For the sake of the five men and one woman whose lives are on the line now and have been daily for the citizens of Baltimore I plead with you that you recuse yourself Ms. Mosby and push for a new venue for the trial. Blind Justice demands it and your law career would not appear to be enslaved to black identity politics.
Something tragic happened to Freddie Gray. We don’t know what, yet.
Your rush to over-charge these six officers due to a coroner’s report of a possible homicide is directly from the theater of Absurd. Freddie was a known druggie-pot and heroin. He may have hurt himself before ever getting into the van. He may have even hurt himself in the van because of another arrest situation he did not want. In jail you cannot get drugs. Paying for bail comes out of drug money. And, he may have, like you, have known that the whole world is watching.
Baltimore Cops Charged
What possible motive or intent would these six officers have to hurt Freddie? Each of them, without a doubt in any one’s mind, had heard the ubiquitous and tainted news reports of so-called police brutality in Ferguson and New York. Wouldn’t each of these six just want to transport Freddie safely to the station without incident? They each knew the jeopardy at hand if anything went ‘wrong’. They would not risk their reputations or their jobs by hurting Freddie. He was already a known criminal. There was nothing to gain ‘racially’ or in any way, shape or form by hurting Freddie. You and the new DOJ AG just intuit criminal and racial intent…somehow.
Ms. Mosby, since you have made yourself into a black youth political activist by your flashpoint statements during your recent press briefing let’s talk politics, briefly.
Rousseauism: new age Liberals, especially black Democrats, have consistently made the claim that institutions, not man himself, are corrupt and constantly flawed (ergo, Democrats constantly arguing for raising taxes to repair their Progressive policy disasters).
If you do not recuse yourself Ms. Mosby because of your obvious incestuous political relationships and push for a new trial venue then yes, the institution and office of the Baltimore DA is deeply flawed. And, as we have witnessed the past six years, the Eric Holder assembled DOJ institution is also deeply flawed and myopically unjust. Do not follow his example.
Justice, Blind Justice, and NOT the ad hoc “hate the man” identity politics framed ‘justice’ is what MLK’s legacy requires of you.
If you have read previous posts you would know that I travel to work-a Chicago Loop location-on the METRA train. After so many stops several of us gather in the vestibule, antsy to get off the train. It is in the vestibule, on a daily basis, that we share the events of our daily lives, the latest front page news, TV programs watched, political viewpoints and so on.
It came as a surprise to me the other day when I learned that three of us four ‘regulars’-a married man in his early sixties, a married man in his late forties to early fifties and a woman also in her late forties to early fifties were each without children. I am the only one of the four who has children.
Another surprise: the three of them along with their spouses-each couple-owned two dogs. They call their pets their four legged children! I had to wonder “Why pets?” and no children, but I don’t ask such questions. Maybe it is a matter of fertility. Or, a matter of fear?
The only clue I gathered was when another woman, a mother, joined us one day. She talked about her kids and her dog. She asked the man of sixty years if he had kids. He replied that he didn’t. “I was afraid for my wife.”
What he meant, I could not tell you. I was left to conjecture: was he afraid for her physical health? Her mental health?
Now, all three train companions have highly positioned jobs. One man is a CPA for a major bank. The other man is a health care manager for employees of a major area hospital. The woman is a VP of an insurance company. She travels over 60% of the time.
So, again, conjecture. Did they choose to be childless to fulfill career paths? Or?
I can not judge their decision but I am curious as to their decision’s formulation and their lack of formula (I had to spit that up, didn’t I?).
Like me you may have seen bumper stickers of the sort “I love my (fill in the blank pet version), it is humans I can’t stand.”
When I see this uncivil declaration renouncing mankind I feel a little rebuffed BUT not to the extent that I would riot or loot or cancel any exam to wallow in shameless emo. I wouldn’t even call Al Sharpton or Eric Holder in to intercede for the black folks included in this public denunciation.
It now seems that anti-human humanism is society’s soup of the day philosophy. What’s important is that animals be anthropomorphized into four legged children.
If you were to listen to my three train companions you would hear that they treat these dogs as children and better. They take their beloved pooches to doggie spas and to doggie festivals where special organic dog food is sampled. I am not mentioning half the luxuries bestowed to the beasts. (“Higher taxes for the 1% will help the poor. So I needn’t go out of my way. Besides, I give when the sad dogs on TV look me in the eye.”)
Don’t growl at me. I am not an animal hater. I have a Parrolet named Henry.
Henry the Parrolet
I have had dogs, cats, chameleons… AND, I have four kids who are human (though there were times when I thought they regressed to being four-legged animals).
The pet over children choice fits in nicely with environmentalists. They seek to stomp out the fires of human passion:“Only you can prevent human existence.”
The ‘’greenies’ spread their irrational fears liberally (e.g., the greenie-propaganda movie “Noah”.). They invoke population control-Malthusian-metric-hockey-stick spreadsheets. They generate CO2 free angst and so bloody on.
And, why, why have kids when life is so hard and so terrible and so there is so much bad in the world and so much work to do to stop climate change (“So many CO2 offenders, so little time”) that will kill us all if we don’t give ALL of our time and ALL of our money to stop it right now and lions and tigers and bears… Let’s let fear itself give us something to fear-a dictum not worthy of you or any generation.
Besides all of the above manmade direness there is the inconvenience of children. You have to feed them, change them, follow them, correct them when they mis-behave (Oh, yes.), take them to Wal-Mart for a Christmas picture, introduce them to the morals you flirt with now and then. And, there is just too much of yourself you would have to give up to have a child.
“I have my studies, my books, my Facebook, my career path to the seventh floor. I have my dreams. I have my “Me, My, I” to look after. First person singular comes first.
This is where pets (and their owner’s bumper stickers) come into view. This is where I am told “Dogs”, on the other paw, “give me their unconditional love”. Yeah, that’s right. You have heard the same thing. Dogs love. Roll the Disney movie. Throw them an organic vegan Milkbone. Walk them with a proud humane cadence. Care for them when ill or itchy. Cuddle with them on your bed…but they are not kids.
Kids? YES have kids! I’ll tell you why but not in smothering detail. You will figure it out.
Here is hint #1: the reason to have kids is connected to the reason for the season-the Christmas season-in case the shelf-elf didn’t remind you what time of the year it is. And hint #2, the reason will involve a new vocabulary word: “kenosis”.
Per Wikipedia, “The New Testament does not use the actual noun kénōsis but the verb form kenóō occurs five times (Ro.4:14, 1Co.1:17, 9:15, 2Co.9:3, Phil.2:7). Of these five times it is Phil 2:7, in which Jesus is said to have “emptied himself,” which is the starting point of Christian ideas of kenosis.”
The word ἐκένωσεν (ekénōsen) is used in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, chapter 2 verses 6 through 8. It is part of an early church hymn that is quoted by Paul:
Who, though in God’s form, did not
Regard his equality with God
As something he ought to exploit.
Instead, he emptied himself,
And received the form of a slave,
Being born in the likeness of humans.
And then, having human appearance,
He humbled himself, and became
Obedient even to death,
Yes, even the death of the cross.
To insure historical usage I unearthed my Greek New Testament and also “THE ANALYTICAL GREEK LEXICON: Consisting of AN ALPHABETICAL ARRANGEMENT OF EVERY OCCURING INFLEXION OF EVERY WORD CONTAINED IN THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE with a GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS OF EACH WORD.… I looked up the word transliterated as kenos. As used in Phil. 2:7–”to divest one’s self of ones prerogatives, abase one’s self”
Wow!
Jesus, Very God, divested himself of his prerogative as God and abased himself to become incarnate.
We have heard it said that “God is love”. We have also heard that “God is eternal”. For love to be love there needs to be an object of love. For eternal God to be Love there must be an eternal object of his love. This means that within the dancing embrace of the Triune God are the eternal objects of each other’s love -the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (JWs, the Trinity is.)
Now, imagine that the Godhead decided to include us humans in their dancing embrace of love. To do so, Jesus, as promised in prophecies of redemption, emptied himself of all his prerogatives as God (an overwhelming surprise for any orthodox Jew) and put on the vestment (the diapers) of created humanity.
The simplest comparison that comes to my mind would be the following: There is a father who is the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation which employs 3000+ workers. The company owns several private jets.
The father comes home, takes off his suit coat and throws it on a chair. He takes off his tie and does the same with it. He then gets down on the floor on all fours to play Legos with his four year-old son-all prerogatives put aside because of love for his son. His ‘position’ is laid aside to be taken up later.
There is something about kids and about divesting one’s self of one’s prerogatives that enables one to be in a relationship and to love another. No one is saying this is easy but it is worth more than what you laid aside.
Christmas, a celebration of the birth of Christ is also a celebration of our humanity, of kids and babies. Imagine God Very God incarnated into our evolved human form and doing so right at the fullness, the bar mitzvah of time! And, come to think of it there is no celebration of Roe v. Wade Day unless, of course, you are Wiccan.
The cross is the nexus of man’s inhumanity to man and man’s sinfulness with a Holy God. Man’s redemption from sin was the outcome. God kept his word to redeem and He imputes his promise keeping righteousness to those, by faith, who believe.
The resurrection of the Son of Man is a celebration of Mankind’s new humanity within the Kingdom of God.
~~~
Yesterday as I was jumping off the train onto my home station platform the METRA conductor, a large friendly black man who looks like he could play defense for the Chicago Bears said “Have a great evening everyone. Fifteen days till Christmas! ”We all smiled looking back at his glowing face.
Christmas is the dancing embrace of God with man and man with man and man with himself.
“What Child is This? The slack-jawed shepherds will tell you that a birth announcement proclaiming humanity’s promised Messiah had arrived via Angelic Express. They will tell you that they found the baby who would one day become King lying in a manger. How un-Godlike? Not for the God who laid aside everything to get on all fours and meet you where you are.
Let the miracle of the incarnation inform your decision to have children, whether naturally, adopted and/or fostered in your home. And then let those children become the objects of your love.
Remember when your parents said, “Eat your supper, eat your peas or go to your room without supper.”?
That is the Eat-Your-Supper-Fiat. Whether you liked the food or not your were required to eat whatever was set before you because, “I said so.” You were offered two choices: “accept what I am demanding of you or face the consequences of not obeying me.”
As adults, as voting adults, as voting adults with representatives we are now told by Dear Leader Obama that we must swallow his Executive Fiat without representation. And, we must also accept the consequences of not loving him with supine obedience: a renunciation of the U.S. Constitution and a negation of our elected representatives.
And here’s the excuse for just such a demand: there are “poor little children from other countries torn from their families, who do not have a regular meal to eat.” Sob. Sob. Sniffle. Sniffle. “Shame on you, taxpayers! You did not obey my commands!”
How these children were torn from their families and became hungry is another story involving crossing our sovereign border and avoiding immigration authorities. They snuck into our country illegally in hopes of demanding to be fed and taken care of by U.S. taxpayer money as in “Illegal immigrants to be eligible for Social Security, Medicare” BTW: They areillegal immigrants and not ‘undocumented” travelers on the road of life.
Now that the ‘dinner’ has been served sitting in front of us is a smorgasbord multinational characters, some who may be Jihadists, felons, drug dealers, gang members, diseased and most certainly impoverished. Yet, we are informed by IL-Rep Luis Gutierrez that we the voters are uninformed children in need of Dear Leader’s guidance. Remember, we are the “stupid voters” ala Jon Gruber. We are not supposed to care what we are fed as long as “Change” is on the menu.
The Dear Reverend Hussein Obama has also blessed the meal. He used Holy Scripture to endorse his lawlessness and to promote his legacy of “Me, Myself and I”. The spirit of anti-Christ is crouching, ready to devour.
The Gospel-according-to-Progressive George Soros funded Illinois Voices For Immigration Deformity has also blessed the meal with their alliterative babble” “Bibles, Badges, Business.” They forgot to add “and Balkanization to boot.” Their “Call to Action” is the new Evangelical Gospel of antinomianism.
Now that Dear Leader has served us his self made whipped up fiat fondue we are told to eat and like it: “If you don’t eat what I am serving, you can’t have any pudding, how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat what I am serving!” But there is more to this fiat force feeding than meets the throat.
Multiculturalism and Immigration Fiat now meet face to face-a few million times over.
Forced multiculturalism, whether as found in England or Germany or France hasn’t worked out well. Many immigrants do not share the same values as their host country. In fact, the immigrants often isolate themselves into their own cultural collectives. And, the radical Islamists currently crossing our border make no distinction between church and state. They want us to be under their Sharia law. They will kill us to make this happen.
“Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity” (2004), Kimball writes:
“Does it,” Huntington asks, “take an Osama bin Laden … to make us realize that we are Americans? If we do not experience recurring destructive attacks, will we return to the fragmentation and eroded Americanism before September 11?”…
Multiculturalism is a moral intoxicant; its thrill centers around the emotion of superior virtue; its hangover subsists on a diet of nescience and blighted “good intentions.”
Wherever the imperatives of multiculturalism have touched the curriculum, they have left broad swaths of anti-Western attitudinizing competing for attention with quite astonishing historical blindness. Courses on minorities, women’s issues, the Third World proliferate; the teaching of mainstream history slides into oblivion. “The mood,” Arthur Schlesinger wrote in The Disuniting of America (1992), his excellent book on the depredations of multiculturalism, “is one of divesting Americans of the sinful European inheritance and seeking redemptive infusions from non-Western cultures.”
A profound ignorance of the milestones of American culture is one predictable result of this mood.”
Let it be known that Our Dear Leader, Supreme Professor of Cultural-Legal-Social-Economic-Self-Aggrandizement Studies, has enslaved us to Multiculturalism. His doting bureaucrats will feed his new slaves from the fiat fondue melting pot, a pot laced with every form of human depravity known to man.
Dear Leader, in his great wisdom, has purposely created this ad hoc toxic milieu so as to dilute America’s melting pot with third world values. Progressive dictatorships feed off of this pot.
Equally as important to Dear Leader is creating millions of worshippers of Progressivism’s cult combine of language, morally relative values, lowest common denominator culture, Gaia-incensed global-warming and the rule of ad hoc law.
Dear Leader wants to amass voters who are submissive, “stupid” and obedient. And, like him, they must not care that there are laws to obey or boundaries to be wary of, or red lines to never cross. The illegal immigrants are to be his hapless ‘victims,’ Dear Leader is to be their Savior and America (always the oppressor in his anti-colonialism zeitgeist) will now submit to him. We are to be his colony of worker bees.
For the ‘victims’ there is to be the 1%’s pot of gold to be had and a third world free-for-all party to attend. “Go ahead. Break the law. Just don’t get caught. But if you do, we have liberal–minded judges who will ‘figure’ it out for you at the time. Remember, laws are meaningless under ‘social justice.”
How else can the Democrat/Progressive party survive? Only by mandating desperate, “stupid” and lawless voters out from shadowy existence and thrusting them into ‘daylight’ of the voting booth. That is how the Progressive Party survives. That is how illegal immigrants will be used. And, that is why Hillary Clinton nods her approval while awaiting her throne.
Here, the Rev. Robert A. Sirico speaks to the issue of Multiculturalism and the fact that all cultures are not equal:
And, Thomas Sowell, as well, about multiculturalism, affirmative action and the minimum wage, all of which comes into play with millions more people entering the country willy-nilly:
~~~~
Lest anyone think that I am not being Christian enough, insensitive to the plight of others and a bigot in my opinion post above, let me summarize my own situation and realign your thinking.
I am a Christian woman who lives in an apartment building, not an ivory tower. Above me lives a Hispanic family. Below me lives another Hispanic family. Across the hall from me is a single black woman with her son.
The apartment buildings surrounding me are filled with a majority of Hispanics, some black Americans and some white Americans.
The apartment building complex south of me is occupied mostly with Hispanics, with some black Americans and some white Americans.
Reader, can you say that about where you live?
Mi amiga, Veronica, works in the food service cafeteria where I work.
Ferguson, Missouri; Michael Brown; the race industry’s huckster’s ‘Reverends’ Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; “No Justice, No Peace”.
Should we listen to and embrace the inflammatory NeveReverending racial rhetoric that bellows out from under a sheep skin, rhetoric that leads to societal schism? OR, should we listen to and follow the wise words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s niece Dr. Alveda King as she says: “Know peace and you’ll know justice”? You tell me.
And, should Obama be just as arrogant as President Lyndon Johnson?
Since the earliest days of my youth I have been seeking wisdom, knowledge and a good understanding. This pervasive endeavor was birthed in me as my mother read from the book of Proverbs at the dinner table each night after dinner.
Please, please, please sit down with your coffee and listen to the wisdom, clarity and common sense that Thomas Sowell brings to the issues of race, affirmative action, minimum wage, the negative effects of today’s intellectualism, multiculteralism, social justice, environmentalism, political correctness, diversity and a host of other hot-button cultural and economic topics. You will be doing yourself a favor – wisdom is like that.
Wisdom’s, Rebuke (Proverbs Chapter One)
Out in the open wisdom calls aloud
she raises her voice in the public square;
on top of the wall she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:
“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
Repent at my rebuke!
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
will make known to you my teachings.
But since you refuse to listen when I call
and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
since you disregard all my advice
and do not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
“Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me,
since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord.
Since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.”
I know, I know, I am polemical. I polarize people with my words. I piss people off because I am ever seeking to destroy pretense. And yet at this juncture in my life I understand this irksome gift as a God-given trait that must be used. This does not mean that I am perfect, of course, or exempt. It does mean though that just like the prophets recorded in the Old Testament I cannot remain silent. I am will ever be forthright and forth telling…
*****
Pervasive throughout our land is the avoidance of asking the hard questions. We shun the real questions about life and death, about God, about good and evil, about the body and soul, about reason and revelation and about eternity and time.
Yesterday I happened to watch The Lord of the Rings (LTR): The Return of the King. Putting the above statement into LTR terms, we want to live peaceably in the shire with never having to venture out and deal with the Ring which has consequential power over us. We may say to ourselves, “Why destroy the ring when we can pretend it doesn’t exist? We may have doubts that all that the shire presents to us is all there is to life but we will ignore those doubts in order to avoid conflict and to live peaceably. We choose the immediate surroundings to avoid the dangerous quest that truth demands. We fear what it might take to make the journey. We fear we will lose ourselves on the way and never return to the shire. We fear what it might take to fight the good fight.
We fear conflict. Conflict is the evil we most want to avoid. Our “dialectics” begin with opposites and end in synthesis. We seek conflict resolution, bargaining, harmony and therapy, no-fault divorce, etc. Because of this we find it easier to believe nothing of import so that we do not have to fear disagreement, ostracism or even death for what one believes. And because we do not believe in anything then we cannot be responsible for outcomes.
To choose to believe nothing means that absolute truth is discharged from our lives. Its voice is no longer heeded. In fact its voice is now being drowned out. The commotion that you hear daily is man’s raucous resistance to leaving the shire ~ his tweeting and texting of empty words, the ever streaming pop/rock music filling the void, the Surround sound of ubiquitous blaring entertainment. It is as if men and women were walking around in the dark calling out to each other and never finding the light switch. They have chosen to stay in the purgatory of their fears.
The avoidance of pain and conflict has become our primary goal in life. This is seen in the young voter’s desire for Obamacare. The health care reform is seen by them as in line with their “values”. The reform is also seen as providing a sense of self-esteem in that it affirms the young voters wish to avoid pain and insecurity at all costs. On the surface Obamacare appears to provide security for themselves and for others while in truth it is a compromise of what is good and what is evil – the good being the desire for your well-being and the well-being of others and the evil which is the lie that Obama and the government will somehow provide self-esteem and security for you and others and do it with altruism. Remember, God has now been replaced by social science, social science based on rationalism and egalitarianism (think John Rawls, Laurence Tribe, etc.) all under the banner of “Social Justice.” Rationalism’s,’ “Social Justice” trumps God every time. Social science is now becoming the creator of society’s values, e.g., God is not to be talked about in public but homosexuality must be. All of this in spite of the fact that rationalism without revelation could never create value. As Benedict XVI said in 1969:
“What is essential is that reason shut in on itself does not remain reasonable or rational, just as the state that aims at being perfect becomes tyrannical. Reason needs revelation in order to be able to be effective as reason.”
The avoidance of truth with its inherent conflicts with other than the truth affects our relationships, our sexuality, our creativity, our culture. In place of absolute truth Americans, as mentioned, have latched on to “values.” And our new “value” system has a new way of talking: “lifestyle”, “Be Yourself;” “Be original;” “Let go and be;” diversity;” “I have my rights.” But now “rights” are no longer the natural inalienable God-given rights “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Now “rights” have morphed into feelings worn on our sleeve. We demand that others accept what we feel and that others be open and tolerant. This is what we value above all else. Right and wrong (and love (read not sex)) no longer have a place in our psyche. “Values” – a synthesis of good and evil dominates our diseased culture. And when we ignore serious questions we create words with synthetic meanings to describe our lives.
“Charisma” is one of those words often heard today. Charisma was once considered a God-given grace but has been used as cover for the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, notes when talking about Hitler’s appeal.
Allan Bloom, another political philosopher, notes in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, “Charisma both justifies leaders and excuses followers. The very word gives a positive twist to rabble-rousing qualities and activities treated as negative in our constitutional tradition. And it s vagueness makes it a tool for frauds and advertising men adept at manipulating images.” Consider that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both been called charismatic leaders.
In the introduction to his book, Bloom writes about what he sees in the classrooms of higher education:
“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes that truth is relative….They are unified only in their relativism and their allegiance to equality….They have been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society…The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness ~ and the relativism that makes it only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings ~ is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point (now) is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.” (emphasis mine)
In a later chapter titled The German Connection, Bloom relates how Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Weber, Freud have influenced American thinking. Americans, within a “pro-choice” democracy, have assimilated this German thinking sometimes turning it on its head. Bloom writes,
“…there is now an entirely new language of good and evil, originating in an attempt to get “beyond good and evil” and preventing us from talking with any conviction about good and evil anymore. Even those who deplore our current moral condition do so in the very language that exemplifies that condition.”
“The new language is that of value relativism and it constitutes a change in our view of things moral and political as great as the one that took place when Christianity replaced Greek and Roman paganism.”
…
“Value relativism can be taken to be a great release from the perpetual tyranny of good and evil, with its cargo and shame and guilt, and the endless efforts that the pursuit of the one and the avoidance of the other enjoin. Intractable good and evil cause infinite distress – like war and sexual repression – which is almost instantly relieved when more flexible values are introduced. One need not feel bad about or uncomfortable with oneself when just a little value adjustment is necessary. And this longing to shuck off constraints and have one peaceful, happy world is the first of the affinities between our real American world and that of German philosophy in its most advanced form, given expression by the critics of the President’s speech.”
Here Bloom is referring to the clamor arising when President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” When yet at another time Reagan said that the Soviets had “different values,” this statement was met “at worst with silence and frequently with approval,” thus revealing our loathing of absolutism in the former statement.
At the beginning of the chapter Values, Bloom, relates, “We have come back to the point where we began (in the book), where values take the place of good and evil.” (emphasis mine)
And so like Gollum we place the utmost value on the ring of power, becoming blind to its tyranny over us. Along with the ring we call our values “My Precious.” Under the yolk of temporal “values” and without facing the serious questions of life we lose ourselves, we lose the real. We lose love, romance, culture, art ~ everything meaningful to us.
Love or charity, a virtue which must be constantly worked at, is replaced with easy sex. Consider that in our culture sexual activity is not to be repressed or disciplined but rather it is to be given preeminent unrestrained “value.” Think Sandra Fluke and contraception. Think in-your-face homosexuality. Does America “confirm her soul in self-control” or not?
Romance, apart from truth is portrayed in movie after movie as just a response to nihilism. Nowhere to be found is the expectation, the unrequited desire and the hoped-for revelation of real romance. Without absolutes there can be no true romance.
We are a culture that seeks therapeutic counseling. Yet modern psychology, the sworn enemy of shame and guilt, refuses to talk about good and evil and therefore offers nothing for the soul. Freudian psychology only brings the patient back to repressed sex.
Modern art has nothing of consequence to offer. Consider the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
Deafening music, pop or rock, pummels our ear drums daily evoking barbaric passions and depriving the soul of its senses.
Tattoos deface our bodies so as to reveal our disdain for the discipline that purity of mind and body requires. Inking is given the (non-)value of counter-culture and rabble-rousing.
Religion, wherein serious questions are faced, is being replaced by positive thinking as preached from the temples of TV.
In view of the fact that our nation is becoming increasingly devoid of absolutes and truth while at the same time becoming increasingly laced with relativism and sliding scale “values” consider this:
Jesus, the Son of the Living God, says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Free from what? Free from fear. All fear: the fear of the unknown, the fear of facing accountability, the fear of death, the fear of loss and personal suffering, the fear of evil. Jesus’ perfect love casts out all fear. Because of this we can face the serious questions of life head-on knowing that He loves us, that He stands with us and that He has gone before us through the same difficult places. Seek Him and He will be found.
Going back to the LTR analogy do you remember how Frodo and Sam and the rest rejoiced that the ring had been destroyed, that their arduous life and death journey had been accomplished? Their courage and resoluteness saved the shire, themselves and Middle Earth even while the others in the shire had no clue as to what was going on. You and I are about to do the same.
“Creating a world that is just, fair and equal.” This Progressive mantra was recited again yesterday. I heard it during a television interview of two historians at a history writer’s convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The black historian’s words sounded so right, so full of righteous human endeavor but in reality his words were the sounds of empty utopian piety deficit of any moral context.
A world that is just is a world where every man gives the other his due. Yet government’s redistribution of wealth does the opposite. It takes away from the taxpayer what is due him, his earnings and property and gives to someone else that which is not due him. This confiscation and redistribution of personal property is for no other reason than to turn unequal incomes into equal outcomes. This highway robbery is currently termed “social justice” by progressives today who were yesterday’s socialists.
Here is Josef Stalin, a murderous dictator, talking about his desire to see socialism dominate the world (meaning you and me):
“…Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world …”
St.Thomas Aquinas in his On the Book of Job (8,1) said:
“Justice is destroyed in twofold fashion: by false prudence of the sage and by the violent act of the man who possess power.”
As we see our nation become increasingly secular we see its structure being pulled away from its Judeo-Christian cornerstone. And in so doing we the ‘homeowners’ are becoming displaced and disordered much like furniture during a house relocation. Without realizing it we are becoming objects devoid of human nature, becoming the un-created or the walking dead. Removed from life’s foundation man is devoid of God-given inalienable rights as well. And with out individual inalienable rights there is only left to mankind the justification of totalitarian power, a totalitarian power that promises a “just, fair and equal world.” This secular utopian promise is not new to mankind: Hitler and Stalin among others promoted such ‘worlds’.
Justice can rightly be discussed only within a complete moral context that includes prudence, temperance, fortitude, charity and a host of other God-derived virtues. To replace that moral context with a secular humanism is to presume that God did not create humans. It presumes that God did not create man as a person, as a whole unto himself as a spiritual being that exists for itself and of itself and that wills its own proper perfection. On these grounds secular humanism denies individual God-given inalienable rights in favor of the general ‘good.’ This denial is imposed on us today in our democracy by majority rule – voters enthralled by the secular humanism advocated by the main stream media, by our president and by Democrats in particular are voting to empty man of his individual nature through law and fiat. They are doing so in the name of communal “social justice.” No one seems to notice except a few on the right.
Because of human nature there will always be those in a small camp who think to themselves “every man for himself” and “screw the other guy so I can get ahead.” And likewise, on the other hand, there will always be those who believe that each of us should give up our person, our property and our individualism for the good of the whole. Neither of these political philosophies should ever be put in power. And yet with high-sounding, pious jingoism pumped out by the main stream media propaganda machine the left is now succeeding into promoting the latter. We already know who the willing recepient is: “a sucker is born every day.”
As individuals each of us should act with justice toward our neighbor giving him his due. What is his due? My neighbor is due his inalienable God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I owe him truth. I owe him the same love I give myself. I owe him freedom from coercion. Beyond that the mantras of “social justice,” fairness and egalitarianism become the Godless mind control pumping the ever marching jackboots of rank and file humanism. Once a sufficient numbers of useful idiots and stooges have succumbed to humanism’s opiate effect a sure and complete enslavement of our nation under a totalitarian regime will occur. Welcome to the world of the godless if Obama’s regime is re-elected in 2012.
For a world to be “fair” someone in power has to determine what is fair. Do you really want to use your vote for that kind of self-subjugation? Certainly there is no Biblical a priori for demanding that life must be fair. Where does this understanding of the need for fairness come from? Is there a philosophical argument for fairness? A moral one?
My guess would be that much of the “fairness” allure comes from popular psychology and socialist rhetoric both which absolve people of personal responsibility and seeks to rectify a person’s losses and hardships by pointing blame at others. Class warfare rhetoric is a prime example, as it defines others as being the reason for your lack. More devastating to our culture and its preoccupation with fairness is our nation’s increasingly secular nature, a secular nature of envy and jealousy actively promoted by president Obama in his many “fair share” speeches. Obama is a secularist wolf in Soros’ bought sheep’s clothing.
A world that is “equal” is a world that removes difference for the sake of bringing every one down to the same low common denominator and nothing more. Imagine our government choosing your husband or wife, your doctor, your food, your home and your words based on what is thought to be equal for everyone. Equal-outcome based thinking destroys incentive, destroys each man’s uniqueness, his God-given differences, his inalienable rights and eats away at civic life-like a flesh-eating disease feeding on its host.
According to Allan Bloom in his book The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Soul’s of Today’s Students in the chapter entitled Values “Egalitarianism is conformism…Egalitarianism is founded on reason, which denies creativity”
Imagine a world where there is no creativity and no aspirations only sameness. Imagine being a citizen of North Korea.
Without moral-based justice as an inoculation against greed and envy people would constantly be looking at others to compare themselves with their neighbor. Forget contentment in a world that is egalitarian.
Finally both fairness and egalitarianism, as laws enacted via secular humanist congressmen and presidents voted for, remove individual moral choice (justice) along with charity, fortitude and temperance from life. If the government does your thinking and makes your choices for you then you as an individual are absolved from any moral duty whatsoever. What than is the purpose of the individual? Without you the state becomes the all-powerful meat grinder and you along with everyone else become the human sausage extruded into the casings of humanism. Digest that if you will.
“A government big enough to give you everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have….” President Gerald Ford
You should know that jealousy and envy disguised as “fairness” and “equality” play important roles in a liberal’s political drama.
Remember the Bible story of Joseph and the coat. Joseph’s eleven brothers, assuming that Joseph was their father’s favorite son, became extremely jealous when Joseph received a beautiful coat as a gift from his father. So jealous were they in fact that they plotted to kill Joseph. But after much hand wringing and intervention by the oldest brother they sold Joseph into slavery. This was deemed a more humane solution.
The brothers in order to deflect their guilt gave their father a bloodied garment as proof of their ‘sincere’ lie that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. The brothers then considered their “problem” to be out of sight and out of mind. What mattered most to them was to maintain status quo – everybody was to remain equal.
From a mature point of view the brothers should not have been jealous. Joseph’s father Jacob had every right to give the coat to whomever he wanted. But the brothers grumbled and cried foul amongst themselves as do liberals today whenever there is a perceived breach of societal equity.
Today’s popular psychology helps feed the popular jealousy by reverse thinking. Instead of providing a positive unselfish viewpoint Freudian based psychology points the finger back at dad the authority figure: “you feel that you didn’t get your fair share of love from your father.” “Your father treated your brother with more love and affection. “Your father should have given you more. He should have been fair with you so let’s help you figure out how to get your fair share.” This nonsense is played out day after day in the liberal media and by president Obama with “fair share” rhetoric.
These liberal folks will tell you as they have been counseled that life has not given you your fair share so you must demand fairness: “Look at your life. Do you have what he has? No?” “Then demand it.” “Demand your right to healthcare. Demand your right to force the 1% to pay higher taxes. Demand your right to live off another person’s property.” This type of debilitating psychology streams from media outlets day and night promoting jealousy, envy and unrest in the people who hear it.
Co-opted, high-sounding and sanctimonious words hide the real motivation behind the left’s policies: jealousy and envy hiding in the wings waiting for the chance to ‘correct’ the unfairness.
Consider this assessment of the Left’s use of innocuous language to achieve their ‘righteous’ ends. Here is Thomas Sowell, economist :
“The left has a whole vocabulary devoted to depicting people who do not meet the standards as people who have been denied “access.” Whether it is academic standards, job qualifications or credit requirements, those who do not measure up are said to have been deprived of “opportunity,” “rights” or “social justice.”
The word games of the left – from the mantra of “diversity” to the pieties of “compassion” – are not just games. They are ways of imposing power by evading issues of substance through the use of seductive rhetoric.
“Rights,” for example have become an all purpose term used for evading both facts and logic by saying that people have a “right” to whatever the left wants to give them by taking from others.
For centuries, rights were exemptions from government power, as in the Bill of Rights. Now the left has redefined rights as things that can demanded from the taxpayers, or from private employers or others, on behalf of people who accept no mutual obligations, even for common decency.”
Joseph was one of twelve brothers. He was 1/12th or 8.333 % of the whole. 8.333% had something the 91.667 % didn’t have. Rounding off, the 92% were envious of the 8% so the 92% decided to bring the 8% down to zero, thus making things fair in their eyes. Removing Joseph from the picture also meant that their inheritance was now larger, divided only eleven ways instead of twelve. Because of envy and jealousy the 92% proceeded to sell the 8% into slavery and bondage, though murder was considered. Think about that before you vote for Obama and the Democrats. Think about that when you hear them demanding that the 1% should dish out their shovel ready wealth for your benefit.
Being your brother’s keeper is so much more than keeping him around and keeping him in his place by only giving him his “fair share.” It is dealing justly with him by giving him what is due him. So if a man has been given a gift or has a talent bless him and do not curse him. If a man receives more than you be thankful to God for what you do have and for his gain. But, if you by jealousy and envy, in order to make yourself feel better about yourself, your situation and the world at large, confiscate another man’s property, if you subjugate his person and sell him into slavery or if, when envy has matured into its final state you seek to murder the man better off than you then know that his blood will cry out for justice. Know that God will avenge those treated unjustly.
What’s at the core of America’s problems today? Is it partisan politics or is there a greater rift in the American people?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian during his commencement address delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978, gave us his diagnosis. His speech is a stinging indictment of the West – its materialism, its enabling of the abuse of individual freedom, its self-serving inbred media and its disavowal of its spiritual roots:
However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. … State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer.
And…
“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”(emphasis mine)
And…
“It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?”
Take a look at what drives you and perhaps you will see why America is no longer a nation under God, no longer a nation of civil courage, of moral decency. Perhaps you will see why people would vote for a president who uses class warfare rhetoric to promote the sands of material security as foundational to life and not the rock of spiritual fortitude.
you enter the Disneyland-like fantasy world of smoke and mirrors, the amusement park of progressives. It is there that …
…you live under Chicago style politics instead of the U.S. Constitution.
…you receive Eric Holder – Black Panther style justice which is no justice.
…your liberty is traded for political hype: “Hope and Change’: “Yes, We Can”.
…the extreme Left receives all manner of special interest goodies. The resulting financial shortfall will be devastating (see Greece, Spain, Portugal, California). Our children and grandchildren will receive the enormous debt burden.
…the government becomes a monopoly, a monopoly that cannot and will not be broken down. Because of this the competition of the free market system, a system that works to lower consumer cost and to ensure better quality products and customer service will vanish from the scene. You will have to take what the government gives you or go to a black market.
…under Obamacare you have health coverage (you are fined for not having it) but not health care. You will have bought the lie.
…whatever health care you do receive will be meted out by bureaucrats (czars) who will tell how much, when and what kind of health care you will receive. They will also decide who lives and who dies, who benefits and who goes without.
…you are free when Obama says you are free.
…you will have your “fair share” when you understand that running from and resisting the Tax Man is impossible and you surrender. You then become enslaved and live on Obama’s Progressive plantation.
…the only good energy policy is the energy policy that financially powers the Obama candidacy and his progressive agenda.
…America will become a subset of the European Union. (BHO wants to eventually become the potentate of the world.)
…democracy will become meaningless because you will have ceded your liberty to a small group of people who you will be told have your best interest at heart. Your vote will mean nothing. Czars and bureaucrats will replace your representatives.
…a top down government will break the back of the states and in the process also destroy individual liberty. All of this for the sake of controlling costs, controlling your money and controlling you the citizen.
….Christians will be persecuted. The main stream media (powered by Obama’s political and secular colonialism) will openly attack Christianity as not being inclusive enough, as being too extreme. All this and more while homosexuals will be allowed to teach your children their moral values in the public schools.
…absolute moral truth will be replaced with the increasingly vogue secular religions of fairness, egalitarianism, environmentalism and political correctness. These ersatz religions are based on relativism and humanism. These ersatz religions will become the state religions and be reinforced by those who are in power using the main stream media.
…your voice will be silenced (i.e., the fairness doctrine) by the Obama regime if you disagree with his message. And, if you believe that the fairness doctrine will only neutralize conservatives, you are in complete denial. Totalitarians always direct the conversation. Controlling the message, the ideology and indoctrination are central to controlling the citizen on the plantation. See North Korea. See China. See Stalin’s Russia. See…
…your voice will be silenced in deference to a few well-connected intellectual elites who will be exalted within their “ivory tower” college professorships. Your “worker bee voice” will be not be heard. Instead, your life will become ‘handled’ by these self-promoting social-scientists who receive their power from above.
…America will be divided into those worship the Obamic Vision and those who do not. The race card will be used extensively to promote a divided nation. And, more and more people will claim minority status so as to indemnify themselves against “hate speech”. Class warfare rhetoric will be used to conflate fairness with an unjust confiscation of property
…your whole purpose in life under Obama will be to become a complacent useful idiot, no more, no less. Through taxation you will be required to buy into the BHO lottery: “Hand me your money and your liberty and we will take care of the rest. Yes, we can.”
…the subsequent rioting in the streets that will occur because of all of the above will be quashed by use of the totalitarian forces put into power by you the voter.
When you wish upon Obama you get the president and the government you deserve.
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth) – George Harrison
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
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“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
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“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
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“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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Cindy Wity 
Fear and Loathing in America
July 1, 2012 Leave a comment
I know, I know, I am polemical. I polarize people with my words. I piss people off because I am ever seeking to destroy pretense. And yet at this juncture in my life I understand this irksome gift as a God-given trait that must be used. This does not mean that I am perfect, of course, or exempt. It does mean though that just like the prophets recorded in the Old Testament I cannot remain silent. I am will ever be forthright and forth telling…
*****
Pervasive throughout our land is the avoidance of asking the hard questions. We shun the real questions about life and death, about God, about good and evil, about the body and soul, about reason and revelation and about eternity and time.
Yesterday I happened to watch The Lord of the Rings (LTR): The Return of the King. Putting the above statement into LTR terms, we want to live peaceably in the shire with never having to venture out and deal with the Ring which has consequential power over us. We may say to ourselves, “Why destroy the ring when we can pretend it doesn’t exist? We may have doubts that all that the shire presents to us is all there is to life but we will ignore those doubts in order to avoid conflict and to live peaceably. We choose the immediate surroundings to avoid the dangerous quest that truth demands. We fear what it might take to make the journey. We fear we will lose ourselves on the way and never return to the shire. We fear what it might take to fight the good fight.
We fear conflict. Conflict is the evil we most want to avoid. Our “dialectics” begin with opposites and end in synthesis. We seek conflict resolution, bargaining, harmony and therapy, no-fault divorce, etc. Because of this we find it easier to believe nothing of import so that we do not have to fear disagreement, ostracism or even death for what one believes. And because we do not believe in anything then we cannot be responsible for outcomes.
To choose to believe nothing means that absolute truth is discharged from our lives. Its voice is no longer heeded. In fact its voice is now being drowned out. The commotion that you hear daily is man’s raucous resistance to leaving the shire ~ his tweeting and texting of empty words, the ever streaming pop/rock music filling the void, the Surround sound of ubiquitous blaring entertainment. It is as if men and women were walking around in the dark calling out to each other and never finding the light switch. They have chosen to stay in the purgatory of their fears.
The avoidance of pain and conflict has become our primary goal in life. This is seen in the young voter’s desire for Obamacare. The health care reform is seen by them as in line with their “values”. The reform is also seen as providing a sense of self-esteem in that it affirms the young voters wish to avoid pain and insecurity at all costs. On the surface Obamacare appears to provide security for themselves and for others while in truth it is a compromise of what is good and what is evil – the good being the desire for your well-being and the well-being of others and the evil which is the lie that Obama and the government will somehow provide self-esteem and security for you and others and do it with altruism. Remember, God has now been replaced by social science, social science based on rationalism and egalitarianism (think John Rawls, Laurence Tribe, etc.) all under the banner of “Social Justice.” Rationalism’s,’ “Social Justice” trumps God every time. Social science is now becoming the creator of society’s values, e.g., God is not to be talked about in public but homosexuality must be. All of this in spite of the fact that rationalism without revelation could never create value. As Benedict XVI said in 1969:
“What is essential is that reason shut in on itself does not remain reasonable or rational, just as the state that aims at being perfect becomes tyrannical. Reason needs revelation in order to be able to be effective as reason.”
The avoidance of truth with its inherent conflicts with other than the truth affects our relationships, our sexuality, our creativity, our culture. In place of absolute truth Americans, as mentioned, have latched on to “values.” And our new “value” system has a new way of talking: “lifestyle”, “Be Yourself;” “Be original;” “Let go and be;” diversity;” “I have my rights.” But now “rights” are no longer the natural inalienable God-given rights “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Now “rights” have morphed into feelings worn on our sleeve. We demand that others accept what we feel and that others be open and tolerant. This is what we value above all else. Right and wrong (and love (read not sex)) no longer have a place in our psyche. “Values” – a synthesis of good and evil dominates our diseased culture. And when we ignore serious questions we create words with synthetic meanings to describe our lives.
“Charisma” is one of those words often heard today. Charisma was once considered a God-given grace but has been used as cover for the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, notes when talking about Hitler’s appeal.
Allan Bloom, another political philosopher, notes in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, “Charisma both justifies leaders and excuses followers. The very word gives a positive twist to rabble-rousing qualities and activities treated as negative in our constitutional tradition. And it s vagueness makes it a tool for frauds and advertising men adept at manipulating images.” Consider that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both been called charismatic leaders.
In the introduction to his book, Bloom writes about what he sees in the classrooms of higher education:
In a later chapter titled The German Connection, Bloom relates how Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Weber, Freud have influenced American thinking. Americans, within a “pro-choice” democracy, have assimilated this German thinking sometimes turning it on its head. Bloom writes,
Here Bloom is referring to the clamor arising when President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” When yet at another time Reagan said that the Soviets had “different values,” this statement was met “at worst with silence and frequently with approval,” thus revealing our loathing of absolutism in the former statement.
At the beginning of the chapter Values, Bloom, relates, “We have come back to the point where we began (in the book), where values take the place of good and evil.” (emphasis mine)
And so like Gollum we place the utmost value on the ring of power, becoming blind to its tyranny over us. Along with the ring we call our values “My Precious.” Under the yolk of temporal “values” and without facing the serious questions of life we lose ourselves, we lose the real. We lose love, romance, culture, art ~ everything meaningful to us.
Love or charity, a virtue which must be constantly worked at, is replaced with easy sex. Consider that in our culture sexual activity is not to be repressed or disciplined but rather it is to be given preeminent unrestrained “value.” Think Sandra Fluke and contraception. Think in-your-face homosexuality. Does America “confirm her soul in self-control” or not?
Romance, apart from truth is portrayed in movie after movie as just a response to nihilism. Nowhere to be found is the expectation, the unrequited desire and the hoped-for revelation of real romance. Without absolutes there can be no true romance.
We are a culture that seeks therapeutic counseling. Yet modern psychology, the sworn enemy of shame and guilt, refuses to talk about good and evil and therefore offers nothing for the soul. Freudian psychology only brings the patient back to repressed sex.
Modern art has nothing of consequence to offer. Consider the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
Deafening music, pop or rock, pummels our ear drums daily evoking barbaric passions and depriving the soul of its senses.
Tattoos deface our bodies so as to reveal our disdain for the discipline that purity of mind and body requires. Inking is given the (non-)value of counter-culture and rabble-rousing.
Religion, wherein serious questions are faced, is being replaced by positive thinking as preached from the temples of TV.
In view of the fact that our nation is becoming increasingly devoid of absolutes and truth while at the same time becoming increasingly laced with relativism and sliding scale “values” consider this:
Jesus, the Son of the Living God, says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Free from what? Free from fear. All fear: the fear of the unknown, the fear of facing accountability, the fear of death, the fear of loss and personal suffering, the fear of evil. Jesus’ perfect love casts out all fear. Because of this we can face the serious questions of life head-on knowing that He loves us, that He stands with us and that He has gone before us through the same difficult places. Seek Him and He will be found.
Going back to the LTR analogy do you remember how Frodo and Sam and the rest rejoiced that the ring had been destroyed, that their arduous life and death journey had been accomplished? Their courage and resoluteness saved the shire, themselves and Middle Earth even while the others in the shire had no clue as to what was going on. You and I are about to do the same.
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Filed under Christianity, commentary, essay, short piece, Writing Tagged with absolutes, Christianity, culture, human-rights, moral relativism, Obamacare, philosphy, politics, social science, society, value positing