One more move...

I recently had a reason to explore the Wordpress platform, and found to my surprise that it has some advantages.  So while "A True Progressive" has had a home here on Blogger for nearly eight years, it's time to try a new residence.

You can find me at www.atrueprogressive.wordpress.com

See you there!

The dam breaks

A century ago, Aleister Crowley posited a worldview by which "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."  This anarchistic bent sadly is often confused with libertarian minarchism which, unlike Crowley, recognizes there must be at least some modest external limits on one's choices for the protection of others.

And yet in our society, we see signs of self-restraint breaking down all around us.

Restraint is an unfashionable concept these days, but it is the indispensable feature of civilized society. To paraphrase my compatriot George Jonas, punching a spinster’s lights out isn’t wrong because it’s illegal, it’s illegal because it’s wrong. But, in a world without restraints, what’s to stop you? If a certain percentage of your population feels no moral revulsion at randomly pulverizing fellow citizens for sport, a million laws will avail you naught: The societal safety lock is off.

Americans refuse to stop spending more than they make.  They refuse to hold their government accountable for its misdeeds.  Thuggery increases in the streets.  As the saying goes, 'those who refuse to rule themselves must be ruled by others.'  And as the MRAPs and other accouterments of military forces pass to local law enforcement, that day draws ever nearer...

Saturday Sounds

What are some of the things you are thankful for?

50 years

While the rest of the world may still be obsessing over the loss of so-called "Camelot," which was a myth if there ever was one, I'd be remiss if I didn't note it's also the anniversary of the passing of C.S. Lewis, whose writings inspired the name of this blog and nurtured the worldview that underpins it.

“Daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?”

Instead of pondering the injunction to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," the world would be so much better off if everyone considered what they could do to honor God and serve their fellow man.

Quote of the Day

"I think that great ideal of government by and for the people is being butchered – for profit. The Nation-State is dying, because any given arrangement of power can be corrupted and will be, by those who benefit from it most – those who hold its powers – in this case the powers of the State  - IF people cringingly let them. And that it what we are doing.

We are allowing the elite of the State to convince us that we are ‘all in it together’, and to claim that our interests and their interests are still one and the same. But they are not. And we must come to see this clearly – and soon. As long as we deny the truth, that they are not standing ‘with us’, and do not have our best interests at heart – until we can face these self evident but chilling truths, then we are never going to see them for what they have become nor see their actions for what they are."

So simple...

...even a baby should understand it:

Today's must-read

From Pacific Legal:

What This Morning's Obamacare Announcement Means


The Constitution of the United States says that the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That provision was written because the Founding Fathers had experienced the arbitrariness of a government in which the British monarchy picked and chose which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore. The result of such political control over the law was, they knew, a breakdown in the rule of law—and a breakdown that allowed the powerful and politically well-connected to manipulate the system at will. As James Madison warned in the Federalist, “mutable” laws

poison the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Unfortunately, today’s administrative state gives so much power to unelected bureaucrats—who are protected against any meaningful control by voters—that they can alter, manipulate, and change the law almost at will. The result is a breakdown in the rule of law and an arbitrary system in which the government operates, not according to predictable standards and meaningful rules, but according to political whim and in arbitrary, day-to-day, ad hoc manner.


*******************
And in response to the Administration's recent battle cry that Obamacare is "law of the land," and thus permanent regardless of flaws, I refer everyone to a recent quip by Justice Clarence Thomas:

Judge Sykes: Stare decisis doesn’t hold much weight with you?
Justice Thomas: Oh it does. But not enough to keep me from going to the Constitution. (emphasis added)

If only all our leaders were so deferential to the governing charter!

The next (il)logical step

Sadly, this is one of the most insightful ledes I've ever read in a story:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It looked like a typical Sunday morning at any mega-church. Several hundred people, including families with small children, packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational talk and some quiet reflection. The only thing missing was God.

What would be the point of that, you might ask.

Jones got the first inkling for the idea while leaving a Christmas carol concert six years ago.
"There was so much about it that I loved, but it's a shame because at the heart of it, it's something I don't believe in," Jones said. "If you think about church, there's very little that's bad. It's singing awesome songs, hearing interesting talks, thinking about improving yourself and helping other people — and doing that in a community with wonderful relationships. What part of that is not to like?"  (emphasis added)

OK, so like many people dissatisfied with something, these folks have set out to retain what they like, while removing the offensive features.  That's fine if you're improving a product.

It's ludicrous if you are searching for Truth.

This really culminates a long trend by which nominally 'christian' congregations have frequently become little more than social clubs, meeting the need of 'community' without getting into all that icky stuff about sin and repentance and salvation.  What might be the "bad" parts about church these people think they're eliminating?  If it's the standard charges of hypocrisy, infighting, and what not, I've got news for them: that comes with any organization of human beings, regardless how well-intentioned they might be individually.   This would be easier to recognize if they were trying to build a fellowship based on observable truths, rather than utopian aspirations.  Instead, they are deliberately (provocatively, even) building a community that explicitly denies these foundations:

For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23)

At the bottom of it, for most committed unbelievers the 'bad' part about church is accountability to something larger than themselves--larger, even, than any human-derived organization.  We desire the paradise of Eden, but not the obligation to listen to Eden's creator about how it was supposed to function.

When I was a young boy spending a couple weeks with my grandfather, he gave me my first chance to fire a shotgun.  Naturally excited by this new privilege, I couldn't wait to try it, and was sure I knew what I was doing... I watched TV, after all.  Granddaddy tried to give me a quick tutorial on how to hold the stock against my shoulder, but I was ready to go and not ready to listen.

I still remember how he quickly backed off.  "Awright..."  You know where this is going, don't you?  Picking my bruised self up off the floor of the clay pit, I wanted nothing to do with that gadget for some time.  I hadn't respected the instructions--or their giver--and I paid the price for it.*

I've come to a realization that all of humanity's tragic history represents God doing the same thing: saying "awright..." to mankind's determination to do things our own way.  He hopes for us to come to our bruised senses, so He can show us the error of our ways and offer us a second chance through His son--who took the worst of the beating for us! 

Humanity was wired to desire fellowship--with each other, and with our Creator.  Like an old TV set, we have a "vertical hold" and a "horizontal hold" that have to be tuned in appropriately.  For any group of human beings missing that 'vertical hold,' the frequent tragic outcome is control by a strong human leader--a cult, in other words.  The Enemy's biggest desire is to provide humanity any rally point that does not include God.

We are seeing more open rebellion and hostility toward God than perhaps at any time in the Church Age.  If there was any doubt how humanity could be so mislead as to finally unite, but only in hostility toward God, it should be diminishing by the day.

May the Spirit open our eyes and keep them open.

* I recently had the joy of watching the older two Musketeers fire the very same shotgun, which I finally earned from Granddaddy and will one day bequeath to one of them.  If there is any consolation in that story, it's that by having heard it from me, they were more than a little inclined to listen to me as I showed them the ropes.  As a result, their first experience was no less memorable, but considerably more pleasant! 

Saturday Sounds

Today's the anniversary of the Broadway premier of The Sound of Music, the success of which would lead to the later classic movie release.   The sounds of The Sound of Music have been a staple in our home for years, and I can remember when the oldest Musketeer was about three, he'd ask to watch it by saying "can we watch doe-a-deer?"

Still think we have the rule of law?

This summary of the status of Obamacare should dissuade you of that delusion.

If that's not enough, you can always read this, this, this, this, this or this.

Devolving into self-parody

First they design a healthcare system only a lawyer or a tax collector could love.  Then they unveil a website that can't handle even one-fifth of the traffic they claimed to expect.  And then the final straw: Americans find out many can't keep their current insurance, even if they want to.

What to do?

Why, advertise of course!  Spin it to win it!

And in those ads you'll find all you need to know about what your self-professed 'betters' think about the American electorate: juvenile, illiterate, slang-slinging and sexually out-of-control.

In defense of this administration, it's understandable why they would hold the citizenry in contempt.  After all, it did send them to the White House.  Twice.

Fortunately, it appears some people have their priorities straight.  Fortune favors the prepared.

E.T. phone home...

AKA "Road trip!"

What, exactly, are we remembering?

Twice a year, on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day, the airwaves and 'teh Interweebs' ring with homages to those who have served.  It is fitting to remember those, especially, who gave their lives in the defense of their homes and families.

But do we remember that far more often than not in America's history, that's not what really happened?  I would argue America has only fought three 'existential' wars, where national survival and/or character were at stake: the Revolution, the War of 1812 (AKA the Revolution, phase II), and the War Between the States.  This, of course, runs counter to every mainstream historical view out there, but I'm anything but alone in questioning the necessity and/or prudence of most the far-flung conflicts in which we've become involved.

Take World War I, for instance--the experience which spawned Veteran's Day as a commemoration.  Most scholars agree the events of 1914 were a tragic, careless tripping of dominoes that had been set in place over the preceding decades.  It was national pride and foolishness more than any true defensive necessity, that contrived to turn all of Europe into a slaughterhouse.  The bigger question on this side of the pond should be "why on Earth did the U.S. ever get involved?"  Consider:  In November 1916, Woodrow Wilson narrowly won reelection in no small part on the platform "he kept us out of war."  Five months later, the same man asked Congress to declare war on the Central Powers, and marshaled a huge propaganda apparatus to overcome the natural American neutrality which his own campaign had just played to!

What had changed?  Had Huns landed in the Hamptons?  Were Austrians besieging Annapolis?  No, the reality was that America's 'neutrality' had been anything but.  With a substantial stake in the Allied Powers' ability to win and repay their debts, it was almost inevitable that Doughboys would follow dollars into the hell of the Western Front.  When Germany made the fateful decision to counter American assistance to the Allies by unleashing the subs yet again, the U.S. found a plausible casus belli.

And what did this intervention accomplish?  Reinvigorated by the entrance of the US as an "Associated Power," the war-weary Allies ditched all thought of finding a settlement, and instead exacted humiliating revenge and post-war starvation upon Germany.  Once embroiled in Europe, the U.S. and its associates took a post-war detour into Russia, intervening just enough in the Russian Civil War to ensure lasting mistrust of the West, but not enough to keep the murderous Bolsheviks from consolidating power.  Thus were seeds of both the Second World War and the Cold War sown.

My point is simply this: more often than not, war, as Smedley Butler put it, "is a racket."  The high-sounding ideals which sell the public on support for the war often bear only the loosest of relations to the actual reasons for which the leadership of various nations contend.   Sometimes they bear no relation to the truth.  And tragically for America, virtually all of the sacrifices made by her citizens have been in wars of choice, not of necessity.

It is good that the recent call to arms over Syria foundered... but don't think that hasn't stopped the powers that be from looking for another rallying cry to distract from the growing consequences of their mismanagement and graft at home.  For Veteran's Day, let's not remember dress uniforms, parades and crisp formations.  Let's remember what happens to those formations when they're thrown into the man-made hell of war... and what becomes of those they leave behind.

Then let us not pick our battles, but instead only accept such cost when it is thrust upon us with no alternative.  THAT is the appropriate way to remember the fallen... by learning the lessons of history.   

Not by repeating them.

A watered-down cure

It never ceases to intrigue me how modern society attempts to pick through the social wreckage of the last couple generations and seek answers.  Often the prescriptions sound vaguely scriptural.  Too often they are Man's fallible pontifications that seek after wisdom while excluding reference to the Wise One.  A friend recently linked to this writing:

Over the last 100 or more years, women have understandably lost their trust in men in general. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Fragile-ego’d, self-seeking, solely cock-driven, permanently adolescent men have abused the planet on every level. The air, water, and soil are polluted, the animals violently killed, the children uneducated and the old people uncared for.
And it may sound radical to say this, but there has emerged a masculine edge in women, which has crept in during the past half a century. It is an edge that has, I believe, been born of a lack of trust in the males to deliver leadership and protection through service and wisdom. Women have been over-masculinising like mad to compensate for the essence of true maleness that’s so badly lacking in at least the last two generations of men, who have been addicted to profit and status.

Yes, the last century has seen a decline in the expectations of men (as so often demonstrated by their portrayal as idiots on the idiot box).  Yes, women have increasingly stepped into 'masculine roles,' sometimes as compensation for male failure to be responsible, and sometimes out of sheer rebellion against their own roles and responsibilities.  The writer of the excerpt above goes on to talk about how "awakening the feminine role in men" has only gone so far; that there needs to be a "deeper awakening of the male-within-the male."  I've never liked the whole "men and women both have masculine and feminine sides" paradigm.  Frankly, I believe that school has contributed to the rampant gender confusion that exists today.  But in that latter part, about the 'deeper awakening,' there is a whiff of sense. 

Consider these words, written two thousand years ago:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

So many outside the church look at this as religious subjugation of women to some self-ordained patriarchy.  Far from it!  Not only did the Christian Church elevate the status of women in the First Century, A.D., it continued to elevate status for everyone, with the understanding that all bear the Imagio Dei.   The verses above aren't a license to rule... they're a charge to keep!  Any woman who submits to the leadership of her husband as she does to the Lord is promoting harmony within a household that is implicitly supposed to be run in a Christ-like manner for the good of all.  Any man who loves his wife in the sacrificial way Christ loved the church (reminder: He DIED for it...), is not going to abuse the responsibility he has been given to protect and provide for his family as it navigates through a shattered, fallen world. 

The article says women are looking for men who are 'trustworthy, loyal, devoted, dependable.'   I say that's merely a recognition (without saying so) that when men follow after Christ, women usually don't mind following after them.  When men provide the one thing women seek most -- unconditional, sacrificial love -- the men find in return that the woman in their life is far more likely to provide the one thing men seek most: respect.  And men who find that respect from their families are far less likely to feel the need to seek it through grasping, selfish behavior that so often has such destructive consequences.

Our society has never been perfect, but it once did a better job of seeking its meaning in Christ.  Would that we did so again!

Saturday Sounds

Just a reminder we're in the sesquicentennial of the Late Unpleasantness.  I've enjoyed this soundtrack for a few years now, and this song in particular.  May 'God have mercy,' indeed, and save us from our folly before there are more Judgment Days in this land...

lyrics here

Obfuscation by 'objectivity'

This is an interesting discussion between representatives of Old and New Journalism.  To see the New York Times representative still critique his competition by retreating to the self-proclaimed mantle of 'impartiality' is more than a little amusing:

Dear Glenn,

We come at journalism from different traditions. I’ve spent a life working at newspapers that put a premium on aggressive but impartial reporting, that expect reporters and editors to keep their opinions to themselves unless they relocate (as I have done) to the pages clearly identified as the home of opinion. You come from a more activist tradition — first as a lawyer, then as a blogger and columnist, and soon as part of a new, independent journalistic venture financed by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Your writing proceeds from a clearly stated point of view.

In a post on Reuters this summer, media critic Jack Shafer celebrated the tradition of partisan journalism — “From Tom Paine to Glenn Greenwald” — and contrasted it with what he called “the corporatist ideal.” He didn’t explain the phrase, but I don’t think he meant it in a nice way. Henry Farrell, who blogs for The Washington Post, wrote more recently that publications like The New York Times and The Guardian “have political relationships with governments, which make them nervous about publishing (and hence validating) certain kinds of information,” and he suggested that your new project with Omidyar would represent a welcome escape from such relationships. 

I will grant that the new voices out there like Greenwald do not attempt to hide their opinions and leanings.  One would hope, however, as their share of information gathering and influence increases, that they would continue to ensure they are as aggressive in presenting both sides of an issue as they are with 'activism.'  The two are often at odds.

But the real dynamic I want to address is this: does anyone still believe that the traditional, corporate-focused world of journalism is any less biased or partisan than independent voices like Greenwald?  If nothing else, the reportage over the last two administrations (Bush and Obama) should have put to rest forever the idea that mainstream journalism is anything else but a tool of the bipartisan, statist ruling elite.

I would much rather read someone who is open about their leanings, such that I can include that in my consideration of what they have to say, than to deal with the false pretenses of those who want to claim some moral high ground of 'objectivity' that they actually fail to occupy.

The simple truth is that the world of establishment journalism has, by claiming objectivity while practicing anything but, simply become a force for propaganda.  I harbor some concern about the damage that overzealous "writers in the tradition of Thomas Paine" can cause.  But just as Obamacare may have been a necessary nadir to get people to wake up to the foolishness of technocracy, such writers may be the necessary corrective to finally get people to demand more from their sources of information.

The ultimate low-information voters

Maybe I'm crazy, but if a voter casts a ballot for someone who's been dead for months, shouldn't there be a way to bar them from future voting since they're clearly not paying enough attention to be a proper participant in the process.....

SEATTLE - Two candidates in separate races in Washington state are both leading their opponents in Tuesday's elections. Should they both hold on for victory, do not expect any long acceptance speeches. Both candidates are currently dead. In the Seattle suburb of Des Moines, John Rosentangle won 71 percent of the vote over write-in candidates in the King County Water District 54. Rosentangle died last August of an illness. He was 63. In a city council race on the Washington coast in Aberdeen, John Erak, also dead, is leading Alan Richrod, very much alive, with 53 percent of the vote. The 81-year-old Erak was a former state representative and died in June shortly after announcing he was running to retain his seat. As of yesterday his lead was only 12 votes, and the results weren't final. Both men died after the filing period closed and their names could not be removed from ballots. Should both candidates win, they will still be dead.

...and we wonder why our government gets away with what it does...

The 10 commandments of government

These do seem to sum up the imperative nicely:

I Generally speaking, government always grows -- it never shrinks -- whether times are good or bad.

II In each area it purports to "assist", government attempts to replace individual decision-making with central planning.

III In order to implement its grand central plans and solidify its power, government must take from one citizen to give to another; this is, in effect, lawful theft.

IV No matter how many times central planning fails, the self-appointed masterminds in government assert that "this time is different" and that with only a few tweaks and more money, their delusional plans will succeed.

V Because it uses funds confiscated from taxpayers, self-restraint is no obstacle to government's ambitions.

VI Its fundamental misunderstanding of human nature notwithstanding, government must claim to grant "rights", which require it steal the labors of one citizen to give to another (such as food, shelter, employment, and health care).

VII No matter how widespread the harm it causes, government will never provide an honest and historical accounting -- a report card -- of its failures.

VIII As more individuals and families are harmed by the failures of central planning, government must find suitable scapegoats, must lie to do so, and therefore must also repress dissent.

IX In order to build its network of redistribution and grow a culture of dependency on its services, government must inevitably undermine the family unit, religion, and the notion of God-given rights in order to cow, bribe, or intimidate its citizens.

X As government grows ever more powerful, it must also become increasingly oppressive through compulsion and force. To do otherwise would mean government must shrink, and this it cannot do.


George Washington, smart guy that he was, provided a Cliff's Notes version over two centuries ago:
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master.”

Saturday Sounds

This is one calm, cool, collected and committed mama!  Bonus points for riffing off Alison Krauss!
We need many, many more mothers like this one!

Saturday Sounds

Unemployed Gollum seeks new work in Hollywood...