When You Wish Upon Obama…

May 13, 2012 Leave a comment

you enter the Disneyland-like fantasy world of smoke and mirrors, the amusement park of progressives.  It is there that …

…you live under Chicago style politics instead of the U.S. Constitution.

…you receive Eric Holder – Black Panther style justice which is no justice.

…your liberty is traded for political hype: “Hope and Change’: “Yes, We Can”.

 …the extreme Left receives all manner of special interest goodies. The resulting financial shortfall will be devastating (see Greece, Spain, Portugal, California).  Our children and grandchildren will receive the enormous debt burden.

…the government becomes a monopoly, a monopoly that cannot and will not be broken down. Because of this the competition of the free market system, a system that works to lower consumer cost and to ensure better quality products and customer service will vanish from the scene. You will have to take what the government gives you or go to a black market.

…under Obamacare you have health coverage (you are fined for not having it) but not health care. You will have bought the lie.

…whatever health care you do receive will be meted out by bureaucrats (czars) who will tell how much, when and what kind of health care you will receive. They will also decide who lives and who dies, who benefits and who goes without.

…you are free when Obama says you are free.

…you will have your “fair share” when you understand that running from and resisting the Tax Man is impossible and you surrender. You then become enslaved and live on Obama’s Progressive plantation.

…the only good energy policy is the energy policy that financially powers the Obama candidacy and his progressive agenda.

…America will become a subset of the European Union. (BHO wants to eventually become the potentate of the world.)

…democracy will become meaningless because you will have ceded your liberty to a small group of people who you will be told have your best interest at heart. Your vote will mean nothing. Czars and bureaucrats will replace your representatives.

…a top down government will break the back of the states and in the process also destroy individual liberty. All of this for the sake of controlling costs, controlling your money and controlling you the citizen.

….Christians will be persecuted. The main stream media (powered by Obama’s political and secular colonialism) will openly attack Christianity as not being inclusive enough, as being too extreme. All this and more while homosexuals will be allowed to teach your children their moral values in the public schools.

…absolute moral truth will be replaced with the increasingly vogue secular religions of fairness, egalitarianism, environmentalism and political correctness. These ersatz religions are based on relativism and humanism. These ersatz religions will become the state religions and be reinforced by those who are in power using the main stream media.

…your voice will be silenced (i.e., the fairness doctrine) by the Obama regime if you disagree with his message. And, if you believe that the fairness doctrine will only neutralize conservatives, you are in complete denial. Totalitarians always direct the conversation. Controlling the message, the ideology and indoctrination are central to controlling the citizen on the plantation. See North Korea. See China. See Stalin’s Russia. See…

…your voice will be silenced in deference to a few well-connected intellectual elites who will be exalted within their “ivory tower” college professorships. Your “worker bee voice” will be not be heard.  Instead, your life will become ‘handled’ by these self-promoting social-scientists who receive their power from above.

…America will be divided into those worship the Obamic Vision and those who do not. The race card will be used extensively to promote a divided nation. And, more and more people will claim minority status so as to indemnify themselves against “hate speech”.  Class warfare rhetoric will be used to conflate fairness with an unjust confiscation of property

…your whole purpose in life under Obama will be to become a complacent useful idiot, no more, no less. Through taxation you will be required to buy into the BHO lottery: “Hand me your money and your liberty and we will take care of the rest. Yes, we can.”

…the subsequent rioting in the streets that will occur because of all of the above will be quashed by use of the totalitarian forces put into power by you the voter.

When you wish upon Obama you get the president and the government you deserve.

*****

Course correction needed.

Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What’s the Unitarian?

May 5, 2012 Leave a comment

It is little wonder that the well-known ‘angry’ atheist Richard Dawkins wrote the anti-thesim book The God Delusion.  It is easily understandable especially after one reads the interview (excerpted and linked below) between a Unitarian Minister Marilyn Sewell and another anti-theist atheist the former Christopher Hitchens (Hitch).

 As evident from the interview, Marilyn Sewell, a minister, is utterly delusional in her understanding of God and Christianity.  And it is blatantly obvious that Hitch has a better understanding of Christianity than this Unitarian minister.

 Apparently from her bio Sewell has studied theology but I contend it is not Biblical theology.  Her questions and remarks as interviewer reveal her embrace of syncretism – a diversity of false beliefs and humanism blended with the truth of Christianity. Unitarian could be another term for syncretism.

 From her eponymous blog we are told that liberal believer and retired minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland Marilyn Sewell is a former teacher and psychotherapist.  She has authored numerous books. Over a period of 17 years Sewell helped grow Portland’s downtown Unitarian congregation into one of the largest in the United States. At this point I must say that the fact that this woman and the Unitarian Church are misleading many is of serious concern to me. I must contend for the truth of Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 It troubles my spirit greatly when people like this liberal Unitarian minister use the name of Jesus Christ to preach “another gospel” and not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her message is a mish-mash of new age religion, liberal theology, social justice and cheap grace.  The ultimate message becomes half lie half truth:  “It’s not what you believe but how you live.” Ergo an embrace of diverse beliefs and social justice activism are at the forefront of Unitarian creeds.  As you’ll read, for Sewell just like the Episcopalian minister ghost in C.S. Lewis’, “The Great Divorce” all is metaphor, and therefore, cannot be taken seriously

 The deity of Christ, His death on the cross, His atonement for sins, judgement, heaven and hell, all are dismissed as being metaphorical, as not relevant to present human need and too exclusive a message to preach and teach.   Clearly this is syncretistic thinking and delusional with regard to the truth.  And because of its soft, socially acceptable version of theology the tentacles of Unitarian tenets are quickly creeping into evangelical churches across the nation.

 As a follower of Christ I am posting this information expressly to note the deception hidden in Sewell’s misguided words.  I have no problem talking about this interview in no uncertain terms. From the public record it can be noted that Sewell is a social activist and polemicist as was Hitch. They are/were each able to dish out pious platitudes at will and certainly, as their backgrounds would support, are/were able to hold their own in conversations regarding issues of faith and God.  So here goes.

 The interview took place prior to Christopher Hitchen’s January 5th, 2010 appearance as part of the Literary Arts’ Portland art and lecture series at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.  Hitch was political columnist for Vanity Fair, Slate, and other magazines, and known for his frequent contributions on the political TV circuit.  Hitchens’ pointed attacks against all religion has earned him regular debates across the country, often with the very fundamentalist believers his book, “God is Not Great”, attacks. Sewell, the interviewer, though, knows nothing about the fundamentals of Christianity. It would seem that Hitch is in a joust with Jello.

 Here are excerpts from that interview,  linked here: 

 Marilyn Sewell: In the book you write that, at age nine, you experienced the ignorance of your scripture teacher Mrs. Watts and, then later at 12, your headmaster tried to justify religion as a comfort when facing death. It seems you were an intuitive atheist. But did you ever try religion again?

Christopher Hitchens: I belong to what is a significant minority of human beings: Those who are-as Pascal puts it in his Pensées, his great apology for Christianity-“so made that they cannot believe.” As many as 10 percent of is just never can bring themselves to take religion seriously. And since people often defend religion as natural to humans (which I wouldn’t say it wasn’t, by the way), the corollary holds too: there must be respect for those who simply can’t bring themselves to find meaning in phrases like “the Holy Spirit.”

Well, could it be that some people are “so made” for faith. and you are so made for the intellectual life?

I don’t have whatever it takes to say things like “the grace of God.” All that’s white noise to me, not because I’m an intellectual. For many people, it’s gibberish. Likewise, the idea that the Koran was dictated by an archaic illiterate is a fantasy. As so far the most highly evolved of the primates, we do seem in the majority to have a tendency to worship, and to look for patterns that lead to supernatural conclusions. Whereas, I think that there is no supernatural dimension whatever. The natural world is quite wonderful enough. The more we know about it, the much more wonderful it is than any supernatural proposition.

The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Let me go someplace else. When I was in seminary I was particularly drawn to the work of theologian Paul Tillich. He shocked people by describing the traditional God-as you might as a matter of fact-as, “an invincible tyrant.” For Tillich, God is “the ground of being.” It’s his response to, say, Freud’s belief that religion is mere wish-fulfillment and comes from the humans’ fear of death. What do you think of Tillich’s concept of God?”

I would classify that under the heading of “statements that have no meaning-at all.” Christianity, remember, is really founded by St. Paul, not by Jesus. Paul says, very clearly, that if it is not true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then we the Christians are of all people the most unhappy. If none of that’s true, and you seem to say it isn’t, I have no quarrel with you. You’re not going to come to my door trying convince me either. Nor are you trying to get a tax break from the government. Nor are you trying to have it taught to my children in school. If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.

Well, probably not, because I agree with almost everything that you say. But I still consider myself a Christian and a person of faith.

Do you mind if I ask you a question? Faith in what? Faith in the resurrection?

The way I believe in the resurrection is I believe that one can go from a death in this life, in the sense of being dead to the world and dead to other people, and can be resurrected to new life. When I preach about Easter and the resurrection, it’s in a metaphorical sense.

I hate to say it-we’ve hardly been introduced-but maybe you are simply living on the inheritance of a monstrous fraud that was preached to millions of people as the literal truth-as you put it, “the ground of being.”

Times change and, you know, people’s beliefs change. I don’t believe that you have to be fundamentalist and literalist to be a Christian. You do: You’re something of a fundamentalist, actually.

Well, I’m sorry, fundamentalist simply means those who think that the Bible is a serious book and should be taken seriously.

If you would like for me to talk a little bit about what I believe . . .

Well I would actually.

I don’t know whether or not God exists in the first place, let me just say that. I certainly don’t think that God is an old man in the sky, I don’t believe that God intervenes to give me goodies if I ask for them.

You don’t believe he’s an interventionist of any kind?

I’m kind of an agnostic on that one. God is a mystery to me. I choose to believe because-and this is a very practical thing for me-I seem to live with more integrity when I find myself accountable to something larger than myself. That thing larger than myself, I call God, but it’s a metaphor. That God is an emptiness out of which everything comes. Perhaps I would say ” reality” or “what is” because we’re trying to describe the infinite with language of the finite. My faith is that I put all that I am and all that I have on the line for that which I do not know.

Fine. But I think that’s a slight waste of what could honestly be in your case a very valuable time. I don’t want you to go away with the impression that I’m just a vulgar materialist. I do know that humans are also so made even though we are an evolved species whose closest cousins are chimpanzees. I know it’s not enough for us to eat and so forth. We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we’re going to die, which gives us a lot to think about, and we have a need for, what I would call, “the transcendent” or “the numinous” or even “the ecstatic” that comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

Could you talk about these two words that you just used, “transcendent” and “numinous”? Those are two words are favorites of mine.

Well, this would probably be very embarrassing, if you knew me. I can’t compose or play music; I’m not that fortunate. But I can write and I can talk and sometimes when I’m doing either of these things I realize that I’ve written a sentence or uttered a thought that I didn’t absolutely know I had in me… until I saw it on the page or heard myself say it. It was a sense that it wasn’t all done by hand.

A gift?

But, to me, that’s the nearest I’m going to get to being an artist, which is the occupation I’d most like to have and the one, at last, I’m the most denied. But I, think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there’s more to life than just matter. But I think it’s very important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be exploited by priests and shamans and rabbis and other riffraff.

You know, I think that that might be a religious impulse that you’re talking about there.

Well, it’s absolutely not. It’s a human one. It’s part of the melancholy that we have in which we know that happiness is fleeting, and we know that life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us. But we know that our life is essentially tragic as well. I’m absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, “Well, ah. Why didn’t you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind.” I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.

You write, “Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and the soul.” You use the word “soul” there as metaphor. What is a soul for you?

It’s what you might call “the x-factor”-I don’t have a satisfactory term for it-it’s what I mean by the element of us that isn’t entirely materialistic: the numinous, the transcendent, the innocence of children (even though we know from Freud that childhood isn’t as innocent as all that), the existence of love (which is, likewise, unquantifiable but that anyone would be a fool who said it wasn’t a powerful force), and so forth. I don’t think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it nourishes the brain.

I wouldn’t argue with you about the immortality of the soul. Were I back in a church again, I would love to have you in my church because you’re so eloquent and I believe that some of your impulses-and, excuse me for saying so-are religious in the way I am religious. You may call it something else, but we agree in a lot of our thinking.

I’m touched that you say, as some people have also said to me, that I’ve missed my vocation. But I actually don’t think that I have. I would not be able to be this way if I was wearing robes or claiming authority that was other than human. that’s a distinction that matters to me very much.

You have your role and it’s a valuable one, so thank you for what you give to us.

Well, thank you for asking. It’s very good of you to be my hostess.

[end of interview]

 Note above that after Sewell’s reference to theologian Paul Tillich’s take on God as “an invincible tyrant” and after mentioning Freud’s dismissive take on faith (also well-known to Hitch), she wants to hear from Hitch about Tillich’s concept of God.  Listen closely to Hitch’s response:

I would classify that under the heading of “statements that have no meaning-at all.” Christianity, remember, is really founded by St. Paul, not by Jesus. Paul says, very clearly, that if it is not true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then we the Christians are of all people the most unhappy. If none of that’s true, and you seem to say it isn’t, I have no quarrel with you. You’re not going to come to my door trying convince me either. Nor are you trying to get a tax break from the government. Nor are you trying to have it taught to my children in school. If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.

 Wow!  The money line: “If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.”

 Even Hitch knows that this woman is way off the mark in her ‘theology’.  In this case Hitch doesn’t drop famous names from history like Sewell.  Hitch cuts to the quick with the truth of the Gospel as he knows it.  He quotes from Scripture:  “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” (I Cor. 15:19). 

 Hitch has known Christianity from standing outside looking in while.  He does not like Christianity’s authority and the abuse of that authority (as I do not).

 Sewell, on the other hand, knows the hodge-podge Unitarian philosophy from inside out.  She knows all of its labyrinthine pathways leading to the utopian fields of humanism, new age philosophy and God is love-ism. The irony:  Unitarian ‘theology’ clearly advocates the contention of atheists that religion is about wish-fulfillment and fear of the unknown.

Here is Marilyn’s take on the conversation from her blog:

“The man is brilliant, but not wise; clever, but not deep; and a fundamentalist, in regard to religion, rejecting any form of liberal Christianity as bogus religion, not to be respected

Hitchens clearly has never studied theology, (This is rich.  See my comments above) and most of the comments he made concerning the Bible, Jesus, salvation, etc., were shockingly naïve (Hitch’s knowledge of Christianity trumped yours, Marilyn).  Where he has something to offer, of course, is his critique of religion and society, and all of the horrors and nonsense done in the name of religion, which I have no argument with.  It’s not exactly news that the Inquisition was a bad thing.  And that Catholic priests shouldn’t abuse altar boys.  And (his particular nemesis) jihadists shouldn’t blow up innocent civilians. 

Hitchens is the ultimate intellectual “bad boy.”  He performs.  He “debates.”  He entertains. All of which he does very well.   But this should not be confused with thoughtful discourse. “(I agree with this last paragraph of Marilyn’s)

 I would certainly argue from the details of the interview that Hitch knows Christianity well enough to be convicted by its message – but he rejects it outright.  Sewell, on the other hand, doesn’t know the truths of Christianity and appears to only embrace the parts of the Gospel that fit with the Unitarian belief in humanism – a theology of a coddling, benevolent and indulgent God who accepts you no matter what.

 Gospel truth convicts people of their sin and their separation from God whereas the tepid mollycoddling theology of Unitarianism destroys lives with its abandonment of truth and its good intentions. And as we all have heard, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or, hell is full of good wishes and desires.  In the end Truth matters.

Are you seeking the truth?

 To find the truth about the Gospel of Jesus Christ read the four gospel accounts that record the life and death of Jesus Christ:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  These historical eye-witness accounts are not metaphors as liberal theologians (Sewell, Elaine Pagels and others) would have us accept.

 Follow the Truth wherever it leads you and it will eventually lead you to Jesus Christ.  He is The Way, The Truth and the Life. I have been on the road of truth with Jesus for many years now.  I know Him and he knows me. 

 Truth and Love go hand-in-hand or not at all.

Filed under Atheism, Christianity, commentary, Diversity, Human Interest, Life As I See It, Progressivism, Scripture, social commentary, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Running On Empty

April 22, 2012 Leave a comment

No, I am not talking about Obama’s campaign war chest.  The “class warrior” who recently made a jab at Mitt Romney with a silver spoon reference regularly charges “regular folks $1000 for a handshake at fundraisers” (see the Sunday April 22, 2012 Chicago Tribune column by John Kass linked in blue below). Class warfare depends on the treasure of the rich in so many ways!

 From Kass’s Sunday Trib column, Obama Ladles Up Hot Bowls of Class Warfare:

And, Obama is of the people, so please forget that presidential media guru David Axelrod just dropped $1.7 million on a gorgeous Chicago condo.

In America, only snobs and fools look down upon someone born poor.  It’s un-American.  But if your father’s poverty isn’t your fault, then, why should your father’s wealth be a sin?

The opportunity to seek wealth is why our people (Kass is Greek) came here, why they left their villages overseas to ride in steerage, seasick, eating black bread and spooning out the stew with wooden spoons, just on the chance that their grandchildren might hold a silver spoon someday…

Romney, of course, took great umbrage at Obama’s silver spoon crack, saying it was aimed at his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, a former president of American Motors.

“The president likes to attack fellow Americans,” said Romney on Fox News.  “He’s always looking for a scapegoat, particularly (those who) have been successful like my dad, and I’m not going to rise to that.”

I find both of them flawed.  Romney as the ring bearer for all that’s wrong with the corporatist Republican smothering of the conservative spirit, Obama as the keeper of the federal leviathan, feeding it as it grows larger, squeezing the life out of entrepreneurship.”

 There are two kinds of politicians:  those without personal wealth, and those with personal wealth.  Those with money don’t need politics to make more.  Those without money need friends as they climb the ladder of public service.”

Michelle Obama had such friends…

And the President had such friends.  One is named Tony Rezko.  He’s rotting in a federal prison, although it was Rezko and his wife who put together the strange deal that helped Barack and Michelle buy their dream house in Kenwood that they never seem to visit anymore.

In prison, Tony Rezko doesn’t use a silver spoon.  He uses a plastic fork.”

 Obama, via his constant “fair share” campaign speeches, relates opportunity directly to having money and not to liberty and self-determination.  How strange and how short-sighted this is. 

What Obama is really telling inner-city people is that they are not going to make it, they will not have opportunity until and unless they other people’s money in their pockets. This is “in your face” class warfare, blatant materialism and an obvious trashing of the human spirit.

Underlying Johnny-one-note-Obama’s fair share speeches is the same inane logic of the Left:  if someone has more that means that there must be less for you. But, life is not a zero-sum proposition.  Everyone can benefit from hard work and self-determination and not just those who already have done so and have earned money. 

It is those on the Left who spend all of their time trying to slice the current pie into exactly equal “fair share” pieces.  It is those on the Right who want to make a bigger pie so that everyone can have a big slice of it and can eat it in peace, free from the tyranny of big government.

 Obama’s implied message:  Forget contentment, you must have what others have or you are missing out, otherwise your treasure chest is empty.

 Now with White House silverware in hand, Obama spoons out the parasite-laden bread pudding of class warfare to those standing in the food lines willing to pay a $1000.00 a plate. He lectures to those anxious for any crumbs that may fall from the table of the Dear Leader and to those of the liberal media anxiously waiting another feeding frenzy.

I ask God for my daily bread and He provides.

Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Entrepreneurship, Liberalism, non-fiction, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No News Here: Friday the Thirteenth, 2012 Edition

April 13, 2012 Leave a comment

US education failure poses a national threat:   Wow! And just think what the failing US education system (thanks to the teacher’s union, its lobby and liberal universities) does for the election process:  A lack of critical thinking which leads to populist voting which in turn leads to stage one laws being enacted which in turn leads to bureaucracy which in turn leads to totalitarianism (in a nutshell). (Leads to totalitarianism because people will be too stupid to know any better and they will have given up all of their freedom to the intellectual elite contingent that has been anxiously waiting for that day when you say “I can’t do this anymore.”

Diversity looks a lot like the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly:  Liberal colleges and universities are cranking out Obamatons with their eager beaver looks and stunning lack of critical thinking. Do they have Che and COEXIST stickers on their bumpers?

Activist Judges are not Inactive:  Ruth Bader Ginsberg Associate Justice of SCOTUS fame during one of her “teaching moments” at an “Arab Spring” conference:  “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”  

 This in spite of the fact that our Constitution has been the template that has supported her free range blather all of her life. Now, instead of fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, RBG prefers a constitution based on International Law (basically, One World humanism administered by ad hoc panels made up of hand-wringing liberals).

 Like Obama and the Dems, RBG is on a much higher humanitarian plane than the rest of us crass peons. She’s at altitudes where there is little or no oxygen.

The franchised system of bureaucracy known as Obamacare will cost a lot more than expected:  Also, did you know that with Obamacare coverage will be mandated but care will not? You didn’t?  Well, you know that according to Nancy Pelosi, another high-flying Democrat, “We needed to pass the bill to find out what was in it.” 

Not the Scooby-Doo ending:  Voting for Democrats is voting for the decline of America and the rise of totalitarianism and the likes of the Supreme People’s Party and its chief Defense Minister, Fear.

better yet,

Voting for Democrats is like shooting yourself in the right foot and then shooting yourself in the left foot just to be sure you’re being fair.

Fuzzy Logic has more No News Here: <<<

Filed under 2012 election, Liberalism, Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Looking Out for Number One and Finding Zero

April 1, 2012 Leave a comment

 This past week, while riding the commuter home I sat down on an upper row seat not far from a young Indian woman. Her head was covered so I believed her to be a devoutly religious person. On her lap was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I wondered about her interest in Rand’s lengthy novel.

As you know much has been said in the media recently about corporate greed and fairness. OWS protests, though largely unfocused and self-trivializing, seem to want to generate a discussion about what is ethically the “right thing to do” in the world of money and specifically money as power or a force to use for “good” and not for selfish pleasure. It should be noted, though, that the message of the OWS protestors is certainly compromised by their own envy and greed. Their desire (and demand) to have the same things that someone else has stands as witness to their hypocrisy. But, let’s get back to the woman reading Atlas Shrugged.  Briefly, let’s look at the philosophy behind the book.

Ayn Rand’s (1905-1982) novels portray the philosophy of Objectivism. The (paper) weighty Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead clearly identify the key tenets of Objectivism: objective reality, reason, self-interest, capitalism.

Ayn Rand’s Objectivism:

Objective reality: a tree falls in the forest. The sound of the falling tree occurs whether you are there to hear it or not. There is no spiritual realm. When you are dead you are dead.

Reason: direct stimuli from nature; there is no God, no soul, no intuition, nothing beyond what we determine though reason.

Self-interest: your own self-interest and happiness is what life is all about. You take care of number one.

Capitalism: Objectivism’s ideal political expression. Capitalism for the Objectivist is all about individual rights and private property; self-reliance, free trade, entrepreneurship and initiative all operate freely and without coercion within capitalism and the free market system.

Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is atheistic, rejecting faith and religion. It believes only in reason and what the self can determine. This viewpoint is born out of a godless evolutionary view of life, the Enlightenment era and philosophical naturalism. Objectivism is blind faith in your self.

Rugged individualism, for Rand, was a force like other forces of nature and something to be reckoned with. As you might imagine this type of thinking would certainly feed the ego and especially if the person who embraces Objectivism is successful in life. For these people pride of place means you’ve made it to the top of the heap. Your self-esteem is rewarded. You are recognized by your peers as having objectively “made it.” (BTW: OWS protestors want to make it, too.)

Ayn Rand’s extreme philosophy is most likely a reaction to her early life in Russia during the Communist Revolution. As a child she learned to despise coercion, government intrusion and totalitarianism. She came to oppose statism and collectivism while she promoted social systems which protected individual rights and personal initiatives. As a romantic realist she hated the dystopian effects created by those seeking to create a man-made utopia. Though a polemic, Rand never insisted that others be made to accept her philosophy. She was “laissez faire” with respect to others.

Before Rand another voice of philosophical naturalism and the evolutionary world view had chosen a different atheistic force with which to respond to “the law of life.: Jack London (1876 – 1916).

London, the author of The Call of The Wild wrote about the rugged individualist in a Darwinian world where and at a time when man was being considered as just another evolved animal. London wrote about animal instincts (the dog Buck) including survival of the species. For the philosophical naturalist life was essentially a matter of staying alive. This meant a primordial existence: eating, having sex, avoiding pain, etc. There was no higher purpose.

Over time, though, London drifted into materialism as most atheistic evolutionists do. He became a member of the Socialist Party of America. He embraced materialist thinkers such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. It may be that because London, as depicted in his writings, saw humans at the mercy of nature’s massive forces that he decided that the best thing to do was to fight back by joining forces with other human animals via collectivism.

It could be said that both philosophical novelists, London and Rand, saw life as a Darwinian atheist did: having no divine purpose; first matter emerges then mind and then will-supplying force. And force, per Jack London and Karl Marx (and even these days, Obama) may be pooled into a collective. Or, force in the hands of Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, can be the individual who does it “My Way.” Either way, force is the means to an end: the “survival of the fittest,” a now-common phrase given to us by Herbert Spencer, nineteenth-century British philosopher who was huge proponent of evolution (and a significant influence on Jack London and it seems also of the OWS protestors).

As a Christian I believe that there is a lot about the basic wording of Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism that rings true while at the same time Rand’s self-directed fleshing out of the philosophy has nothing in common with Christianity.

To be sure there is objective reality but for the Christian it is the True Reality of the Kingdom of God. And those who have “ears to hear and eyes to see” can detect this Kingdom. It is spiritual and at the same time more real than this present world. Christians have wide-eyed belief in God.

Being created in the image of God a Christian also understands that reason is not an end in itself but a means to be in relationship with God and to work together with God to bring about His kingdom on earth.

Christian self-interest is the model for how we are to take care of others: “Love your neighbor as yourself”; “Husbands love your wives as yourself.” Our self-interest is not an end in itself. It is not bent inward. Remember, the Good Samaritan cared for the wounded man as he would have wanted to be cared for in the same situation. He wasn’t the rugged individualist who walked on by. Instead, he was the rugged individualist who cared for others.

Christian capitalism, man’s free, voluntary and individual exchange with others, is to be guided and tempered by a Christian’s self-governing virtue of justice – giving every man his due, of temperance, of prudence and of charity and not by government fiat. Remember, we are told in Scripture to “Pray for those in authority over you.” We pray for those in authority so that we can live in peace – a peace which means no government authority interfering in our lives. This allows for the free exchange of God’s goodness.

Collectivism, on the other hand, finds no place in Scripture apart from a brief mention of the early New Testament church. Yet, there are social engineers and social gospel advocates who build vast socialist ideologies around snippets of this New Testament history.  The U.S. Government is not the church of Jesus Christ. The world and the church are two separate entities. Governments are impersonal and do not have virtues. Governments are coercive and make demands.  In a democratic republic like the U.S. we must not elect leaders who create ever more egregious and imposing laws in hopes of creating the virtues we want to have around us. Be the virtue instead.

The Indian woman on the train woman reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged may find that “the survival of the fittest” individual means that she cuts herself off from God and others to obtain it all. And, those with a humanistic-collective bent may find that they will lose themselves and God in the mix.

Jesus – The Way, The Truth and The Life.  Let The Way Occupy you.

****

Shakespeare had it right when Hamlet says. ‘And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

Here are some related posts:

Wrestling With God

Just Say No

What’s Left. To Be Decided.

tête-à-tête

How Shall I Then Live?

Filed under Christianity, conservative, essay, Human Interest, Liberalism, Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, Writing

The “Green” Brick Road

March 18, 2012 2 Comments

BHO is so forward thinking (and narcissistic) that he chases his own tail right to his own straw man conclusion.

 Below is a March 15th, 2012 You-Tube video showing BHO in true form:  a professional politician pompously using straw man arguments to make a supposedly erudite point about his political agenda while poking fun at Republican candidates.

 BHO portrays himself as the elite “green” technocrat.  He postures himself as someone who can lead us boldly where no man has gone before – down the path of green energy to freedom from our slavery to fossil fuels. BHO wants you to follow the “green” brick road but this path leads directly to him, the Wizard behind the White House curtains. Don’t go there. You won’t get what you are looking for – you already have it.

 Who is BHO talking about when he says “folks running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed.  They’ve been talking down new sources of energy.”?  Certainly he is not referring to any of the Republican candidates.  None of them have said any such thing (see Gingrich video below). But of course BHO already knows that you only listen to BHO and his shills via the main stream media.

 The Republican candidates have, in fact, denounced throwing good money (our tax-payer money) after bad to promote “green energy projects and companies who will in turn promote a BHO “green energy” presidency.  These companies include most notably the bankrupt Solyndra.

 And why is BHO talking about green energy and not about jobs?  Because he knows that environmentalists and progressives will fill his campaign coffers and  BHO doesn’t want to you think about his job’s record. He doesn’t want to go there.  He’d rather chide Republicans for not being “green” minded like he is. The greenest part of BHO, though, is his envy of other’s power.

 Wind power? Solar energy?  Bio-fuels?  Algae?  Why not talk about nuclear power, the most effective source of clean power we can generate? Instead, what we have now is a Jane Fonda-esque president!

 I work in the Power Industry.  Because of my confidentiality agreement with the company I work for I am forbidden to talk about my work in detail.  Suffice it to say, though, that wind power and solar power are miniscule generators of power and are mostly irrelevant to power generation. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is a tremendous generator of energy. And, fossil fuels, abundant in our own country, have been cleaned up.  They can be transported safely and efficiently throughout our country.  Fossil fuels will also provide many thousand of jobs and secure our nation.  But, BHO will not go there.

 BHO wants the “green” ticket to ride to the 2012 presidency. He doesn’t care that it will cost the taxpayer his own “green” money (e.g.,  Solyndra) to get him there.

 BHO chides the Republicans when he says that unlike them he and the American people have “faith in the future”. Well, there certainly is enough dried bull shit in this line to fuel all the stoves of the former Russian gulags.

 BHO goes on to make Rutherford B. Hayes a straw man.  BHO lies, he cajoles, he plies you with his “green” is good BS. In the end, though, the only green wind power you’ll ever get out of a BHO presidency is what comes out of both ends of BHO.

Green Conservatism:

Filed under 2012 election, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Runaway Slave – C.L. Bryant, Tea Party Member

March 17, 2012 Leave a comment

The previous post showed a Wisconsin Democrat and union boss who has been cyber stalking a Wisconsin State Senator.  He called her “a pig”, in fact.

This post reveals an African-American Tea Party member who ran away from the Democrat’s Party’s Plantation politics:  C.L. Bryant.

Keep in mind that the main stream media (practically every TV/cable media outlet other than Fox news) will depict and propagandize Tea Party members as being racist.

Filed under Conservatism, conservative, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism

Cyberstalking a Woman Wisconsin State Senator

March 17, 2012 Leave a comment

Because liberals, the Left, Progressives and Democrats have nothing constructive to offer they resort to name calling, ad hominems and distortion. The denigrating of people’s character, in fact, is used to get themselves elected – they get others to believe and respond to their inflammatory rhetoric. And this is exactly why Obama is in the White House (via the dirty politics of Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod). As everyone knows, Obama was not elected because of a political record or because of experience. He was elected because of intimidation politics played out Chicago Style.

This way of politics can also be found in the state of Wisconsin which borders Illinois.

One example of dirty politics used by the Democrats (and there are many such examples) from the Badger Pundit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6HjiQwTTOo&feature=player_embedded

Filed under 2012 election, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Towering Babel-ist in America

February 12, 2012 Leave a comment

I would like to think that the American voter is trying really hard to make a go of it in this oppressive economic climate created by Obama and the Democrats. I would like to think this is the case but I have also come across another kind of voter:  the life’s victim-voter.

 This victim-voter, because of their constantly reinforced victim status, is basically mush – a supine non-thinker who asks government to bail them out of life’s difficulties, out of life’s pain and losses.  Instead of pursuing happiness though hard work this voter demands that government guarantee that their life will be easy and trouble-free. They say to themselves:  “Life is hard. If God won’t take away our pain we’ll make government do it.”  They may also argue, “Others are doing it why don’t I.”

It is this same victim–voter who continually seeks the balm of government hand-outs. The same victim–voter will instantly and freely give up their liberty for the license to be a perpetual needy victim. And, at the same time, this type of voter will seek to impose government restrictions on others thus fulfilling their need to keep others under control and/or paying the bill.

 Now I wonder, do these same voters just want to go about their lives doing their art, taking self-photos to post on Facebook, watching crap TV and movies, surfing the internet, smoking, drinking, tattoo-ing and living a life apart from the having to deal with reality? (I would like to write about other things but our nation is being dismantled by Obama and the progressive movement.)

 Now, why is Obama telling you and me what to do? Why is Obama, as announced recently, giving us a compromise regarding contraception?  Why is he involved at all in this very personal conversation? He and the Dems need to get the hell out of our lives.  They are absolutely intrusive, overreaching and becoming more totalitarian by the minute.

 Ask yourself:  “Why is Barack Obama involved in my personal stuff? ”

 Why does the government need to be intimate with the details of my medical records? Of my earnings? Of my life?

 Why is BHO telling me how much I can have?

 Why did Barack Obama tell the world that we are not a Christian nation?

 Why does Obama pick and choose who wins and who loses? (think car companies, unions and big banks)

Why is Barack Obama trying to create a climate of discontent? A climate of covetousness?  Of envy?

Why does Barack Obama conflate Scripture (“to whom much is given, much is required”) with class warfare? (Why,  brother Obama, sow discord and disharmony among the brethren? Perhaps you are a wolf in sheep’s clothing!)

 Why is AG Eric Holder allowing the Black Panthers a pass on voter intimidation? Or, allowing guns to be sold to drug dealers which in turn kill our own officers?

 Why is Michelle Obama telling me what I should eat?

 Why did Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats pass a national health care bill and then say “we had to pass the bill to find out what was in the bill?”

 Why are dictatorial judges (think 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, San Francisco) ignoring the Constitution in their legal decisions? Why are the rules changing for special interest groups?

Why did Ruth Bader Ginsburg (now in the SCOTUS) say that Egypt should have a different Constitution than the Constitution of the most free and Democratic republic in the world? Does RBG not like the Constitution under which she is to make her rulings? She should recuse herself and retire Jan 2nd, 2013.

 Obama and the Dem’s progressive overreach: Health care, contraception, faith, marriage, the family, earnings, investments, inheritance money, what you eat, omnipresent and oppressive regulations and…

 “Hope and Change.”  These words, verbal promissory notes to the militant Left during the 2008 presidential campaign, are code words replacing “Progressivism and radicalism.”  The 2008 election of BHO, as I see it, became the beginning of the end for America, an America once of the people, by the people and for the people. Our country is now being radicalized, being rewired into a dystopian matrix of parallel connections all wired and channeled to a small political ruling class of elites. (Think Obama’s czars. Think the EU – the European Union.)

 Why would BHO trash America?  Because he and those like him believe they have a better way for you to go – a hopey and changey pablum kind of way – a way we are told that transcends God, the church, race, gender and economics.  We are told that this “better way” transcends everyone and everything and for your own good. The inference being here that we the people are too stupid, too inept and out of control (read free) to live our lives without the better “Way.”

 The Hope and Change Lie has been told and re-told.  Those who voted for Obama in 2008 believed that the world would be a better place (?) if BHO was in the White House.  Without a denial of the facts, the effect of his presidency and the Democrat majority Senate has been the destruction of our nation’s economy, an encouragement to blatantly disregard the American Constitution, the torching of American exceptionalism (read flag) and the implementation of a scorched earth ideology that replaces everything in its path with the word “Fair” – fairness as defined by an elite group of people. 

 You, the voter, get a say for now but soon your say will be silenced by this political ruling class and the increasing murmur of illegal immigrants entering our country. The value of your own interests or concerns, once your own business, will soon be decided by the Obama government.  Remember, you are thought to be too stupid to act for your own good. Sadly, I think there are, as I have mentioned above, victim-voters who quickly acquiesce because they don’t want to think about what it takes to live this life. They, instead, want Obama and the Democrats make their life decisions for them.

 We are repeatedly told by the Obama-led progressives that we need this change so that we as a nation of diverse people and needs can get along fairly, equally. BHO sees himself as the champion of the little guy.  He will, in fact, promote himself as such for the 2012 presidential campaign. But, you should know that he is walking up the ladder of ascendant power on the backs of the little guys.

 What I have also seen is that Barack Obama seeks to create strife among the races (race “carding” any dissent; think Al Sharpton, MSNBC and the media); strife among economic groups (class warfare), strife among workers (union and non-union); strife among church and state; strife among people of every stripe and color. He does so in order to promote himself as the gentle, wise old black man (a Morgan Freeman-like narcissistic typecasting) to help the poor embattled nation (now at odds in its Barack Obama-incited civil war). Obama creates the problem and then reveals himself (the “level-headed” One) as the solution to the problem. And, it is this One who wants to bring “peace and harmony” to the nation ala Abe Lincoln (more narcissistic typecasting).  Barack Obama is politically motivated to play you and this nation at every level in order to build his tower of Babel overlooking his constructed world.  Many let him do it.  But why?

 What is now truly transcendent is the totalitarianism of Barack Obama and the federal government. And, the over-reach continues:  Obama will feign moral high ground when he opines professorially “we (the political elite) know best, we are above the bickering.” This is the Hope and Change Lie re-packaged to encourage supine surrender to the elitist tyranny.

 The voter must be ever vigilant against the totalitarianism of sincere motives in the hands of a few.  Some of you bought the lie in 2008.  It is almost too late.  The Lie, with its ring of totalitarian power, must be thrown into the fires of Mount Doom and be forever destroyed.

(I have flavored this post with plenty of metaphors in hopes of giving the reader a bitter taste of what is happening to our liberty under Obama.)

 There is hope, though:

“The Tea party Movement is nourished by a very American creed, namely that governments don’t have the answers, that reform comes from below, that people are wiser than their leaders.” British MEP Daniel Hannan in The New Road to Serfdom:  A letter of Warning to America

 And, this video tells it like it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXsrajvFGk8&feature=player_embedded#!

Filed under 2012 election, essay, Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, prose, social commentary Tagged with ,

Minimum Wage Or The Price We Pay For Stupid

February 4, 2012 Leave a comment

I have noticed a definite pattern emerging ever since before the 2008 election of BHO:  many voters have given up thinking and have decided to vote for the popular shills of humanism, otherwise known as the educated elite.

 BHO, the POTUS, is surrounded by Harvard grads, each of whom has been steeped in liberal mores taught by educators who have risen to the level of their incompetence (the Peter Principle).  I like what Tomas Sowell, economist, said about these professors:

 “Too often what are called “educated” people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings.  Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.”[1]

And, Walter E. Williams:

“People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.”

In my estimation the American voter, though often degreed, has become less educated and intellectually apathetic. This voter has become a stage-one thinker – someone who finds some humanist value in a policy, votes for the person promoting it and doesn’t want to think any further about it, believing that they have done their good deed for the day.  Yet, the policy does not operate in isolation and, typically, havoc and damage control ensues when the policy is implemented. Our nation is left ever more crippled.  The Minimum Wage Law (MWL) is one prime example of this stage one thinking implemented and voted for by people who let others do their thinking.

Thomas Sowell in his excellent book the Thomas Sowell Reader, a compendium of his many newspaper articles and essays, wrote an article titled Minimum Wage Laws. Here are some of his thoughts from that article to ponder deeply before the next election:

 “By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when process are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market.”[2]

 “The unemployed are made idle by wage rates artificially set above the level of their productivity.  Those who are idled in their youth are of course delayed in acquiring the job skills and experience which could make them more productive – therefore higher earner – later on.”[3]

 “Although most industrial societies have minimum wage laws, not all do.  Switzerland and Hong Kong have been among the exceptions – and both have had very low unemployment rates.”[4]

 “Higher costs for a given quantity and quality of labor tend to produce less employment, just as higher prices for other things tend to produce fewer sales. Moreover, higher costs in the form of mandated benefits have the same economic effect as higher costs in the form of minimum wage laws.  The explicit minimum wage rate understates the labor costs imposed by European governments, which also mandates various employer contributions to pension plans and health benefits, among other things.  Europe’s unemployment rates shot up when such government-mandated benefits to be for by employers grew sharply during the 1980 and 1990s.”[5]

 Average hourly compensation in Europe of manufacturing employees in the European Union countries in general is higher than in the United States or Japan.  So is unemployment.”[6]

 “Labor unions also benefit from minimum wage laws, are among the strongest proponents of such laws, even though their members typically make much more than minimum wage rate.”[7]

 “Just as businesses seek to have government impose tariffs on imported goods that compete with their products, so labor unions use minimum wage laws as tariffs to force up the price of non-union labor that competes with their members for jobs.”[8]

 “…when all is said and done, most empirical studies indicate that minimum wage laws reduce employment in general, and especially the employment of younger less skilled, and minority workers.”[9] (emphasis mine)

Thomas Sowell’s article is chock full of empirical information and common sense economics.  I could continue to quote many of his insightful words.  I’ll provide one more series of quotes about minorities and the implementation of MWLs the past century:

 “Again, it is necessary to note how price is a factor even in racial discrimination…It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment not only skyrocketed but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers.”[10] (emphasis mine)

 Stage-one voting creates unemployment.  Obama, the educated One, Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus should know the facts.   But in ignoring the economic data they choose “navel-gazing, hand-wringing or self-dramatization” to preach a Liberal Utopia that will never arrive on this earth. MWLs produce the opposite effect, in fact!

 Don’t ignore the data. Read. Understand. Think beyond stage-one.  Uncle Sam needs You more than ever.

Again, Thomas Sowell:

 “People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote.”[11]

 

[1] Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader, p. 401

[2] Ibid., p. 108

[3] Ibid., p. 108

[4] Ibid., p. 109

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., p.110

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., p.111

[10] Ibid., p. 115 & 117

[11] Ibid., p.397

Note:  Mitt Romney has come out in favor of auto-increasing the MWL.  I am voting Newt Gingrich in the Illinois GOP primary.

Update:  In a 02/07/2012 RCP article regarding Mitt Romney’s faux conservatism, Thomas Sowell said:

“Nor are such consequences of minimum wage laws peculiar to blacks or to the United States. In Western European countries whose social policies liberals consider more “advanced” than our own, including more generous minimum wage laws and other employer-mandated benefits, it has been common in even prosperous years for unemployment rates among young people to be 20 percent or higher.

The economic reason is not complicated. When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don’t get hired. It is not rocket science.

Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, “Capitalism and Freedom.” So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself “conservative” has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to. “

Thoughts from Uncle Miltie:

Filed under 2012 election, Economics, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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