I Spy Meaning

January 22, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“As you get older, ideas go and come. Questions, answers, loss of the answer again and more questions, and this is what really interests me. Yes, the cinema and the people in my life and my family are most important, but ultimately as you get older, there’s got to be more. Much, much more.

The very nature of secularism right now is really fascinating to me, but at the same time do you wipe away what could be more enriching in your life, which is an appreciation or some sort of search for that which is spiritual and transcends? That’s one of the reasons why I made the George Harrison documentary. Silence is just something that I’m drawn to in that way. It’s been an obsession, it has to be done… it’s a strong, wonderful true story, a thriller in a way, but it deals with those questions.” silence-poster-700x1092

–Martin Scorsese

~~~~

The above recent quote of director Martin Scorsese regarding his passion project the film Silence underscores the human need for meaning. Pre-Enlightenment, that meaning had been intuited in a common culture taking in the aesthetic. Contemplation of nature and high culture pointed us away from ourselves and our situation to that which transcends and to the sacred. Fine art, classical music, drama, architecture and classical literature prodded our imagination, our consciousness. Value and virtue could be envisioned and then acted out and gained. Meaning so derived offered a way to rise above our daily existence and provided hope. But today, in the days of the Post-Enlightenment’s reductionism of everything to science-truth and of deconstructionism’s relentless push to zero out meaning and the never-ending consumption that offers only temporary fulfillment in its quest, we are left with that which does not relate to the subjective within us: fake art, pop art, pop music, the desecration of the sacred, fantasy, cynicism, sentimentality and secularism’s clichés. We take in rubber chicken soup for our souls.

Instead of seeking meaning which transcends, many find comfort and community with others in a complicit collaborative deception – the lies of the secular and the fake that are “inviting us into a realm where we deceive each other into thinking that we are thinking when we are not.” -philosopher Roger Scruton (on recognizing fake philosophy)

~~~~

More from philosopher Scruton:

“People need beauty. They need the sense of being at home in their world, and being in communication with other souls,” – philosopher Roger Scruton.

“In so many areas of modern life – in pop music, in television and cinema, in language and literature – beauty is being displaced by raucous and attention-grabbing clichés,” laments Scruton. “We are being torn out of ourselves by the loud and insolent gestures of people who want to seize our attention but to give nothing in return for it.” Roger Scruton On Beauty

“Music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.” ― Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World

~~~

Once in a blue moon a movie offers the public something of value. Last night I watched The Lives of Others.  the-lives-of-others-1

Here is what the back of the DVD says:

“This critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience…

Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police or Stasi. Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg’s stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer’s apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives – as well as his – in this seductive political thriller…”

the-lives-of-others

This write-up is sensationalist-weird (“erotic”; “seductive”) and does not do the film justice. Having watched this film several times in the past, and again last night, I came to see, within the historical-political-power-over-others context, that Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler was in desperate need of meaning in his drab German Democratic Republic (GDR) socialist life. Wiesler becomes obsessed with playwright Georg Dreyman’s life, a life which included drama, literature, music and the art on the walls of his apartment. Dreyman found meaning in aesthetics and in his close relationships. That’s all I am going to say about that, so you can watch the film. Note: the movie is rated R “For some sexuality/nudity”. I did not find the “sexuality/nudity” gratuitous. Rather, the brief sexuality/nudity scenes were in keeping with the story.

The story takes place in 1984. The fall of the Berlin Wall began November 1989.

Footnote:

Born during the days of the Harry S. Truman presidency, I have seen a lot of history in the making, including the collapse of socialist states such as the GDR. History matters when making new decisions. History matters in your quest for meaning. Fill your life with high culture music, art, literature, drama as provided by the lives of others throughout history. Do your own surveillance on meaning.

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The Disconnected

December 10, 2016 Leave a comment

 

Another day and the same dream:  I am driving a compact car and I’m trying to park in a space meant for compact cars. On each side of the parking space is a monster vehicle – a Sierra Massive Madre and a Himalayan Mountain All Terrain I-Drive-a Ram-cuz-I’m-a-Man-In-Your-Face Pick-up.  I finally park my car and then try to get out. But the vehicle next to me is so space -staking large that I can only open the door but a pinch. That is when I wake up.

The same day and, as usual, I went to the local health club to do my cardio routine.  And, as usual, thunderous testosterone overdosed music was there to assault me.  The large fitness club has two floors. The resistance weights are located upstairs and the cardio, yoga classes, etc. are located on the main floor. The upstairs looks down onto the main floor; the floors are open to each other. This arrangement means that the screaming hellish heavy metal music is inescapable. Not having a toggle switch on the side of my head to turn off outside noise, I put on headphones, and once again, I hear my own blood pumping.

Workout complete, I head to the women’s locker room wishing there was something to take my mind off of the music that comes from the bottomless pit.  Yet, when I enter the women’s locker room there are six large screen TVs blaring out the local news. In Chicago, the local news is mostly about the west and south sides of Chicago and about who is killing whom over gym shoes or for a gang initiation or just because they feel welcomed in Chicago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and IL Representative (D) Luis Gutierrez. Shooting off guns is what they do to celebrate in third world countries.

To find relief from the harmful drug-like effects of constant and pervasive packaged noise, I choose a locker near the showers, away from the din. Further away, in the sauna, I believe that I can find a quiet place. But that occurs until a young girl in head-to-toe sweats comes in. Bypassing the body, her brain is plugged into a Smartphone which dispenses her self-image – the latest sweet-bad-girl-nymph chirping infantile sexuality. I then move to the shower where there is sure to be a respite from… But wait! What is that I hear?

Lately, on Tuesday, 4:30 AM, a young black girl shows up and uses the shower across from me.  Her ambience is set with the wailing ecstasy of bowel-wrenching R & B music, music which plays out of speakers of some device impervious to shower water and to others.

 

Noise exhaustion cannot break my contract. My contracted membership with this health club cannot be voided except if I die or suffer a physical disability, such as severe stroke. 

Touché!

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Intrinsic, Not Extrinsic

December 4, 2016 Leave a comment

 

“God has committed himself, ever since creation, to working through his creatures–in particular, through his image-bearing human beings–but they have all let Him down.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity makes Sense

~~~

The waitress who brought me my order of eggs and bacon this morning at the Sweetened Sacks of Flour caught my attention as did another waitress last Saturday – their arms were covered in graphic cartoon-like black scrawl that seemed to slither up their arms toward some nether region of their bodies. My heart sank again this morning at the sight.

This young waitress – a twentyish woman with a beautiful smile and bright black eyes – had defaced herself and the Lord only knows why. Perhaps it’s the enticing effects of the reality TV culture, aka Pop culture, aka Cartoon Culture that we live in.  Donald Trump was elected president in such a culture – and that makes perfect sense. “Winning” the Presidency has become a cartoon choice award.

Found on many cable channels, reality TV programming reveals people participating in all manner of human folly including the ritual of “inking”.  To a great extent, The Media – the televised “news” programs, the newsfeed websites, the print and blog formatted- is also reality programming meant to arouse consumer’s attention and to provide a common denominator of baseness where one-upmanship is pulling one man’s pants down to use to pull your readers/viewers up out of the same swamp they are all in. Did we really need to be reminded of our broken humanness and subscribe to folly? But then again, watching the latest version of Sodom and Gomorrah in action may cause some to repent – but I doubt it. Just walk away and don’t look back.

Yes, my heart sank again this morning at the sight of this young woman who submitted herself to a pagan ritual. Tattooing is not adornment. That butterfly on the back of your neck is not adornment. You are telling the world that you belong to the ruler of this world and he – the Satan – has been kicked out. Anyone can be The Satan’s hands and feet, just as any Christian can be the hands and feet of the Lord.

At the health club, I see dozens of women who have “adorned” their bodies with graphic comic-like tattoos. Many have knowingly given themselves over to paganism with the “tat” being the sign that they are part of a death-Goth community which exists within a milieu of despair. They have thereby shown their allegiance to the former ruler of this world. As viewers of The Media, these who have dehumanized themselves with tattoos may have thought that God had given up on them and the world. Or, maybe they do not want anything to do with God and do not want to be a human who was created in God’s image. Paganism throughout human history has sought to destroy God’s image in our humanness. It has sought to make a god of man’s own image. Inking injects dye and idolatry into the skin.

Paganism is dehumanization. Paganism converts a person’s thinking so that they only live out their lives at a skin-deep level. Ultimately, paganism’s goal to make their supplicants into the image of The Satan. Before that point, one will look a lot like Gollum.

Paganism’s devotees find all sorts of religious ways to be rid of the indelible image of God. Some paganist’s devotion may be pantheistic in nature (diluting God in a solution of everything, thereby watering down any notion of a personal God) and some devotion may be populist in nature (watching TV), though the two are closely connected at the hip (pun intended).

Paganism’s alter ego is “enlightened Epicureanism. Both “religions” preach the same lie: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Both “religions” cultivate fools.

A fool will say in his heart “there is no god…and if there was I don’t want him anyway or to reflect his image. I will tattoo myself and shed any claim God may have on me”. In the end, when this fellow stands before God, he will say “I spent my entire life divesting myself of you. Get me out of here now!” And so, God will give him the desire of his heart.

 

Those of us who desire to be in the Kingdom of God, who desire the same true humanity as our Lord put on…we do not need to be in abeyance – the position of being without, or waiting for, an owner or claimant. God laid claim on us when we were sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever” (BCP, 380).

~~~

The DIY short list of how to become less human and deface the image of God (i.e., how to dehumanize yourself and others):

 

Murdering

Aborting

Euthanizing

Committing Adultery

Fornicating

Viewing pornography

Practicing homosexuality

Involving yourself with bestiality

Lying

Stealing

Being unjust

Gossiping

Being sentimental

Worshipping the creature and not the creator

Dishonoring your mother and father

Watching and paying for fantasy-ridden movies and cable shows which glorify the above

Watching cartoonish “animated” movies a la Disney, DreamWorks

Taking drugs

Crucifying someone

~~~~

“When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope:  Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

~~~~

Do you want a POV from a well-read prison psychiatrist who’s also an atheist?

“The correspondent asked me: what was wrong with tattooing, if that was how people wanted to adorn themselves?

I asked him whether he would have himself tattooed—whether he would be happy if his teenaged children had themselves tattooed—and if not, why not? After all, if he would not like it, he must have some inner objection to tattooing.

True, he said, but tattooing was not illegal. And since even I, who deprecated it, did not think that it should be illegal, there was nothing further to say about it. If tattooing was legal, it was thus of no social, moral, or cultural significance.

I tried to point out some of the cultural meanings of the vogue for tattooing. First, it was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.

Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.

And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.”

-Theodore Dalrymple’s Law Isn’t Enough

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Whole Lotta Searchin’ Goin’ On

November 25, 2016 Leave a comment

 

2016 Proverbs (Observations, generally speaking.):

 

Astronomers search the universe for cosmic origins.

Physicists seek to understand the behavior of systems at atomic length scales and smaller using quantum mechanics.

Geneticists, in search of disease prevention and cures, scan the genetic code for the secret of life.

Archeologists search fossil and radiometric dating records for what has gone on before.

Anthropologists search for “missing links” and the ways and means of the past.

Nurses sonogram pregnant bellies for signs of life.

Philosophers search for why there is something rather than nothing.

Nihilists search for meaning in nothing and come up empty-handed and nauseous.

Wise men searched the night sky for kingdom beginnings.

Mathematicians seek solutions in our design-inherent universe.

Social scientists seek to nudge a human’s free will toward a “proper” response.

Capitalists seek value.

Socialists seek other people’s money.

Traders seek to buy low and sell high.

Long term stock and bond holders look for a return on their investment at some point in the future.

Investors seek the highest returns while shouldering prudent risk.

Psychologists, asking “how do you feel about that”, seek to redefine consequences away from morality.

Psychiatrists seek out the next tranquilizer to medicate “the problem.”.

Political scientists seek to define the perfect social order with or without property rights.

Attorneys seek favorable jurors and favorable verdicts.

Politicians seek power.

Progressives seek unicorns with your tax dollars.

The Ruling Class seeks to rule by fiat, making us serfs.

The ignorant seek to be reaffirmed in their ignorance.

Media conglomerates seek to capture our attention and our budget.

Homosexuals seek pride in their love of the creature rather than their Creator.

The transgendered seek to be ‘normalized’.

The lazy, self-absorbed and intolerant, but “diverse,” want something for nothing and call their demand “a right.”

Conservatives seek to preserve longstanding meaning, community and high culture.

Millennials, in this Age of Feelings, seek protectionism in safe spaces.

Blue-collar workers, who have not learned new skills, seek trade protectionism.

College students seek affirmation rather than the meaning of life.

Athletes seek trophies and endorsements.

The Good Shepherd searches for the Lost Sheep.

The son of man came to seek and to save the lost.

A woman searches for a lost coin, finds it, and rejoices.

Joseph and Mary searched for the boy Jesus and find him at the Temple, where God dwelt with men.

Christians seek and find faith as small as a mustard seed.

The House of Islam seeks to bring the whole world under submission to a supreme caliphate by any jihad necessary.

Buddhists seek enlightenment within themselves by numbing their consciousness with mantras.

TV preachers and faith-healers seek to wrench filthy lucre from wrenched bodies and souls.

The addicted seek a “fix” and so share a needle with others.

The contented seek to share life’s bounty with others.

High culture seeks to deepen our common religious/ethical community bonds.

Fiction writers seek to tweak our imaginations with universal questions posed by imaginary beings.

Architects seek to place function before form, denouncing the sublime in the process.

Art, high culture art, seeks to give the viewer laudable content in laudable form, evoking old and new sympathies.

Modern art seeks to give the viewer content in shock form, in order to deny meaning its value.

Climatologists seek anthropocentric fault in weather changes and “find” data to say it’s your fault.

“Enlightened” Epicureans seek godless pleasure and find a “way which seems right”.

Abortionists search the womb for “tissue” to suck out beginnings.

Euthanasians search for a vein to end beginnings.

Atheists, with a God-given consciousness, seek for nothing and find it and then credit themselves.

Fortune tellers search horoscopes, crystal balls and tarot cards for the almighty dollar.

Agnostics and Deists seek for a way around God.

And the search continues…

~~~

 

“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.” –Flannery O’Connor

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“Attention Must Be Paid”

August 18, 2016 Leave a comment

Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman and “82,000” has been on my mind lately.

Here is a brief intro video. No comment will be necessary. The video following is where “Attention must be paid” to 63-year-old Willy Loman [2:50]

“We were almost free and clear.” I suggest watching the entire play.

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Good to the Last Drop?

May 10, 2016 Leave a comment

 

That Terry thought he was a vampire didn’t seem to faze Teresa.  It did faze his parents and friends.

…

A mother tugged a small boy through the outside door.  A teenage girl came out the inner door, crossed the room and left behind the mother and son.  A therapist stuck his head out of the inner door and looked around the room and saw his next client, a thirteen year-old boy.  “Hi, come on in.”  The boy dutifully followed the therapist.  A fiftyish woman came in the outside door and proceeded over to the glass window to check in with the clinic’s receptionist. Terry no longer paid attention to the ebb and flow of people in the clinic’s lobby.  Waiting for psychologist Teresa to claim him, Terry sat in the lobby as he had ninety-nine times before and always dressed in black.

“Hi, Terry, come on in.”

Carrying his dog-eared Virtual Gamer magazine Terry shuffled through the held door.

At the beginning Teresa was made aware of his parent’s concerns, their disbelief. When Terry had started to cut his arms and stomach to collect and consume his own fluids, they called N.B. Clinic.  They hoped for some reparative therapy that would bring back their child from the “grave.”  So, Terry’s parents sat down with Teresa.

They wanted to know what triggered Terry’s transformation:  “Was it us?  And what makes Terry sleep walk every night?  And why did he only want play outside at night?”

Terry’s parents related how they would wake in the middle of the night, every night now, to find that Terry had left the house.  He would roam the neighborhood in his black pajamas hissing.  It had to be more than simple parasomnia.

When they did find Terry his face would be covered in blood and the remains of dead cats and dogs were scattered about. The sight and smell of blood gagged them. Terrified by Terry’s manifestation, Terry’ parents wanted to do anything to bring their son back to from this state. He used to play so gently with his stuffed animals.

But after ninety-nine sessions, Terry’s parents were now told to accept their son’s “vampirism”.  As Teresa had explained it on the phone, vampirism was becoming an accepted behavior and that Terry’s self-image and his dignity depended on his being a vampire.  “It is something that he cannot control and it makes him feel human.  Besides,” she said, “it’s likely genetic – Terry’s need for plasma.  He believes that has the ability to extract some kind of energy from living things to strengthen him. I see this kind of thing all the time at N.B. Clinic.”

 

“I wish my parents would accept me the way I am.”

“They are trying, Terry. I met with them recently.  Give them time.”

“I wish everyone would accept me the way I am.  I was born this way, you know, and it’s not what they think.  I know who I am now.  You can see that.   Why can’t others?”

“Well, Terry, the world is not always friendly to minorities.  But there are social justice warriors who are advocating for you right now.  They are making a difference.  Still, there are so many fundamentalists who reject the notion of nocturnal plasma-sucking activities that it is an uphill fight.  Give it time.”

Teresa continued, “But you need to be secure in yourself, Terry.  Last week I gave you information about a local Vampire Community support meeting.  Did you go?”

“Yeah, it was alright.  I got to be myself without having to hide my feelings.  A lot of the kids said they came out of their coffins to their parents.  I just wish my parents and friends… I just wish the whole world was a safe place for me and my friends.”

“You and I both wish that Terry.”

 

 

 

© Sally Paradise, 2016, All Rights Reserved

…

“And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch

“This is about the dignity and the respect that we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we as a people and as a country have enacted to protect them, indeed, to protect all of us,” Lynch said

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Authoritarians at the Gate

April 29, 2016 Leave a comment

Obama finger gun

Authoritarian Fundamentalist

The honoring of power over reason is that which makes one an authoritarian.

For the Authoritarian, power is more important than laws. Laws become whatever Authoritarians impose on others.

Authoritarians are far more likely to exhibit “sloppy reasoning, highly-compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and — to top it all off — a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.” The Authoritarians, p75; Dr. Bob Altemeyer, University of Manitoba

Dr. Altemeyer proposes that Authoritarians are products of strict parenting, “strict fundamentalist parenting”.  His non-scientific proposal, used as a form of projection, targets Christians and Christian homes. But strict fundamentalism is native to the Authoritarians at the Gate.

These Authoritarians are the Ruling Class and their minions on steroids.  As such, they will lecture you to death with their Authoritarian Fundamentalism.

Consider the authoritarian lecturing of “the science is settled” and “you are a denier if you don’t agree with our confident knowledge.”  The “settled science” fundamentalists are dogmatic, believing that they have all knowledge.  So they will impose climate change on you.  In authoritarian Ruling Class minds, their might makes it “right.”

Truly, it is the “settled science” Authoritarian Fundamentalists who employ “sloppy reasoning, highly-compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and — to top it all off — a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.”

Consider also, the settled social science dogmatism of the teeny-tiny LGBTQ+ cabal.  These Authoritarian Fundamentalists demand that you submit to their belief system:   “We of LGBTQ+ convictions determine what is right and wrong. Christians should not.” “We have rights.” “Christian rights are to be subordinated to our rights.” “Christian convictions are too rigid, too fundamentalist.” And so again, we see the “highly-compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness,” and profound egocentrism that characterizes Authoritarian Fundamentalists.

 

To wit, recent Authoritarian Fundamentalism case history:

Read more of this post

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Food for Trough

April 17, 2016 22 Comments

 

“The ruling class’s appetite for deference, power and perks grows.” From Angelo M. Codevilla’s America’s Ruling Class –And the Perils of Revolution

…

nancy-pelosiWho are these Ruling Class Orcs?  Who are these aggressive scavengers and opportunistic Kulakovores?  They are Ruling Class America and the minions who do their hunter-gatherer bidding.  They are the Democrats and Republicans who accrue power unto themselves; they are the political parties that refuse to elect a person of principle. They are the un-elected:  the bureaucrats, the administrative state, the regulators, the social engineers, the ones whose careers are dependent on the government.   They are the ones who have no boundaries but will set boundaries for you. They are the ones with secret servers, the ones who call themselves “saviors of the planet” and those in the confident “know”.

sebelius3They are the Progressives, the elitists, the “living Constitutionalists” and those who are a law unto themselves, the “settled science” purveyors, the “green agenda” evangelists, the followers of the Scientism cult, the denigrators of religious convictions as “irrational”, the high priests of secularization, the climate change Inquisitors,  the #SJW, #BlackLivesMatter, the LGBT, the gerrymandering, the feminists, the abortionists, the eminent domain Dishonest Johns, the Democratic Socialists, the diviners of what is best for you, the Barbara Boxers, the union bosses, the public school educators, the “It takes a village” people, those offended by “Merry Christmas”, the ones who come between you and your children, the ones who tell your kids what to eat in school, the establishmentarians, the deniers of viewpoints other than their own, the ones who say “Are you kidding?” when questioned about a Constitutional basis for their enacted laws, those who  deem “this is for your own good”, those of the Unconstrained Vision, the initiators of unintended consequences, the federal workers, the EPA and DE, the Lois Lerners, the Commissar State, the Saurons, the Sarumans…all those bent over and feeding from the government trough.mccarthy

Elizabeth.Warren

 

 

Agitate the masses

 

What is in said trough? Kulaks. Heaps of Kulaks.

“They called us kulaks because we had a house with a galvanized iron roof and four horses, three cows, and a fine orchard by the house.  The first thing in the orchard was a spreading apricot tree, and there would be heaps of apricots on it every year.”  From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s short story Apricot Jam

 

Kulaks? We have property. Some of us have mansions but most have enough to call home.  We marry, have children, raise children, have grandchildren and bury (and not discard) loved ones. We are Pro-life even knowing that life is hard.  We push and prod ourselves and our charges to excel, succeed, to grow out of adolescence into maturity. We pray and prepare. We worship our God and we rejoice with others when a sheep is found. We sweat, blister and toil. We provide and protect. We shoot bows and arrows and guns but not at each other. We take off our hats when we see our nation’s flag in a parade. We tear up when America the Beautiful is sung.  We thank veterans for their service. We appreciate. We have dignity and values that were not handed down to us from government. We base our decisions on right and wrong and not on what our friends let us get away with saying.

Many of us believe that there are God-given laws and precepts that define our responsibilities and our freedoms. We sing “Amazing Grace” not for money or show but because we know sinning first hand and will admit it in a song and on our knees. Many of us are in the Kingdom of God and some of us are in the Fellowship of the Ring seeking to overthrow the world view of this age. We give thanks. Gratitude defines us. Whining is abhorred by us. We help out neighbor. We utterly detest government’s intrusion into our lives. Aspirations and love move us, not government mandates. We kulaks are the country class.

 

“Describing America’s country class is problematic because it is so heterogeneous. It has no privileged podiums, and speaks with many voices, often inharmonious. It shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards inept and haughty. It defines itself practically in terms of reflexive reaction against the rulers’ defining ideas and proclivities — e.g., ever higher taxes and expanding government, subsidizing political favorites, social engineering, approval of abortion, etc. Many want to restore a way of life largely superseded. Demographically, the country class is the other side of the ruling class’s coin: its most distinguishing characteristics are marriage, children, and religious practice. While the country class, like the ruling class, includes the professionally accomplished and the mediocre, geniuses and dolts, it is different because of its non-orientation to government and its members’ yearning to rule themselves rather than be ruled by others…

Nothing has set the country class apart, defined it, made it conscious of itself, given it whatever coherence it has, so much as the ruling class’s insistence that people other than themselves are intellectually and hence otherwise humanly inferior. Persons who were brought up to believe themselves as worthy as anyone, who manage their own lives to their own satisfaction, naturally resent politicians of both parties who say that the issues of modern life are too complex for any but themselves. Most are insulted by the ruling class’s dismissal of opposition as mere “anger and frustration” — an imputation of stupidity — while others just scoff at the claim that the ruling class’s bureaucratic language demonstrates superior intelligence. A few ask the fundamental question: Since when and by what right does intelligence trump human equality? Moreover, if the politicians are so smart, why have they made life worse?” (emphasis added) From Angelo M. Codevilla’s America’s Ruling Class –And the Perils of Revolution.  Read it and weep, kulaks.

…

kulak family

“As long as anyone can remember, our family lived in the village of Lebyazhy Usad in Kursk Province. But then they put an end to the way we thought to live. They called us kulaks because we had a house with a galvanized iron roof and four horses, three cows, and a fine orchard by the house.  The first thing in the orchard was a spreading apricot tree, and there would be heaps of apricots on it every year.” …Before they deported us as kulaks, they tried to make us tell them where we had hidden our goods.  Otherwise, they said, we’ll chop down your apricot tree. And they chopped it down.” From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s short story Apricot Jamkulaks_news

 

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Here’s government overreaching to binge on you.  Chomp, chomp, chomp…

High School Demands End to Off-Campus Christian Lunch Group

Six million perish

#FeeltheBern

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Utopia Has No Room for You… in the Inn

April 2, 2016 Leave a comment

 

Utopia comes from the Greek: οὐ (“not”) and τόπος (“place”) and means “no-place“, a non-existent place.

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And now a few clarion words from Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo M. Codevilla:

 

“This dismissal of the American people’s intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about. Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others’ comprehension.

While the unenlightened ones believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God and that we are subject to His and to His nature’s laws, the enlightened ones know that we are products of evolution, driven by chance, the environment, and the will to primacy. While the un-enlightened are stuck with the antiquated notion that ordinary human minds can reach objective judgments about good and evil, better and worse through reason, the enlightened ones know that all such judgments are subjective and that ordinary people can no more be trusted with reason than they can with guns. Because ordinary people will pervert reason with ideology, religion, or interest, science is “science” only in the “right” hands. Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic matter only insofar as proper authority acknowledges them.

That is why the ruling class is united and adamant about nothing so much as its right to pronounce definitive, “scientific” judgment on whatever it chooses. When the government declares, and its associated press echoes that “scientists say” this or that, ordinary people — or for that matter scientists who “don’t say,” or are not part of the ruling class — lose any right to see the information that went into what “scientists say.” Thus when Virginia’s attorney general subpoenaed the data by which Professor Michael Mann had concluded, while paid by the state of Virginia, that the earth’s temperatures are rising “like a hockey stick” from millennial stability — a conclusion on which billions of dollars’ worth of decisions were made — to investigate the possibility of fraud, the University of Virginia’s faculty senate condemned any inquiry into “scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer review standards” claiming that demands for data “send a chilling message to scientists…and indeed scholars in any discipline.” The Washington Post editorialized that the attorney general’s demands for data amounted to “an assault on reason.” The fact that the “hockey stick” conclusion stands discredited and Mann and associates are on record manipulating peer review, the fact that science-by-secret-data is an oxymoron, the very distinction between truth and error, all matter far less to the ruling class than the distinction between itself and those they rule.

By identifying science and reason with themselves, our rulers delegitimize opposition. Though they cannot prevent Americans from worshiping God, they can make it as socially disabling as smoking — to be done furtively and with a bad social conscience. Though they cannot make Americans wish they were Europeans, they continue to press upon this nation of refugees from the rest of the world the notion that Americans ought to live by “world standards.” Each day, the ruling class produces new “studies” that show that one or another of Americans’ habits is in need of reform, and that those Americans most resistant to reform are pitiably, perhaps criminally, wrong. Thus does it go about disaggregating and dispiriting the ruled.” (emphasis added)

Beyond the excerpt:  I commend Codevilla’s entire article to you.  In fact, I urge you to click on the link and print out the article.  Sit and read it and be forever changed by its content. I pray that the article opens your eyes and that moral courage arises in your heart.

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution by Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo Codevillano_room_at_the_inn_postcard

 

Now, perhaps, you know these culprits,  the Unconstrained Visionaries, by their characteristics:  snobbish, name-calling bullies; cliquish; desiring kinship w/other like-minded people; seeking power by government association; demanding rule by ‘right’; believing themselves morally and intellectually right; saying “You must obey us because we know better”; blinded to their  ‘well-intentioned’ actions leading to horrible unintended consequences; believing they know better than you; applying a “living constitution” template to every legal decision; using science as leverage without any depth of scientific knowledge; posturing “settled science” to quash dissent;  believing they “have the one true faith”; deeming that intentions and not results matter most; obtaining snobbery wielding government power;… combining attitude with government power, coercive.

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Utopia Has No Room for You (and Swaddled Truth) in the Inn.

Us Christians, we abide in Christ wherever we are.  We’ll leave the Light on.

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Background on the Constrained and Unconstrained Visions, the intuitive assumptions that shape our worldview:

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Roll Away the Stone from Your Mouth

March 19, 2016 Leave a comment

 

“Take away the stone,” Jesus said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

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Is ‘t night’s predominance or day’s shame

That darkness does the face of Earth entomb

When living light should kiss it?

Ross, Act 2, Scene 4, Shakespeare’s Macbeth

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In the previous post Cow Bells Are for Fellow Travellers, the link presented Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s essay Live Not By Lies prefaced as follows:

Solzhenitsyn penned this essay in 1974 and it circulated among Moscow’s intellectuals at the time. It is dated Feb. 12, the same day that secret police broke into his apartment and arrested him. The next day he was exiled to West Germany. The essay is a call to moral courage and serves as light to all who value truth.

Solzhenitsyn’s polemical speech to Harvard was also a call to moral courage.

But what happens when moral courage is eschewed and truth is not uttered?  “Darkness does the face of Earth entomb.”

There has been a long history of “night’s predominance.” And you may think that you are a modern enlightened individual who can shed light on the road before you, but check your rear view mirror to see where you have been.

Epicurean philosophy, in vogue since before 300 BC, has denied the existence of a Personal God and, alternatively, has placed a high value on sensate feelings and friendship.  As a consequence, today truth is most often considered not to be Objective – the authority of an absolute infinite-personal God, but rather subjective, what our friends let us get away with saying.  Truth now lives with its ‘friends’ in the land of “Like” on Facebook and Twitter.

Epicurean atheists and agnostics posit science – Epicurean atomism – as the beginning and end of all knowledge, declaring revelation and immortality to be romantic nonsense or the effects of too much wine.

The Long March of Cultural Marxism up to the present day disregards any absolutes and even the verities of science.  President Barack Obama declares AGW to be “settled science” when in fact Obama has no published thesis or academic record to show if he is even worthy of us contemplating such an outrageous claim.

The Long March stomps out revered traditional values and Christianity wherever such Objective Truth-based morality is found, replacing them with immediate social consciousness sound bites. And thus, subjective truth becomes a milieu of Epicurean-based malleable “truth”, worthy of Karl Marx. Marx conceived of truth (only in political-economic terms, of course) as what friends contrive when amassing social consciousness. Later, French philosopher Foucault would say the same. Thus the importance our culture now places on social media, polls and majorities, and on discrimination instead of discernment, as opposed to Objective absolute Truth.

 

What happens when moral courage is eschewed and truth shunned?   There is a loss of liberty.

“You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” –Jesus. But the Ruling class elites want to define truth and set the narrative.

Professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, Angelo M. Codevilla’s National Review article Standing Up to the Ruling Class: What citizens can do to resist the ruling class’s redefinitions of moral and cultural norms speaks directly to the reality facing us, and those who have recoiled from truth-speaking:

“If you’re wondering what Americans can do as our ruling class sets about enforcing its redefinition of marriage, start by looking back at what it did to the citizens of Indiana when their legislature raised the possibility that someone might object to joining in celebrations of homosexual marriage…

Indiana’s Republicans, its churches, and conservatives in general pled for the liberty to speak and act according to religious faith. They did not and do not argue the worth of the Judeo-Christian religious beliefs that the ruling class deems odious.This has proved to be self-defeating. Appeals for tolerance of all beliefs in the name of America’s traditional freedoms fail because they concede the ruling class’s assertion of its own moral-intellectual superiority, as well as its underlying assumption that good and evil, better and worse, are just other words for its own likes and dislikes…

Consequently, if we wish to remain who we are in the face of threats and declamations meant to force us to honor intellectual and moral falsehoods, we have no alternative but clearly and loudly to distinguish between true and false, fully making the case for what we believe to be right. There is no viable alternative to confronting the ruling class’s fantasies and euphemisms substantively, in detail.

Peaceable behavior will not protect you from being hounded as a “hater.” A whiff of “offensive” attitudes is enough for the ruling class to make you as untouchable as the lepers of old. Nor is silence a refuge.” (emphasis added)

You will want to read the whole article, contemplate its message and summon moral courage.

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Jesus stood before a member of the Ruling Class, Pontius Pilate:

“What is truth?” Jesus did not bear witness to what his friends wanted him to say. Jesus did not say, as French intellectual Michel Foucalt postulated, that truth is “regime” of beliefs and values linked to systems of political and economic power, a scientific, non-universal apparatus feeding into majority opinions.” 

In the days before his foretold crucifixion, Jesus told Pilate, and his disciples previously, that He came to bear witness to all that his Father does and says.  Crucifixion was invoked by the “Crucify him!” social consciousness to silence Objective Truth – what the Father does and says.  But then Objective Resurrection occurred and Truth was exalted to the highest place – God’s right hand.

 

Who is your father?  The father of lies who is the grand marshal of the Long March.  Or, is it the Father in heaven? Who do you testify about?

Have you ever seen the Father rejoice over homosexuality or homosexual marriage? Jesus at the wedding in Cana showed the Father’s blessing of his creation: male and female marriage. Never once has Objective truth ever endorsed homosexuality.

The unscientific paramours of homosexuality, psychology and psychiatry, add their voice to the loudest, angriest voices on social media so as “to raise awareness” and to alter the predominate consciousness of the natural union of male and female.

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Speaking of the binary:  Truth-seekers need both reason and revelation.   Each informs the other. Both need to be declared. And, we must leave the nether land of sentimentality that keeps us entombed in darkness and ready to give up.

Start with the Objective historical facts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  There were hundreds of witnesses to the resurrection. And like Paul, we have become witnesses of the Resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus revealed truth about the Father, that there is life beyond atomism. There is immortality; life is more than the body, and incredibly more than the packaging of identity politics.

A.D. The Bible Continues

Be not afraid. Roll away the stone from your mouth. Do not remain silent. And, did not Jesus say that persecutions would come when we spoke truth? Were these persecutions based on silent acquiescence so as discern whether to be “Liked”? No. Here’s what Jesus said:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

The Eternal Living light:

“The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”  I John 1:2

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“Scripture urges us to “expose the unfruitful works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11) and avoid becoming partners with those “who deceive with empty words” (Ephesians 5:6). Colossians implores us not to be “taken captive by deceit.” We’re warned in 2 Timothy that the time will come when people will not want to hear the truth, so they will surround themselves with frauds who tell them what their “itching ears want to hear.” I believe we have arrived at that moment, and it is now urgent that we specifically identify these frauds and false teachers. This is not a fun or polite process, but it is necessary, so we must get on with it.” (emphasis added)

Let’s Remember The Cowardly Conservative Leaders Who Betrayed Us For Trump

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