Politics: Ready, Set...Lie

So the Presidential Campaigns are revving up and getting in full swing and I saw this article on Perry on Fox's website. In the article Perry is accused and criticized for: Violent remarks toward Bernanke, working for Al Gore and not being honest about it, and wanting to lead a Texas secession.

1. The Bernanke Comments

In the Article:" Exhibit A. On the same day he filed his candidacy papers, Perry was captured on camera suggesting Texans might want to rough up Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke if he tries to tackle the economic slump by printing more money.

"If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas," Perry said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost ... treasonous in my opinion." "

In Reality: Fair enough, Perry probably shouldn't have said it, but keep in mind that democrats have been vilifying tea-party republicans (who proposed Cut-Cap-and-Balance, the ONLY plan proposed by congress that S&P admitted would have prevented the downgrade, and also the ONLY plan the president and democratic leaders refused to discuss) as 'terrorists' and 'hostage takers'. So fair enough, Perry should refrain from suggesting physical violence, but nothing out of the ordinary.

2. Working for Al Gore's Campaign

In the Article:"Already, he was questioned Monday about his post as Al Gore's Texas campaign chairman during Gore's unsuccessful 1988 bid for president. Perry claimed these were the days before Gore was "Mr. Global Warming," but Politico.com noted that Gore was talking about global warming before his 1988 bid. "

In Reality: Read the above. 'Perry claimed these were the days before Gore was "Mr. Global Warming"'. So what if Gore mentioned Global Warming a few times. He didn't go off the deep end until after Bush beat him in the 2000 elections. Perry is right, Politico.com is being stupid.

3. Secession

In the Article: "Gibbs questioned how the governor who famously suggested a Texas secession from the U.S. is now seeking to lead the entire nation.

"Just two years ago, the governor of Texas openly talked about leading Texas out of the United States of America -- and now this campaign has caused him to profess his love for the United States. I think it's a remarkable turnaround," Gibbs said."

In Reality: To be fair to Fox, most of this comes from Gibbs, though they failed to contradict the blatant lie Gibbs told. Perry never said he would lead Texas in Secession. What he said was that if England continued ignoring what the colonies want then there might be problems...sorry, got mixed up there. He said that if Washington 'continues to thumb their noses at the american people, who knows what may come of it.' Thumbing noses may refer to pushing the healthcare bill through in secret sessions, confiscating copies of the proposed bill from voters wanting to speak with their congress men, denying voters access to their congressmen, lying about what was in the bill, etc, all of which was being done by the political establishment in Washington when Perry made the above remarks. If Perry was in any way wrong, then we might as well throw out the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Gibbs is wrong in that Perry didn't talk about leading any kind of Secession (he indicated that if anything happened it would be ordinary people fed up with Washington, not politicians), and that it wasn't Texas Seceding, it was American citizens from every state.

My point basically is not that Perry is perfect, he's not. He is, in my opinion, the best man for the job right now, and the next year is going to see a lot of people making volcanic mountains out of collapsing mole hills. The collapse of any kind of journalistic code of honor means that Americans need to develop discernment in their reading and the diligence necessary to actually do research on who they are voting for. The only thing that kills Democracies faster than a nonvoter is an uneducated and selfish voter.

A Republic, A Tyranny

As I have mentioned before, the root problem with the debates going on in Congress focus around how much the federal government will control the nation. The question that is being ignored is who will run the federal government.

In the Republic, Plato sets out what he thinks would be a perfect state and in so doing sets forth two propositions which are wonderful on the surface, but flawed underneath. The first is the foundation of the Republic's boundaries upon the people's need for beef, which pays no heed to the people's need for bacon; and the second is the running of the nation by a council of all powerful wise men, which pays no heed to the propensity of wise men to have particular area of foolishness.

The need for bacon being beyond argument, I will here deal with propensity of wise men to have particular areas of foolishness and further more the inability for a council of such men to run a country. Wise men, or rather those called wise men by the world, have the same difficulty in managing the details of a nation that general has in managing the details of a battle, both are esconsed so high above the fray over seeing the big picture that they have lost touch with what is really happening in each of the individual conflicts that put together make up the battle. The general has his plans and the wise man his theories, but neither has anything to do with particulars.

It is also important to note that a government such as Plato imagined it, an all powerful one filled with wise men, has another devastating draw back. Such governments tend to slowly be less filled with wise men without becoming less powerful, so that in the end they are all powerful governments filled with fools or madmen. Power does not corrupt so much as it produces stress, though the difference between the two for men with the moral framework of our current politicians is slight indeed. Plato makes an attempt at creating a system to perpetuate the rule of the wise, but he has nothing to perpetuate their wisdom. His solution, education, has just as much power to blind as it does to illuminate. Look at the rulers of Nazi Germany, most of the men who formed Hitler's government were geniuses with college degrees. And I don't think there are many who can claim to have the power to manipulate or shape not just a crowd but an entire nation as Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

Our current government no longer exists to 'promote the General Welfare'. Instead it exists to support itself, the first step in the direction of tyranny. I do not suspect the current members of our government to be working toward a dictatorship, I do not think that even most of them want a dictatorship. They are however moving in that direction by diverting portions of the government away from the public and toward itself. Vast amounts of money are spent each year from the national budget on keeping the present people in power. Whether this is creating programs that people want (but shouldn't have), jobs that could be done better in the private sector (or shouldn't be done at all), or government funds going to criminal organizations (like Planned Parenthood) it is in line with Plato's theoretical Republic, which is in itself a tyranny. The current politicians, having written exceptions for themselves into almost every law they pass and massive benefits for themselves into special laws for themselves, are content to play Plato's wise men on our nation, directing everything as they see fit, and making a rather colossal mess of the whole thing.

Our government was not set up to opporate like Plato's Republic, but instead was supposed to be a limited government run by good people. Now most of the good people are gone, replaced by greedy theorists, and the 'limited' part of our government is being reduced in every way possible.

Default, Aaaahh! Not.

Default is not the main problem confronting our nation at the present moment, as the usual suspects are screaming. The real danger facing us is that our credit rating may be downgraded from Triple A status. Default will occur if we fail to:

- either reduce the amount of money we have to pay every day to keep the government running,

- or increase the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow.

Our credit rating will be downgraded if the rest of the world gets the idea that we never really intend to pay it all off, i.e. by borrowing from China to pay the U.K., then borrowing from Germany to pay off China, then borrowing from the U.K. to pay off Germany, ad infinitum. We could avoid a Default and still have our credit rating downgraded, which would have a massive impact on our economy, slowing down any recovery further and possibly sending us backwards.

If the U.S.'s credit rating is downgraded, interest rates will increase drastically, which would hurt just about every single area of the American economy.

The only way to avoid this is to seriously cut our spending now. Anything else will damage the economy. Raising taxes will continue to constrict business and cut away at our manufacturing base, which is already weak enough as it is. Raising the debt limit will signal that we do not really intend to ever pay it off.

Joker One

I just finished reading Joker One by Donovan Campbell, a recounting of Campbell's time as a platoon leader in command of a platoon of Marines stationed in Ramadi Iraq. The book tells briefly how Campbell joined the Marines through OCS in college, his initial struggle to take command of his platoon, Joker One, and get it ready for deployment, but the bulk of the book is spent recounting the day to day struggle for the Marines as they took over from the Army in Ramadi and fought off attack after attack by insurgents.

The biggest thing that I took away from the book was an incredible respect for our men and women in uniform. Even as they grew frustrated at the insurgents, Campbell's men refused to shoot at terrorists who surrounded themselves with children while firing AK rounds at the base. In contrast, one of Campbell's men was mortally wounded when a RPG round blew off his legs while he and other Marines remained in the open to provide medical care for a crowd of thirty children who had been hit by an earlier RPG.

I highly encourage the book, though if you are squeamish you might want to skip several pages, since Campbell does not edit out the injuries his men suffered. Campbell wrestles with issues from how to lead his men into situations he knows are incredibly dangerous to how to deal with a populace that allows terrorists to stockpile weapons in their houses. All in all, I highly recommend the book.

Government: The Problem For All Our Solutions.

I know a lot of people are wondering why the federal government cannot get the debt problem taken care of, and I thought I would take a few minutes to hopefully shine some light on a few of the problems.

• Neither House Democrats nor President Obama have presented a plan. They have critiqued various parts of the Republican plan, but have not presented a plan themselves.
• The spending cuts that Democrats in Congress, and President Obama, are willing to allow are far in the future, while the tax increases they are demanding take effect far sooner. Also, in the past when democrats have made deals with Republicans such as "one dollar in tax increases for three dollars in spending cuts", the tax increases have taken place and congress never actually gets around to making the cuts. This is what happened to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
• Republicans think that the way out of the recession is to allow more money to stay in the private sector, increasing business capital to allow more job creation. Democrats on the other hand think that the economy can be jump started by the government spending large amounts of borrowed money in incentives and programs.
• Republicans worry that if we simply raise the debt ceiling, then U.S. debt will be downgraded in value as people loose faith that it will ever be repaid. Everyone will be paid by money borrowed from somebody else until eventually nobody else will lend, leaving the last group of lenders will not get paid, and nobody wants to be the second to last group that doesn't get paid.

People like to talk about government being necessary to get us out of this mess, but may I point out that government got us into this mess by forcing/encouraging companies and banks to loan money into the housing market that could not be repaid. It wasn't corporate America that made a deal with the devil, it was the Federal Government trying to create a perfect world that made this mess.

That is what is at the base of the current difficulty. Is government the solution to the problems that plague our society, or is it, as many of the founding fathers said, a necessary evil?

Hunting

I read an article yesterday either in TIME or WORLD that discussed some people's obsession with watching the death of animals they are about to eat. As someone who has done a lot of hunting and trapping, I thought now might not be a bad time to explain to those of who do not hunt or trap why we do what we do and what our mindset is. I cannot speak for everyone, and I recognize that every hunter is different.

Hunters can be broadly divided into four groups; The adrenaline junkies you see on TV who shoot an animal with big antlers from a few miles away, the hunters you rarely see who are simply trying to put meat on the table, those who are doing pest control on wildly over populated areas, and those who hunt to stay in touch with nature.

Many of the hunters on television are nothing like the majority of hunters, but there seem to be more of them every year. Such hunters are after notoriety and adrenaline highs. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a great hunter or relishing the flood of adrenaline from a hunt, I and many others are disgusted by the hunters who leave it at that. There little to be proud of in shooting a deer from thee hundred yards away while it was eating on what is for all intents and purposes a bait patch, and then taking the antlers only, leaving everything else to rot and be eaten by buzzards. People with this mindset occasionally move beyond the bounds of law and become poachers, using floodlights, silenced rifles, and night vision to kill trophy bucks on other people's land and then sell the antlers for hard cash.

Many hunter on the other hand are simply trying to put meat on their table. Deer meat is far more healthy than beef, and one deer can provide several meals for an average family. During the great depression deer became a valuable source of food in rural areas, where men would kill thirty or forty deer to feed their families.

Most people today do not 'need' to kill wild animals to put food in their table, yet hunting remains a popular activity. Fathers taking their sons deer hunting is a common practice in Texas, and its not because we have a wild fascination with killing things, but because we want to be responsible stewards of our world. I hunt in order to help keep the deer population at the point the land can reasonably support it, to provide food for my family, and because the hunt is one of the greatest experiences a man can participate in.

It is widely propagated that hunting damages the populations of deer especially. This is quite simply a myth. Last year I spent a few days on my grandfather's ranch in Texas and killed four deer in three days. I was shooting a scoped high power rifle from a four wheeled vehicle at deer that we saw while we drove back and forth doing chores for his cattle. The area is over run with deer, due in part to the vast ranches surrounding the area that do not allow hunting. Already the deer population is beginning to reach over population and running out of food, and the current drought is not going to help at all. The result will be a large number of deer dying from starvation and disease because the population has not been kept in check by responsible hunting. When I was with my grandfather, he asked that I always aim for the oldest doe, thus removing two or three fawns from next years population with each shot. That is responsible hunting, what many hunters engage in from year to year, trying to properly manage the land they have been given stewardship of.

A Proposal For The Resolution Of The Debt Problem And The Increase Of Efficiency In The American Government

The following is a proposal written up by one of my smaller friends who occasionally does time as an obstruction for me to bounce ideas off of.

As election season approaches and the debt crisis escalates I would like to propose a solution to our economic problems and to our government’s inefficiency. In a word: Monarchy.

Every two years billions of dollars are dumped into the election industry, an industry which produces a million annoying ads, vast amounts of paper signage, a few hundred politicians, and not much else. A pure monarchy would do away with this mess and help the nation in three ways. First, it will free up those billions of dollars to do something useful and build the economy, which can then be taxed more to increase government revenues. Second, Monarchy will free up hundreds of educated men and women now serving in public offices for the work force, which will further grow the economy, which will further increase revenues. Thirdly, it will remove the annoying campaign adds, which will result in calmer people in the work place, which will be conducive to better business decisions which will help grow the economy, which will increase revenues still more to the point that we can pay off the debt, pay people to do nothing, and still have a space program so we don’t have to ride to our space station at the Russian’s convenience. A further note on Space, Monarchies like big things, which would give the monarch the added incentive of encouraging NASA to make bigger and better Shuttles instead of telling them to work on some multicultural time killing investigation. Such a move would reemploy a number of people, which would further grow the economy, further increasing revenue.

The running of the nation by a monarchy would also cut down on the amount of money given away by people seeking reelection, which would increase the amount of money in the treasury, possibly raising it as high as not-completely-in-debt.

A Monarchy would also solve many of our foreign policy problems. With a monarch for life, there will be no more switching back and forth every four years in our policies. Also, with military power concentrated in one person military problems will be dealt with quickly and efficiently, a few bombs, a group of Marines, and problems like the one in Libya could be changed from a small nation bloodbath to a small nation mess-which-may-also-be-a-bloodbath-but-will-receive-less-press-because-there-are-fewer-big-caliber-explosions-mess.

Also, because a Monarch will rule for life, he will be more likely to be careful with his nation’s treasure since he has to make it last a lifetime, not just four to six years.

To conclude, let me put my argument into a logical syllogism for the effect of greater clarity.

We need a more efficient government than a Democratic Republic

Monarchy is a more efficient government than a Democratic Republic.

Therefore we need Monarchy.

Logic makes it so simple!

-Mark Auralius Tudorius

Novelty Cannot Replace Quality

In my continuing quest to create a story that a few people might enjoy, I have spent not a little time reading books on how to write a book. Many of them have provided me with helpful insights, a few in particular have harped incessantly on the necessity of ‘surprising the reader’ and ‘being new’. So far this is all well and good, I enjoy being surprised by a clever plot twist, or a new type of character, but when the aforementioned books assert that without such, the book will not be read, I fear I must respectfully disagree.

A good work of art attracts attention either by its novelty or its quality. Novelty is easier to create than quality and has thus become, for many, the Holy Grail of art. So artists, writers, directors, etc. spend their time trying to outdo each other in novelty, usually by being ore and more grotesque, until grotesqueness ceases itself to be either novel or grotesque. Art today is a business, if you book, movie, or paintings don’t bring in money, then few people are interested in it, and when something becomes a business product, people try to find the way to produce something for as little as possible to sell it for as much as possible. An artist’s currency is time; novelty is quick and fast when compared to quality. Thus, quality has suffered. Novelty is just that, something new, and so when something ceases to be novel (when you’ve seen or read it), the essence of what made you enjoy the work of art is gone, then it has no pull on you. Novelty may create best sellers, but it cannot create classics by itself.

Well told stories, well made characters, however, do not grow old at nearly the same rate (Reading your favorite story, and nothing else for weeks on end will make you sick of it no matter how charming or fulfilling). Quality stories, quality characters are able to entertain for years on end, they have staying power. Part of what brought this to my mind was the number of movies that are remakes of stories and characters we already know: Iron Man (film adaptation of a comic series), Thor (film adaptation of a comic series) , Green Lantern (film adaptation of a comic series), The Green Hornet (film adaptation of a comic series), The A Team (Film adaptation of a TV Series), True Grit (Remake of a film adaptation of a book), The Eagle (Film adaptation of a book), I Am Number Four (Film adaption of a book). These films have done very well, and you cannot really argue that they succeeded because they pushed the envelope or were in some way vastly different from anything we had ever seen. In fact we already knew what most of them were going to be about.

A pursuit of novelty has contributed largely to the waste paper lining the Fantasy, Horror, and Sci-Fi sections at Barnes and Noble; it creates works that are fun to read once or twice but have no lasting value. Quality can overcome a lack of novelty and create a work that is fun to read and does not rely strictly on your desire to find out what happens next. A great work of course, includes both novelty and quality, but novelty must be servant, it makes a poor master.

A quick thought...

If tax revenue was such an issue, shouldn't the person in charge of our treasury be someone who actually paid his taxes? I mean, Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion, Timothy Geithner was made Secretary of the United States Treasury. No wonder law school can be confusing.

Tax Cuts Part II

In the below post there are a few things I want to clarify. First, I was not trying to be biased in my comment about taking from the rich to give to the poor. There are few people (Scrooge excepted) who think that people with more have no responsibility to help those who have less, the argument that arises is whether the government should have a hand in the sharing; liberals say it should, conservatives say it shouldn't (as a rule). I recognize that's not where all taxes go, its just where a lot of them go. Conservatives also believe that taxes go to a lot of things they probably shouldn't (like Planned Parenthood).

Also, low taxes will not expand the economy no matter what else happens. Low taxes tend to help grow the economy. Let me reiterate, tend to help. The economy can still struggle when the taxes are lower than they were the year before, and it can still grow when the reverse is true. Taxes are only one of many factors that effect the size of the economy, lowering taxes will not cause the economy to boom by itself, though it will tend to have a helpful effect. Raising taxes will not tank an economy by itself, but when a number of other factors (such as uncertainty, heavy regulation, and too many government mandated programs) are putting pressure on the economy, raising taxes will only put more weight on an already overloaded economy.

My comparison of Texas and New York was a comparison of the best and the worst, but it cannot be explained simply by natural resources. Yes, having massive amounts of oil sitting under your state might help you with the trucking industry (which California ran off), but it doesn't necessarily help you lure in the tech industry. New York has been increasing taxes and programs at a staggering rate, and businesses have been leaving the state equally fast. New York taxed productivity to pay for people who were not being productive. It shouldn't be surprising then that productivity in the state plummeted, and their programs are going bankrupt.

There is no silver bullet to reviving the economy, and the government's job is not to micromanage it. The answer is not no government regulation, but neither is it heavy regulation beyond reason. The answer is a balanced solution that utilizes all the assets we have available.

Tax cuts

I've had several conversations with people about tax cuts recently, and most of them seem to have no idea how tax cuts work. It is my attempt to explain the rational behind tax cuts as I understand it.

Most tax revenues come from money moving through the economy (income tax, sales tax, trade tariffs, etc.). Making this look more simple than it is, the equation might look something like this: T x I= R, where T=tax rates, I=money changing hands in the economy, and R= government revenue. Now, if we want to raise R higher, then we can raise T or I. Everyone agrees we need more tax revenue if we are going to stave off economic collapse

The argument for higher tax rates goes something like this: The best way to raise revenue is to increase tax rates. The money is there, we just need richer people to give more of it to the government so we can continue taking care of the poorer populace. In the short term they are right, raising tax rates will indeed bring in more tax revenue.

The counter argument is more complex because, I think, it takes the real world into consideration. The counter argument states that the way to raise revenues over the long term is to lower tax rates, which will increase the amount of money changing hands in the economy, (lowering T to raise I in the equation above). When you tax something, people will pay the tax until it gets annoying. At that point they will either try to do it somewhere you can't tax it (outsourcing) or as little as possible. The more money we leave in the economy, conservatives argue, the bigger the economy will get. The increase in the size of the economy will off set the reduction in taxes enough to raise the amount of money that is raised through taxes. In the long run, they are right, though tax cuts will not do a whole lot in the short term to help the economy.

With tax increases, people will pay more money to the government. Pulling money out of the economy, through the government, and then putting it back into the economy is terribly inefficient and doesn't do a whole lot.

A lot of companies are taking moving out of the states because it is cheaper to do business abroad than here. Part of that is, I admit, because you can't pay Americans a dollar a day, but neither do they have to pay the Chinese government 35% of their earning in taxes. If tax rates where decreased, a lot of business would return to the U.S. I admit that I am not an economic major or a math genius, but it doesn't take a genius to see the difference between how New York and Texas are weathering the economic crisis. New York has some of the highest tax rates in the nation and they are going bankrupt. Texas has far lower tax rates and we're growing.

To the Young (Like me)

This is primarily for young people, specifically young men. I've done a lot of thinking over the last few months with all the debate about what laws should and should not be passed etc, and I have come up with the solution to most of the ethical issues facing the nation. Young Men.

If young men would take a stand and live for God instead of for self, a pretty large portion of the evil in America would simply vanish. To illustrate my point, consider the following:

Abortion: If young men are only having sex with their wife in marriage, there will be precious few young scared girls getting abortions because they can't take care of themselves and a young child.

Porn and the explicit entertainment industry: It's simple, companies produce what people buy: if it ain't being bought, it will not be made.

Gun Violence: If young men get their focus off themselves they would be less likely to shoot up people they don't think respect them and more likely to minister to those who are in pain.

Bottom line: The Social Evils that everyone is spending so much time and money fighting will not be ended by a law. You cannot pass enough laws to make people good. The solution is hard and slow, something people today don't like. It is not easy to popular to tell people that abortion will not be ended by a Supreme Court decision in ten years but will take at least several decades of people interacting and changing hearts one at a time.

Young men and women are the leaders of tomorrow, as people at college are so fond of saying. If we make the decision that we will make a stand for God, for the right, whatever the cost, whatever the result, God can use us to have an impact far greater than we could ever wish.

We Are All Stark Raving Mad

I just back from a short drive and on the way back we listened to 'All Things Considered' where Jon Ronson, the author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry , was being interviewed. The main premise of the book, which sounds like it would be an interesting read, is that much of the world is run by psychopaths. I laughed, but as I listened to some of the things the classified as constituting madness and as telltale signs of madness, a few things stood out. Much of what he described are often described as 'having a power trip', 'being a ruthless leader', or a 'cuthroat competitor'. Mr. Ronson is not describing madness, he is describing sin.

Many people today cannot accept that 'normal' humans could be as bad as most humans evidently are. Forget Hitler or Stalin, how do we explain a basically good man taking pleasure in firing hard working employees when he knows that they need the job and will have little possibility of finding another job? How do we explain a basically good person talking about their belief in the predator instinct and the dominance of the strong? What about the kids who walk into schools and start shooting, or the career criminals who see nothing wrong with their way of life? If we do not believe in a God or a Devil, we are forced to accept these evils as part of the world and either deny the difference between good and evil, or we can normalize it by calling it madness. While there are definitely those who would chose the first option, appealing to evolutionary development and the survival of the fittest, there are many who cannot accept this solution. They feel on a basic level that certain things are just wrong, and when they see people take joy in these things, unwilling to admit to the existence of evil, they conclude that these people have a psychological problem.

The result is a society afflicted with varying degrees of kleptomania, narcissistic personality disorders, and a myriad of variations of madness. Everyone in a society is afflicted with madness to one degree or another, because all deviations from good behavior are results of madness.

If this is true society cannot function. If everyone is mad to one degree or another, who is to say what is madness and what is sanity. If you remove the basic standards that God put in place; right and wrong, good and evil, you remove the logical and rational basis for society to function. Evil exists, and calling it madness and normalizing it will do nothing to ease the pain or fix the damage that it creates.

It is true that there are psychological disorders that are real disorders and are neither results of a conscious desire to sin nor indicators of present or past sin and I have no wish to diminish the suffering that such diseases cause. There is however, a difference between someone who has a legitimate disorder and someone who is just plain evil.

King Arthur

This is an essay I wrote to (very) briefly cover the history of the Arthurian Legend with emphasis on the earlier portions of the story. I would like to eventually do something a little more in depth on certain characters or portions of the story, such as Merlin. Check it out, and I hope you enjoy it.
King Arthur, Man, Myth, And Legend

It Is Finished

The pain came stronger, with each pulse throbbing,
His bleeding hands and slowly tearing feet,
Slowly him of his strength was robbing
was this cross so different from his father’s seat.

Below him cried the mortal horde,
jeers and jests from those he loved,
those he saved from death’s dark sword.
They laughed and sneered still unmoved
by the blood and sweat that from his face ran down
and soaked into the dark and thirsty ground.

Beside him hung two more,
petty thieves, he saw their lives,
doomed to eternal wrath and gore
beneath the law for their unnumbered crimes.

All about him the host of God arrayed.
All stood there who had at the beginning stood,
The Traitor, Lucifer, all his power displayed,
his being devoid of all that was good.
Beyond him stood Michael in sorrow,
And Gabriel wondering what would be tomorrow.

But beyond them all his eyes were sent,
The judgement hall he watched and felt
There was all his focus bent.
As before God the law and judgement knelt.

Each and every crime from days long past,
and from those days still now untold
upon himself were laid at last.
The pain increased a hundred thousand million fold
And judgement’s darkness descended about him,
And he felt the burning, freezing, tearing pain of sin.

Time seemed to stand still,
watching the Son of God,
Suffer a world of ill.
As his blood fell red upon the sod.

He bowed his head as the pain raged on,
Love held him there, love pure and true,
Love it was that made him strong,
God and man he stood, pure and true.

Then he felt it, drawing near,
he cried for wine, his mouth to clear.
All would hear it, from the gates of gold
to the bulwarks of hell, the mountains old
and the flowers young, from the east to the west
Once more he would speak before his rest.

He swallowed the wine put too his lips,
letting the wetness fill his mouth.
It was only a few short sips,
but he would be heard from North to South.
Gathering his strength he lifted up upon the nail,
that pain by the judgement rendered pale.

He filled his mortal lungs with air,
and with all the strength in his mortal frame
He cried out the words so sweet and fair,
The words so long he had awaited.

“Tetelestai!” He cried with all the power at his command,
“It Is Finished!” His work was complete.
Man from God was no longer banned.

The rocks cracked and the angels reeled
The temple curtain God in a moment rent.
From him his children were no longer sealed.

Pragmatism and Lysoled Cake

I hate pragmatism, and just about hit the ceiling whenever someone says they do something 'because it works'. Pragmatism, Machiavellianism, call it what you will, it doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is simple, humans as a race do not have enough knowledge to predict with any kind of accuracy the totality of the future. When we are assessing how we will achieve a goal we have to evaluate three different areas. First, what is the goal we want, then what is the best way to get there, and what will be the fallout from getting said goal. For instance, let us say we want someone else's cake. Having decided on the goal, we then decide the best way to get there is to demand it. We assume that since we are the upperclassman and the cake belongs to freshmen, there isn't anything they can do. However, the cake, it turns out, has been sprayed with Lysol. Also, demanding the cake irritated the freshmen, so while you are at the library, said freshmen stuff rotting chicken up your air vent.

This illustrates that pragmatism violates itself because it doesn't work. The above was a humorous situation, after the chicken was removed, but the mess Neville Chamberlain created in Europe wasn't a funny for the hundreds of thousand of Czechoslovakians Hitler killed.

The reason pragmatism is so appealing is because its main contender isn't so appealing if you just want to help yourself here and now. Christianity tells us to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

Most atheists talk about the divine busybody who makes us do the right thing because it is his set of rules. God created the world and the universe a certain way, with a structure that works very well when you follow the rules. When you violate the way the universe is structured, there are natural consequences. God's rules are the owner's manual to the universe, and people throw away the manual, talking about being 'free spirits' and 'independent of a omnipotent dictator' and proceed to fail miserably in their lives.

When you choose what is right over what you think works, the outcome is good. The catch is that it may not be good for you right now. Thus, if you are the most important person in the world (as per atheism and evolution) and if there is no afterlife (as per atheism) then pragmatism is a far better option, but it will still fill your room with stinking chicken.

The Purpose of Man

The great question that every person faces is what is man’s purpose in life? The most common answer from Christians is something along the lines of ‘To glorify God and enjoy him forever”. That may indeed be a great answer, but in order to construct an argument from it, let us analyze what it means to glorify and enjoy God.

First let us look at glorifying God. To glorify is much the same as to honor, to make look good, etc. The best way I know to honor God is to obey his commandments, pretty fundamental right? Okay, so glorifying God is obeying God, but what else does it mean? As Christians we are called to be ambassadors for Christ, so how does an ambassador honor he who sent him? By behaving in such a way that brings credit to the name of the sender. So glorifying God is being obedient to his commands and acting in a way that brings credit to his name.

But what does it mean to enjoy God? Most people I believe have grasped the idea, if not the practice, that enjoying God means creating and cultivating a relationship with him. I would submit that one way to enjoy God is to enjoy what he has created. God created the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and God created man. God does not create to fill space. Everything he creates is to glorify him in some way. When man sings a song, paints a picture, has a family, grows a garden, plants an orchard, raises an animal, he is glorifying God by engaging in the creation that God made.

There are two extremes that Christians seem to be prone to, at least in America. One group says that we should enjoy what God has created, learn about him from the good things in life. They then proceed to chase a relationship with God by spending all their free time ‘enjoying God’ without attending to the business God has given them to do. It such people the phrase ‘So heavenly minded they are no earthly good’ refers to. The other extreme is to be so focused on following the particular mission or command God has given that we forget to enjoy and engage in the world that God created.

To bring this all together, if you focus on enjoying God through the life he has given you, you will fail to complete his plan for you. You are like the soldier who, having gone behind enemy lines, proceeds to get to know the occupied locals and joins their tribe; a relationship has been established, but nothing has been done to further the lord’s plan. You have failed to make a meaningful contribution to the Lords work. When you stand before the Throne with God Almighty sitting in judgment what will you say? ‘I knew you Lord, though I ignored your commandments’? ‘Lord I enjoyed your creation, though I did nothing to save others from hellfire’?

If on the other hand you become so focused on completing the mission God has given you, you will become disappointed and bitter. Man is built for victory. In one of the Nazi prison camps, it was said that a particular commander ordered an experiment to see how people handled a pointless task. Prisoners were forced to move a pile of rocks from one side of a field to the other, then back again, day after day. Men began going mad on the third day. God does not ask any of us to accomplish a goal or mission, and for a very simple reason, we can’t. Until Christ returns, we are fighting a losing battle. God asks only that we give everything we have to fight for him, and he will worry about the results. If your only focus is on glorifying God through obeying his commands, you will be sorely tested as you see yourself failing continuously to make any kind of impact on the world. Doing combat with the world, the flesh, and the devil, you will be wounded many times, and you must seek comfort in the Lord if you are to continue. When you stand before the Throne, will the Lord say to you “You obeyed me, but did you love me? You honor me, but do you love me?”

There is no easy way. If you want to be called a good and faithful servant you must not only enjoy the Lord, but you must honor him as well. Do not spend all your time trying to achieve measureable success, do not ask, at the end of the day ‘What did I get done’ or ‘Do I feel fulfilled’. Instead, ask ‘Did I make good use of my time to honor and glorify the Lord’?

Engage your brain before your mouth

In Victorian Literature this week, we are covering Darwin and Huxley and the general debate about evolution that occurred in Victorian England when Darwin published 'Origin of Species' and 'Descent of Man'. Sadly, one of the main readings consisted of an account of Huxley demolishing an English Bishop on the subject of evolution because the Bishop, quite frankly, didn't know what he was talking about.
There are so many things wrong about the theory of evolution that one does not have to be a world class biologist to see them. It takes some study and effort, but the time thus spent is worth it when you consider the cost of not spending it. When Christians open their mouths without knowing a) what they are talking about or b) what they really believe, they do nothing but destroy their own credibility.
The second part of our reading dealt with a Christian who attempted to suggest that God put fossils in the rock that give a false impression as to history in an attempt to test our faith. The point of this theory was to try to make both evolution and special creation valid. Macro-Evolution and Christianity are fundamentally opposed, one is based on death, disorder, and meaninglessness, whilst the other on Life, reason, and purpose. Christians do nothing but undermine themselves when they try to make arguments that they are either ignorant about or are unwilling to commit themselves to the Bible.
If you want to have an impact on the world, you must know what you are talking about and you must have a firm commitment to the infallibility of the bible. The Scriptures are unchanging, while scientists change their minds a couple of times a century.

In the Name of Clarity ...

To the left you will see that I have now several separate pages, one of which is the Arthurian Story. I'm still trying to figure out what the best format for this will be, but for right now its on a separate page.

When Men Are Angels

There once lived a young man, gifted beyond belief. Tall and strong with a tongue of silver, men followed his every thought, turning his visions into reality. The wise men of the city listened to him, and saw wisdom in all he said. His power grew until many recognized him as the ruler of their city.

As his age increased, so did his wisdom and power. Just laws were enacted throughout the land, the wicked were punished and the good were rewarded. With time, crime and murder were almost unheard of. Art and culture flourished, and the city became the wonder of the world, and the world looked on the people of the city, courteous, peaceful, and wise, and they said they must be as the angels of heaven.

On the borders of the city lived other cities who quickly accepted the man, now no longer young, as their ruler. So the empire was born, and it swiftly grew as great and beautiful and good as the city had been so that it was the wonder of the world.

Now, to the north of the empire lived barbaric peoples who lived a life of war and hardship. They dressed in animal skins and eked out a living from hunting and the little that would grow in the cold. They built no grand temples or vast cities, but wooden halls in which they drank away the harshness of their world.

So the people of the empire looked on these barbarians and saw the killing and the murdering and thought of their own peaceful cities. And they said to each other “Would it not be better if they were under our rule? Have we not been blessed with peace and goodness, and is it not our duty to spread our blessings to those who are more corrupt?”

So they gathered an army and marched north, ordering the barbarians to obey their laws and their customs. And they pointed to their cities, their healthy and peaceful families, and said “If you do as we tell you, you will be blessed with this.” And all who would not obey them they put to the edge of the sword.

So the barbarians looked at their own wars, and saw bloodshed and violence. Then they looked on the invaders and at the burning halls, violated women, and murdered infants, and determined that these invaders were the very demons of hell.

Should Be vs. Is Now

Over the last few days, a number of students at Texas A&M have been competing in jaw dropping competitions, seemingly astounded at the idiocy of students who want guns on campus or the stupidity of students who don't.

From what I have seen of both sides, the two arguments go something like this.

The right to bear arms is a fundamental right guaranteed by our Constitution. An armed campus is safer than an unarmed campus because you have a higher risk involved in opening fire on a class room when half the class might return fire. On an armed campus, gunmen cannot go on the kind of rampage that we saw at Virginia Tech, because students are armed and can stop them.

The reply to this is that first, arming students could be making it easier for psychopaths to get heavy weapons on campus (No one will report someone with an AK if its legal to carry them around). Second, students shouldn't be doing police work, and it would be way too easy for hotblooded teenagers to start throwing lead over emotional and academic problems.

In my opinion, the first argument is correct. It argues from where young people should be. If young people were responsible, I would have no problem with them wearing weapons to school. In early America ten year olds took their father's rifle to school in the winter.

Also, the second argument is correct, for it argues from where we are now. Lamentably, I believe that young people today do not have the responsibility or self control that ten year olds did in the past.

If I may make a proposition, why not arm professors? They have the responsibility lacking in younger students, and a blank fired off every now and then might help keep class awake.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Clearly!

Evolution is purely scientific, of course, nothing religious about it.

Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

This video really drives home the fact that evolution is a root of a larger philosophy that has something to say about everything. You can no more plug evolution into Christianity than you can plug theistic creation into atheism.

Really?

In a recent post on his blog Pharyngula, P.Z. Meyers makes the following statement in his discussion of atheists.

Dictionary Atheists. Boy, I really do hate these guys. You've got a discussion going, talking about why you're an atheist, or what atheism should mean to the community, or some such topic that is dealing with our ideas and society, and some smug [jerk] comes along and announces that "Atheism means you lack a belief in gods. Nothing more. Quit trying to add meaning to the term." As if atheism can only be some platonic ideal floating in virtual space with no connections to anything else; as if atheists are people who have attained a zen-like ideal, their minds a void, containing nothing but atheism, which itself is nothing. ...

If I ask you to explain to me why you are an atheist, reciting the dictionary at me, you are saying nothing: asking why you are a person who does not believe in god is not answered when you reply, "Because I am a person who does not believe in god." And if you protest when I say that there is more to the practice of atheism than that, insisting that there isn't just makes you dogmatic and blind.

Meyers has got this right, and it is something that people don't often realize. When you make a statement about the existence of God you are forced to make certain conclusions about the world if you are to remain consistent. Atheism has deep theological and scientific implications, and once you buy into a part of atheism, you buy into an interpretation of facts that is 1) not always consistent with itself, and 2)inconsistent with biblical thought.

This is why believing in an old earth is such a problem. Scientifically the claim is still questionable, and there are other conclusions that can be drawn from the scientific evidence. The belief that we live on an earth older than twelve thousand years old is one that was hammered out and and brought mainstream by the belief in evolution, a theory in and of itself diametrically opposed to the account given by Jehovah. In evolution, and belief in an old earth, death is a part of the fabric of the world, the driver of progress instead of a result of human sin, and how can you believe in a God who built death into the fabric of the world? If you want to read more on this, check out my post from a while ago Why does Creation Matter

Meyers' post is interesting, and I suggest that you read it, it gives an interesting look at atheism as some of the more influential and militant atheists see it. Also, just scanning his blog, you can see that all the man has to do if he wants to beat on Christianity before breakfast is scan the internet, find a few Christians making fools of themselves and walla! he's debunked christianity, again. Some of these people a good men who are fools in the world's eyes, but others are just simply being foolish. If Christians would take care of themselves and clean up our own act, we've have a lot easier time doing the Lord's work.

Interesting Note

I came across this the other day and was reminded of the perks of reading something in the original language. I have heard a lot about how reading stories in the original give an added dimension to that is lost in translations. Here is a practical example

In one Irish faerie tale, a son asks his father if he can have a certain castle for a day and a night. In the original language of the story, nouns worked something like they do in Greek, where there is no 'a' article. Instead, all nouns have the article 'the' attached to them when you are talking about a specific one. 'I see the sea' would have an article in front, while 'I see a sea' and 'I see sea' would look the same.

The father grants the son his wish and give him the castle for day and night. When the king comes to take possession of the castle the next morning, the son replies that it is his forever, for all of time is divided into day and night.

Unless you know original languages, you miss humorous things like this. Smart kid eh?

Don't feel to badly for the dad though, He was one of the faerie kings and owned more castles than his son had retainers.

Black and White

One Thing I find somewhat disturbing in modern fiction is the tendency of authors to paint humanity as either black or white. Now, please pause for a moment in your flight to throttle my heretical throat, and think for a moment. In almost every piece of fiction, the author goes to great lengths to show how either the villain actually has a pardonable motive, or the hero has an unpardonable dark side. In Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling paints man as purely white. As evil as Voldemort has become, he is not 'evil', for all his evil is the result of circumstances beyond his control and aimed at an at least pardonable desire, immortality. He is twisted by his childhood and the harshness of the world. It is thus for every single villain in the story, however despicable their acts, however violent their crimes, their motives are pure. The werewolves are angered by their rejection from society (is withdrawal and eventual hostility natural?), Snape's initial involvement in the death eaters is a result of James Potter and Sirius Blacks's treatment of him (and who wouldn't hate the spitting image of their boyhood tormentor?), and Draco joins the Death Eaters at least partly to avenge his father.

The Inheritance Cycle, from the three published books, appears to be buying into this theory hook, line, sinker, fisherman, boots and all. Murtaugh is harsh in the beginning out of fear for his life, not because he's a bad person, and he murders hundreds (semi-?) unwillingly because Galbatorix is forcing him to. The soldiers of the empire are similarly enslaved. Even Durza and Galbatorix are basically good. Durza, stuffed to the eyeballs with raging demons, is enslaved by them because he summoned them to avenge his dead master, and even the demons are raging because the can't bear to be stuck inside mortal flesh! (I personally did not understand how both parties could be guiltless in the transaction, but that might just be my failure as a reader.) Galbatorix was set off on his murderous rampage by the death of his dragon, which it has been hinted drove him mad (No sane man could do all that evil!).

On the other end of the spectrum, authors such as George R.R. Martin, and Vince Flynn portray all men as bad, their evil diluted only in as much as they have good motives. Their villains are vile and their heroes have some dark weakness, which is intended to bring out their 'humanity'. This end of the spectrum was occupied heavily by World War era writers such as T.H. White, George Orwell, and Kurt Vonnegut, whose message was something along the lines of 'Man is doomed, Humanity is coming to get us". As far as they were concerned, we didn't need alien invaders to destroy us, we were doing the job just fine on our own.

The great literary and artistic movement that couldn't stand Aragorn (he was too perfect), Sauron (he was two dimensional), or anyone from ancient stories (they are either good or bad, nowhere in between) has decried such literature because their character were either black or white, with gray left out of the matter. They thus set off to create characters who were more believable with plenty of grey areas, yet in their attempts to paint men as both black and white , they painted mankind one or the other.

Where Tolkien, Lewis, and authors of the past realized that mankind was gray and thus painted their characters as either black or white, Modern artists demand that characters be gray, and thus either condemn man to hell as a demon, or raise him to heaven as an angel.

Man kind is neither black nor white. He is a noble creature created in the image of God who feeds the poor, clothes the naked, and provides for the homeless. People such as Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi exemplified the humble passion that is a characteristic of man, and it is such people that J.K. Rowling and most modern authors think of when they think of man.

Yet man is also a mean, twisted creature who will turn upon his closest friend and kill him for pleasure. Such were the German and Austrian Youth who murdered Jews they had known since childhood for sport. Such were the guards at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec who would make men jump to their depths for fun, hunt prisoners and snipe at them from guard towers. It were these men that T.H. White and Vonnegut thought of when they thought of man.

Yet this is not all, Man is also a conquerer who tames the wild stallion and forces the mighty bull to yield. Man is a creator who builds monuments to dazzle future generations, bridges that span massive caverns, and cities well nigh impregnable to assault. Man is a destroyer who will burn a painting hundreds of years old for a few moments warmth and burn a city because its people offended him.

Man is too complex to be basically good or basically evil, the terrible and wonderful fact is that man is both.

On Writing

Across the page my pencil goes,
Never fast and often slows,
So sundry strands of stories I try to unravel,
As a hundred men
make such a din
I cannot control the rabble.

So many people with different faces,
hurrying from so many places,
I cannot begin to keep them in check,
they will not stand still
for good or for ill,
And turn my tale to a wreck

I vainly attempt to take control
Yet suddenly go down a rabbit hole.
And find to my horror the farther I fall,
that up has gone down,
and spun me around
and sense has gone out of it all.

We Have Met the Enemy....And He is US!

In Pogo veritas est. What is art for if not to illuminate the plank residing within our optic organ. Today Tom Delay was sentenced to three years for money laundering. While it is true that there is much wrong with what the Democrats have been doing in the federal government for the last two years, it is to be expected that they will act the way they have. If we will follow our own moral code, the world will be far better off than if we spend our time screaming bloody murder when democrats in Washington spend like democrats (Drunken sailors, it has been pointed out, stop spending when they run out of money), when people in Hollywood make pornographic films, and when atheists write books that use atheistic logic.

If Republicans cut off pork barrel spending and ended Christmas tree bills just from their own party, that would have more effect on the deficit than any amount of yelling at Democrats. I am not equating Christianity with Republicanism, far from it. I am merely trying to point out that both Christians and Republicans have a tendency to spend too much time pointing fingers when there is plenty of work to be done in their own garden.

Beyond the obvious effect of making a number of almost clean gardens clean, fixing our own lives is part of being above reproach. Our calls for morality fall somewhat flat when people see how Christians behave toward each other. Machiavelli and the Medici could take a few tips from church politics today; I mean whatever happened to 'they shall know you by your love for one another'? Republicans have screamed and yelled about excess spending and immoral democrat practices and yet this past year multiple Republicans and Christians faced charges relating to improper use of money and improper sexual relations, charges that were not unfounded.

If we take care of ourselves, and exercise dominion over the resources that God has given to us, we will do more good for the world than any amount of finger wagging will do. People, strangely enough, are more effected by deeds than by words, yet it is words that most of us employ instead of actions.

Chivalry, Real and imagined.

I recently participated in a small discussion on whether or not chivalry was dead. As my former teacher Blake Moser would say, 'DEFINE!'. What do me mean by 'chivalry'. If we are referring to the code of conduct popularized by the Arthurian Romances written under Eleanor of Aquitaine, in which the knight is essentially the slave of all ladies he happens to come across, I would hesitantly agree that it is dead. I hesitate because I'm not sure if the thing was ever properly alive.

If on the other hand we refer to chivalry as simple good manners such as opening the door for a lady, giving up our seat on a crowded bus, paying when we go on a date, etc., then I think chivalry, while not in perfect health, is a ways from the grave. If I may be allowed to brag a bit, at Texas A&M, I see such acts on a regular basis.

But why would we even ask the question, why would we care about the health of chivalry? I believe that it is certainly ailing, and is under assault by many of the ideas and mindsets of today.

1. First, young men have to a degree, ceased to look at young women as equals who should be protected and valued for who they are. Sexual and emotional desires are the main reasons that young men pursue young women, and such desires leave no room for the selflessness that chivalrous behavior is an indicator of.
2. Second, many women have demanded that they be treated 'just like men'. That is about as reasonable as the Air Force demanding that they be treated like the Marines. Both services have vital missions, but to give the Air Force the kind of funding and equipment that the Corps lives on would seriously impair its ability to perform its mission, they need high tech equipment, millions of research dollars, and high flying planes. The Marines need rifles, bayonets, and some food every once in awhile. Men and women are equals, but they are not interchangeable.

Chivalry is a Christian institution. To Islam, a man opening a door for a woman is unthinkable. To naturalism a man opening a door for a woman is pointless unless the man is trying to get her into bed. Christianity gives both the man and the woman the inherent worth that makes such behavior honorable to both. Neither party is demeaned when chivalry takes place. The man is honored by his performance of it, and the woman is honored, for the man sees her as worth of such service.

Towers

If you decide to become a soldier in the war of ideals that has raged for all time, it is unfortunantly true that you will meet on the vast and varied landscape known as the human mind many people who are brilliant, but have erected towers of ignorance, powerful, imposing, and impervious to facts. In my own limited and short journeys have met several such towers, and no matter how much I hurled facts, figures, and witty quotations at them, they have continued to stand, tall and power, immune to all my arguments.

In a recent confrontation of this nature, I found myself wondering at thickness of the walls and the height of the tower that two gentlemen had erected, from which they poured abuse on an organization they next to nothing about and its failure to have any resemblance to a second organization which they knew nothing about either. Such towers are immensely infuriating to those they withstand, and I found myself devoting far too much time to constructing refutations of their utterances of nonsense. The problem with nonsensical utterances is that there are so many ways to refute them that you can often spend a great deal of time preparing attacks from every possible angle, when you will at most use one.

However, two separate thoughts came to me as I thought how best to bring down a tower impervious to anything I could do. First, assaulting such towers is often a waste of time. Granted, there are times when nonsense is broadcast so far and so loud that it must be contradicted, but it is often better to save our energy and time to discuss truth with those who are genuinely interested in discovering it. Second, and perhaps more importantly, as we survey such towers, we should take a moment to see if our vantage point is a result of our standing on a mountain of fact and reasoning, or if we are able to see so far because we have erected our own citadel of folly.

Eric and Arthen

On the off chance that someone somewhere is wondering what happened to Eric and the story that I was posting upon this blog, I thought I would enlighten that someone.

Eric changed his name to Nikolas and left Narthlan, heading south to attend The University at Cirithul, which I did not know existed until he decided to attend it. When I asked him how he got so much money he replied that his family was in fact a merchants family in Morkal, and while his father was dead, his uncle was taking perfectly good care of him.

Arthen also went on several excursions (he still will not tell me where he went), and informs me that it was not Ethelstein to whom Fingarion gave the weapons, but to King Ulrayne some two hundred years before Ethelstan (Arthen says I spelled it wrong too) ascended the throne of a kingdom several hundred miles south of where Ulrayne ruled.

I have been attempting to correct my errors, but Rovik has been most uncooperative, and Raven refuses to follow any rules whatsoever. Several new characters have found their way into the story, and Arthen has introduced me to several who I knew only from brief meetings some time ago.

On the whole the tale is coming along, but people are so contrary, and characters simply refuse to do as written and will insist on going somewhere else to look after interests I did not know they had. However, Arthen has given me multiple manuscripts for research, and if you want something to read I can reproduce some of them. Most of them are of old, old times but some people might find them interesting.