Recognizing Terrorists' Territorial Claims--But Not Terrorists' Ideology

Many have adopted the acronym ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) to identify the army that is terrorizing the world from territory it holds on and between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.  And that is why it is so curious that this Administration insists on using the acronym ISIL.  Doesn't use of this moniker, ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), stupidly or tacitly recognize the territorial claims of the subject terrorists?!  And stupidly or tacitly menace the Levant--the geography that contains Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon?!  The persistent use of this moniker, by the once leader of the free world, simultaneously a) promotes the claims of avowed enemies and b) menaces our allies.  Use of the acronym ISIL is, in effect, treasonous.  If this Administration can recognize the territorial claims of ISIS, why can't they recognize the influence of Islam in the formation of the "Islamic" State?  ISIS is simply Islam in theocratic practice:  American leaders have stupidly or tacitly recognized terrorists' territorial claims, why don't they recognize their ideology?  At least, they might desist from using this treasonous acronym.

Animus as Impetus

It is likely that the issue of national gay marriage will turn on the definition of a single word.  The word is animus.  It means strong dislike or hostility or enmity or animosity or hatred.  As you can see, the word has a whole spectrum of meaning.  Its primary hue is red.  It denotes seething.  Some use it as legalese for 'hater'.  It is a good word for revolting teens:  "Dad, you are showing animus toward my friends and lifestyle."  Who feuds wielding this word, comes off sounding very sensible--as he or she expresses what is really only an opinion.  Animus is about heat and opinion; it is not a word for facts or reason.  It doesn't express something that can be measured rationally; for example, the advocates of its usage in same-sex arguments can't credibly say:  "the animus scale clearly reveals that this author falls somewhere between a hostile and a hater."  Animus has yet to be measured in individuals with any standardized method--let alone to be measured in a populace.  When it is, it will be measured using subjective standards.

In court, the animus assertion sounds like this:  the states "have given us no reason to think they have a 'reasonable basis' for forbidding same sex-marriage.....this suggests animus against same-sex marriage."  The courts have preferred to indict the masses for animus rather than acknowledge that our basis for moral judgment under the Constitution, including the notion of non-discrimination, is Judeo-Christian (ie. "do unto others as you would have them do unto you")--a basis which must finally yield up its place and authority in order to accommodate gay marriage for the 1%?

Isn't it curious that this highly variable, exceptionally sentimental word is expected to overturn laws that majorities made in many States--in our highest court?  By basing their judgment on this one wobbly word, will the Justices discover or devise some objective scale for weighing animus (ie. toward equal protection under law for same-sex couples) or will they reveal their animi (animuses) toward the People, their legislatures, the Constitution, the First Amendment, States rights, Judeo-Christian morality, and republican democracy?  These things would be rather a lot to cast on the ash heap for such a wobbly word--especially when the word might be best applied to the condemnation of a majoritarian sentiment.  Will the Supreme Court deem the People 'haters'?

Abraham Lincoln, Conspiracy Theorist (Continued)

Today, in an article entitled "At Supreme Court, Kicking the Tires on a Same-Sex Marriage Case Fit for History", the New York Times observed "The lawyers challenging the same-sex marriage bans (in many states) are confident they will win in the Supreme Court, which is why they have all urged the justices to hear their cases even though they had won in the lower (appeals) courts."  This is how the Times explained the inexplicable and generally unheard-of acts of appealing--en mass--verdicts deemed victories: it is simple glory-hounding by persons prescient about how the Supreme Court will rule!?!  Observe that these lawyers stand to gain--not just the notoriety of a historic verdict, as noted by the New York Times--but the standing of nobility in America for themselves and others of their ilk.  Imagine the importance of argumentation and presentation--their specialties--when laws become completely arbitrary and amoral.  This is precisely what national gay marriage would do: it would redefine law away from morality as we know it.  However moralizing the tenor of the arguments by its advocates, national gay marriage would make laws amoral and judgment immoral.  This would serve ambitious litigators:  when charisma is the only criterion in court, nothing will be outside the grasp of a good, licensed attorney.

I pity their gay clients.  Not because they found matrimonial bliss in spite of populist state laws.  But because they are being made to hazard their it anew for a runaway cause.  Their issue is no longer the concern of a mere 1-2%.

Their issue has become the foil of every gentile thrusting against God's objective moral code and against America's Judeo-Christian Constitution and legal system.  With this, they thrust viciously at the eyes and ears and mouth of legitimate justice.  Some human eyes are already dull; some ears are already missing; some mouths are already silenced.  Unchecked, these wicked strokes could blind the body politic, mute expression, and dumb truth; and thus, would foil freedom, faith, and hope--for everyone--eventually including those stabbing and slashing at the only real basis for law and justice.  Resist this national self-mutilation while you can still see and speak.  Eventually, if we let them "succeed", the only equality will be an equality of misery.  Unless they desist, they will discover that they brought their sword to a duel with God--that they brought their sword to a cataclysm.

God bless us with better sense than that of a swarm of fruit flies:  may we sense while we are still aloft (and not afloat) that vinegar, however presented, is not, after all, a fruit.

The Security of a Vain Imagination

Americans are afflicted with a certain malady common to hegemonies. The ancient Romans caught it. In fact, it was the seed of their demise. It appears in much of our self-help literature--a self-affirming, self-congratulatory, self-buoyancy that damns the torpedos of fate that can only afflict less enlightened peoples. This self-sufficient self-satisfaction is never rash nor abashed. Our assumptions are laced with it--assumptions about how to, what's important, and who's who. Some suggest that this is a strength of ours. I believe, if anything, it has reached the dimensions of a delusion. And daily, it is more delusional. We ask ourselves, "aren't we":

"Buoyant"—who have never really been fated to sink?
"Optimistic"--who have rarely hoped in vain?
"Settled" who have not been removed by conquest?
"Sensible" who haven't really experienced the senselessness of human barbarism?
"Pragmatic"--who haven’t known the exasperation of predator nor the desperation of prey?
"Resourceful"—whose resources have almost always sufficed and been sustainable?
"Enterprising"--whose returns have usually been predictable? 
"Enlightened"--who haven’t endured a long night of totalitarianism?

Of course, I hope that America can remain buoyant and never sink. But we see wilder waves now. And it may not be the fate that God Almighty grants us.

Perhaps as we war with words, mutiny, face existential threats of our own making, and scrap God, we might yet buoy and keep ourselves up with the ballast of our indomitable attitudes? Perhaps our concentrated, happy thoughts will mount a vigorous defense--while our military is dismantled and while the world burns around us? Perhaps if we were more monomaniacal about channeling the American Dream--if we believed more, doubted less, worked longer, spent less, saved more, strove harder for the secular, conformed our every conviction to it, and censored ourselves in favor of the Dream (isn't there yet a dearth of online advice about how we might do these things?)--our federal liabilities, totaling about $530,000 per household, would never come due and would be indefinitely deferred?

I do not hold with those who would afflict America for her hubris--those who would have her or make her abject. Nor do I sympathize with those who believe she was never exceptional--those who pejoratively call her "Merka" even as they are carried by her. These are blind guides and blind observers. They are blind to the protection, prosperity, and preservation of the Almighty.

But even as the bankruptcy of our choices and policy appears, as a nation, as individuals, we are in denial about how we got here. It isn't because we didn't rely on ourselves; it is because we didn't rely on God. It isn't because we lack outward certitude--that which makes for good "optics"; it is because we lack the inward fortitude of faith. It isn't because we didn't fault others for our failures; it is because we didn't find them in ourselves--and amend our ways. It isn't because we didn't have credible reasons to act or to omit actions; it is because we didn't love the truth. It isn't because we have lacked means; it is because we have valued possessions and power more than God, truth, right, and others. It isn't because we didn't have grievances; it is because we didn't seek to be reconciled to God and others. As we remain in denial that we are in demise, how can it be averted?

A group of fishermen once found themselves tossed by a tempest. As the gale shrieked, they knew their seamanship would not suffice--it could not save them. Wisely, they turned to the Master of Sea and Earth and Skies, Jesus Christ. We might do the same. Or not--and perish from the earth as a people.

A Schism Between Progressives

Reviewing recent literature about the shortfalls of elite education in America, in an article entitled "Becoming a Real Person", David Brooks of the New York Times observed "people in authority no longer feel compelled to define how they think moral, emotional and spiritual growth (progress) happens, beyond a few pablum words that no one could disagree with and a few vague references to community service. The reason they don’t is simple. They don’t think it’s their place, or.....they don’t think they know."  Education is lacking and especially in the moral sphere, according to Mr. Brooks.

So if "people in authority" don't think it is their place to define morality or don't think they know what is moral anymore, what does this say about their fitness to set alternative moral standards for society as Sam Harris, a New York Times best-selling author, prominent atheist, and neuroscientist, and others have argued they should?  To Mr. Harris, per his TED speech "Science can answer moral questions", it is "patently obvious, that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in the notions of human well being than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes.  We simply must converge on the answers that we give to the most important questions of human life.  And to do that, we have to admit that these questions have answers"--answers that science can now supply, according to Mr. Harris.  But why would Mr. Harris suggest we need to stamp out individual variability in our own species when it is the very basis of evolutionary biology?  To me, this is not the morality that one would infer from science.

There is a schism in modern progressivism.  But you wouldn't know it from watching mass media.  It is the chief impediment to their "progress".  Progressives have discovered that to destroy is not to create.  It is one thing to displace God.  But it is quite another to replace Him.  To replace His morality, to muster the authority He once wielded in society, to exercise power over life and death and freedom, to concentrate their control over scarce resources, progressives must make themselves gods.  In other words, if progressives would implement controls over what is existential to others (ie. health, the economy, the environment, births), they must make themselves god-like experts.  This requires certitude--certitude, not in an objective divine but in one's human self--fanatical certitude.  But what sort of gods will they be?  This question is the source of their schism.

Will they be stern gods--like the one many deride, the Old Testament God of Israel, who had His people drive and kill those who differed?  At least, that God is not a human and is, many allege, omniscient:  He is not the god of self, by self, and for self.  Perhaps it was the idolatry of human omniscience that made the people of the ancient Levant irreconcilable to God's people?  In America, how can we be reconciled if progressives will not tolerate active faith expressed by majorities in public policy?  Are they advocating extermination?  Is theirs a secular variant of radical Islam?  Do they consider Judeo-Christians to be infidels?  Thankfully, there is a schism between these progressives and other progressives.

Note that, for more than two millennia, our nation, under God, was not indifferent to moral questions nor intolerant of broad divergences.  Laws were generally executed with the moral certainty of Judeo-Christianity.  And the Constitution has not dictated convergence.  If anything, it has enabled the very opinions (ie. a new progressive theocracy) that now threaten its existence.

As they seek to be the source of existential allocations, if not stern gods, will progressives choose to be gods of reason--gods who will educate and lift others until all mankind embraces their enlightened views?  Of course, this assumes that everyone will eventually see their views as enlightened.  Even Israel's God has had difficulty there.  It also assumes that progressives can be patient--as patient as Israel's God who has over centuries mentored man--only to be ousted in modernity.  But their human mortality is a problem:  how does one inculcate a new conscience in a generation or two?  If it took miracles and millennia to form the old conscience, how can human reason inculcate a new one?  And if reason and reflection will not suffice, what sort of force and fanaticism must one resort to so as to inculcate a new human conscience?  Perhaps science has some promising drugs or medicine some promising therapies?  Oh, but we're back to the stern gods.

Thankfully, there are still progressives with less certitude than what is germane to a god--persons too human to determine what is dispensed to others--persons pansophical enough to see that the burnings at Seville, the gassings at Auschwitz, and China's Great Leap Forward (perhaps 30 million deaths) all involved convergence for 'the greater good'.  God bless them for their reticence to be god themselves.  I am hopeful that they can check the ambitions of others--as these seek to be the sole dispensary of what is existential to others.  Once existential allocations are concentrated, we will be at the mercy of the allocators and the tendency will be to a tyranny of one.

On Prepping

Are you prepared?  For every conceivable contingency?  Are you ready?  For every inconceivable contingency?  Would you survive a riot, war, nuclear disaster, fire, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, virus, comet, or solar storm?  Or live through a confluence of all of these events?  Are you prepared?!?!

It is insatiable--our striving for security.  Once our belly is full, we fill our shelves.  It will not suffice to provide for today.  We must lay up stores for tomorrows--exquisite tomorrows--for distant heirs.  Once we have insured against disability, we might insure ourselves against a pet’s death.  But there is no mass-market insurance for what is truly hazardous--things like divorce, mental illness, long-term un- and under-employment, or incarceration.  However mightily we strive, perfect security eludes us--because we are human.  Of this striving, I suppose I am guilty as any--because I am human.

To some degree, our striving is prudent—the conduct of a sentient and insecure being.  But, at some point, isn’t it absurd?  For example, why are the top 20% of Americans still striving for something that cannot make them secure--when they already control more than 80% of America’s net worth?  Can their wealth ensure them against a solar storm?  And isn’t this vast disparity in the distribution of wealth fraught with peril for both the possessed and the dispossessed--doesn’t it pit the fewer and richer against the more numerous and poorer?  And doesn’t arbitrary redistribution by government make the rich more stingy and the poor less contented?

What does our frenzied, American pursuit for possession (ie. prepping and now redistribution) say about our faith and trust in God?  Have we placed our trust in the creature--and not in the Creator?  Wouldn't this naturally detract from our faith and trust in God?  Perhaps we blame Him for the insecurity we have fueled?  Or have come to consider His conditions unsustainable—come to the conclusion of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor:  real faith is untenable and immaterial?  Perhaps, like the Inquisitor, some seek to correct God’s work, to give men bread first and then demand their abject obedience?

Jesus sought to prepare others for the future but He was no prepper.  His preparations involved faith in God, not substance.  He considered survival and security to be inferior to, subordinate to, and distractions from true salvation:  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).  He put faith first—even before fulfillment, even before preparations for the future:  “take no thought for the morrow”, He counseled.  Though He anticipated calamities, rather than warn His disciples to prepare for every contingency, he instructed them to “seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind…..For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things” (Luke 12:29-31).  He offered the Bread of Life to those who sought miraculous provision.  He warned the rich to willingly abase and not to exalt themselves “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:13-21); “go and sell that thou has, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven” (Matthew 19:21).  He counselled us all to “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you” (John 6:27).  When we are alarmed or hear alarms, it might be best not to go to fetch or pen the golden goose but to turn to the God of Israel and his manna—Jesus Christ.

A Riddle

It is the currency that revolutionaries, zealots, mutineers, and demagogues offer the masses.  It is that of which they deprive them:  it obstructs progress--for good or ill.  It is goad and hold for Satan's fold.  To fearful mortals, it is insatiable.

What it is?  Mortal security.

On Apostasy

Apostasy is the condition that prevails when men refuse faith and trust in God for other things. 

We are all apostate to a degree:  Jeremiah described men as “brutish” in knowledge (Jeremiah 10:14); Paul observed that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and are generally “ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” (Romans 10:3); John warned “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8); many of the faithful have denounced the wickedness, hatred, pride, vanity, foolishness and hardheartedness of men who seek peace and security where it cannot be found—in possessions, in sin, and in oppressions.

Faith has a history of fits and starts.  History shows that the general condition of humanity has been apostasy.  For example, faith in the God of Israel has been anything but common in most civilizations (ie. in Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and etc.) and most places (even today).  It was fragile even among the children of Israel.  Often, they chose idols over God.  They had epochs of unbelief, captivity, and dispersion; and they had eras of faith, emancipation, and reunion.  Even to God’s most trusted servants, faith has seemed, at times, tenuous.  For example, our New Testament portrait of Peter, the "rock"--a self-deprecating portrait preserved at Peter’s behest-- is one of a man who was generally bewildered by the words, will, and works of God, a man who was often rebuked by Jesus (“thou savorest not the things that be of God”--Matthew 16:21-23).  Nothing, it seems, has been more tenuous than truth about God.  Nothing has been less secure.  The hands of men have been too ambitious, too cruel, too weak, too self-serving, to hold the truth and oracles of God long.   In fact, apostasy has been so common, it may seem that this is how God wanted the world to be.  I don’t think that it reveals God’s will that men have only had that portion of God’s word that they were prepared for and willing to receive and keep.  To me, it reveals God’s great mercy.

That apostasy has been prevalent is no marvel, as Paul observed, because “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).  John the Revelator beheld a whore representing the dominion of wickedness over all the earth, and among all nations and people.

Paul anticipated that the truth would be persistently imperiled.  He exhorted believers to “be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.  Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:2-4).  Paul anticipated that churches would fall into apostasy; he anticipated a day when the son of perdition would show himself to be God even in the holiest place(s).

I am encouraged by the examples of Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:21-39).  As they worshipped God, in a conquered, abject country, captive to an apostate empire, in a temple overseen by apostates (Pharisees), God rewarded them for their faith:  they saw and recognized the Christ child and rejoiced in His coming.  We can have confidence--in perilous times, in a fallen world--that God will reward our sincere faith and love of truth.

The Macroprudential Motive

America's founders distrusted pure democracy.  They feared it would devolve into a tyranny of the majority whereby majorities would act as dictators over minorities and individuals.  For this reason, they established a constitutional republic, a representative democracy, buttressed by a Bill of individual Rights.

We often hear demagogues propose what is big-picture best: policies that will minimize pain for a majority or maximize gain for the many.  Their arguments are compelling.  They seem to contemplate what is best for the most.  They express sympathy for what seems to be mainstream.  Often, they are propounded by experts.  Of course, we should always consent to such macro-prudence?

For example, some might assert that to save or stimulate the economy more extreme and extra-legal interventionism is prudent as dictated by the Federal Reserve.  After all, isn't resuscitating our economy worth every and any expense?

What is arguably macro-prudential may be adverse to what is micro-existential.  If pure democracy might devolve into a tyranny of the majority, macroprudential policy might become a tyranny of enforced opinions dictated by "experts" to "save" the rest of us dumb blokes from ourselves and our individual rights.  Recognize that, in crisis, macroprudential arguments are used to overcome restraints (ie. constitutional restraints, legal restraints, moral restraints, restraints on government).  The pursuit of what is prudent from a macro-perspective is good as long as it is restrained by the rule of law.  When it isn't, it is just the prudence of a pack as sensed by the olfactory of a fallible, hungry alpha male.

Police State

According to an article entitled "FBI Agents Say Rivals Encroach on Their Turf" the Wall Street Journal reports, "In the past year, 61% of the FBI's field offices have run into 'severe' or 'moderate' conflicts with other federal law-enforcement agencies, according to an internal (FBI) survey."  State and local law-enforcement agencies are persuaded that other federal agencies "are attempting to.....usurp the FBI's role in ongoing investigations" according to an internal FBI memo.  And most FBI special agents have experienced "mission creep" as a result of encroachment by other federal police.  But the FBI survey reflects the alarm of agents only, not the concerns of FBI leadership, according to an agency spokesperson.

It is notable that overlapping police jurisdictions are a defining characteristic of totalitarianism.  Overlap makes authority arbitrary and bureaucratic.  It has the effect of atomizing (Hannah Arendt's word) humanity.  This makes a policeman no more secure in his authority, purpose, jurisdiction, employment, and safety, no more certain of his certitude in execution, than is a lay person in her identity or innocence.  Everything, (ie. authority, identity, security) is an arbitrary grant in a totalitarian state--and subject to arbitrary seizure.

The Anti-Diversity Agenda

While many gay rights advocates consider themselves champions of diversity, there are elements of anti-diversity to gay marriage.  One is biological.  The emerging science of behavioral epigenetics asserts that environment determines, in part, the psychology and behavior of future generations.  In other words, what you are biologically is determined, in part, by the events and experiences of your father’s and grandmother’s life.  Environment imprints our forefathers and foremothers, activating some of our genes and deemphasizing others.  This imprint from environment is passed to one’s progeny biologically.  Notably, children raised in same-sex marriages are reared by a single sex.  They lack the heterogeneous influence of both--very different--sexes in parenting.  Their parents are homogeneous—not just physically--but psychologically and behaviorally.  Confrontations, conciliations, and compromises between gender heterogeneous, independent individuals are not observed by these children at home.  This homogeneity of behavior and psychology at home, this lack of diversity in their environment will be expressed epigenetically in them.  Their children and grandchildren will inherit it.  It may be amplified in their future relationships—homogenizing the psychology and behavior of their children and grandchildren.

For good or ill, homogeneity will induce conformity and collectivism—perhaps unconsciously enforced by epigenetics.  And conformity and collectivism has risks.  Under this prospective regime, the individual might be as discernable to the human eye as is a seal lying supine amid a sea of barking sames.  Such colonies might be attuned in the collective to some dangers but will they be alert to the dangers of conformity and collectivism?  Or, will homogeneity eliminate the discernment and discrimination that defined and preserved our species?  Also, will compromises between truly heterogeneous ideas and individuals become impossible?  Or, will divergent psychology and behavior, bifurcated by identity and reinforced by epigenetics, irreconcilably divide and ultimately destroy society?  Without more time and information, to the general satisfaction, we mortals can’t say for certain.  But while we retain the consciousness and discretion to discern the risks inherent in the homogeneity of homosexual unions, before diversity is pared and paired away epigenetically—shouldn’t we exercise caution, investigate the effects of homogeneous pairing across generations, and openly debate the merits and demerits of what is a draconian, unprecedented, unpopular, and unscientific shift in social policy?

It is unfortunate that this reasoned thesis might incense some.  They may accuse the author of ‘hate speech’—denounce him as a ‘hater’—because he advocates caution, discretion, study, debate, and time.  They may seek to censor or silence him as they have others.  Or, levy new economic and social sanctions against him for his opinions.  And they may succeed—if so nefarious a thing can be termed success.

Remarkably, anti-diversity in the form of censorship has flourished in America:  opposition to gay marriage has not really had a hearing recent years in any mass media outlet—including outlets as avowedly conservative as Fox News (ie. consider the Craig James firing).  The silencing of dissent about gay marriage in America coincides with America’s plunge in terms of relative press freedom:  Reporters Without Borders has demoted the United States in its international press freedom index from a ranking of number 17 in 2002, the first year the index was produced, to number 46 in 2014—to a position between its new peers, Romania and Haiti.  Perhaps the censorship of opposition to gay marriage in America arose much as it has emerged in Italy:  the Italian press, which reports from an overwhelmingly Catholic country, has recently been enjoined by a European decree to portray total societal acceptance of and to gag all opposition to homosexual relations and unions.  For a reporter to contradict such censorious edicts from supranational sovereigns may be to sacrifice one’s standing and career in media—such edicts may be enough to cow content providers.  Apparently, one of the risks of the homogeneity of homosexual unions is not just manifest but is, in fact, realized—conformity in the form of coercive political correctness already chills free speech and stamps out diversity of opinion in the American and international media.

Moreover, an incapacity for compromise appears already in America in the scorched earth strategies of those who promote, as a minority, homogenous marriages.  For example, many of these partisans refuse to buy the products (ie. chicken at Chick-Fil-A) of their political opposition.  For example, observe how the promotion and continued employment of Mozilla’s eminently qualified co-founder, the creator of JavaScript, from Chief Technology Officer to Chief Executive Officer was contemporaneously undermined by Mozilla employees and a Mozilla-affiliated company, OK Cupid, because he made a contribution to support Proposition 8.  Observe the contemporaneous departures by members of the Mozilla Board after he was promoted.  Apparently, he was rejected as unfit to lead not because he once opposed gay marriage (even Harry Reid and Barack Obama did this) but because he would not renounce his beliefs and affirm gay marriage. 

An un-diverse incapacity for compromise also appears in federal workplace policies promulgated by the Justice Department—the arm of the executive charged with establishing justice in America.  While the Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any public Trust under the United States”, the Attorney General has promulgated workplace policies that assay one’s affirmation of alternative lifestyles.  To comply, managers: “DON’T judge or remain silent….. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval”; “Attend LBGT events sponsored by DOJ Pride”; “display a symbol” (ie. a DOJ Pride sticker).  The persons promulgating these policies are not content to censor others, they require a pledge of allegiance to LGBT lifestyles.  For many, this is unconscionable.  It would require a renunciation of their faith—as a test of their compliance with unconstitutional workplace policy.

An incapacity for compromise advances in our courts.  Observe how judges have, by fiat, recently overturned statutes and amendments defining marriage in many states—including conservative states—contrary to the popular will.  In rejecting the popular will, the judiciary does not appear to be deliberative—but desperate, inflammatory, and uncompromising. 

For example, consider how Wisconsin and Indiana were given a pre-verdict bench whipping by "conservative" Illinois judge Richard Posner as they sought to defend their populist constitution and laws.  He interrupted their arguments early and often to lecture them and to observe:  "You don't have any empirical or even conjectural basis for your law.....funny."  Does Mr. Posner have any empirical or even conjectural basis against the laws--is that why he is altogether dismissing populist laws--at the risk of inflaming the majorities (ie. 3.3 million Wisconsin voters) who passed the laws on some basis whether empirical or conjectural?  In his book "Reflections on Judging" Mr. Posner observes:   "in many cases judges can't have any confidence in the soundness of their decisions if they do not have empirical data concerning the likely consequences of deciding the case one way or another" (never mind the rule of law) but apparently Mr. Posner will make this decision based on conjecture only and needs no empirical data--because empirical data about same sex marriage is virtually non-existent.  Same sex households only made their debut in U.S. Census Bureau data in 2010 (in the American Community Survey estimates)--representing 1% of the population.  Questions such as those that follow about same sex households cannot be answered empirically with data.  What is the duration of a typical same-sex union?  What fraction of the $250,000 cost to rear a child is incurred by a same-sex household?  If it is much lower than the fraction incurred by an average household, does this economic disadvantage deter other Americans from child-bearing?  What is the typical level of educational attainment, crime rate, divorce and separation rate, suicide rate, unemployment rate, median income, savings rate, and tax rate among same-sex households and among households comprised of children raised by same-sex households?  At present, these questions cannot be answered with data.  Even if Mr. Posner, the most cited legal scholar in America, omits to consider whether law or justice will be coherent without the Judeo-Christian moral objectivity of America's founders, without empirical data to support "the soundness of (his) decision"--which data does not exist--Mr. Posner's opinion, to redefine marriage by overturning populist laws, must be based solely and hypocritically on conjecture.  It must be arbitrary and make laws arbitrary.
 

If heterogeneous speech and acts continue to be repressed in America by an uncompromising, censorious, anti-diversity minority, we might anticipate at any day now the establishment of that most homogeneous regime of all, totalitarianism--a regime in which all expression and all thought yield--a regime which sacrifices humanity and humans--to homogenous ideology.

This trend leaves many of us wondering, what is the paradigm of this anti-diversity minority?  We recognize that censorship and political persecution—even censorship and persecution of ‘bigots’--is un-American.  Alarm about this trend is increased by observing that one of the declared goals of the Communist party (in 1963) was to “present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as ‘normal, natural, and healthy’”—a goal this censorious minority supports.  We recall it was communism and its isms like Stalinism and Maoism which dictated that some individuals, identities, and ideas were dispensable, and so, dispensed of them.  We remain incredulous that this is their ideal only because once speech is subdued, once folks are just factors, can these fellow Americans really expect not to be an eventual offering on their own anti-diversity altar?

For more on this topic, see the post entitled "Abraham Lincoln, Conspiracy Theorist".

On Cults of Personality and Social Capital

Even among social conservatives, some suggest that there are persons who are so good, so noble, so virtuous, and so unselfish that laws ought not to bind them--that such persons ought to be above liability.  In some state, somewhere in America, there is an executive, so secure in the trust of administrators and legislators that he enjoys an exemption by law or execution from law and liability.  In some church, somewhere in America, there is a shepherd, so secure in the trust of his sheep that he need not fear to disregard the law and reap the consequences:  his sheep know that he observes a higher law.  Above the law, these persons might slander, defraud, coerce, and oppress others without legal consequence.  But they won’t, some assure us, even though they are, actually or effectively, lifted above the law, because of their perceived virtue.  And if they ever do, it will only be for the good of all--including those who have been slandered, defrauded, coerced, and oppressed by them.

While some persons may exhibit supreme goodness, unless they are supreme in every way—a virtual and virtuous dictator—is there any security in license for them or others--even in their virtue?  So long as they are subject to higher authority and subject to less virtuous cults of personality, might they not be coerced, by their superiors, to use their license for evil--unless they are willing to sacrifice everything that they value (ie. life, liberty, health, wealth, reputation, family, community, and etc.) for any virtuous principle at any time?  In other words, is there any integrity to virtue when it is released from liability and law but still under authority less virtuous?

An example will illustrate this problem.  Suppose there was a judge so goodly and wise and virtuous that his people made him king--setting him above the laws of man.  His word and person became the very law of the kingdom itself.  His picture adorned every building in the kingdom.  And the people rejoiced.  But time passed, and the kingdom was annexed by a greater kingdom.  A stronger king arose who was not without virtue, but almost.  This king was shrewd.  He knew of the esteem enjoyed by the lesser king because of his virtue.  So, he did not dethrone him.  Instead, he put his words and ideas in the lesser king's mouth.  In loyalty (?), the lesser king spoke them.  And the subjects obeyed them.  But in time, it appeared that the words and ideas of the stronger king were not loyal to the first kingdom and its people.  In fact, they divided the kingdom against itself.  This caused the virtuous king to mourn.  Out of virtue (?), he avoided conflict, secretly (!) snubbing his superior and any who took sides.  But his head was on fire and his heart was at war:  to preserve his virtue, he must, out of loyalty to his kingdom and people, sacrifice himself for virtuous principles; but to keep the people generally secure beneath his better influence (?), he must betray the principles of the first kingdom and its people.  Would he trade individual virtue and conscience for general peace and security?  He grieved:  "if only", he thought:  "if only, our king were subject to just laws; if only I were subject to just laws--and not lifted above them by the esteem of others for my unbounded virtue."

Once above the law (by policy or practice) but still subject to less virtuous others, such persons will face unconscionable choices:  for example, what level of lawlessness will they tolerate in their masters, in others, and in themselves?  Will their license as an arbiter become the means of lawless pardon or condemnation as they obey authority and/or expediency?  What lengths will they go to uphold an order for others that they themselves are above?  Will they, for example, put themselves at hazard for laws that apply arbitrarily to others only?  What virtuous principles must never be compromised to license (ie. the license of one's superior)?  In other words, what level of lawlessness would cause one, lifted above the law, on principle, to reject higher authority and to sacrifice life or liberty, health or wealth, reputation, family, or community?  Also, will license, even in virtuous practice, necessitate cascading lawlessness out of fear that one's subordinate license will come to be prosecuted by higher authority?  Will the virtuous, perhaps overwrought by the demand for charismatic leadership, perhaps out of love toward family and friends, confer their license on others?  Who, then, will remain liable to the law except the obscure?  Will the just and lawful interests of the least ever trump the license of one acting on behalf of the many, influenced by the most, under his license of virtue?  License exercised within but acting outside a rule of law is deceit.  It is antithetical to integrity and to virtue.  When it lacks sovereignty, doesn't the license of virtue become just a wicked and corruptible law unto itself?

Anti-Semitism as Strategy

The Holocaust, the extermination of six million Jews and others, manifests how specious were claims, by the Nazis, of Jewish domination in pre-war German society.  If the Jews dominated, how did the Anti-Semitic Nazis rise meteorically—almost without opposition?

While some deny it even occurred, many have sought to understand this enigma of evil, the Holocaust.  After all, to understand it may be to avert future atrocities.  So, many ask:  how is it possible that such overt evil ever came into existence?!?

Often, this search for understanding pursues evidence of provocations—possible provocations by Jews from Germany's past or from Hitler's early life.  For example, to understand the Holocaust, some point to parts the Jews had in German politics (ie. communist revolution).  Others point to parts Jews played in Hitler's life--so as to identify possible provocations.  But while historic provocations may help us understand pre-war prejudices against Judaism, they cannot explain or excuse the enigma of Nazi atrocities.

Some blame the Holocaust on religion.  Hitler, they insist, was a Christian; and his avowals attest it!  They would have us take the Fuhrer at his word—spoken by a delusional megalomaniac to manipulate a Christian populace.  Efforts are afoot to revise Nazi history:  some seek to delete or discredit the many shockingly godless, atheistic, Social Darwinist statements once attributed to Hitler even as revisionists seek to conflate National Socialism and Christianity.  If Hitler can be connected to Christianity, atheist theories are vindicated:  the enigma of evil, the Holocaust, is explained—this conflict, like all others, is, at heart, religious; and outlawing religion, man might have peace.  While some might construe Hitler’s words to be a Christian’s; none can construe his works to be a Christian’s.  Christianity concerns itself with means; but Nazism never did.  It is hard to imagine anything more woeful than the fruits of Nazism--those gassed and gaping Jews.  And by their fruits, we know them.  No, National Socialism was not Christian; it was applied Social Darwinism: it was evolution engineered by the state—eugenics vulgarized, collectivized, fanaticized, and militarized.

Some have characterized Anti-Semitism as element of Nazism only—as an extreme, fringe element that was not elemental to Nazism.  But that was not Hitler’s view.  And it was not his policy.  He considered Anti-Semitism--not just an element of--but elemental to National Socialism.  It was integral.  It was not a tactic:  it was key strategy for National Socialism.

Remember, the Nazis sought to transform Germany.  They would usher in a millennium of Germanic governance—a Third Reich, the Reich of a Thousand Years.  It was their burden to conform the past and future to their world view—to make themselves heirs of the Holy Roman Empire and champions of a Third Reich.  Because Judaism offered an alternate, competing, compelling, ancient and future world view, the scapegoating of Jews was strategic for Nazis.  It eliminated an alternative world view.  And it cowed many Christians.

The Frowny Flappy Birds of U.S. Foreign Policy

Anymore, it seems like American foreign policy is a video game. In the media, it looks virtual; it seems like an online sport with scores (ie. 300 in Ukraine). And it is about as consequential to polls. 

Sometimes, we look like Flappy Bird. Our delegates dodge swelling convulsions in foreign countries--flapping over, under, and around them with frowning faces. Their faces seem to say the mayhem is kept down by their frenetic frowning and dodging. Perhaps the 'game' manual they opt to reference contains instructions like these: "use only three of the controls to win--the arrows to evade, the grimace button, and the gorilla grimace button--use the gorilla grimace button only for extraordinary emergencies". But is the object of this 'game' to frown and dodge? Who is actually at the controls? Is this video game something we can just turn off and put away like a teen when we tire of it or when we get 'poned shamefully for confining ourselves to only three controls (among many) and keeping one hand tied behind our back? If we do, will its mayhem land in our living rooms and its gore spatter the walls of our homes?

Law-ful-less-ness

God's law is love.  In fact, as John, the Revelator, noted, God is love.  The earthly throne of Jehovah, the throne from which he judged the children of Israel was the 'mercy seat'.  It was perched on the ark of the covenant which enclosed Israel's law (the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone).  This symbolized God's judgment:  law is less than love toward God and man.

Often, men stumble in judgment as Micah observed (Micah 6:6-15):  "O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"  Micah was outraged that judges in Israel executed the law without love toward God and man--using "wicked balances" and "deceitful weights"--respecting persons and not fearing God.  Then, as now, laws were executed without the priority and perspective that only love of God and man brings.  He denounced elevated exactions under human law:  "thousands of rams..... rivers of oil, my firstborn for my transgression".  Micah worried:  to expect men to do more than what is just, merciful, and humble toward God might be too much--they might muddle love and law.

Love of God and man is what Jesus embodied.  For omitting vain observances, for committing acts of love arguably prohibited by law, for chastening others out of love, Jesus was arrested, condemned, and crucified.

So began a historic tug-of-war between love and law.  Consider another example:  legalism deceived Paul.  And it later defied his preaching.  That tension persists:  loveless legalism recurs today.

Laws and judgment are honest and simple when they are based on love of God and man.  They don't need volumes of legalese nor expert interpretations and arguments--the least and the layman understands them; they are applied unequivocally to everyone: no one is above or beneath the law.  Legal priorities and perspectives are ordered by love of God and man.  Love confirms the moral authority of the judge, legislator, and executor.  Even the censured are elevated by such laws.  In short, where charity is the law, there is security and stability.

In contrast, unless it is founded on love of God and man, human law oppresses.  It makes some men the conquest of others.  Those that lack love resort to legalism to exalt themselves and to abase others.  Multiplying and magnifying commandments in minutiae, like Pharisees, they make themselves a law which others can't know or keep--preferring certain outward performances to uncertain inward faith and love--preferring substance and social standing to the insecurity of seeking God's will.  With a corner on law and lawyers, they condone (ie. for profit) or condemn and divide others at will.  As the law itself, they acknowledge no interpretations of law but their own.  Their law-ful-less-ness seeks security for self even as it keeps others insecure.  This then is their doctrine and law: to be alone established in the earth; to be alone exalted everywhere.  Ultimately, the dark edicts of men eclipse the light of God's love.  Men's hearts fail; love wanes and waxes cold.  Man, following such law-ful-less-ness, deserts God's love in favor of secular security and becomes apostate.

Then, the wicked rule; but God is not mocked:  out of love, he defers judgment--granting men the consolation they choose.  Some crave secular security however fleeting, however licentious, and however hazardous to one's soul; others put their faith in God's love, peace, and security, however tenuous it may seem to some.  Ultimately, men will reap the fruit that they have sown.  Thorns will bear thorns.  And vineyards will bear grapes.  Without love and without God, human laws and commandments are just snares both to the trappers and to those trapped by them.  They condemn the persons they judge uncharitably (and therefore unjustly) and condemn the judge, legislator, and executor for their lack of love.  The people lose their respect for law when it respects persons.  Without the priority and perspective only love can lend, authority is made contemptible--and must rely on cults of personality, travesties, and surveillance to maintain order.  Eventually, legalism--law, without love of God and man--invites fearful insecurity for all.  Unchecked, law-ful-less-ness will consume all secular security.  And all but the poor and meek, those who put their trust in God, will be left without consolation.

Without love of God and man, fear and compulsion prevails.  Fearful and insecure because they deny God and love and distrust others, the law-ful-less consult the Oracles of technology (unconstitutionally and uncharitably) to peer in upon others, to ascertain the color of their thoughts, to discover disagreeable propensities that might be prosecuted or retroactively outlawed for arrests and convictions, to stamp out and counter discouraging and dissenting words before they are spoken, and etc.  Ironically, this acute judgment judges them.  It leaves them without consolation even in the kingdom they make to themselves.  Love and truth rots in them.  What they are becoming, treacherous and barbarous misanthropists, is what they see in surround and what they produce by contact.  Their own madness descends upon them:  treacherous, they cannot trust (ie. in truth), barbarous, they know no sympathy (ie. for self); without trust and sympathy, because they are human, they can have no emotional security.  So they seek physical security in cynical community, in perishable accumulations, in sleepless, ubiquitous surveillance, and in arms.  But security defies them:  human, they are incapable of insuring their own unassailable security--and daily security seems slighter to them.  For their continuing vulnerability, for His concept of and conditions on security, they resent God and begrudge the faithful.  This unholy social cycle spins.  And security is daily more elusive because of the treachery, barbarism, and inequality introduced by the law-ful-less into their own kingdom.  Ultimately, the means will be the end:  the cycle will end with those who set it in motion--when they let the love of God and man back into their laws and lives or when treachery and barbarism cease to respect persons.

An Invitation To Invasion

In America, we see boarders where there were once borders.  And what lacks a border, cannot be a nation for long.

Also, in what other 'humanitarian crisis' arising from conflict, have we seen children--many children unaccompanied by adults--flee across a border for safety?  For example, who occupies the refugee camps in Iraq and Turkey?  Only children?  No, in crises, families flee.  Parents don't abandon children en mass except to ensure them amelioration, assured of their safety and prosperity.  Would you abandon your children to America's care--after so many broken assurances to them by American leaders?  The parents of our boarders at the borders must have more faith in America than you or I do or must expect more actual fulfillment from America's leaders--as illegal aliens.

Borders are about national security:  an open border is an invitation to invasion.

Chicken Little's Great Big Thermostat in the Sky

Over a century, the earth’s temperature may have risen by one to two degrees Fahrenheit; and, it is possible that humans are culpable; but from the rhetoric of climate change alarmists one might conclude that the world is on fire and that the fire is an arson ignited by American humans against their host, earth. By contrast, weren't Chicken Little's claims sedate?

These alarmists spend most of their time stoking hysteria ("the consequences will be terrible if we don't take quick action") and excoriating their opponents as "flat-earthers", "deniers", and "anti-intellectuals" spewing "venom" and "sheer rage". Maybe they consider it disclosure and debate to just darkle populist, even institutional opposition like Congress, (ie. preposterously, as believers that the moon is cheese)? Why all this drama, mama? Are they scaring because they are caring?

If only we could calm them, if only they would hush their hysteria just enough for a reasoned discourse they might discover the 'nuts' that inform some of their opinions.

First, why are these alarmists so negative about climate change? I thought they were all about change. Remember the rain forest? Rising levels of carbon have been and will be a boon to plants according to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate, citing 3,586 studies: “Most plants will display enhanced rates of photosynthesis and biomass production as the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration rises”—even anthropogenically. Aren’t plants green? So, this is a reason for alarm: the spruce tree in one’s own landscape may become a giant sequoia? It seems like climate change activists are looking at the glass half empty. Maybe, instead, it is half-full: will melting ice caps / rising oceans be adverse to endangered whales? According to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate, “Multiple studies from multiple ocean regions confirm ocean productivity tends to increase with temperature…..Subjects of this research include phytoplankton (whale food) and macroalgae, corals, crustaceans, and fish.”  Hurrah for the whales!?

In resisting change, which may be demonstrably good for plants and animals, are climate change activists being anthropocentric chauvinists—discriminating against plants and animals and in favor of their own species? So, whose environment concerns environmentalism, hypocrite? Would you speak for the Earth and all its life? While some climate scarers are hypocrites, I think it is likely that most are sincere but misinformed. ‘Consensus’ and catastrophism has them denying the prospective benefits of change—even to humanity. And even if climate change is as adverse to humans as alarmists assert, won’t humans adapt? Maybe climate change will enhance our evolutionary biology? Perhaps they have never seen that budget-buster movie, Waterworld?  Why won't they focus on the positive? And be calm? And defer to a deliberative approach? 

Second, climate scientists have been so engrossed in discerning a change to global temperatures, in refining what were unreliable models of climate change, and in constructing consensus publications that even the most panicked among them have yet to make specific, sequenced policy prescriptions. Instead, a recent report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program which pooled resources from many federal agencies including NASA, (the once National Aeronautics and Space Administration--retooling as the National Atmospheric Science Administration?) focuses on simulating catastrophes. It draws tangents between future catastrophes and past events without disclosing probabilities and correlations. It describes future black swan events including floods, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and food shortages in detail by U.S. region. This approach makes cataclysm seem close to home.  What the report lacks is specific, sequenced prescriptions about how society might avert the simulated catastrophes. But if its authors are panicked about our prospects without climate controls, why would they omit these? Especially when the report asserted that: "response activities are necessary to limit the magnitude and impacts of global climate change on the United States". What response activities “are necessary”?  They won't say.  This they defer to a prospective Climate Controller in Chief.

Have they omitted their prescriptions because there is no consensus among them as to what response activities will save us from the dire consequences they simulate? Doesn't this say something about how ingenuous they are about their fire alarms--if they won't immediately identify the emergency exits they see and supply us with their prospective extinguishers? Doesn't it also say something about how efficacious they consider their evacuation plans and extinguishers? Would they have all of creation put its blind trust in a single, human, lay Climate Controller in Chief?

Third, recognize that this alarmist approach creates a climate of crisis in America that is adverse to the rule of law. Is "quick action" on climate change--like the new executive edicts and the new EPA regulations--legal or Constitutional? Do they acknowledge the sovereignty of the rule of law? Will Congress or the Supreme Court consider and check these executive, federal, and bureaucratic histrionics? Or will we, like Chicken Little in tow, become fox food?

Fourth, our ability to measure, let alone to hindcast or to forecast, climate change is nascent. Consider this:  how reliable were weather instruments a century ago? How robust (ie. as to frequency) were thermometer readings a century ago? How subject were these readings to human errors (ie. someone slept in)? How unbiased was the choice as to where measuring instruments were placed when data couldn't be retrieved wirelessly? In other words, what inferences can one make about how global surface temperatures have changed from intermittent data collected at sparse points on the globe as recorded in private journals a century ago--let alone how oceanic or atmospheric temperatures have changed? And what assumptions or adjustments are necessary to relate those scant measures with the more robust readings available today--and thus to form a time series? A time lapse map showing the counts and placements of human instrumentation employed in measuring climate change data would reveal how tenuous are any take aways as yet. Recognize that robust climate change measurement is just decades old. And human hindcasts and forecasts are much younger.

Given the data limitations, it is entirely possible that global warming as measured has much to do with environmental changes only at the points where weather instrumentation was placed. Of course, New York City and London have changed and were cooler when they had pastures--green pastures where blacktop and buildings now stand. Climate science has not adjusted its data for urban heat islands as noted by Dr. Roy Spencer. And adjustments would be assumptive--and not exactly scientific.

Somewhere, perhaps a civilization more advanced is chuckling unsympathetically: here is a curious life-form, the human, still uncertain of its own consciousness and comprehension; perceiving progress (ie. science) even in nullifying entropy (its own concept)--as discerned by its biased anatomy using tools, references, and elements motive in nearby space; presuming, to make inferences from the near past (decades) reliant on the most minute changes to its heat measures (a degree) to simulate centuries of cataclysms to be averted; presuming to differentiate cause from effect and help from harm to its host while assuming its tenancy is healthy to Earth; presuming to sustain its comparatively superannuated satellite by its fledgling, but now conscious (?) acts or omissions; presuming to check itself in favor of other life-forms; presuming, on this basis, to enforce regulation of existential emissions against its own kind. Is this what 'science' saw in the lemmings? Meanwhile, on Earth, this callous exercise might be as harmless as a game of billiards played "on a cloth untrue, with a twisted cue, and elliptical billiard balls"--if it didn't involve all of our lives and livelihoods.

Of course, true conservatives acknowledge climate change. Global warming is described in the Bible:  "For behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts.....But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.....And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet". True progressives, true conservatives don't consider this reference to global warming to be a cause for panic any more than we consider current climate scare tactics to be a cause for panic. We trust the Creator.  How many comets, asteroids, and satellites, in this solar system, have never collided with the earth? How many calamities have never culminated here? Elevated, erroneous observations of science and edicts by our leaders are just a precursor to Biblical global warming. To avert the adversity of this inevitable, imminent climate change, one needs only personal change: to be humble, to cease to do wickedly, and to trust God. Neither science, nor authority, nor crisis should supplant our trust in God. And it would be catastrophic to render unto Caesar that which was made in the image of God: if we trust God, we will not be reconciled to having our God-given breaths taxed by men, to having the air we exhale regulated by government, to giving custody of our bodies to a state--any more than we will be reconciled to erecting a man-made, high-tech, Babel-like tower to 'heaven'. Some may consider our dissent intolerable discord. We consider it concord with the will of God--trusting that those who foment false crises, who burn the truth, who burn the Constitution, and who burn believers, will, in God's good time, be burned--eternally.

D-Day Today

"And there was a war in heaven.....and the dragon fought and his angels.  And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.  And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.....Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.  Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea!  for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time (Revelation 12:7-13)."

A war that the Eternal Father did not avert, in a place where peace eternally purls, rages on.  From John we learn, it is waged no more in heaven but continues on earth.  This wider war was not won at Normandy.  The hostilities did not end at Yorktown, or Appomattox, or on V-E Day, or with the close of the Cold War.  No union or league of nations has preserved a peace.  More impermanent, more unsustainable is peace to this war than it has been in the Middle East.

James Joyce once asked, with all this world's war-weary:  "Are you not weary of ardent ways?"  Many, like John Lennon, suggest we should surrender to a certain peace and brotherhood:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Many suggest that we should surrender our ideals--that the impediments to peace are aspirations for eternal life and inhibitions about eternal damnation or, in other words, are religious.  These theorists often assert that religion is the cause of conflicts--as if the Jews brought on the Holocaust by their beliefs.  Put aside God-ward aspirations that divide, and lay aside arms, they assure us, and we will have peace on some sustainable terms--theirs (or their Father's below?).  They assure us that love or peace, not human or terrestrial or galactic domination, is their acme aspiration--and should be ascendant over our eternal aspirations.

But if God did not preserve peace in heaven, how will we preserve it here?  If the contest of opinions was worthy of warfare in heaven, should we disarm and seek détente on terms dictated by mortal deceivers and convenient deceptions?  Jesus sent not "peace" but a "sword" (Matthew 10:34-36).  This original civil war pits one against himself:  "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit" (Galatians 5:17).  This war within bursts outward:  "From whence come wars and fightings among you?  come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" (James 4:1).  Failing to overcome us, our enemy seeks hostages among those who are dear to us.  In this way, one may be pitted against his own:  "a man's foes shall be they of his own household" (Matthew 10:34-36).

Our adversary informed Sun Tzu's strategies.  He would never declare war when peace and 'normalcy' disarms the complacent majority.  Instead, he recruits turncoats at the top--executives, administrators, judges, legislators, academics, and influencers in media--people who turn laws, institutions, bureaucracies, and media against God, people who dismiss even reasoned dissent as 'conspiracy theories' from 'anti-intellectuals' and 'haters'.  Their Father below will not risk bullets when he already controls most ballots, federal benches, blogs, and big screens.  Like Sun Tzu, his strategy puts victory before violence.  But this is his endgame--violence--even against his adherents.  So revolting are his intents that they must be kept from daylight.  His thralls (ie. some religious thralls) use insinuations, secrets, darkness, dossiers, lies, libels, mobs, terror, vigilantism, and violence.  He wants us to affirm his 'altruistic' plan before we know what it is:  fetters and fear for everyone.

Thoreau observed that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"--perhaps like homesteaders in a holocaust.  Always, the ignorant and timorous deny the desperate conflict around them with inanities like "shit happens".  But to lay aside arms is to become a casualty.  To affirm every act and every actor in this conflict is to inflict casualties (ie. to right and truth and innocence and innocents), to kill, without a cause.  The hot battles happen in a fog, at the exposed flank--between those who recognize the momentous stakes.  Usually, right appears outnumbered and outgunned (ie. at Calvary).  This persuades many that might makes right and that truth and faith cannot prevail--let alone endure.

Recognize that peace and brotherly love are ideals, but apparently they aren't, according to the word of God, paramount.  The first commandment, Jesus taught, is to love God with all our heart.  To love God is to love good--He is goodness itself.  When some were estranged from Him--that is from goodness--our Good Father did not compel reconciliation, peace, fraternity, or love (ie. of Him) as heavenly brothers took up arms.  He respected right and righteousness, truth and freedom, and his children so much that arms were admitted into heaven.

As fallible, mortal combatants, we overcome, we triumph, in this mortal combat, "by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus Christ), and by the word of (our) testimony" that Jesus is Savior.  He will prevail again.  The time is short.  At the front, there are perils of every nature.  Will you join this original and final battle?  Those who conquer will "love not their lives unto the death" (Revelation 12:7-13) and will "lose their lives".  And finally gain eternal life and real peace through Jesus Christ.

The Bigger They Are.....

Adolf Hitler knew something about fabrication. His gift for fiction enabled his industrialization of human extermination--his application of machine methods to mass murder. Aside from liquidation lines and devices, the 'machines' he worked through were other human beings whose consciences he coopted and ultimately corrupted with lies. He once described his best practices: "A definite factor in getting a lie believed is the size of the lie. The broad mass of the people, in the simplicity of their hearts, more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one." He understood that crowds are no check on fiction. He knew that community often coopts one into a perverse conformity.

The size of a lie has to do with the numbers of persons who adhere to and espouse it wittingly or not. Big lies enjoy widespread and frequent repetition and affirmation. Big lies depend on complicity in media: all information is politicized; and propaganda supplants truth.  Big lies are institutionalized:  in the economy, in government, in public policy, in courts, in schools, in universities, in corporations, in hospitals, and etc. In this way, big lies achieve a perverse integrity that envelopes the individual.

This integrity, always tenuous as to truth, is threatened by individual expression. To maintain its 'integrity', it must constrain individual conscience whether by fear or force. Individual expression that is not affirmative is deemed malignant. Only expression that is affirmative has an audience. For the masses, expression is fixed (ie. by fear) on soothing, self-centered, and benign subjects like peace, joy, happiness, love, hope, health, work, personal management, sports, business management, unity, camaraderie, friendship, and fashion. Note that truth, investigation, and dissension are taboo. Big lies portray big questions as solved and settled. Digressions are cast as degenerate, unpopular, hyperbolic, and anachronistic.

Gradually, by gain or pain, every institution and every individual is made an accomplice--endorsing and enforcing the big lie. And vigilantism ensues--as it did on Kristallnacht. To attest their allegiance, to settle a score, to aggrandize self, mobs destroy the livelihoods, properties, and reputations of others to uphold big lies. The mobs multiply. They become institutions. And extermination ensues.

Can't we, Americans, rest assured that big lies only prevailed only elsewhen and elsewhere? Surely, suggestions to the contrary are hyperbolic? For example, let's not question whether the sciences (ie. 'settled', expert, and authoritative economic and environmental science) are superior to the rule of law. How could economic stagnation have anything to do with moral uncertainty in the execution of laws? Would it be anachronistic to inquire: can moral reason, behavior, rights, and justice prevail in a society that rejects morality? Wouldn't it be downright degenerate to ask: are Christians currently being classified as a race of 'haters' who ought not to appear in the public square, to vote, to speak, to lead? Please, let's stay our conversation on what's soothing, self-centered, and benign. By the way, how many vegetables and calories did you eat today? Do you know who friended you on Facebook?

James Madison

According to James Madison, one of the foremost of the founders, "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."

Is he impeachable if he is the first black to hold the office?  Is he impeachable if his political party controls the Senate?  Specifically, is there any principle that has more import than politics?

All Service is Pure and Pristine?

No, service is not incontrovertible, indubitable, unimpeachable goodness.  The Nazis and Soviets extolled service.  Energetic, anxious, efficient service was emphasized by these totalitarians.  They insisted on action, on intervention for 'good', unhampered by thought or conscience.  Their focus was on results--quantifiable, measurable, efficient, timely results.  Service enabled their control of the populace:  it channeled all human endeavor into strictly sanctioned activities; it overcame centrifugal forces with centripetal exertions controlled from the center; it coerced individuals to cast off their conscience in favor of communal conformity.

Under totalitarianism, divisions of service emanate from authorities and experts--not from one's individual conscience.  Authorities enunciate what is best for the individual, for the people, for the party, for the economy, for the environment, for God.  Of course, in this simplistic state, these superlatives always harmonize, however oppressively.  And service and sacrifice are always enjoined in the most superlative terms.

Hannah Arendt compared totalitarianism to an onion.  Totalitarian societies have layers, she argued.  The onion skin is representative of the populace that is marginalized because their ideas and exertions are peripheral to those of the party (ie. dissidents, intellectuals, those who entertain alternate ideologies).  Intermediate layers are characterized by an increasing commitment to the party paradigm.  At the center of the onion are its most zealous, insulated, and isolated servants who look with severity, cynicism, and contempt upon all of those outside this inner circle.  To eliminate the threat of competing ideas and individuals, they use all of the technology and treasure derived from the unthinking devotion of their adherents.

Under totalitarianism, service isn't good or even neutral.  It is political compulsion only.  In fact, nothing is neutral and everything, including service and sport, becomes political as the Nazis explained: "Non-political sport, so-called neutral sport, is unthinkable."  At their acme, party politics subvert and supplant even religion.

Compulsion is the contrary of morality because it destroys individual conscience.  To be pure and pristine, service must issue from the individual.  It must be an act of free will.  It has as many forms as there are persons.  Doing well is good--especially if one means well.  But only if one is not compelled to do well.  What derives from a demand or a dictum cannot be altruism.  Charity isn't charitable when it offers others capital it has confiscated.  Alms-giving from appropriations isn't altruistic.   Service, unhampered by thought, conscience, or humility, can be worse than benign.  Notably, Hitler considered himself an "instrument of Providence."

Persons who exclaim "we are God's hands" must be made to see the limitations of their proxy for God in the lives of others.  He is not our dependent; we are His.  Beneficence is matter of duty to God.  And duty is no platform for plaudits.  Unrestrained intercession for God is predicated on a tenuous, presumptive, condescending, and corruptible surrogacy.  Altruism can be blind to its own hypocrisy.  Benevolence may be deaf to the true interests of the people.  Sometimes, philanthropy intervenes when it ought to abstain--enforcing dependency when it ought to encourage independence.  Perversely, it may condition charity on servile complaisance--keeping a brother in bondage to his keeper.  Often, the social conscience expresses only affirmation and amity when it ought to express outrage.  Frequently, when service is bulk it acts only on stereotypes--eclipsing identity and individuality.  Collective charity, charity incorporated, lacks the integrity of individual conscience (see Arrow's impossibility theorem).  Sometimes, service would put the intents of men above the interests of God and the second commandment ahead of the first.  Babel would have us correct God's work--would have us make straight what He made crooked (Ecclesiastes 7:13)--would have us offer salvation on simpler, more mortal terms.  The compulsion, deceit, and violence we observe today do not emanate from God's hands.

Beware of demagogues who presume to effect the welfare of others--to their own advancement and accolades.  Beware of those who corrupt charity, taking credit for activities capitalized by confiscations from others.

Saturation in service is no good substitute for individual conscience. Thoreau once asked, as we should, "why has every man a conscience"?

While some may begrudge it, intellectuals and dissidents render an invaluable service to free society:  they defend the ideals that keep service pure--even if by purgative.  Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valiance.