I’m Getting Over Sentimental, And You?

December 27, 2014 Leave a comment

As we head into the New Year let’s take a moment to not look back… 

Ah, yes.

Ah, yes.

 Sentimentality is that taskmaster which keeps us longing for the leeks and garlic of Egypt, the known-knowns of past life, up to and including slavery.

 Sentimentality is gate keeper to the past, fending off reality to preserve sugar-plum memories.

 Sentimentality serves as wooer, policy maker and candlestick maker, ergo, The Great Society (aka “Let’s help the little people and feel good about ourselves in the process”, affirmative action (see The Great Society for further social science mishaps), education (aka job-security for union workers), amnesty (aka imported votes for Progressive Democrats) and multiculturalism (aka “We promote “Diversity” here, just stay off my lawn and don’t get near my rights, you fools.”)

 Sentimentality, the emo that keeps on giving, will keep an angry woman ever angry; never forgiving. For her the past will be kept stewing, waiting for the next victim to be boiled alive.

 Sentimentality will fight fires by removing the oxygen from the room: “This is the way we have always done it.”

 Sentimentality is not tradition. It is more like unclaimed baggage that keeps going around on the airport turnstile day after day. You watch it to see if anyone claims it. If not it’s yours to drag around forever.

 Sentimentality chooses the moldy and crusty bread of the past over the fresh gluten free, sugar-free crackers of the present ala “This white bread reminds me of mom.”

 Sentimentality can be good wine turned into vinegar; old wineskins never replaced.

 Sentimentality is the troll who guards the bridge to the New Year. The troll demands a toll. (Just tell the little bugger, ”I paid years ago, be off with you or I’ll call my Father Time. He’ll kick your little troll butt!”)

 Sentimentality calls up past fears and dreams for advertised future benefits, benefits created at any cost to reality. See the Social Security trust fund. See the Barney Frank everyone-needs-a-house bubble machine that unleashed the Kraken upon world finances when the bubbles burst.

 Sentimentality wants to relive the civil rights and war protests of the sixties and invoke the depression era bindle-bums of the thirties. OWS Millennials ‘must’ ‘re-live’, record and recreate a diorama of those events from a BA degree in Identity Politics perspective. The grapes of wrath must be re-trampled. Social justice must be served with an order of the freshest iPhones.

 Sentimentality “keeps me hanging on” by a thread of delusion. “Marriage is secular, a right, a ‘love-in’.” Sentimentality says “I do” to whatever makes me feel… sentimental. And, sentimental makes me feel all gooey inside like…cable TV lovers.

 Sentimentality demands that Mother Earth be saved from manmade people while avoiding fact-see leftist Pope Francis for further encyclical faldera. Does the Pope realize that the Green Movement believes that overpopulation of the world is the problem? Does the Pope realize that he is actually promoting abortion, assisted-suicide and humanist population control?  (BTW: does the Pope even understand that capitalism fills the coffers of DisneyVatican?)  And, forget “Seasons in the Sun”. We may be facing an Inferno or an Ice Age depending on which way the inverted dated is put up on the overhead. ALGore Rhythm has predicted inverted hockey stick apocalyptic weather conditions to occur at any second now. And this, my friends, despite the fact that CO2 makes growing things…green! We are told by dogged Gaia loving-tenure-loving-paycheck-loving scientists that CO2 is not green ‘making’ ‘stuff’ when man is involved. Mankind only creates off-green “problems,” “problems” that are only resolvable with enormous sums of green taxpayer money. And, to increase our awareness of the right uses for CO2 the greenie bible Mother Earth News reportedly reports “green is god, dude, especially when rolled and smoked.” Anyway “It’s hard to die when all the birds are singing in the sky.”

 Sentimentality: a Disney movie replaying your childhood over and over. You know, the time you spent fantasizing about being princess as a young boy. Animated cels have always portrayed our deepest feelings, the best of our culture and the highest aspirations of our humanity-remember? Who needs reality when you have “Frost”?

 Sentimentality is that trampoline you keep in your back yard just in case you need to jump up and down endlessly to walk away from the back and forth of everyday life.

 Sentimentality gets an Enlightened Epicurean Scientism big bang out of a singular boson appearance but considers God’s silhouette passé.

 “A sentimentalist“, Oscar Wilde wrote, “is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it”.

 Use “Sentimentality” in a sentence/s: “I prefer my sentimentality over tradition, dudes. Tradition is so predictable whereas ad hoc sentimentality ushers in a new age of Progress as well as a proto-social justice that protests everything that isn’t sentimental.”

 Sentimentality as cultural entrenchment, as socio-political-economic-education policy-see Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality (subtitle in US editions: How Britain is Ruined by Its Children) by Theodore Dalrymple. Who could resist this book with chapter titles like these: Chapter Three: “The Family Impact Statement”, Chapter Four: “The Demand for Public Emotion”, Chapter Five: “The Cult of the Victim”, Chapter Six: “Make Poverty History!”

 Sentimentality-I could go on but, at this point, if I look back, I just might become sentimental. I won’t look back. Yes, there were good times but I keep those memories like a locket around my neck. And, don’t worry. Good memories have a way of making themselves known and sustaining you at the right time-that is if you create them first. (The Israelites used to create stone monuments as a place of remembrance where Jehovah had intervened. They did not carry the monument around with them. The thought that God is Infinite-Personal became a fixed place in their memory.)

 Taking sentimentality as a daily palliative pill will regurgitate acid reflux. Worse, making sentimentality your GroupThink Emo-a demand to relive all hurts whether real, perceived, projected or revived-leads to unresolved GroupThinkAnger and to “Stokely Carmichael’s idea that “before a group can enter open society, it must close ranks.”” And to the “Day of Rage” (’69, Cornell U) and to Black Panthers with billy clubs at polling places, to the NAACP, to the SPLC’s perverted “Hate-Watch”, to Al Sharpton, Eric Holder and their ilk.

 Looking back, as one who was told not to look back, did not work out well for Lot’s wife. She may have very well thought that God was like her-sentimental about what someone holds dear, in this case her life in Sodom. She may have very well thought that God would not destroy a place she called home. She got it wrong.

 A pillar of salt goes nowhere in life. 

A pillar of the community!

A pillar of the community!

 ~~~~~

Who needs the shallowness of sentimentality when you can have full-bodied hope! And, I’m not talking about “Hope” as found in the “Hope and Change” campaign come-on that was used to lull Millennial lemmings to follow Obama over the cliffs of insanity.

 I am talking real hope. And, real hope includes distancing yourself from sentimentality and going forward with God into sublime reality, as the Apostle Paul described here in his letter to the Church at Rome (Chapter 4-5): 

“…since we believe in the one who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was handed over because of our trespasses and raised because of our justification.

 The result is this: since we have been declared “in the right” on the basis of faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Through him we have been allowed to approach, by faith, into this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate the hope of the glory of God.

That’s not all. We also celebrate in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patience, patience produces a well-formed character, and a character like that produces hope.

Hope, in its turn, does not make us ashamed, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the holy spirit who has been given to us.” (emphasis mine)

 

 

 ~~~

Credits:

The picture of Lot’s Wife –courtesy of MudPreacher.

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2014, New Year's Eve Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Back On Earth

December 25, 2014 Leave a comment

America's Christmas gift to the world - How to kill a dictator!

America’s Christmas gift to the world – How to kill a dictator!

Joy to the world! “The Interview” will be released, 

Let earthlings view this crap,

Let every one call it “Freedom”,

And Sony and Clooney chime in,

And Sony and Clooney chime in,

And Sony, and Sony and Clooney chime in.

 

 

 

 

 

Joy to earth, the “Frost” movie reigns  

Control Your Climate Change or Elsa!

Control Your Climate Change or Elsa!

No More Mr. Nice Gay

No More Mr. Nice Gay

Let LGBTers their fantasies employ

While diversity chills society

Repeat just “Let It Go”,

Repeat just “Let It Go”, 

Repeat, repeat just “Let It Go”.

 

Front & back door man Al Sharpton

Front & back door man Al Sharpton

No more let race relations grow

Nor love disperse our hate

Sharpton comes to make the money flow, 

Far as his race is found

Far as his race is found 

Far as, far as his race is found. 

 

 

Obama rules our world with Executive Fiat, 

(Spoken like a true dictator)

(Spoken like a true dictator)

And makes lawlessness his,

The mandates of his Imperialism,

And wonders of his lies

And wonders of his lies

And wonders, and wonders of his lies.

 

 

~~~~ 

Credits:

“The Interview” poster-wikipedia

Elsa’s Ice Palace

“No End In Sight” photo–Washington Post

“Al Sharpton and gay rioter photos–Common & domain.

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2014, Political Commentary Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The Slaughter of the Innocents: Ramos and Liu; Pakistani Children

December 23, 2014 Leave a comment

 “I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.” 

  “It’s horrible that someone gets shot dead just for being a police officer,” Rafael Ramos’ son, Jaden, posted on Facebook.

 Flowers, candles, photos and written messages were placed outside of the station house in Brooklyn of two NYPD officers who were fatally shot while sitting in their marked cruiser. The family of one officer spoke at a vigil Sunday saying they forgive the shooter.

  

The darkness in men’s souls grows even darker.

To counter the darkness a Light came into the world. Christ was born.

“In him was life, and that life was the light for all mankind.”

Atheism thus was born. Atheists loved the darkness rather than the light.

Atheism rejected the world’s new King-the Word become flesh;

Atheism grew from its infancy into Darwinian Marxist materialism, evolving into Epicurean ‘Enlightened’ existentialist nihilism. 

Atheism slaughters everyone in its path to maintain its will to power.

Atheism slaughters with star, with crescent and sword, with ovens and gulags, with enabling terrorist professors, with paid and unpaid protesters.

Atheism slaughters with Herod, Stalin and Pol Pot regimes. Atheism terrorizes with 65 year-old pony-tailed anarchists and union riff-raff.  

Atheism enslaves with rulers who are a law unto themselves.

 The spirit of anti-Christ has been pervasive throughout our world, since the before the birth of Christ. You hear the sound of its revilement when…

Protesters yell “What do we want? Dead cops!” – anarchy and lawlessness must reign.

The Media exchanges good for “evil”, evil for “good”.

Amorphous slimy politicians and their front men hide their spiked tails and horns, play the narcissistic victim.

In the battle between good and evil, the Slaughter of the Innocents will continue….

 

 2 NYPD police officers ‘assassinated’; shooter dead 

Officer Rafael Ramos

Officer Rafael Ramos

 

 

Officer Wenjian Liu

Officer Wenjian Liu

 

In Pakistan school attack, Taliban terrorists kill 145, mostly children

 Photos of some of the children killed at Pakistani school

Photos of Pakistani children killed by Taliban

Photos of Pakistani children killed by Taliban

 

“I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.”

 

Wisdom’s Rebuke, from the Book of Proverbs Chapter One;

20 Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
    she raises her voice in the public square;
21 on top of the wall she cries out,
    at the city gate she makes her speech:

22 “How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
    How long will mockers delight in mockery
    and fools hate knowledge?
23 Repent at my rebuke!
    Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
    I will make known to you my teachings.
24 But since you refuse to listen when I call
    and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
25 since you disregard all my advice
    and do not accept my rebuke,
26 I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
    I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
    when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
    when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

28 “Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
    they will look for me but will not find me,
29 since they hated knowledge
    and did not choose to fear the Lord.
30 Since they would not accept my advice
    and spurned my rebuke,
31 they will eat the fruit of their ways
    and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
    and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety
    and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

~~~~~~

For What It’s Worth

Recorded by Buffalo Springfield

Written by Stephen Stills

Song explained: http://www.reasontorock.com/tracks/for_what_its_worth.html

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2014 Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

The Deconstruction of America Along The “Do The Right Thing” Highway

December 20, 2014 Leave a comment

decostruzione4-1How do I put this? Like a battered codependent wife who stays with her husband believing that he really does love her in his heart of hearts? Like a College Lit professor who embraces the Literary Critical Theories of Lacan, Derrida and Foucault and who, like Foucault, must, in true Marxist fashion, deconstruct each work of literature, each text, overturning every word to uncover some element of sexism, homophobia, racism or class injustice-looking for victims in all the wrong places? Or, as a dog returns to his vomit so a fool returns to his folly? I am trying to describe why America would vote a second time for Barack Obama to be president of the United States.

Of late, Barry and Michelle have worn their emo on their sleeves-the nation that has elected Barack Hussein Obama to be the FIRST BLACK president TWICE-has let him down-racially!

And, Michelle, poor dear, as first Lady she had helped a woman reach something high on a shelf. Michelle now complains that she felt she was being treated as just “the help” and not as the Oprah of Black women that she sees herself as. Lord Almighty! Poor BLACK OPPRESSED FIRST LADY! Racism is so insidious!

Yesterday, in Obama’s flippant and rambling Putin-worthy Laugh-In press conference the FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT invoked Jim Crow! Let me paraphrase: “The nation has improved with respect to race and class but has not improved with respect to race and class. The cops are out of control. Black men everywhere should not be restrained while committing a crime or shot when charging a police officer to overtake the officer. Rioters and looters–they are just the effect of bad police work. Me, I am in charge of a country that’s doin’ just fine economically. That was my last question, ladies.  I’m going on a two week vacation to Hawaii. Golf awaits.”

And, aren’t we are told hundreds of times by Professor Teleprompter that we must, in the words of the almighty BLACK ARTIST Spike Lee, “Do The Right Thing”

“We must do the right thing about” immigration, health care, sex-education, Iraq troop withdrawal, guns, jobs, fill-in-the leftist Christmas list and he’ll spiel it as “The “Right Thing.”

For one to do “The Right Thing” one must know what the right thing is to do. Well, Dear Leader has made it known that, like his predecessor Fidel Castro, only Obama knows what the right thing is. We are only the proles. Obama is professor First and Last Word.

~~~

A vote for Barack Obama was a vote for those like him-Pius Racial Animus the 1st AG Eric Holder, Puppeteer Valerie Jarrett, race hustler Al Sharpton, socialist Bill de blasio, et al.

A vote for Barack Obama was a vote for the deconstruction of America into nihilistic anarchy-a banana republic with dope, drugs and The Soullessness Train.

Your vote began the removal of our country’s Judeo-Christian cornerstone. Your vote is now replacing it with the mud of multiculturalism, multiculturalism which embraces radical Islam under the guise of religious freedom.

Your vote is a vote to discard the foundational U.S. Constitution and replace it with the quick sand of ad hoc moral relativism.

Your vote is currently demolishing the painstakingly built race relations meeting place.  

Destruction of Ferguson

Destruction of Ferguson

Your vote installed the jobless rioters and looters and paid contractor anarchists into that meeting place.

We, the proles, are left within the dust storm and ashes with a president who thinks he can see more clearly than you, aka “Dreams From My Father.”

Added 12-21-2014, the day after this post!:

Two NYC cops executed – Revenge for #EricGarner? (#BlueLivesMatter)(#NYPD)

~~~

Painting: DECOSTRUZIONE IV

Picture from post “The Destruction of Ferguson, Missouri “[Video]

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Empire of Lies – Andrew Klaven

December 17, 2014 Leave a comment

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What Childlessness Is this?

December 13, 2014 Leave a comment

Anomaly? Perhaps. Trend? Perhaps.

If you have read previous posts you would know that I travel to work-a Chicago Loop location-on the METRA train. After so many stops several of us gather in the vestibule, antsy to get off the train. It is in the vestibule, on a daily basis, that we share the events of our daily lives, the latest front page news, TV programs watched, political viewpoints and so on.

It came as a surprise to me the other day when I learned that three of us four ‘regulars’-a married man in his early sixties, a married man in his late forties to early fifties and a woman also in her late forties to early fifties were each without children. I am the only one of the four who has children.

 Another surprise: the three of them along with their spouses-each couple-owned two dogs. They call their pets their four legged children! I had to wonder “Why pets?” and no children, but I don’t ask such questions. Maybe it is a matter of fertility. Or, a matter of fear?

 The only clue I gathered was when another woman, a mother, joined us one day. She talked about her kids and her dog. She asked the man of sixty years if he had kids. He replied that he didn’t. “I was afraid for my wife.”

 What he meant, I could not tell you. I was left to conjecture: was he afraid for her physical health? Her mental health?

 Now, all three train companions have highly positioned jobs. One man is a CPA for a major bank. The other man is a health care manager for employees of a major area hospital. The woman is a VP of an insurance company. She travels over 60% of the time.

 So, again, conjecture. Did they choose to be childless to fulfill career paths? Or?

I can not judge their decision but I am curious as to their decision’s formulation and their lack of formula (I had to spit that up, didn’t I?). 

Like me you may have seen bumper stickers of the sort “I love my (fill in the blank pet version), it is humans I can’t stand.”

 When I see this uncivil declaration renouncing mankind I feel a little rebuffed BUT not to the extent that I would riot or loot or cancel any exam to wallow in shameless emo. I wouldn’t even call Al Sharpton or Eric Holder in to intercede for the black folks included in this public denunciation.

It now seems that anti-human humanism is society’s soup of the day philosophy. What’s important is that animals be anthropomorphized into four legged children.

If you were to listen to my three train companions you would hear that they treat these dogs as children and better. They take their beloved pooches to doggie spas and to doggie festivals where special organic dog food is sampled. I am not mentioning half the luxuries bestowed to the beasts. (“Higher taxes for the 1% will help the poor. So I needn’t go out of my way. Besides, I give when the sad dogs on TV look me in the eye.”)

 Don’t growl at me. I am not an animal hater. I have a Parrolet named Henry. 

Henry the Parrolet

Henry the Parrolet

I have had dogs, cats, chameleons… AND, I have four kids who are human (though there were times when I thought they regressed to being four-legged animals).

 The pet over children choice fits in nicely with environmentalists. They seek to stomp out the fires of human passion:“Only you can prevent human existence.”

 The ‘’greenies’ spread their irrational fears liberally (e.g., the greenie-propaganda movie “Noah”.). They invoke population control-Malthusian-metric-hockey-stick spreadsheets. They generate CO2 free angst and so bloody on.

And, why, why have kids when life is so hard and so terrible and so there is so much bad in the world and so much work to do to stop climate change (“So many CO2 offenders, so little time”) that will kill us all if we don’t give ALL of our time and ALL of our money to stop it right now and lions and tigers and bears… Let’s let fear itself give us something to fear-a dictum not worthy of you or any generation.

 Besides all of the above manmade direness there is the inconvenience of children. You have to feed them, change them, follow them, correct them when they mis-behave (Oh, yes.), take them to Wal-Mart for a Christmas picture, introduce them to the morals you flirt with now and then. And, there is just too much of yourself you would have to give up to have a child.

 “I have my studies, my books, my Facebook, my career path to the seventh floor. I have my dreams. I have my “Me, My, I” to look after. First person singular comes first.

 This is where pets (and their owner’s bumper stickers) come into view. This is where I am told “Dogs”, on the other paw, “give me their unconditional love”. Yeah, that’s right. You have heard the same thing. Dogs love. Roll the Disney movie. Throw them an organic vegan Milkbone. Walk them with a proud humane cadence. Care for them when ill or itchy. Cuddle with them on your bed…but they are not kids.

  Kids? YES have kids! I’ll tell you why but not in smothering detail. You will figure it out.

 Here is hint #1: the reason to have kids is connected to the reason for the season-the Christmas season-in case the shelf-elf didn’t remind you what time of the year it is. And hint #2, the reason will involve a new vocabulary word: “kenosis”.

Per Wikipedia, “The New Testament does not use the actual noun kénōsis but the verb form kenóō occurs five times (Ro.4:14, 1Co.1:17, 9:15, 2Co.9:3, Phil.2:7). Of these five times it is Phil 2:7, in which Jesus is said to have “emptied himself,” which is the starting point of Christian ideas of kenosis.”

The word ἐκένωσεν (ekénōsen) is used in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, chapter 2 verses 6 through 8.  It is part of an early church hymn that is quoted by Paul:

 

Who, though in God’s form, did not

Regard his equality with God

As something he ought to exploit.

 

Instead, he emptied himself,

And received the form of a slave,

Being born in the likeness of humans.

And then, having human appearance,

 

He humbled himself, and became

Obedient even to death,

Yes, even the death of the cross.

 

To insure historical usage I unearthed my Greek New Testament and also “THE ANALYTICAL GREEK LEXICON: Consisting of AN ALPHABETICAL ARRANGEMENT OF EVERY OCCURING INFLEXION OF EVERY WORD CONTAINED IN THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE with a GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS OF EACH WORD.… I looked up the word transliterated as kenos. As used in Phil. 2:7–”to divest one’s self of ones prerogatives, abase one’s self”

 

Wow!

Jesus, Very God, divested himself of his prerogative as God and abased himself to become incarnate.

 We have heard it said that “God is love”. We have also heard that “God is eternal”. For love to be love there needs to be an object of love. For eternal God to be Love there must be an eternal object of his love. This means that within the dancing embrace of the Triune God are the eternal objects of each other’s love -the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (JWs, the Trinity is.)

 Now, imagine that the Godhead decided to include us humans in their dancing embrace of love. To do so, Jesus, as promised in prophecies of redemption, emptied himself of all his prerogatives as God (an overwhelming surprise for any orthodox Jew) and put on the vestment (the diapers) of created humanity.

 The simplest comparison that comes to my mind would be the following: There is a father who is the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation which employs 3000+ workers. The company owns several private jets.

 The father comes home, takes off his suit coat and throws it on a chair. He takes off his tie and does the same with it.  He then gets down on the floor on all fours to play Legos with his four year-old son-all prerogatives put aside because of love for his son. His ‘position’ is laid aside to be taken up later.

 There is something about kids and about divesting one’s self of one’s prerogatives that enables one to be in a relationship and to love another. No one is saying this is easy but it is worth more than what you laid aside.

 Christmas, a celebration of the birth of Christ is also a celebration of our humanity, of kids and babies. Imagine God Very God incarnated into our evolved human form and doing so right at the fullness, the bar mitzvah of time! And, come to think of it there is no celebration of Roe v. Wade Day unless, of course, you are Wiccan.

 The cross is the nexus of man’s inhumanity to man and man’s sinfulness with a Holy God. Man’s redemption from sin was the outcome. God kept his word to redeem and He imputes his promise keeping righteousness to those, by faith, who believe.

 The resurrection of the Son of Man is a celebration of Mankind’s new humanity within the Kingdom of God.

 ~~~ 

Yesterday as I was jumping off the train onto my home station platform the METRA conductor, a large friendly black man who looks like he could play defense for the Chicago Bears said “Have a great evening everyone. Fifteen days till Christmas! ”We all smiled looking back at his glowing face.

 Christmas is the dancing embrace of God with man and man with man and man with himself.

 “What Child is This? The slack-jawed shepherds will tell you that a birth announcement proclaiming humanity’s promised Messiah had arrived via Angelic Express. They will tell you that they found the baby who would one day become King lying in a manger. How un-Godlike? Not for the God who laid aside everything to get on all fours and meet you where you are.

Let the miracle of the incarnation inform your decision to have children, whether naturally, adopted and/or fostered in your home. And then let those children become the objects of your love.

Added:

In case you are a worrier watch this video:   I can’t believe we made it.

 

My Two Youngest at Pritzker Pavilion

My Two Youngest at Pritzker Pavilion

 

Filed under child-rearing, Christmas, Holiday, Incarnation Tagged with , , , , ,

Imagine Education Normal: Logocentrism

December 10, 2014 Leave a comment

Homeschool1A recent comment dialogue I was involved with on another blog made me realize that many people act and react out of an imagination that is cable TV connected. Their words lacked perspective, moral imagination and a coherent basis for reality. Their words, wildly absurdist, were meant to make a serious point. Sadly this has become normative for online point-counterpoint.

Below are some excerpts from a brief article about education, books versus TV, imagination, home schooling and preserving what’s good in a civilization. 

The article provides a great prescription for a child’s education.   Two of my children were home schooled for several years, so I know from experience the author’s point of view.

The article begins with the author asking “Are you ever afraid that home schooling your kids will make them, um, oddballs?” As parents we asked ourselves the same question. We found the answer to be a resounding “No.”

 I have heard people tell me that children who are home schooled lack social interaction. That is absolute nonsense. And, consider the social interaction coupled with the teacher’s ‘propaganda’ that occurs now with your child.

What you do as a home schooler is to connect with other parents who are doing the same thing and who share your values. Then, you just let the kids relate. We did this with families from our church community.

Together, you go on field trips. You are free to do myriads of fun learning activities. These would include science, music, sports and drama events.  And, there are plenty of curricula with associated support-internet and otherwise-for anyone who wants to home school their child.

The following excerpts are from a Touchstone Magazine article:

 Education Normal

Mark T. Mitchell on the Oddity of Giving Children a Moral Imagination

 Will your kids be raised primarily on books or on television? To put it another way: Will your children be educated in a logocentric environment, where the written and spoken word is the primary conveyer of meaning, or will they ingest most of their information through electronically generated images?

Now, of course, emphasizing books over television is not the entire story, for books vary in quality and there are plenty of books that cultivate misshapen virtues and a cynical view of life. But I think it is safe to say that parents who make the effort to emphasize books as a way of life will generally be those who have been powerfully moved by books themselves. They have experienced the wonder and joy and goodness of certain books and will introduce these to their children even as one introduces a family member to a much-loved friend.

But setting the content of the books aside (for only a moment), those whose minds are shaped by an ongoing encounter with language will develop mental habits that include patience, perseverance, the ability to think abstractly, and an imagination that does not require the constant stimulation of external images. The imagination of the reader (guided by the author) creates the images, whereas the child raised on television merely imbibes what has already been fully rendered by the camera.

 More than Rules

There are two facets to educating a child well. The first is to recognize that education is not merely the accumulation of facts, but that it has an unavoidably moral aspect. A suitable education must do more, therefore, than simply teach facts, even moral facts. Education must seek to cultivate the moral imagination of the child, for reducing moral education to a list of rules is bound to fail…

But if our children are raised primarily on visual images, if they do not cultivate the mental disciplines necessary to access truth via language, then the Holy Scriptures will remain opaque, the creeds and confessions of faith will be meaningless recitations, and hymn lyrics will be merely pleasant-sounding rhymes to accompany occasionally pleasant-sounding music.

While the ultimate aim of education is to cultivate the souls of children toward godly virtue, a secondary but related end is the preservation of civilization…

stewards of our civilization must possess well-cultivated language faculties capable of grasping complex and abstract ideas and concepts.

 Normal Children Needed

If a proper education is to accomplish or at least to seek to accomplish these tasks, then a normal child is one whose moral imagination is well formed, whose soul is oriented toward a love of logos and the Logos, and who knows and loves the best of his own civilization. Such a child will, perhaps unwittingly, become a steward of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In a world where normal is considered odd, such children are desperately needed.

Mark T. Mitchell teaches political theory at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. He is the co-founder of Front Porch Republic.
Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=22-07-014-v#ixzz1ZpTpK4sP

~~~

Teacher propaganda? Do tell:

 Worker Bees, Outcome Based Education and Our Little Ones

 The People of the “White Privilege” Lie

Parents angry after school tells 13-year-olds they can have sex, choose gender

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Don’t Feed the Multiculturalists

December 7, 2014 Leave a comment

to the boil cartoon by Eray Ozbek

When I eat at a Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Korean, Nigerian, Caribbean and you-name-it restaurant I am not force fed. I go there to freely eat the food of another culture. But for some ‘intellectual’ elites Multiculturalism is their bread and butter. And they want to force feed you and yours the same because for them-tah, tah-tah tah!-“Diversity!” has become the bread of life (think tenure).

 Noted British psychiatrist and prison doctor Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) has made a spot-on ‘diagnosis’ of the Multiculturalism doctrine. The doctor is very familiar with the bizarro world this liberal doctrine has engendered, having retired in culturally presumptuous Britain after a lifetime of up close human experience. The following quote is taken from his book “Anything Goes,” under the section “from Melting Pot to Stir-Fry”:

 “Whatever our foreign policy should be-whether we believe we ought to promote the welfare of others or merely to pursue our interests-there is no reason at all for us, indeed there is no real possibility for us, to be multiculturalists at home, if by multiculturalism is meant the granting of legal and social equality, recognition and protection to all customs, traditions, beliefs and practices whatsoever of immigrants, as if multiculturalism were merely a kind of fusion cooking. Of course, we will spontaneously take from immigrants aspects of their traditions that we find congenial, but this will be an informal assimilation, not mediated by government decree. Multiculturalism as a doctrine is just another instance of the tendency of a portion of the intelligentsia to exhibit its virtue and generosity for all the world to see, as well as provide a minor if lucrative source of employment to cultural bureaucrats.

As anyone who has ever tried it knows, understanding another culture is a Herculean labour, even when the culture is comparatively close to one’s own…

 In case should I be accused of insensitivity towards immigrants, I should like to point out that I am descended on both sides from refugees, whom integration, brought about informally, without any official direction, served magnificently. Multiculturalism was not a doctrine in their day, a fact for which I am grateful, for otherwise I should now be in the clutches of social workers, housing departments and assorted political entrepreneurs.” (emphasis mine)

 

 Now, from the New World, I offer a West Coast perspective. The clarion passage exposes the Left’s need to have everyone conform to their Cult of Difference. The passage, taken from playwright David Mamet’s book “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of the American Culture,” is found in the chapter is titled “Hope and Change.” Let’s start here:

 .”…To inspire the unsophisticated young to demand “change” is an easy and cheap trick-it was the tactic of the Communist Internationale in the thirties, another “movement.”

 The young and spoiled, having not been taught to differentiate between impulses. Frightened of choice, they band together, dress, speak, and act alike, take refuge in the herd, and call it “individualism.” …

Why is the call (to “change”) attractive? It appeals to the Jacobin, the radical, the young, and those who never matured-the perpetually jejune of my generation. We were taught in the sixties to award ourselves merit for membership in a superior group-irrespective of our group’s accomplishments….For we were the culmination of history, superior to all those misguided who had come before, which is to say all humanity. Though we had never met a payroll, fought for an education, obsessed about the rent, raised a child, carried a weapon for our country, or searched for work. Though we had never been in sufficient distress to call upon God, we indicted those who had. And continue to do so.

 (Mamet has set the stage. Now the tour de force…)

 Those we loved, ‘the oppressed,” were those whose consciousness we denigrated sufficiently to presume they would believe in our pretensions. (This is why the Left prefers Arabs to the Israelis, it, mistakenly, considers Arabs backward, and, thus, stupid. And, this is also why the Left obsesses over our country being “liked.”)

 But how manipulable are we? We have been exhorted and have encouraged each other to empty the national treasury, to chain our children to inflation, debt, and a descending standard of living, taxed business sufficiently to ship overseas those jobs which would support our country. And we have abdicated our position as world leader, as if our desire were not for security, but for exploitation-another example of that decried Colonialism which the left sees everywhere, which cry is the one trick of the Remittance Men who make up the United Nations.

 What greater act of colonialism than to bind a segment of our own population to shame and poverty through government subsidy and by insistence that they be judged by lower standards than the populace at large? We have created a permanent underclass through the ignorant and sententious operations of the mis-educated and ignorant. And we compound the legislative enormity by insistence in education on “diversity,” and “multiculturalism.” These are a codependence similar to the insistence in the prewar south on the Biblical support for Slavery.

~~

The sleepy youth of my child said a Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of school, and then was done with it. This was a ritual acknowledgement that we lived in a good land, and in a good society, and that our elders wished us to continue it. How different from the constant insistence on the “celebration of differences” which one finds in today’s schools.

 Who are the performers of this show, and for the benefit of whom?

 They are parents, teachers, administrators, and school boards, indulging in a cheap orgy of self congratulation…To expand their brief (their teaching-my note) into the correction of social injustice is improper and intrusive-like the teaching of sex education: it is simply none of their business.

 Diversity (and “multiculturalism”) is a pat on the head from the White members of my generation sufficiently inexperienced and self-absorbed to feel they are entitled to “bless their inferiors.”

 

Mamet added a footnote to the bottom of page 200. This insightful note is the reason I say “Don’t feed the multiculturalists.”

“Multiculturalism” and “Diversity”-now insisted upon as a basic tenet of education, is, of course, directed at Whites. What Black or Hispanic enclave or group insists upon the presence of Whites? Why should they? Why, then, is the White population devoted to this show-and-tell? It is the essential counterweight to affirmative action-the postmodern version of busing. The enormity of these programs is less that they, fatuously, endorse the exposure of whites to People of Color, but they operationally support the inverse, the idea that these People of Color benefit from White condescension. As such, “diversity” is the stalking horse of affirmative action-it is a happy proclamation of Black inferiority.” (all emphasis mine)

 ~~~~

Consider that President Obama has declared, by illegal Executive fiat, amnesty for millions of illegals. As I write this, these illegals will receive Social Security numbers, welfare benefits and the whole shebang-at our economic, moral and national security expense.

 These illegals won’t be required to learn English. They will not be required to read and be tested on the U.S. Constitution. They won’t be required to be in sync with American values in any way, shape or form (think Sharia Law accommodation).

These illegals won’t be ‘nationalized’ due to the national self-hatred infused throughout our land. Those in authority and those in the media and those in “white-privilege”–colonialism-Christian-Jew-Capitalism hating education positions will ‘whack-a mole’ any head that pokes itself above the surface for some non-toxic air.

Many illegals, seeking “the promise of a better life” will become willing victims of the systematic poisoning of America: “Multiculturalism” stir-fry laced with homegrown hemlock and its starchy side dish “Diversity.” Hemlock described

~~~~~

Gluten-free, Hemlock-free food for thought:

 Immigration Fiat Meet Multiculturalism or Don’t Pass the Fiat Fondue Melting Pot

 Vote American and Do Look Back

~~~~~

I can’t take all the…Credits:

http://www.eliyah.com/Forum/ubbthreads.php/galleries/115030/Hemlock_A_Sedative_That_Advers.html

 “To the Boil” cartoon by Eray Özbek

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Let’s Clear the Record

December 6, 2014 Leave a comment

Where to begin after the past week’s events? How about a headline like this?

“Gotham’s Mayor of Mayhem Bill de Blasio throws the NYPD under the bus! The Joker throws his card on the table.”

Wait! There is more. The op-ed page tells it like it is!

“Gotham’s Mayor speaks pseudo-conciliatory words meant to shame the ‘white privileged’…“Centuries of slavery””

BTW: it will seem like “centuries of slavery” under this Joker’s socialist chokehold. Welfare, as opposed to charity, becomes a form of slavery. 

 

Now let’s hear from the best of America. Let’s hear what an African American, a man of considerable intellect and common sense has to say about “centuries of slavery” and the welfare state.

 

 

The Jokers and Lawlessness. They go together, hand and glove. But it is no joke…   joker

 

There is no doubt about it: lawlessness is the spirit of the anti-Christ. And, that spirit is at work within our country’s authority today, within our classrooms and within our neighborhoods. Wisdom has seen it coming and has warned us about it.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
    but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

~~~

“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?”

 Lawlessness as promoted and enacted by a government authority, whether explicit or implied, whether by a mayor or an AG (Eric Holder’s Fast and Furious, IRS discrimination, etc.) or a President (Obama’s illegal and defiant amnesty fiat), done to satisfy political ends will inherently backfire.

Simply put, what goes around comes around. Ergo, witness rioters, looters and protesters protesting a lack of societal conformity by those in authority. These same protestors, though, never protest a lack of societal conformity on behalf society’s participants. Not only are they sectarian in their lawlessness. They are sectarian in their practice of ‘justice’. They want ‘fairness,” “egalitarianism,” “blind justice” and ‘restraint” for their defense but never as their motive.

What goes around comes around. Morphing on…

Let’s set the record straight. The current elected “radical transformation” leadership works out of a laboratory of lawlessness. They form mayhem out of human parts. They own the Frankenstein monsters they have built.

These monsters can’t breathe, they sometimes lay in the street and some stand in front of podiums and put their hands up.  Most of them are mindlessly looking for the nearest voting booth for another jolt to keep themselves going. The walking dead now roam the streets.

 ~~~~~~

As mentioned above, Wisdom saw the outcome of fools not “centuries of slavery” ago, but millennia ago.

From Wisdom’s rebuke found in the Word of God, The Book of Proverbs Chapter 1 v. 32-33:

For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

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Evil Marches On. Good Will Stop To Help And Pray

November 30, 2014 Leave a comment

You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.…”

Jesus from the eyewitness account of Matthew 5:43-44

A painting that was for sale in Hidden Treasures, Andrews's store, before it was burned on Nov. 24, 2014. Image: Amanda Wills, Mashable

A drawing that was for sale in Hidden Treasures, Andrews’s store, before it was burned on Nov. 24, 2014.
Image: Amanda Wills, Mashable

 

A gofundme account was created on November 27th, 2014 for Jeniece and her husband. This money will help them to rebuild their retail business, Hidden Treasures. The store was destroyed by lawless rioters and looters in Feguson, MO. See my previous post.

Give evil its marching orders. Overcome evil with good: donate and bless Jeniece.  She is one of the Kingdom of God’s no longer hidden treasures.

 

Hidden Treasures Ferguson Rebuild

 

“And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” Job 42:10

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