) something to teach to the generation who bore them?

The judgmental generation

2008-01-28T11:28:00.000-05:00

It was the "beats" that introduced post-WWII America to the notion of an America divided, unequally, between "hipsters" (in the minority) and "squares". Those labels morphed into the hippie "cool" versus "red-neck" and these days have morphed again into "hip" versus "Republican" or "hip" versus "evangelical". These characterizations necessarily involve a severe judgment. Who is it that decides who is hip, who is not, and by what criteria? That the judgment is made - about that there can be no question. In fact, to those who are "hip" it is of the utmost importance that they discriminate about who is "in" and who is "out". To perhaps no other activity do hip people devote so much attention; that is - deciding who is hip, how to be hip, and how to avoid being un-hip (an unthinkable fate).

Now the irony is this: Hasn't it been the counter-culture hips who, since the late 1940's, have been screaming the loudest at society that they must not be "judged" by it; that the ultimate sin is to "judge" one another? Yet, isn't it the hips who have been doing most of the judging in society - if your hair is cut a certain hip way, if you don't wear hip clothes, if you don't listen to hip music, then you are not "hip"?

Hate crimes on the increase?

2007-11-20T06:16:00.000-05:00

The FBI reported that so-called hate crimes rose 8% percent in 2006. Hate crimes include such nefarious acts as three students hanging nooses from a certain tree (a popular gathering place for whites) under which a black had sat the day before. Never mind that anti-white racial epithets are part of the everyday language of blacks on the street and it would be impossible to count the number of attacks on whites, especially women, by gangs of blacks in the last 30 years. Who is safer, a white woman in an all black neighborhood or a black woman in an all white neighborhood? Only a few years ago the nation watched a hidden camera video of a black accosting a white woman in the parking lot of Wal-Mart (she wound up raped and dead) and not an single whisper was heard about a "hate crime". So what is all the noise about hate crimes really about? Well for starters the Left doesn't give a rip about blacks or any other allegedly persecuted minority group. What they do care about is eradicating Christianity from America. Their strategy for now (until they can use overt force) is to discredit Christianity. The idea is, according to the Left, "Since we live in a Christian nation, than hate crimes are symptom of Christian thought and practice." By looking under every rock for a hate crime they gather evidence for an indictment against Christianity, which they hope in the short run, will lead to relaxation of all restraint on homosexual behavior, and in the long run to the banning of Christianity as an outlaw hate religion. This Thanksgiving, Leftist churches are rallying around a cry of "Fast on hate; feast on gratitude." Many observers, exposed to this slogan, fail to notice that love and hate have nothing to do with Thanksgiving; the holiday is about gratitude or lack of it (toward God) only. Pretty soon the slogan for Easter will be something like, "Up with Spring, and down with hate."

Oh! the double standards

2007-11-19T20:12:00.000-05:00

A great deal of criticism is being directed these days, especially from the Left, at Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. An ally of President George W. Bush in the war on terror, he has suspended certain aspects of the democratic process in his country as he contends with radical Islamic factions opposed to his rule. Now I am no friend of dictators, but I find it hypocritical that so many who are outraged at Musharraf don't seem to be concerned that most of the Middle Eastern nations, including our "friends" there, are ruled be absolute dictators. Why no similar outcry against Mohamed Hosni Mubarak who has been ruling Egypt since 1981? Why is is the Left so anxious that the United States should get out of Iraq, if democracy is so precious to them? Abraham Lincoln had no qualms deporting dissenters to his administration without due process, and suspending habeas corpus when he thought the circumstances warranted it. Regarding Musharraf hand picking his nation's Supreme Court: why does that outrage the left when they raise no cry against the memory of F.D.R., who intimidated the Supreme Court in his day to obtain the outcome he wanted?

Rick & Kay Warren; AIDS Summit & Hillary Clinton

2007-11-16T12:45:00.000-05:00

Rick Warren of Purpose Driven Life fame has invited presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to attend his annual AIDS Summit (and never mind that being located near hedonistic Los Angeles, and during gay-friendly Governor Arnold Swarchenegger's administration, its good for Saddleback Church's attendance numbers to be sympathetic to homosexuals.) Rick and Kay believe the church needs to stop sweeping the issue of AIDS under the carpet and step forward, based on their reading of scripture, and assist to heal the sick and stop the spread of this "pandemic". Now, since HIV is not a virus that will seek you out, but instead is contracted primarily through voluntary activities like anal sex (which is the number one route to contracting the disease in the U.S.) it seems to this writer that the best way to stops the spread of AIDS is to preach loudly and clearly to the world that homosexual activity it bad for your health and ought to be aborted. So the key to stopping the "pandemic" is right within our grasp, it just needs to be taken up. (Would Warren call a Bubonic Plague Summit to stop the spread of that horror if people were willfully exposing themselves to plague carrying fleas?) Now the question that arises is: "How helpful will Hillary Clinton be in trying to persuade people at risk from engaging in high risk activities?" Increasingly Warren is being exposed for what he is, and the sooner Christendom wakes up to reality, the better.

The Left exalts murderers - as always.

2007-11-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

What follows are comments by Dr. James W. Watts, M.D. comments on procedure which made a vegetable of Rose Marie Kennedy, the sister of John F., Robert R., and Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy:

We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped. - Dr. James W. Watts, M.D. comments on procedure which made a vegetable of the sister of sister John F., Robert R., and Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy.

The following are samples of entries that Rose Marie Kennedy made in her diary prior to the lobotomy she was subjected to:

"Went to luncheon in the ballroom in the White House. James Roosevelt took us in to see his father, President Roosevelt. He said, 'It's about time you came. How can I put my arm around all of you? Which is the oldest? You are all so big."

"Have a fitting at 10:15 Elizabeth Arden. Appointment dress fitting again. Home for lunch. Royal tournament in the afternoon."

"Up too late for breakfast. Had it on deck. Played Ping-Pong with Ralph's sister, also with another man. Had lunch at 1:15. Walked with Peggy. also went to horse races with her, and bet and won a dollar and a half. Went to the English Movie at five. Had dinner at 8:45. Went to the lounge with Miss Cahill and Eunice and retired early." [1]

Now, lets be fair. If Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney had come from a family in which a somewhat slow child had been treated like the Kennedy's treated Rose Marie, do you think the press would have had a field day with it? Or, what if Dick Cheney had forced a lobotomy on his daughter when she came out as lesbian?

1. Gibson, Barbara, Rose Kennedy and Her Family: The Best and Worst of Their Lives and Times, Birch Lane Press, ISBN 1-55972-299-1.

Substitutionary atonement

2007-11-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

Who are the good among us? We long for character don't we? Don't we long for somebody who, through the testimony of their character, we can put our trust in, who can lead us? Not you? You are the exception? Really? Ever have a teacher you looked up to? Was there ever a musician you looked up to, whose music moved you deeply? Did you ever have anybody, friend or stranger, stand up for you and come to your defense when you were vulnerable? Are you still sure you don't long to find someone worthy whom you can admire? Now, who do Christians look to? If they are wise, they look to Jesus Christ - the perfect life lived with perfect love. Who do liberals/progressives look to? Puzzled? Don't you know? They look to anybody who passes the liberal litmus test, whatever that might be at a given time. What is the litmus test of the moment? To pass the test at the moment, you must be 1.) tolerant, 2.) concerned for the poor, 3.) anxious to cure the sick, 4.) outraged by social injustice (especially discrimination) 5.) abhor armed conflict. To be all those things is the liberal equivalent to the christian standard of holy. And for the liberal, if he or she emotes all those things than virtually any other "sin" is forgiven. Simply be tolerant during the day and you can go out that night and have anal sex with a stranger you met in an airport restroom. Simply be heart broken about the poor one day and you can go out the next and hate and excoriate a Bible-thumper, and still be pure. Simply be "outraged at social injustice" and you can be unfaithful to your spouse as much as you like, and still be an icon. Of course, Calvinists do something similar: being elected and sanctified in one fell swoop, they don't have to worry much about how they conduct themselves, since no matter how they do conduct themselves, they are holy.