“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32 of New King James Version.) Until very recently—in at least most of the West—these words were understood and acknowledged as the foundation of all civilization and the bedrock of decent society. Unfortunately, what was once commonly understood by enlightened human beings has now been pretty much rejected out of hand. Beginning with the “Enlightenment”–and never has an era been less aptly named!—truth and objectivity began to be replaced by the concept of relativism: that is, a belief in changeable standards. An example of relativism is, for instance, the claim that even the most atrocious of crimes might be absolved under the proper mitigating circumstances. Those who hold this philosophy boldly contend that “everything is relative” while, in turn, failing to recognize that the statement is itself an absolute! Eventually the very concept of absolute truth was utterly rejected by the 20th Century’s dominant moral philosophy, Post Modernism. Of course, the problem with this type of worldview is that it fails to take into account that certain things simply aren’t open to “interpretation.” No amount of wishing or believing can change physical reality. Two plus two does in fact equal four! Physical laws such as gravity and inertia cannot be contravened by human desire or a positive attitude. Old adages such as “you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” and “time and tide wait for no man” were expressions of those existential realities that could not be wished or ordered away! Today, however, we are constantly afflicted by the visions of people who believe that reality is determined by feelings, sincerity and desire. The motto of the current Age has been pretty much defined in the statement made by leftist actress Jane Fonda so many years ago, “I must be right, I’m so sincere!” And yet, today’s nimrods have actually managed to, if not change reality, then to act as if they had done so and the rest of the culture goes along for the ride. It makes one wonder who is more insane: the habitually offended or those around them who do not respond to their flagrant idiocy by giving them a swift boot in the backside. For instance, in a further attempt to achieve “fairness” or “equality,” it would seem that today’s “educators”—and there is another word that has been perverted!—have declared that mathematics is “racist!” And whence comes this idiotic idea? Apparently large numbers in a certain elect and protected group do not do well in that discipline. Now if everybody was equally poor in math, all well and good—but that would still not make it “racist! However, because the problem appears to exist only in that same “elect group,” it is reasonable to believe—according to today’s “educators”—that the problem is mathematics, not the people in that group. That’s the kind of “sense” being made today—and it has a name: nonsense! The real damage being done to mankind by this failure to embrace reality is that when reality actually does intrude into society, wishful thinking is a poor defense against the resultant catastrophe. Remember, mankind was never all that rational and reasonable when absolutes were understood and acknowledged! Take as an example, the Indians in Pennsylvania who tried dissuade white settlers from building a city at the end of a valley containing the confluence of three rivers! Of course, those settlers believed that they knew better than the “primitives” who had lived for generations in the area and so they went and built the city of Johnstown! The result has been the three catastrophic floods, the worst in 1889 and the others only slightly less disastrous in 1936 and 1977! The people in Johnstown believed that they could build their city in a dangerous place because they wanted to believe it. Post Modernists believe there are no moral or any other absolutes because they want to! For a long time the people of Johnstown were spared the prophesied disaster, but all they had to do was look with a clear and reasoning eye at the existing situation and they could not fail to have anticipated the inevitable consequences and perhaps even take steps to ameliorate those consequences—but they didn’t; they were blinded by a desire that overcame reality. Yes, the city remained where it was built, but all of their determined desire could not protect those who perished when reality returned—as it always does! Another clear example of a belief being destroyed by reality can be found in the field of women’s sports, especially in academia. Remember Title 9? That decree was enacted by the government to force schools to provide financial support for women’s sports. Since these did not draw the same attendance and revenue as did men’s sports, schools put more funding into the latter. Title 9 forced schools to finance women’s sports whether or not the public had an interest in them. Score one for the feminists—or so it was believed. Then came the current sexual apocalypse led by the “Trans-Gender Movement.” Under this “movement,” an individual can “self-identify” as whatever gender he-she-it chooses. As a result, many women’s sports have become dominated by “transgender” males whose physical strength and size overwhelm biologically female competitors! The result is a travesty wherein women who were supposed to benefit from the increased interest in and funding of “women’s sports” now find themselves overwhelmed in those same sports by males masquerading as females! Even worse, the present politically correct interpretation of the whole gender-transgender movement prevents women athletes from protesting their subordinate situation lest they be branded as intolerant! Consider how much time and money would have been saved if women had simply been allowed to compete in men’s sports! After all, that is pretty much what is going on now! However, this situation is also very dangerous. A young woman boxer had her skull fractured in a bout with a transgender male illustrating the reason why society didn’t let girls play on boys’ teams in the first place! In the end, most female athletes can no longer successfully compete in their own sports when a “trans-gender” is present in the same competition! As the rejection of reality grows ever more absolute, it also becomes apocalyptic; that is, the dangers involved increase both swiftly and exponentially through the creation of conditions that no one could have predicted and therefore addressed once they occurred. When the direct consequences of actions are ignored or rejected because they are not desirous, the results are often without precedent. Open borders and “sanctuary cities” have become repositories of diseases long dead in the West or, in the alternative, never before seen except in textbooks. Most diseases in Africa are due to what is called a “fecalized environment.” Human feces is very dangerous especially in the transmission of disease, and when the streets of our cities–-even some of our most beautiful and wealthy cities–-are covered with human excrement, the results are devastating. Several police officers in Los Angeles have already been diagnosed with typhoid! This is a disease arising from filth and human waste, a condition that killed countless millions in the days before Western techniques of public health and sanitation became routine. Of course, where this sort of environment obtains, the rat is also found in great numbers! Apparently, Los Angeles is badly infested by these creatures. And where there is the rat there is the flea, and where there is the flea, there is the plague. The Medieval “black plague” is still with us in both its bubonic and pneumonic forms. It remains endemic in parts of Mongolia and is even occasionally found in the American Southwest, carried by prairie dogs and their fleas. How much would it take to make San Francisco or Los Angeles of 2020 into London or Paris of 1300!? And while there are now drugs that can address the plague, it is by no means easily cured or terminated! Furthermore, in the Middle Ages, most people didn’t travel very far, but today, modern transportation can carry people everywhere during the plague’s ten day incubation period, thus spreading death far beyond the liberal sanctuary cities that spawned it. And what is the cause of this madness? A refusal by far too many people and their government hirelings to accept reality when they prefer to embrace false prophets and ideologies. The danger to all mankind grows daily but the sad thing is that those of us who do accept truth and recognize absolutes are not immune to the disasters perpetrated by those who do not. To quote that great Western philosopher, Walt Kelly, the creator of the comic book character, Pogo Possum, “We has met the enemy and he is us!”
Rule(s): noun – 1 – one or a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere. Law: noun – (often phrased as “the law”) the system of rules that a country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members usually enforced by the imposition of penalties upon those who violate same. Creation has always had “rules” and “laws.” These are natural according to physical reality. Most of the laws we acknowledge involve the behavior of matter and energy and have nothing whatsoever to do with man save only when he misuses them often in an attempt to create (or destroy) something or someone. These rules, as noted, cannot be broken! They are part of creation itself and can only be “changed” by the Author of Creation – God Himself! Ergo, obviously the above title cannot refer to such “laws” as gravity or the speed of light &etc. No, we are speaking here of those “rules” and/or “laws” created by Man regulating mankind’s behavior and activities under varied circumstances. The main “rule” of nature itself is simple: the survival of the fittest. No one who has studied the natural life on this planet – and we must assume any other planet that contains life – believes that Mother Earth is a forgiving deity. Nature always maintains a balance that leads to both life and death, the latter sometimes on such a massive scale as to be called “mass extinctions” of the life on the planet that existed during such periods. There have been five such in our planet’s history:The end of the Ordovician period (444 million years ago)Late Devonian period (360 million years ago)The end of the Permian period (250 million years ago)The end of the Triassic period (200 million years ago) The end of the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago) – the event that killed off the dinosaurs. In none of these periods of time did Man exist on the planet, so our “carbon footprint” cannot be blamed for the disaster. And today we are nowhere near any such an ELI (Extinction Level Event) – barring, of course, some calamity such as the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs (see 5 above). It is true, however, that Man has proved capable to doing a great deal of damage to himself and his environment by both accident and design. Still, we apparently appear to present more of a danger to our planet and our fellow man in our supposed efforts to prevent such an outcome than otherwise, a good reason to be wary of those who counsel and demand “action!” in planet-wide matters of apparent concern. On the other hand, the difference between “natural law” and “man-made law” is, as noted, that the latter relates directly to man and often addresses his ability to influence and even possibly destroy himself as well as often doing damage to “nature” itself (see Fukushima). Now, of course, we have moral law as laid down to us by the God of the Bible – in the much heralded Ten Commandments: 1. You shall have no other gods before Me. 2. You shall make no idols. 3. You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain. 4. You shall keep the Sabbath Day holy. 5. You shall honor your father and your mother. 6. You shall not murder. 7. You shall not commit adultery. 8. You shall not steal. 9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 10. You shall not covet. These “laws” are not of Man, but of God and are (or were) acknowledged to be rather universal. The first four involve Mankind’s association with God Himself while the rest dictate as to how Man is to behave within his own civilization, so as to receive God’s blessings and thrive upon the earth. Even those who do not recognize the God of the Bible understand that these Commandments provide a moral structure more than adequate to promote a healthy and thriving civilization! Indeed, most of these “laws” are found in cultures quite outside the religion that gave them to humanity in the first place! That is, they are known instinctively by Man in general as being essential to civilization itself! And from those strictures, all other “laws” and “rules” obtain and it is by those same subsequent laws that we actually have a human condition called “civilization!” For the simple fact is this: when these moral codes are discarded, mankind descends into chaos and darkness. However, it is also possible to have too many laws! In the work, The Annals of Imperial Rome, the philosopher Tacitus exclaimed, “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” This is not an overstatement. To begin with, the more numerous both those employed by the State and the laws one must follow within the State, the more power accrues to the State and, subsequently, the less to the People. Today there are those who declare that in the present United States of America, everyone probably breaks some kind of a law almost daily if not more often. It may not be a federal or even a state or local law but it’s bound to be some sort of mandate or declaration that is counted as a law even if it never underwent the necessary steps to create that legal condition! When such a situation is present, it makes of the general population, lawbreakers – and therefore a people less worthy of legal protection. After all, as the old saying goes, [Latin phrase removed] or, “ignorance of the law excuses not (that is, is no excuse)." And since one is not permitted to plead ignorance of the virtually endless list of things that are forbidden, whatever you do, you can be held responsible for doing it despite the fact that you were unaware that you were, in fact, “breaking” a law! The rationale of this particular doctrine is simple: if ignorance were a valid excuse, a person charged with criminaloffenses or the subject of a civil lawsuit could merely claim that he was unaware of the law in question so as to avoid liability – even if that person really did understand the law involved. As a result, the law imputes knowledge of all laws to all persons within the accepted jurisdiction, no matter how transiently, though it would be impossible, even for someone with substantial legal training, to be aware of every law in operation in every aspect of a government’sactivities. Nonetheless, this is the price that must be paid to ensure that willful blindness cannot become the basis on which to claim innocence. Of course, the doctrine assumes that the law in question has been properly promulgated (that is, proclaimed), by being published and distributed, in, say, a government publication, or made available over the Internet, or reproduced in volumes available for sale to the public at affordable prices. The need to provide this understanding is expressed in the ancient phrase of Gratian, [Latin phrase removed] ("Laws are instituted when they are promulgated.”) After all, it is clearly recognized that a “secret law” is, in fact, no law at all. But laws are nothing more than words. They have no force in and of themselves. They gain force by their enforcement (!) through those agencies in the body politic assigned that duty such as the police and the courts. Therefore, the expected understanding of the law is that it has meaning; that it is created to provide strictures; that is, boundaries surrounding a situation in which certain behaviors are not permitted in and by the society and that to abrogate said strictures will result in the determined retribution provided by the laws so breached. So now we understand the general basis of the concept of “The Law!” The Law is statutes delineating and defining behaviors, both acceptable and forbidden that are created by and through various established processes in order to become “law.” Depending upon the governmental structure under which this takes place, said “laws” are intended to maintain and defend the culture of the nation and the people under which these “laws” are promulgated or proclaimed. Meanwhile, individual persons study to become proficient in the creation, the use and the enforcement of said laws in order that the people will benefit therefrom. Of course, it goes without saying that the better the culture and its people, the better the laws that arise! Barbaric cultures usually have barbaric laws while enlightened cultures produce, per se, enlightened laws. But there is a further matter that influences the law to a far greater degree than the mere “interpretation” – or even ”misinterpretation” – of any statute, and this occurs at the highest level of the legal vocation. It doesn’t usually concern the police who enforce but do not interpret the law – though they may be “permitted” – or even “instructed” – by their overlords to misuse their power to achieve some desired end! And it is in this matter of “desired ends” or “agendas” that situations diametric to the “Rule of Law” may be found. For it must be realized and accepted that laws and rules themselves cannot survive unless those mandated to make use of those laws in the society do so honestly and with justice for, though the Rule of Law can survive error, it cannot survive deliberate duplicity. Yet, often in the past, judges and others mandated to pursue and enforce the law have yielded to a desired agenda and abandoned their sworn duty to uphold the laws of the land as written and interpreted over time – a matter referred to as “legal precedent.” Of course, these efforts to achieve a goal by abandoning one’s sworn duty to legal fidelity have been known to occur in the past. Below is an article that appeared in the Daily National Republican of August 17th, 1876, in which the editor of that newspaper points to a letter written to the New York Herald, a paper on the other side of that year’s presidential election in which the writer speaks eloquently of the failure of New York judges to do their duty under the law because of “politics:” Daily National Republican – August 17th, 1876 The Ishmaelite of the New York Sun does not relish the following paragraph in a recent letter of Col. John S. Mosby to the New York Herald: “It was only about twelve months ago that Tweed was released from prison on habeas corpus by a decision of the New election of that York Court of Appeals, composed of seven Democratic judges. Mr. Charles O’Conor, the Nestor of the New York bar, in a letter published at the time, charged that the decision was procured through the corrupt influence of Tweed’s money. Here was a splendid case for investigation, far excelling in enormity the sale of a suttlership; yet these judges remain unimpeached, and are still wearing the ermine of justice. I allude to this fact to show the tone of political morality of the party of which Gov. Tilden has been the acknowledged head ever since the retirement of Tweed.” The letter writer’s beautiful allusion to the fact that the judges involved are still sitting on the bench and therefore capable of rendering further illegal and immoral rulings – “ . . . yet these judges remain unimpeached, and are still wearing the ermine of justice.” – indicates how quickly the legitimacy of any government or society can be destroyed not by men with guns, but by men in robes, as referenced to in the phrase, “the ermine of justice.” All during the period from the faux “election” of 2020 to date, we have seen very suspicious matters declared as being “sent to the courts” for consideration and in reading that, most Americans hoped for these matters to be corrected and any wrong-doers involved punished by law. But time and time again, nothing has happened! And when some judgment does come back declaring what was done to be questionable or even actually illegal, the matter is soon swallowed up in a mass of intentional confusion and distraction; that is, by being sent to another court or jurisdiction or challenged yet again, eventually to simply fade away, out of sight, out of mind and out of all hope of rectification. Meanwhile, little by little, elites like George Soros and leftist groups purchase members of the American justice system and fill our courts with people who care nothing for the law or the People or the future of the nation because they are loyal to an agenda that those same laws reject and refute! So, what has happened to the Rules – including the Rule of Law? Alas, the present generations have decided that they prefer fiction to fact, fantasy to reality and global tyranny to national liberty. As Milton once said of the English as they embraced Charles II at the Restoration, “ . . . they have chosen bondage with ease over strenuous liberty.” However, what today’s Americans don’t seem to realize or understand is that they will not get “bondage with ease;” they will get the slavery George Orwell and Ayn Rand predicted. They will serve without hope, without recompense and without release – all because they allowed the Rules to be broken by their “leaders” without the same resistance that arose against another tyranny in the year 1776. Almost 250 years ago, Continental Army Commander George Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night with little hope that his efforts would allow his wretched “army” to continue the struggle for American independence should he fail, while also knowing that, if captured alive, he would undergo the hideous fate of being hanged, drawn and quartered on the gallows at Tyburn in London! On that night, Washington chose the password, “Liberty or Death” – and, indeed, those were in fact the only choices that he, his army and his country had left. I believe we have arrived at a similar “crossing” and if we do not become aware of what short a time we have left to stand and fight, there will soon be only one outcome for America and Americans – death.
The definition of pessimism is a tendency to see the worst aspect of things and/or to believe that the worst will happen; also, a lack of hope or confidence in the future. Pessimism as a philosophy is defined as the belief that this world is as bad as it could be or [less used] that evil will ultimately prevail over good. This latter, of course, does not apply to Christian pessimists. I should know as I am one such. Furthermore, I do not see pessimism as do many, the philosophy of a quitter! Recognizing the state of reality and finding it just about as bad as it can be does not necessarily result in the pessimist vacating the field of battle. Indeed, it is far more likely that the clueless optimist, when reality rears its ugly head, will throw in the towel with the destruction of his carefully built fantasies of ultimate at least human victory! And then, there is the very real benefit with that mindset that the surprises bestowed upon the pessimist are always happy whereas the optimist can take no such comfort. Frankly, if there were ever a fertile field for pessimism, our current national and world situation is only slightly less dire than that evening when the good [?] people of Sodom and Gomorrah discovered that water is not the only thing that can rain down from the sky! In point of fact, the situation referable to the folks of both cities of the plains exist to about the same degree but over a far wider geographic area of the globe and with a percentage of the ungodly within the population not too different than existed in the Book of Genesis! Indeed, to meet the requirements that ended those dens of iniquity today would require a rain of fire worthy of the eruption of the Yellowstone Super Volcano and, interestingly enough, that natural cleanser has shown some definite signs of awakening from its 650,000+ year’s sleep. Hmmmm . . . But pessimist or optimist, neither can function unless he (here I will say “or she” only this once because it is annoying!) is aware of the existing situation as clearly and accurately as possible and as a pessimist, I believe that when the “warrior” does err in this matter, it is always better to err in its dangers rather than the reverse. That is, it is better to wipe one’s brow and say “Amen!” that there were fewer enemies than you had thought, than to realize you will go down to defeat because your enemy was stronger than you knew and for whom you had prepared as would have happened with the optimist. One cannot help being what one is, pessimist or optimist. One can only do the best one can to discover the existing situation, to cull the lies and misconceptions and focus on what is important. This latter is a big problem for conservatives whether they are optimists or pessimists! Liberals, on the other hand, develop a plan of action and remain constant in their pursuit of their objective. When they are derailed, as they were in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump, they do not lick their wounds and retire but immediately find an alternative plan of action. If that alternative fails a la Trump’s first impeachment, they immediately go to the next plot and so forth until time runs out for our side in efforts to take advantage of such times in which we do “accidentally” wind up in a position of power – and believe me, in these days, a true conservative coming to power with very few exceptions is usually an accident! On the other hand, the conservative seems to me from my many years of observation to be particularly concerned with the beliefs and actions not of his liberal adversary, but his fellow conservative. Of course, this is somewhat understandable because up until recently, most liberals couched their intentions, aims and goals with rhetoric that carefully avoided any reference to things that ordinary (that is, decent) people would reject out of hand. But through the use of the education system and the attack on the Christian churches that has gone on for the last fifty plus years, those plots previously rejected by all but the most vile and depraved are now considered the ultimate of humane and honorable intentions. And as that is the case, the Left no longer needs to “hide” its objectives. They are openly stated and even “mandated” by what was once believed to be the government “of, for and by” the American people. And so, how do conservatives respond? Not as one would think! No indeed! While liberals line up to revile and persecute anyone on the right, depending upon the figure chosen whether it is Donald Trump (whom many conservatives do not even consider one of their own!) or Jared Taylor – and everyone in between – conservatives look carefully at the liberals’ chosen target to determine whether that person should be protected, ignored or possibly even attacked! And whereas liberals “flock together” no matter their natural position on other matters, conservatives very carefully look to see if a “fellow conservative” under attack is worthy of their support! Thus, Muslims support feminists and gays, Jews support openly antisemitic Black Lives Matter and minorities support those who would, under different circumstances, spit on them. On the other hand, the “pure” conservative looks to the “credentials” of a fellow conservative and, depending thereupon, may forgo any support if that person is not one hundred percent “right” in the eyes of his or her right wing critic. If there is anything more worthy of condemnation, it is this particular attitude regarding the other fellow on one’s own side that is found in the old joke about the Puritans, that is, “No one is perfect but me and thee – and I’m not so sure about thee!” Nothing has excited my natural pessimism regarding the future of America and the West more than this unhelpful and unholy mindset of the true “right” – that is, the “paleo-con” rather than his “neocon” replacement – and make no mistake about it, we are being replaced – perhaps deservedly so! When we can stand on the deck of a sinking ship and quibble about whether this conservative hasn’t been “good enough” or that conservative has “the wrong opinion” on some issue, I begin to wonder how anyone could be an optimist!
How can you tell if you're in an echo chamber? Not all echo chambers are easy to recognise, especially from within. Often, echo chambers form and persist in opposition to another. Take, for example, the red-pill community, which exists largely as a reaction to third-wave feminist ideologies (an echo chamber many are more familiar with). A person who blindly adheres to a stereotype might be in an echo chamber, but so is someone who restructures their entire life in a mission to disprove that stereotype. This is why many outspoken atheists are accused of practising another form of religion—not because questioning the existence of God is a form of religion, but because they pursue it with a kind of religious fervour, rather than with the open scepticism that seeks truth without the need to assert intellectual superiority over the "herd." Echo chambers are often centred on moralities, and they emerge when people try to fit ideas, especially those they disagree with, into a few familiar categories shaped by their own historical, socio-cultural, or religious background, and then rush to make moral judgments. For example, I come from India, where respecting one’s parents and elders is deeply rooted in religious teachings. If someone like me, raised with this value, were to witness a child from a Western country having a heated argument with their parents, it would be easy to label the child’s behaviour as “immoral” based on my cultural context. I might overlook the fact that this behaviour is shaped by the social context the child is part of. The West has inherited its own customs, beliefs, and values from its history and religions, including the idea that each person possesses inherent divinity and is equal in the eyes of God. This emphasis on the individual self can lead to a different kind of parent-child dynamic, which might explain what seems, from another cultural perspective, to be a lack of respect. Another important point that deserves mention here is that the attempt to classify ideas into one category or another (good/bad, right/wrong, rational/irrational) would require that people often try to catch others who, in their view, are teetering at the edge of a slippery slope. For example, each time I visit my ancestral town (a small hill town in Northern India), I notice changes—fewer trees, more houses and restaurants, more tourists, fewer ducks in the lake, litter on a lakeside that used to be pristine, and a shift toward profit-mindedness among locals who once offered strangers free peaches from their farms. These are the inevitable consequences of development. If I were to comment nostalgically, “How things have changed! Why did they cut down all the trees?” it could easily be interpreted as me prioritising environmental concerns over the well-being and progress of the local people. This conclusion, after all, provides an easy escape from the discomfort of holding two conflicting ideas in mind at once—on the one hand, the value of preserving natural beauty, and on the other, the necessity of development for the local community. Another way echo chambers become more entrenched is when people learn an individual’s opinion on one subject and then assume the person’s views on other topics as well. This occurs when the echo chamber is strong enough that various ideas are grouped together, leading to a groupthink-like situation where two people who agree on one issue feel nudged towards agreement on another without truly considering it, simply because they belong to the same “club.” This is often why many feminists are also pro-LGBTQ, and why vegetarians (who may be motivated by religious reasons) are seen as champions of climate activism. Of course, this is not to say that there is no connection between different topics, but only that different views, even on the same side of the debate, must be given space to flourish. Tolkien’s iconic quote from The Lord of the Rings comes to mind, but if you replace “ring” with “morality,” you capture the essence of every echo chamber's mentality: "One morality to rule them all, one morality to find them, one morality to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them." In the context of echo chambers, it would be impossible for me not to bring up Nietzsche's message in his book, Beyond Good and Evil. After three readings of the book—one was far from sufficient to grasp the full scope and complexity of his thought—I’ve come to believe that Nietzsche boldly attempted to convey something that many would shy away from. Not least because of the controversial nature of those ideas, but also because certain ideas are like brief flashes of insight, moments of clarity that often slip away when you try to put them into words. It’s no surprise then that Nietzsche’s views, and particularly his thoughts on morality, are frequently misunderstood by readers today. I recognize that I too might fall into this category, and there is no guarantee that my interpretation isn’t itself a misreading of his message. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to offer my perspective on what Nietzsche was trying to convey in this book, and why so many have misinterpreted his message. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil contains several passages that are often misinterpreted as promoting moral relativism or nihilism. These passages can be read as rejecting conventional morality or suggesting that there are no objective moral truths, leading some to criticise Nietzsche for promoting a “might makes right” philosophy or moral anarchy. Nietzsche doesn’t claim that "anything goes" morally, or that being amoral is the highest morality, but rather that the conventional, herd-like morality (what he calls "slave morality") reflects weakness, fear, and a repression of vitality and creativity. Nietzsche doesn’t think we should simply abandon concepts of good and evil, but that we should transcend simplistic, dogmatic moral judgments. Rather than claiming that morality is a form of cowardice (a popular misreading), he claims that a lot of cowardice actually masquerades as morality. He calls for the need for intellectual courage and the willingness to venture into morally ambiguous or "dangerous" territory. Come to think of it, this kind of intellectual honesty is precisely what's required for genuine thought. When one ventures outside their echo chamber, there’s always the risk of accidentally stepping onto what might be seen as the beginning of a slippery slope toward immorality. But there is no default moral position where one can remain immobile, avoiding the fall entirely. The challenge—and the joy—lies in teetering on the edge without falling, while also not retreating to a safe distance. It’s not a space of moral ambiguity, because morality hasn’t entered the scene yet. It is the realm where one finally breaks free from the confines of the echo chamber and steps into the fertile ground of ideas—a place from which true moral understanding can eventually emerge. Here, one is free to explore and entertain ideas that, if taken to their extremes, could just as easily lead to immorality. This echoes the scene in Genesis when God forbade man from eating from the Tree of Knowledge yet allowed him access to it. Similarly, it recalls when Lakshmana drew the Lakshmana Rekha around Sita, urging her not to cross it for her own protection. In both cases, the choice to disobey was granted—even at the risk of sin or harm. Adam and Sita both ultimately disobeyed their instructions, but without the choice to stray, Adam would have remained harmless, and Sita unharmed. But in that scenario, good would have been an easy, default position to assume, rather than one achieved through conscious effort. “In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them HONEST answers: for example, whether it be "real" or not, and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same description. The belief in "immediate certainties" is a MORAL NAIVETE which does honour to us philosophers; but—we have now to cease being "MERELY moral" men!” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Recently, a commentator on a conservative talk show made an observation worthy of dissemination; that is, that the current murderous climate in this country – and the world! – is no longer a matter of Left vs. Right, but of “in” vs. “out” – that is, insiders vs. outsiders. The Left vs. Right battlefield is long gone as so many “conservatives” have become, for all intents and purposes, little different from their “leftist-liberal” colleagues. Indeed, they have become so different from their fellow conservatives that the very term “conservative” has been split into two definitions: traditional conservatives or paleo-cons and the present big government types now known as neo-cons. Former President (supposedly conservative) Richard Nixon once told a newly elected Republican Congressional Representative that, “. . .we’re all big government conservatives here.” Of course, the very definition of a “conservative” involves the rejection of “big government” so it is obvious that over the years, those who were against socialism but still believed in what Mussolini called “corporatism” – the merging of government and big business, also known as fascism – could not retain the label of conservative but neither could they be regarded as liberals who wanted everything run by government (that is, themselves). Hence the “neo-con” was born and all that that label entails with regard to the fight against the growing power of the government and its merger with Big Business – presently defined as the “Deep State.” This situation has resulted in lots of people on the “outside” and far fewer people on the “inside.” Previously, power tended to flow to groups that had the largest numbers but in the present circumstance, the distribution of “heads” is diametric to the distribution of “power.” For the insiders have all – and I do mean all! – the power today! Even ordinary political disputes are not between those on the inside versus those on the outside, but only among those on the inside as that group has become so diverse as well as powerful as to be the only place where such disputes can – and do! – take place. Of course, this situation means whatever power is being exercised has nothing to do with those of us on the outside looking in. We have been reduced to spectators in our own world absent the power to cause or prevent whatever agenda is eventually determined by the “insiders.” Nowhere was this reality made better known – perhaps known at all! – than in the candidacy and election of Donald Trump in 2016. The creeping power of our various government and its agencies were becoming known to Americans at large, but it was so well camouflaged that it wasn’t until an outsider was introduced into the “Deep State” that the totality of our enslavement became obvious to even the apathetic and the naïve. It became even more obvious when, after four years of the Deep State’s ongoing war against the People’s duly elected President, the matter was finally “decided” by a fraudulent election whose illegality could be neither hidden nor at least successfully denied. Many people believed – because they were told by supposedly knowledgeable sources! – that the military would overcome the crime, but few knew that Communist change-agent, former fake “President” Barak Obama had already destroyed America’s military by removing so many of its faithful leaders. A list of those removed as of March 17th, 2014, was compiled by General Paul Vallely. The General made this comment at the end of his very extensive list: “Absolutely every communist regime on the planet did this as soon as they got in power. I am surprised this communist traitor with his feet up on our furniture in the White House hasn't done this until now!” Of course, Obama remained in office for an additional 1,016 days after General Vallely’s list was published and it can be assumed that he continued to gut the US military to the point at which we are left with what we have today. It is no wonder that neither Donald Trump nor his supporters could take any comfort in the belief that America’s military would prevent his being illegally removed from office! There is an old saying that especially and specifically applies to our present crisis, to wit: “Which is worse, ignorance or apathy?” The response? “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Still, it is true that while ignorance may not lead to apathy, the reverse is very much the case. Ignorant people, knowing that they are ignorant, may want to learn and thus not remain ignorant. But apathetic people seldom care about anything and so make no efforts to overcome ignorance even where it is known to exist. And God knows! we Americans have been apathetic about our nation’s condition for a long, long time. Sated by entertainment – bread and circuses! – we have chosen to ignore or, perhaps, not see things that should have forced our attention on matters suggesting that our “leaders” were leading us down the primrose path to tyranny – and death. And so, because we in the West (and not just Americans!) played our personal fiddles while our civilization was being burned by its enemies, we now find ourselves locked out of the very processes by which we believed we could overcome what was happening – has happened! – and reclaim our birthright. Wrong! You cannot play the game if you are no longer recognized as a legitimate player – and we “Deplorables” as we were defined by a woman whose wickedness makes Jezebel of old look like Mother Theresa! – allowed that woman and her miserable and equally wicked “husband” together with their whole “congregation of evil” to slowly, quietly and with malice aforethought remove us from the very culture and civilization our ancestors had created. Having burned Notre Dame in Paris, they are “building it back” as a shrine to something far different from Our Lord’s Holy Mother! Having removed and/or destroyed the monuments to American heroes, replacing them with horrible works dedicated to horrible people and things, we now have learned that those of us on the “outside” have lost all control over what we believed to be our culture, our country and our future – and the fault is ours. We chose to look away when they began to remove our God from the cultural and governmental structures including our schools. We chose to ignore the sexualization and degradation of that same culture. We chose to allow “the government” to take charge of our children because it gave us, the parents, more time to earn money and follow our own interests. We chose to adopt technologies that promised ease but delivered addiction – and worse! We chose to avoid confrontation with liars either through cowardice or the desire to appear “tolerant,” “benign” and “public-spirited” when what we actually did was to surrender our culture and our humanity to their malignancy. The only question remaining is, can we come back? Can we move the “insiders” out of command of humanity and put back God and His people to run this world? Alas, that is a question that I cannot answer – at least not from my place on the outside.
I enjoy a good disaster film. Movies such as San Andreas, Independence Day, Godzilla (in all its many manifestations!) and other such “block busters” are good fun on a rainy afternoon. This is especially true these days when the industry’s present “special effects” give great reality to situations that in earlier days were simply never attempted or if attempted, poorly achieved! Of course, while we watch the ongoing havoc in the film, we are naturally concentrating on the main characters. I remember two particular scenes in San Andreas, the earthquake taking place in a restaurant in a skyscraper and a tsunami entering San Francisco. Both show the deaths of many people in those two settings as well as the escape of some of the main characters from the mayhem! Of course, one focuses on the main characters, the others – the “extras” – are simply consigned to their part of the narrative, usually death in great numbers! Occasionally, however, there are characters one meets earlier in the film that are then reintroduced before they die. For instance, in one of the tsunami scenes we meet an elderly couple who had earlier met the main characters being crushed by the liner, Queen Elizabeth that has been flipped over on top them by the wave! But aside from those infrequent “other people of interest,” for which the audience is expected to display at least a few moments of interest and remorse, the rest of the “deceased” are nothing more than “background” and those who play them in the film are even called “extras” because they have no lines to speak other than the occasional scream or expletive. There is an old Indian belief that one’s conscience is a three sided figure whose points are sharp. When the conscience is “offended,” it spins – and because of those sharp points, it hurts! But if it spins often enough, the “points” wear down so that it hurts less and less as time goes on. I believe we can see this today, especially if we look back a generation or two. Things that would have aroused our horror and anger in, say, 1950, now seem not only commonplace and unremarkable but sometimes even possibly worthwhile in some bizarre way; that is, much of what is so very wrong in our culture is at present, not worthy to be remarked upon much less condemned. And as the death count rises from wars and crime and drugs and all the rest, those who perish appear to us as nothing more than extras in the film of life. British poet Alexander Pope once opined upon the results of exposure to wickedness and its resultant apathetic acceptance: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” Another cause of our apparent inability to see the extent of our present human casualties is the fact that people no longer view reality directly – at least a good majority of the time. We have become spectators in and of our own world. Like movie and theater audiences, we sit and watch reality – or, often more precisely unreality – play out before us. Soon, the violence in films – violence we know to be fictional – influences those images that actually involve reality. The dead in seen documentaries are little different from the dead appearing in disaster movies when we are no more than spectators; that is, they do not move us even to pity, never mind concern and a desire to intervene on their behalf in order to bring them some semblance of justice. Indeed, we have come so far from reality that quite often when we ourselves become “extras” in the “film of life,” we are astonished at this turn of events! That’s not how it was supposed to happen after all, for we are the main characters in our particular “film!” But when it does happen that way, we rush to place the blame on those whom we believe should have protected us, often from our own stupidity! It is no wonder that the Deep State and the rest of the New World Order were able to use the threat of COVID to turn us into obedient – and stupid! – sheep! Another consequence of this “spectatorship of life” is the loss of our ability to respond quickly and with sufficient strength to situations that arise detrimental to the well-being of ourselves and our fellow man. This is further complicated by our failure to keep ourselves sufficiently informed to prevent the use by our rulers of fear as a means of ensuring our compliance with their often totally unreasonable, unrealistic and frequently dangerous mandates to situations many of which they themselves have created! After some great disaster occurs and many lives are lost, we learn that in most cases there were sufficient warnings to either prevent or address that disaster prior to its occurrence! How many books and films have dealt with historical “what might have beens” from the sinking of the Titanic to the attack on Pearl Harbor. People knew the risks and shortcomings. They were aware of those same “might come to pass” situations but they chose to ignore rather than respond in a timely fashion. One thing about both movies and reality is that the “extras” can never be revived and brought back to life. Death is as eternal in fiction as it is in reality. More importantly, we also usually learn that most of the casualties arising from these disasters were frequently the result of ineffective or intentionally dangerous responses by our “leaders” that have been put into place in the name of protecting the public! Indeed, we have recently learned that most if not all government “response” to the so-called “pandemic” of 2020 were specifically designed to do more damage to the population than was ever threatened by the “pandemic” itself! This was not a “response” to a public danger but an agenda, a strategy to bring about what is, in fact, now happening: genocide of the world’s “excess population” – that is, the world’s “extras.” Nowhere is this more obvious and more egregious than in what has been presented to the world as a means by which this mythic “pandemic” has been, will be and is being “overcome,” the creation of “vaccines” by a number of Big Pharma corporations acting in concert with the United Nations and the governments of the world together with the medical and public health establishments. These “medicines” have been “made available” to the public beginning in 2021 and ongoing to date. Indeed, they have not only been “made available” but in many governments and their agencies, they have been mandated even for those people who admittedly run little risk from the COVID virus itself – children, healthy adults and those who have already had the disease and (easily) recovered. On the other hand, the vaccinated “extras” who have either been severely injured or who have died – or will die in the foreseeable future – number in the millions! Some of the deaths that have resulted from this “campaign” have been doctors and scientists attempting to make the danger known to the public. Those who have not been killed outright (and, yes, that HAS happened!) have been censored and marginalized to the point at which none of their warnings are begin taken seriously except by those relative few who are intelligent enough to give no credence to the “sworn word” of their government and its minions in the establishment who continue to claim that these poisons are both “safe and effective!” The numbers are astronomical, even those admitted to by the various governments and this does not take into account the known fact that only a small percentage of the injured and dead have actually been counted! The interesting thing here is that the media – social and otherwise – have provided firsthand witness to this plague. We’ve seen people being struck down with horrible seizures and even with death itself everywhere from television broadcasts to athletic events and more mundane settings such as nail salons and restaurants! One would think that a pretty young chef dying during a broadcast of her cooking show would have caused outrage together with real (and understandable!) hysteria in the viewing public, but like those who died in San Andreas, her fate merely caused mild regret and even more mild interest. It wasn’t “real” though for the young woman, it was fatally real. It would seem that our present condition of spectators to our own extinction will make that much easier than might otherwise have been the case! On the other hand, the strategists who were banking upon our lack of response to an actual catastrophe because they were busily covering the facts of the matter failed to take into account something as mundane as the insurance industry and especially the life insurance industry! No society can ignore matters involving large amounts of money and when those companies began to report huge increases in the percentages of deaths among healthy people from ages 16 to 64 many in the world’s “viewing audience” began to take notice! A Dutch life insurance company, Aegon, reported that its 2021 payments skyrocketed an amazing 258% from its 2020 payments! Reuters reported via Yahoo Finance: “Dutch insurer Aegon, which does two-thirds of its business in the United States, said its claims in the Americas in the third quarter were $111 million, up from $31 million a year earlier. U.S. insurers MetLife and Prudential Financial also said life insurance claims rose. South Africa’s Old Mutual used up more of its pandemic provisions to pay claims and reinsurer Munich Re raised its 2021 estimate of COVID-19 life and health claims to 600 million euros from 400 million.” All insurance companies and not just life insurance providers are slowly coming to realize the truth about COVID vaccines despite the efforts of a murderous mainstream media and our complicit “governments” and “hi-tech” sector to cover up the accelerating death rate. The signals now emerging in the financial books of insurance companies can’t simply be ignored for these don’t involve the ordinary “viewing audience,” but a large part of our nation’s (and the world’s) economy. Financial companies are always interested in the “trends” of finance and that trend is monstrous! For far too long, far too many people have sat and watched history happening the way they watch sports or films. For some reason, they do not equate what’s happening with themselves personally or if they do, they cannot believe that they will suffer anything worse than financial and/or physical inconvenience. Very few members of the viewing audience put themselves in the place of the people dying in San Andreas or the "extras" dying in any other disaster film; they don’t say what used to be said back in the good old days, “There but for the Grace of God go I!” And believe me, that’s how our “government” wants it to stay! But let us pray (earnestly!) that our elite rulers finally have to say what it is claimed was said by Admiral Yamamoto after the attack on Pearl Harbor: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” For, my friends, if we are not awakened from our present moral sleep, our next sleep will be eternal.
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32 Up until fairly recently—at least in most of the West—these words were understood as the foundation of all civilization and the essential bedrock of a decent society. Unfortunately, it would seem that what was once “understood” is now a rejected concept throughout most of the world. Beginning with the “Enlightenment” – the first rejection of a Christian-based society in the West! – truth and objectivity began to be replaced by relativism; that is, a belief in changeable standards. Relativists present a worldview that rejects absolutes including the concept that even the most terrible crime might be excused under certain circumstances. “What’s true for you, is not necessarily true for me!” goes the claim. Eventually, the very concept of absolute truth became utterly rejected by the popular mid-20th Century philosophy, Post Modernism. Of course, the problem with this worldview is that it attempts to ignore things that are not open to “nullification.” No amount of wishing or believing or demanding that 2 plus 2 does not equal 4 or that up is down and vice versa, can change reality. One idiotic result of this type of “reasoning” is the present academic effort to label mathematics “racist” because an equality of results across racial lines cannot be obtained. The real damage done by this failure to apprehend and accept reality is that when reality does intrude—and it always does!—wishful thinking and toddler-brain demands are no defense against the resulting disasters. In the past, men were none too reasonable when absolutes were acknowledged! For instance, consider the Indians in Pennsylvania who attempted to talk white settlers out of building a city at the end a valley containing the confluence of three rivers! Of course, the settlers believed that they knew better than the “primitives” who had lived for generations in the area and so they went ahead and built the city of Johnstown! The result has been three great floods, the worst in 1889 and the other two only slightly less catastrophic in 1936 and 1977! The people of Johnstown believed that they could build their city where they wished despite the warnings—because they wanted to believe it! For a long time they were spared the disaster prophesied, yet all they had to do was look with a clear eye and a sound mind on the existing situation and they could easily have predicted the inevitable consequences. But they were blinded by a desire that overcame reality. Yes, the city did remain where its founders wished, but that did not protect those who perished when reality eventually intruded. Another clear example of a demanded cherished belief being destroyed by reality is found in women’s athletics. Remember Title 9? That was used by the government to force schools to finance girls’ sports. As these did not have the draw that boy’s sports did, schools spent more time and money on the latter. Title 9 “leveled the playing field,” so to speak, forcing girl’s athletics upon a public that had no desire for it. Score one for the feminists—or so they believed. Then came the “Trans-Movement” that declared an individual could claim to be whatever gender that person chose to be! As a result, women’s sports are presently being filled with “women” whose physical strength and size gives them the victory almost every time! The result of this travesty is that the women who were supposed to gain from the increased funding of “women’s sports” find themselves losers because they cannot compete with the men who now “identify” as women and fill the ranks of their particular sport. Think of how much money could have been saved if the girls had been allowed to compete in boy’s sports instead of trying to maintain two different athletic programs! After all, that’s pretty much what is going on today, isn’t it? But as ridiculous as this is, it is also very dangerous. A young woman boxer had her skull fractured in a bout with a pseudo-female and there have been—and will be—countless other injuries in contact sports! That’s why we did not let girls compete on the boys’ teams in the first place! Of course, the worst thing for women athletes is that they cannot compete in their own sports – at least if they want to win! But as the rejection of reality grows ever more apocalyptic, the dangers increase not incrementally, but exponentially because we are creating situations that none are able to predict. Why? Because to do so requires an acceptance of reality! And since these situations have not been predicted, for that same reason they cannot be addressed! The “open-border-sanctuary cities” have become repositories of diseases either never before seen among us or long extinct in the West. Much of the rampant disease in Africa is due to what doctors call a “fecal environment.” Untreated human feces are very dangerous and when the streets of our cities – even some of our most beautiful and wealthy cities – are covered with human excrement, the results are inevitable—and devastating. Several police officers in Los Angeles have been diagnosed with typhoid! This disease, arising from pervasive and untreated human waste, killed countless millions in the days before modern sanitation! Wealthy liberal elites in Beverly Hills should take no comfort in their money or their zip code. Remember, Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, died of typhoid and he had it all—wealth, fame and a very upscale address! And of course, where this type of environment obtains, our old nemesis, the rat is also to be found in great numbers! Apparently, Los Angeles, is suffering from a monstrous infestation of these creatures. And where there is the rat, there is the flea – and where there is the flea, there is the plague! The plague in both its bubonic and pneumonic forms is not gone; indeed, it is still endemic in Mongolia and in parts of the American Southwest carried by prairie dogs and their fleas. Consider how little it would take to make present day San Francisco or Los Angeles into 14th century London or Paris! And while there are drugs to treat the plague, it is by no means a “given” that it could be stopped once an epidemic began! Remember, over 18 million people died of the Spanish influenza at the beginning of the 20th Century, and we have had other world-wide epidemics that have cost more lives than most wars! Furthermore, in the Middle Ages, people didn’t move very far from their homes. In these days of planes, trains and automobiles, people—and the plague—can be carried anywhere and everywhere during its ten-day incubation period, thus spreading death much further than liberal sanctuary cities and their immediate suburbs from whence it came. And what is the cause of this rampant insanity? A refusal by far too many people and their government hirelings to accept reality when they would rather embrace poisonous political ideologies and social narratives. The danger grows daily but the awareness of that danger has yet to find its way in any real sense into the public square. But alas, the real tragedy of this lunacy is that both the innocent and those who do accept absolutes cannot flee from the disasters being perpetrated by those who do not. Thus, when the Horseman of pestilence and death astride his pale mount comes among us, all our knowledge and rationality will offer us no safety from his dread hand. Post Scriptum: As might be observed, this was written before the “onset” of the faux “pandemic” in 2020. It seems strange that actual dangers from virulent diseases were ignored so as to produce a desired social narrative permitting the overthrow of America’s democratic processes and the implementation of government control that under ordinary circumstances would have had no possible chance of success. Of course, the greatest danger now is that an actual plague might arise and the overstepping by government of its constitutional limitations in response to a false plague will result in a failure to properly respond to a real one! It would seem that danger is all about us and is made even more deadly by our failure to deal with reality.