31 December 2017

Word(s) Matter

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The week before Christmas, when I taught Sunday School for the last time this year, I broke the rules. Although the guitar is not permitted in our services I took mine and played it for class. I discovered something about my own talents that I didn't previously know. I acquired more evidence that I'm unique and laudable. Sometimes in life, we don't feel like things make sense, and sometimes the words we use or hear don't mean to us what they actually mean. As we live and learn and acquire talents/experience, our understanding of things changes, and our ability to convey meaning changes. There is a great deal of difference between a guitarist and a troubadour, but most guitarists probably think of themselves as the troubadour. The words we use matter. Our understanding of words others use matters. Ultimately it will matter to us if the word is in us.

During the classical music era, the guitar was forbidden because it wasn't actually a string instrument. Although it has strings, it's technically a percussion instrument, because you pluck it, and you do not play it with a bow. According to that tradition, we do not use the guitar in musical presentations, particularly during any part of the worship services. However, I felt it appropriate because "Silent Night" was originally written for the guitar. On a Christmas centuries ago, when the Oberndorf bei Salzburg organ broke, the local priest asked a parishoner to compose music to go with the poem, and Silent Night was performed on the guitar as part of the Christmas sermon in that parish that day, and since I spent two Christmases in Austria, I felt it appropriate to recreate that first Silent Night. None of them seemed to complain, but that's probably because they might like if we followed the admonition of other churches and used a band to liven up the sermon. Personally, I don't mind the ban, because when I attend services by other faiths, I find the band distracts from the word and drives away the Spirit under most circumstances, but this song doesn't seem to fall victim to that same phenomenon.

Apparently most people who play guitar don't also concurrently sing. After I finished, one of the guys told me how impressed he was that I sang while I played. Now, I make no pretense at being a professional entertainer, but after he said that, I realized that most groups, the lead just sings. Some notable exceptions exist like Ray Charles who played piano and sang or Taylor Swift who plays guitar and sings or Lindsay Sterling who plays violin and dances. However, most of the guys I know who play better than I do only do that- they play. As much as the young girls swoon at their feet while they play, and some of them are spectacular musicians, they only play the instrument, and they do not sing. It's funny, because I think of the women who are serenaded in stories, but apparently that doesn't happen. More likely, John Cusack shows up on their lawn with a boom box and plays them a song. I can actually do both.

We take a lot of things for granted based on our own bias. We know what we know, what we do, why we do it, and without other information, we don't know that other people do things differently. I thought a lot of what I do and think and feel was normal, but apparently it's less normal. Maybe it isn't normal at all. We have unique terms in English to differentiate between different circumstances, but so many people seem uneducated or inarticulate and use the same term on multiple different circumstances. Sure, I can sing and play, but I am not a musical artist, and I am not a performer. I suppose I am a musician, because I know how to play and can play and do play. Not everyone I know is a friend, and not everything I enjoy is something I "love", and not everyone who claims to love me means the same thing as I do when they say that. Maybe we're all correct, but the words are different, and they convey different denotations based on our bias and experience. I am sad to discover that the words of so many people don't matter.

This has been a very strange year. I expected something bad to happen any moment, and as I went to bed last night without knowing about anything bad that happened to me, I felt abnormal in a new way. Much of the world lies in turmoil. Most people are not as comfortable. My own neighbor got foreclosed on just before Christmas. My best friend got divorced. Based on my own life experience, I sometimes feel oppressed or in dire straights, and even though others endure trials doesn't make mine irrelevant. They are mine. They are allowed in my life because they mean something to it. They are mine because I can endure them. They apply to my life because each of us has a different tutorial before we shuffle off this mortal coil. There are many ways to live, many choices to make, many talents to acquire, many experiences to have, and many things that happen that happen unexpectedly. However, there is only one way to have a complete life. Live life well. Turn to Christ. Let Him lift you up as He was. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. As we learn what the words mean and what the Word means, as the Word means more to us, our lives get richer, and we look forward with surety for a better world.

I am personally very thankful to the Word that 2017 was quiet. I expected my dog to die this year. I expected bad news. It was quiet. May your 2018 bring you that promotion you seek, that vacation opportunity you truly enjoy, a wiser heart, a clearer eye, someone wonderful with whom to share your life, and a better appreciation for the meaning of the Word in your life. Happy New Year.

25 December 2017

My Peace I Give Unto You,

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Ever since I started working in Academia, Christmas seems to sneak up on me like a mugger. Finals finished on the 13th, grades were due on the 20th, and here we are, less than a week later, and Christmas is here. It seems I hardly get to enjoy it much anymore with the paperwork, the meetings, and the things I have to close up before I leave. Of course, some of that I chose to do, and I try to get ahead when I can on gifts as early as possible, but it never seems to be as pleasant as I remember as a child. It seems rushed, and it seems forced, and it seems to be over all too soon. At the end of the day, I mostly collapse after catching up on work and then I fall asleep early before I can really do much. It wasn't until Wednesday night that I even thought about decorating and hung up lights and wrapped the gifts that have sat in my bedroom for weeks. It's finally Christmas, and I finally get a little peace. Some of the peace comes all year long in little pieces, but I start to think on it a little more in the evenings as winter dawns an Christmas approaches. Particularly this year, I started thinking about older Christmases, when I liked it a lot more, and I spent more time pondering than I usually do about things I had, things I thought I had, and things I wanted to find. I think about the reason for the season and how He said, "My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you", and I find that it's true, and it's not the ways I expected.

This season, as with most, Christ blesses us with peace of mind. For my own part, there is only one decision I ever made that festers in my brain, but that's the point of Christ's atoning sacrifice. He came to take upon Himself the sins of all those who repent and refrain from repeating the offense. SO even for everyone who makes mistakes or repeatedly rebels, there is hope for a peace of mind, a peace of soul, and peace in your heart through Christ. During class I try to impress upon my students the importance of honest, accurate information because of the implications on decisions tht we make. Some of the chapters of our lives close despite our best efforts. Captain Picard reminded us in Star Trek that it is possible to make the best decisions and still lose without it being a character flaw. Other people get to choose too. Sometimes we are not as choice to them as we'd like to be. Sometimes they make other choices. Christ's atoning sacrifice swallows up that pain too, because if we do our part, it will be with us in the final accounting as if everything had worked out as we hoped. And, when we don't do our best or sometimes when we do our worst, because Christ was born, there was a sacrificial lamb on whom our sins can be scapegoated, leaving us unblemished if we truly mean our penitence. That can give us peace of mind, that mistakes are always attended with mercy.

I spend a lot of time each Christmas in quiet contemplation and prayer because I live alone. After I tire of the unrealistic and sappy Hallmark Holiday movies, as I sit in the evening, I pray. This year, I even hung up lights on my house for the first time since I was divorced, and I sat on the porch briefly basking in the glow of His light and thought. In previous years, I have driven neighborhoods or more often walked around looking at lights and talking with God. When I pray, I don't feel chastisement. I feel more like He understands. I know Christ knows what it's like to be alone. Like Him, I spend most of my Christmases with my parents. Like Him, I've been betrayed by false friends. I think about old Christmases, like a Christmas for Carole, and about my years in Europe. I think about how I felt outside the Oberndorf chapel where "Silent Night" was first performed for guitar and what it was like walking the back alleys of old Salzburg looking for souveniers from Austria and for that first Christmas abroad making straw stars to hang from the tree. I never really felt nostalgic for Austria before, but I find at Christmas that, without anyone else in my life, my heart belongs there. At that time, I was a missionary and spent my days and weeks preaching about Christ, and it was a good time, a peaceful time, despite the heartaches, disappointments, and struggles I faced. I remember hearing the bells on Christmas Day. I remember winter nights in the snow, and I find I miss that. I also find that I feel Christ's approbation for most of my life, and that gives me peace.

Despite my bellyaching, I consider at Christmas on the peaceable and blessed state of my life. I had the chance to reach out and help some people I know who are not so fortunate this year. My best friend got divorced, and he's unemployed, so he's barely squeaking by. My local friend closed up his parents' estate and moved away, but he's essentially homeless, so we still talk when we can, and I have two rooms in my house full of his belongings. I have all my limbs and faculties, money left over after the bills are paid every month for emergencies or fun, and I live in America. Even one of the facilities people I met who originally hails from England told me he came here because of greater opportunities. My next door neighbor is getting his house foreclosed and must move sometime in the spring, so I looked him up, and I found that he earns less than I do and may have obligations to TWO former wives and their kids Oida! Maybe I'm not receiving the blessings I like. Maybe I haven't been on a date for over two years and maybe I'm not tenured yet and maybe I don't have close friends who live here, but that doesn't mean I am not blessed. In fact for years, I've told people there are only two things about my life that I would change, and I don't think I know many if any who can say their lives are that well off. I'm not swimming in money or friendships or rewards from work or opportunities for love, but I have already lived beyond the wildest dreams of almost all of my progenitors, and I know it. That gives me peace. It's also very comforting to have enough for myself as well as enough to share with others who are in need.

Sometimes when people talk about peace at Christmas, they aim for the stars instead of looking into their own backyards. They assume it means that we'll all sit around perfectly equal, perfectly happy, singing kumbiyah and blissfully ignorant of other opportunities. Instead of looking for the entire package, sometimes it helps at Christmas to consider the small things. The kids who benefit from Toys For Tots are happy to just get a present. The homeless people at Carey and Las Vegas Blvd are happy for a bowl of soup and a fresh pair of socks. People who are alone are happy that people talk to and visit them. The sick are grateful for every gesture that hospital staff can make. It's not enough, and it's not the same, but it's something, and it's more than most people do any other time of the year. Perhaps sthe most important thing is WHY we do it. As part of our belief as Christians, we think about and emulate the Savior, and at Christmas we try a little harder than at other times of the year to act like it and spread the joy and peace of the season to people other than ourselves and to consider all the gifts we receive before the 25th. Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings which shall be unto all people. Good tidings of peace, from that silent night, that holy night. It was a time when Mary and Joseph were grateful for all the things they did have, that they'd finally found a place for her to give birth. It was a time when they communed with the heavens and felt of God's love and approbation as they brought His son into the world. It was a time when the Messiah long foretold finally came to free men, to throw off the shackles of oppression, to give hope to all whatever their burden and ease their lives and minds. His peace I give unto you, this Christmas, and always. Merry Christmas.

14 December 2017

Equal Voice is CONSERVATIVISM

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People seem confused at what liberalism actually means and why anyone would oppose it.  Liberalism, at its core, is anti-liberty and authoritarian.  It relies on logical fallacies, ad populum and ad hoc ergo proctor hoc and quid pro quo to survive and thrive.  Liberalism, like its predecessor Feudalism, attracts the arrogant, vain, and selfish while managing to justify its existence by claiming its opponents are thus.  While claiming a meritocracy, liberalism only believes in merit when its people are advanced.  While defending democracy, liberals only believe in it when the people vote for what liberals believe.  Liberalism crosses party lines because liberals share one facet in common: they prefer their own and detest any others.  Most liberals are united by one great ethic- the pursuit of power.  Indeed, some liberal characters in fiction proudly declare “There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it.”  It’s a very condescending point of view, but it is also pervasive.   It’s the easy way.  A liberal demands to be judged on his intentions while judging you on your actions.  A liberal believes that the ends always justify the means as a pretense to do whatever the liberal desires even if the liberal takes different sides of an issue for expediency.    Liberalism persists because they “clothe their naked villainy with odd old ends stol’n forth from holy writ and seem saints when most they play the devil” (Richard III).   Essentially, when you get down to brass tacks, liberalism is the philosophy of hell, the doctrine preached by the father of all lies, and just as it captured the devils that follow Lucifer and millions of humans in the years before us, it appeals to the minds of many in our day because it’s easy. 

Almost every demagogue is a liberal.  They essentially oppose any other ideas besides their own, even when they, like Barack Obama, declare falsely that they are open to any ideas and new ideas.  No, they feel like this and speak like this: “Women [liberals] don't want to hear what you think. Women [liberals] want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice” (Bill Cosby).  Essentially this amounts to the logical fallacy of ad populum: they tell you what they think you want to hear, just like apparently liberals imply ever man should do to his wife.  You hear that advice all the time- to learn to say “yes dear” if you want a happy marriage.  How is it happy to subjugate your will to someone else?  Liberals are good as word smiths.  They say “We’re going to fix education.”  You mean fix as in to make permanent or fix as in to repair?  The latter definition does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1912 edition that sits in my library at home.    Liberals promise the moon and give you tripe.  For them, the ends always justify the means and style beats substance.  Rupert Murdoch declared in 2006 that Barack Obama was “a rockstar”.  What had Obama actually achieved?  Black people poured out in AL to elect Doug Jones who was not black and has not done anything to help blacks because he has a “D” after his name.  What did the Democrats actually do to qualify them?  They weren’t republicans.

Liberals are adroit at pretense and pretending.  Rather than spend money on education, let’s just arrange to have everyone elected to public office, which obviously makes every liberal an expert on every subject.  Once in office, liberals act like mini tyrants and demand that you live your principles and if they can they demand that you live theirs as well.  They like to pretend to hate the rich and want to redistribute for the poor, but if you look at the Forbes list, eight of the ten richest people in America are liberals, and the companies they run reach into almost every American home, preaching liberalism.  Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are all liberal companies, and so our calamity is heightened by reflection that we furnish the means by which we suffer.  We support liberal companies with our purchases and then wonder why liberalism spreads.  Liberals claim to be for blacks and for women and lash out when their blacks and their women are roasted, but when Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin come under vicious slander and libel, the silence of liberals is deafening.  In recent weeks with sexual misconduct on the radar, black people in Conyers’ district demanded due process after accusations arose, but none of those people demanded due process for Roy Moore.

In order to be a successful liberal politician, you must in essence endorse and be a fraud.  At some point in the last 40 years, the democrats managed to convince a large fraction of the electorate that they were for freedom, the little guy, the minority, and the oppressed.    Electing a republican will bring back segregation.  Race baiting to defeat Roy Moore was way over the top, especially when you consider that the Congressional records show that Democrats were actually in favor and defenders of slavery and its associated aftershocks.  Indeed, Leonard Bacon warned that “If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong - if those laws of the Southern States, by virtue of which slavery exists there, and is what it is, are not wrong - nothing is wrong.”  Most liberalism came from the south, and now that they’ve moved into the north and west with the collapse of their racist utopia in the confederacy, they permeate the nation with the notion that “you only live once so live it up”, that “do what you like” (unless it’s be a conservative Christian), and “whatsoever a man doeth is no crime”.   They continue to perpetuate the lie that they are somehow oppressed.  Most of the media outlets are liberal despite what their commentators claim as political affiliation, and when liberals own the information, they can bend it all they like.  In fact, more than 90% of news coverage of Trump is negative, but the media will claim that any conservative commentary constitutes a disproportionate “bias”.  It’s not about bias.  It’s about hegemony.  It’s piratical in a sense, that they do not care about how much swag they have as long as you have any swag below your deck.  Liberals claim to be FOR the oppressed, always bashing the “rich” but they cleverly never include themselves, and they redefine what rich means.  Obama talked about a family of four earning $250,000/year.  How is that “millionaire”?  Nobody thinks they are rich.  Even one of the police officers on campus said you can never earn too much money and he earns $83000 year as a police officer.  That’s more than an Army Major earns.  That’s probably more than you earn.  Yet, he will talk with anger about how the “rich always get tax cuts from the republicans”, because liberals are never rich.  There’s always someone with more money, someone with money they don’t have.

Once in office, the liberal perpetuates fraud.  Here, the logical fallacy ad hoc ergo proctor hoc takes place.  They elected us, so we have a mandate, but when you elect their opponents, the election is fraudulent (Bush v Gore 2000).    When it comes to science, they pick and choose. With global warming, they say “it’s hotter than we’d like” and so it must be YOUR fault.  Coincidence is not causality, but if you don’t believe in it, they call you a climate change denier.   IN order to keep their base drummed up, they claim that you must elect democrats or the evil republicans will cut funding for fire, police, and ambulance services.  Only a liberal demagogue thinks that when I say I'm for lower taxes and less government I think that police, firemen and the like ought to be cut from the budget. Only a complete moron jumps to that conclusion over other programs.  Everything they do dehumanizes those they oppose.  Any gun crime evokes accusations against all gun owners.  Any hypocrite Christian justifies the vilification of all Christians.  This fearmongering  comes after the art of Gaston: “The beast will make off with your children.  He’ll come after them in the night.  We’re not safe until his head is mounted on my wall!”  Liberals are only responsible if the outcome is positive.  Obama wasn’t responsible for rising gas prices but was responsible for stock market gains, but Trump is not responsible for stock market gains and is responsible for inflation.  Liberalism is easy.  It is the political party of “Oops!” whereafter then they say seven Hail Marys and then they move on because it’s resolved in their minds.  It’s not just democrats; the GOP has liberals too.  When conservatives delivered the GOP all three branches of government in 2016, the GOP RINOs disparaged them and flipped them the bird.  Too many politicians are immoral: they promise us one thing during the election and then flip us the bird afterwards. They promise to defend the Constitution and then eviscerate it. Yes, that includes the GOP too and RINO Speaker Ryan who may be a pathological liar.  Liberals will say anything to get elected and then do something else afterwards; liberal democrats will promise liberalism in the campaign and then make sure it happens, no matter what it costs.  The liberal will spoon-feed you their own patented form of bullshit. Ignore the verbiage and look at what they're doing. What they're asking you to do. What sort of world they'd have you build and how they're going to pay for it, because trust me, you’ll pay.


In order to be a liberal, you must think hypocrisy is normal and justifiable behavior (unless your opponents are hypocrites, which is just more hypocrisy).  The liberal will complain that, if Russian Olympiads are banned for doping, nobody from America should be allowed to go either.  It’s that grammar school mentality where we all must put our heads down because of some nincompoop we don’t even know.  Here, the diabolical and criminal fallacy of Quid pro quo dominates.  If you want to move up in a liberal organization or political movement or business run by liberals, you will either have to dig dirt or lick boots.  A liberal has his friends in iniquity and the departments of government as guards, and he tears up the laws of those who rule in righteousness so that he can destroy those who rebel against his will.  If you do not validate them, they will not promote you over any other candidate regardless of disparate qualifications.  The nursery rhyme “Little Jack Horner. Sat in the corner,. Eating a Christmas pie;. He put in his thumb,. And pulled out a plum,. And said, "What a good boy am I!"” references the feudalistic practice of bribing the Lord with a “plum”.  Don’t believe it?  Look at what Harvey Weinstein’s accusers say was the reason why they acquiesced to his demands- career advancement.  Sexual misconduct matters only with conservatives.  In that case, allegations is all it takes, but when evidence and accusers pile up about known liberal politicians like Conyers, Clinton, et al., it is immediately defended.  A liberal demands to be integrated only in the moment but feel free to integrate your entire life and dig up dirt from your past at any time as if you did it today and as if you had no remorse, made no restitution, and paid no penalty.  They demand to be judged by intentions but judge you by any error ever.   Being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry unless the godfather of liberalism demands you kiss his ring, like the kings of yesteryear.  For them, there is only one commandment.  “In fact the whole of two-faced society paid only lip service to the ten commandments and committed adultery, stole, and cheated at cards, because, after all, it was only the eleventh commandment that mattered—Thou Shalt Not Get Found Out” (Marion Chesney, The Miser of Mayfair).  If you do get caught, if you’re useful, they hold onto you, and if you’re not, like Al Franken and Conyers, then they throw you out post haste.

The hypocrite is fake from his core.  Liberals always go after fake issues.  They demand sexual harassment training but not the reporting of sexual harassment to law enforcement or the resignation of their own while they demand any conservative accused be shamed into hell.  Our biggest issues are not transgender bathrooms and the availability of free contraceptives.  Yet, obsessed with race and sex, they talk about abortion and discrimination as if no strides were ever taken to combat these inequities and as if they were proponents from the beginning, which they were not, but that’s already been addressed.  Liberals prop up fake heroes: how much carbon do these psuedointelletuals emit enroute to their “climate conferences” anyway?    Liberals abound with fake outrage.  Who is Senator Gillibrand to tell us who should resign? Where was she when Mrs. Huckabee was mocked? Sarah Palin? When did she ever condemn Bill Clinton who sexually abused interns in the oval office? Your outrage is just the parliament jester's foist on a somnambulent public.  In order to be a liberal, you must support fake bipartisanship: when was the last time that Democrats caucused with Conservatives on an issue?  Liberals only want bipartisanship when conservatives join them.  When Obama was president, which Democrats broke ranks to oppose him?  Liberals are fake when it comes to being accepting, inclusive, and tolerant.   Liberals demand that you accept them as they are and then demand that you become what they find acceptable.  Since everything is fake, it’s difficult to deal with these people who are fake friends, fake allies, and fake confidants.  How do you trust anyone?  You live in perpetual fear, and you end up paying the blackmail to keep it secret, usually in the form of continued support for liberalism and its programs.  Fear becomes the ultimate tool of liberal government.  Now, they will fearmonger about what the conservatives “might” do and ignore the maladies and aftershocks caused by what they already did.  You see, socialism just needs enough time and enough money and then panacea!  They never give a timetable or an actual itemized list of costs. 

Our founding fathers knew the risks of trusting people to govern themselves, knowing that even those who mean to rule well may mean to rule.  They warned us that if you give small men big power and sometimes you'll pay for it and that absolute power corrupts absolutely, yet the liberal is exactly for that- absolute power.  They demand phenomenal cosmic powers and then restrict you to itty bitty living space.  The conservative wants you to decide, to be free to fall, to flail, and to fail.  Jefferson once wrote to an adversary that we believe in the people differently- liberals believe the people are babies who need to be kept from hurting themselves, and conservatives believe that in order to be adults, babies must be allowed to walk on their own.  It’s the difference between hell and heaven- hell wants to devour you, and heaven wants you to walk on your own.  That’s why God doesn’t intervene.  It would weaken you if He kept anything ill from ever befalling you!  However, it is a standard behavior of most people to lionize their own and paint their opponents in caricature, but you only really believe in and stand for a thing when you fight for it when it stands to benefit people you don’t know and don’t like.  Liberals consider the Trump administration to be immoral and unethical but if you bring up Bill Clinton’s sexual dalliances or Barack Obama forcing religious organizations to pay for contraceptives, they will villainize YOU.  The problem with liberalism is that liberalism promotes and glorifies in the seven deadly sins: gluttony, lust, avarice, pride, despair, wrath, and sloth.  You are encouraged to these particularly through the sin of envy, which leads you to demand things and rights for nothing and at the expense of others, which does not lead to happiness but to more problems.  In fact, the liberal doesn’t want to help society.  He does not want us to have an equal chance, an equal voice. The liberal must justify his place as our ruler.