The Subject line: Honor Them

November 12, 2014 Leave a comment

playing taps

A group of vets from our company met for lunch yesterday, Veteran’s Day.

 I received this in an email today from one of them. The Subject line: Honor Them.  I was asked to pass this along…

 

WITH DEEP REGRET
Charlie Sheen is 45 and his story is all over the news because he is a substance abuser, an adulterer, sexually promiscuous and obnoxious.
Lindsay Lohan is 24 and her story is all over the news because she is a celebrity drug addict and a thief.
The same can be said about drug addict Philip Seymour Hoffman who died with a needle stuck in his arm.
Alec Baldwin, actor, who is constantly in the news for his public disorderly conduct and inappropriate language and behavior involving the police or photographers, among others, continues to stay in the news.
Something as frivolous as Kim Kardashian’s stupid wedding (and short-lived marriage) was shoved down our throats, while……..

 

Justin Allen 23
Brett Linley 29
Matthew Weikert 29
Justus Bartett 27
Dave Santos 21
Jesse Reed 26
Matthew Johnson 21
Zachary Fisher 24
Brandon King 23
Christopher Goeke 23
and Sheldon Tate 27…
…are all Marines who gave their lives last month for you.
There is no media for them; not even a mention of their names.
They were young men who most likely came from rural America seeking a chance to better themselves and to serve this country.
Honor THEM by sending this on.
I did, will you?
Rest In Peace, and THANK YOU TROOPS.

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Political Sea Change Puts Global Warming On Ice

November 8, 2014 Leave a comment

 Yeah, it’s OK to be American once again. More importantly, it is OK to be human again (see a real human in the video above)!

Republicans were elected to become a majority of Congress.

 The dehumanization of our country and its people over the past five plus years by Progressivism’s ever demanding Politburo bureaucracy must end now. No more redistributive fear mongering. No more redistributive shaming the people of this nation into a collective submission to the will of fact denying environmentalists or to political correctness or to universal healthcare or to behavioral economists who want to “Nudge” libertarian paternalism (Big Brother in Brooks Brothers clothes) onto you. No more.

 The fog of war, the war against mankind (and against womankind), is beginning to lift. We can see a glimpse of America on the horizon. The flag is still standing.

 It’s OK to walk out on the two-faced-mal adroit-in-denial Obama and his “my policies are on the ballot”. It’s OK to say “good riddance” to the worst Senate Leader in our nation’s history-Harry Reid. Obots, it is OK to be human again.

 There should be no more scare tactic talk of world ending proportions: “global warming is the greatest threat to mankind.” No more of this Bernie Madoff “trust-me-in-this” type hoax. 

https://twitter.com/charlescwcooke/status/529844924976730112

 As a people we can begin to safely and efficiently frack. We can mine for coal and continue to filter its combustion. We can build the Keystone pipeline, create jobs and the safe transmission of oil. We can apply for small business loans and for Tea Party non-profit status without the jack boots of the Obama Stasi stomping you into the ground. We can protect our borders from illegals carrying drugs, disease and a distaste for America. But, can we protect our borders from Obama?  God help us.

 There should be no more politicization and polarization coming from the Attorney General’s office. Eric Holder has been the most egregious and unjust man to ever hold the office. Even now he is trying to influence the outcome of the Ferguson grand jury by his public inferences.

 There should be no more denigration of small businesses and their owners, owners who have worked so hard for so long to build something only to have them mocked from Obama’s and his alter ego’s (Liz Warren) bully pulpits.

 It is no small thing that the average age in congress is now 50 years of age instead of 62. And, it is no small thing that Congress is now to be filled with a “DIVERSITY “of women and minority Republicans: (Iowa’s Senator-elect Joni Ernst, Utah’s Mia Love,  West Virginia’s Senator-elect Shelley Moore Capito, South Carolina’s first black American Senator-elect Tim Scott; the first Indian-American Nikki Haley reelected as South Carolina’s governor). They have been elected to speak for the people.

 A gentle reminder:  It is in “God We Trust” and not the Republican Party, the majority or vox populi vox dei.

The 2014 vote was vote for a return of our humanity and, knowingly or not, for a God who endowed each of us-not collectivism’s bureaucracy-with natural rights and their guardian angel responsibilities

 The previous majority party, the “hear no evil, see no evil” party stomped their feet and endlessly spoke evil of the generous job-creating KOCH brothers. That majority didn’t listen to the people or to God. We have paid an enormous price for their childish obstinacy.

 

2014: Hope has found its needed change – a sea change that should lift all boats.

 

Added 11-10-2014-Here is what Progressives think about you the voter:

VIDEO: “Stupid voters” would have killed Obamacare

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Thanksgiving Becomes You

November 2, 2014 2 Comments

Lincoln Thanksgiving

Lest history is revised as a means for present deceptions and determinations and before another angry atheist/liberal professor/fiction writer decides revisionist history is the best way to fool “We the People”, let us read the following proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln.

 A note of context: Eyewitness accounts of the Surrender at Appomattox tell us the events of the Lee-Grant surrender meeting took place at the McLean house on April 9, 1865. Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation, announced about a year and a half before that day, was made to declare a national and unifying day of Thanksgiving. (Each state had celebrated Thanksgiving on a different day.).

 The declaration also appears to be written to remind the people of this great nation that “Almighty God” had given the nation a great many blessings of which gratitude and not discontent and strife was in order. (emphasis mine)

 

 

 

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

 

By the President of the United States of America.

 

A Proclamation.

 

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence (sic), have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness (sic) of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility (sic) and Union.

 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

 

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

 

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

 

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

 

 

President Lincoln, a Deist, never forgot that a higher and providential power, a sovereign, theistic objective morality existed enthroned above-“Almighty God.” Lincoln acknowledged the right of God to deal with mankind on His terms.

 Now, fast forward.

 Counselors, psychologists, social workers ad infinitum-the whole earthly host of remedial pacifying gurus-have diagnosed and they have declared of mankind “I’m OK, You’re OK.” Guilt, shame and a conscience are not worthy of YOU. Instead, coming out PRIDE is what you are meant for. Ergo, anyone outside the perimeter of YOUR being must be denied as existing or, at the most, nondeserving of any attention, except as it emulates YOU (e.g., the homocentricity of homosexuality). Social justice must be a reflection of YOU-love yourself (and Mother Earth) as your neighbor should love you. Facebook and Tweet your goodness (and grandiosity) for the entire world to see.

 Thanksgiving, counting your blessings and God Himself, whether as Lincoln’s distant Deist or as the Infinite/Personal God I know are now considered ‘things’ of the past.

We are told that “We must “Lean Forward and be Progressive! History got it wrong. We are smarter than that! Thanksgiving had nothing to do with God. It was a time of community, of socialism, of communism, Comrade!”

   As we approach Thanksgiving Day-my favorite national holiday along with the Fourth of July-I am constantly reminded of the extreme blessings that have been poured into my life. Both hands cannot begin to hold the cornucopia of goodness from my Lord in the land of the living.

 Yet I am confident I will see the LORD’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13

 

Daily I am confronted by the unrest and discontent of almost everyone I meet. These people are union workers, my non-union coworkers (yes, they have a well-paying job with benefits and they complain anyway) and the abundantly blessed who are betwixt the commercialism they so publicly lambaste and so privately desire (e.g., the Occupy Wall St. tribe; see video below).

 Not many people, if you listen to the Kulture Kommentators of any media type, are grateful to be American. Instead we learn that our nation has become an ungrateful, needy, whiney people of constant griping: “meet my demands or I-will-riot-and-loot”. ”I will shut you out of my America.” “Pay homage to me and my cause or I will call you a racist, a homophobe, a rapist, a “bitter clinger”, greedy and un-American.” “I hate America therefore I am intellectually smarter than your honor roll student.” “COEXIST-at your own risk around me.”

 Our current leaders are unworthy focal points for any national horizon where thanksgiving may arise. Unlike Abraham Lincoln our leaders induce and enable ingratitude. Their own compromised and disfigured lives coupled with their “everything is political” reductionism generate universal discontent-a “bah-humbug” unrest with the current state of things. As logocentrists in their own minds, they provoke ingratitude in order to present themselves as “pursuit of happiness” purveyors, saviors of the rights of being self-supreme but always, always, as advertised recipients of their largesse as they administer the providence of almighty government.

 One last comment: Do atheists give thanks? Who do they thank? And why? For them, aren’t Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday a break from work to enjoy crass materialism, endless football and feasting? A day of hedonism? A Thus Spoke Zarathustra Day?

Is life to be understood now as one big riverboat casino with you as the captain of your own fate, the Proud Mary rollin’ down the river?

 For the atheist isn’t everything that happens and everything handed to them, whether as relative good or bad, just collectivized random events, Logical Atoms, knowledge based on sensory experience, existential relativity derivative of Darwinian evolutionary materialism? And, Thanksgiving Day, isn’t it just a form of epicurean escapism from the drudgery of a riverboat life? Perhaps atheists thank government for socialized medicine, another outcropping of materialistic atheism. Thanksgiving requires a leap of humility and that is a crevice too wide and distant from one’s self, one’s will to jump over.

 Life for me without giving thanks is a life lived avoiding God.

 I have learned that a grateful heart changes your countenance and your outlook…from facing inward to facing outward and upward. Thanksgiving becomes you.

 From the Book of Common Prayer said before The Great Thanksgiving:

 

“It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”

 

More sensory experience:

 Abraham Lincoln and the “Mother of Thanksgiving

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Vote American and Do Look Back

October 25, 2014 Leave a comment

There is no need to remind you that election season is once again upon us. The blitz of TV ads, mailers and phone messages infiltrates our homes with a “he said, she said” type of campaign red-lining. Some of the accusations will ring true while others, sadly, most of the others, will be deceitful, stretching or deleting compelling truth for the sake of pocketing your vote. By now you have noted that the Golden Rule has never been used to measure politician’s noses.

 Be so reminded that Tuesday, November 4th, 2014 is the day when you cast your vote or even earlier, if necessary and allowed.

 The issues at hand-you already know them. You embrace some or all of them with various degrees of importance: immigration, homeland security, foreign policy, the economy, rights of others-which I believe must include a very vocal upholding of due process (i.e., the Ferguson Missouri lynch mob mindset and the ubiquitous college campus kangaroo courts). Other interpretative rights include women’s rights, worker’s rights, and rights, more rights, and la-di-dah rights…

 You won’t hear, “Thank God for our country and for our freedoms” or “Responsibility and self-government are meant to be egalitarian with any ‘right’ afforded to us.” Our last two presidential elections told us in word and deed “God damn America!”

 And, you won’t hear: these aspiring words: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

 The vintage words of Abraham, Martin and John have been trampled under the rush of man’s “me-first” wrath. Their blood stained words are now swept away with dust. Forgotten, also, as are the words of Theodore Roosevelt. Political correctness now governs our lexicons, our lives and our American legacy, all to the detriment of our nation.

It is now intellectually vogue to be anti-American. The “we deserved 9/11” crowd invokes cocktail party ‘pat on the back’ self-righteousness conferred onto sycophants who hang on their every anti-American rant.

Their myopic critiques have become standard fare in college courses dealing with social sciences, the humanities, history and wherever a professor can raise a high brow over America.

 You know some of the ‘black flag’ crowd: : Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Coover, E.L. Doctorow, Joseph Heller, Elizabeth Hardwick, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Robert Altman. 

“When I see an American flag flying, it’s a joke.” Robert Altman, American Film Director, b.1925

 It is not anti-American to critique America. Free speech, freedom of assembly, etc. are American rights which give us elbow room to squabble and to even critique America’s rights.

 But, it is anti-American when that is all that is said about America is the negative.

 The fact that you can write and publish anti-American literature, create movies that promote anti-Capitalism in favor of ‘been-there-done-that failed-socialism’ and educate college kids with your perverse version of Americana/sacrosanct collectivism reveals the greatness of our country. Totalitarians demand control of your words, your thoughts and your loves. America gives you the freedom to even pronounce judgment on your own freedom.

 As a timely reminder of what America is about I offer the following from Theodore Roosevelt. His words spoke to the same issues we are now voting for or against on November 4th.

 Below is part of a letter written by Theodore Roosevelt-to Solomon Stanwood Menken, the head of the National Security League and the chairman of its Congress of Constructive Patriotism, on January 10, 1917. Roosevelt’s younger sister, Mrs. Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, read the letter to a national meeting of the organization on January 26, 1917.

 Americanism means many things. It means equality of rights and therefore equality of duty and of obligation. It means service to our common country. It means loyalty to one flag, to our flag, the flag of all of us. It means on the part of each of us respect for the rights of the rest of us. It means that all us guarantee the rights of each of us. It means free education, genuinely representative government, freedom of speech and thought, equality before the law for all men, genuine political and religious freedom, and the democratizing of industry so as to give at least a measurable quality of opportunity for all, and so as to place before us, as our ideal in all industries where this ideal is possible of attainment, the system of cooperative ownership and management, in order that the tool-users may, so far as possible, become the tool-owners. Everything is un-American that tends either to government by a plutocracy or government by a mob. To divide along the lines of section or cast or creed is un-American.  All privileges based on wealth, and all enmity to honest men because they are wealthy, are un-American-both of them equally so. Americanism means virtues of courage, honor, justice, sincerity, and hardihood-the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life. (emphasis mine)

 Preparedness must be of the soul no less than of the body. We must keep lofty ideals steadily before us, and must train ourselves in practical fashion so that we may realize these ideals. Throughout our whole land we must have fundamental common purposes, to be achieved through education, through intelligent organization and through the recognition of the great vital standards of life and living. We must make Americanism and Americanization mean the same thing to the native-born and to the foreign-born; to the man and to the woman; to the rich and to the poor; to the employer and to the wage-worker. If we believe in American standards, we shall insist that all privileges springing from them be extended to immigrants, and that they in return accept these standards with whole-hearted and entire loyalty. Either we must stand absolutely by our ideals and conceptions of duty, or else we are against them. There is no middle course, and if we attempt to find one, we insure for ourselves defeat and disaster. (emphasis mine)

 Next up from Theodore Roosevelt, an April 1894 article from The Forum Magazine titled “True Americanism.” Here are some excerpts:

 “the class of hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to steal the watchwords of righteousness and use them in the interests of evil-doing….

 We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism. Our nation is that one among all the nations of the earth which holds in its hands the fate of the coming years. We enjoy exceptional advantages, and are menaced by exceptional dangers; and all signs indicate that we shall either fail greatly or succeed greatly. I firmly believe that we shall succeed; but we must not foolishly blink the dangers by which we are threatened, for that is the way to fail. On the contrary, we must soberly set to work to find out all we can about the existence and extent of every evil, must acknowledge it to be such, and must then attack it with unyielding resolution. There are many such evils, and each must be fought after a fashion; yet there is one quality which we must bring to the solution of every problem,- that is, an intense and fervid Americanism. We shall never be successful over the dangers that confront us; we shall never achieve true greatness, nor reach the lofty ideal which the founders and preservers of our mighty Federal Republic have set before us, unless we are Americans in heart and soul, in spirit and purpose, keenly alive to the responsibility implied in the very name of American, and proud beyond measure of the glorious privilege of bearing it….

 Regarding immigration:”

 “It is urgently necessary to check and regulate our immigration, by much more drastic laws than now exist; and this should be done both to keep out laborers who tend to depress the labor market, and to keep out races which do not assimilate readily with our own, and unworthy individuals of all races – not only criminals, idiots, and paupers, but anarchists of the Most and O’Donovan Rossa type. From his own standpoint, it is beyond all question the wise thing for the immigrant to become thoroughly Americanized. Moreover, from our standpoint, we have a right to demand it. We freely extend the hand of welcome and of good-fellowship to every man, no matter what his creed or birthplace, who comes here honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen like the rest of us; but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so and shall not confuse the issues with which we are struggling by introducing among us Old-World quarrels and prejudices.

There are certain ideas which he must give up. For instance, he must learn that American life is incompatible with the existence of any form of anarchy, or of-any secret society having murder for its aim, whether at home or abroad; and he must learn that we exact full religious toleration and the complete separation of Church and State. Moreover, he must not bring in his Old-World religious race and national antipathies, but must merge them into love for our common country, and must take pride in the things which we can all take pride in. He must revere only our flag; not only must it come first, but no other flag should even come second. He must learn to celebrate Washington’s birthday rather than that of the Queen or Kaiser, and the Fourth of July instead of St. Patrick’s Day. Our political and social questions must be settled on their own merits, and not complicated by quarrels between England and Ireland, or France and Germany, with which we have nothing to do: it is an outrage to fight an American political campaign with reference to questions of European politics. Above all, the immigrant must learn to talk and think and be United States. The immigrant of to-day can learn much from the experience of the immigrants of the past, who came to America prior to the Revolutionary War. We were then already, what we are now, a people of mixed blood.” (emphasis mine)

 …

“Above all we must stand shoulder to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only demanding that they be in very truth Americans, and that we all work together, heart, hand, and head, for the honor and the greatness of our common country.”

 Theodore Roosevelt quotes;

 “Let us pay with our bodies for our souls’ desire. Let us, without one hour’s unnecessary delay, put the American flag at the battle-front in this great war for Democracy and civilization, and for the reign of justice and fair-dealing among the nations of mankind.”

***

“If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let’s remember, as True Americans, to vote with a clear regard for others and for our country, giving no allegiance to the false flags wafting for our attention.

 

A Lefty Explains What the Election Is All About

 Added 1-28-2014: 

Chicago Activists Unchained, Destroy Black Leadership

 

Resource:

 http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/23771

 

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It’s Not Easy Being Green Without CO2

October 24, 2014 Leave a comment

 

Kermit sang it:

 

It’s not that easy being green

Having to spend each day the color of the leaves

…

But green’s the color of Spring

And green can be cool and friendly-like

And green can be big like an ocean, or important

Like a mountain, or tall like a tree…

 

“It’s not that easy being green” -especially without CO2.

 

“Nothing would be green around the world without CO2,” Rep Sensenbrenner, “CO2 is not a pollutant.”

 The two videos presented below are presentations given at the pre-2012 presidential election 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). The conference theme: “Real Science, Real Choices.”

 In the first video, Chris Horner (he is introduced in the video), lets it be known that “doing-the-right-thing” scarcity fear mongering is the only man-made element in the global warming issue. Also, that the EPA’s Lisa Jackson’s job destruction to create clean-up jobs – breaking things to fix things- is not all that it is cracked up to be. The net gain is equal to your brain on carbon monoxide.

 

 I truly appreciate U.S. Rep., WI 5th Congressional District, Jim Sensenbrenner’s candor and thorough knowledge of the politically discharged climate change propaganda that is polluting the airwaves of truth.

 

 If you are still a devotee of the global warming sect after listening to these videos then I have a catalytic converter to sell you. It is adjustable to fit your nose and comes with duct tape for your mouth to prevent ad hominem leakage-you know, cap and trade kinda stuff.

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Income Inequality Anonymous

October 18, 2014 1 Comment

 “Hello, my name is Sally. I am addicted to income inequality.”

 Group: “Hello Sally.”

 Group Leader: “We’ve asked Sally here tonight to please tell us her story, how she deals with income inequality addiction.”

 “Thank you for the invite Charis and Irene!”

 “Well, my income inequality addiction began at a very early age. At five years of age I saw kids in my neighborhood receiving an allowance from their parents.

 These friends of mine were able to buy gum, baseball cards, dolls, G rated Archie comic books, you name it. They bought it with their 25 cents or with their 50 cents or with their dollar bill right in front of me. I felt deprived, anxious and angry.”

 Group Leader: “You must have felt a tremendous urge to make demands of your parents.”

 “Yes I did. Income inequality anger began to grow deep inside me. I began to covet my friend’s hoard of pennies. “It’s not fair!” I told my parents.

 Well, my parents, good folk that they were, gave me an allowance but only after I had washed the supper dishes, made my bed daily, memorized my Scripture verse for Sunday and completed other value-received chores.

 Still, you must know, my allowance of 25 cents wasn’t enough. I couldn’t buy what my friends could buy. They had bags of marbles. I had a handful. “It’s not fair,” I told my parents again.

 So, I was given the option of washing the family car for two dollars once a week. Cutting the grass was a regular chore so no money was gained from yard work. I had to really think hard as to how to compete for that societal equality that would ultimately, I thought, make me bubble-gum ice cream happy.”

 Group Leader: “What did you do?”

 “Well, nothing for a while. I stewed and, sometimes, I stole candy and small items from the “Five and Dime” stores.” I wanted my fair share.

 As I grew older I did receive COLA allowances but I also received W-O-R-K obligations to match the COLA allowances.

 So, you must know, I began working at age 12. The pastor of our little church must have seen the march for equality goose stepping its way though my nervous system as I sat squirming in the pew every Sunday. One day he recommended me for a job at a local photo shop. The store owner, upon the pastor’s recommendation, hired me for PT work. Every week after that day I received a paycheck.

 With that piece of the monetized industry I began to spend, to save and to tithe. I stopped saying “It’s not fair!” on a regular basis. “Minimum wages”, unheard of in my youth, were what I got for what I agreed to do. I did not complain. In fact, I beamed.

 Still, you must know, that after two years of behind the counter film canister envelope prep and returning unexposed or badly lit pictures to irate customers I was promoted to selling cameras. Nikons, Canons, Hasselblads-the whole gamut of photo gadgetry. I was paid more and beginning to forget about childhood’s income inequality fixation until someone else was hired.

 The addition of the another staff member made me wonder if I was paid more or less than the new hired help. I became anxious, secretly hoping to exercise my detective skills to determine income inequality. My addiction was flaring up once again.

 Group Leader: “Did you ever find out about the other worker’s pay?’

 “No, I didn’t. Circumstances changed: the high school bus started arriving every week day morning. What I hadn’t thought about till then was that the owner of the photo shop had anticipated my leaving for high school and needed to hire a replacement. I kept my anxiety in tact anyway. I wasn’t sure I could trust people to be fair. Nobody else knew how important I was.

 Still, you must know, I was at financial odds with my generation. People I knew were going to Woodstock or to San Francisco or to Paris. The unlucky went to Vietnam-no envy was elicited from me on that matter.

 And, you must know, that in high school, I wasn’t equal with a good friend who got a car from his parents. It was a car with an eight-track player! “It’s not fair,” I revved up again.

 Well, my dad-he worked two jobs-let me use the family car. I became somewhat mollified. I could then at least listen to WLS with Larry Lujack, “Little Tommy” and “Animal Stories” on the punch dial radio. Not only that, the Top Forty Countdown aired between a dozen or so commercials. I sat in the family car or drove the car just for the existential experience of radio “ON” and windows open. Music helped soothe the savage inequality beast.

 High school was a challenge for me. I was too busy with band, orchestra, track, tennis, honors math, boyfriends, etc. to worry out loud about income inequality. But, I did want the same clothes, the same shoes, the same pink troll pen tops-you know, the essentials.

 Group Leader: “How did you manage without money during high school?”

 “It wasn’t easy. My dad worked two jobs and my mom worked a night shift. They were both tapped out. I babysat my younger siblings gratis, biting my nails and watching “Father Knows Best.” I had to wait till summer to abate my income inequality anxiety.

 Every summer between my high school years I worked my butt off. Each job was different and demanding. I gained knowledge quicker than I gained income, but again, I would leave my envy intact as a backup. There was always something I felt that was missing, something that I thought I needed to have even when I couldn’t picture it in my mind or on the TV.

 Group Leader: “What happened after high school?”

 “My father and mother gave me $750.00 and sent me off to Moody Bible Institute, a tuition-free school. That was all the money I ever received for my college education. I worked PT at Garrett’s Popcorn shop and did janitorial work for Moody to cover room and board.

 After Moody I began working in the only jobs that I could find-industrial jobs. It had become clear to me that childhood had run its course and that now I must provide for myself. This was scary anxiety driving stuff. Envy was still waiting in the wings hoping that I would rejoin her party.

While I worked different shifts I began studying correspondence courses from Moody-New Testament Koine Greek, New Testament Survey and other courses.

 Later, working at various day jobs I made myself learn what I needed to increase my income. So, at night and the weekends I went to a community college.

 There, I studied sundry subjects: computer programming, trigonometry, physics, macro and micro economics, accounting, business, and welding! I could stick weld, MIG weld, TIG weld, flame weld, use a blow torch, calculate rates of acceleration, balance your books and code Programmable Logic Controllers. This unique skill set paid more, much more. I found that if I made myself indispensable to my employer I earned more and was kept on staff when there were layoffs. And there were layoffs.

 Group Leader: “It sounds like you began making personal decisions that turned your life around.”

 “Yes, I forced myself to grow. I am inquisitive by nature so most learning comes naturally. Some learning comes the hard way-through stupid stuff and not paying attention to detail.

 At one point after I had worked as electrical panel builder I taught myself how to use CAD software. After that I began doing design work. I then became a designer of electrical automation schematics. I enjoyed the creative aspect of engineering. Income inequality became less of an issue because I felt I was in the game. Then I had a family.

 Little materialists popped onto the scene and like the rest of us they were contentment challenged.

 Being a Tiger That-Eats-Ones’-Self Parent that I am I put more pressure on myself when I decided to become a partner in a newly formed corporation.

 To make a long story short, three of us, two guys and me as Tiger Parent, started a manufacturing business. Each of us brought a different set of skills accrued over time. We felt we could make it happen and we did. The company became a worldwide multimillion dollar company. It also became a 24/7 job in my role a VP of Engineering. So, after fifteen years and thousands of miles of air travel I sold my shares and quit. A little late, but family needed to come first.

As a business owner I certainly had plenty of income as well as other perks. Income inequality addiction was no longer a driving force of my life. In fact a quest for learning had replaced it.

 My life’s paradigm shift occurred somewhere along the path of pages and paychecks.

 And, as a parent I wanted to make sure my kids knew God and they understood how the world works from God’s perspective.

 Group Leader: “”Can you tell us how you came to that perspective?”

 “Sure. As I mentioned I studied Scripture. Three verses stand out: “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added.” and “Godliness with contentment” and w/o The Real Housewives of Orange County” “is great gain.” Also, “To whom much is given, much is required.”

 My addiction to income inequality began to erode when I chose to cling to those things which are eternal above me, in me and in my children. Then, I was able to love others and rejoice when they gained. I did not need to be equal. I needed to be thankful.

I had finally realized that income inequality addiction is a character flaw. I had used my envy like a baseball bat. I beat the air hoping to smash open the paper mache piñata that held the material goodies I felt should rain down on me.

“I dropped the bat and put away childish things. Thanks for having me here tonight.”

Filed under Culture, Economics, Education Tagged with , , ,

Mission Probable: Self-made Victims

October 15, 2014 Leave a comment

 “Should you decide to accept this mission to self-victimize the IMF (Inane Meme Force) will disavow any knowledge of your subsequent misbehavior if caught in the act.”

 Consider the following IMF missions of self-made victimization:

 Social media participants as victims: every moment of one’s-no depth of field life must become selfie-important.

 We may knowingly expose ourselves à la NY Rep. Anthony Weiner or as Jennifer I’ve-got-a-million-of-them Lawrence and exclaim “others have been messing with my ‘stuff.’

 After the damage is done to reputations it necessarily follows, in this day of dispositive scapegoating, that we then must present ourselves as victims even when we are victims of our own devices. Who would ever look at Jennifer Lawrence’s collection of nude pictures? I mean, the world is so….out there.

 Victims of circumstance or of circus stance on the high wire of notoriety?

 Illegal immigrants as victims: here we see bus loads of victims moving in. Yet, we must remember that these victims are the renewable energy source for Progressive votes. And this, despite the fact that any lack of border control, any lax enforcement by the Obama administration, any amnesty that adds more illegal immigrants to our country equals with other detriments more CO2, more crime, more narcotics, more narco-terrorists, more infectious disease, more gang members, more homeland terrorism and a huge drain on our national resources. But damn it, “victims” they must be for our purposes. We are America, the land of the free from taxation for half the nation and the home of the Black Panther monitored ballot box.

 Environment as victim and victimizer: Well, by now you should have come to your senses and have realized that global warming crisis is man-made. It has been manufactured by the likes of Al Gore and climate scientologists with dubious reports. These ‘scientologists’ or data shufflers dare not cross the red line of truth and lose their collegial credit card status points, their weather stations for life.

 Not only is the environment a victim but just like a Russian nesting doll you, too, can become a victim-of the environment. And, universal victim hood makes each of us eligible to be “insured” under the UN One World global warming whole life redistribution insurance plan. Benefits accrue to those who want to become wealthy off of other’s fears.

 Voter as victim: From the well-known Legal Insurrection blog, a post of Oct. 10th, 2014: “Judge tosses out Texas voter ID as U.S. Supreme Court blocks Wisconsin voter ID The ruling by the U.S. District court finds that such law…creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans.”

 This ruling by both courts is slap in the face for blacks and Hispanics. It essentially claims that blacks and Hispanics and too stupid, too inept to get an ID and to provide such ID at a polling place. To put it another way, there are millions of people who can secure a proper ID and present it at the time of voting. I am sure that Dr. Ben Carson, a self-made African-American neurosurgeon, can provide a proper ID. He would also help you figure out what to do.

Ask yourself: How do blacks and Hispanics acquire cable TV when they do not have ID?

 Note: The Texas ruling was recently reversed for the Texas Nov. elections but the matter is still in the courts

 Politically biased, blindfold taken off high courts have affirmed blacks and Hispanics as victims-a protected class of victims-so as to garner the un-ID’d ‘victim’s’ weight in votes-for the Progressive side of the scale, of course. Preferential treatment by the courts makes the rest of us truly victims of injustice. Preferential treatment by Progressive bureaucratic Lois Lerner types within our current heavily politicized government negates Democracy in favor of totalitarianism. The Tea Party non-profit groups became true victims of injustice with the administration’s silent approbation.

 The poor as victims: Here is what we are told by the supercilious politicians and Keynesian economists (NYT’s Paul Krugam, Thomas Piketty, et al) : “There are poor people because there are rich people. The global wealth pie is a one fixed-size feeds all pie.  The rich have the larger share. Redistribution is the only answer-it is socially just.”

 It doesn’t matter to the above mentioned wisdom impoverished that the rich have made personal choices that create wealth or that the poor have most often made personal choices which have made them poor and keep them poor. And, somehow, the poor find a way (trading food stamps for cash or bit coins online, for instance) to buy lottery tickets, to gamble in Vegas and to buy enormous HDTVs so they can watch “The Real Housewives of Orange County!”

Our government enables the self-victimization of the poor. Obama and slave master Progressives have created cradle to grave dependency on government.  The “Julia” website is a first hand account about a lifeless victim of gargantuan government gone wild.

 Fiscal and monetary policies-The New Deal, The Great Society, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), TARP, the FED’s tinkering to create artificially low interest rates, ETC.- direct money away from savings and investment, capital that would ultimately create jobs and individual wealth. 

Each one of these government ‘fixits’ creates bubbles that ultimately burst.  There should be a History Channel just for this.  First came the dot com bubble and then the housing bubble. And, most home buyers are now government subsidized. Uh-oh!

Printing money creates ever more debt and puffs up the economy with lighter than air dollars. 

Our government is creating an even greater balloon (Let’s call it the “Keynesian Economic Balloon”) that will soon go bust “Big Time”, as Peter Gabriel sang. Then your dollars will be almost worthless.  The IMF endorses such politically ‘safe’ and economically disastrous inane activity. Just don’t get caught holding USD.

That 47 MILLION people are on food stamps tells me that government enables poverty in our nation.  And there are even ‘victims’ who complain that 99 weeks of unemployment benefits isn’t enough! Use your head and your ID and vote for people with integrity, character and business sense, avoiding lethargic professorial panty waists unless, of course, you should choose the mission of self-made victimization.

 Addicts as victims: Consider this recent “addiction help” advertisement heard on the radio: “Addiction is a disease, not a character flaw.”

 Whoa! Calling an addiction a disease takes the onus off of the addicted, removing them from the light of day and placing them under the dark cloud of victim hood where the sun doesn’t shine on your addled behavior.

 And, it most certainly as advertised, places the addicted under the expensive ‘guidance’ of medical professionals who will’ ‘altruistically’ be your savior. “Victim status is where you belong, why try to fight it. Give us the money that you are now giving to pay for your addiction. Character flaws mean personal responsibility and they may not result in insurance payments to our treatment facility.”

 Homosexuals as victims: Where to begin? When acting out homosexual desires you are told that you are not responsible for your behavior. Rather, what you are dealing with is a quirk, a queerness that exists in the universe. Homosexuals do not even try to overcome your desires and use self control. You will become sexual minority stressed. God knows that you have enough to worry about when you do unnatural things to your self and to others. AIDS is our problem, not yours. You are sexual minority stressed transmitters and no more.

The Politically Correct as victims: it is not easy being totalitarian all the time but the Politically Correct, the language police, must enforce ‘safe’ societal boundaries or bubbles where nothing offensive to their delicate yet ‘diverse’ palettes enters the void. Truly they are victims of their own demands.

 One more IMF mission out of dozens of putative instances:

 Civil Rights victims: The omniscient and all powerful Oz, Eric Holder, and his Race Swami-Tsunami spiritual advisor the ‘reverend’ Al Sharpton have made sure by their appearances that the citizens of Ferguson, MO-the black citizens-received their fair share of victim status. They both spread their special mixture of racial rat poison and silent approbation, disguised as legal fertilizer, on the community lawns of Ferguson, Mo.

 Weeds of lawlessness now spring up daily in Ferguson, Mo. The encroaching and choking weeds are growing in place of flourishing businesses and a thriving community.

 

“Should you decide to accept this mission of self-aggrandizing self-victimization the IMF (Inane Meme Force) will disavow any knowledge of your subsequent misbehavior (unless, of course, it benefits Progressive’s talking points).”

 

In this age of self made victims it is impossible to balance the empathy budget. The stockpile of care is all out of love. Your self-immolation will have to go down in flames without me. In any case your actions will be disavowed by me.

 ~~~~

 There are people in this world who are hurting. And, “Shame on you” is not a strong enough indictment for those who claim victim status when they do “stupid stuff.”

 Pastor Saeed Abedini, Irani, returned to Iran to help Iranian children. He was arrested and placed in prison. He has been in an Irani prison over two years. He is in prison for being a Christian, a Christian seeking to help orphaned Irani children. Pastor Abedini doesn’t play the part of victim. The God of Israel watches over him.

Filed under Culture Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Binary That Binds?

October 11, 2014 Leave a comment

I kid you not… 

‘Gender inclusive ‘school district says drop ‘boys and girls,’call kids’purple penguins’

 In its quest for “welcomeness” the Lincoln, Nebraska school system, under the guidance of individuals with superior ‘intellect’ and with visions of sugar plum equality fairies dancing in their heads have told their teaching staff to not use the appellation “Boy” or “Girl “ when referring to boys and girls. Instead “purple penguin” is to be considered an appropriate designation for your son or daughter. They kid you not.

 This humanistic-nihilistic-equality worshiping social engineering didn’t start here, in Lincoln Nebraska. It began years ago in the hearts and minds of those who abandoned natural law and the God who structured it.

 These wizards conjured philosophies, via God-abhorring human-craft, that were to magically create a more perfect world via perfected institutions, institutions that would lift mankind (Now, penguin-kind) from its savagery to its wunderkind apotheosis.

 Consider the words from the 1700s of French Enlightenment thinker Marie Jean Antoine Nicholas Caritat, marquis de Cordocet written in his “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.” Per Condorcet, “a real equality” demands that “even the natural differences between men will be mitigated by social policy.”

 The Condorcet webpage reminds us that what humanists seek is nothing short of god-like omniscience and sovereignty:

 “Our hopes for the future condition of the human race can be subsumed under three important heads:

The abolition of inequality between nations,

The progress of equality within each nation,

The true perfection of mankind.”

 

I do not think for a minute that what Condorcet wrote long ago implied that our identities should be wiped clean and that “purple penguin” be written on our name tag. But, once the pathogen of humanism is left to mutate within isolated ivory tower minds we end up with the dementia found in Lincoln, Nebraska.

 The Lincoln, Nebraska school system has taken humanist thinking and extrapolated it to the extreme. The Lincoln, Nebraska school system is playing god with the lives of our little ones and they are doing so to facilitate “gender inclusiveness”-titillating words that send chills down the legs of people with frozen brains.

 Of course, the gods of political correctness (the coercive inclusive-for-few-ejective-of-all-others LGBT mob) must be satisfied. Anything and everything that is natural-the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God-including marriage and, now, your child’s human identity is to be sacrificed by Hegelian Progressives on the altar of identity politics. Child sacrifice has returned. Yin and yang are bad. Synthesis and Kumbaya are good little penguins.

 From the ‘gender inclusive’ Lincoln, Nebraska school system’s dehumanization of children we are to understand that binary is bad: 0 and 1, 1 and 0 are out.

 Binary gender does not reflect, we are told by effete ‘educators,’ the true nature of an all important aspect of education: ‘gender fluidity.’

 ‘Gender fluidity,’ is now to be considered a necessary Common Core-ish foundation for a good public education. And, like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, these school administrators have no use for the U.S. Constitution. It is too natural law abiding, too structured, too not with it!

 But wait! Even more important than the dismantling of young minds and rebuilding them with the sands of ‘gender fluidity’ is that life will become ever more ‘perfect’ for that loveable LGBT crowd.

 The imposition of “Gender Identity Fluidity’ teaching, a narcissistic precondition for a teeny tiny minority, is now going to open the flood gates of raw sewage that will pour right into our child’s classroom.

 Calling children “purple penguins” negates the binary and we are left with nil. Welcome to Disneyland humanism and hell on earth.

 

 

 Wisdom is known by her children, a tree by its fruit.

 

 

BTW: here is the Lincoln, Nebraska handout in PDF format:

 

12 easy steps on the way to gender inclusiveness: Gender-inclusive-training-handouts

 

Read it and weep.

 

Extrapolation Endnote:  The Lincoln, Nebraska school system now must require the purple penguins to call the teacher Buttercream Buffoon instead of Mr./Mrs./Ms Johnson!!

Seen-this-before Endnote:  If someone points their finger into a shape of a pistol then the purple penguin will be called “Boy.”

Filed under Education, gender, LGBT Tagged with , , , , , , ,

One Nation Under Children

October 5, 2014 Leave a comment

No, this post isn’t about the current self-aggrandizing, blame shifting, egotistic, inept and jejune regime. But, this post just might lend some insight into the domino effect of immaturity that toppled its way into the White House in 2008. In any case, the topic affects us all…

 In his recent essay “The Kindergarchy: Every Child a Dauphin” Joseph Epstein, observes our current parenting culture through his 70 plus years of perspective as a son, later as parent and also as a teacher at Northwestern University:

  In America we are currently living in a Kindergarchy, under rule by children…For the past thirty years at least, we have been lavishing vast expense and anxiety on our children in ways that are unprecedented in American and perhaps in perhaps any other national life. Such has been the weight of all this concern about children that it has exercised a subtle but pervasive tyranny of its own. This is what I call Kindergarchy: dreary, boring, sadly misguided Kindergarchy.

With its full-court-press attention on children, the Kinderarchy is a radical departure from the ways parents and children viewed on another in earlier days….

 Parents didn’t generally didn’t feel under any obligation to put heavy pressure on their children. Nor, except in odd neurotic cases, did they feel any need to micromanage their lives. My father once told me that he felt his responsibilities extended to caring for the physical well-being of my brother and me, paying for our education, teaching right from wrong, and giving us some general idea about how a man ought to live, but that was pretty much it. Most fathers during this time, my guess is, must have felt the same.”

…

 One of the direct results of the 1960s was that the culture put a new premium on youthfulness; adulthood, as it had hitherto been perceived, was on the way out, beginning with clothes and ending with personal conduct. Everyone, even people with children and other adult responsibilities, wanted to continue to think of himself as still young, often well into his forties and fifties. One of the consequences of this was that one shied away from the old parental role of authority figure, dealing out rewards and punishments and passing on knowledge, somewhat distant, carefully rationing out intimacy, establishing one’s solidarity and strength. Suddenly parents wanted their children to think of themselves as, if not exactly contemporaries, then as friends, pals, fun people.”  (emphasis mine)

…

 “On visits to homes of small children, one finds their toys strewn everywhere, their drawings on the refrigerator, television sets turned to their shows. Parents in this context seem less than secondary, little more than indentured servants. Under Kindergarchy, all arrangements are centered on children: their schooling, their lessons, their predilections, their care and feeding and general high maintenance-children are the name of the game.

 No other generation of kids have been so curried and cultivated, so pampered and primed, though primed for what is a bit unclear.

 

Epstein goes on to note, “The craze of attentiveness hits its most passionate note with schooling, and schooling starts now younger and younger.”… (emphasis mine)

 He also mentions the obsession of child naming and the hesitation or neglect, as I see it, of punishment for bad behavior. Spare the rod and you produce morally meandering Millennials.

 As I have observed and Epstein cites examples in his essay, our current culture is child-centric. It is Disneyland ad infinitum. The altar of childhood is now venerated with sappy-saccharine-syrupy feelings oriented animated movies. And the child-centric unicorn circling dance does not stop with the kids. The parents are on the same carousel standing next to their child.

 The parent’s toys are adult-‘proof’ but they still toys. The movies are just as inane as the children’s movies. They lack maturity and provide no food for thought, no intelligent repast. The “cloud,” the miasma where adult minds linger, offers nothing that is clearly discernable other than adults being totally distracted. Little eyes and ears take notice and also abstract away reality.

 As mentioned above, Epstein brings up child punishment, spanking and time outs. He notes that today’s parents tend to balk at child discipline wanting rather to make each experience a “learning experience.”

 To dote or not to dote, that becomes the question.  As a parent of four children (three are adults), I view today’s parenting as passing through our morally relativistic culture sieve:  the parent would rather not deal with the issue of bad behavior. The parent does not want to bother delineating good and bad behavior; he or she does not want to set boundaries. Instead, they would rather smooth things over, synthesize. They do so in order, I guess, to keep from being judgmental and to stay in the child’s good graces. And, then there is the matter of feelings.

 The child’s ‘delicate’ feelings, feelings most likely viewed through a parent’s projected sentimentality, those feelings would never be questioned by such a partisan parent.  

There are some who would have us believe that the child is always right; a child’s feelings, whether or not his or her motives are, are always pure, clean and off-limits. The questions a parent should ask him or herself are “Are the child’s emotions matching reality?” and “Does my child know what is truly essential, the gravitas of his or her actions and reactions?

“So often in my literature classes students told me what they felt about a novel, or a particular character in a novel. I tried, ever so gently, to tell them that no one cared what they felt; the trick was to discover not one’s feelings but what the author had put into the book, its moral weight and its resultant power….I knew where they came by their sense of their own deep significance and that this sense was utterly false to any conceivable reality. Despite what parents had been telling them from the very outset of their lives, they were not significant. Significance has to be earned, and it is earned only through achievement. Besides, one of the first things that people who really are significant seem to know is that, in the grander scheme, they are themselves really quite insignificant.

Growing up with only minimal attention sharpened this sense of one’s insignificance…”

 The consequences of so many years of endlessly attentive childrearing in young people can also be witnessed in many among them who act as if certain that they are deserving of the interest of the rest of us; they come off as very knowing. Lots of conversations turns out to be chiefly about themselves, and much of it feels as if it formulated to impress some dean of admissions with how very extraordinary they are..” (emphasis mine)

 The essay is found in Joseph Epstein’s collection of essays titled “A Literary Education and Other Essays.”

 There is a lot to be gleaned from Epstein’s observations, much of which is too obvious to spell out here. But, I will spell M-i-l-l-e-n-n-i-a-l-s.

 

Wisdom is known by her offspring, a tree by its fruit.

Filed under child-rearing Tagged with , , ,

Double-Closeted And Doubled Down?

September 28, 2014 Leave a comment

Study: Same-sex abuse rate high

Chicago Tribune, Sunday, September 21, 2014 article by Ted Gregory

From the page seven article:

“Same-sex couples may experience more domestic violence than opposite-sex couples, a Northwestern Medicine review of research suggests.

Richard Carroll, an associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and Feinberg Ph.D. student Colleen Stiles-Shields made their conclusion after reviewing a handful of studies, including the 2011 National Violence Against Women Survey of about 16,000 people.

That survey found domestic violence rates among same-sex couples upward of twice as high as those of opposite-sex couples, Carroll said Thursday….as least as high and in many cases higher than for opposite-sex couples, …

“Their explanation for the higher rates, Carroll said, is that same sex couples “are dealing with the additional stress of being a sexual minority.”

That added stress also leads to lower rates of reporting domestic violence among same-sex couples, Carroll said.”(emphasis mine)

Note: I am unable to link to the Tribune article since I am not a member of the Chicago Tribune online circulation. I do have the newsprint in front of me. The article in its original form can be found at Northwestern University website:

Domestic Violence Likely More Frequent for Same-Sex Couples

Extra stress in same-sex couples may raise risk of domestic abuse

September 18, 2014

“Evidence suggests that the minority stress model may explain these high prevalence rates,” said senior author Richard Carroll, associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a psychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Domestic violence is exacerbated because same-sex couples are dealing with the additional stress of being a sexual minority. This leads to reluctance to address domestic violence issues.” (emphasis mine)(reluctance =Double Closeted in their thinking)

The review was published Sept. 4 in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. The first author is Colleen Stiles-Shields, a student in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at Feinberg.

Domestic violence — sometimes called intimate partner violence — is physical, sexual or psychological harm occurring between current or former intimate partners. Research concerning the issue began in the 1970s in response to the women’s movement, but traditionally studies focused on women abused by men in opposite-sex relationships.

“There has been a lot of research on domestic violence but it hasn’t looked as carefully at the subgroup of same-sex couples,” Carroll said. “Another obstacle is getting the appropriate samples because of the stigma that has been attached to sexual orientation. In the past, individuals were reluctant to talk about it.”

Of the research that has examined same-sex domestic violence, most has concentrated on lesbians rather than gay men and bisexuals.”

 

Minority stress model?!? Wow! And this from a psychiatrist, from a ‘professional?!’

NFL. No doubt you have witnessed the recent uproar over the Ray Rice video. Domestic abuse, caught on tape, is front and center. Should Ray Rice be given the option of choosing the NFL “stress model” as his psychological reasoning for acting violently towards his mate?

Remember the Penn State child-sex abuse scandal and Jerry Sandusky? Should the pressures of creating football success, football success which must translate into school donations coupled with a historical background of abuse be placed under a similar but somewhat different model: the unctuous demand for success dollars that creates stress and leads to abuse under situations conducive to abuse? With Sandusky there was more to the story than just the stress surrounding his job performance but I would certainly figure that being his team’s defensive coordinator was a stressor. Does the football “stress model” also apply to him?

Domestic abuse in any form is a deplorable act, needing immediate attention. And, there is no doubt that NFL players placing themselves under a contract and the spotlights, have put themselves under tremendous pressure to perform. Should a player’s stress factor be used to explain violent behavior and for some, excuse the behavior as understandable?

Of course the “minority stress model” extends well beyond same sex-sex couples. It would also apply to the sexual minority groups of polygamists, pedophiles and sexual predators the likes of John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.  Every minority would fall under the umbrella diagnosis regardless of the violence inflicted on their victims.  One has to wonder when the “minority stress model” diagnosis will be used in court as a defense.

Minority stress model?!?

Now to my point: Is a “stress model” where the domestic abuse discussion should end? Are there not moral implications which are at work here? And, do people put themselves in positions and remain in positions where stress is a given? Are people culpable for their actions?

Regarding the above research by Carroll and the PhD student, where is the diagnostic factor that each person, regardless of stress, is responsible for their own actions, whether in a heterosexual marriage or in a same-sex marriage?

Certainly Carroll and Stiles-Shields, psychological diagnosticians, do not make a moral assessment as to why same-sex couples would encounter “Minority-stress.” Instead, they basically enable same-sex couples via a politically correct way to accept themselves-a “Get Out of Shame Free” card, if you will: “You are a sexual minority and therefore you encounter more stress than couples in heterosexual marriages would. You are victims of your status, nothing more. It is the world’s responsibility to make life better for you, a same-sex couple. “You are not ultimately responsible for your violent reactions under stress. You are only reacting out of minority stress.”

Is the opposite scenario true? Would there be less stress on same-sex couples if only the rest of the world accepted their “minority” behavior? And, what makes them a minority? It is their sexual and emotional codependency on a person of the same sex.

Isn’t it the implication of Carroll and Stiles-Shields that there would there be less stress and domestic violence in same-sex marriages if everyone around them jumped up and down and said “Yes, gay is good for everyone? ”Carroll specifically used the words “Minority stress model”- a politically correct way of sifting victims out of thin air.

Becoming a victim is now vogue, a cause célèbre. Victimization will almost ensure that people will take notice of and senimentalize your ‘dilemma’, thereby feeding any narcissitic tendencies.

Yet, what is written onto everyone’s heart is truth, not unjust and obtuse psychological mumbo-jumbo.

From an absolute moral perspective a Christian knows that a person’s ‘heart’, his or her psyche, is not a tabula rasa but rather a tablet inscribed with a moral knowledge-a BIOS operating system embedded by God.

“For the anger of God is unveiled from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice performed by people who use injustice to suppress the truth. What can be known about God, you see, is plain to them, since God has made it plain to them. There are, of course, things about God which you can’t see: namely his eternal power and deity. But, ever since the world was created, they have been known and seen in the things that he has made. As a result, they have no excuse: they knew God, but didn’t honor him as God or thank him. Instead, they learned to think in useless ways, and their unwise hearts grew dark. They declared themselves to be wise, but in fact they became foolish. They swapped the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of the image of mortal humans-and birds, animals and reptiles.

So God gave them up to uncleanness in the desires of their hearts, with the result that they dishonored their bodies among themselves. They swapped God’s truth for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever, Amen.

So God gave them up to shameful desire. Even women, you see, swapped natural sexual practice for unnatural; and the men, too, abandoned natural sexual relations with women, and were inflamed with their lust for one another. Men performed shameless acts with men, and received in themselves the appropriate repayment for their mistaken ways.

Moreover, just as they did not see fit to hold on to knowledge of God, God gave them up to an unfit mind, so that they would behave inappropriately. They were filled with all kinds of injustice, wickedness, greed, and evil; they were full of envy, murder, enmity, deceit, and cunning. They became gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, self-important, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, unwise, unfaithful in marriage, unfeeling, uncaring. They know that God has rightly decreed that people who do things like that deserve death. But not only do they do them; they gave their approval to people who practice them. (emphasis mine)

The Apostle Paul’s words in his letter to the Roman church is a true psychological diagnosis of the human psyche. With God there is no politically correct word spinning or blame shifting, no pandering of victimization. Each of us is responsible for our own actions whether we are in a majority, minority or in a minority within a minority. God doesn’t offer secular humanism. He offers a safe harbor and redemption.

The good news is that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” so that mankind could courageously confront and acknowledge each our own sinfulness, repent and find our God-renewed right minds.

Paul’s letter to the Roman church goes on to tell you the good news worked out in our lives. I suggest that you buy a copy of New Testament scholar N.T. Wright’s translation of the New Testament: “The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation” Read about the good news and the healing process for yourself. It works when applied!

One final observation: the “Minority stress model” sounds analogous to the global warming models, models that are designed to be overly sensitive to CO2 in order to make certain political and economic justifications… and to make everyone a victim.

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