Thursday, July 08, 2010

I’ve Got A Freedom Attitude

Just the other day, I posted a link to a Lee Harris essay titled The Spirit of Independence: The Social Psychology of Freedom.  I titled that post “So Who Owns You?” - An Attitude.

This morning, stopping by Claire Wolfe’s, I read Claire’s most recent post titled Thinking free, in which Claire references the movie The Shawshank Redemption, and expands on the subject of a freedom attitude.  Both Harris’ piece, and Claire’s essay, are attitude provoking reads.  You are free to consider reading them.

From Claire’s post.

I’ve always talked about how freedom begins with an attitude — with thinking free. Some people just aren’t interested in hearing that because it means they have to shift the blame from other people (their parents, the cops, bureaucrats, Congress) and take charge of their own lives. Others dismiss it as nonsense on pragmatic grounds — because it’s ridiculous to say anyone can be free while stuck in a gulag or living in a police state. Others just think that action is everything and that thinking free is merely a form of idleness.

Even people who understand that you can’t live free unless you think free have a lot of trouble maintaining that belief, day to day…

Yet you know and I know that virtually the only thing that stands between us and the complete triumph of tyranny is our attitude — followed by our actions. We must think free — then act free — according to our own lights, no matter what the rest of the world does. That is literally the only hope for overcoming tyranny.

I’ve got a freedom attitude.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/08 at 07:47 AM
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Tesla Hits The Wall of Reality of Question Number 4

The autoblogreen headline reads Tesla shares in freefall, now below IPO price.  Within the story we read these “expert” analyses of Tesla Motors.

...According to Josef Schuster, the Chicago-based founder of IPOX Capital Management LLC, “The company is a great concept with relatively weak fundamentals. Markets are weak and in a weak market right now this is hurting the company even more.”

Financial expert Michael Holland explains, “They brought this thing into a market that was not rewarding hype,... The stock did get its pop, and now it’s plagued by the reality of the marketplace. The reality of the marketplace is that people aren’t paying for dreams and visions.” (bold by ed.)

The reality of question number 4, which I noted in a post titled Reality for Tesla “True Believers.”

But question number four, “And do they offer the kind of basic, bottom-line transportation value needed to attract mainstream buyers in a tough market?”, is the most important question, and with a starting price of around 60K, running up to 130K, I think the answer to the question is a emphatic “No.”

As I have previously noted in regards to Tesla, Obviously, A Hand Out is in Order, otherwise Tesla Roadster to Go the Way of the Segway.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/07 at 03:16 PM
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False Sense of Entitlement Blues

There is a story in the business section of The New York Times with a headline which reads American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation, which in reading makes makes me want to either scream, or weep.  The story begins this way.

After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston, went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home.

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Poor young Mr. Nicholson, diligently hunting for a job, in the cushy comfort of his parent’s home, upon being offered a job, and an opportunity for self-reliance, turns it down.  And why did young Mr. Nicholson turn down the job

Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder…

“The conversation I’m going to have with my parents now that I’ve turned down this job is more of a concern to me than turning down the job,” he said.

That is not reasoning, my friends, that is an outright spurning of an opportunity for self-reliance due to a false sense of entitlement inculcated through the American education system, which has caused young Mr. Nicholson to worry more about what he is going to tell Mommy and Daddy, rather than how he can pay his own way.

But to what, does The New York Times attribute young Mr. Nicholson’s inability to get a job?.

The Great Depression damaged the self-confidence of the young, and that is beginning to happen now, according to pollsters, sociologists and economists.

While it cannot be disputed that the current state of the economy is affecting young college graduates’ ability to find employment, let’s not blame it on damaged self-confidence, but rather false self-confidence instilled in America’s culture of unearned entitlement, which is supported by these statements describing young Mr. Nicholson’s world view.

“Going it alone,” “earning enough to be self-supporting” — these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends.

The story continues, lamenting this, that, and the other thing, including other individuals’ successes in the past, but providing no real substance as to why young Mr. Nicholson should be so special as to refuse to stand on his own two feet and take any job, other than maybe that he is “handsome as a Marine officer in a recruiting poster.”

The denouement to the NYT piece are these two paragraphs, and they are the main reason for my not knowing whether to scream, or weep, upon reading this story.

So he struggles to get a foothold in the civilian work force. His brother in Boston lost his roommate, and early last month Scott moved into the empty bedroom, with his parents paying Scott’s share of the $2,000-a-month rent until the lease expires on Aug. 31.

And if Scott does not have a job by then? “I’ll do something temporary; I won’t go back home,” Scott said. “I’ll be a bartender or get work through a temp agency. I hope I don’t find myself in that position.”

The attitude displayed by young Mr. Nicholson, in those words, perfectly illustrate why American society is failing.  A good portion of American individuals believe they are entitled to a free ride and will not get off their asses until they have milked the system, whether it be Mommy and Daddy, or the State, until the milk runs dry.

I’ve got the false sense of entitlement blues.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/07 at 12:17 PM
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The Rise of the Animal Class

Reynolds links to a Jammie Wearing Fool post titled ‘This Type of Conduct is Not Supposed to Happen in Civil Society’.

That post title was taken from an utterance of Alton Police Chief David Hayes, as reported in a news story titled Mob shoots fireworks at police, firefighters, wherein we read this.

First responders from the Alton Fire Department and five officers from the Alton Police Department were attacked by a crowd of several hundred people in the Oakwood Housing Complex who shot large bottle rockets at them. The incidents occurred late Sunday and early Monday in the 700 and 800 blocks of Oakwood…

The confrontations began at 10:20 p.m. and within the 40 minutes it took to resolve the first incident, police were attacked three times. It started when a firetruck was dispatched to extinguish a Dumpster fire in the 700 block of Oakwood and was immediately attacked by the crowd shooting and throwing fireworks at them.

Jammie Wearing Fool states that the mob exhibited “subhuman savagery,” but I unfortunately must point out that this event is only an exceptionally minor subhuman act of stupidity incident, compared to what may be coming in America’s future.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/07 at 09:56 AM
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Thou Shalt Not Steal

Thou shalt not steal.  What is it, about those four simple words, that is so difficult to understand?  Stealing, is immoral, plain and simple, and yet all manner of justifications and obfuscations are daily presented so as to instill in “the people” a confusion in regards to the fact that stealing is immoral, such that the admonition “Thou shalt not steal” is become “Thou shalt not steal, except…”

Wendy McElroy posts an excerpt of a F.A. Harper essay on the subject of stealing, which provides an “intutitive morality” test on stealing.  The post is titled To Steal or Not To Steal.  Can you pass the test?

From Harper’s essay, posted at Wendy’ site.

Herein lies the principal moral and economic danger facing us in these critical times: Many of us, albeit with good intentions but in a hurry to do good because of the urgency of the occasion, have become victims of moral schizophrenia. While we are good and righteous persons in our individual conduct in our home community and in our basic moral code, we have become thieves and coveters in the collective activities of the Welfare State in which we participate and which many of us extol.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/07 at 09:14 AM
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Loss of Principal, Gain of Principle - It’s A Mystery

Wal-Mart Stores has spent a year and more than a million dollars in legal fees battling a $7,000 fine that federal safety officials assessed after shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at a store on Long Island on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.

The mystery, federal officials say, is why Wal-Mart is fighting so hard against such a modest fine.

And why is Wal-Mart’s battling of this fine a “mystery” to federal officials?  Because of this.

But in fighting the federal fine, Wal-Mart is arguing that the government is improperly trying to define “crowd trampling” as an occupational hazard that retailers must take action to prevent.

It would be a “mystery” to federal officials when a business or individual stands up for principles rather than mere principal.

I say good for Wal-Mart, and I hope they continue to bury the federal government in their own bureaucratic legal paperwork jungle.

Wal-Mart Fighting $7,000 Fine in Trampling Case

Via dispatches from TJICstan.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/07 at 08:38 AM
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Censoring God

GodBlock

GodBlock is a web filter that blocks religious content. It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions. When installed properly, GodBlock will test each page that your child visits before it is loaded, looking for passages from holy texts, names of religious figures, and other signs of religious propaganda. If none are found, then your child is allowed to browse freely.

Via Blazing Cat Fur, who upon noting this specialized web filter asks But does it work against Airport Hare Krishnas?

On a related note, we have the following from a post at Counting Cats in Zanzibar titled Cultural Incommensurability.

How many books have you in your home? How many have you read in your life? Now try and imagine there was just one book and you are brought up, from an early age, to believe this is the word of God. Well, in places like Afghanistan that is frequently the case. Imagine also that your education consisted of memorising by rote that one book and you were beaten if you recitation was a bit out? Imagine further that that book is something you can’t actually read. You can recite it but that’s not the same thing. Not only can you not read at all but also that book is in a foreign and ancient tongue and you depend on the local holy man to tell you what it means. Now some of these holy men are scholars of that book but out in the boonies quite a few of them are as illiterate as you.

Books of course have power and the more of them you read, the more broad-based and subtle that power becomes (that is not to say it must of necessity weaken the faith of a religious person - I have met a lot of pious people who are staggeringly well-read). The situation amongst much of rural Afghanistan is like Medieval Europe. Yes, there were great Biblical scholars but many parish priests were hardly theologians. The Bible and those who could understand it - or gave the impression they could - were treated with awe. The mighty Cathedrals that still inspire awe in us, in a culture that can send probes to Saturn, must have stunned the medieval peasantry. Then something changed but the authorities who wielded the power of The Book weren’t happy and as we all know the reformation hardly happened without much weeping, wailing and the rending of garments.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/07 at 08:13 AM
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Are My Opinions Controversial Enough to Make the List?

So, the Transportation Security Administration is instigating a restriction of information available on the internet to individuals who work for the TSA.  Here are the basic criteria to get on the list.

• Chat/Messaging

• Controversial opinion

• Criminal activity

• Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content

• Gaming

The email does not specify how the TSA will determine if a website expresses a “controversial opinion.”

I am guessing, here, but I would bet that any opinion which does not express admiration and praise of the State will be deemed as controversial, because if there is one thing the power brokers of the State do not want is an educated minion.

TSA to Block “Controversial Opinion” on the Web

Posted by John Venlet on 07/06 at 12:58 PM
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Revolution and History

Rand Simberg points to a Walter Russell Mead essay, written while Mead was in London on July 4th, with a post titled Thoughts On The Revolution, without comment, except to say, “Read the whole thing,” after providing an excerpt from Mead’s essay.

Mead’s essay is titled London Fourth, and it is an interesting read, and the essay touches on the subject matter which has occupied a number of my recent posts.

An excerpt from Mead’s essay I found particularly interesting.

In that sense, the forces that drove the American Revolution are still coursing through our politics now.  While a significant number of Americans (usually relatively affluent and well educated) want a transformational government acting in the service of a coherent moral vision, larger numbers of Americans start getting nervous when they see too much movement in that direction.

I hope that larger and larger numbers of Americans begin getting more and more nervous in order to check the do-gooders who believe that morality can be legislated into existence, because it cannot.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/06 at 11:55 AM
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“So Who Owns You?” - An Attitude

How do you answer the question which is the title to this post?  I know how I answer this question.  No one owns me, I own myself.

This question, “So who owns you?,” according to Lee Harris, was the impetous for his most recent book The Next American Civil War: The Populist Revolt against the Liberal Elite, and the question was also the impetous for an article in The American titled The Spirit of Independence: The Social Psychology of Freedom, which is well worth your time to read.

A quote from Harris’ essay in regards to the answering of the question which poses as the title to this post.

In retrospect, their answers were more profound than mine. My answer came from the head; theirs from the heart. Many of those who responded from the heart probably knew very little about the philosophy behind libertarianism. Perhaps some had read John Locke or John Stuart Mill back in college, but most of them might best be considered natural libertarians. They knew they couldn’t stand the idea of someone else owning them, someone else telling them what to do or how to think, of someone else bossing them around. They all felt competent to manage their own lives and deeply resented any attempt by other people, including the government, to manage their lives for them. Rightly or wrongly, natural libertarians are firmly convinced that no one else can know their best interests more than they do. They insist on remaining in charge of their own destinies and bristle whenever other people seem intent on taking charge of their lives. Because natural libertarians respect their own independence, they respect the independence of others. They do not aspire to control other people’s lives, but when other people aspire to control theirs, they will resist tooth and nail. The natural libertarian will behave this way not because of an ideology, but because of his or her distinctive attitude towards life.

What is your attitude toward life?

Arts & Letters Daily.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/06 at 09:19 AM
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Monday, July 05, 2010

Ascend to Individual Freedom

Last night, I read a post by Joan of Argghh! at Primordial Slack titled From Freedom’s Holy Light to Free Stuff!  Within that essay, which was originally posted January 8, 2009, Joan states the following.

Is freedom a holy illumination, available only to those who have sought divine guidance? How quaint! How precious. As though a rational people couldn’t rule their lives and fortunes without the silly and repressive fairy tales?

Though Joan is correct in noting that freedom is not available only to those who have sought divine guidance, we would be remiss in denying the positive influence Christianity; perjoratives aside; has had on individuals ascending to the idea of individual freedom, as Malone Vandam noted in a June 4 post titled The Toynbee scale.

In either case, we face a series of crises, all of them essentially metaphysical crises, including the decline of our great religion, Christianity, whence we draw our highest transcendent universal values.

It’s pretty clear to me that America without its Scriptural underpinnings as the absolute referent for its values and mode of being looks increasingly like a postmodern Carthage, an atavistic society of degeneration that embraces a culture of death. The West and America have always seen degenerate behaviors but always had recourse to a transcendent vision that rejected them. Now we’re moving into what appears to be a phase of puritanical relativism, where degenerate behavior is normalized and the transcendent vision is rejected.

What I find to be the most challenging impediment to the idea of individual freedom is the group, or herd mentality, and said so here, in 2003.

Why is there such a confounded need to label yourself or align yourself within a group? Can we not just be men with like minded ideas of liberty and sovereign individuality? Even if some of your political ideologies differ in regards to the size of government, as compared to other labeled individuals, does the group label offer you any kind of safety, or is it just a need to belong that is being fulfilled by the label? The group mentality, in most instances, only provides a bludgeon to use against other groups.

As I further considered Joan’s and Vandam’s posts this morning, while installing a couple of window air conditioners, I recalled a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti’s talk when he dissolved the Order of the Star of the East in 1929, which also bears on the idea of ascending to individual freedom.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb towards the Truth, it cannot be “stepped down” or organized for you. Interest in ideas is mainly sustained by organizations, but organizations only awaken interest from without. Interest, which is not born out of love of Truth for its own sake, but aroused by an organization, is of no value. The organization becomes a framework into which its members can conveniently fit. They no longer strive after Truth or the mountain-top, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.”

Though there are indeed touchstones each individual must needs grasp to ascend to individual freedom, in order for the idea of individual freedom to bloom within all individuals, it must be pried from the hands of any organization claiming a monopoly on its possible ascension.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/05 at 10:29 AM
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Sunday, July 04, 2010

“Civilization of the Mind”

In its entirety, an essay by John Perry Barlow.  A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland

February 8, 1996

Via Bill St. Clair, who reminds us here, of this.

“The only true consent is unanimous consent. No majority, no matter how large, is enough to deny a single right to an unconsenting individual.”

Posted by John Venlet on 07/04 at 03:07 PM
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Subjects, to Citizens, to Something Even Greater

Claire Wolfe links to a Washington Post article titled Jefferson changed ‘subjects’ to ‘citizens’ in Declaration of Independence, wherein one can read this.

“Subjects.”

That’s what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word “citizens.”

No longer subjects to the crown, the colonists became something different: a people whose allegiance was to one another, not to a faraway monarch. (bold by ed.)

Those words in bold, in the above quote, are the words I draw your attention to.  I do not think the writer of the piece, Marc Kaufman, is remotely aware of what those words in bold imply, nor are most Americans, now.  I state this because a good percentage of American individuals, today, have withdrawn their allegiance from one another, and instead have given their allegiance over to the United States government, which provides support to the thought that the Constitution was a counter-revolutionary act.

In the comment thread to Claire’s post, commenters are objecting to be labeled a citizen, and I completely understand why, because I also object to being labeled a citizen.  Claire responds to the objections with some additional reading on Jefferson, and ends her comment response this way.

I agree with Pat on the present state of things. If going from “subjects” to “citizens” was a huge philosophical change (and it was), then it’s time for another similar leap. Something to think about this Independence Day.

I wonder, too, whether articles about this (that are making major mainstream media rounds) might get a few people thinking. Most will probably just take it as a bit of historical trivia and move on. Ho hum. But what if a few thousand people who haven’t been coherently “political” hear about this say, “Hm … what have we become now? What are we to the government and what’s the government to us?” Could happen…

Indeed, “what have we become now?”  It is time for another huge philosophical leap, a full restoration of allegiance amongest individuals, and a casting off of the chains of government.  Let us obliterate American individuals’ servitude to the State.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/04 at 12:25 PM
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Independence Day

Today, is Independence Day, not, the 4th of July, though Independence Day does happen to fall on July 4.

While walking the critter early this morning, I passed only one other individual on the street, I said to them “Good Morning, and Happy Independence Day.”  In response, the individual said to me, “Oh, that’s right, it is Independence Day,” and continued on their way.  This cavalier attitude, to arguably the most important day in all of history and mankind, goes a long way towards explaining why you read the following in regards to Independence Day at History.com.

A Modern Holiday

With the rise of leisure, the Fourth also emerged as a major midsummer holiday. The prevalence of heavy drinking and the many injuries caused by setting off fireworks prompted reformers of the late 19th and the early 20th century to mount a Safe and Sane Fourth of July movement. During the later 20th century, although it remained a national holiday marked by parades, concerts of patriotic music and fireworks displays, Independence Day declined in importance as a venue for politics. It remains a potent symbol of national power and of specifically American qualities—even the freedom to stay at home and barbecue.

I hardly think that Independence Day remains “a potent symbol of national power and of specifically American qualitities,” unfortunately.

It seems appropriate, based on the above observation, that individuals should thoroughly re-familiarize themselves with The Declaration of Independence on Independence Day, particularly, in my opinion, this portion of the declaration, and, more specifically, the words which I have highlighted in bold.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, IT IS THEIR DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Though many adult individuals may have a cavalier attitude towards Independence Day, and patriotism, some parents are still attempting to instill in their children a love of America, the “camouflage people” who make up America’s military, and the flag.

Sweet Daughter started drawing flag pictures around Memorial Day. We had done our best to explain how Memorial Day was to honor those people in uniform that keep us safe here in the United States. (We left out the part about honoring the ones that died. She’s four, and we figure five is old enough to introduce that buzzkill.) She remembered the “camouflage people” from our event at Petersburg in April, and she knows that there is evil in the world. In her case it takes the form of the Big, Bad Wolf in her dreams, but she understands that there are bad guys around and that special people exist to help keep her safe from them. Whether it’s a soldier, policeman or parent, some people step up when things go bad.

Go and read the rest of that story.  You may get a bit choked up, but in a good way.  Thanks to Tam for posting that the other day.

There are alot of American flags flying in my neighborhood, and I enjoy seeing them, because for myself the American flag represents Independence Day, not jinjoism or any of the other negatives which are at times associated with the flag.  In celebration of Independence Day, I retired my defiled American flag, and put up a new one.  Here it is, and Happy Independence Day.

image

Posted by John Venlet on 07/04 at 08:47 AM
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Saturday, July 03, 2010

Taking No Pleasure in Being Correct

Back in December 2004 I titled a post The Next Wave of Socialists Will Arise from Churches, after reading an article titled Pushing Poverty into ‘moral values’ debate Some religious leaders trying to broaden discussion beyond abortion and marriage, which can be read at the link.  Almost five years later, I posted a November 2009 redux, after reading a piece informing individuals about Obama’s religious mentor, Jeremiah Wright, which can be read at that November 2009 link.  This is what I said in December 2004.

I have a deep respect for individuals’ personal religious beliefs, as long as they keep them personal, and individual.  I think, though, that organized religions, which form advocacy groups, with names like National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, or Christian Churches Together in the USA, have the potential to bring forth the next wave of socialist purges, and kumbyaism, in the name of God of course

I take no pleasure in being correct in regards to where the next wave of socialists will arise from, especially after reading a Charles Blow op-ed in The New York Times titled Rise of the Religious Left, wherein the following can be read.

People often ask whether the Republican Party will have to move to the left to remain viable. However, the question rarely asked is whether the growing religiosity on the left will push the Democrats toward the right.

At the moment, that answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, unlike John Kerry before him, Barack Obama made a strong play for the religious vote on his march to the White House. It worked so well that it’s likely to continue, if not intensify, among Democratic candidates. On the other hand, the religious left is not the religious right. The left isn’t as organized or assertive. For the most part, it seems to have made its peace with the mishmash of morality under the Democratic umbrella, rallying instead around some core Democratic tenets: protection of, and equality for, the disenfranchised and providing greater opportunity and assistance for the poor.

Both the religious left and right present a danger to all Americans when they attempt to misapply the Word of God to political means, rather than to personal and individual faith.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/03 at 12:25 PM
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