Posts Tagged → church
Merry X-Mas to all Americans
Today is Christmas, the national holiday of America and most Western nations. Its origin is easy enough to decipher from the English name we use today, which is a conjunction of two words, Christ and Mass, or Christ’s-Mass, Christ being the Anglicized version of the Greek Chrystos, which means anointed.
Why does any of this matter? Because people best do things they agree with and understand, and in order to understand a thing, a person must understand the entire thing, especially its genesis.
Holding a Christian Mass -or Christmas- in honor of the Jewish man Joshua the Nazirite (or Joshua of Nazareth) whom orthodox Christians believe fulfills anointed messianic prophecy as interpreted from the Hebrew Scriptures (TANACH, or Torah (The Old Testament), Nevi’im (the Prophets), and Ketuvim (the Writings), is a way of celebrating the person at the center of the Christian faith. At least as the faith has been understood after the First Nycean Council (held in Nyceae Greece, now Iznik Turkey, in the year CE 325), when the first 275 years of Christianity was then greatly reformed and shaped, and out of which a religious orthodoxy emerged that both Protestants and Catholics today follow.
Apparently observed mostly as an austere holiday devoid of outward joy or expressions of happiness for most of its 1,500 year history, and conveniently set for the 25th day of December to match up with Hanuka’s 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, Christmas as we now know it in America was created by a Briton, a 19th century writer named Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, something almost all Americans are familiar with. Starring one Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim and a cast of other characters designed to tug at our heart strings and elicit our deepest sympathies and emotions, A Christmas Carol aggressively addresses what Dickens saw as a dearth of happiness and Christian charity. Especially at that time, when the modern industrial revolution had pulled people off the rural farms and pooled them into teeming urban slums, creating a huge strata of direly poor people in need of everything and unable to provide for themselves as they had back on the farms.
(note that Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto at the same time in response to the same industrial revolution socioeconomic dynamics playing out in Germany and Europe, but instead of trying to encourage Christian faith to rise to the occasion, like Dickens, Marx sought to supplant Judaism and Christianity with his own new religion…)
Dickens believed that those who had benefited most from the industrial revolution and its cheap labor had a Christian duty to share their success in the form of charity with those living in the urban slums. And so Dickens’ A Christmas Carol story is both a huge guilt trip and emotional plea that was immediately and wildly successful when it debuted and continues to shape our own Christmas experiences to this day.
Combined with Scandinavian traditions of Santa Claus and reindeer, evergreen trees decorated with festive lights, and German gift giving, Dickens’ vision of a friendly, happy, merry, relaxed Christmas is how Americans celebrate, observe, or simply enjoy the holiday today.
So today is Christmas in America. Whether or not one is an orthodox Christian, an orthodox Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or any other religious or nonreligious faith or identity, this day is yours to make of it what you will. Religious or secular. Even the secular version has the best of human traits.
Why not make the most and best of it? Wishing some stranger in the shopping center a Merry Christmas can have as much theological meaning as you want it to have, or it can simply be your best of heartfelt personal well wishes to a fellow American citizen. It is yours to choose what you mean by saying Merry Christmas, but the point is that saying it neither detracts from your own faith, nor does it add to anyone else’s faith if you simply wish them a Merry Christmas.
Some places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Borough Park, Brooklyn, have such an absence of Christians that it would not make sense to wish anyone one encounters there a Merry Christmas.
But to everyone else in America, I wish you a very Merry Christmas, with only the best of hopes for you today and in the year 2023 ahead.
Good cop, bad cop
Most of America’s large urban areas are and have been firmly dominated by one political party for at least fifty years, and yet these same urban areas remain a seething mass of angry people who feel preyed upon by their own police forces.
Isn’t it fascinating that fifty whole years of liberal domination of urban politics has not brought the “change” that urbanites are now saying they want by burning new landscapes into their skylines? In fact, after fifty years urban conditions are worse now in so many ways than they were back then.
And yet, urbanites continue to vote for just one political party that is dominated by white liberals, whose policies have obviously failed by every measure.
One area that is now being purposefully failed is urban policing.
In some cities the police are being neutered by their political bosses, told not to enforce the law, not to make arrests. The police are actually prevented from upholding the law, applying the law, and at the worst times. Like when violent thugs attack peaceful protesters, or when those violent thugs become violent arsonists and go on vandalism rampages. No police response. No protection of innocent bystanders, peaceful protesters, or private property.
But those same police were heavily mobilized by their mayors to confront and often arrest normal everyday people who simply went outside their homes during the fake Wuhan Flu sham-demic. They were also heavily mobilized to confront peaceful protestors whom the various mayors disagreed with politically in Seattle, Portand, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and many other cities.
This selective use or non-use of the local policing power is patently illegal. It was used during the 1950s and 1960s by southern Democrats to attack and suppress peaceful protesters who wanted voting rights and de-segregated bathrooms, restaurants, buses, and schools. And when this selective use of the police was used to protect murderers of young black men and black church arsonists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation moved in.
Back then, the FBI aggressively arrested police and elected officials who had deprived American citizens of their civil rights. Those bad police and elected officials deprived people of the equal protection of the law for simply belonging to the “wrong” political party, or having the “wrong” skin color or religion. That deprivation often included severe violence, either by the police or by their aligned street thugs, and included murder and torture.
So, in addition to the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice aggressively brought lawsuits against municipalities, corrupt police, and their elected bosses. As a result, the South changed, because segregation laws were struck down, schools were de-segregated, black people’s voting rights were protected, and the bad people went to jail.
So how does today’s liberal version of good cop, bad cop stack up to what happened in the 1950s and 1960s?
Well, today’s Black Lives Matter violence and racial attacks sure look at least as bad or a lot worse than the Southern anti-black racist riots and arson attacks back then. The roles are completely reversed today, and the DOJ is MIA.
So why isn’t the U.S. Department of Justice acting swiftly to bring equal justice and equal protection of the law to the current spate of BLM insanity? You and I are not alone in asking this question. It is a huge, important question.
I will take a shot at it and simply re-state the oft mentioned point that Republicans and conservatives believe they are debating ideas with their opponents, while their opponents are arming up for seditious revolution and organizing voter fraud and street violence. So a guy like U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr is uncertain how to act now. He keeps expecting the Democrat Party folks to weigh in like pro-America adults and urge people to stop rioting and looting, and they won’t. Barr expects his political opponents to engage him in a gentlemanly duel, may the loser buy drinks afterwards. But as a career-long Washington, DC, guy, Bill Barr is not wired to resolve these kinds of conflicts the way they need to be resolved…the way the Democrat Party resolves them ….. with overwhelming policing and legal force. Instead, Barr is firmly resolved to having stern interviews with the mainstream media political activists.
It is way too early to say that America is lost or headed into severe civil war, but we are facing a major leadership crisis that is being exploited by violent people. The Republican establishment is not used to fighting, ever, unless it is against a conservative running for a Republican seat somewhere. Last week in the Pennsylvania State House a bunch of aggressive, violent rioters took over the House floor, and the entire Pennsylvania House GOP caucus just stood there and watched. That good ol’ Republican culture encouraged all the elected Republicans to …just…do…nothing…just as they are almost all (not all) doing nothing for America right now.
Right now across America, only one person in an official capacity, and a few people around him, is providing any leadership and guiding light. That is President Donald Trump. Hopefully some of the high officials in his administration get on board with this fight for equality and justice. We all deserve to be treated equally by the police, regardless of where we live and regardless of our political views.
No more liberal good cop, bad cop, while bad people burn and loot our cities, attack peaceful citizens, and get good people fired from their jobs or frightened from their homes. This must end, now.
This photo of bad cops in a bad judge’s court room may be from 1967 Mississippi, but it could just as easily be from today in any major liberal city, with ANTIFA members and the local Democrat mayor snickering in the background
Remembering US Army veteran Paul Marino
Today is Memorial Day, devoted to remembering the US military service personnel who devote their lives and safety so that the rest of us civilians can sit back and crack a cold beer and marvel at how life in America is oh, so good. So easy.
Out of the many hundreds of thousands of US military veterans who have contributed to my own daily sense of settled well-being, one recently caught my attention. Not because he was a super warrior who killed many enemies, nor because he was a battlefield hero who risked his own life to save many of our own wounded. What actually struck me was the clean, all-America way that Paul Marino lived his life, raised his wholesome family based on time-tested simple values, worked for a living, contributed to his community and neighbors.
Not that military veterans hold these kinds of qualities exclusively, but we all know many veterans, if not the vast majority, who are exemplary citizens and neighbors. Real stand-outs in terms of their public service, their charitable giving, their easy way with strangers and neighbors. US Army veteran Paul Marino exemplified all of this.
Here is the thing: I did not know or meet Paul Marino. He only came to my attention because he was recently executed with his wife, Lidia, while visiting the grave of their son Anthony in the Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Bear, Delaware. For years they visited Anthony’s grave there almost daily.
Paul and Lidia were shot in their heads execution-style, from behind, by a 29-year-old man named Sheldon Francis. He used a handgun, up close and personal. By all appearances this was a classic hate crime, Paul and Lidia targeted because of their skin color by a hateful man amped up on a constant barrage of racial hate and jealousy messaging from American campuses, activist groups, American media people, and even from some religious institutions.
Some people have surmised that Paul and Lidia were murdered by Francis in retaliation for the racially motivated murder of Ahmad Aubrey in Georgia earlier this year. I suppose to some people this might make sense, or even be justified. It is not justified, and I have no question that Paul and Lidia would disagree, also, were they alive today to have an opinion on it. After all, they believed in hard work, simple family values, church attendance, community, home, and service. Blind retribution was not in their lexicon.
As a little girl, Lidia remembered the German soldiers marching through her town in Italy, and she also remembered the American GIs marching through from the other direction as the Germans skedaddled in retreat. Lidia knew the value of family, community, and practicing good deeds.
Whatever the reason for Francis gunning down two people in their eighties in a cemetery, the fact remains America is much the poorer for their loss. We lost a solid veteran and his life partner in an unexpected, avoidable, unnecessary, evil way. Paul and Lidia represented the very best of America. The murder represents a culture clash that must be resolved, peacefully and with love, and firmly.
Modern America was built by people like Paul and Lidia Marino. In fact, it is impossible to think of an America without them and their important small, humble, daily positive gifts and services back to all of us. The solid communities they built, the sense of reliable neighborliness they brought to any community they lived in. And the US Army that Paul Marino served in did not so much build Paul up, as people like Paul built up that institution and made it the effective fighting force and great equalizer for Americans of all skin colors and religions that it remains today.
Rest easy, Soldier, and thank you for your many different services you provided to all of us Americans.
Science Denier Chuck Todd Declares NBC a Heretic-Free-Zone
In the 1600s, the Catholic Church was on a roll with great momentum. The church’s Great Inquisition was well under way, as a money making venture and as a barbaric instrument of terror, coercing both potentially wayward believers and outright non-believers back into a dark corner, out of fear of physical torture, financial ruin, or burning alive at the stake. Due process and the rule of law were not yet concepts the church embraced outside of a small group of inner circle elitists.
This is the world that early scientists like Galileo and Copernicus stepped into, and where they met with the buzz saw of censorship. This is an old and well-known story from the church’s dark days, and it will not be repeated in detail here. It is mentioned, however, for the benefit of its irony: Today, openly partisan political propagandists like Chuck Todd of NBC “news” have set themselves up as the new church censors, deciding what is truth and what may not be said, for fear of upsetting a political arrangement of things he favors.
Chuck Todd has declared that no heretics will be permitted in his presence. His true goal is to shame and coerce non-believers into submission, out of fear of retribution and ruin.
Like the 1600s church censor before him, Giancito Stefani, the “Master of the Sacred Palace,” Chuck Todd has now declared that no person will be allowed on his NBC television show who defies or questions politically correct dogma, that being human-caused “climate change.”
Not even real scientists who have actually studied climate change are welcome! Really!
Chuck Todd and his coercive brethren today are like the 1630 church fathers; they have the same anti-science goal of control and censorship. In 1630, the church fathers were quite certain that scientists Galileo and Copernicus were way off base, that their ideas were heretical, and that those ideas must be declared haram, off-limits, unwelcome, wrong, banned, and unacceptable. Galileo was to be stopped at any cost. His ideas were dangerous.
To a certain political arrangement of things the church favored.
Similarly, Chuck Todd asserts that climate science is and has been settled, and that is that, he says. It shall not be questioned, he says. Not on his TV show, and, he hopes, not on anyone else’s TV show, either.
Chuck Todd name-calls people who disagree with the idea or claims of human-caused climate change “climate deniers.” This is a fancy name for ‘heretic’. The irony is that Chuck Todd and his co-believers are science deniers, because they deny the scientific refutations of human-caused climate change, and because there is absolutely no science behind the climate change belief Chuck Todd espouses; he and they will permit no actual science to contradict what is essentially a faith belief he and they have.
As if real science is ever settled. The whole point of real science is that it is an ongoing open, transparent enterprise of search and study, curiosity and analysis. Subjects that were once said to be dreamy fairy tales and heresy are today concrete fact.
The problem with human-caused climate science is that it is not transparent, it has been completely politicized, and it is almost 100% built on flawed computer modeling, which is something I know a lot about.
Much of the raw data fed into the computer models has been faked, and the models themselves contain a lot of sloppy methodology (e.g. certain variables are artificially heavily weighted while other variables’ importance are diminished, without any proof of why or how the decision was made).
The East Anglia University scandal is just one example of the complete corruption surrounding climate science.
Recently, Aaron Doering (see his official mugshot below), a purported “climate change expert” professor at the University of Minnesota, was charged with felonious beating the hell out of his girlfriend. Why did this saintly professor strangle his girlfriend? Why, only because she dared to challenge his views. And that right there is the summation of science-denying climate change advocates: Stand them up to scrutiny, and they will lay you down with coercion and violence, because they cannot stand to be challenged or questioned. Bullies, all of them, Doering, Chuck Todd et al.
Pseudo professor Aaron Doering likes beating up women who question “climate change”
An example of how established science changes is how the initial dominance of Einstein’s relativity physics resulted in a rejection of later quantum physics. Because for years the two were considered mutually exclusive, and scientists favored Einstein’s physics, which were already well established (the giant mushroom cloud thingy is pretty persuasive Einstein knew what he was talking about). But as quantum physics began to find its way forward with huge particle accelerators that defied what we thought we knew about atomics, Einstein’s relativity physics had to give way. It isn’t that one or the other is proven right or wrong; it is that both appear to be correct and we do not yet know enough about how that can be true, when both are operating on mutually exclusive rules.
So here is Chuck Todd, not a scientist, picking sides in an ongoing scientific debate without any scientific training himself, and without having held a scientific debate to educate his viewers, and using his position to squash dissent and ideas he does not like. This is because he is most loyal to the politics of human-caused climate change. No surprise there, but hey, let’s just say what needs to be said.
A tattered old bumper sticker my friend John Johnson has on his pickup truck says “Liberal ideas: So good they have to be required.”
The flip side of John’s bumper sticker is that totalitarians like Chuck Todd and Aaron Doering are so insecure about the truth of their views that they must censor all contrary arguments. Like almost all others in his establishment media, Chuck Todd bans his critics because he cannot withstand basic scrutiny.
But if the church is any indication, there is hope for Chuck Todd. Fast forward from the bad old days, and the church became an irreplaceable cornerstone of Western Civilization; without its Biblical values, there would be no universal truths or individual rights that make America so great today. The church just had to look inward and answer some basic questions about freedom, liberty, individual conscience, and then everything else fell into place.
And as unjustifiably confident as Chuck Todd is in public, he must have a spark of curiosity buried somewhere in his conscience. A normal person would.
Chuck Todd and Aaron Doering and all other liberals are envious of the Catholic Grand Inquisition’s ability to burn “heretics” alive
OK, call me a Whig
For those like me who are bothered by the simplistic, almost child-like identity politics of partisan political party identification, there is always the third way out: Independent.
True to its name, being an Independent means that one is much less driven by one-dimensional partisan interests, and much more broadly politically driven, by more philosophical interests.
Oh please, don’t kid yourself that the Democrats and the Republicans today represent philosophical strands of thought on government involvement in the lives of the citizenry. That is a joke.
Both main political parties, Ds and Rs, are each practically wholly-owned subsidiaries of their respective special interest groups. Because I believe in economic freedom, among other things, I am more drawn to the Rs than the Ds, who have now pretty much openly embraced socialism.
Socialism is the opposite of economic freedom, and socialism requires tremendous inroads into personal freedom to achieve its artificial “income equality” outcome. The Ds have completely thrown in with the communists, the socialists, the chaotic ANTIFA, and the 1%-ers like George Soros who fund all the anarchic, violent, anti-America street melees. If you like your doctor, you will not be able to keep your doctor, as the previous ANTIFA president demonstrated, despite his lies to the contrary. There is nothing here with this group or amalgamation of groups for the average American family trying to get by comfortably and live a simple, happy life.
However, there are plenty of Rs who are D-lite. Call them RINOs, GOPe, whatever, they are part of an established, elite political class who have elevated themselves above the broad interests of the citizen taxpayer. Their interests are narrowly economic and even more narrowly financial. Big corporations, the Koch Brothers, US senator Mitch McConnell’s big and financially rewarding ties to the Chinese government, the various guises of the Chamber of Commerce, etc.; all seeking to funnel as much financial gain into as few big pockets as possible. At the cost of Americans’ freedom now and future liberty.
Like the Ds, this GOPe group also tries to manipulate national policy for personal gain, with open borders and no checks on the el-cheapo labor force that comes with a huge cultural and school tax price tag. Obviously the GOPe has little in common with the interest of The People, either, though more economic freedom can be found here than with the Ds. Nevertheless, the GOPe RINOs are not really committed to defending citizen freedom and liberty.
Thus the demand for the Independent identity. The problem with the Independent Party is that it is frozen out of many states, where there is a bi-partisan death grip on electoral process. If there is one thing both Ds and Rs can agree on, it is that they and they two alone must control, if only occasionally share, political power and outcomes for everyone else.
This is why there is so much collusion and bi-partisan deal making in places like Pennsylvania, where our closed Primary artificially limits voter choice. Being an Independent in most places, like Pennsylvania, means one cannot really vote in a meaningful way in the primary election, arguably when votes matter most.
If the Republican Party of the 1860s was the vehicle for the great Abolitionist movement, much of that great spirit is now gone. Obviously. Oh yes, we have the congressional Freedom Caucus, a refreshing group of patriots and individualists. But they are largely outnumbered by the corporatists within their own party.
And never mind that the Ds demand their minorities aka modern-day slaves remain and vote on the Democrat Plantation, just like they did in the old days. And that everyone else fall in line with their autocratic control schemes. Or else.
I do not identify as a Democrat and probably never will again (to do so would be like gleefully standing by the road screaming “Heil Hitler” in 1930s Germany as the latest Democrat Socialist Messiah drove by), so trying to figure them out is a waste of time.
So, I am now reaching and looking farther back in time for a political identity, back to more philosophical times, to when big ideas had relevance to everyday lives. And in that past I find the old British Whig Party actually captures my current philosophical views.
The Whigs of the 1700s-1800s believed in spreading political power and decision-making to the citizenry as broadly as possible.
The Whigs believed in Abolitionism, the movement to abolish slavery. Plenty of economic and financial gain at stake there, so it was a truly principled stand in the meanest sense.
The Whigs believed in a parliamentary monarchy, which was radical at the time. Though the Magna Carta had been written and signed by the British king so many centuries before, its notions of freedom, representative government, and due process for the average citizen only took a few centuries to refine and percolate up and out to the point where the monarch’s absolute grip on power was actually, truly challenged by erstwhile representatives of The People.
That slow progress also involved a couple civil wars that were spiced nicely with religious feuding. Lots of heads rolling in the streets, families burning at the stake…what the Chinese call “exciting times.”
So given they had witnessed the great evil and cruelty carried out in the name of official religious control and power, the Whigs were naturally against the establishment of all religious tests for citizens, and against an official, established state religion. On this score they eventually lost, as Anglicanism is now the official state religion of Britain.
Similarly, Scotland has the Church of Scotland as its official place of worship. Not that either of these churches are very Christian nor pro-Western today. The Whigs correctly viewed official religions as being against the interests of the People, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Church of England’s official anti-West, anti-freedom do-gooder political meddling.
In short, Britain’s Whigs were non-conformists who believed in a third way: diffuse political power, as opposed to centralized power. They promoted economic freedom and individual liberty for all, including for the lowest slave.
British history and people may appear rather blase and boring to today’s casual reader, but rest assured it was nothing of the sort. An overabundance of violent civil wars resulted in the seemingly placid society one enjoyably visits today.
As a result, the Whig party was transcendent for almost two centuries. With its enlightened philosophical views came maximum freedom and opportunity for the greatest number of Britons, ever. Many Whig views found their way into the American Constitution.
Given the anti-citizen Uni-Party political establishment here in America, the weakness of the Independent Party, and my own Constitutionalist views, I am mighty tempted to join the 1700s Whigs. At least they stand for something real and valuable.
And what does it say that in 2018 we must now reach back to the early 1700s Britain to reconnect with our greatest individual rights and needs in 21-st century America?
The Pope is Your Man
If you live in Europe, North America, or South America, you are greatly influenced by the Pope in Rome.
Whether you know it or not, the Pope is usually going to bat for you every day. You don’t have to be Jewish to like rye bread, and you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate and value the Pope, who fills a unique role for all humans.
While it is true that Roman Catholics have a special role for the Pope/Papacy in their theology, a role that non-Catholics find tough to accept, the fact is the Pope is the West’s leading voice on morality, charity, gentleness, kindness, and the other positive little acts that knit together our civilization. At his best he is a public advocate for all the important little things between people that are right and true, necessary for happiness on our planet. In that way, the Pope is your man.
Over the past 1,500 years popes have played varying roles in politics and the advancement of civilization as we have come to know and treasure it today. Some were better or worse than others. A few were truly bad, and quite a few were truly great leaders. The Church built much of Europe’s civilization (some of it built with money stolen through the Inquisition, the Church’s darkest time), and we all have gratitude for that stable society we now enjoy.
The pope we have today is pretty controversial, and I will admit I am not his biggest fan right now. Oh sure he says a lot of things that are important for all humans to hear, and I value that. But he also says things publicly and quietly does a lot within the Church that are contrary to how our civilization works.
Gentle critics ascribe this to his South American slum “liberation theology” and his Jesuit training. Harsh critics, including some of my most religiously observant Catholic friends, are much more blunt about their dis-satisfaction. I won’t repeat any of it here, but I will admit to missing very much the somewhat recently departed Pope John Paul, a really inspirational leader and powerful voice for goodness and right action across the planet.
Dear Pope, I hope you find your voice, because it is a voice for all of us. I am not Catholic, but I am a human who benefits from you when you are at your finest. Hurry up, please.