The subject book is an overly long, but largely unconvincing attempt to pin major responsibility for the Holocaust on TJ Watson and IBM. As I read through it I thought of our current Holocaust of over 60 million babies murdered in their mothers wombs, and am ashamed to realize that turning away from horror remains our standard practice.
On page 232, Black states the obvious ... that IBM was far from alone in making business deals with Germany, indeed many Americans felt that Germany was unstoppable, and of course the US was very anxious to maintain neutrality until Pearl Harbor was bombed. After WWI, americans felt that they could stay out of the "world's problems" ... much like many americans today are happy to ignore the slaughter of the unborn.
If you follow the link, you will see a reasonable review.
No question Watson was greedy, willing to ignore evil to make money, ruthlessly competitive and constantly attempting to eliminate competition by any means. He was a classic capitalist of his time,
He would be right at home in today's US political environment.
Looking at Google and Amazon dealing with China today assures us that human nature remains fallen.
So begins a journey that I have long dabbled in, and hope to now take in earnest -- attempting to give a truly secular view of the Darwinist faith. "Moral, Believing Animals" covers the fact that we alll live by faith, the only question is; "in what?" Realizing that nothing is "provable" in a scientific, philosophical, or theological sense is enlightening.
As you may see me state probably too often, one of my current goals is to firmly establish my personal dogma -- with dogma meaning "the core, the base, the foundation" ... or in operating systems terms, the "kernel". I already have the "core of the core", like the "microkernel" if you will, of "Grace alone (sola gratia) through faith alone (sola fide) for the sake of Christ alone (solus Christus), revealed by Scripture alone (sola Scriptura).
The first paragraph of Gelernter states ..
Darwinian evolution is a brilliant and beautiful scientific theory. Once it was a daring guess. Today it is basic to the credo that defines the modern worldview. Accepting the theory as settled truth—no more subject to debate than the earth being round or the sky blue or force being mass times acceleration—certifies that you are devoutly orthodox in your scientific views; which in turn is an essential first step towards being taken seriously in any part of modern intellectual life. But what if Darwin was wrong?
Darwin is indeed part of the base dogma of most people's "modern" worldviews. Upon it rests the faith that a randomly created universe and biological life are randomly "good" (adaptive) relative to an ever evolving "standard" (an oxymoron), the inevitability of "progress" being "good" .... thus at the base of secularism is the faith that "randomness is good, randomness is great, we thank it for our daily bread".
Rarely has there been such a great disparity between the popular perception of a theory and its actual standing in the relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature. Today modern neo-Darwinism seems to enjoy almost universal acclaim among science journalists and bloggers, biology textbook writers, and other popular spokespersons for science as the great unifying theory of all biology. High-school and college textbooks present its tenets without qualification and do not acknowledge the existence of any significant scientific criticism of it. At the same time, official scientific organizations—such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), and the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT)—routinely assure the public that the contemporary version of Darwinian theory enjoys unequivocal support among qualified scientists and that the evidence of biology overwhelmingly supports the theory.
Note: "Intelligent Design" IS NOT equal to "Young Earth Creation" ... following quote from CRB article ...
As for Biblical religion, it forces its way into the discussion although Meyer didn’t invite it, and neither did Darwin. Some have always been bothered by the harm Darwin is said to have done religion. His theory has been thought by some naïfs (fundamentalists as well as intellectuals) to have shown or alleged that the Bible is wrong, and Judeo-Christian religion bunk. But this view assumes a childishly primitive reading of Scripture. Anyone can see that there are two different creation stories in Genesis, one based on seven days, the other on the Garden of Eden. When the Bible gives us two different versions of one story, it stands to reason that the facts on which they disagree are without basic religious significance. The facts on which they agree are the ones that matter: God created the universe, and put man there for a reason. Darwin has nothing to say on these or any other key religious issues.
So for ID haters, you can restart your brain now ... look up Gelernter if you are having trouble. He is NOT "some stupid crazy".
We return to the main theme.
Is it possible that a whole bunch of scientists and institutions could be wrong? See "We are entering an ice age" (1970's), "We are out of oil" (1970's), "cholesterol, eggs, butter BAD -- carbs good!" (1970 to 2015), ... and I'm certain the beat will go on. Experts ... always certain, frequently wrong.
Darwinism is based on two very simple hypothesis:
Life began as a singular vastly unlikely accident that we can't repeat even after massive attempts with our most advanced methods.
All the diversity we see descended from that miraculous event and differentiated through the power of mutation and natural selection to us and all life.
So how likely is claim #1? (from Darwin's Doubt (DD)):
“Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.” Or, as Nobel Prize–winning molecular biologist and origin-of-life researcher Christian de Duve explains, theories of prebiotic natural selection fail because they “need information which implies they have to presuppose what is to be explained in the first place.”
That old nasty bootstrap problem.
Ok, so we realize that as far as our current science can tell, the creation of life is simply a miracle. So how about mutation/natural selection? -- now called "neo-Darwinism" based on the knowledge gained in science since Darwin, especially DNA / genome understanding?
Since 1980, when Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould declared that neo-Darwinism “is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy,” the weight of critical opinion in biology has grown steadily with each passing year.
So ... as previously stated, we have a giant disconnect between the dogma of Darwinism and the knowledge coming out of science, and our youth are being indoctrinated with what current science tells us is false. Why?
As you will see often in my reading/writing, it is because humans are RATIONALIZING beings, not "rational". To be rational requires humility, and we are neither humble nor rational by nature. The only proven way to become more rational (proven by pre-"progressive" Western civilization) is to become more humble, best stated in Proverbs 9:10 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." When you are humble, you are better able to seek knowledge/wisdom because you don't believe you know it all!
Or, if you prefer philosophy, Socrates is considered to be the wisest man because he knew that he knew nothing, and was therefore always learning, rather than relying on dogma.
Throw that fundamental humility away and you get arrogance and human dogma -- "the survival of the fittest", faith in "progress" (social Darwinism), "the majority is always right", etc
As we have gained more knowledge about the "programming" or "language of life" ... DNA, RNA, proteins, peptides, etc the odds against Darwin have grown ever more extreme. Following quote from CRB article ...
But neo-Darwinianism understands that mutations are rare, and successful ones even scarcer. To balance that out, there are many organisms and a staggering immensity of time. Your chances of winning might be infinitesimal. But if you play the game often enough, you win in the end, right? After all, it works for Powerball!
Do the numbers balance out? Is Neo-Darwinian evolution plausible after all? Axe reasoned as follows. Consider the whole history of living things—the entire group of every living organism ever. It is dominated numerically by bacteria. All other organisms, from tangerine trees to coral polyps, are only a footnote. Suppose, then, that every bacterium that has ever lived contributes one mutation before its demise to the history of life. This is a generous assumption; most bacteria pass on their genetic information unchanged, unmutated. Mutations are the exception. In any case, there have evidently been, in the whole history of life, around 1040 bacteria—yielding around 1040 mutations under Axe’s assumptions. That is a very large number of chances at any game. But given that the odds each time are 1 to 1077 against, it is not large enough. The odds against blind Darwinian chance having turned up even one mutation with the potential to push evolution forward are 1040x(1/1077)—1040tries, where your odds of success each time are 1 in 1077 — which equals 1 in 1037. In practical terms, those odds are still zero. Zero odds of producing a single promising mutation in the whole history of life. Darwin loses.
I'm struck by the similarity of what we are finding in biology is to what we are finding in cosmology. As I posted in my old blog, the odds against a UNIVERSE with the exact physics constants so that our world could exist are around 10-400
So the odds against the world being here at all reduce to "way impossible", and the basic tenets of Darwinism reduce to mega negative exponent odds, why would one NOT want to rethink some of the basic premises of our secular dogma?
Well, for the same reasons that Luther was extremely brave to question the dogma of the Roman church -- the "powers that be" tend to get VERY angry when their dogma is questioned! Christ clearly declared that church and state ought to be separate ("my kingdom is not of this world"), but of course humans want their dogma to be universal (questioning it is "hate speech") ... so the Catholic Church became increasingly synonymous with "the state" prior to the Reformation, and thus failed the "not of this world" requirement. To disagree made one a "heretic", worthy of being burned at the stake. This tended to give Christianity a bad name, much like Naziism gave Fascism a bad name.
The "enlightenment/reformation" re-separated church and state, but as people became more and more "enlightened" (secular, materialist, atheist, etc) the restraining force of Christian faith was abandoned and human nature took over. We are natural dogmatists ... we like to have a very firm faith that we are RIGHT and the "other side" is WRONG ... the only proven way out of this dilemma is humbly practiced Christian faith (to avoid the pre-Reformation Catholic heresy). The modern dogma is secular humanism, and if you disagree you may well be "cancelled".
So now the secular dogma of Darwinism, progressivism, humanism, etc seeks to suppress "heresies" and demand that their dogma be inculcated in the youth through schooling, media, etc, and all questioning of that dogma must be suppressed for our own "good". Our "enlightenment" has now become what pre-reformation Catholic Church once was. We all have a dogma (worldview). Only through faith in Christ are we by Grace able to keep our dogma living as opposed to dead.
I find this column to be very close to spot on however ... just read it.
The Fraser Institute is a free-market think tank that ranks nations according to things free-market think tanks like: less regulation, free trade, secure property rights. The freest economies in the world are places like Hong Kong, the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Denmark, Mauritius, Malta and Finland. Nations in the top quartile for economic freedom have an average G.D.P. per capita of $36,770. For those in the bottom quartile, it’s $6,140. People in the free economies have a life expectancy of 79.4 years. Those in the planned economies have a life expectancy of 65.2 years.
I'll start with a couple of Fromm's statements from the forward ...
This book is a continuation of Escape from Freedom, written over fifteen years ago. In Escape from Freedom I tried to show that the totalitarian movements appealed to a deep-seated craving to escape from the freedom man had achieved in the modern world; that modern man, free from medieval ties, was not free to build a meaningful life based on reason and love, hence sought new security in submission to a leader, race or state.
The main point in this last part of the book is not so much the belief that each one of the recommended measures is necessarily “right,” but that progress can only occur when changes are made simultaneously in the economic, socio-political and cultural spheres;
that any progress restricted to one sphere is destructive to progress in all spheres.
I find that a lot of Fromm's analysis is cogent -- however as he moves to "solutions" he largely rejects spirituality in favor of "culture, politics, economics" which I find to be ignoring the spiritual core of humanity and believing that by mechanistically dressing up the zombie like corpse, one can build a "perfect society" ... the socialist dream, which tends to end in some sort of "final solution".
The aim of the whole socio-economic development of the Western world is that of the materially comfortable life, relatively equal distribution of wealth, stable democracy and peace, and the very countries which have come closest to this aim show the most severe signs of mental unbalance!
The "enlightenment" view of modern man is materialism ... everything, including us, is just matter -- there is nothing else than matter, and "Man is the measure of all things". Since this tends to be discomforting, the most common goal state of current man is to become "Comfortably Numb".
Especially in America, we have the strange idea that if "everyone" agrees with us, we must be right (the sad error of democracy)! In fact, "political correctness", "wokeness" and "intersectionality" assert that if some people refuse to "wake up", we likely need to force them! Fromm courageously states the obvious ...
The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
He also makes a statement that at this point in my studies seems painfully obvious ...
It may be said in passing that the real problem of mental life is not why some people become insane, but rather why most avoid insanity.) Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer, the only difference being that one answer corresponds more to the total needs of man, and hence is more conducive to the unfolding of his powers and to his happiness than the other. All cultures provide for a patterned system in which certain solutions are predominant, hence certain strivings and satisfactions. Whether we deal with primitive religions, with theistic or non-theistic religions, they are all attempts to give an answer to man’s existential problem. The finest, as well as the most barbaric cultures have the same function—the difference is only whether the answer given is better or worse.
In order to assess "better or worse" one needs to know "the good", which is an ancient difficult question. Fromm clearly rejects the materialist "more stuff = the good", but he is unclear on what the right answer might be.
The human condition without transcendence is extremely uncomfortable (thus the seeking of pleasure, avoidance, distraction, "numbness") ... in the material world, we can try to "love" (in my opinion, always failing without faith in God), to create, or ...
There is another answer to this need for transcendence: if I cannot create life, I can destroy it. To destroy life makes one also transcend it. Indeed, that man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.
Here we see how abortion and euthanasia are modern forms of "transcendence".
On page 102 we find the core of the religion of liberal/progressive/woke culture ...
Virtue is to be adjusted and to be like the rest. Vice, to be different.
As is covered so well in "Why Liberalism Failed", when the price of your "freedom" is to fully conform to the ever changing "values" of a culture that believes that tomorrow is always "better" than today, you find you can never be assured of not somehow being "different" ... you may have just not got the latest memo, and now MUST state that "Epstein hung himself! -- and anyone who doubts this obvious "fact" is a racist, sexist, deplorable!
Fromm is a firm believer in "socialism will EVENTUALLY get it right" ... the last part of the book. Apparently he has failed to read Solzhenitsyn.
For the non-academic, "liberalism" here is classical liberalism -- individual rights (especially property), government at the consent of the people, and freedom of economic activity (often capitalism).
Now, I am not sure the higher purpose that religion offers its adherents can ever be replaced by any other human enterprise. Nor do I discount religion’s positive contributions to the building of community, or to the development of our culture. I am just not convinced that there was ever a way for religiosity to have fully survived Charles Darwin. Even if secularization is in some ways undesirable, it is at least partly inevitable. Most of Europe, for one, has renounced Christianity. Deneen mourns the death of God, and understandably so, but as a political theorist in modern society he cannot just assume that the strength of organized religion can be easily regenerated. He must grapple with, rather than just complain about, the rise of secularism. And his inability to cope with it, ironically enough, serves to demonstrate the wisdom of liberalism — for part of liberalism’s genius is that its pluralistic capacity to foster freedom of association can incorporate atheists and people of faith into the same body politic.
When your argument is that the only remaining "ism" after Communism, Socialism, and Fascism have failed many times is ALSO a failure, it is not all that surprising that pretty much everyone in the modern intellectual elite would have a lot of negative things to say about your thesis.
NR shows it's true colors by siding with godless atheism as a "value" of the liberal project, and Brooks vacuously points out that something so old can't possibly be wrong ...
Deneen’s book is valuable because it focuses on today’s central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order. Nonetheless, he is wrong. Liberal democracy has had a pretty good run for 300 years. If the problem were really in the roots, wouldn’t it have shown up before now?
I think if Brooks read just a little closer, even in his own review, he would see his problem ...
The problem, Deneen argues, started at the beginning. Greek and medieval philosophies valued liberty, but they understood that before a person could help govern society, he had to be able to govern himself. People had to be habituated in virtue by institutions they didn’t choose — family, religion, community, social norms.
While liberalism was far from perfect in basic construction, the fact that up until maybe "1930 or 1940", "culture" at least in the US still involved the CULTIVATION (root of "culture") of the basic virtues of governing yourself as Buckley expertly pointed out in "God And Man at Yale". Unfortunately NR, founded by Buckley has obviously strayed from this key quote from that work ...
"The duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level".
Without the transcendent foundation of Christianity, a country like what America was is impossible -- Buckley saw that in 1950, Reagan saw that in the '80s, and by 2008, such knowledge was all but gone -- which is why Rod Dreher outlines "The Benedict Option". And Reagan often talked about it.
NR may find that Nietzsche was right and god is dead ... however, God doesn't agree, and that is far more important. Nietzsche IS very dead and NR is showing definite signs of mortality. Evolution is MECHANISM -- it is a HOW, not a cause. To the extent it operates, it operates in a universe that it did not create, and it operates because of underlying principles in that universe that were not created by evolution.
If I write a program you like and you say, WAIT! You used C++! (a programming language, "mechanism"), therefore you do not exist! You would be using the same argument as "Darwin disproves God".
Whatever science "proves" (and it can only EVER prove by induction), the fact remains that for the vast majority of "common people", "the rank and file", Faith and Hope found in religion and family is the only way to a decent life in THIS world. For those of us that believe, the life in this world is only the preseason for the next, but for the purposes of this book, we are dealing with the here vs hereafter.
Shorn of the deepest ties to family (nuclear as well as extended), place, community, region, religion, and culture, and deeply shaped to believe that these forms of association are limits upon their autonomy, deracinated humans seek belonging and self-definition through the only legitimate form of organization remaining available to them: the state. Nisbet saw the rise of fascism and communism as the predictable consequence of the liberal attack upon smaller associations and communities.
("deracinate" -- remove from native environment and/or culture) Once both social and economic "liberalism" have "freed" you from all your "obligations" save to the State, you find that the State is never going to be able to love you or even "care" about you, since it MUST, (by definition) consider you a 100% interchangeable "citizen", "consumer", "taxpayer", etc. that is to be treated "equally".
Our “community” was now to consist of countless fellow humans who shared an abstract allegiance to a political entity that would assuage all of our loneliness, alienation, and isolation. It would provide for our wants and needs; all it asked in return was complete devotion to the state and the elimination of any allegiance to any other intermediary entity.
Say that when you discover that you are completely alone with only a cold uncaring state as a constant companion, you decide to make some friends of your fellow "citizens". Remember the root of "culture" so gleefully fled and then destroyed was "cultivation" -- both you and they needed to have an actual culture to CULTIVATE what it means to be the sort of human that can have meaningful relationships with other humans.
These three cornerstones of human experience—nature, time and place—form the basis of culture, and liberalism’s success is premised upon their uprooting and replacement with facsimiles that bear the same names.
So now you realize that you truly NEED to relate to other HUMANS in order to live, but you find that both you and your peers are not humans of the sort that relate, but rather deracinated "individuals". The problem has cartoon simplicity!
Finally, we find we are really "all on the same side" to the extent we lost our transcendent faith. We are one big "liberal tribe" mistakenly thinking we are "left and right"! Each a generic greedy, self-centered consuming pure creature, shorn of anything "higher" than the self save the all encompassing state!
People who are “uncultivated” in the consumption of both food and sex, Aristotle observed, are the most vicious of creatures, literally consuming other humans to slake their base and untutored appetites. Far from being understood as opposites of human nature, customs and manners were understood to be derived from, governed by, and necessary to the realization of human nature.
Since we are now mostly atomic individuals who are proud of **OURSELVES**, we choose our vaunted "identity" -- through what we consume, where we live, where we go to school, our sexuality, our degrees, our tats, .... always our "own creation", or more accurately, the creation of a godless state and godless corporate marketing tricking us to the false belief of our "independence".
The book ends with the following ...
After a five hundred–year philosophical experiment that has now run its course, the way is clear to building anew and better. The greatest proof of human freedom today lies in our ability to imagine, and build, liberty after liberalism.
I STRONGLY recommend reading this fairly short work. Almost certainly it will make you uncomfortable no matter what your political, religious, or philisophical stripe. Which for me is one of the most important things a book can do -- because only through pain can there be growth!
The fact "both sides" hate it is an awfully good recommendation!
For any readers that are wondering why I post this on this blog as opposed to Radio Free Moose, my answer is that this is a BOOK REVIEW, and it is a review of a book by a respected WSJ editor, not some partisan hack. It more about governance than politics. RFM is more from rants, brain farts, etc.
As always, there is a bias in this book - to be human is to be biased. The difference is that in this book, sources are generally named -- not "anonymous White House sources close to Trump". As this book clearly documents, a huge amount of our "news" is totally fake, and the cost of that is our nation being destroyed -- by the very powers claiming that Trump is the "destructive force".
The summary of what has happened is pretty clear, and it didn't start with Trump ... Obama weaponized the Administrative/Deep State with Lois Lerner being an obvious example, long before he decided to use/allow the FBI/NSA/CIA/State Department etc to attack Trump prior to him even being the nominee.
The story is pretty simple and this book documents it.
The Clinton campaign funded opposition research by Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump.
Fusion colluded with Russians on this task
Comey ... who was on record as hating Trump, used the Fusion information ("The Steele Document") as a pretext to initiate an intelligence op against Trump as "insurance".
The FBI/NSA/etc fed information to Democrats which began operations to nullify the 2016 election prior to Trump even taking office.
The Administrative/Deep State worked hard to entrap Trump and anyone working for him to create a "case" for removal from office.
This operation continues -- with Deep State tools being used to surveil Devin Nunes and probably anyone else they see fit in hopes of finding something, ANYTHING! embarrassing / questionable / "illegal" ( like "lying" because you got a date wrong in testimony, or have "violated" some "law" that has never been prosecuted prior to Trump ...)
The assumption of all this (like Harry Reid taking the nuclear option) is that the combined power of the Administrative / Deep State, MSM, and the mostly left Judiciary is going to prevent any power ever being vested in parties/groups that want to maintain some semblance of a republic again. They may well be right.
As I have been saying since at least Obama, we are most likely in a non-recoverable situation already --- it is gratifying to see such an emminent organization as the WSJ lay out our peril so clearly. I pray it is not too late.
It is a book that sorely needs to be read by any who are even beginning to wonder if they are being hoodwinked by the elite establishment! A little quote ...
"One particularly huge mistake helped drive all the rest: The press became willing advocates for government officials and agencies (at least the ones they liked). This is the reverse of the role the press is supposed to play. The media exists to be a watchdog:the public depends on it ..."
"It’s hard to explain just how big a dereliction of duty this is. Reporters learn on day one that government officials exist to spin and lie, and that they do so with impunity. And the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation fell so clearly into the government-abuse-of-power stories that the press usually exists to expose—spying on a presidential campaign, wiretapping U.S. citizens ..."
This is unfortunately a much too old a story ... we have continued to build a massive unaccountable bureaucracy that is increasingly running the country in collusion with most of the elected officials from BOTH parties (see "Never Trump"). A vast majority of us apparently like the illusion that we can have everything we want and "someone else" will pay for it.
Trump is far from the "perfect vehicle" ... the sad situation is that he is the ONLY vehicle, and unless he and a majority of both houses win in 2020, what is described in this book will only get worse.
A must read recounting of a well educated liberal mugged by the reality of life in a fairly humane prison camp in WW2 China, that gives factual insight into the reality of human nature. He starts with a lot of faith in human nature being "good" and due to the reality he observes in the camp, comes to the conclusion that to the extent our society continues to believe in the basic goodness of human nature, we are certainly bound for hell on Earth.
The story of Block 49 ... one room having 11 men and another having 9, and the appeals to reason, justice, etc having zero effect is one of the realities that blew a hole in the Harvard Philosophy graduates worldview.
But in Block 49 men understood—they understood fully. They understood that a “reform” meant their own loss, and so they fought that reform, whatever its rationality and justice, as if it were a plague, a poisonous thing. Self-interest seemed almost omnipotent next to the weak claims of logic and fair play. Ironically, in this first and most logically clear of all our many cases, our committee, if justice were to be done, finally had to appeal to the least rational of all principles: the authority of force. We asked Mr. Izu to tell this recalcitrant dorm to take one more man, which they did readily enough—and we heard no more from Block 49.
Gilkey had a firm faith in human nature, reason, proper organizational structure, etc ... what he found out is that it is character that is the bedrock on which life and civilization are built. Unless you go to gulag type measures (and you will mostly fail even if you do), you must find something to believe in beyond human nature!
This point was increasingly apparent to me during the last year whenever we would look for a new stoker, cook, or kitchen helper. The question uppermost in the minds of the Labor Committee and the managers was no longer, “Has he the skill to do his job?” but rather, “Has he the honesty to be trusted with these supplies?” For the skill, while important, could be learned, but the integrity could not. Yet it was indispensable to our common life. However highly developed our technology might have been, a technique was of no real service in the hands of a dishonest man.
...better philosophy, a clearer and more coherent way of thinking about things will not be enough. Only a change in the mode and character of man’s existence will resolve this sort of problem. If the self were to find a new center from which both its own health and security as well as its creative relation with the neighbor might flow, such a possibility alone could provide the answer to this dilemma.
So what is a culture to do? Essentially exactly what we have thrown away.
Only in God is there an ultimate loyalty that does not breed injustice and cruelty, and a meaning from which nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us.
He doesn't claim a specific faith, but he does confirm that both moralism and mysticism will not socially save us. I recommend you read the book, and if you want to understand what he sees as working, LCMS Lutheran would be very close!
Seeing a hardcover at a good price at Costco, I did an impulse buy, not really expecting much. (What is the most expensive vehicle to drive? Answer -- a Costco shopping cart!)
No idea if it is ghost written, all made up, etc., but it certainly doesn't read that way. DJT JR comes across as smart, hard working, common sense / common people, a "real guy".
He is an avid outdoorsman -- fisherman and an hunter that would rather drive around in his pickup than go to fancy events.
On page 94 he does a great job of laying out the Hart-Celler act pushed by Teddy Kennedy that threw open the doors to mass immigration largely targeted at new likely Democrat voters. "Heart to cellar" might have been a better title because it was a move designed to "change the base" so that the US would be more left wing -- and it "worked", if you like division, crime, and massive welfare rolls -- and "The Party" (TP-D) does!
On page 218 he covers the Sarah Jeong, a NY Times reporter who posted "White people marking up the internet with their opinion like dogs pissing on fire hydrants" on Twitter ... which was not popular with conservatives, but received no general sanction from her employer or the MSM.
Candice Owens posted "Jewish people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants" as an experiment ... and was banned from Twitter. If you only listen to the MSM, you have never heard about this ... here is more detail.
The book is a fairly rational response to "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS) from one of the targets of TDS. If you are a Trump supporter or rational moderate, I highly recommend it. If you are a confirmed TDS person, it is likely a bridge too far.
As a conservative Christian, as I read it I thought of my own prejudices against divorce and womanizing .... although I do understand the temptation!
Christians are "saints and sinners", and thus ALWAYS in some degree hypocrites. I have many divorced and remarried friends and relatives, and I certainly know of affairs as well. As Christians, we are commanded to not judge -- which in general, I'm more successful at than the "lust of the flesh" -- eating, drinking, overly enjoying the view of a pretty lass, etc. My faith requires that I frequently confess ...
Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against You in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We justly deserve Your present and eternal punishment. For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us so that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways to the glory of Your holy name. Amen.
As I observe TDS, I am reminded of my youth in a fundamentalist Baptist church that delighted in condemnation of "The World" ... Lutherans, Catholics, non-believers, etc which drank, smoked, chewed, and did all manner of "sinful" things. As I watch TDS, it is clear that judgement of others and pride in our own "works righteousness" is a particularly strong evidence of human nature.
Condemnation of Trump somewhat exceeds the Baptist condemnation of "worldliness" -- possibly because the Baptists had full faith that those worldly folks were bound for the fires of eternal judgement, while they were bound for eternal paradise. The doctrine of Hell, while uncomfortable, like exercise and self denial, does have the effect of better allowing us to not mete out our various punishments in this life. "Justice is mine saith the Lord".
The underlying message of the book for me was in showing the danger to free civil discussion which harsh judgement and "virtue signalling" in the present engenders. The idea that by "cancelling", or "doxing", blocking their speech, refusing to talk to them, unfriending, posting hateful memes, and in many cases, even beating then up ("Antifa").
The de facto single party rule of TP, RINOS, Deep/Administrative State, MSM, AFSCME, NEA, etc has been challenged by Trump, and Russiagate showed the lengths to which that cabal will go to defend it's rule.
As the Scribes and Pharisees of old and the Baptists of my youth loved to "Virtue Signal", so the TDS people of today are absolutely convinced that the height of "morality" is showing how much you hate Trump!
The dark side of hatred is always present. What the left has realized and leveraged forever, ridicule is among the strongest weapons. The Sith of Star Wars reveled in hatred, and used it's dark power. However, we often forget that while the Jedi attempted to not give in to hate / anger, they still used lightsabers. Jesus said to love your enemies -- he didn't say not to have any.
Trump is the first person of the "more right than recent Republicans" to at least pull out the lightsaber of ridicule!
GoodReads Link This is now my top book for those seeking an introduction to Christianity and/or those wanting to understand the different philosophical and theological approaches to life, and especially LCMS Lutheran life with God. (p25)
"Adolf Koeberle notes three kinds of spiritual aspiration: moralism, in which the will seeks to achieve perfection of conduct; speculation, in which the mind seeks to achieve perfection of understanding; and mysticism, in which the soul seeks to achieve perfection by becoming one with God."
I grew up in a Baptist moralist tradition -- and I was never close to good enough. I spent a lot of time in speculation -- the endless search for more and more knowledge and "wisdom" -- and nobody is ever saved by knowledge! Man, especially in our generally materialist and hyper-secular world, really likes to think that he is somehow in control!
We cannot perfect our conduct, try as we might. We cannot understand God through our own intellects. We cannot become one with God. Instead of human beings having to do these things, Lutheran spirituality teaches that God does them for us—He becomes one with us in Jesus Christ; He reveals Himself to our feeble understandings by His Word; He forgives our conduct and, in Christ, lives the perfect life for us.
Lutherans believe that God does it all -- which is the only way that works since we weak humans are way too weak and sinful even begin to save ourselves!
"Lutheran spirituality is a sacramental spirituality, centered in the conviction that the Holy Spirit actually descends in the waters of Baptism and that Christ is really present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion."
Coming from the Baptist tradition where Baptism and Communion were mere symbols of "following Christ", rather than real divine interventions in our life as the Bible says ... "Baptism now saves you", and "This IS my body and blood", the sacraments are especially dear for me.
“When our sins and conscience oppress us,” Luther writes, “we strengthen ourselves and take comfort and say,’Nevertheless, I am baptized."
I'm going to run the "confession" together with the other works in this short book ... "What is Religion", "Religion and Morality", and "The Law of Love and Violence".
When Tolstoy was in his 50's, already well known and admired as an author around the world, he came to a point of crisis which he covers in chapter 4. He had realized (in chapter 3), that his former thought of the morality and purpose of "living in conformity with progress" was nonsense. Anything, no matter how horrible could be justified in the name of "progress". This writing was done prior to WWI, and even prior to the Russian Revolution ... he saw the likely outcome of the dream of "progressivism"-- 10's of millions dead from Nazism and Communism in the 20th century.
He becomes extremely suicidal, and what saves him is what he sees as a revelation that he has an eternal soul and that God has a purpose and meaning for all of this. Being a genius, he immediately skips over the idea of "wisdom" (fear of God), and the fact that he has none of it (wisdom) next to God, as well as forgetting that the human heart is "full of it", but the "it is shit". He then proceeds to cherry pick the Bible as he sees fit, much like Jefferson did in creating the "Jefferson Bible", a "bible" devoid of anything other than a deist god who totally keeps his hands off his creation.
Tolstoy hates "the church", virtually all sorts of government, and postulates a "divine nature" at the core of all humans that just needs to be nurtured (by ourselves) separate from all historical creeds and philosophy. At one level, he realizes that "religion" is a requirement for people living in community ... but is uncertain of what such a "religion" might be.
The book is mainly interesting because it was written by Tolstoy.
The linked article is an excellent SHORT summary by the almost always excellent (but not always short) Victor Davis Hanson. If you read this blog, you know that the entire Mueller probe is a travesty, but one of the underlying issues is the unraveling of a basic human value -- the presumption of innocence.
Instead of presuming Trump innocent unless he finds evidence of Russian collusion, Mueller started with the assumption that the reckless raconteur Trump surely must be guilty of some lawbreaking. Thus, it is Mueller’s job to hunt for past crimes to prove it.
Getting Americans to buy fully into the idea that members of TP ("The Party"-D) are inherently innocent, or if not innocent, "absolved" (see Slick Willie, Hildebeast, BO, the Kennedys, etc). To be in "opposition" to TP is itself a crime in BOistan, so the task is reduced to "finding the specifics". They already know you are guilty of not being a member of TP, the unforgivable sin, the only question now is; "What ELSE are you guilty of?".
BOistan is charting new waters for the region once known as the USA, although extr -- it is proving it is a "crime" simply to win an election and not be TP (or a suitably TP-like RINO).
No president has ever faced impeachment for supposed wrongdoing alleged to have taken place before he took office — not Andrew Johnson, not Richard Nixon, and not even Bill Clinton, who lied about his liaisons with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. With the effort to go back years, if not decades, into Trump’s business and personal life, we are now in unchartered territory.
There are LOTS of new waters in BOistan ... if you want to run in California and have a 501C, all it takes is someone to ACCUSE you of "coordination", and the burden of proof is on YOU to "prove yourself innocent" rather than on the state to prove you guilty! Welcome to the gulag comrade!
Victor would like to see some of the FBI agents and even Hillary investigated for a few of the crimes already uncovered and KNOWN relative to coordination on the Steele Dossier, wiretapping and spying on the Trump campaign. That would be an excellent idea -- if we ever again live in a state not ruled by TP!
A great little article on the lack of wisdom in our now so prevalent Western materialist thought.
Foolishly, this survivor of Communist slave labor camps revealed himself “to be an enemy of socialism.” Solzhenitsyn recalls a Canadian TV commentator who “lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my own limited Soviet and prison-camp experience. Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonment and hunger, the cultivation of the soul despite the captivity of the body: how very limited that is compared to the bright world of political parties, yesterday’s numbers on the stock exchange, amusements without end, and exotic foreign travel!”
It may be that the oppressive denial / distraction of the soul in the 20th century west will turn out to have even worse effect than the oppression of the USSR.
Stalin once remarked; "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic". How very true -- the 100 million+ murdered by communism and socialism -- 6 million Jews by "National Socialism" alone are incomprehensible to our material brains. Only recovery of our souls can begin to comprehend the horror of this and the 60 million+ now murdered in their mothers wombs.
We are never closer to evil than when we think that the line between good and evil passes between groups and not through each human heart.
We all live by some standard -- we worship that standard, so the most important act in human life is to accept the standard (Truth) that God has provided (Christ -- The Way, the Truth, the Life), lest we rely on our "intelligence" to "choose" another object of worship. ( man, the state, ideology, ourself, etc ... all in fact being Satan)
The myth of human "choice" is the most damaging of all -- we were created to joyfully serve God, but in Adam we rejected our purpose through Satan, so we became divided -- with the knowledge of good and evil running through our souls. In Heaven we will return to only knowing good.
The base foundation is denial of God and a purposeful creation.
Bolshevik ethics explicitly began and ended with atheism. Only someone who rejected all religious or quasi-religious morals could be a Bolshevik because, as Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and other Bolshevik leaders insisted, the only standard of right and wrong was success for the Party.
In my writings I will often refer to "The Party" (TP) which is the combination of the Deep State, Administrative State, the vast majority of our public schools and institutions and most of our media intellectual establishment. It is best represented by the Democratic Party currently, although as Trump has exposed, it also includes much of the once opposition Republican Party.
While we have the curse of the knowledge of good and evil, the Devil much prefers that we distract ourselves from that knowledge and assume that we are "basically good". Human nature is always to ask the wrong questions.
We sought an explanation for those prisoner cattle cars, but it should now be clear that it is not cruelty that requires explanation but the reverse. To ask the reason for cruelty is to ask the wrong question. People sometimes ask the reason for slavery, but since slavery was practiced everywhere for most of human history, the right question is the opposite one: why was slavery eventually abolished in many places? In the Bolshevik context, it is mercy and compassion that require explanation.
Darwin explained to us that the only "morality" is "whatever works" ... survival of the materialy "fittest". It and we are all just "stuff" -- if violence is more effective/fit, than it is to be preferred in a materialist world.
Kopelev, Solzhenitsyn, and others describe the key event of their life as the discovery that just as the universe contains causal laws it also contains moral laws. Bolshevik horror derived from the opposite view: that there is nothing inexplicable in materialist terms and that the only moral standard is political success.
There light at the end of the hard to read article -- "Everybody has been indoctrinated with the slogan that, in a material world where nothing beyond the laws of nature exists, “The result is all that counts.” But camp experience taught that that was a lie. “It is not the result that counts . . . but the spirit!” Once you realize this, “then imprisonment begins to transform your character in an astonishing way.” You begin to appreciate friendship differently. Recognizing your own weakness, you understand the weakness of others. When another prisoner relates how he became a Christian, Solzhenitsyn recognizes that when he had been most certain he was doing good he was actually doing evil. He understands “the truths of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (every human being).”
The whole article is WELL worth your time -- in fact, it could be eternally significant!
I'm messing around with a new site ... if you want to see a more general overview of current moose life, give it a try! (and let me know ANY thoughts you have on the mechanism, content, etc.
2019 finds me a resident of Iowa living on Five Islands Lake outside of Emmetsburg and launching a new blog using Wordpress ... which didn't last very long because I didn't find it convenient to use.
I ended Moosetracks in April 2018, because the general world, as well as my personal world, had become too contentious for honest straight talk about faith, the state of the US, and Western civilization.
So why restart?
I see us drifting to more extreme socialism than even I thought possible in 2018 (see Democrat candidates)
Remaining silent doesn't work ... haters are going to hate, even if you roll over and play dead. They typically would prefer you to be actually dead.
I was too optimistic that when it became clear that Trump was effective (eg rising economy, less war rather than the more war the opposition predicted, really solid SCOTUS appointments, etc) that the folks stuck in Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and that early attempt to overturn the election was garbage, that reason would prevail and all but the most extreme would "Move On" ... boy, was I wrong!
I'm going to write anyway, I love discussion, and I firmly believe that unless we return to actually respecting and even celebrating difference of opinion, we are more over than we are already!
Moosetracks could be thought of as a "voice crying in the wilderness" about what I suspected was happening. My hope was that BBB can be one of the many needed elements in the path to recovery of basic personal and family relationships in the age of radical individualism, tribalism, and loss of meaning in most lives, now that more accept the reality of current divisions and the loss of meaning and connections that many are experiencing.
The following is a quote from "Them" by Ben Sasse:
But normal people in the not-so-distant past were able to gather together, discuss politics, and part ways as friends and neighbors. We’ve let our loneliness, our fears, and our anxieties swallow up the better angels of our nature. A republic can’t survive if it’s filled with fanatics. We need to be able to identify and then to resist the habits that are driving us toward fanaticism.
The sad fact is that for Facebook, Twitter, Google, and a host of other internet businesses, "We the people" are "We the product" -- as a number of wags, Tim Cook of Apple for one, have said; "If the service is free, YOU are the product". In a post-civilization world, be certain of the main course when you are invited to dinner!
Sadly, Facebook is CLEARLY an example of a platform living off the creation of "anti-tribes" -- who often do not know in much detail what they are FOR, but are daily on red alert hair trigger for what they are are AGAINST! While I will cross post some of this blog to FB, my FB time there will remain radically limited, and I will avoid discussions in that forum. (but will be happy to discuss in person, by phone, email, or "whatever")
As no less than Saint Augustine put it; "Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person will die".
Much of what we see on social media is the false idea of "resentment as a virtue".
The motivation of much of what passes as "discussion", "argument", or even "news" these days are people and businesses wittingly or unwittingly selling you the poison of resentment! There is big money in hatred from every angle. In this period, it is critical to understand that the antidote has been available for over two thousand years!
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" (Matt 5:44)
We CAN "all get along" with proper training and help -- and it can be secular as well as faith based. Certainly we will need to give up some virtue signalling and a lot of illusions of our innate superiority to "them" ... you know, THOSE people! Perhaps the most important thing is to keep in mind what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn discovered in the Gulag.
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
"The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being"! In our many attempts to make "them" out to be evil, we can fail to recognize that the line is in each of us -- part and parcel of what we are, and not even a straight line! When you discover that the speck in your brother's eye is "the problem", humble self examination will nearly always show a severe "log" in your own eye.
One usually Eastern symbol, the Tao, expresses the path to goodness and understanding as the wavy line between the two halves with the dots expressing that nothing in this world is "all" one condition or the other, indeed, each contains the seed of the "other".
Another symbol, from the West is expressed here in the form of Laminin, the molecule that we now know holds what we believe to be "biological life" together.
That symbol is of course also the Cross -- and at the center of that Cross is the point of maximum suffering. The point at which Christians believe that our Savior willingly allowed himself to suffer and die to save us and to give us the strength to willingly suffer our own crosses so that in Him and with Him, we can transcend suffering and even death.
In dealing with phobias and anxiety, we use that same wisdom. Rather than avoiding and fighting anxiety and unwanted feelings, we seek to accept the suffering and allow ourselves to abide with it, rather than increase the anxiety by fighting it. We don't necessarily decrease fear, anxiety and bad feelings as much as we increase courage and a willingness to "be with" what IS. (eventually, this will being more emotional peace -- and it may take a good deal of time, and the willingness to accept with patience the FAITH that acceptance WILL work!
So welcome! The objective will be to combine ancient truths, modern science (especially psychology), philosophy, theology, history and general book reading to hopefully stimulate thought as to how we can all get along with "them", and maybe find that they are really US!
AND, I will do my best to avoid my natural instinct to "go for the win" in discussion, all too often on display in Moosetracks. No doubt I will be much less than perfect.
If you followed some of the links above, you will also understand that I believe that humor is healthy.
