A friend of mine sent me this video. I recommend you watch it, not because it's great or insightful, but because it's the only way my analysis will make any sense.
I'll be the first to admit it's a catchy tune, and if the situation it depicts is accurate, I won't even argue that it's not outrageous, but probably not for the reasons that immediately pop to mind.
States maintain their power quite often by pitting different factions of the population against each other. They pit rich against poor, black against white, etc. In this video, the two groups pitted against each other are the 'real Brits', and those pesky Muslim foreigners who, according to the video, show up in mass in order to sponge off of the real Brits, and that makes them thieves. I have no doubt that British politicians regularly claim to be riding in on legislative white horses to save the day and to rescue us from the barbarians at the gate. That is, if they are anything like their American counterparts.
My own thoughts on immigration in general are..complicated, and not a rabbit worth chasing at this point, but it is interesting to me how this issue is used as a club and a wedge to divide people into 'us' and 'them'. It's also yet another way to take money from one group of people and give it to another group of people (while claiming to be against them) while securing their future political loyalty. As the old saying goes, the best way to buy votes is with other people's money.
No one, regardless of where you were born or when you arrived at this particular piece of dirt, has the right to live at the expense of anyone else. For a natural born American to live on the dole is just as much an act of thievery as a Rio-Grande-fording Mexican. You didn't earn a free ride by getting here, and you didn't earn a free ride by being born here. One is not any more horrific than the other, but one certainly seems to stir the passions more than the other. I find that very interesting.
I'm not sure what the hard numbers are, or what the laws are, but I would be willing to wager that there are far more 'Americans' receiving benefits than any 'foreign rabble' Why such selective outrage? Why aren't we assembling in mass and tearing the government housing complexes apart brick by brick?
Most 'coservatives' enjoy utter hypocrisy on this topic and a philosophical blind spot the size of an aircraft carrier. I work with a fellow, that, no matter what issue you start discussing, he eventually drags it back to illegal immigration, which he is convinced is Public Threat #1. We’ve discussed this at length for years now, and he becomes very irate and incapable of rational thought. I started one particular discussion with asking him whether or not the government has any right to dictate who you associate with. He of course said no. I asked him should the government be able to tell me who I can have on my property? No. Who I can hire? Of course not. I said “Even if they are illegal aliens?” The top of his head almost popped off.
I proposed a solution to him. I said we should destroy utterly the welfare state. No freebies for anybody. If we do that, I posed to him, and we threw open the borders, who would show up? He grudgingly admitted that those that wanted to work would be our new wave of immigrants. I really thought I had made some headway, but then he lapsed into a xenophobic rant about how ‘they’ won’t learn the language and ‘they’ want to change our culture.
This blind spot , in my estimation, runs parallel to the 'anti-terrorism ' crowd. Any solution the state wants to impose, no matter how draconian is better than the alternative, in which we will be held helpless and our treasure laid bare before the encroachment of 'them', whoever the 'them' happens to be at the moment. For some historical perspective on this, do a little research and read the things written about the Irish immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century. It is no small irony that their descendants will cry out from the housetops about how 'they' are taking 'our' jobs.
As usual in this blog, if you want some real gems of intellectual wordsmithing, you'll have to go elsewhere.To this end, I recommend Mrs. Becky Akers, who despite her fiery grammatical invectives still is my nominee for the Nicest Person Ever. Enjoy.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
The Experts Oughta Be Committed
I am currently making my way through an audio book entitled "Ten Days in a Madhouse" by Nelly Bly, which was published in book form in 1887. In it, the journalist author feigns madness in order to have herself committed to a mental institution so that she may investigate the goings-on from the inside. This took no small measure of bravery as she entered with no clear plan as to how to get herself released. She writes of her plan to "once within the walls of the asylum to find out and describe its inside workings, which are always, so effectually hidden by white-capped nurses, as well as by bolts and bars, from the knowledge of the public."
What follows is a sad account of her experiences under the care of 'experts'. Starvation and abuse were common tools of the trade, with a healthy dose of humiliation. The focus was to force the patient to conform to someone else's idea of what 'cured' looked like. The doctors and nurses enjoyed almost complete power over someone in their care because after all they were the experts. Men who had gone to school for years and had learned the very best their witch-doctory had to offer claimed that seclusion from family, and electro-shock therapy were 'extremely helpful and effective'. They defended these practices, citing studies and cases where peopel had been 'cured' ,at least according to them. The final determiner as to whether or not you were allowed to resume being a human being was a panel of people that were guessing as to whether or not there was anything wrong with you. Not much has changed.
To the modern eye (and indeed even to Nelly) the practices seem cruel, and barbaric with a diagnosis procedure based almost entirely on guesswork. Nelly Bly, who was hardly a professional actress, managed to fool several police officers, a judge and several doctors, and convince them that she was out of her head. The reason this was so simple is that , then, as now, there is no scientific medical test you can perform to establish sanity or prove it's lack thereof. There is no blood test to establish if you have any syndrome or affliction. All she had to do was act a bit distracted, a bit distant, obsess over something more than some doctor thought was appropriate and she was deemed insane. Then, as now, people with initials and degrees after their names sit as judge, jury and executioner as to your mental stability, with little appeal available.
Just as in Bly's day, for the sham of the mental health industry to be able to carry on, its inner workings must be hidden from the public. In Bly's day, as in now, the barbarities are still cloaked by professional sounding jargon and men in white coats with degrees who rule from on high, doling out their edicts and judgements upon the great unwashed masses virtually unchallenged. The courts look to these 'professionals' and defer to their wisdom when deciding whether or not your child should be medicated, or even removed from you. Lately there has been much discussion about whether or not 'crazy people' should be allowed to defend themselves like real human beings. Guess whose expert opinions are being used? The mental health mafia use cryptic language designed to intimidate the layman, with acronyms like ADHD or OCD used to describe people who don't conform to their idea of normal. They can't prove you have it, so you can't prove you don't have it, and after all they are 'scientists'.
True scientists perform repeatable observable experiments that aren't based on a vague, constantly changing baseline of behavior. If I were to walk up, and decide without running a single test that you had cancer, you would feel free to dismiss me. But if regular medical science worked the way psychiatry does, I could then go get a court order and force you to undergo chemotherapy no matter how loud you protested that you don't have cancer. What do you know, you uncircumcised Philistine? I , after all, am an expert. See, I have a white lab coat and everything.
The modern crop of experts of course look back at the barbarities of the past, take a moment to assume a solemn look, cluck cluck with their tongue and grudgingly acknowledge that in less enlightened times, mistakes were made, but after all, we're doing much better. 'Mistakes' are a fig leaf to hide scarred minds, broken bones, and destroyed lives. They continue on with their guesswork, only now they are destroying lives with dangerous medications. Do you feel too much? Then we will dope you to the gills so that you don't feel anything, and you 'll feel just like we do with our seared consciences. After all, we decide what's normal.
I was surprised to find that, although starvation and deprivation appear to be out of vogue in psychiatric circles these days, some of the old tried and true treatments are still employed, but more carefully now. Electroshock therapy was developed in 1938 by an Italian expert named Ugo Cerletti. The way the story goes, Cerletti observed pigs being zapped which made it easier for the butcher to slit their throats. How scientific. The movie 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest' highlighted this therapy, and the damage it causes, and it fell out of favor from a public relations point of view, but it still goes on. For example, from the highly respected Mayo clinic comes this blurb regarding electroshock therapy
On a personal note, I have watched 'experts' diagnose my sister with one syndrome and then a different passel of experts diagnose her with a different syndrome. I have watched her medication be changed and adjusted several times a year with each doctor having a different opinion as to what's wrong with her, and what she needs. Every time the expectation is that 'this will fix it'. That sounds a lot less like science and a lot more like snake oil. Only snake oil salesmen never had the courts on their side.
What follows is a sad account of her experiences under the care of 'experts'. Starvation and abuse were common tools of the trade, with a healthy dose of humiliation. The focus was to force the patient to conform to someone else's idea of what 'cured' looked like. The doctors and nurses enjoyed almost complete power over someone in their care because after all they were the experts. Men who had gone to school for years and had learned the very best their witch-doctory had to offer claimed that seclusion from family, and electro-shock therapy were 'extremely helpful and effective'. They defended these practices, citing studies and cases where peopel had been 'cured' ,at least according to them. The final determiner as to whether or not you were allowed to resume being a human being was a panel of people that were guessing as to whether or not there was anything wrong with you. Not much has changed.
To the modern eye (and indeed even to Nelly) the practices seem cruel, and barbaric with a diagnosis procedure based almost entirely on guesswork. Nelly Bly, who was hardly a professional actress, managed to fool several police officers, a judge and several doctors, and convince them that she was out of her head. The reason this was so simple is that , then, as now, there is no scientific medical test you can perform to establish sanity or prove it's lack thereof. There is no blood test to establish if you have any syndrome or affliction. All she had to do was act a bit distracted, a bit distant, obsess over something more than some doctor thought was appropriate and she was deemed insane. Then, as now, people with initials and degrees after their names sit as judge, jury and executioner as to your mental stability, with little appeal available.
Just as in Bly's day, for the sham of the mental health industry to be able to carry on, its inner workings must be hidden from the public. In Bly's day, as in now, the barbarities are still cloaked by professional sounding jargon and men in white coats with degrees who rule from on high, doling out their edicts and judgements upon the great unwashed masses virtually unchallenged. The courts look to these 'professionals' and defer to their wisdom when deciding whether or not your child should be medicated, or even removed from you. Lately there has been much discussion about whether or not 'crazy people' should be allowed to defend themselves like real human beings. Guess whose expert opinions are being used? The mental health mafia use cryptic language designed to intimidate the layman, with acronyms like ADHD or OCD used to describe people who don't conform to their idea of normal. They can't prove you have it, so you can't prove you don't have it, and after all they are 'scientists'.
True scientists perform repeatable observable experiments that aren't based on a vague, constantly changing baseline of behavior. If I were to walk up, and decide without running a single test that you had cancer, you would feel free to dismiss me. But if regular medical science worked the way psychiatry does, I could then go get a court order and force you to undergo chemotherapy no matter how loud you protested that you don't have cancer. What do you know, you uncircumcised Philistine? I , after all, am an expert. See, I have a white lab coat and everything.
The modern crop of experts of course look back at the barbarities of the past, take a moment to assume a solemn look, cluck cluck with their tongue and grudgingly acknowledge that in less enlightened times, mistakes were made, but after all, we're doing much better. 'Mistakes' are a fig leaf to hide scarred minds, broken bones, and destroyed lives. They continue on with their guesswork, only now they are destroying lives with dangerous medications. Do you feel too much? Then we will dope you to the gills so that you don't feel anything, and you 'll feel just like we do with our seared consciences. After all, we decide what's normal.
I was surprised to find that, although starvation and deprivation appear to be out of vogue in psychiatric circles these days, some of the old tried and true treatments are still employed, but more carefully now. Electroshock therapy was developed in 1938 by an Italian expert named Ugo Cerletti. The way the story goes, Cerletti observed pigs being zapped which made it easier for the butcher to slit their throats. How scientific. The movie 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest' highlighted this therapy, and the damage it causes, and it fell out of favor from a public relations point of view, but it still goes on. For example, from the highly respected Mayo clinic comes this blurb regarding electroshock therapy
"Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a procedure in which electric currents are passed through the brain, intentionally triggering a brief seizure. ECT seems to cause changes in brain chemistry that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses. It often works when other treatments are unsuccessful.Well I certainly feel better. It's safer now. I suppose that means less memory loss, less fractured bones although no numbers are given as to how much less.
Much of the stigma attached to ECT is based on early treatments in which high doses of electricity were administered without anesthesia, leading to memory loss, fractured bones and other serious side effects.
ECT is much safer today ...."
On a personal note, I have watched 'experts' diagnose my sister with one syndrome and then a different passel of experts diagnose her with a different syndrome. I have watched her medication be changed and adjusted several times a year with each doctor having a different opinion as to what's wrong with her, and what she needs. Every time the expectation is that 'this will fix it'. That sounds a lot less like science and a lot more like snake oil. Only snake oil salesmen never had the courts on their side.
Hold Your Applause
Monday was Memorial Day and in addition to the various signs and placards and banners that I saw thanking me for my service, we happen to be in the middle of camp-meeting at church, and all of us veterans were asked to stand wherein we received a hearty dose of applause and a ‘thanks’ from the pulpit. Off to my right was seated a visiting pastor who looked over at me with such admiration that an honest-to-goodness real life hero was sitting in his very midst. It was all quite embarrassing.
Now I don’t claim to speak for all veterans, only for myself. Please stop. I served six well-intentioned years in the United States Navy where I made multiple trips to the Middle East. We were there to enforce various UN resolutions against the country of Iraq. I didn’t like the UN then, and I don’t like them now, but there I was, going hither and yon at their bidding because the officers appointed above me and the President of the United States thought that was a worthwhile use of my time.. Was it dangerous? Certainly. But nothing I did, in my estimation earns me any sort of annual applause in perpetuity. I’m not a war criminal, but certainly not a hero.
In our congregation we have a person who has 4 purple hearts and a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry for actions performing in the late 60’s. Wounded on 4 separate occasions, he not only carries physical ailments from his time overseas, but is continually privy to mental anguish. What do I make of a day set aside for him? What do I think we owe him?
Regardless of what you think about that particular overseas venture ( I think the American people were lied to and we squandered the lives of perfectly good men for no good reason) this one thing I do know; that nobody really fights for freedom in a war. A man put in a combat situation isn’t fighting for freedom or liberty. Such concepts are abstract to the point of pointlessness when other armed human beings are shooting at you. He is fighting for him and his friend’s lives, and although this seems to put me a bit off the libertarian reservation, I think that fighting to preserve the lives of your friends after having been put in a horrible situation by your government is an act that carries with it a certain amount of gallantry. Trying to get everyone home alive in the midst of chaos and bloodshed is an act of bravery. Trying to maintain your humanity in the face of orders from disgusting authority has a bit of nobility to it.
But what I think is owed like my friend is an apology. Someone owes them an apology for how their blood and their humanity were sacrificed to line the pockets of well-connected profiteers. Memorial Day ought not be just a day of hero-worship, it ought not be a blank check of gratitude extended to anyone who wore a uniform, it ought to be a day of reflection, and repentance and apology. Every Memorial Day we ought to recommit that we won’t send good men off to die for no good reason. We ought to resolve that we won’t buy the lies of the state when they drum up yet another boogieman to frighten us into giving up our sons to the ravenous jaws of the war machine. We ought to purpose within our hearts that we won’t let ourselves be manipulated into blind obedience to the latest crop of flag-waving politicians who will happily send out children off to an early grave while mouthing empty slogans like ‘Freedom isn’t free’. No, its not free. In fact, the way things are set up now, their definition of ‘freedom ‘ is not only free, its ridiculously profitable.
So keep your applause, I didn’t earn it, and if you feel compelled to observe Memorial Day, observe it with prayer that we as a people wake up and stop the perpetual madness.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Rand is not Ron
I was doing a radio interview recently regarding SWINDLED, and the host asked me what my impression was of Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky and heir-apparent to his father's philosophical empire. My response was simple , "I have Rand issues."
Trust me, I've heard all the arguments in favor of the Rand Paul "libertarian when I need to be" philosophy. I've heard how he needs to "play the game" in order to "get anything done". Well that certainly implies that we need government to get anything done, doesn't it? I thought we held that liberty and freedom and individuals were the solutions, not partisan politics. I don't 'need ' Washington. All I 'need' them to do is leave me alone, a simple task they seem incapable of doing. Compromise is what got us where we are now, isn't it?
I've been pointed towards some of the brave stands he has taken, such as his drone filibuster. That's all fine and good, but I would like to see a little more consistency in the man. He has supported sanctions against Iran, which his father claimed was an act of war. Since Iran seems to be the new neocon litmus test, Rand's willingness to play political games with the lives of other people's children seems to me to be at odds with his libertarian soundness in other areas. His last name isn't enough for me to give him carte blanche enough to hide in his father's shadow.
A perfect example of my Rand issues came to light in the Senates recent unanaimous vote to push us one step closer to war with Iran. The media has already started to portray the regime as Enemy of the Month, and already the average amn on the street is being programmed to think "We gotta do soemthign about those guys". Trust me, unless something drastically changes, I completely see us parking ourselves in yet another country, toppling the regime, and spilling precious blood and squandering precious treasure in an attempt to control what happens afterwards. This apparently is what we do now.
I assume Mr. Paul ( the younger) has presidential aspirations, and maybe he saw how his father was shut out by the establishment and he seeks to endear himself to the establishment while keeping his liberty street cred. But I submit to you that such a tightrope act is not only impossible, but unwise, and won't win him any points with me.
Rand, its not too late to change course. Some of us are still watching to see how you turn out.
Trust me, I've heard all the arguments in favor of the Rand Paul "libertarian when I need to be" philosophy. I've heard how he needs to "play the game" in order to "get anything done". Well that certainly implies that we need government to get anything done, doesn't it? I thought we held that liberty and freedom and individuals were the solutions, not partisan politics. I don't 'need ' Washington. All I 'need' them to do is leave me alone, a simple task they seem incapable of doing. Compromise is what got us where we are now, isn't it?
I've been pointed towards some of the brave stands he has taken, such as his drone filibuster. That's all fine and good, but I would like to see a little more consistency in the man. He has supported sanctions against Iran, which his father claimed was an act of war. Since Iran seems to be the new neocon litmus test, Rand's willingness to play political games with the lives of other people's children seems to me to be at odds with his libertarian soundness in other areas. His last name isn't enough for me to give him carte blanche enough to hide in his father's shadow.
A perfect example of my Rand issues came to light in the Senates recent unanaimous vote to push us one step closer to war with Iran. The media has already started to portray the regime as Enemy of the Month, and already the average amn on the street is being programmed to think "We gotta do soemthign about those guys". Trust me, unless something drastically changes, I completely see us parking ourselves in yet another country, toppling the regime, and spilling precious blood and squandering precious treasure in an attempt to control what happens afterwards. This apparently is what we do now.
I assume Mr. Paul ( the younger) has presidential aspirations, and maybe he saw how his father was shut out by the establishment and he seeks to endear himself to the establishment while keeping his liberty street cred. But I submit to you that such a tightrope act is not only impossible, but unwise, and won't win him any points with me.
Rand, its not too late to change course. Some of us are still watching to see how you turn out.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Don Henley May Have Been on to Something
I don't make a regular habit of watching broadcast television, for a variety of reasons. It's a huge time-sponge for starters, and then there are concerns about content, obviously. I especially avoid news reports though.
Does anyone else think its a little psychotic the way television news is delivered? It's all soft lights and exciting theme music and color coordinated ties and teleprompters. Its so much pageantry and theatre over substance as to stagger the imagination, and the easiest way to see it is to abstain from it for a length of time, and then watch a broadcast. If you stay away from the shiny box for a while, and then take a peek, you'll begin to understand why they call it 'programming'.
If you flip through the channel;s during news time you'll see the exact same stories covered in the exact same order with the roughly the same amount of time given to each and sometimes all of these independently talking heads will all use the same buzzwords and catchphrases, as if they are issued from on high by some TV news fatwah. If you then listen to the conversations of people who get their news this way, you'll hear them repeat these viewpoints and phrases in parrot-like fashion with no thought as to what they are saying and no conscious realization that they were spoon-fed that opinion.
Every story covered is in its own little self-contained pre-packaged universe. That's how the news anchor can report on tornado deaths in Oklahoma with a sad look on his face and literally seconds later turn to another camera, put on a smile and talk about how baby pandas were born at the local zoo. Real people are incapable of compartmentalizing all the happenings in their life that neatly, that succinctly, but broadcasters do it for a living, and in doing so they present to you a neat compartmentalized, emotional vapid reality that has no bearing on your day to day life. They regularly spin you half-told tales about people you will never meet. The goings on and bed-hoppings of celebrities (whose only skills are their physical attractiveness and their ability to pretend to be somebody else all day) are treated as if they matter.They mention tragedies that not only have nothing to do with you, but that you are incapable of affecting one way or the other.. They manipulate your emotions with close up shots of grieving widows and burned out school houses. They adopt a worldview and narrative about an event and all reporting is filtered through that worldview and edited to fit the narrative. By doing this , they crowd out valuable brain space and trick you into investing emotional capital in all the wrong places. Filling your head with trivia and banality, they hope to keep you from thinking too much or looking too closely at what's behind the window dressing, My question is always not 'what did they say?' but rather 'what are they not telling us?'
"Hey, your government has declared for itself the ability to kill you without a trial, but look, Angeline Jolie had a double mastectomy! Isn't she brave? Isn't she pretty? And now a word from our sponsors."
Our local news has real problems with the English language. During a recent tragedy they reported that 'approximately 15 were confirmed dead'. In my mind, the words 'approximately' and 'confirmed' sort of cancel each other out. How many dead are there? Are there 'approximately' 15 or have you confirmed that there are 15? Doesn't matter, we've got an ad for Pop-tarts to show you. 'Approximately 15' could be as high as 20 or as low as 12. But let's not think about that, let's move on to who wore the most low-cut dress to the Oscars.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, word came from the fatwah that Ron Paul could not win. The reasons given were never reasons of substance, to simply declare him unelectable was enough. Step one is to declare his defeat and then step two was to ensure it by ignoring him and marginalizing his support. Over and over again durng the campaign people were told things like "He's too old", or "he's too extreme" or "He can't possibly win". Both Democrats and Republicans joined in this chorus until eventually the man on the street would say to you "He too old, he's too extreme, and besides, he can't possibly win". The shiny box told you that supporting him was 'throwing your vote away', and pushed the idea of 'the lesser of two evils'. Thousands of people gathered to hear him speak even as 'conservative' Fox News reported the decline of his campaign. You see, truth is secondary to the agenda. The agenda is to keep you rooted on your couch and give you just enough information to make you think youre informed. Give you a few talking points that you can recite if the topic comes up around the water cooler, and let's move on to the advertising.
The advertising's whole point ( and to be honest, I find marketing fascinating) is to make you discontent with what you have, or what you are, and then propose their product or service as a solution. The point is to emotional manipulate you in order to provoke a controlled response. Too fat? We can fix that. Old car? We can fix that. Never mind that your husbnad still adores you and thinks you're all that, the shiny box says you're fat, and here's how you fix it. Never mind that by keeping your current car ( which runs)you can stay out of debt. we need you to be in debt, we need you to live beyond your means. On and on and on drones the shiny box, 24 hours a day 7 days a week , talking when there is nothing more to say, and slowly liquiifying your brain.
Stay with us, the shiny box says. TV time is family time. Oh look, a train wreck in Nebraska, and some celbrity was arrested for driving drunk. Look at those scary peopll with their AR-15's. They shouldn't have those guns, should they? After all, you don't need an AR-15, do you? Wouldn't some popcorn be good right now? Only cultists homeschool their kids. Police are heroes.Hours slip away, precious precious time, and still the box never stops pumping out nonesense.
But hey, people love dirty laundry, right?
Does anyone else think its a little psychotic the way television news is delivered? It's all soft lights and exciting theme music and color coordinated ties and teleprompters. Its so much pageantry and theatre over substance as to stagger the imagination, and the easiest way to see it is to abstain from it for a length of time, and then watch a broadcast. If you stay away from the shiny box for a while, and then take a peek, you'll begin to understand why they call it 'programming'.
If you flip through the channel;s during news time you'll see the exact same stories covered in the exact same order with the roughly the same amount of time given to each and sometimes all of these independently talking heads will all use the same buzzwords and catchphrases, as if they are issued from on high by some TV news fatwah. If you then listen to the conversations of people who get their news this way, you'll hear them repeat these viewpoints and phrases in parrot-like fashion with no thought as to what they are saying and no conscious realization that they were spoon-fed that opinion.
Every story covered is in its own little self-contained pre-packaged universe. That's how the news anchor can report on tornado deaths in Oklahoma with a sad look on his face and literally seconds later turn to another camera, put on a smile and talk about how baby pandas were born at the local zoo. Real people are incapable of compartmentalizing all the happenings in their life that neatly, that succinctly, but broadcasters do it for a living, and in doing so they present to you a neat compartmentalized, emotional vapid reality that has no bearing on your day to day life. They regularly spin you half-told tales about people you will never meet. The goings on and bed-hoppings of celebrities (whose only skills are their physical attractiveness and their ability to pretend to be somebody else all day) are treated as if they matter.They mention tragedies that not only have nothing to do with you, but that you are incapable of affecting one way or the other.. They manipulate your emotions with close up shots of grieving widows and burned out school houses. They adopt a worldview and narrative about an event and all reporting is filtered through that worldview and edited to fit the narrative. By doing this , they crowd out valuable brain space and trick you into investing emotional capital in all the wrong places. Filling your head with trivia and banality, they hope to keep you from thinking too much or looking too closely at what's behind the window dressing, My question is always not 'what did they say?' but rather 'what are they not telling us?'
"Hey, your government has declared for itself the ability to kill you without a trial, but look, Angeline Jolie had a double mastectomy! Isn't she brave? Isn't she pretty? And now a word from our sponsors."
Our local news has real problems with the English language. During a recent tragedy they reported that 'approximately 15 were confirmed dead'. In my mind, the words 'approximately' and 'confirmed' sort of cancel each other out. How many dead are there? Are there 'approximately' 15 or have you confirmed that there are 15? Doesn't matter, we've got an ad for Pop-tarts to show you. 'Approximately 15' could be as high as 20 or as low as 12. But let's not think about that, let's move on to who wore the most low-cut dress to the Oscars.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, word came from the fatwah that Ron Paul could not win. The reasons given were never reasons of substance, to simply declare him unelectable was enough. Step one is to declare his defeat and then step two was to ensure it by ignoring him and marginalizing his support. Over and over again durng the campaign people were told things like "He's too old", or "he's too extreme" or "He can't possibly win". Both Democrats and Republicans joined in this chorus until eventually the man on the street would say to you "He too old, he's too extreme, and besides, he can't possibly win". The shiny box told you that supporting him was 'throwing your vote away', and pushed the idea of 'the lesser of two evils'. Thousands of people gathered to hear him speak even as 'conservative' Fox News reported the decline of his campaign. You see, truth is secondary to the agenda. The agenda is to keep you rooted on your couch and give you just enough information to make you think youre informed. Give you a few talking points that you can recite if the topic comes up around the water cooler, and let's move on to the advertising.
The advertising's whole point ( and to be honest, I find marketing fascinating) is to make you discontent with what you have, or what you are, and then propose their product or service as a solution. The point is to emotional manipulate you in order to provoke a controlled response. Too fat? We can fix that. Old car? We can fix that. Never mind that your husbnad still adores you and thinks you're all that, the shiny box says you're fat, and here's how you fix it. Never mind that by keeping your current car ( which runs)you can stay out of debt. we need you to be in debt, we need you to live beyond your means. On and on and on drones the shiny box, 24 hours a day 7 days a week , talking when there is nothing more to say, and slowly liquiifying your brain.
Stay with us, the shiny box says. TV time is family time. Oh look, a train wreck in Nebraska, and some celbrity was arrested for driving drunk. Look at those scary peopll with their AR-15's. They shouldn't have those guns, should they? After all, you don't need an AR-15, do you? Wouldn't some popcorn be good right now? Only cultists homeschool their kids. Police are heroes.Hours slip away, precious precious time, and still the box never stops pumping out nonesense.
But hey, people love dirty laundry, right?
Friday, May 17, 2013
A Perspective on Wealth
(Note: Most of the numbers on this post were done a few years back for a Sunday School class I was teaching. I simply updated the prices, and marveled within myself as to how much the price of things had gone up. If anyone has better numbers I would love to see them.)
There is a lot of talk about wealth, and money, and people appear to be as obsessed with it as they always have been. Forbes magazine prints a compendium of wealth every year in which it names the most wealthiest people on earth, and their net worth. I personally think their list is incomplete, but that's a topic for another day. Empires rise and fall and today's hot name will be tomorrow's old news.The wealth most people on the Forbes list enjoy is ,in the grand scheme of history, small potatoes.
In the book of Exodus, commands and instructions were given in regards to the construction of the Tabernacle. It was to be a portable, or at least a de-constructable, structure that would be assembled, broken down and reassembled as the children of Israel moved from place to place. It would be the centerpiece and focal point of the Jewish religion until the construction of Solomon's Temple several centuries later.
The materials assembled for the Tabernacle are described in detail in Exodus 35-38 and summarized in Exodus 38:21-30. The total quantity of gold collected was approximately one ton; of silver 3/4 tons, and of bronze 2 1/2 tons. At todays prices gold is approximately $1376.50 an ounce (compared to $500 in the original version of this). Silver is currently priced at $22.46 an ounce ($12 originally) and brass is trading at 33 cents an ounce.
The gold used in the Tabernacle winds up costing a little over $22,000 a pound or $44,000,000 a ton. The silver comes in at a paltry $459 a pound or $918,000 a ton. The brass is so cheap is almost seems like a waste to do the math, but I really like math ( no calculator, and I show all my work), so here we go; 33 cents an ounce is 10, 560 bucks for a ton. Now there's only a ton of gold in the Tabernacle, 3/4 of a ton of silver, and 2 1/2 tons of brass. The cost, just in raw metals, laying aside the historical or spiritual significance of the items themselves, looks something like this:
$ 44,000,000 in gold
$ 688,000 in silver
$ 26,400 in brass
$ 44, 714,400 in materials
It's hard to find some basis of comparison, since there is nothing like it in our modern world. Anything you might hope to compare it to turns out to be a permanent structure, but that just makes the comparison more remarkable. For example, thee Tabernacle cost more in raw materials alone than the total cost of the Empire State building in the 1920's, including the labor and the property it sits on ( just over 40 million). That wealth was held by a group of former slaves on the way to their homeland, and had apparently been gathered up as they were leaving Egypt when the Egyptians 'loaned' them some jewelry. It does make one wonder how much wealth was sitting in Egypt at the time, if they could loan a bunch of slaves the equivalent of $44 million.
Several centuries later, a king arose in Jerusalem named Solomon. His accomplishments really are almost inconceivable, and could be delved into in great detail, but I'm going to zero in on one aspect of his accomplishments; his income. The Forbes list tends to focus on the net worth of the individuals listed, which is a perfectly reasonable standard to go by, but for the purposes of this article, I'm going to discuss income. Solomon had an unspeakable net worth , with houses and cities and servants and 40 thousand horse stalls and 12,000 horsemen. He had a house built decked with precious jewels and gold ornaments on the walls.Solomon gave gifts to allies of his in other kingdoms consisting of thousands of measures of wheat and oil a year,but aside from all that, how much money did the man bring in every year? And how does it compare to the economic titans of today?
He received a one-time gift from the king of Tyre that was 120 talents of gold. He received a one-time contribution from Ophir that was 420 talents of gold. He was regularly showered with gifts of ivory and peacocks and apes and servants from other kingdoms, but I'm not going to count any of that. I really don't want to try and figure out the going rate of ivory and peacocks; you'll simply have to forgive me. I am simply going to look at the scriptural account of his annual income, which is listed as 666 talents of gold.
Now a talent differs depending on who you read, and what country, and what time period. the numbers run as high as 130 lbs to a talent I'm gong to use the lowest number I could find which is 57 lbs of gold for one talent. so 666 talents of gold winds up being 37,982 POUNDS of gold, with a modern value of $835,604,000 a year.
Bill Gates of Microsoft , although no longer possessing the title of 'world's richest man' (a title probably not worth the hassle and scrutiny) is still the icon of American wealth, so we will use his listed annual income of roughly $30,000,000. Now it beats digging ditches for a living, but honestly? Old King Solomon makes Bill Gates look like somebody living under a bridge. I had read somewhere once ( and I can't find it now) that 1/4 of the wealth in the world at the time flowed through Israel when Solomon was on the throne. Yet according to Jesus Christ, the lilies of the field are better clothed than he was.Just a bit of perspective. Do with it what you will.
There is a lot of talk about wealth, and money, and people appear to be as obsessed with it as they always have been. Forbes magazine prints a compendium of wealth every year in which it names the most wealthiest people on earth, and their net worth. I personally think their list is incomplete, but that's a topic for another day. Empires rise and fall and today's hot name will be tomorrow's old news.The wealth most people on the Forbes list enjoy is ,in the grand scheme of history, small potatoes.
In the book of Exodus, commands and instructions were given in regards to the construction of the Tabernacle. It was to be a portable, or at least a de-constructable, structure that would be assembled, broken down and reassembled as the children of Israel moved from place to place. It would be the centerpiece and focal point of the Jewish religion until the construction of Solomon's Temple several centuries later.
The materials assembled for the Tabernacle are described in detail in Exodus 35-38 and summarized in Exodus 38:21-30. The total quantity of gold collected was approximately one ton; of silver 3/4 tons, and of bronze 2 1/2 tons. At todays prices gold is approximately $1376.50 an ounce (compared to $500 in the original version of this). Silver is currently priced at $22.46 an ounce ($12 originally) and brass is trading at 33 cents an ounce.
The gold used in the Tabernacle winds up costing a little over $22,000 a pound or $44,000,000 a ton. The silver comes in at a paltry $459 a pound or $918,000 a ton. The brass is so cheap is almost seems like a waste to do the math, but I really like math ( no calculator, and I show all my work), so here we go; 33 cents an ounce is 10, 560 bucks for a ton. Now there's only a ton of gold in the Tabernacle, 3/4 of a ton of silver, and 2 1/2 tons of brass. The cost, just in raw metals, laying aside the historical or spiritual significance of the items themselves, looks something like this:
$ 44,000,000 in gold
$ 688,000 in silver
$ 26,400 in brass
$ 44, 714,400 in materials
It's hard to find some basis of comparison, since there is nothing like it in our modern world. Anything you might hope to compare it to turns out to be a permanent structure, but that just makes the comparison more remarkable. For example, thee Tabernacle cost more in raw materials alone than the total cost of the Empire State building in the 1920's, including the labor and the property it sits on ( just over 40 million). That wealth was held by a group of former slaves on the way to their homeland, and had apparently been gathered up as they were leaving Egypt when the Egyptians 'loaned' them some jewelry. It does make one wonder how much wealth was sitting in Egypt at the time, if they could loan a bunch of slaves the equivalent of $44 million.
Several centuries later, a king arose in Jerusalem named Solomon. His accomplishments really are almost inconceivable, and could be delved into in great detail, but I'm going to zero in on one aspect of his accomplishments; his income. The Forbes list tends to focus on the net worth of the individuals listed, which is a perfectly reasonable standard to go by, but for the purposes of this article, I'm going to discuss income. Solomon had an unspeakable net worth , with houses and cities and servants and 40 thousand horse stalls and 12,000 horsemen. He had a house built decked with precious jewels and gold ornaments on the walls.Solomon gave gifts to allies of his in other kingdoms consisting of thousands of measures of wheat and oil a year,but aside from all that, how much money did the man bring in every year? And how does it compare to the economic titans of today?
He received a one-time gift from the king of Tyre that was 120 talents of gold. He received a one-time contribution from Ophir that was 420 talents of gold. He was regularly showered with gifts of ivory and peacocks and apes and servants from other kingdoms, but I'm not going to count any of that. I really don't want to try and figure out the going rate of ivory and peacocks; you'll simply have to forgive me. I am simply going to look at the scriptural account of his annual income, which is listed as 666 talents of gold.
Now a talent differs depending on who you read, and what country, and what time period. the numbers run as high as 130 lbs to a talent I'm gong to use the lowest number I could find which is 57 lbs of gold for one talent. so 666 talents of gold winds up being 37,982 POUNDS of gold, with a modern value of $835,604,000 a year.
Bill Gates of Microsoft , although no longer possessing the title of 'world's richest man' (a title probably not worth the hassle and scrutiny) is still the icon of American wealth, so we will use his listed annual income of roughly $30,000,000. Now it beats digging ditches for a living, but honestly? Old King Solomon makes Bill Gates look like somebody living under a bridge. I had read somewhere once ( and I can't find it now) that 1/4 of the wealth in the world at the time flowed through Israel when Solomon was on the throne. Yet according to Jesus Christ, the lilies of the field are better clothed than he was.Just a bit of perspective. Do with it what you will.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
The Birth of Religious Freedom in America
There are, in my estimation, some freedoms that, unless you have them, make other freedoms rather meaningless, but if you do have them, other freedoms are not only possible, but amplified in their effectiveness. A quick example is the right to property. If you don't have this right, then the fact that you are 'free' to barbeque on weekends is really rather meaningless , since you exercise that 'freedom' at the good pleasure of whoever the overlord of the moment happens to be.
One of the others is religious freedom. If anyone can compel you to believe something, or compel you through whatever means to confess to things you do not really hold to be true, then you have lost the battle for your own conscience, and whatever other 'liberties' you might enjoy pale rather quickly by comparison. For a man to hold power over another man's conscience through state power or ecclesaistical power ( which often masquerades one as the other), it is the worst sort of tyranny, for it claims jurisdiction over the innermost parts of a man and seeks to reign over his soul.
It is a great irony in American history that the Puritans who had fled to the New World for the chance to exercise their own conscience in matters of worship eventually became the very thing they fled. Colonial America wasn’t an idyllic utopia of liberty, but rather a patchwork quilt of different understandings and tolerances of what freedom was all about. In many places, especially in Church of England dominated-areas, the line between church and state was so blurry as to be almost non-existent. Church officials held political offices and church officials exercised police powers, with a careful eye towards maintaining the status quo of doctrinal purity. This mindset revealed itself in activities like the witch trials in Salem or the ordinance passed in Massachusetts in 1644 that specifically referred to Anabaptists as “the troublers of churches in all places where they have been”. In 1656 when the first Quakers began to arrive on the shores of Massachusetts, the Quakers in question were imprisoned by their Puritan brothers, the women strip-searched under pretense of looking for witches, and their religious literature burned as heresy.
One of the most prominent was one drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and adopted in 1786 entitled "An Act for establishing Religious Freedom". In three simple paragraphs, Thomas Jefferson laid out not only what powers the state did not have, but why. It's worth reading in its entirety, but I am going to cite a couple of prominent lines and then opine (probably in a separate post) on where I hope things are going in America today. It is an axiom in my mind that all natural rights are interconnected, and the principles behind one can be applied to the others, as you will see.
Jefferson proved himself by this resolution to be not only overtly brilliant, but a man who understood the issue and was able to get to the heart of it. His arguments, his logic, his very words, later became the heart of the 1st Amendment, an amendment that was an absolute condition for Virginia's ratification of the Constitution.
Would to God we had a few more Jeffersons!
One of the others is religious freedom. If anyone can compel you to believe something, or compel you through whatever means to confess to things you do not really hold to be true, then you have lost the battle for your own conscience, and whatever other 'liberties' you might enjoy pale rather quickly by comparison. For a man to hold power over another man's conscience through state power or ecclesaistical power ( which often masquerades one as the other), it is the worst sort of tyranny, for it claims jurisdiction over the innermost parts of a man and seeks to reign over his soul.
It is a great irony in American history that the Puritans who had fled to the New World for the chance to exercise their own conscience in matters of worship eventually became the very thing they fled. Colonial America wasn’t an idyllic utopia of liberty, but rather a patchwork quilt of different understandings and tolerances of what freedom was all about. In many places, especially in Church of England dominated-areas, the line between church and state was so blurry as to be almost non-existent. Church officials held political offices and church officials exercised police powers, with a careful eye towards maintaining the status quo of doctrinal purity. This mindset revealed itself in activities like the witch trials in Salem or the ordinance passed in Massachusetts in 1644 that specifically referred to Anabaptists as “the troublers of churches in all places where they have been”. In 1656 when the first Quakers began to arrive on the shores of Massachusetts, the Quakers in question were imprisoned by their Puritan brothers, the women strip-searched under pretense of looking for witches, and their religious literature burned as heresy.
Existing side by side with these large religious behemoths were small pockets of men and women who followed their conscience regardless of what the ruling powers thought. They worshipped both in secret, and in open, and preached outside of the established church buildings, taking the gospel out in public as the Bible commands. For this they were fined, banished, beaten, arrested, and imprisoned. Their ears were, in some cases, cut off, and hot irons driven through their ‘blasphemous tongues’. Their church buildings were burned, their properties seized. They were Quakers, and Baptists, and Anabaptists, and a variety of other groups who simply sought to live and worship according to the dictates of their own conscience. They sought to practice what would later be called ‘soul liberty’.
Because those abuses were so blatant, it drew the attention, and earned the condemnation of some of the most prominent thinkers in the colonies. As we are seeing again today, the state overreacted, overstepped its bounds, and men of courage called them on it. In June of 1768, four Baptist preachers were imprisoned in Spotsylvania County, Virginia for preaching without a state-issued license. Patrick Henry became involved in the case, and they were released. That incident, and incidents like it, caused great discussion among the founding generation as the colonies moved closer and closer to independence. Local statues were enacted and drafted by what would become some of the most famous men in history. These statues were put in place to protect the consciences of free men from coercion by the state. They presented, in writing, a philosophical thread that grew and grew until it became the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution.One of the most prominent was one drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and adopted in 1786 entitled "An Act for establishing Religious Freedom". In three simple paragraphs, Thomas Jefferson laid out not only what powers the state did not have, but why. It's worth reading in its entirety, but I am going to cite a couple of prominent lines and then opine (probably in a separate post) on where I hope things are going in America today. It is an axiom in my mind that all natural rights are interconnected, and the principles behind one can be applied to the others, as you will see.
Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness....This includes the Infernal Revenue Service dangling threats of revocation of tax exempt status over the head of ecclesiastical bodies and using that as a lever to force entry into their internal affairs. If there ever was an organization committed to 'hypocrisy and meanness', it is these modern day publicans who are after all a political organ as they have so recently demonstrated.
...that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;An everday occurrence in America. I believe it is wrong to steal, so I am stolen from. I believe it's wrong to mooch, so my stolen money is used to support the moochers. Abortions are funded out of my own pocket after its been pilfered. In a thousand ways I am made by compulsion to support things I hold to be wrong.
Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate,..As a minister of the gospel I hold that a society in which there is no state religion offers me the greatest opportunity to persuade men from the Scriptures by earnest and heartfelt discussion and it offers me the greatest opportunity to hear their rebuttals. In fact, on a personal note,to do so is one of the great joys of my life.
Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever,In a perfect world this would include the peculiar doctrines taught by the compulsory government schools. Compulsory government education has been one of the greatest and most successful tools in robbing people not only of truth, but of the ability to recognize the truth when it is presented to them.
Jefferson proved himself by this resolution to be not only overtly brilliant, but a man who understood the issue and was able to get to the heart of it. His arguments, his logic, his very words, later became the heart of the 1st Amendment, an amendment that was an absolute condition for Virginia's ratification of the Constitution.
Would to God we had a few more Jeffersons!
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