According to the laws of thermodynamics, all things devolve into chaos and disorder unless acted upon by an outside force. The same is true of human behavior. Unless we continue to preach, teach, expound, exhort, encourage, direct, correct, and recognize even the minor improvements, humans also devolve into their baser nature and act like every other animal. They will cheat, lie and steal to preserve their own. They believe that to the victor goes the spoils. They will kill their rivals to take mates, power, positions, shelters, or victuals. Everything devolves away from civilization unless civilized behavior persists. Civilized behavior starts with a moral and religious people. That's probably why America is on the decline, because "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". Default human belief holds the conventional view that if we don't act, everything will be destroyed. Well, that's true, but the actions they propose have a short sighted end game in mind, an end game that is only far enough away to get them reelected. In fact, that's what politics is- applied rhetoric, where people persuade people to agree, where the best arguer wins and not the best idea, because the person who argues best is declared the winner. well, history is replete with examples of persuasive arguments that failed- the Spanish Armada, the Third Reich, HD DVD, every single Crusade, the guillotine, ad infinitum. Almost every time we rush, we fail, or at least we get something other than what we intended. Desireable outcomes come from deliberate and consistent action. However, that's not human nature. Everyone is actually, if left to themself, concerned with their own advancement, the rest of the people be damned, in particular people they dont' know or like. No matter what we like to think of ourselves, each of us is human, and human beings seem to be selfish, indigent, lazy, dishonest and debauched. It is not war that never changes. It is human nature that never really seems to change.
Changing human behavior without changing human nature is like hacking at the leaves of a problem rather than the roots. Until we address the root of the problem and deal with the enmity inherent in the natural man, in instinctual behavior, hacking at the leaves will not gain us any ground. In fact, I remember from graduate school learning that many plants, when the leaves are cut, increase root growth, and so I think in many cases we are making it worse by only attacking the leaves while allowing the problem to be even more firmly rooted in our society. Why do liberals insist on superficial and superfluous activity on the leaves? It's easy to hack at the leaves and people can see your work. I dug a palm tree out the first year after I bought this house because it was growing so it would block access to the front door, and it was a pain. Seems like every time I cut a root, four more would appear to replace it. It took weeks to dig this palm tree out, and nobody even noticed until it was gone because I did it after work, in the dark, and only as much as I felt like it that summer until I was too tired and hot to continue. Politicians aren't in office long enough for the correct plans to bear fruit, so they do things to look busy knowing that most people equate action with achievement. You may not like the Democrat party, but nobody can argue that liberals are very good at getting what they want into play. Liberals act first and think about it later, forcing everyone else to play "catch us if you can".
Instead of teaching virtue and trying to solidify the family, liberals preach about laws and try to solidify government. The world works from the outside in, hoping, erroneously, that if they change behavior it will change nature. Well, it is a canard that doing begets being, but being almost always begets doing. Not everyone who does the right thing is a good person, but good people do the right thing. When Democrats rammed through Obamacare, they told us that we had to "pass the bill to find out what's in it" but when the GOP wanted to replace it, the Democrats cried foul that they didn't get to see it first. How can they possibly honestly protest the things they do when done to them by others? It's because they don't understand human nature- that people tend to do unto others as others do unto them. If liberals really wanted to change the world for the better, they would not pass laws that disavow access to raw materials. They would work at teaching the most crucial raw material (people) to be responsible, to be honest, true, chaste, benevolent, and then those same liberals would set the example. instead, liberals show us that they, like humans naturally do, are willing to do whatever it takes as long as it doesn't cost THEM anything. Then they point out the mote in another's eye to distract your gaze from the beam in their own. I do care about children, women, sick people, and the poor. It is a fallacious argument to claim that unless I agree with you that I must not care about them. IN fact, when you quickly jump to an emotional argument, I know that your logic and reasoning is weak or else you would continue to defend your position on its merits without such a reducto ad absurdium.
Chaos erupts from an inequity between human nature and behavior because we all have different subsets of information and because some of what we know isn't actually true. Knowing that even if everything you know is true that you may not know all the truth, liberals appeal to emotion without evidence, selling people on a reaction to information rather than conclusions based on actual evidence. Even when you present them with evidence, they discount it if it doesn't corroborate what they already happen to believe. When new information comes to light, they either disregard it or say "oops" and assume they have been forgiven and set about to try again. For them, it's ok to be only human, but I never get to use that argument. All too often they excoriate me for an inability to perfectly live a standard they refuse to even attempt. Ordinarily, it's considered insanity to try the same thing twice expecting different results, but they keep trying to build a socialist utopia, despite all the other tyrannies that ended in failure, insisting that THEY are special, and that THEY will succeed. Perhaps that's why liberals keep lying and why for them the ends always justify the means. They believe honestly that they will succeed where others failed, that what they believe is and of a right out to be the only desireable outcome. Well, each of us values different things, and even when we value the same things, often we value them for different reasons. What if I don't like the ends or I am hurt by them? It's only a win for me if the outcome is desireable to me. Since their beliefs are ideological, and inherently selfish, if they are satisfied, they erroneously conclude that it is by definition virtuous, even if obtained by immoral means, even if other people are hurt, because they won.
I really like the guy who writes BirdandHike.com, but today I saw on his website that he thinks that if you want to protect and preserve access to public lands you ought to vote democrat. This is an argument from ignorance. The mine at Anniversary Narrows is a lithium mine, and the demand for lithium is driven largely by liberal democrats who equate lithium batteries with environmental responsibility. That is incredibly incompetent. I have seen the earthen works at Anniversary Narrows and Silver Peak, both of which are lithium mines, and those mines like most mines are MESSY. Consider also the pollution associated with making a battery and then generating energy to store in that battery, and the "environmental" movement is at least as harmful as the alternative. However, since the people driving the cars aren't creating the pollution, they conclude because they do not see it that it must not exist. What? Liberals who drive hybrid vehicles must sleep well at night knowing that although their cars are also polluting and killing the environment the pollution is created by other people, probably those evil republican corporations that own the mines, and so it must be ok. This straw man dinner theater somehow leaves liberals clean as a whistle and ladles the blame fully onto the evil GOP. Let's not forget that Barack Obama (D-IL) was president when the mine reopened and that both Sandoval (R-NV) and his predecessor were liberal RINOs.
Somehow, everyone associated with diminished access to the area is liberal, but the GOP becomes the scapegoat and takes ALL the blame.
Human nature must be overcome by consistent and intentional correct training, which is why parents, families, and marriage matter so much. Behavior is learned by example, and the examples people see teach them how the world really works. Most people are born innocent, and although many of them are taught correct behavior, since their parents, peers, and patrons practice contrary to their preaching, people learn that in order to get ahead, you break the rules. Eventually they learn that connections mean more than achievement, that people can and will be bought, and that "it's only a crime if you get caught". Since so many people seem to escape the negative consequences of their actions, they think that nothing matters and do whatever they like. Fortunately for me, I didn't notice the way the world really was until I reached high school because my parents endeavored to live what they taught, and it wasn't until my activities extended beyond my own household that I noticed the duplicity. With so many people born out of wedlock, raised without a parent or by a surrogate, and taught by the sophistry of man, even when mingled with scripture, it ensconces the notion that hypocrisy is normal, acceptable and laudable. People must be held accountable for their actions as well as the consequences thereof. Just because a thing is legal doesn't mean it is moral. Just because we can do a thing doesn't follow that we ought to.
People must learn to do what they ought to do and be held to the fire to do so whenever possible. We excuse too many people and blame too many others. Our best athletes, musicians, clinicians, and artisans rise to prominence because their coaches and mentors hold them to high expectations. There is a good reason why teachers matter so much, because people need to be taught the best way to do something rather than a way that happens to work. Most people are not the exception; most people are the rule, and you're not probably going to be lucky enough like a coworker of mine to go to the same bar every Friday night and be approached by an attractive woman who exalts you like a king. Family is the crucible of correct civilization, so when the family is faulty, formed incorrectly, or fractured, and when the parents abandon their obligations to the tutelage of other influences, people do not do what they ought, sometimes because they don't know what they ought to do. Entropy says that we end up sharing the least common denominator, so the further we are from ideal the further our behavior will be from ideal. This renders utopia impossible, because people who cannot conceive of or understand what utopia looks like cannot possibly be expected to build it.
Someone once said that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Indeed it is the sad disposition of almost all men that as soon as they obtain the least scintilla of power as it were they immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Most of this unruly and unrighteous behavior is about power- about establishing our dominance as a species and in a tribe of our own species. People are mean to people in order to get power- stealing, murdering, coveting, disobeying, backtalking, etc., are all parts of asserting dominance. It is concluded among our species because it is true among the others that the last man standing is in charge. So, they shout down opponents, attack their character, attack them with intent of bodily harm, in a bid to appear to be the best. They are proud without principle. Just because you are principle among a people does not follow that you are a principled person. Principles must be connected to actions. That is why I believe in Constitutional government and why I defy liberalism. Nothing convinced me more that liberalism was the philosophy of hell, the philosophy of chaos, as reading CS Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters". As I read those pages and then listen to liberal politicians prattle, it's as if I hear Screwtape, Wormwood, or Lucifer himself trying to persuade me that they can build on earth, which is fallen, the utopia that heaven alone can sustain. Chaos and disorder are normal. They are the rule unless your rulers are people of principle, people whose actions actually lead to the outcomes they claim. It is however human nature to do whatever it takes to get ahead, and that's how you know who the base among you truly are.
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