The Lord of Ism’s Prayer

July 22, 2012 Leave a comment

Our Obama which art in the White House

Wallowed be thy fame.

Thy -ism come,

Thy will be done nationally

As it is in North Korea.

Give us this day our daily ration.

And forgive us our liberty,

As we forgive those who use their liberty to pay their own way.

And lead us not into the debt-free living,

But deliver us from clarity

For thine is the government, the IRS and the media

For as long as we vote.

Ahem.

© Sally Paradise, 2012, All Rights Reserved

 

Here is an interesting statement from Chairman Mao, April 30, 1971: 

“China should learn from the way America developed, by decentralizing and spreading responsibility and wealth among 50 states.  A central government could not do everything.  China must depend upon regional and local initiative.  It would not do [spreading his hands] to leave everything up to him [Mao].

 https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/harris/1973/02/sincelin.htm

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He Is Heavy, He’s My Government

July 21, 2012 Leave a comment

H/T to a blog down under, another land of the free and the brave:

http://catallaxyfiles.com/category/libertarians-dont-live-by-argument-alone/

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Depends On You

July 14, 2012 Leave a comment

The 2012 Presidential and congressional elections will be reflections of who you are.  You will be deciding whether you want to be represented as a slave under a bigger more intrusive government with its plantation inducing mentality or whether self-government and self-determination will best speak for you.  The former is easy – show up and do nothing except what the master tells you to do.  The latter requires blood, sweat and tears.

 Let me ask you straight up:  what would provide you with more self-esteem?  A government welfare check for subsistence or a check handed to you by your accountant after your company succeeded and made a profit? Or equally, a check handed to you by your employer because the company you work for succeeded to make payroll for another week because of your input? The former just pays the bills (and likely buys several lottery tickets).  The latter provides for yourself, your family, your grandchildren and much more.

 Another question:  With those same checks in hand would the person with the government welfare check be more willing to give to charity or would the person who was handed the profit-sharing dividend or a paycheck be more willing to give to charity? (A Christian would have to be the second kind of person.  King David once said, “I will not offer to the Lord something that costs me nothing?”)

 You don’t have to think hard about this.  The answer is obvious to most right thinking people, the vision is clear, but it is hidden from those who vote for Obama and the Democrats.

Progressives and their “Lean Forward” campaign (funded with monies from foreigner George Soros) want the U.S. government to dole out cradle-to-grave entitlements thereby making Americans utterly reliant on the political ruling class and their condescending “we-the-government-know-what’s-good-for-you” pseudo-altruism. In reality, these two-armed bandits want more gambling revenue to throw at money laundering schemes like Solyndra.

 Thomas Sowell in his book of articles and essays The Thomas Sowell Reader describes the Big Government vision promoted by the ruling class “anointed” …

 The anointed want to eliminate stress, challenge, striving, and competition.  They want the necessities of life to be supplied as “rights” – which is to say, at the taxpayer’s expense, without anyone’s being forced to work for those necessities, except of course the taxpayers.

Nothing is to be earned.  “Self-esteem” is to be dispensed to school children as largess from the teacher.  Adults are to have their medical care and other necessities dispensed as largess from the government. People are to be mixed by race and sex and whatever else the anointed want to take into account, in order to present whatever kind of picture the anointed think should be presented.

This is the vision of human beings as livestock to be fed by the government and herded and tended by the anointed.  All the things that make us human beings are to be removed from our lives and we are to live as denatured creatures and directed by our betters. (emphasis mine)

Those things that help human beings be independent and self-reliant – whether automobiles, guns, the free market, or vouchers – provoke instant hostility from the anointed.

Below are two contrasting videos:  one video depicts a life on government programs ala The Life of Julia.  The other describes you as a self-governing self-determining free person.  I ask you, who is more empowered? You already know the answer. Vote the answer and not what the plantation’s political ruling class is promoting via the main stream media (MSNBC‘s Lean Forward Campaign, Media Matters, etc.).

 Is the future of America you holding your DMV issued health-care card and food stamps?  Or is the future of America (you and me) dependent on our own self-government and our own self-determination while holding on to our self-esteem and liberty? For a while fascism’s authoritarianism feels safe and secure but that quickly changes.  You soon become a slave or an automaton in the system. Liberty on the other hand is scary good. As I have said liberty requires responsibility on your part but liberty is supremely worth it.

Yet, if the Obama plantation feels safe, if you see yourself as dependent on the master for your life then go with that but please don’t vote to take others with you.

Others have made freedom and choice their life: 

http://demetriuspeaks.com/2012/07/06/what-it-means-to-be-a-black-conservative/

 Thomas Sowell notes in another article, “Entitlement is just a fancy word for dependence.”

The full article here: 

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/267898/dependency-and-votes-thomas-sowell

Who represents you in Washington is a reflection of you.  Do you like what you see?

 Democrats and the plantation:

Independence Day:

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Just, Fair and Equal: the Stooges of Progressivism

June 3, 2012 Leave a comment

“Creating a world that is just, fair and equal.”  This Progressive mantra was recited again yesterday. I heard it during a television interview of two historians at a history writer’s convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The black historian’s words sounded so right, so full of righteous human endeavor but in reality his words were the sounds of empty utopian piety deficit of any moral context.

 A world that is just is a world where every man gives the other his due.  Yet government’s redistribution of wealth does the opposite. It takes away from the taxpayer what is due him, his earnings and property and gives to someone else that which is not due him. This confiscation and redistribution of personal property is for no other reason than to turn unequal incomes into equal outcomes.  This highway robbery is currently termed “social justice” by progressives today who were yesterday’s socialists. 

Here is Josef Stalin, a murderous dictator, talking about his desire to see socialism dominate the world (meaning you and me):

“…Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world …”

St.Thomas Aquinas in his On the Book of Job (8,1) said:

 “Justice is destroyed in twofold fashion:  by false prudence of the sage and by the violent act of the man who possess power.” 

 As we see our nation become increasingly secular we see its structure being pulled away from its Judeo-Christian cornerstone.  And in so doing we the ‘homeowners’ are becoming displaced and disordered much like furniture during a house relocation.  Without realizing it we are becoming objects devoid of human nature, becoming the un-created or the walking dead.  Removed from life’s foundation man is devoid of God-given inalienable rights as well. And with out individual inalienable rights there is only left to mankind the justification of totalitarian power, a totalitarian power that promises a “just, fair and equal world.” This secular utopian promise is not new to mankind:  Hitler and Stalin among others promoted such ‘worlds’.

 Justice can rightly be discussed only within a complete moral context that includes prudence, temperance, fortitude, charity and a host of other God-derived virtues.  To replace that moral context with a secular humanism is to presume that God did not create humans.  It presumes that God did not create man as a person, as a whole unto himself as a spiritual being that exists for itself and of itself and that wills its own proper perfection.  On these grounds secular humanism denies individual God-given inalienable rights in favor of the general ‘good.’ This denial is imposed on us today in our democracy by majority rule – voters enthralled by the secular humanism advocated by the main stream media, by our president and by Democrats in particular are voting to empty man of his individual nature through law and fiat.  They are doing so in the name of communal “social justice.” No one seems to notice except a few on the right.

 Because of human nature there will always be those in a small camp who think to themselves “every man for himself” and “screw the other guy so I can get ahead.”  And likewise, on the other hand, there will always be those who believe that each of us should give up our person, our property and our individualism for the good of the whole. Neither of these political philosophies should ever be put in power.  And yet with high-sounding, pious jingoism pumped out by the main stream media propaganda machine the left is now succeeding into promoting the latter.  We already know who the willing recepient is:   “a sucker is born every day.”

 As individuals each of us should act with justice toward our neighbor giving him his due.  What is his due?  My neighbor is due his inalienable God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I owe him truth.  I owe him the same love I give myself.  I owe him freedom from coercion. Beyond that the mantras of “social justice,” fairness and egalitarianism become the Godless mind control pumping the ever marching jackboots of rank and file humanism.  Once a sufficient numbers of useful idiots and stooges have succumbed to humanism’s opiate effect a sure and complete enslavement of our nation under a totalitarian regime will occur. Welcome to the world of the godless if Obama’s regime is re-elected in 2012.

 For a world to be “fair” someone in power has to determine what is fair.  Do you really want to use your vote for that kind of self-subjugation?  Certainly there is no Biblical a priori for demanding that life must be fair. Where does this understanding of the need for fairness come from?  Is there a philosophical argument for fairness?  A moral one?

My guess would be that much of the “fairness” allure comes from popular psychology and socialist rhetoric both which absolve people of personal responsibility and seeks to rectify a person’s losses and hardships by pointing blame at others.  Class warfare rhetoric is a prime example, as it defines others as being the reason for your lack.  More devastating to our culture and its preoccupation with fairness is our nation’s increasingly secular nature, a secular nature of envy and jealousy actively promoted by president Obama in his many “fair share” speeches.  Obama is a secularist wolf in Soros’ bought sheep’s clothing.

  A world that is “equal” is a world that removes difference for the sake of bringing every one down to the same low common denominator and nothing more.  Imagine our government choosing your husband or wife, your doctor, your food, your home and your words based on what is thought to be equal for everyone. Equal-outcome based thinking destroys incentive, destroys each man’s uniqueness, his God-given differences, his inalienable rights and eats away at civic life-like a flesh-eating disease feeding on its host. 

According to Allan Bloom in his book The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Soul’s of Today’s Students in the chapter entitled Values “Egalitarianism is conformism…Egalitarianism is founded on reason, which denies creativity”

 Imagine a world where there is no creativity and no aspirations only sameness.  Imagine being a citizen of North Korea.

Without moral-based justice as an inoculation against greed and envy people would constantly be looking at others to compare themselves with their neighbor. Forget contentment in a world that is egalitarian.

 Finally both fairness and egalitarianism, as laws enacted via secular humanist congressmen and presidents voted for, remove individual moral choice (justice) along with charity, fortitude and temperance from life. If the government does your thinking and makes your choices for you then you as an individual are absolved from any moral duty whatsoever.  What than is the purpose of the individual?  Without you the state becomes the all-powerful meat grinder and you along with everyone else become the human sausage extruded into the casings of humanism. Digest that if you will.

“A government big enough to give you everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have….” President Gerald Ford

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Joseph and the One Percent

June 2, 2012 2 Comments

You should know that jealousy and envy disguised as “fairness” and “equality” play important roles in a liberal’s political drama.

 Remember the Bible story of Joseph and the coat.  Joseph’s eleven brothers, assuming that Joseph was their father’s favorite son, became extremely jealous when Joseph received a beautiful coat as a gift from his father.  So jealous were they in fact that they plotted to kill Joseph.  But after much hand wringing and intervention by the oldest brother they sold Joseph into slavery.  This was deemed a more humane solution.

 The brothers in order to deflect their guilt gave their father a bloodied garment as proof of their ‘sincere’ lie that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.  The brothers then considered their “problem” to be out of sight and out of mind.  What mattered most to them was to maintain status quo – everybody was to remain equal.

 From a mature point of view the brothers should not have been jealous. Joseph’s father Jacob had every right to give the coat to whomever he wanted.  But the brothers grumbled and cried foul amongst themselves as do liberals today whenever there is a perceived breach of societal equity.

 Today’s popular psychology helps feed the popular jealousy by reverse thinking.  Instead of providing a positive unselfish viewpoint Freudian based psychology points the finger back at dad the authority figure:  “you feel that you didn’t get your fair share of love from your father.” “Your father treated your brother with more love and affection. “Your father should have given you more.  He should have been fair with you so let’s help you figure out how to get your fair share.” This nonsense is played out day after day in the liberal media and by president Obama with “fair share” rhetoric. 

 These liberal folks will tell you as they have been counseled that life has not given you your fair share so you must demand fairness: “Look at your life.  Do you have what he has?  No?” “Then demand it.” “Demand your right to healthcare. Demand your right to force the 1% to pay higher taxes. Demand your right to live off another person’s property.” This type of debilitating psychology streams from media outlets day and night promoting jealousy, envy and unrest in the people who hear it.

 Co-opted, high-sounding and sanctimonious words hide the real motivation behind the left’s policies:  jealousy and envy hiding in the wings waiting for the chance to ‘correct’ the unfairness.

 Consider this assessment of the Left’s use of innocuous language to achieve their ‘righteous’ ends. Here is Thomas Sowell, economist :

 “The left has a whole vocabulary devoted to depicting people who do not meet the standards as people who have been denied “access.” Whether it is academic standards, job qualifications or credit requirements, those who do not measure up are said to have been deprived of “opportunity,” “rights” or “social justice.”

 The word games of the left – from the mantra of “diversity” to the pieties of “compassion” – are not just games.  They are ways of imposing power by evading issues of substance through the use of seductive rhetoric.

 “Rights,” for example have become an all purpose term used for evading both facts and logic by saying that people have a “right” to whatever the left wants to give them by taking from others.

 For centuries, rights were exemptions from government power, as in the Bill of Rights.  Now the left has redefined rights as things that can demanded from the taxpayers, or from private employers or others, on behalf of people who accept no mutual obligations, even for common decency.”

 Joseph was one of twelve brothers.  He was 1/12th or 8.333 % of the whole.  8.333% had something the 91.667 % didn’t have.  Rounding off, the 92% were envious of the 8% so the 92% decided to bring the 8% down to zero, thus making things fair in their eyes. Removing Joseph from the picture also meant that their inheritance was now larger, divided only eleven ways instead of twelve.  Because of envy and jealousy the 92% proceeded to sell the 8% into slavery and bondage, though murder was considered.  Think about that before you vote for Obama and the Democrats. Think about that when you hear them demanding that the 1% should dish out their shovel ready wealth for your benefit.

 Being your brother’s keeper is so much more than keeping him around and keeping him in his place by only giving him his “fair share.”  It is dealing justly with him by giving him what is due him.  So if a man has been given a gift or has a talent bless him and do not curse him.  If a man receives more than you be thankful to God for what you do have and for his gain. But,  if you by jealousy and envy, in order to make yourself feel better about yourself, your situation and the world at large, confiscate another man’s property,  if you subjugate his person and sell him into slavery or if, when envy has matured into its final state you seek to murder the man better off than you then know that his blood will cry out for justice. Know that God will avenge those treated unjustly.

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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.

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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

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