Ayn Rand and Objectivism

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American philosopher, novelist, and playwright who is best known for her philosophy of Objectivism. Her ideas have had a profound impact on the political and economic landscape of the United States, influencing the conservative movement and inspiring libertarians around the world. In this blog post, we will explore the key tenets of Rand's philosophy and the implications of her ideas.

Legalize Marijuana

Marijuana, also known as cannabis, has been a controversial topic for decades, with arguments ranging from its therapeutic value to its negative effects on users. The debate on whether to legalize marijuana has become increasingly important, as more countries and states have moved towards legalizing it for medicinal and recreational use. In this essay, I will argue for the legalization of marijuana, highlighting its medicinal benefits, potential economic benefits, and the fact that the criminalization of marijuana has been largely unsuccessful in reducing its use.

Capitalism 101

 

Capitalism is the only economic system that is consistent with the principles of individualism, freedom, and prosperity. It is a system based on the idea that individuals have the right to own and control their own property and pursue their own self-interest, free from the interference of government or other external forces.

At the heart of capitalism is the concept of the free market. This is a system in which individuals are free to buy and sell goods and services on the basis of voluntary exchange. Prices are determined by supply and demand, and competition ensures that prices remain fair and reasonable. In this system, there are no restrictions on who can enter the market or what they can produce. This creates a level playing field that allows individuals to compete and succeed based on their own abilities and efforts.

Morning Entry, February 20, 2023/Conspiracy Theory

 

Well, so here it is, February 20th, 2023. I am sitting at my desk writing this, thinking about a variety of things. I have a conspiracy theory: the Chinese government arranged for President Trump to leave office by rigging, cheating, and gaming the elections, in collusion with certain US politicians.

The number of US politicians with ties to the Chinese is noteworthy here. Especially the Biden family. Yes, I believe that there are people who would easily sell out this country for personal gain. OK, so where's the evidence of this? Let me ask you a question: how in the FUCK did a Chinese spy balloon get completely across North America-a distance of over 3,000 miles-without being shot down? Radio and TV commentator Dan Bongino discusses the China situation in depth. US Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) spoke on the matter of  Twitter interfering in the election by suppressing and eliminating news information that would have had an impact on the election. Here is a link to an overview of the so-called "Twitter Files". 

There Will Never be a Way

What is art? Here is a definition from Google:

 (art is) "...The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power."

Or this, from the Britannica on-line dictionary:

"...Something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings."

Now the question is, are these valid definitions? All art is simply the expression of human creative skill and imagination ? That sounds good enough for me, but I would have to add that art also has a deeply subjective value, either to the artist or to his patrons, or both. People are willing to spend time and money on producing art, and consuming art. There are both spiritual and material components involved here that the vast majority of us take very seriously.

A Symptom of Cultural Rot

 

It seems like the absolutely coolest thing in the world to do, is to scoff at even the very idea of sexual morality. Not only that, but there's also this thing about scoffing at traditional gender roles. Women are told that they don't have to be women, and men are told they don't have to be men. Holding these attitudes at the same time makes you warmly accepted on social media. Just say "men can have periods", and you're in.

Then there's the biological male athletes who identify as trans competing against biological women. They think everyone should be focused on the tranny's struggle to overcome sexual dysphoria and social conditioning. Fairness-justice-to the real women athletes-is irrelevant. Also, there are men who honestly believe that the best way to get a mate is to feign suspicion and contempt for maleness-and essentially, become feminine.

All of this is clearly absurd, and irrational. In this worldview, the law of identity (everything is what it is) does not apply. Contradictions exist. 

Music 101: An Example of Artificial Intelligence at Work

The following essay was written by Chat GPT, an artificial intelligence:

Music is an integral part of human culture and has been around for thousands of years. From ancient civilizations to modern-day pop, music has always been a source of expression and enjoyment for people of all ages and backgrounds. In this post, we will be exploring some of the basic concepts of music and how they are used to create the sounds that we love.

Morning Entry

 February 6, 2023

I had yesterday and Saturday off, but since today is Monday,  I must go back to work. I get every other weekend off.

It's not so chilly this morning, as it has been for the past few days. Fortunately, I find myself looking forward to work today. 

The picture at left shows my work desk at home. I know how to read and write music, but lately, all I've been doing is just playing. 

I'm well into a work-a-day routine, and I probably should take a few days off in the future and go someplace different. 

Morning Entry

 

February 5, 2023/0243

The picture at left was taken at the Salvation Army homeless shelter in Savannah. I lived here for 9 months before I found a job, saved money, and moved into an apartment. If you're wondering why it took so long, it's because they require you to wait 6 months-a veritable vacation from life itself-in order to do a lot of thinking and praying about what, exactly, got you to this point. Meanwhile, they put you to work around the shelter 40 hrs. a week (I worked in their warehouse, and did a stint as a front desk clerk).

But today, I am no longer homeless, working a full-time job at a local hospital about a mile and a half from my apartment. Today, I am grateful to the Salvation Army in Savannah for helping me get back on my feet again.

Victor Davis Hanson's lecture Hillsdale College

“Mr. Hanson, an accomplished classicist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is one of the great amalgamators of American political writing. He has a particular gift for bringing together a dizzying array of events, controversies and ideas and making sense of them by advancing a coherent argument that incorporates thousands of years of history… Mr. Hanson hits hard, but I don’t find his analysis unfair or partisan. There is enormous value, moreover, in thinking about toxic political developments not as problems of the moment but as destructive pathologies to which all societies are prone at all times.”―Wall Street Journal

Morning Entry

by John Russell Turner

I've been working at St. Joseph's hospital here in Savannah, GA for 8 and a half months. The people who run the place call my job "environmental technician"; but I call it "porter", because I take the trash out and dispose of things around the hospital. Here's how a typical day for me goes: I clock in, and head to our department office for a meeting. After the meeting is over-usually 15 minutes or so-I go to the chute room and empty the trash bins there. Afterwards, I go to seven different wards in the hospital and pick up their trash. Around mid-day I go up to the seventh floor and work my way down, picking up cardboard and biohazard on the way. So I walk about 15 miles a day, and three miles going back and forth to work from my apartment. It's not strenuous work, but the constant walking around the hospital gets a bit tough on my feet. I have a sturdy pair of walking shoes, however, and so it's all good.

I woke up a bit early this AM, so I have some free time to write this. Perhaps later I'll look more into a couple of AI programs I've been interested in. 

Politics and the English Language

by George Orwell

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

SONG AND DANCE MAN

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN THE SEVENTIES, I (and most of my peers) thought of Bob Dylan as someone our parents listened to, along with others like Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and the hundreds of bands popular in the 1960's. That in itself was enough to relegate Dylan to the "uncool" list, as far as we were concerned. Besides, most of us were busy listening to bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Foreigner, AC/DC, et al...and Dylan had an air of being highbrow, of being "relevant" and "meaningful", which alone was enough to make that fabled teen-age list of the uncool.

Elian Gonzalez Revisited

It seems like so long ago now, but I remember when I first became really interested in politics. It was the Elian Gonzalez affair, about twenty or so years ago now, that caught my attention.

Individual Human Rights

by John Russell Turner

For Erich Ferger

THERE ARE ONLY THREE RIGHTS which every man, woman, and child possess, regardless of their gender, skin color, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, or political orientation:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

-United States Declaration of Independence

Let's recap: the three rights are: 1. the right to life, to live; 2. the right to liberty; and 3. the right, i.e., the liberty or the freedom, to pursue that which makes one happy, as long as in so doing, you do not kill, do physical harm, nor steal from anyone. These rights can not, must not, be taken away from any person without legal due process (they are inalienable), and for violation of clearly defined, morally objective laws. 

Furthermore, these rights are not granted by man, by the state, nor by any human group or society, nor by any individual. They are granted by the Creator,  by God. And if you don't believe in God, these rights are intrinsic in our nature as human beings. We are literally born with these rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Period.

All the other so-called "rights" we hear about, the alleged right to a job, housing, medical care, et al, are not given to us by God, nor by our nature as human beings. These are not rights, they are entitlements, usually given to people by a government agency. Such entitlements require the transfer of economic goods (jobs, services, money, and stuff) from the producer of those goods to the taker of those goods. If citizen A is told he has a right to a job, and so decides to collect on this right, citizen B must give it to him. If citizen B refuses, then by any number of methods (threat of imprisonment, fines, and ultimately, death if he refuses hard enough), the government will force him to do so. This is clearly immoral, because it violates citizen B's rights to hold property, his right to pursue his happiness without being literally robbed in order to supply someone else's "right" to his property. The right to own, and to freely dispose of property is a necessary corollary to the right to live, and to pursue happiness. This is because of man's nature, of his means of survival. He or she builds a house, buys a car and clothes, and plants, raises, or buys food. These things are his, for him to dispose of as she, or he sees fit, so that he might live a reasonably happy life.

Socialism, in essence, is parasitism, but of a weird, bizarre kind because it is human parasitism upon other humans. Cannibalism. Furthermore, it offers the hideous spectacle of evil masquerading as good, since it all depends not on the moral and just, but on violence and death. Such is the moral sewer underneath the concept of socialistic, man- granted rights.

On a personal note, this is why I believe in God, why I believe that all of my rights come from Him, and not from the state. When rights come from the state, hell ensues, and we get rivers of blood and corpses stacked on top of each other in ditches.

On Abortion

by John Russell Turner

The human right to life begins at conception. At the very instant of conception, human life begins, and so the basic human right to life begins. That is why I say: abortion is murder.

To say that life begins at any other point besides conception is arbitrary and ultimately, self serving. For if you can say that life and the right to live begins at birth, then you could also say life and the right to live begins at any age. Just because an individual is physically under-developed does not disqualify that individual from his or her right to live. Pro-abortionists see the line drawn when the child travels through the birth canal and into the outside world. Before that, the child was living inside his mother' body, just a clump of cells with the potential to become human, but not actually human. Why? Under what criteria, then, do we objectively define when this "clump of cells" is actually human? Furthermore, abortion is a hideous act of evil, not only because the baby is defenseless, totally dependent upon his or her mother, but because most people (but not all, and this is important) support abortion so as to have sex without consequences. Murder and betrayal, for convenience. Abortion, as birth control.

Whatever you want to call an unborn human being- zygote, embryo, fetus, a clump of cells, etc., this is a separate, distinct individual existing inside the mother's body.  It's not the mother's body, it's the baby's body, and the baby's life.

Do Not Tolerate Evil

and don't deny that it exists...

It was with a feeling of dismay and anger that I watched yet another news report about the emergence of another variant of "the virus", sometimes referred to as "covid". I just don't know anymore what to call it; it's a coronavirus, sure, but what the etiology of the disease it causes entails, what is the exact mortality rate of the disease, and how this rapidly mutating virus ever got out there in the first place confounds me. 

It sure looks like a lot of people are still trying to capitalize on the hysteria surrounding the virus and the disease it causes. Irrational mandates and enforced vaccinations, cancelling of cultural events and the masking of children, the arrest and internment of people who violate these new rules, and the numerous deleterious consequences of these rules all have proven to be much worse than the disease itself.  

Who is responsible for ginning up the hysteria? "The media" is the first thing that comes to mind, and they certainly played a large part in it. But what we are seeing is just a symptom of a much larger problem facing America today. What is this problem? Americans have given evil a place at the table. Most of our teachers say evil is just another choice that some people make; morality is relative at any rate, and who are we to say what is good, or not? Reality is purely subjective, and whatever you want can come to you simply by wishing it. So goes the zeitgeist, so goes the lessons our students are being taught, lessons that have now gravitated to the mainstream. In such a poisonous atmosphere, it is easy to exploit disasters, calamities and mishaps for one's personal gain, without being concerned about the moral implications.

What's interesting is that evil used to hide in dark corners, running at the first sound of a human footstep, like cockroaches. Now it is out in the open, naked and smirking with malevolent glee. What else can you say about the fact that kindergartners are being taught about sexuality? older kids are being taught critical race theory? somebody successfully orchestrated the takedown of Donald Trump on a grand scale? American oil production could easily solve our current problems, but is being restricted and even forbidden? What else can you say about the fact that the Democrats first order of business after stealing the Presidency was to undo all the positive good that Donald Trump and his administration accomplished, out of vindictive spite? So why do evil people feel so emboldened these days? Why are skeletons smirking at us, demanding that we self-immolate? Why did we give evil a place at the table of society and culture?

Because of the world-view taught in the high schools, colleges, and universities. It started in the sixties, and is now bearing full bloom. What is this world-view? Basically, it's about denying the existence of objective reality and the validity of truth. Tolerance of differing opinions, thoughts, cultures and lifestyles are core values. Tolerance of others should not include tolerance of their evil. That's a good place to start.

Characteristics of the "Woke"

"We are virtuous", the woke shout, "look at what we are claiming to be!" Such a verbal claim to virtue is not based on any action, except maybe to put a bumper sticker on their cars, or an icon on their social media profiles. This does nothing positive or practical. The only thing it does is signal to the others in the mob that they are safe, of like mind, that they can be trusted and included.

They care nothing about true virtue, only in being perceived as virtuous by all the other fools who make up any mob. Their self-respect is dependent upon how others see them. They are lemmings, who will blindly follow anyone who validates their timidity and abdication of personal moral responsibility. This is why they hate those who speak the truth about anything contrary to their ideology. It is one thing to damage someone's self-respect, but quite another to damage someone's pretense of self-respect. To so do invites mindless hatred. To do so invites the mob to sever your head and parade it around town on a pole. 

Understand what you are up against. Any individual who thinks in this manner (if you could call it thinking) has pronounced a verdict of damnation upon his life, and upon life in general. They profess to be concerned about the plight of the poor, but condemn the one system (capitalism) that can, and does,  lift the poor out of poverty, and into prosperity. They profess to be concerned about the oppression of women, yet marginalize them by claiming there is no meaningful distinction between men and women, and any man who feels he's a woman may compete against women in athletics. They claim to be champions of social justice, but advocate policies that only serve to make the poor worse off than before. They say they are against racism, but in the final analysis of their actions and attitudes, they are the racists and fascists amongst us. They are about the elevation of vice to virtue, the hatred of the good for being the good, and the total destruction of what happiness is possible to human beings on Earth.

Notice their relatively recent trend of shouting down mostly conservative speakers, or anyone who says something opposed to their woke ideology. They also claim to be about "free speech", but most definitely not if they disagree with it. I've seen the videos of this happening, and what strikes me the most is how offensive and deliberately obnoxious those hecklers are. How is it that anyone on Earth could be so arrogant, as to feel justified in negating someone's right to speak? It's a totalitarian mindset, for sure. Their hysteria and shrillness is evidence of an existential fear so profound that they are actually trying to drown out their own inner voices, which condemn them. Since their self respect is based on what others think of them, upon membership in the mob, and successfully signaling to the world how virtuous they are, they will hate anyone who shines a light on their mediocrity. In reality, however, it is themselves and life that they hate. Death is the standard of all that they value. 

Is Global Warming a Problem?

It's a problem, but not nearly as bad as many make it out to be. The ice caps are not going to melt enough to flood somewhere thousands of miles away from the poles, or even close by-at least, not anytime soon, as many people rich enough to buy seafront property are well aware of. Temperatures are rising slightly on average, but it's not going to be tomorrow when people start dying en masse of heat exposure. Or next year. There is ample time to address these issues. Drastic measures are not necessary. In some cases, it might actually be beneficial to do nothing at all, as warmer climate brings many benefits. Realizing this, I find the actions of people like Greta Thunberg amusing, and a bit ridiculous. She speaks of imminent apocalypse, as have many others over the years, but none has come, and none will come. Given time-and there is plenty of it-humanity will solve the problems arising from warmer temps without pulling the plug on industry and technology.

On Societal Breakdown, and Chaos

Not so long ago, I was homeless, but managed to recover with the help of a local homeless shelter. I now live in a suburban apartment, and work full-time.  Everything's good now, but I wonder what I would have done if there were no shelters available back when I needed one. In the town I live in, there are at least three different shelters. Other places I've lived had them; only very small towns do not. So, wondering what I would have done had there been none, is moot.  I still wonder-how would I have showered? Slept? Kept neat and presentable, in order to work? It would have been incredibly difficult, but not impossible. Labor pools, labor camps, temporary agencies and the like are all good places to get a day job quickly. At the cost of sleeping outside for a day or two in order to save money, I would be able to get a motel room. Eating at the soup kitchens, missions, and various food pantries is possible, but often, these places are open only at certain times, and so a conflict with work arises. But what if none of these places were available, as well? Food must be bought, the first rent and key deposit must be paid, and then food and subsequent rent eats up the entirety of my earnings. At least I'm sleeping inside, and keeping clean. Obviously, this is a dead-end, with no hope of improving my life, unless I can work two jobs at the same time. If I can do this, I will escape poverty. That is the answer. 

But what if there were no shelters, day labor agencies, and food pantries? What would I do if I lived in a  country were there was no safety net? Not only that, but what if I'm living right in the middle of a societal breakdown, with violence and mayhem commonplace? Would I turn to begging, or thievery? Would I kill someone for a piece of meat? Dr. Jordan Peterson once asked a group of students to imagine that they were guards at a Nazi concentration camp. Most people immediately take the moral high ground when confronted with this question-"of course I wouldn't work as a Nazi prison guard!"-but how do they know what they would do were they really in such a position, a position where they have to chose evil in order to survive? "I'd rather die, and my family along with me, than torture prisoners!" said very few people in Nazi Germany, confronted with this reality. 

Human Males Cannot Get Pregnant

These days we are seeing more and more examples of grotesque perversity, of in-your-face depravity waved in front of the world as if it were some form of  moral superiority.  One of these is the assertion that men can get pregnant. How is this so? Well, some people believe that if you are a woman, but feel or think like a man, then you are a man (and vice versa). Imagine a woman feels like a man on the inside. She believes she's a man trapped in a woman's body. If she gets pregnant, she can then claim that since she feels like a man, she is a man, and therefore, men can get pregnant. (although it is somewhat comical to imagine how this could be so: obviously, this woman felt like a woman enough to get pregnant).

 If you feel like a man, but possess female parts, then you are a man. Despite the vagina. This is an attack on reason, in an effort to elevate one's feelings as supreme, as the source of all knowledge. It is a word game designed to convince confused people to undergo "sexual reassignment surgery", at considerable cost to the  patient, and at great profit to the practitioners of this brazen quackery. 

This is clearly absurd. There is no real escape from the law of identity: you get to have your own opinions and feelings, but not your own facts. If you don't feel like paying your rent, and don't, then it's only a matter of time before your landlord evicts you. If you don't feel like eating, then eventually you will starve to death. If you were born a male, but do not feel like a male, you're still a male-and always will be.

Some Thoughts About Good and Evil Policies

 The first lie the devil tells you is that he doesn't exist...

It's was never about Donald Trump, per se, although his leadership skills and character, in my opinion, are clearly admirable. It's about his platform, not his personality. 

Prosperity for all, individual liberty, America first (policies that benefit all Americans), and a common sense approach to governing-this is Donald Trumps' platform, but not just his (there are certainly others, Democrats and Republicans, who share this platform). Again, it's not about the man. 

Common sense conservatives and liberals alike agree on what is needed to maintain a peaceful, prosperous Nation: absolute respect for the rule of law, absolute respect for the Constitution as it was written (which includes free speech, the right to bear arms, et al), and policies that protect our country and way of life. We do not worship Donald Trump, we worship the God of our understanding, or no one at all, if we so choose. The undeniable fact that Trump is an effective leader (for one, he surrounds himself with brilliant people) and stands for America and Americans first, gets him my vote.

I was homeless and under-employed for most of Barack Obama's 8 year term. After Trump was elected, I immediately found gainful employment and continue to benefit from the economic boom Trump's policies brought about. Hatred of Donald Trump-and America-is merely hatred of the good, for being the good. 

And with that, we arrive at what has happened before in our history. Evil has been given a seemingly good appearance, as if it were just another choice, equally as valid as any other that human beings make. If you consider the fact that capitalism has advanced human prosperity, longevity, and individual self-actualization more so than any other system, you would think that anyone who claims to be pro-human and pro-life would advocate it. Collectivists-those who are sometimes called communists, socialists, Marxists, progressives, etc.-claim exactly that, that they desire a perfect society where everyone can prosper and be happy. If this were true-and it is most definitely not true-the collectivists would not advocate systems that are directly responsible for literally hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century, when these systems were actually tried. Despite this incontrovertible evidence, they continue to condemn capitalism and promote collectivism. Love of mankind is not their motive. Hatred of mankind, evil for the sake of evil, hatred of the good for being the good, is their actual motive. They are anti-life, anti-mind, and sometimes I think they actually worship death.

They're teaching toddlers about sex practices. They're trying to normalize pedophilia. They pass laws that demand we respect people's "pronouns", whatever they claim those to be. They kill unborn children. They demand we pay attention to their hysteria and wear masks, stay inside and go out only when they say it's OK.  Demanding that we all go back to pre-industrial times in the name of saving "the planet". They openly smirk when displaying their evil. And now, watch how they are all reacting to Elon Musk's attempt to take over Twitter and remake it in the name of free speech-the cat's out of the bag. The attempt to unjustly destroy Elon Musk is already underway. 

I hope they fail to destroy Musk, and learn not to play with people's lives. I hope that those who have embraced evil will turn away and embrace light and life. 

Please, God, let this be so.

Christian Leadership

Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. (Philemon 1:8-9).

An excellent attitude for anyone who manages/supervises the work of others. Have your people do what you want them to do, because they want to, because they respect and love you. This, instead of issuing blunt orders, or leading by imposing fear in your subordinates. So how does one lead on the basis of love? Answer: by having genuine love and respect for the others who work with you. It sounds simple, and it is, but what does such an attitude look like in practical terms? For one, you never tell people to do something that you wouldn't do yourself. You demonstrate a willingness to do the work with them, and to help them in whatever manner is necessary to accomplish a task, or to achieve a goal. When people can see that you are genuinely interested in them and their work, when they see that you are not all talk and virtue signaling, they will not only do their best in appreciation, but reward you with their loyalty. 

The Cancellation of History

Why?

In New Orleans, statues of prominent Confederate era men were taken down in the name of removing the association of those men with the city of New Orleans. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were the most visible statues, and these men were believed to be nothing more than evil racists who represented a shameful era of American history. This is nonsense. (The picture at right is the statue of Robert E. Lee that was taken down).

If these statues were morally wrong and offensive to be publicly displayed, why weren't they removed long ago? Perhaps because New Orleans was dominated by white racists, until the enlightened, woke, evolved and mostly Leftist politicians took over the city? New Orleans politics has been dominated by such Leftists for at least fifty years; Earnest Morial, the first black mayor of New Orleans, was elected back in 1978. It is also relevant to note that New Orleans has not had a Republican mayor since 1870. It is also relevant to note that Democrat/Progressive-run New Orleans has one of the highest crime and poverty rates in America. I mention this only to point out that perhaps the removal of old statues that may or may not offend someone is a misplaced priority, to say the least.

It seems unlikely that the statues-and various street names-were removed simply because a better class of New Orleanians took over the city. "Better" meaning those people who have developed a strong hatred for racism, slavery, the Confederacy, and everything associated with it. So why has all this statue removal and street renaming taken place just now? Why have New Orleanians voluntarily erased a major portion of their history, as if in so doing, that history can be forgotten? Again, people don't want so-called evildoers like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis to be celebrated with statues in their city, to be thusly honored and remembered. Many people would agree; yes, let's stop celebrating racists and slaveholders. Unfortunately, this completely ignores the fact that Lee and Davis were human beings, who were nothing more than the product of their times. Also, both men were accomplished professionals who achieved far more than just owning slaves. Lee graduated from West Point, was a military engineer, was the president of Washington College, and served honorably in the Mexican war. Davis, also a graduate of West Point, served in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce as Secretary of War, and had attitudes about slavery that were very much common in the south during those unenlightened times.  By the way, if you feel strongly about the fact that both men owned slaves, human beings of all races and colors have been slaves, and have enslaved others for millennia, and it is still going on today. Slavery is by no means an experience unique to dark skinned people from Africa, and while none of these facts make slavery right, let's keep this issue in perspective and stop with the hysterics! Erasing history will not prevent human beings from acting badly again, it will not make the plight of the victims of racism any better, and serves only to alienate those who believe history should be preserved, and respected as part of our common culture.  Also, it seems obvious that erasing history will only make it harder to learn how not to make the same mistakes made by our ancestors. 

So again, why is this cancellation of history-and not just in New Orleans-happening now? Why are people judging historical figures by today's standards? Do they really believe that all the cancelling will do any real, positive good? Could it be, at least in New Orleans, that the ruling class believe that this would help attract people to the city? "Come to New Orleans, because we are woke!" I am grasping at straws in an effort to answer this totally bewildering question. There is no logical reason for it all. 

Perfect Skepticism

Why do most conservatives claim that morality without God is dangerous? Short answer: because Man is prone to error, imperfect, and capable of corruption.  To answer at length, let's look at the broad field of morality and moral codes.

All moral codes are based on some standard, answering the question: if an action is good, bad, or merely neutral, then why is it so? Good, by what standard? Bad, by what standard? Neutral, by what standard? There are only two, possibly three answers: something can be good, because someone other than man (God) declared it to be so. Or, something can be good because Man declared it to be so. The philosopher Ayn Rand proposed a third definition, or so she claimed: what is good or evil is dependent upon how an action affects human beings. What harms an individual is evil. What benefits him, is good. Ayn Rand's ideological dependence on the reliability of human rationality aside, in other words, what is good or bad is determined from the declarations of God, or from the feelings, laws, customs, etc., of humans. In other words, what actions are good or bad is determined either objectively, or subjectively, from the perspective of humans, who act. 

To claim an action is good merely because I said so, based solely on my feelings, is to claim that my words (and the feelings underneath those words) are sufficient to define what is good. If I were God, then this would be justified, but since neither I nor any individual is anything but human, such a claim is preposterous. No man created the world. No man is God. Even so, if all I do is simply live my life and act according to what I feel is good, that is one thing, perhaps a good thing, perhaps not. On the other hand, if I-or any other human- require by force others to act solely according to what I feel is good, that is to arrogate my identity as God. In other words, when morality comes from Man, it is subject to human imperfection and corruption. When morality comes from God, then and only then does it have any chance of being true, correct, and perfect. Notice the assumptions here: that humans normally wish to lead happy, flourishing lives, and the purpose of ethics is to answer the question how to live such a life. The answer is what we call a moral code, or in general, morality. 

Conservatives in general tend to think that human beings can be perfected only in a relation to God; liberals tend to think that we can be perfected by evolving into perfection. When you start talking about the specifics, however, the sparks fly. When you postulate the imperfections of Man, basing a moral code on Man's conscience, laws, culture,  on anything other than God, you are inviting the Holocaust. With Man, there is the possibility of injustice. With God, there is the inevitability of  justice. So the atheists can have their faith in human rationality and reason: I will have my faith in God. Just as America is a nation of laws and not men, morality is based on God, not men. 

It Is

 A brief pondering on the idea of  intelligent design

I looked up at the sky, and I saw a pinprick of light that was at least 700 years old. To put it in perspective, the photons of the light I was seeing started their journey at about the time Columbus was trying to convince the Queen of Spain to finance his expedition. This was before the English set up colonies in the New World, when Europe was undergoing a Renaissance, and Africa was but a dark mystery to the West. And so the farther out from Earth one sees, the older what one sees. There are galaxies that are so far away that the light that strikes our eyes is older than the Earth itself. It's strange the way we rattle such figures off, as if they were just another set of figures. "The Andromeda galaxy is about 2 and half million light years away". Wow, just like Siberia is on the other side of the world, right? The thing is, light travels at 186,000 miles per second, making this number so incomprehensibly vast as to be almost unintelligible.

There is in these insanely vast numbers a clue to something humans have contemplated for a long time. How did all this come to be? Somehow, the idea that the universe has always existed, a Totality with no origin and no end, seems mad. Our minds try to impose a background grid upon which to operate and focus; we postulate a beginning to the Universe, because if we did not, we'd be overwhelmed by the infinitude of it all. We impose order upon chaos, like God, who created us in his image.

Look now in the other direction. The "smaller" we focus, the more we find, including things which seem to contradict the various laws of physics. It turns out that atoms are not the smallest things in the universe, and there are living things that can be seen only under a powerful microscope. The process of protein formation is done in a manner similar to a machine process. T\here is no way for this process to have been randomly evolved, as it involves complex sequencing of genes. 

The more we look in both directions, the more we see tantalizing clues, outright evidence that someone or something created this space we live in. Evolution becomes more and more absurd as we understand the astonishing mechanisms of life, at least as a theory explaining the origin of life and it's infinite diversity. Darwin was partially right; organisms evolve structures and characteristics that increase their chances of survival into the future. To claim that a single cell, microscopic organism evolved into something as complex as an animal with it's many specialized organs is like saying that a billion monkeys hammering mindlessly away at a typewriter will eventually produce Shakespeare's Hamlet. Or the constitution of the United States.

As it turns out, the Earth is located in a very narrow space where temperatures and the resulting climate are suitable to sustain complex life forms. The presence of the moon, the atmosphere, the tilting of the north-south axis, the Earth's magnetic field, and the Earth's rotation all are in a perfect balance to create a cradle for the existence, and thriving, of complex life forms. All of the proportions are in perfect balance, and even the smallest deviation from them would make life impossible. 

Finally, I will refer you to a piece of scripture written over two thousand years ago, when it was apparent to people that someone or something built all this:

(Romans 1:18-20, NIV)...The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

The creator whom we sometimes call God exists. We see clues to existence all around us. 

The Only Thing We Have to Fear

is God....

 I’ve heard it said that the Russians (which Russians?) are nervous about having a NATO ally so close to it’s southern border. But…why? the member nations of NATO stand for democracy and non-aggression. What exactly does “Russia” have to fear from NATO, and the Ukrainians? Most every day Russians have more to fear from their own government than they do having NATO-allied Ukraine at it’s southern border.

Here in America, most people are busy working for a living, protecting their families and loved ones, pursuing personal interests and hobbies, etc., etc. The same goes for the Ukrainians, at least before Russian dictator Vladimir Putin decided to invade their country. A small group of people in Russia are willing to kill innocent people who don’t agree with their ideology. They have taken over Russian culture and society, and have the Russian people under their yoke. Now they propose to do the same to the Ukrainians. This is why I say the war mongers in Russia, and their supporters abroad, are criminals. Criminals who believe that they will get away with their crimes and their evil. This is the demon we humans let loose on Earth when we created governments long, long ago. The need for government unleashes psychopaths like Putin, like Hitler, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, Stalin, and any number of other tyrants who leap at the opportunity to kill and destroy with impunity and pseudo-moral justification.

So how will these criminals ever come to justice? They control nuclear weapons, capable of ending all life on Earth many times over. Do we slap economic sanctions on them, hoping to provoke the oppressed citizenry to rise up against their masters? How is this just? Ordinary citizens, desiring from others only to be left alone, will suffer from these sanctions. Many will starve, their lives destroyed by poverty. In such a condition, how will they fight against an armed government?

Meanwhile, here in this country, there are people debating how many genders we have; there are people so consumed by self-righteous hatred for Donald Trump and his supporters that they are willing to destroy everything Trump accomplished, out of spite. Here in America, people allow themselves to be obsessed with a person’s skin color, sexual identity and gender, when none of these things even matter to the actual worth of a human being. Loud, obnoxious people become shrill and scream “theocracy” or “white supremacy” when any attempt to defend Judeo-Christian ethics are made. You know, those pesky, oppressive life affirming and life sustaining ethics that Christians and Jews have been tyrannically imposing on the world, who only want the right to be self-loving narcissists, baby killers, and promiscuous fornicators.

The world is broken. Evil is abroad and at home, on the march, unchecked and unopposed in any meaningful way. The horrors we are seeing in Europe right now will soon come to our homes, our towns, our families and friends. The demons of war are loose, and they’re coming for all of us. Why did this happen? Because America basically gave up on it's position of leadership in the world, wracked by hand wringing self loathing. 

Fake News: Let Them Eat Cake

John Russell Turner, Sept. 21, 2019

Marie Antoinette was beheaded. Afterwards, one of the leftists attending the decapitation ceremony took her head and put it on a pole. Other leftists saw this, and a malicious, gleeful parade was formed on the streets of Paris. This, from people whose motto was "liberty, equality, and brotherhood".

So what was Marie Antoinette guilty of, to deserve such vicious cruelty? Murder? Factual treason? Child molester? None of these. She was guilty of no crime, no felony, nor misdemeanor, according to the legal codes. She was a victim of the fake news of her time-her entire family denounced as moral perverts (and criminally insane)by the propagandists, who thought they had everything to gain by the elimination of the French monarchy. Soon heads were snapping off French necks at such an alarming rate that some historians believe an infected wheat harvest (LSD producing fungus) caused the mass hysteria which was the French Revolution.

This is why the fake news media in America, and the rest of the world, is so dangerous. The mob that paraded Marie Antoinette's severed head through the streets believed every word from the propagandists/intellectuals of the time. They did the same thing then as the various news outlets do today: they appeal to humanity's darker emotions. They are literally attempting to make way for the mobs, so they may rule in the ruins.

Reflections From an Alleged Boomer

by John Russell Turner, July 3, 2019

Most of the sources I checked define the "Boomers" (short for "baby boomers") as anyone born in America between the years 1944-1964. That would make me a boomer.

Here is an excellent source of information on the subject of generational names.

As a matter of fact, most, if not all of the kids I grew up with would have told you that the baby boom generation was our parents, not us. My maternal grandfather came home from WW2 and almost immediately sired my mother, Karin, who was born in 1945. As for my paternal grandmother, Gertrude, she came from a line of Polish and European immigrants, along with my paternal grandfather, who was a skilled tradesman from a long Irish-European ancestry. They had my father Lawrence in 1943.

Noa Pothoven is Gone

by Sam Tobin, June 12, 2019

I read a Tweet the other day, from a prominent pro-life activist I greatly admire. The Tweet mentioned a Dutch girl who had been euthanized in The Netherlands. Here is Matt Valliere, from Fox News on this seemingly tragic story from Europe. To be fair, here is the New York Intelligencer's report, as well. It is interesting how divided this story has become, but as a week or so has passed, it is clear that Noa died from starvation...and no one at her family home, nor any doctors that knew Noa's history and what was going on, tried to stop it.

Abortion: The Real Issue

I can do what I want, because I am God

by John Russell Turner, June 4, 2019

Abortion is not the real issue (although a deadly serious one). I'll get to that later. But first, a definition recap:

There are essentially two basic questions in the abortion debate, and one basic premise:

Question One, "when does human life begin?" can be easily answered. It begins at the moment of conception, that is, at the moment when the sperm fertilizes the egg and cell division begins.

Question Two: "when do human rights begin?" can be easily answered, as well. Human rights begin at the moment a human being is conceived, again, at conception. Why? Because we are human. What are human rights? The right to live, which in this context means the right not to be killed, to continue on with his or her development until natural death occurs. Some would argue for other rights, but for the purposes of this argument, let's stick to the most fundamental of rights, the right to live, because without this right, no other rights can exist.

Basic premise: it is morally wrong to kill other people for any reason other than self-defense.