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.