cultural Marxism | Cindy Wity

Fourth of July Americana Without a Fifth of Jackboot Alchemy

July 3, 2021 Leave a comment

Empty the bottled witches’ brews – the potent eye-of-newt-baboon-blood admixture of COVID scientism and the wool-of-bat-tongue-of-dog-nihilism-cultured Marxism – down the toilet. Turn off the media cauldron . . .

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There. Now, pour yourself a tall cool glass of Simply Lemonade. Cut yourself a piece of apple pie. Kick back and enjoy some Americana. Reanimate your imagination.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. – Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens, using the pen name Mark Twain, gave America two major classics of American literature: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The lives and values of people living in the American South during the middle of the nineteenth century are conveyed through Twain’s choice of imagery, vernacular, relaxed diction and characters. Twain’s small-town realism: what is seen through the eyes and imaginations of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

A Stamp printed in USA shows the painting “Tom Sawyer”, by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), American Folklore Issue, circa 1972

If you were ever a kid, and I suspect that most of you have been so inclined, you will connect with the antics of Tom Sawyer. You’ll relate to Tom’s larger-than-life imaginings and his dashed realizations. Like Tom, you may have acquired experienced-based knowledge and also consequences with each twist and turn of an adventure.

You’ll remember being bored during summer vacation and being both bored and lonely during a bout of the measles. And you’ll recollect more, as you listen to and read . . .

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Chapter 22

TOM joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by the showy character of their “regalia.” He promised to abstain from smoking, chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he found out a new thing—namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing from the order. Fourth of July was coming; but he soon gave that up —gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty–eight hours—and fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was apparently on his deathbed and would have a big public funeral, since he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned about the Judge’s condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his hopes ran high—so high that he would venture to get out his regalia and practise before the looking–glass. But the Judge had a most discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the mend—and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once—and that night the Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would never trust a man like that again.

The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again, however —there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now—but found to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he could, took the desire away, and the charm of it.

Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning to hang a little heavily on his hands.

He attempted a diary—but nothing happened during three days, and so he abandoned it.

The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were happy for two days.

Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in the world (as Tom supposed), Mr. Benton, an actual United States Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment—for he was not twenty–five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it.

A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in tents made of rag carpeting—admission, three pins for boys, two for girls—and then circusing was abandoned.

A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came—and went again and left the village duller and drearier than ever.

There were some boys–and–girls’ parties, but they were so few and so delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.

Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her parents during vacation—so there was no bright side to life anywhere.

The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very cancer for permanency and pain.

Then came the measles.

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got upon his feet at last and moved feebly down–town, a melancholy change had come over everything and every creature. There had been a “revival,” and everybody had “got religion,” not only the adults, but even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever.

And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from under an insect like himself.

By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its object. The boy’s first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His second was to wait—for there might not be any more storms.

The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a stolen melon. Poor lads! they—like Tom—had suffered a relapse.

Source: Twain, M. (1876). The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co.

Chapter 22 | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain | Lit2Go ETC (usf.edu)

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America has been undergoing a hostile takeover by the Wicked WOKE. Since the ‘60s this red army has infiltrated our education systems. From elementary through graduate school, it has promoted an infighting America. Using Marxism’s class warfare, identity politics and now Critical Race Theory, one is taught to hate America, hate Capitalism and even your own white skin color. What is the Wicked Woke’s motivation?

. . . if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. Mk. 3:25

The military is being subjected to Marxism and CRT. To get first-hand insight, read Lt. Colonel Matthew Lohmeier’s book Irresistible Revolution; Marxism’s goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military. Lt. Colonel Lohmeier was sacked from his command following this book. This man has courage that many in leadership lack!

Businesses are now submitting to cultural Marxism. The over a century old engineering company I work for is now celebrating the division of the company into identity groups via the tokenism of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives (DEI). Apparently, the adult owners and managers are being led by the nose by the new recruits once matriculated in indoctrination classes.

American history is tortured into saying America is a racist country (vide anti-American Communist sympathizer Hannah Jones’ 1619 Project).

People are waterboarded by the media into feelings of panic and terror with a constant deluge of “pandemic” counts, deaths and variants, mask wearing mandates, lockdown mandates, vaccination as salvation, a Jan. 6^th narrative, racism behind every bush, and an impending climate change apocalypse.

Just the other day the Biden regime’s Energy Sect. Jennifer Granholm was on CNN. When asked a leading question, Granholm suggested that the building in Florida may have collapsed because of climate change. Why instill fear in people? Why provoke anyone to think that their building may collapse at any moment due to climate change? Why? Fear is used for political ends.

Through relabeling and redefinition of terms, the NSA and FBI pronounce white Americans who love their country “White supremacists”. This now ‘allows’ them to spy on American citizens with impunity.

We will soon be made to lease our homes. The global elites (Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway Real Estate included?) are buying up housing and real estate. You will be forced to rent and accept their lease terms, including their progressive Marxist agenda. Private property will be taken away.

The Biden regime and Democrats in Congress aim to spend enormous amounts of taxpayer money. In doing so, our country will be headed for financial ruin – hyperinflation, market collapse and the dollar will lose its standing as the global reserve currency. Our children, grandchildren and their children will suffer great hardship because of their out-of-control spending.

Our constitutional republic is being destroyed by those who cry “Our Democracy is under attack!” while increasing their censorship of what Americans can and cannot say.

When the Biden regime took over the White House in Jan. of 2021, our constitutional republic was subjected to malicious attacks. One of the puppet dictator’s first acts was to abolish what he called the ‘offensive’ 1776 Commission. He also restarted the racial sensitivity reprogramming of American citizens.

Below is a copy of what the Biden regime abolished and what militant ideologues continue to pillory as being “lies” and “propaganda”.

Turn off the media cauldron. Download and read the 1776 Report to your family.

From the 1776 Report Conclusion:

Identity politics is fundamentally incompatible with the principle of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Of note, Dr. Carol M. Swain was the Vice chair of the President’s 1776 Commission. You will want to go to her website to watch the video From GED to PH.D: the Carol Swain Story. (I doubt that she is “black enough” per the racist standard set by Joe Biden and the rest of the race hustlers.)

Here is a website to promote American History: 1776 Project Pac.

The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report Download

“What to the slave is the Fourth of July?’ This Frederick Douglass quote is from his oration on July 5^th, 1852 – 76 years after the founding of the country.

Frederick Douglass Oration 7-5-1852 Download

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Unlike President Wilson (see “The Meaning of Liberty”) who progressively sought to bring the Declaration up to date, President Coolidge affirms the enduring veracity of human equality, inalienable rights, and the consent of the governed—“those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound.”

Calvin Coolidge’s Speech on the Occasion of the 150^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Coolidge Speech 150 Anniversary of America Download

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Welcome to all of the countries accessing my blog:

Filed under 2021 current events, Consitution - rights, cultural Marxism, Culture, Fourth of July, Political Commentary, Progressivism, social commentary Tagged with Americana, CRT, cultural Marxism, Fourth of July, Joe Biden, Mark Twain, politics, progressivism, Tom Sawyer

As the World Turns

May 30, 2021 Leave a comment

The made-for-TV melodrama General Fauci has aired for a year and a half. Its storyline of a global pandemic, mimicking the fantasy narratives of the “We’re-all-gonna-die-unless-somebody-from-science-saves us” pandemic movies of recent years, has a twist. Instead of the pandemic creating zombies, the pandemic mitigation methods – masks and vaccines – creates zombies.

The main character of General Fauci is scripted as the main character of pandemic policy for the nation. His background in funding gain-of-function research and of telling people what to do is the basis for his moral high ground authority. Entire episodes are viewed through the eyes of the main character.

The doctor believes that he can bring about a Great Reset of humanity if only people would do what he says. The supporting cast, media and other hand-wringing types, is an approving Greek chorus. But the audience is kept guessing as to what the doctor is saying, as noble lies come out of both sides of his mouth.

Each daily soap episode presents the same cast of grim-Woke actors and the same set and props. Each daily soap episode is designed to play on emotions to gain viewership. Each episode is a storyline to be continued to gain repeat viewers.

A subplot of the General Fauci soap was added last November: insurrectionists install a feeble-minded puppet dictator in the White House. The Great Reset of humanity is placed in his hands.

Before General Fauci aired, a Washington-based Dark Shadows style soap production aired for over a year. All My Collusions depicted the creepy, campy, and cultish world of psychotic Democrats.

Now, after a year and a half airing of the tedious General Fauci, viewer’s questions arise: “When does it end?” and “Is there more to life than meets the media eye?”

In answer to viewer’s first question, the word on the street is that a new soap opera is in the offing. As the General Fauci series winds down, another melodrama will replace it: a climate justice series called “The Days of Our Earth”

The new soap will present the daily ordeals and hardships of Mother Earth as she deals with the effects of climate change. Fearing the immediate end of the earth, Dark Green religionists join the Build Back Better Brotherhood to save Mother Earth by ridding her of excess carbon-based humans. Script writers have been working on the soap for several years.

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Fluff. Ubiquitous fluff. Cheerios for breakfast. Disneyland for vacation and TV productions for 24 hour-a-day viewing. Fabrications of fluff abound in art, architecture, and cinema. Because of fluff’s pervasive immediacy, you may not have noticed that it is a replacement of what is real. Fantasy objects are the substitute. These offer a quick detachment from reality and immediate gratification as real emotions become involved.

As people subject their healthy truth-seeking imaginations to today’s pandemic of fantasy, more and more fluff is required to be injected into their minds. This past year we’ve seen that political correctness and scientism abhor a vacuum. Both have gone wherever people let it in. And, so has Marxism.

Now under the cover of the “Build Back Better” (BBB) promotion, Marxism proposes, using historical materialism as its determinant, salvation via a collective will. We are to believe that through BBB, man will have the ability to perfect himself. And, that BBB will overcome the world’s ills: pain, suffering, poverty, conflict and sadness. And that the earth will be saved from mankind. And through BBB, technology will produce a transhuman man who will be immortal – basically, a nihilist who’s all fluff for all time.

Despite its almost universal marketing by college and university professors and by the “Build Back Better” political harpies, Marxism is a dangerous fantasy drug. Those who take Marxism into their lives will feel a sense of security and power at first. But they will soon come to feel great loss and emptiness. For, the Marxism addicted are injecting the fluff of nihilism into their system.

Polish philosopher and historian Leszek Kolakowski, called a “thinker for our time” by philosopher Roger Scruton, was exiled from Poland in 1968 for his criticism of Marxism and Communism. He had firsthand knowledge of the fantastical machinations of Marxist ideology. Consider the following passage from his 1976 essay On the So-Called Crisis of Christianity:

Christianity is thus the awareness of our weakness and misery, and it useless to argue that there exists or could exist a “Promethean Christianity,” that is, that Christian faith could be reconciled with hope for self-salvation. Two great ideas of the nineteenth century which, despite all that separates them, perfectly embodied this Promethean expectation –those of Marx and of Nietzsche – were anti-Christian in their roots, and not as a result of accidental historical circumstances. Nietzsche’s’ hatred of Christianity and of Jesus was a natural consequence of his belief in the unlimited possibility of mankind’s self-creation. Nietzsche knew that Christianity is the awareness of our weakness., and he was right. Marx knew this too, and from the young Hegelians, he took over and transformed the philosophy (more Fichtean than Hegelian) of self-creation and futuristic orientation. He came to believe that the collective Prometheus of the future would reach a state in which his thought and action would be indistinguishable and in which even “atheism” would lose its reason for existence, since people’s self-affirmation would be entirely “positive”, not negatively dependent on the negation of God.

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To answer the soap viewer’s second question “Is there more to life than meets the media eye?” we must look elsewhere. . .

Have a good look at the birds in the sky. They don’t plant seeds, they don’t bring in the harvest, they don’t store things in barns – and your father in heaven feeds them! Think how different you are from them! Can any of you add fifteen inches to your height just by worrying about it?

And why worry about what to wear? Take a tip from the lilies in the countryside. They don’t work; they don’t weave; but let me tell you, not even Solomon in all his finery was dressed as well as one of these. So if God gives that sort of clothing even to the grass in the field, which is here today and on the bonfire tomorrow, isn’t he more likely to clothe you too, you little-faith lot?

So don’t worry away with your ‘What’ll we eat?’ and ‘What’ll we drink?’ and ‘What’ll we wear?’ Those are all the things the Gentiles fuss about, and your heavenly father knows you need them all. Instead, make your top priority God’s kingdom and his way of life, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow can worry about itself. One days’ trouble at a time is quite enough. (Matt. 6:26-34)

Long before the melodrama of General Fauci, long before “emergency use” vaccines, and long before historical materialism’s death toll of millions, the Son of Man walked 30-some years in an unsanitary disease-filled world. All manner of health threats – smallpox, parasitic infections, malaria, anthrax, pneumonia, tuberculosis, polio, skin diseases including leprosy, head lice, scabies and more – existed in the first century.

Jesus was fully aware of the pain, suffering and groaning of his creation. He was fully aware of the reality that people were dealing with. He knew that many people of that time had only the bare necessities. Many lived hand-to-mouth. What did Jesus offer when he saw the growing crowds and went up the hillside, sat down, took a deep breath and began to teach them? (Matt. 5:1-2)

Jesus did not offer vain words and soap operas to play on emotions. He didn’t paint people as victims. He didn’t peddle ideology. He didn’t offer the Power of Positive Thinking. He didn’t offer critical theory. He didn’t offer diversity, equity and inclusion training. He didn’t pander for their attention with talk about skin color or gender or sexual preference. He didn’t offer collective Promethean self-salvation.

Jesus didn’t tell the crowds to rise up as one collective will to revolt and destroy what is and build a socio-economic system to produce the outcomes they desired. No.

What did Jesus offer? Jesus offered the kingdom of God – a physical-spiritual reality that Marxism denies. He offered a new Torah that fulfilled the old Torah. He offered a change of focus. Outsiders are now insiders. The first will be last. Washing feet, and not stepping on feet to get ahead, is the kingdom way.

Jesus spoke in terms of individual human agency. He said that his followers would be blessed if they acted in the ways he described. They would know the happiness and joy of life in the kingdom of God (not available under Marxism (cf. Psalm 4: 7)).

He offered awareness of reality from the perspective of a shepherd caring for his sheep. Jesus’ hillside discourse is found in the gospel according to Matthew (Matt. 5, 6 & 7). The first verse of Matthew’s gospel records that Jesus is a descendent of David, a shepherd who became king.

As we read in the Matthew passage above, Jesus offered the world as it turns – a cosmology of Creator love and care. He pointed to aesthetic flora and forage-to-mouth fauna as empirical evidence of his Father’s love and care for the evolutionary creation he put in motion some 13.8 billion years before.

“When does the melodrama end?” It’s up to you. People believe what they want to the believe. Psalm 1 tells us that there are two paths that one could follow.

“Is there more to life than meets the media eye?” It’s depends on where you look. Psalm 103 relates a worldview of good – blessing and benefit, compassion and concern, and righteousness and redemption – as man relates to God.

As the world turns you may feel like you are in a dryer drum on an Air Fluff cycle. In such a state you easily become discombobulated and distressed. You will want to take to heart Psalm 4 – David’s plea for deliverance from fluff – vain words and lies – that disturbs his sleep.

Turn off the Air Fluff cycle and remove the lint from your life. Have a good look at the birds in the sky. Take a tip from the lilies in the countryside. The unchanging One who put the universe in motion, feeds the birds, and dresses lilies in lavish beauty will look after you as the world turns.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James 1:17

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Psalm 1 Download

Psalm 103 Download

Psalm 4 Download

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“Episode_983 Lock Step of Tyrants … Dr. Naomi Wolf on Vaccine Passports and Nigel Farage”. Released: 2021.

“Episode_986 The American Generals Speak Part III”. Released: 2021.

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The following is not a soap opera. Pastor Artur Pawlowski was recently arrested by the Canadian Stasi for his staunch defiance of the pandemic lockdowns. Pastor Pawlowski conveys the reality of the self-salvation ideology of Marx, Nietzsche, and the collective Prometheus. He speaks of God’s salvation.

FROM COMMUNISM TO GOD

Pastor Art Pawlowski Tells His Life Story: From Communism to Man of God – Rebel News

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Keep these people and their needles away from your kids:

Day 110: The Same People Who Lied to You Over the Wuhan Lab Now Want You to Vaccinate Your Kids. (thenationalpulse.com)

Number of COVID Cases in Delhi Crashes After Mass Distribution of Ivermectin (humansarefree.com)

Keep these people and their pornography away from your kids:

Earth to Loudoun County — We have a problem… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

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Call to action:

Actress Samaire Armstrong: “What’s coming down the road is so much bigger than this moment.”

Actress Armstrong Gives Powerful Call for Moms to Fight Back Against Filthy Disgusting Masks on Kids (rumble.com)

America’s Frontline Doctors Sue the Federal Government to Prevent Forcing Experimental COVID Vaccines on US Children (thegatewaypundit.com)

“Understand, you are agreeing to be in a medical study when you take any of the COVID-19 vaccines.”

PDF >>TEN MEDICAL FACTS REGARDING THE COVID-19 EXPERIMENTAL VACCINES

509290635-AFLDS-10-Facts-Experimental-Vaccine-Cole-4-12-21 Download

“{The AFLDS is] seeking temporary injunctive relief against any existing or further authorization for use in children under the age of 16, of any of the COVID-19 “vaccines”1 that have been approved under the Emergency Use Authorization (“EUA”) . . .”

509292976-AFLD-Motion Download

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COVID Court:

Dr. Peter McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine and he is warning against the Vaccine.

Facebook exposed in global effort to silence dangers about Vaccine.

Facebook Whistleblowers LEAK DOCS Detailing Effort to Secretly Censor Vax Concerns on Global Scale – YouTube

Mask Psychosis: NYT Confirms The Liberal Mask Cult Is Here to Stay – Revolver

commie lee jones on Twitter: “MIT researchers ‘infiltrated’ a Covid skeptics community a few months ago and found that skeptics place a high premium on data analysis and empiricism. “Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.” https://t.co/jsoAG8G2VT https://t.co/CpEvCKz2HK” / Twitter

Model Stephanie Dubois Suffers Blood Clot, Dies Days After Getting COVID Shot (newsweek.com)

[Michigan] is working through a process to make permanent its workplace COVID-19 rules, enforced through the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Michigan’s push for permanent COVID-19 rules sparks battle with business leaders – mlive.com

Will the legal dept. save us from some COVID totalitarianism?

“The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has put employers on notice that should they attempt to require employees to receive injections of experimental COVID-19 gene-therapy vaccine a resulting adverse reaction will be considered “work-related” for which the employer may be held liable.”

Employers may be liable for ‘any adverse reaction’ from mandated coronavirus shots: OSHA | News | LifeSite (lifesitenews.com)

40 Million Fake Masks, 200,000 Counterfeit COVID Tests Seized. – The National Pulse

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A Story of Survival

Like humans, flowers inherit their appearance from genes. Pigments are “born” into these plants, producing a range of colors across the spectrum. The same chemical, carotenoid, that produces pigment in tomatoes and carrots, also produces yellow, red, or orange color in certain flowers. Another chemical, anthocyanin, is responsible for producing red, pink, blue, and purple-colored flower petals. While many people see these plants as purely decorative, flowers aren’t colorful just to be pretty – they need their color for survival.

Why Flowers Have Color (konicaminolta.us)

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The Manufacturing of a Mass Psychosis

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U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division Museum, Cantigny, Wheaton, IL

Image © Jennifer A. Johnson, 2021

Filed under 2021 current events, Christianity, COVID-19, cultural Marxism, Culture, pandemic, Political Commentary, social commentary, socialism Tagged with Anthony Fauci, Christianity, COVID, culture, fantasy, Marxism, mental health, pandemic, Sermon on the Mount

Cross Purposes

May 2, 2021 Leave a comment

You and I are inundated by narratives day and night. We are implored to spend our time, money, and allegiance in response to them. Their goads come at us through the mail, and via emails, radio, TV, and social media. Here are only a few of their associated rallying cries:

“Today Only!” “Act Now!” “Call Now!” “Last day to act!” “Crisis into opportunity!” “Doing nothing is not an option!” “Let’s get it done this year.” “We must move beyond climate talk to climate action.” . . . And there is, of course, The Great Reset’s pervasive “Build Back Better!” (bidding us to become the bricks and mortar of the Globalist’s Tower of Babel.)

The pressure to surrender and conform to narratives can be as manipulative as it is intense. The pressure is especially persuasive when a long-standing narrative fuels pressure to have a defining moment enacted. To wit, Palm Sunday and the so-called “triumphal entry”.

In terms of the gospel according to Mark, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, though taking on a “triumphal” and precursive tone, was anti-climactic. There was no takeover, no ousting of Roman rule, and no fire coming down upon the unrighteous.

Jesus entered Jerusalem, went into the temple, and looked all around. It was already getting late, and he returned to Bethany with the twelve. (Mk. 11: 11)

Those who had lined the road up to Jerusalem and had shouted “Hosanna in the Highest” did so out of the highest hopes. Along with the palm branches, they held expectations of a “Messianic Apocalypse”:

. . . for the heavens and the earth will listen to His [God’s] messiah . . . [and all w]hich is in them shall not turn away from the commandments of the Holy Ones. Strengthen yourselves, O you who seek the Lord, in his service! Will you not find the Lord in this, all those who hope in their heart? . . .

These words, from the Qumran text 4Q521 dubbed “Messianic Apocalypse”, were written some 100 years before Jesus. I wonder. Did the people go home that night and ask each other “What’s up with that guy? Why doesn’t he get with the program?” They would have had their reasons for asking.

Second Temple period Jews were experiencing a cultural crisis. Under the rule of a Seleucid (Greek-Syrian) king named Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“god manifest”), that began in 175 BC, the Jews had been under tremendous pressure to conform to Hellenistic culture.

(Note: the apocalyptic visions recorded in the latter chapters of Daniel (7-12) were written in response to the ongoing Jewish persecutions (167-164 BCE) by Mr. “god manifest”. The chapters can be dated toward the end of the Maccabean revolt (see below).

Antiochus did all he could to push his cultural narrative onto the Jews. He plundered the temple, erected an altar for Zeus Olympus in the Jerusalem temple and sacrificed to Greek gods. Traditional practices of Judaism were outlawed.

Many Jews at that time were greatly concerned about the growing assimilation to Hellenism and its gods. While some Jews went along with the cultural change, others revolted against it.

The Maccabean revolt was the armed resistance. Mattathias, a priest, and his sons Judas Maccabeus, Jonathon, Simon, John, and Eleazar led the resistance. Under Simon, Judea and Jerusalem achieved political independence for a time – the yoke of the Gentiles was removed from Israel (1 Maccabees 13:41-42)

After purifying the temple of foreign elements, Simon led a procession of those playing musical instruments and hymn singers waving palm branches into the temple. This much abbreviated version of second temple times sets the stage for Palm Sunday. You get a feel for what the people were thinking about Jesus.

Jesus entered a Jerusalem under Roman rule. The accounts of the Maccabean revolt, Simon’s “triumphal entry”, and the Messianic Apocalypse stoked imaginations that day. The crowd wanted Jesus to be the fulfillment of their Messianic hopes.

Jesus had encountered similar pressure to conform to the long-standing narrative – the advent of the Messiah – several times before.

When Jesus began to teach his disciples something new – there’s big trouble in store for the son of man – Peter did not hear Jesus conforming to the ‘popular’ messiah narrative. Sure, there had been trouble before. But this? . . .

There’s big trouble in store for the son of man. The elders, the chief priests, and the scribes are going to reject him. He will be killed – and after three days he’ll be raised. He said this all quite explicitly. (Mk. 8: 31-32)

Moments before Jesus said this, Peter had boldly declared Jesus to be the Messiah (Mk. 8:29). Clinging to a notion of the messiah as a formidable political and spiritual power and projecting onto Jesus that notion, Peter rebuked Jesus for saying things that took the wind out of the narrative he and others had been floating.

Jesus forcefully replied to Peter’s cross purposes:

Get behind me, Accuser! You’re thinking human thoughts, not God’s thoughts.

The renunciation of man’s narrative brings to mind Mark 1: 13. There, we read that Jesus went into the desert for forty days and was tested by Satan’s narrative.

Satan wanted Jesus to be the Messiah – a compromised, self-promoting, and self-advancing Messiah. He wanted the Jesus to be the Messiah the people wanted and not the Messiah the people needed.

Jesus had a growing number of people following him. Why not take advantage of the populist surge and clean house and become a hero? As before, there would be processions honoring a conquering hero. “‘C’mon, fulfill your destiny!” “The time is ripe.” “Act now!” “Build back better!”

Good Friday and Easter. We find out Jesus’ Cross Purpose. We find out why, though dealing with enormous opposition, he did not surrender to the pressure or conform to narratives and to cross-purposes. We are admonished to carry on the same way by considering his example:

We must look ahead, to Jesus. He is the one who carved out the path for faith, and he’s the one who brought it to completion.

He knew that there was joy spread out and waiting for him. That’s why he endured the cross, making light of its shame, and now has taken his seat at the right hand of God’s throne. He put up with enormous opposition from sinners. Weigh up in your minds just how severe it was; then you won’t find yourselves getting weary and worn out. -Hebrews 12: 2-3

Next, we’ll look at the gospel record of Jesus countering narratives and settling debates using “God’s thoughts”. We’ll also take a look at conformity.

*****

“We need an army to rise up,” he said. “We need people to stand up and not comply. We need a civil rights awakening again, noncompliance like Martin Luther King, Jr.” Our guests are: Rabbi Spero, Rudy Giuliani, Pastor Artur Pawlowski, John Brakey

Filed under 2021 current events, Christianity, cultural Marxism, Culture, Gospel of Mark, Jewish History Tagged with Christianity, Easter, Good Friday, Jewish History, Maccabean revolt, Palm Sunday, Second temple period, The Gospel of Mark, The Great Reset

Are We to Be Their Playthings?

April 11, 2021 Leave a comment

“There is no question in my mind that very significant powerbrokers around the world have either planned to take advantage of the next pandemic or created the pandemic.” – Dr. Michael Yeadon, ex-Pfizer VP

Sixty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his farewell address January 17, 1961, warned the nation:

“. . . we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

The “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” persisted by the means of self-preservation: generate kinetic military action to generate the continued sales of military armament.

Clearly this “misplaced power” existed in the Bush-Cheney and the Obama-Biden administrations. Both made sure to continue world strife.

The Nobel Peace Prize winning 44th president launched more drone strikes than “43” carried out during two full terms. Obama launched two undeclared wars, and—as he bragged in a speech defending the Iran deal—bombed no fewer than seven countries.

Sixty years later and we are witnessing and are subject to another disastrous rise of misplaced power: Globalist Oligarch Tech World Order Kyrioi Enclave (G.O.T.W.O.K.E.).

The “military–industrial complex” was described as an “iron triangle” with government officials, legislators, and military-industrial firms at adjoining angles.

G.O.T.W.O.K.E. can be described as an inverted pentagram. The five interconnected points of darkness are globalists, oligarchs, techno-utopians, politicians and the media. Within the star are the stakeholders: government entities such as the CDC, NIH, DHS, etc., the Party of Davos, Pope Francis, and a supporting cast of useful idiots such as Progressive Christians -Evangelicals, Catholics, Jesuits – and election-stealing Democrats.

The inverted star represents the consortium of power and Satanic influence at work to subvert the created order.

Literature has analogies to G.O.T.W.O.K.E. For, the evil that man does to man has been repeated throughout history. Those who write to warn us, take the implications from the record of atrocities and apply them in a post-contemporary setting which contain new means to apply the same evil.

The three authors below published their novels after WWI and WWII. They understood the horrors resulting from progressivism and totalitarianism.

Aldous Huxley, in his novel Brave New World wrote of the World State and its motto “Community, Identity, Stability”.

In George Orwell’s 1984 we read ofthe “Party” and its enigmatic leader Big Brother. Of course, the Party has slogans: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.”

C.S. Lewis penned a space trilogy. In the third novel in that series – That Hideous Strength – we learn of the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) N.I.C.E. is a scientific and social engineering agency and a front for dark supernatural forces. There are significant parallels of N.I.C.E. activity to what is happening today.

Like N.I.C.E., G.O.T.W.O.K.E. will stop at nothing to get their way. The epigraph and the following is from the article Ex-Pfizer Vice-President: COVID-19 Vaccines to Cause “Mass Depopulation” Event Within 2 years | The Red Elephants (the entire post is a must read!)

“I think the end game is going to be, ‘everyone receives a vaccine’… Everyone on the planet is going to find themselves persuaded, cajoled, not quite mandated, hemmed-in to take a jab.

“When they do that every single individual on the planet will have a name, or unique digital ID and a health status flag which will be ‘vaccinated,’ or not … and whoever possesses that, sort of single database, operable centrally, applicable everywhere to control, to provide as it were, a privilege, you can either cross this particular threshold or conduct this particular transaction or not depending on [what] the controllers of that one human population database decide. And I think that’s what this is all about because once you’ve got that, we become playthings and the world can be as the controllers of that database want it.”

And so it is that one of the pointy fingers of G.O.T.W.O.K.E., the media, invoked a representative of an increasingly Progressive Christian college to call out, persuade, and cajole White Evangelical Christians to submit to “a jab.”

“If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,” said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.”

White Evangelical Resistance Is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

We are told in the NYT article that “Distrust of scientists has become part of cultural identity, of what it means to be white and evangelical in America”.

So, we are to trust Anthony Fauci, who with Francis Collins of the NIH, was behind the gain of function experiments gone awry in Wuhan China? Are we to trust scientism – scientific claims devoid of empirical evidence and debate and derived from ideology?

I wonder. Do Progressives pray “woke will be done on earth as it is in my belief system”? This would make sense with the following.

One of the rules Victor Davis Hanson lists in his article Radical New Rules for Post-America, Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them is . . .

“Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity itself.”

Of course, to be a woke crusader one must wield the sword of wokeness. One must slash scientism deniers with cutting edge wokeness.

While woke warriors are fighting the good fight with yard signs, bumper stickers, virtue signaling, and interviews they are too busy to notice what G.O.T.W.O.K.E. is doing. This is by G.O.T.W.O.K.E. design.

The COVID-19 “pandemic” is being employed to produce a feudal state. The new class structures will mirror Medieval times.

Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism. If the last seventy years saw a massive expansion of the middle class, not only in America but in much of the developed world, today that class is declining and a new, more hierarchical society is emerging.

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin (goodreads.com)

One major way to bring about a feudal state is the control of money.

You may be aware that the Fed has propped up the stock market with low interest rates. But those not in the stock market and with a savings account have not earned interest on their money. So, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – by design.

And, when the Biden regime talks about spending trillions of dollars for infrastructure (‘crumbling roads and bridges”) they mean they will spend a small portion on infrastructure and a massive amount to produce Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of society. The inordinate spending will mean increased taxation and not just of the wealthy. Raising your taxes is in the docket.

With the amount of government spending based on printing money and accruing debt beyond our GDP, a devaluation of the dollar and inflation will soon hit the economy. The middle class and poor will be hit hardest. Inflation means that the cost of goods will go up but wages will remain stagnant so that businesses can afford the cost of goods. Your purchasing power will decline.

With a devalued dollar, the Fed will create a digital world currency to replace physical currency. This may be done under the guise of securing public health: “cash passes on disease and pandemics”.

You will be required to exchange your physical dollars into the new digital dollar (DUSD). But here’s the kicker. The exchange rate will not be one for one. It will start out less than one for one and then decrease over time. This will serve to persuade, cajole, and force you to exchange your USD for DUSD.

And, as Dr. Michael Yeadon infers about the vaccine, a digital currency means we become playthings and the world can be as the controllers of that database want it.”

Your smartphone is to become the controller’s means to monitor your behavior. A social credit system will be set up using your phone. This is not science fiction. This system will parallel the China Social Credit System mandated by the Chinese Communist Party. China’s population of 1,443,585,192 is controlled digitally.

Your money, your health, your contacts, your purchases – everything about you will be monitored in light (dark, really) of G.O.T.W.O.K.E. social policy. G.O.T.W.O.K.E.’s Great Reset is going to make this happen in our lifetime.

Consider what the above means for Christians. G.O.T.W.O.K.E. is led by atheists, nihilists and narcissists. None of them want anything to do with God. The tower of Techno-Babel they are building has nothing to do with God. They desire to delete Christ with their apps and algos and then by persecutions and deaths.

Some place their hope in a “horses and chariots” election, in an outpouring of rebuke against what is happening. But what I have written about above is taking place now and will not be overcome by voting in the ‘right’ candidates. We must prepare for what is next.

So, I believe it is time for Christians to prepare to go underground. Get rid of personal debt. Get rid of church buildings, building programs and church debt.

The underground church is nothing new. And, it is necessary. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist as Christians in China are fully aware.

We go underground to recover what it means to follow Christ and to steel ourselves with prayer and intimate community for what is coming.

For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.

Isaiah 60:2

*****

Episode 852 –they are coming for people of faith NY Times and Liz Cheney

Episode 854 – Occam’s Razor … Fauci’s Virus and Open Borders Superspreaders

Episode 858 – Naomi Wolf Cryptocurrency and China’s Passports … The CCP’s Next Attack

You can choose to not submit your yourself to those who would use you as playthings:

Here it comes:

CDC declares racism “a serious public health threat” – Axios

Bill Gates, George Soros Team Up To Form Organization Tasked with Policing with ‘Disinformation’ – Conservative Brief

Some women report heavier and more painful PERIODS since getting the COVID-19 vaccine | Daily Mail Online

Second Vaccination Site Halts Operations After Adverse Reactions to Johnson & Johnson Vaccine (theepochtimes.com)

Beautiful 28-Year-Old Nurse Died Because of the Pfizer mRNA Injection – Shaneya.Info

They Are After Your Child – They Want to Inject Your Child With Dangerous Synthetic mRNA Technology – Shaneya.Info

Mandatory Vaccines, Mandatory Tracking Bracelets and Mandatory PCR Tests Are a Pretext to Mandatory RFID Implants Into Our Hand and Brain – Shaneya.Info

Georgia is the fourth state to pause Johnson & Johnson vaccine (nypost.com)

We are CNN’s Playthings:

*****

Note: The “rapture” is a fantasy imposed onto Scripture. We should see the Scripture in the context it was written and not add fantasy notions to it. The Apostle Paul, by the Holy Spirit, gave us the imagery of Christ returning in power. In 1 Thessalonians 4.15-16 the Apostle “Paul is casting a vision of Christ’s return wrapped in political overturns (he actually does this a lot!)”. There will be no “rapture”. “The Late Great Planet Earth” and the “Left Behind” series of ‘end times’ books are fantasies imposed on Scripture. These books are not worth your time.

*****

Filed under 2021 current events, Christianity, cultural Marxism, Political Commentary, Progressivism, totalitarianism Tagged with Christianity, COVID-19, Davos, digital currency, New World Order, pandemic, progressivism, social credit system, techno-utopians, The Great Reset, the underground church, totalitarianism, vaccine

A Plain Reading of the Times

March 28, 2021 Leave a comment

The brainwashing techniques of the tortuous past year – the state’s coercion to make us obey irrational and inhuman restrictions, the sensory-depriving mask mandates, the social isolation, the state-instigated shaming and punishment of those not conforming, the 24/7 fear-peddling of the media, the forced subjugation to pseudo-science, the unrelenting “get-the” vaccine goading – reminded me of the O’Brien-Winston Smith struggle session in George Orwell’s 1984:

I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

O’Brien later questions Winston as to Winston’s understanding of why people are brought to Room 101. Winston replies “To make them confess”. O’Brien replies “No, that is not the reason. Try again”. Winston answers “To punish them.” “No!” exclaimed O’Brien.

“Shall I tell you why we brought you here? “To make you sane! . . . The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”

What has taken place the past year is also eerily similar to the mind-control techniques used on Korean War prisoners detained by communists in North Korea and China. The Biderman Report of 1956, details techniques used on prisoners (see chart below).

What has taken place the past year -the quashing of dissent – is also eerily similar to the destabilization techniques (“decomposition”) that was used in Stasi psychological and political warfare.

…the Stasi often used a method which was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung, and it’s described in another guideline. The word is difficult to translate because it means originally “biodegradation.” But actually, it’s a quite accurate description. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn’t try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions.

—Hubertus Knabe, German historian

“The aim of decomposition is the fragmentation, paralysis, disorganization and isolation of hostile-negative forces, thereby providing a differentiated political-ideological recovery.”

You can read about the methods of The Stasi Decomposition here.

The 20^th century handed us blood-stained receipts for the purchase of ideological conformity. These should have served as warning signs. But these signs are being taken down. History, with its own voice of dissent, is being “decomposed” by those who are taking control of the past (e.g., the 1619 Project). For . . .

Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future. ― George Orwell, 1984

2021 and the “PARTY” continues. Over my 68 years I’ve witnessed the American psyche transformed from an attitude akin to that of fiercely independent frontier folk to that of the emasculated, passive and childlike Eloi. In the process Americans have become fodder for the ruthless dark army of the “PARTY”, aka Globalists.

It is the Progressives – “PARTY” useful idiots – who use coercion and control, as documented above, to demoralize, degrade, and dispatch Americans. It was the much-ballyhooed Progressive FDR who ordered Japanese-Americans into internment camps. FDR created a milieu of fear to perpetrate this crime against a portion of humanity.

Have you noticed? For Progressives, being a U.S. citizen means doing nothing more or less than what they say. And, Progressives do not stop with removing freedom and rights of Americans. They desire the exorcism of the human spirit so that you and I may only be possessed by their collectivist ideology.

Human agency is a problem for Progressives. Your claim to be made in the image of God is a major problem for them. Your heart, mind and soul must be purged of anything that is God-resident. We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.

Over the past year we’ve witnessed how they “change them”. We’ve seen people forced to submit to the indoctrination of Critical Race Theory. We learned of the dark army’s passage of the For the People Act of 2021 (H.R. 1) – the act works to keep the dark army in control Of We the People.

We’ve learned of Megan Markle’s childish “me-me-me” worldview that was meant to be replicated worldwide. And, we’ve seen the entire population locked down when only those at risk – a small segment of the population – should have been quarantined.

We’ve seen the normalcy “goal post” moved over and over the past year (a destabilization technique). We’ve been forced to follow the (pseudo-)science of COVID pronouncements.

In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good. What prompted Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, or Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hysterically and wrongly to forecast widespread demographic or climatological catastrophe in just a few years was not ignorance of science per se, but a desire to massage science for our own good.

. . . Fauci has rejected science, as he knew it, to mislead the public. . . he adopted the Platonic “noble lie” on occasion. – Victor Davis Hanson, Follow The ‘Science’ They Said

In this post I presented some analogies from history of what the intelligentsia – those who think they know better than you; today these are the Globalists of Davos – will do to make sure you are controlled to the nth degree so as to produce the outcomes they desire.

Now come the questions: Since we have the blood-soaked receipts of the evil that occurred in the 20^th century are people now allowing it to happen again?

Where are people’s heads at right now? Are people running around in a make-believe Where the Wild Things Are world created for them by the thought-control Globalists? Is political correctness and the “cancel culture” about people preferring a make-believe world as found in children’s books? Do people relate to Megan-Markle spewing her WOKE pablum?

(What should be deeply concerning: history and now literature, which also takes us beyond our finite self-world, are now being discarded as not being relevant to one’s own “me-me-me” experience.)

Do people like being treated like children? Are there people who are perfectly content being juvenile in their thinking and playing the Eloi? A plain reading of the times would indicate this to be so.

“Take your medicine and we’ll give you a cookie (or a Krispy Kreme Donut).”

****

Below are some links, videos, and podcasts – basically, a plain reading of the times:

“…reports of injuries and deaths following the experimental COVID-19 “vaccines.”

3,964 DEAD 162,610 Injuries: European Database of Adverse Drug Reactions for COVID-19 “Vaccines” (healthimpactnews.com)

Doctors Around the World Issue Dire WARNING: DO NOT GET THE COVID VACCINE!! (healthimpactnews.com)

The vaccine – “an experiment on humanity.”

Wait Until You Find Out What They’re Not Telling You About Covid-19 – Revolver

Man’s skin ‘peeled off’ in reaction to Johnson & Johnson COVID shot (nypost.com)

Transhumanism, (Nano) Technology, and the New you!

Transhumanism Is The New Religion Of Technocracy

Here’s someone fighting the dark army with Light:

Deconstructing “Wokethink” – Mark Jeftovic (02/25/2021) – WallStreetWindow.com

Dr. Gad Saad: How Infectious Ideas are killing Common Sense; Idea Pathogens

EXCLUSIVE: Cigna’s critical race theory training: Don’t say ‘brown bag lunch’ and be mindful of ‘religious privilege’ (washingtonexaminer.com)

Episode 818 – Industrialized Crime … The Globalists’ Border Crisis and Endless Warfare

Episode 825 – Trust the Science, Follow the Money … American Elites’ Connection

Episode 831 – Black Box Voting … Ending Voter Fraud in Machines and By Mail

Added 3-31-2021: Here’s an interesting talk by an interesting character. Brand gives us a plain reading of the times. He comments on the Davos’ elitist view of things (us) and their takeover of the world via technology. He talks about the COVID Pandemic Shock Doctrine, The Great Reset, and the disturbing trends of technology.

😂😂😂The Parrots:🦜🦜🦜🦜
"Number are going up, numbers are going up"
"Wear a mask, wear a mask." pic.twitter.com/lCyHEicGfV
— Canada Jack (@AlbertanPatriot) March 4, 2021

1/ Okay, a bunch of countries have decided @AstraZeneca’s #Covid vaccine is double-plus ungood because of a tiny ittybitty lil risk it will cause horrible deaths in healthy young adults.

But no worries about the @JNJNews @pfizer @moderna_tx shots, right?

Well. Hmm.
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) March 30, 2021

(You will want to read the thread.)

Filed under 2021 current events, Christianity, cultural Marxism, Culture, social commentary, social science, Technocracy, The Great Reset Tagged with CCP, Communism, COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccine, Critical Race Theory, Davos, Globalism, politics, social engineering, Stasi, The Great Reset

Freedom – Everywhere in Chains

January 31, 2021 Leave a comment

Are you less free now than a year ago?

Are you currently free to flourish as a human?

Are you currently told to wear a mask, stay home and wait for release from house arrest?

Are you being told how you can gather with your family and your church?

Are you being told that you will need a vaccine passport so that you can travel and participate in society once again?

Has your business license become a noose around your neck?

Do you feel free to make choices about dealing with COVID-19?

Do you feel free from coercion? From arbitrary power?

Are you being told how to live your life by those who do not know you?

Do you agree with the following?

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.” (emphasis mine)
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

Collectively decided to be good is principle the 18^th century Swiss philosopher and French Revolution muse Jean Jacques Rousseau was after: the “general will”, as penned in his 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Some equated Rousseau’s “general will” with an agreed upon rule of law that would ensure freedom and equal treatment in society. This, at first glance, appears to be beneficial for society. Yet, freedom can be quickly disposed of when the “general will” becomes a demand for obedience and conformity to its rules and laws. Dictators and totalitarian leaders – Democrats, specifically – and their media amplifiers have no problem creating a “general will” and dispensing with your freedom.

As you have witnessed, the Democrats/Left define and perpetrate “general will” in their own ideological (and theological – “social justice”) terms. The Left has no desire for input from anyone else.

The Left’s concocted “general will” is hawked by the predominately Leftist corporate media as the generally accepted will of the people. And, since the lie is in the NYT and on MSNBC, CNN and now on Fox News, people get the impression that what they are being sold is the real deal. The critical race theory based “1619 project” is just one example of what is being peddled. Mask wearing is another. Salvation from COVID-19 by vaccine is another

Those who do not abide by the “general will” Groupthink are rubes, “bitter clingers”, “deplorables”, “racists”, and not worthy of a social media voice in the controlled “general will” narrative.

Does any of this sound familiar in light of this past year of politics playing medicine, of mandates, lockdowns, the stolen election, and the stolen “general will”? Freedom – everywhere in chains because of the imposition of “general will”.

Collectivist’s lies may make you feel like you are in sync with the “general will.” Therein, you may feel safe. Collectivism talks of multiculturalism, of humanism, of a “better world for everyone.” Individual freedom is of no importance to collectivists.

If you care about your freedom, then throw off any attachment to the collectivist “void”. Put to death the collectivist impulse once and for all. Resurrect the human that is you. I return you to the words of Friedrich Hayek.:

“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”

And

“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”

******

The opening sentence to Rousseau’s The Social Contract:

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.”

Rousseau, like many since, assumed that man is by nature a free and innocent being. He would tell you that man is not the problem. In The Social Contract he stated “Men are not naturally enemies”. He pointed to social institutions as the problem. Fast forward. Remember Barack Obama talking about the “fundamental transformation of America?”

Such a distorted vision of man is behind the ruinous ideology, i.e., Marxism, which has devasted and destroyed the lives of millions. In the effort to produce equality of results, the only equal result has been death by ideology.

Such a distorted vision of mankind is also behind the ad hoc justice being dispensed to today as “social justice.” Accordingly, people are not to be held accountable for crimes against another because of their social situation – environment is the problem, not the man. Yet, as anyone can see under ad hoc justice, a socially “just result” for the criminal does not produce an equally socially “just result” for the victim. The Left cares for one result but not the other.

As I write this, more and more of American institutions are becoming corrupted to serve the coming globalist collective. Man, who is “born free”, is willingly taking on the “chains” supplied by the institutions of the globalist collective.

To learn more about the “unconstrained vision” and before you read anything else this year, read …

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggle by Thomas Sowell

*****

Here are two men who have shown “readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority” (“general will” majority):

Economist Thomas Sowell:

A word about the COVID-19 hysteria from Pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson

Added 2-1-2021. The truth about COVID-19, masks and the lies we are being fed …

This informative video is found at the following link:

Unmasking The Truth – Dr. Lee Merritt -Omaha, Nebraska

Filed under 2021 current events, cultural Marxism, pandemic, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, social justice Tagged with COLLECTIVISM, COVID-19, Democrats. Millennials, freedom, Friedrich Hayek, Globalism, lockdowns, mandates, Marxism, pandemic, social justice, socialism, Thomas Sowell, vaccines

“We have a Bunch of Cowards”

January 26, 2021 Leave a comment

Watch this video before YouTube pulls it down!

David K. Clements, a business law professor at New Mexico State University, presents a cogent and courageous response to an emailed letter from NMSU President John Floros. Go and do likewise.

Added 1-28-2021:

I will not take the vaccine. Here’s why …

Dr. Dolores Cahill, professor of molecular genetics, School of Medicine at University College Dublin, and chairwoman of Irish Freedom Party:

Filed under 2020 election, 2021 current events, cultural Marxism, Culture, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary Tagged with 2020 Presidential Election, Antifa, COVID-19, culture, David K. Clements, education, freedom, John Floros, NMSU, political, storming the capital, vaccines

“the right to be unhappy”

January 24, 2021 Leave a comment

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.’

‘In fact,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.’

‘All right then,’ said the Savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.’

‘Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.’ There was a long silence.

‘I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re welcome,” he said.”

This conversation between John the “savage” and Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe, takes place in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian science fiction novel Brave New World.

Mond had explained to John the World State’s system of castes, control and consumerism established to create order, stability and happiness. Under the World State the world’s population, economy, technology and culture are made to serve the mission statement: “Community, Identity, Stability”.

John, reared on the Savage reservation and raised on Shakespeare, rejects Mond’s world as described here:

Everyone in Mond’s society belongs: nobody experiences the pain, loneliness, and rejection that has been part of John’s character formation. Nobody in the World State ever suffers any material want, such as hunger or overcrowding. Everyone lives in a clean, new, sterile, sanitary, and bright world with lots of things to buy. Everybody is conditioned or drugged to be happy…
To John, those elements of life Mond has jettisoned are exactly what make us human. Life for John is not worth living without the possibility of deep relationships and intellectual exploration and discovery.

What brought this novel to mind is the Left’s concerted effort to produce a similar globalist World State via the Great Reset. The “public health crisis” and the (illegitimate) 2020 election are the Left’s “gain of function” mutation of our rights and laws to bring about a World State.

Leftist professors, politicians, media provoking agents, Progressives, and even the Pope would have us believe that differences of class, race, income or XYZ can be resolved and that equality and freedom can be won by “A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.”

The Pope after the 2016 election:

“It it has been said many times and my response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians. Christ spoke of a society where the poor, the weak and the marginalized have the right to decide. Not demagogues, not Barabbas, but the people, the poor, whether they have faith in a transcendent God or not. It is they who must help to achieve equality and freedom”. [emphasis added]

So, are we to believe that communists think like Christians (based on the communist seizure of Acts 4:32)?

Are we to choose to live under a flag of “Community, Identity, Stability”, where the people, the poor … achieve equality and freedom, and then (theoretically) be free of worry, material want, hate, isolation, disease, and would then be happy!?

I have tried to understand the heuristic behind those choosing freedom and those choosing to be free of freedom and desirous of living in a communist state. The Brave New World suggests to me that there are those who choose fail-prone freedom over happiness and those who choose fail-safe happiness over freedom. These two views are at odds. I see the difference going to the very nature of what it means to be human.

As we heard in John’s response above and from your own experience, you know that freedom involves choice. And, being able to choose goes to the very essence of being human, does it not?

A material object cannot choose. Artificial Intelligence cannot know the sense of adventure and surprise inherent in the act of choosing. Objects and AI cannot know a sense of failure or of happiness or of worry or of hope that a choice may bring about.

For those who choose fail-prone freedom, life is tragic, romantic and the sum of all human potentialities. Value is created through freedom and choice: love, goodness, charity, etc. These, taking the initiative freely, will say, “I see what needs to be changed, and it starts with me.”

(Now, you don’t want to make the same choices John “the savage” did. You’ll end up in a very dark place. But you get the gist of what I am saying.)

Those who choose fail-safe happiness over fail-prone freedom, it seems to me, trade their freedom and choices for a doled-out life of (theoretical) material security and certainty. These lay the burden of responsibility for their happiness on the World State. You can see this in the growing welfare state.

These seek to avoid pain and suffering and any effort that might bring about pain and suffering inherent in a choice. These seek the material comfort and surety promised by socialism’s “workers’ paradise.” These, lacking the initiative to choose, will say “I see what needs to be changed and it starts with you.”

For, those who choose fail-safe happiness over freedom, in order to obtain fail-safe happiness, go on to coerce, cancel and control the lives of those who do not conform to the manifesto of the World State of Happiness.

Tragically, fail-prone freedom outliers are considered less than human by the World Staters and are sent to internment camps. You either live in the ‘civilized’ World State of the ‘enlightened’ ‘real’ people or you live as barely human on the Savage Reservation.

There are no families and no religion in the World State. Babies are engineered and hatched in the World State. Babies occur naturally within families on the Reservation. There is a syncretic religiosity on the Reservation. Those of the World State voyeuristically watch the savages and worship the assembly line developer Henry Ford.

When the World State requires you to give up your freedom along with your rights and your property so that it can mete out happiness in the form of physical well-being and solidarity with others in similar chains, what will happen to you? Years ago, I wanted to understand the World State of Happiness, aka, communism, and the threat it imposed on humanity.

During the early eighties I read the three volumes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s’ The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. (I doubt that Pope Francis has ever read these accounts of the devastation to human beings under communism. He prefers messaging that affirms his Marxist World State religion.)

As I learned from my reading, communism dehumanizes. And, as humans are wont to do, Solzhenitsyn rebelled against the imposition of inhumanity – a communist rule. The rule had begun as an ideology to put things right and ended as an institution of purges, mass murders and gulag camps.

“Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat ax. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more complex), all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. The whole created being—man—is reduced to matter. It is characteristic that Communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West

What is certain if you choose fail-prone freedom over happiness is that you are “claiming the right to be unhappy.”

What is certain if you choose fail-safe happiness over freedom: your claiming the right to be happy will not be heard. For, you will have been “reduced to matter”. Your human nature will be eradicated in your quest for security and stability, aka, happiness.

Let’s Talk Turkey

November 25, 2020 Leave a comment

Let’s Talk Turkey

But first, a word from our sponsors ….

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace….We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” ― Samuel Adams

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville

While I was on Twitter, a few years ago, I would jump in on threads where socialism and capitalism were discussed (Better, the terms were tossed about.). The anti-capitalists would denounce capitalism as “unfair” and the rich as “greedy” while insinuating “equality” and “fairness” occurred naturally within the materialist realm of socialism. As an example, they pointed to Scandinavian countries (where, amazingly, none of them had the gumption to take up residence. That would take initiative and responsibility and money on their part.)

The anti-capitalists, assuming a superior moral position, never talked in-depth about the mechanics of socialism other than it being a redistribution of wealth from “rich” to “poor” via confiscatory taxation. And, whether they were oblivious to or welcoming of the growing soft despotism in America that gives people the illusion that they are in control, I could not determine.

On Twitter there were also those who proclaimed Jesus to be a “Progressive”. They offered a litany of “Progressive” attributes assigned to Jesus, among them “anti-rich”, their presumed antithesis to “Blessed are the poor” [“…in spirit”]. There were those, too, who said that the early church was an example of socialism because the early Christian shared everything in common. Apparently, these folks had never read that Jesus warned about the dangers of the love of riches and not that someone who was rich shouldn’t be. Did these folks also not comprehend that the early church did what they did out of love and not out of coercion?

In the current hopped-up milieu of socialism as social justice*, what is the mystique and lure of socialism, central planning, and top-down government when …

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.
For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances – what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself.

-from “Democracy In America” by Alexis De Tocqueville, Chapter VI: “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear”

Long before social media came around fostering populist socialism, I inured myself against the idea of a free lunch. In the 80s I watched Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose Series on TV. The following video is part of that series.

Plain-spoken Milton Friedman, economist of the Chicago School of Economics, addresses the issue of social responsibility that seems to be the motivation behind a rejection of capitalism and the attraction of socialism. He also presents the fundamental difference between capitalism and socialism: capitalism – an economic market operating under the incentive of profit; socialism – the government market under the incentive of power. Included are his thoughts on collectivism, social justice, moral values, individual responsibility, the doctrine of social responsibility, and philanthropy.

For the many of you around the world who live in disparate circumstances and who read my blog, I pray that you will benefit greatly from this video.

A final word from our sponsors ….

It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.
― Alexis de Tocqueville

What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish? ― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men. ― Samuel Adams

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote…that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. ― Samuel Adams

The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional. ― Samuel Adams

* Pope Francis is Envisaging and Engendering an Open World:

“On the other hand, if we accept the great principle that there are rights born of our inalienable human dignity, we can rise to the challenge of envisaging a new humanity,” he proposes. “We can aspire to a world that provides land, housing and work for all.”

As one can surmise, Francis welcomes the populism of socialism and “for the good of all” envisages a communist version of Catholicism. For example, if you are a Catholic in China, (or the world for that matter) in his vision you’ll be provided land, housing and work provided that you are the Chinese Communist Party’s version of a “good citizen”.

The above helps explain why Pope Francis deplores the populism that elected Trump. A movement of “free people” is hostile to coercive top down rule and to non-democratic central planning and to the liberty-annihilating communism the Pope dreams of and so desires so as to reshape the world into his Let Us Dream image. The Pope/CCP desires the Ring of Power to conform all men to its will.

The Trump movement seeks to take back life, liberty, and country –identity – from the Ruling Class Obama-Clinton-Biden-Cuomo types who talk down to Americans, considering them “bitter clingers” and “deplorables” and rubes. The Trump movement detests the privileged elites (including Francis), and the unelected bureaucrats, and, essentially, those who are “more equal than others” and deign to tell them who they are and what they are to think and what they are to do. The Trump movement fights to keep America from becoming a third world country, as Democrat mayors prove it is possible with their “Open World” policies.

The Trump movement deplores the overreach and suffocating control of globalism. The movement seeks to remove the tentacles of the “Open World” beast that wants to devour the U.S. – our individual rights, our liberty, our Constitution and our identity – to feed its One World Fratelli tutti chimera. “We the people” reject the Great Reset.

The One World forces and the purple and scarlet dressed Whore of Babylon are gathering to fight against the Lord, as foretold.

“The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last…
The great battle of our time.”

Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Added 11-26-2020:

Podcast:

Totalitarian Democracy Roger Kimball in conversation with Mark Bauerlein

Roger Kimball is Editor and Publisher of The New Criterion

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University.

Filed under 2020 current events, capitalism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Current Events 2010, Economics, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, social justice, socialism, Thanksgiving Tagged with Alexis de Tocqueville, capitalism, Democracy, Economics, Marxism, Milton Friedman, Pope Francis, Samuel Adams, social responsibility, socialism, Thanksgiving. Progressivism

Ask Yourself …

November 13, 2020 Leave a comment

Ask yourself …

Did the media just elect Geritol-ad Joe Biden as president-elect of their sock puppet theater?

Does the media care whether your one vote is disenfranchised by two illegal/invalid votes?

Did illegal votes pour in just like illegal aliens poured in at the behest of Democrats?

Are you buying the narrative that by not conceding to the main stream media/Democrats and by demanding a thorough investigation into alleged election corruption you are delegitimizing Democracy?

Was the NYT headline of Nov. 11, 2020 American Democracy DEMANDS every legal vote to be counted and the rest tossed? Or, was it Election Officials Nationwide Find no Fraud?

Should we just get on with our lives and assume that what the NYT and the media tells us (“Nothing to see here.”) is “good enough for me”?

During the takeover of a country by the forces of a dictatorship, does the media ‘cooperate’ with the power they are in cahoots with?

Do you believe that the media has your best interest at heart?

Are you aware that the media and social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.,) pose the greatest threats to democracy?

Are you OK with and feel secure in Groupthink?

Are you Ok with the shadow government of Democrats/media operating to take down President Trump the last four years?

Is the Democrat/Progressive party the party of Bolshevism?

Are you OK with submitting your income, your rights, yourself and your country to Bernie Sanders, BLM and the Socialist spice girls (Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar)?

Are you OK with the intolerance of the Democrats/Progressives/media and their desire to cancel you (your thoughts, your words, your religion) out?

Are you OK with being reduced to the lowest common denominator of life because socialism/Marxism says it must be so for equality?

Are you OK with Biden rescinding, through executive order, the immigration policies put in place to protect the country?

Have you heard of any terrorist attack on U.S. soil during the last four years?

Have you heard of the U.S. starting wars the last four years?

Are you OK with Biden placing America – its resources, its tax revenue and its people – at the behest of the self-serving token Paris Accord (a Tower of Babel) while the American private sector, the last four years, has produced alternative green energy sources and has made America energy independent?

What really matters: numbers of cases and positivity OR deaths directly and solely related to COVID-19?

Are you OK with a state government that shuts down your business and your livelihood as it plays God seeking to control a virus?

Will state government shut down communities and businesses for climate change and racism and “gun control” calling each a “public health crisis?

Who is the “public” in “public health”?

Is the “greater good” proffered by the state as the reason for its coercive and overbearing control of your life really the greater good?

Do you agree with a member of Biden’s new coronavirus task force and lockdown enthusiast, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, that life is not worth living past 75?

Who should have the say about your health: the state or you?

Do you believe the state is the answer to healthcare and not yourself?

Are we to obey all laws?

Am I ready for civil disobedience?

Are you OK with increased cases of depression, drug use, suicides, and child and spousal abuse that the lockdowns have produced?

Are you ready to disobey all state orders that hinder human flourishing, that are antisocial and inhuman and, that produce the negative effects as mentioned above?

Should we obey stay-at home advisories and orders? And, why?

Should we “cancel Thanksgiving” as Chicago’s Mayor Lightfoot has strongly advised?

Who should be quarantined?

Who should not be quarantined?

Should you be quarantined?

Who should not be forced to stay at home and to cancel Thanksgiving?

When Democrats propose policies do you challenge them and ask economist Thomas Sowell’s questions: “Compared to what?” and “At what cost?” and “What hard evidence do you have?”

Are you able to challenge them or are you cut off because you are not making them look good and they don’t have the answers to your questions?

Do Progressives care more about their vision than about humans they want to impose their vision on?

Are you able to think for yourself or do you need the state/media to tell you what to think?

Do you operate out of a sense of fear that has been relentlessly generated by the media and the state?

Should casinos operate with greater freedom and flexibility than houses of worship?

Should Illinois restauranteurs defy state mandates that drive them out of business and create massive unemployment?

Should parents of school-age children in Illinois rally and protest to reopen schools?

Are the U.S. (and world) public health officials joined at the hip with China?

Are the U.S. public health policies driven by China, as are Hollywood and pro-sports?

Will compulsory vaccines, contact tracing and vaccine cards become the means to separate who’s in and who’s out of the New Globalist World Order in the coming days?

Are you OK with abuse of power and a Stalinist type enemies list and another Great Purge?

Do you rant and rave, calling America “racist” and society “systemically racist”, because you grew up in a single parent home without a father and never learned how to succeed in the world?

Are you OK with the individual being crushed, worn down, and reduced to powder in the mortar and pestle of the totalitarian Progressive Left?

Are you concerned about and afraid of firearms because the TV has relentlessly told you that you should be concerned about and afraid of firearms, as it has with Covid-19 and climate change and healthcare and a host of other socialist initiatives to get you feeding from the same trough?

Ask yourself: Am I still in America?

Filed under 2020 current events, 2020 election, cultural Marxism, Culture, Current Events 2020, humanism, pandemic, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, socialism Tagged with 202 election, Chicago, Civil Disobedience, COVID-19, cultural Marxism, democrats, Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, Joe Biden, Lorie Lightfoot, mainstream media, politics, progressives, stay-at-home-orders, Thanksgiving, Trump

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THIS SIDE OF PARADISE

“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton

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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
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“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
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“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
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“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
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“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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This is what the LORD says:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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