What a turnabout. Half a century ago feminism was all about celebrating women’s success. There was huge excitement about women’s progress in achieving rewards and riches in what was once a man’s world. The media was cock-a-hoop about how well we were doing, breaking through those glass ceilings to bring in the big bucks. What happened? At some point the Powers That Be decided it was in women’s interests to play down this success. The public narrative is now all about women being badly off, struggling to survive in this dog-eat-dog world where men still come out on top. Now all we ever hear about is downtrodden women needing assistance to cope with their unfair treatment. Homeless women. Poverty-stricken women living on meagre pensions or insufficient superannuation. Oppressed, disadvantaged, and always, always in need of more financial support. Sure, there are many women in trouble. But the relentless moaning is actually a cover for a far bigger story. The truth that is being strenuously downplayed is that, overall, women will soon be sitting pretty, right on top in the wealth stakes. “Women will soon have more money than men for the first time in history!” trumpeted Fortune magazine last week , explaining that women are on the verge of controlling the majority of personal wealth. “The unprecedented transfer of wealth to women is projected to reach $30 trillion in the next decade,” said author Sara Lomelin, quickly passing over this extraordinary news to gloat about an imagined boom in philanthropy with generous women in charge. In Australia, women’s ship has also come in. A recent report by JB Were – The Growth of Women and Wealth - predicts a “tsunami” of inheritance heading in women’s direction. The wealth management company estimates women will inherit $3.2 trillion in the next decade, mainly due to longer-living wives inheriting from husbands. But even when the wealth is transferred to the next generation, for some reason oldest daughters will benefit the most, say these experts. Of course, women stand to gain not just through the death of their wealthy partners, but also as a result of divorcing them. JB Were looked at the approximately 10,000 High Net Worth couples who divide their assets each year and estimated that would result in a $30 billion asset pool converting to roughly $15 billion in the hands of the women. Not bad, eh? In May 2023, Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest was the second richest person in Australia. Or so it seemed. But any man who has been through the family law system will tell you that a man’s grip on his assets is tenuous at best. After Twiggy and his wife split and the family law system had done its thing, he tumbled down the Rich List, dropping to Number 10 and he was overtaken by a new entrant - his wife, who entered at Number 8. Nicola Forrest entered the Rich List for the first time ranked eighth overall, becoming Australia’s third-richest woman, with a $14.6 billion fortune. Nice work if you can get it….. The key point is that much of the wealth nominally owned by men in fact belongs to their wives – as soon as these women decide to get rid of them. So, it is easy to see why it is that our feminists aren’t shouting from the rooftops about this massive new achievement of wealth for women. The fact is that most of the money that is pushing women into the top wealth category comes not from their own efforts but from the men in their lives. Naturally, they don’t even need to divorce them or wait for them to drop off the twig. The reality is, as economists will tell you, savings are simply deferred consumption. The objective of acquiring wealth is spending and here women really excel. The hands firmly in control of spending are usually female. Some facts on spending:Retail – Women account for 85% of all purchases.Travel is increasingly dominated by women: - 64% of travellers worldwide are female - 80% of all travel decisions are made by women - 85% of solo travellers are women - 230% increase in travel companies dedicated to female clienteleVehicles - Women buy more than 60% of all new carsProperty – slightly more women than men own property. The property issue is interesting because younger women are less likely to own property than men but in middle age female ownership takes over. CoreLogic Head of Research Eliza Owen speculates, “This suggests women may be empowered to buy property later in life.” Yes, well, it just so happens that this empowerment happens around ages 25-45 when divorce is most common. Reminds me of the joke about “How many divorced men does it take to change a light bulb?” No one knows, because they are homeless. The reality is all that moaning about women’s sack cloth and ashes is a smokescreen for the true picture of women’s good fortune. Not only are many women ending up with all the loot when they find themselves on their own, but they are usually the ones in charge of spending the couples’ money when they are together. Not exactly a hard luck story. All of this makes a mockery of our media’s relentless whining about women’s miserable superannuation. The ABC served up a classic just recently with the story of Debra Moxon and her dog, Georgie. Here she is.. The article follows the normal ABC format of focussing on the “lived experience” of some vacuous female friend of the reporter rather than, say, facts. Nothing new - except that, with this article, the ABC has moved beyond parody. Here’s a summary: I’ve got this friend Deborah. Do you know Deborah? She’s lovely. You’d really like her. Well, you’ll never believe what she told me. She left her job so she could go on a never-ending holiday and now she thinks she may not have enough income! And she took out her super to buy a camper van and now, like, she thinks she might not have enough super! And I just think that’s so unfair. I mean, she should be given lots of money - that’s just gender equality, right? The middle of the article cuts to pronouncements from a feminist “expert” – in this case a male from the Australia Institute. Despite the ABC pushing their “women are victims” line, the Australia Institute report provides almost no support for their claim of a “retirement savings gap of 23.4%.” To understand the real numbers, consider the ATO’s latest data on super balances released 14 June. The chart does indeed show a significant gap at the point of retirement, but that’s misleading. Much more important is how much you have when you are actually retired and need the money. As the ATO data shows, from age 65 on, when it matters, the “gap” all but disappears. Here’s what I wrote four years ago, commenting in another boondoggle from Australia Institute claiming Australia’s tax concession system is stacked against women: As women grow older the gender gap in super miraculously evens out, with men and women ending up pretty much level. This means that one way or another, older women end up with more of the men’s loot. It’s highly unlikely that these older women are suddenly earning much more to account for their increase in super balances. Most of them must be losing their partners and ending up on their own. Many of these women outlive their men – the current gap in life expectancy is about five years and with most women partnering slightly older men, they enjoy the financial benefits for long after his passing. As named beneficiaries for the man’s super what was his is now hers. It’s all been happening for many decades and our media, our professional commentators are assiduously choosing not to notice. And now they are busily ignoring this amazing news about the fortunes of women because it challenges the party line. Perhaps one day soon we will be treated to an ABC update on Deborah. I like to picture her blasting down the highway in her super-fuelled campervan singing along with Dire Straits – “Money for Nothing.”

Even as a new right-winger, I can admit that capitalism has problems, problems that pushed me ideologically to the left when I was younger. I’ve grown fond of watching numerous anti-capitalist documentaries: Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, The Corporation, etc. And while I wholeheartedly agree with their critiques of capitalism, I am always unsatisfied with their proposed solutions, if they even propose one. The solutions are always either socialism (Taking power away from capitalists by giving it to the state — a.k.a more regulations, more funding of public institutions, more protection of workers and environmental rights, etc.) or anarchism (rebuilding the whole system from the ground up — a.k.a revolutions, grassroots movements, local community organization, etc.) But for all the things capitalism does wrong, there are so many things it does right! Are we really ready to throw it all in the garbage and rebuild everything from the ground up? Are we already ready to try the all-mighty state solution again, which historically gave horrible results? The free market is so very efficient, and that we have experimental proof of. What if it was hiding the solution to the woes of capitalism in plain sight, but we were too blinded by tradition, by “business-as-usual”, to see it? Capitalism in its actual form is still young, and maybe our initial drafts of corporate constitutions, of shareholder agreements, of corporate governance, are simply incomplete? It is said that to be a good entrepreneur, you don’t necessarily need to invent something new. You just need to see the value in things where other people see none. And I believe that in the structure of capitalism itself lies hidden value for clients of a corporation. But because clients are blind to it, they don’t claim it. And because they don’t claim it, this value naturally, unconsciously, mechanically, finds its way in the pockets of investors, without any ill-will on their part. This additional hidden value skews the whole system in favor of investors, and the effect compounds over time, leading to growing inequalities, economic instabilities, class struggles and political polarizations. To better see where this unclaimed value is hidden, we have to take a deeper look at a special market: the housing market.The two types of ownership Capitalism states that in a free market society, economic agents like citizens or corporations ought to take the decisions that maximize their self-interest. When buying a house, one such decision is presented to you: you can decide to live in the house, or you can decide to rent it out to turn a profit. There is no universally better choice, it depends on your context. If the house satisfies all your needs and is close to your place of work, then it maximizes your self-interest to live in it. Otherwise, it makes more sense to rent it out to someone who values it more. If the house was a company, whose product is a habitable space, then you ought to decide between these two types of ownership: ownership for consumption (living in it), or ownership for profit (renting it out). In the traditional shareholder agreement, on the basis of which most companies are incorporated, there is no such choice. It is assumed that you buy a company for profit. And because you don’t get to choose, you can’t maximize your self-interest, and thus some value gets lost in the system and gets claimed by people who do not necessarily deserve it. There are a lot of cases where buying a company’s shares for consumption would make much more sense. The best example of which is in supply chains.Thought experiment: The wooden table company Imagine you own a company producing beautiful wooden tables. To produce those tables, you need planks, a lot of planks. So you strike a deal with a plank supplier. Because you buy a lot of planks, you get a good deal on your planks, but no matter how good the deal is, the plank supplier is a for-profit company: it needs to sell the planks at a markup to make a profit. For a complex supply chain with a lot of intermediaries, these markups accumulate, inflating the price for the final consumer. What if you don’t want to pay the markup on your planks? What if you know you consume about 25% of the supplier’s plank production, and you decide to buy 25% of the supplier’s shares? Shouldn’t you be entitled to 25% of its production? In other words, can you decide to receive your dividends in planks rather than in cash? Technically yes, but that is not a situation included in the traditional shareholder agreement. In the traditional shareholder agreement, you are only entitled to 25% of the profits generated by selling the planks to other people. You cannot buy shares for consumption, you can only buy shares for profit. Sure, you can devise a special case-by-case shareholder agreement where such a deal is laid out, but because this is not standardized, that would incur legal costs to both parties, and the plank supplier has no interest in incurring those costs. But what’s the difference, might you ask? “Yes, I still need to pay for my planks, including the markup, but as a shareholder, I get the markup back through my capital gain and dividends, no?“. And you would be right that it would almost balance out this way, but some of your value would be lost:Taxes and transaction fees: In the traditional shareholder agreement, you pay taxes and transaction fees when you buy the planks at the marked up price, and when you receive your dividends or capital gain back. You pay no tax or fee if you just receive planks directly.Marketing, advertisement and sales fees: To turn their planks into money, for-profit shareholders need to sell their planks to outsiders, which incurs marketing, advertisement and sales costs. These costs get deducted from the profits, and thus the final dividends or capital gains. But as a consumer shareholder, you do not need that additional step, you do not need to market, advertise or sell the planks to yourself, you already own them. So why should you pay for that?Undesired growth: As a consumer of planks, you don’t care about growth. If you need 2 000 planks per month, but the plank supplier grows, you may now be entitled to 2 500 planks per month via your shareholding. The extra 500 planks are nice, but they mostly just get in your way, you need to sell them or store them or manage them. In the traditional shareholder agreement, only a fraction of the profit is given back to shareholders as cash, the rest is reinvested in growth. But why should you reinvest in growth if you don’t need it?Cash flow crunch: You can save the markup on your planks only as long as you hold the supplier’s shares. This creates a problem: to keep getting planks at a reduced cost, you must hold the shares. But, if the company doesn’t pay dividends, to access the money you saved using this strategy, you need to sell the shares (a.k.a. realize your capital gain). In other words, your savings are locked up in the company. Accessing your savings means losing your capacity to save. This reduced cash flow is another reason why growth and capital gains are a hindrance for consumer shareholders. So, as the wooden table producer, it would maximize your self-interest to propose an amendment to the shareholder agreement of the plank supplier.An updated shareholder agreement In the above oversimplified example, it is pretty easy to determine what 25% of the production means, because the supplier only sells planks. If the supplier sold multiple products, then it would be logistically complicated to distribute gains in this way. But the solution is simple: gift cards, or maybe more appropriately, internal credits, “cash” that can only buy the products or services of a given company. An updated shareholder agreement should give the right to any shareholder to choose between ownership for consumption or ownership for profit. In other words, it should give the right to any shareholder to receive their dividends either in cash or in internal credits, whichever maximizes their self-interest in the given financial year. But why would a shareholder decide to receive his profit as internal credits instead of cash? Well, if it is the same amount, then for sure cash is preferable, as it is a more flexible and liquid form of currency. An incentive needs to be offered to consumer shareholders for their commitment to spend their profits back in the company. The correct and fair incentive is simple: allow any product or service purchased using internal credits to be paid at the cost rather than at the listed price, because the cost is the price of the product without all of the markups listed above: no tax, no transaction fee, no gross margin and no marketing, advertising or sales fees.The growth conundrum Let’s say the plank supplier made 100 000$ in profits last year, and it wants to reinvest as much as it can in the growth of the company. That year, 50% of the shareholders decided to be for-profit, and 50% decided to get their dividends as internal credits for consumption. As seen above, consumer shareholders should not reinvest in growth, so they would get 50 000$ in internal credits. For-profit shareholders, however, would get nothing in dividends, as every dollar of their 50 000$ would be reinvested. But because of that reinvestment, all shares would increase in value, giving capital gain to all shareholders. That’s not fair, as consumer shareholders did not reinvest in growth, so they should not get that capital gain. The solution to this conundrum is dilution. Instead of cash dividends, for-profit shareholders should get 50 000$ of newly emitted stock dividends as acknowledgment of their reinvestment. This would dilute the value of the shares of the consumer shareholders, offsetting the capital gains caused by the reinvestment.Implications This updated shareholder agreement acknowledges the existence of consumer shareholders, and describes a potential legal framework in which they can coexist harmoniously with for-profit shareholders. Interesting, but how will that fix capitalism? Well, if adopted at scale, profound economical, political, social and environmental impacts will emerge:Offsetting inflation: Superconducting supply chains In the example of the wooden table company, we focused our attention on a specific link in a supply chain, on a specific supplier-consumer relationship. We saw that by buying consumer shares of the supplier, the consumer could stop paying markup on its supplies. Well, this principle could be generalized to the entire supply chain. You can picture a supply chain as a leaky pipe, or a lossy electric wire. The longer the supply chain, the more economic value is lost to for-profit investors outside of the supply chain. But if the participants of the supply chain themselves own their suppliers via consumer shares, then no economic value gets leaked outside of the supply chain. This maximizes the value that reaches the final consumer, leading to much lower prices. This is what I like to call a superconducting supply chain. Imagine the potential superconducting supply chains could have on the whole economy!The end of multinational corporations: Supply chain decentralization In the current version of capitalism, because of leaky supply chains, a table produced via a supply chain of 5 intermediaries costs more to the final consumer than an identical table produced by a single company that owns all the steps of the supply chain. Why is that? In the end, it is the exact same table. And using the principle of the specialization of work, shouldn’t it be more efficient to produce the table using 5 companies hyper specialized in their own step of the supply chain, rather than via a single generalist company that tries to do everything? Leaky supply chains lead to what is called “supply chain integration”, which is basically a big corporation buying all the steps of a supply chain to gain a competitive edge in a market: the breeding ground for monolithic and monopolistic multinational corporations. But without leaky supply chains, there is no competitive edge to be gained from supply chain integration, which will lead to a specialization and decentralization of the supply chain.An exit strategy from the infinite growth paradigm: The Maturity Paradigm If only for-profit shareholders exist, then the valuation of a share is based only on the expected future profits of the company. As a for-profit investor, all I want is to buy shares, then resell them later at a higher price. But that is only possible if the expected future profits are expected to grow somewhere in the future.. Otherwise, I have no reason to buy shares. So if a company were to stop promising growth, the demand for shares would drop to 0, and so would its price. Current shareholders would be stuck with worthless shares they can’t sell. Because companies have a legal obligation to maximize their shareholder’s value, then they must promise growth, even when that growth is morally, socially or environmentally destructive. Consumer shareholders do not value the expected future profits or the growth potential, they value the total productive output of the company. So if a company were to stop promising growth, the demand for shares from for-profit investors would simply be replaced by a demand for shares from consumer investors. No catastrophic market crash would occur. Companies would thus adopt a more natural lifecycle. At foundation, a company has no productive output, but a lot of growth potential, which will attract for-profit investors to stimulate its growth. As it grows, it will start to attract consumer shareholders interested by its productive output. As the company reaches its peak and its maturity, for-profit investors will lose interest and start selling to consumer shareholders, freeing the company from its growth imperative.NPCCs: Non-profit Consumer Corporations At the end of the company’s natural lifecycle, companies will be owned only by consumer shareholders. This presents a unique organizational structure that blurs the lines between for-profit and non-profit corporations. Governments and tax authorities will have to recognize these companies as non-profits operating for the collective benefit of their consumer-shareholders, rather than for private or individual profit, which will open the doors to numerous fiscal advantages and tax breaks typically reserved for non-profit entities.An environmentally and socially friendly economy: Mature Capitalism Non-profit consumer corporations are thus set to replace for-profit corporations in the long run. Driven by their client-based decision-making, they will naturally tend toward superior product quality and pricing, and will naturally abandon business practices hostile towards their customers, like planned obsolescence, misleading advertising, vendor lock-in or hidden charges. Because of that, they will naturally outcompete any equivalent for-profit company, securing themselves a long-term stable place in the market. Since their goal is to fairly distribute their finite yearly production amongst their customer base, overconsumption from their clients hurt them, contrasting drastically from the unhinged consumerism pushed by for-profits. By abandoning planned obsolescence and promoting restraint and moderation instead of excess, they will help build a greener and more sustainable economy. It will also drive innovation, as for-profit investors will naturally abandon big mature corporations with low growth potential for smaller and younger companies, unlocking capital and propulsing innovation at a level never seen before.Conclusion By recognizing and harnessing the untapped potential within the existing capitalist framework, Mature Capitalism builds an economy that truly serves the needs of all its participants, fostering a future that balances prosperity with responsibility. This is not just an adjustment to the system; it is a fundamental evolution that redefines the purpose and potential of capitalism in the 21st century.

Doctors operating on a Covid-19 patient. Those first few months of 2020 were dire times. A new, “novel” virus had been discovered in China months before; on January 20, 2020, the CDC confirmed that a strain of this “Novel Coronavirus” had been detected in Washington State. From there, things began to explode. Daily, the mortality rate among the Chinese began to climb while, at the same time, the number of newly infected here in the United States also accelerated. For months, no one seemed to know how to handle this increasing pandemic. Eventually, state and local officials would utilize the most draconian methods ever employed in peacetime, mandating mask-wearing and social distancing, and they would also shut down all “non-essential” businesses. The economic impact of all this was devastating, with many unsure where or when their next paycheck would come. Under President Donald Trump, the concept was initiated to send a “stimulus” check to all taxpayers. Labeled “Economic Impact Payments,” $1,200 in checks and bank deposits were made to each account, with slightly more for families with children. After the election of 2020, President Joe Biden continued the stimulus program by sending $600 and later an additional $1,400 to all taxpayers. Nearly 500 million checks and deposits were made to Americans nationwide, totaling almost $1 Billion. The good news: it worked! There can be no doubt that the “Stimulus” Program saved the country from an economic catastrophe. That dreadful second quarter of 2020 saw the economy (GDP) drop further and faster than at any time in our history, including even the Great Depression of the 1930s. Without Stimulus, we would have been in a world of hurt. But, as anyone familiar with finance will tell you, there’s no “free lunch,” to quote Milton Friedman. Unfortunately, no one will tell you that Stimulus created a debt that should be paid off someday. It’s become a game in Washington to see how our Government can cover up the debt created by Stimulus. Isn’t it ironic that the same Government that passed the “Federal Consumer Credit Protection Act” and created the “Consumer Protection Bureau” fails to inform us, the taxpayers, of our legal obligation to pay back the Stimulus? If a commercial bank, credit union, or other lending institution implied that any loan didn’t have to be repaid, they’d find themselves shut down in a hurry. Yet, that’s how the Stimulus Program is being portrayed. Look at any of the .gov websites, and you’ll find endless repetitions of how to get your check, but there is no notice that those checks came as a loan. Three ways Stimulus Impacts Us Today: Before we launch this part of our discussion, here is a caution. I’m not suggesting that the Stimulus was wholly wrong — far from it. It was a necessary part of our eventual recovery. (While I disagree with some policies that led to our economic woes). Now, let’s discuss where we are financially and how we can achieve a better financial future for our country. Here are three significant results of the Stimulus and how they impact us now. Dollar Devaluation The first and most obvious impact of the Stimulus was to devalue the dollar. M2, one of the most common measures of the supply of dollars, exploded after those Stimulus Checks hit everyone’s bank account. M2 is one of the economists’ favorite measures of the dollar. The M2 float (number of dollars in the economy) went from $15.6 Trillion (at the end of Q1 2020) to $21.7 Trillion (at the end of Q2 2022). That’s a 39% increase in money supply in just two years. The dollar would have declined by nearly 39% in a static economy with no growth. Fortunately, the United States economy entered a recovery mode, and that dire consequence did not happen. Nonetheless, the dollar exhibited the worst bout of devaluation we’ve experienced in 40 years. You undoubtedly read about it in the headlines and felt it in your wallet. Oh yes, what economists call dollar devaluation, you and I call inflation. (Things cost more because the dollars we use to purchase them are worth less.) Cash Flow The first thing that any credit counselor looks at is “cash flow,” which refers to the ability to pay your bills and maintain your standard of living. Today, America is not meeting that standard; we are borrowing money just to pay our bills. It is a red flag, and the Stimulus pushed us over that line. In Q1 2020, our national debt per person was $91K; today, it’s $104K, an increase of $13K for each of us. Not too bad, our growing economy reduced the impact of that Stimulus Package. However, we’re getting killed on the interest payments. Are you listening to the Federal Reserve Board? During these same four years, the Fed raised interest from a mere fraction to the current 5 1/2%, the most significant percentage hike in the Fed’s history. (The Fed has hiked to a much higher level, but never from near zero to 5.5%.) When computed for each of us, this means that our national interest expense has gone from $6.8K to $18.0K per year, which is nearly triple the interest expense of four years ago. As anyone who’s tried to pay off a high-interest credit card will tell you, it is this interest expense that is the most critical and difficult to surmount. As interest rates have increased, the interest on our national debt is now nearing $1 Trillion per year. While that’s good news for US Treasury Bondholders, it’s terrible news if we, as a country, want to get out of debt. These high-interest rates should bring an entirely new dimension to our national discussion on interest rates. Dependency Finally, we come to the saddest of all the measures of life after Covid: dependency. Dependency is admittedly a problematic measure to get your arms around. It includes a broad range of programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Food Supplement (SNAP Program). This category also contains specific Unemployment Insurance. However, despite their amorphous nature, these social programs represent the largest expense for the Federal Government and are increasing dramatically. Government Transfer Payments have seen a 40% increase in the four years since Covid began. Of course, much of this increase is due to the Boomers’ retirement and social security payments. This post-World War II generation has created a demographic surge throughout their lives, and retirement will be no different. But beyond the Boomers is a generation of people who have been regretably affected by the changing economy brought about by COVID-19, and specifically the lockdown that accompanied it. Its the “non-essential” small businesses that shortsighted politicians shut down. Remember, small businesses hire more new employees than any other sector of the economy. Covid also created the new Work From Home (WFH) trend today. Meanwhile, while the WHF might have welcomed staying home to work via the internet, it left a gaping hole for the service workers who toil at the local coffee shop, cleaned the high-rise buildings, provided security, or drove the taxis and busses to transport those stay at home employees. In considerable measure, these less skilled workers are being forced onto government subsidies. If current trends continue, we will pay nearly $4 trillion in total Government-funded transfer payments next year. Conclusion We are a far different country than we were just four short years ago. The quicker we recognize that reality, the easier our transformation into this new economy will be. The first step is to recognize that “Stimulus” was not free. That its the private sector, not the government, that has made this country the strongest economy in the world. And it is free enterprise that will lead us back to prosperity. Epilogue Reading today’s financial press is like watching a debate between pessimists and optimists. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty, and the US Economy is about ready to fail. To the optimist, the glass is not only half full but nearly overflowing, with nothing but good times ahead. So who’s right? The answer is both. If we continue on the path we’re on now, the pessimist is likely to prevail. Endless free-spending by anyone, even America, is not sustainable. On the other hand, with just a few adjustments, we could be back on track as the world’s economic leader. To our political leaders, we say: stop this nonsense that all innovation must come from Washington. Reduce regulation and taxes, and let our native free-enterprise system flourish. Undoubtedly, America can retain its promise of prosperity for all, but economic freedom is critical. ** Follow me here at ThinkSpot for more stories from the ValueSide.

Young folks these days love to “diagnose” the world around them. Their parents, their friends, even themselves. The language of psychology has seeped so deep into everyday chatter that it spills over onto social media. Words like "co-dependent," "dysfunctional," "trauma response," "projection," and "gaslighting" roll off tongues as easily as if they were born knowing them. But it makes you wonder—how much of this talk is truly helpful, and how much of it is just noise in the wind? Not everyone has the gift of eloquence, the ability to pluck just the right words to frame their experiences. I used to think that this absence of language might keep people from truly grasping their own lives, that without the right words, the truth of what happened would slip through their fingers. And to some degree, I still believe that. Yet, I’ve been surprised time and again by the people I’ve met. They aren’t poetic like John Steinbeck; their vocabularies are small, and they might not know a single scrap of that psychobabble. But with plain, simple sentences, they manage to capture the essence of profound truths. An aunt once remarked, “Jisko jab jana hai, wo likha hai. Na ek minute pehle, na ek minute baad.” (The time when someone has to leave this world is written. Not a minute sooner, not a minute later). Such words come easily from the lips of the old. It’s only recently that I've begun to find solace in these plain truths. You see, growing up, I stumbled into a trap—a trap that ensnared most folks of my age and still keeps many caught in its jaws. We have a way of believing something true only if it’s wrapped in poetic beauty, or if it stands firm on the crutches of science. We buy into it if it carries the weight of philosophical depth or if it’s crafted with a twist that makes us say, “Gotcha!” It’s as if we need these embellishments to validate what we hold to be real. Young folks get a kick out of thinking they’re wiser than the rest, often by echoing what they believe to be sharp reasoning or by repeating some snappy line they’ve picked up—be it from a book or a passing conversation—that challenges the old, straightforward truths. They parade these clever snippets as if they were revelations, dismissing the simplicity of less argumentative, old-fashioned truths. Examples of some of these glib sentences that once enticed each of us are: Everything is subjective; there are no objective truths. All systems are completely corrupt because they are predicated on power. Marriage is just a piece of paper on which two people have signed. Parents are just a means through which life enters the world. Capitalism is inherently exploitative. All relationships are transactional. Societal norms are always oppressive. Belief in God is a coping mechanism and religion is just a means of social control. Everything is a social construct. Most young folks I’ve known have held on to at least a few of these notions at some point. For many, these ideas seem to cover the whole breadth of their beliefs. My advice to them would be to do as I did: Chuck out the whole lot, and start thinking from scratch. Even a blank slate would be better. “He who knows that he is profound strives for clearness; he who would like to appear profound to the multitude strives for obscurity. The multitude thinks everything profound of which it cannot see the bottom; it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.

There is a burning question in the hearts of many young women I know. Most of these women are of my age, approaching their 30s. Some are older, some are younger. Not too long ago, the same question nearly scorched a hole in my heart too. The question being, “Why can’t my father let me provide for him?” Many times, I've seen my friends wrestle with this question, each in their own way, shaped by the cards life dealt them. Some have lost their mothers, leaving fathers to navigate a lonely old age. Others, though both parents still live, fight against financial problems. There are those without brothers, no one to share the burden of caring for ageing parents. Some are only daughters, without siblings to take turns with, while others are the eldest daughters of their families. They see it as a raw deal, the way their father won't think twice about taking money from his sons but hesitates when it comes to his daughters. To the daughters, this seems unfair. They can’t help but wonder—was it because their father didn’t see them as capable, as able to stand on their own and provide? Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe it’s tied up in that old saying, "beti paraya dhan hoti hai"—a daughter is someone else’s wealth. It’s a phrase soaked in the old ways, in the idea that a daughter is just passing through, never really meant to stay, raised with the quiet understanding that one day she’ll belong to another home, another name. Many women, by some instinct, are drawn to view things in this way. But only recently have I come to grasp that the truth lies elsewhere. It isn't for the reasons we've been taught to believe. Fathers shy away from leaning on their daughters, not out of pride or stubbornness, but because deep down, it stirs a quiet fear within them—a fear that they’ve somehow fallen short as providers. It was hard to arrive at this truth. Men and women do not always feel guilty for the same things, and what one finds glaringly evident may slip past the other’s comprehension. Take for instance a woman’s plight: if she’s bedridden and can’t manage to prepare a meal for her family, she might be consumed by a gnawing guilt, ordering out instead of serving a home-cooked dish. To a man, this might seem like an overblown concern. Conversely, should the bills go unpaid for a month, she might merely pass the responsibility to her husband without a second thought. It’s almost humorous to her if he were to dwell on not being able to provide a trinket she’d like. Yet, in times of financial strain, men often find themselves beset by a deeper, more troubling anxiety, not merely over where the money’ll come from, but what this shortage signifies about their worth as providers. Once articulated, the truth set me free. It made me feel so much gratitude and empathy for the men who’ve borne this burden, without complaining and with so much grace. We often hear about the quiet fortitude of women—mothers who make silent sacrifices for their children. Yet, there is a grace in men as well, one that is no less noble. In modern thought, feminism paints a picture of men as the sole architects of freedom—men who go where they please, dress as they wish, and command the flow of currency with a casual ease. The image conjured is one of untrammelled liberty, yet behind this veneer of ease lies a vast sea of responsibility. Feminists advocate for women to earn, but primarily for personal empowerment and self-assurance, rather than to take on the responsibility of providing for others. In fact, most feminist discussions are about rights, never responsibilities. They teach women to view every move a man makes as a manoeuvre to encroach upon their domain, painting his every action as part of a grand crusade against their progress. However, one must not forget that much of what men endeavour to achieve is in the interests of women. Still, many women do want to provide for their families, and there is much meaning to be gained from the fulfilment of this responsibility. But the weight of this responsibility is huge, as is the contribution of men to family and society. A man may toil his entire life, adorn his wife with jewels, educate his children, see them married off, and indulge his grandchildren, only to find himself scraping by when his own turn finally comes in his seventies. Even then, he hesitates to depend on his children, especially his daughters. If he’s lucky, his son will step into his own shoes, and his daughter will be crafty in sneaking in help however she can, careful not to ask him to forsake the very principles that define him. If he is unlucky, he might find his ungrateful, ‘empowered,’ and otherwise successful children treating him as a burden and a failure, only to find themselves in a similar position someday. Then again, rotten eggs turn up in the best of families. Image source: Cimon and Pero by Peter Paul Rubens

Christians seem to be obsessed with extracting a confession of faith out of him. He doesn’t want to do it. And even if he does, there is a bigger problem. His belief is not the same as yours. It’s tricky to navigate a conversation on religious belief and theology with Jordan because he uses the same language they do. Statements like, “The truth will set you free,” “Christ rose from the dead,” and “Heaven is real.” And it is precisely this fact of common language that fools many Christians into presuming Jordan actually means what they themselves mean by those words. In a recent interview with John Rich, the country singer asks Jordan point blank if he has “turned over his life to God.” And Jordan said, “I did that a long time ago.” I can almost hear the exuberant cheers coming from Christians all across America. So I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but Jordan didn’t mean what you think he meant. The central meaning is understood, I’ll agree. The phrase, “turn our lives over to God,” means that we dedicate our lives to the precepts of the highest good, the voice of conscience that calls us to the highest aim. Jordan agrees with that. But what he means by “God” is not what John Rich meant by “God.” Similarly, when Jordan says something like “Heaven is real” or “Hell is real,” Christian think they know what he meant, but they don’t. To Jordan, at least according to what he has said publicly, heaven and hell are not actual places the soul goes to in the afterlife. They are states of being—mentally, physically, and spiritually—that are experienced in this life. Jordan has clearly stated (on the Iced Coffee Hour podcast) that he does not speculate about the afterlife because it is beyond his capability to know anything about it. I’m tired of Christians trying to impose their theology on him, especially because I think he understands Christianity better than they do. After the interview with John Rich came out, the Christian corner of the internet exploded with presumptuous, clickbait-y, arrogant titles, like: • "John Rich HUMBLES Jordan Peterson..." • "John Rich's WARNING to Jordan Peterson..." It makes my blood boil. Finally, stop asking Jordan if he is a Christian because, clearly, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He told John Rich that his personal faith is a private matter and shouldn’t be displayed for all to see. What he really cares about is the message he is putting forth, and he trusts that it will be the clear fruit of his spiritual life.

Ukraine Battle Tank. There can be little doubt that the Ukraine Army's lightning-fast strike deep into the Kursk Region caught the Russian defenders by surprise. The border between Ukraine and Russia stretches for nearly a thousand miles, and the Ukrainians attacked at what was likely the weakest point in the Russian defense. It was a brilliant and strategic victory for Ukraine, which has seen little to celebrate throughout the past year. In a war that is often visualized as resembling the "trench warfare" of World War I, here was a dynamic, mobile strike that more closely resembled the German mechanized Blitzkrieg of the Second World War. Top-of-the-line tanks, like the German Leopard 2s, speedy troop carriers, like the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and mobile artillery, like the American HYMARS, were all dispatched to the Kursk Oblast. General Syrskyi and President Zelenskyy saw their opportunity, and they took it. Here was an opportunity to strike deep into Russia, just as Russia had done to them two years prior. For a regime desperately in need of good news, this was a move bound to make headlines. However, the Russians weren't the only ones caught flat-footed. Much of NATO appears not to have known about the attack; AP reports: "The move also surprised many of Ukraine's supporters at NATO and the European Union. It's unclear how extensively they were briefed ahead of the offensive, even though U.S. President Joe Biden insists that he's been kept abreast of developments since." https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-incursion-kursk-nato-eu-backers-c400bd59e5a11b5439b92b88914e95a8 Rules Of Engagement While NATO and the United States have viewed the "Kursk Incursion" as merely a counter-strike against Russian territory, there are indications that these battles have taken a new, darker turn. By all accounts, the Kursk region was lightly defended, mainly by Russian Border Guards and Police. In large measure, this accounts for the Ukrainians' decisive move, attacking with reportedly some of their best, battle-hardened troops. Ukraine quickly captured 1,000 square kilometers (382 square miles), encompassing 80 towns and villages. Once the Ukrainians had penetrated the border, they mostly encountered Russian civilians, many of whom fled. But here's where the controversy arises. Local Russians report that the Ukrainians have targeted non-combatants, civilians, as the troops surged through the countryside. Russian President Putin has taken them at their word; speaking before a meeting of government ministers, he said: Ukrainian forces "are conducting indiscriminate fire from various types of weapons, including rocket weapons, at civilian buildings, homes, ambulances." https://www.rt.com/russia/602269-putin-kursk-attempted-incursion/ Ukraine Terrorists These actions have caused Putin to label this a "terrorist action," indicating that the Russian Rules of engagement will change. The Ukrainians involved will be considered terrorists, not soldiers, and subject to the harshest treatment. While the treatment of enemy combatants has changed, it looks like the Russian Army is dusting off its "playbook" from last year's siege of Bahkmut. We wrote about the Russian strategy of encirclement (the Cauldron) as their way to neutralize the occupying force. The Russian Cauldron Where Victory Looks Like Defeat Ironically, the Ukrainians' success may become their most significant liability. By thrusting so far into Russian territory, at least 10 kilometers by most accounts, the Ukrainians must now provide the logistical support vital for any fighting force. The Ukrainians carried with them the munitions, food, and supplies needed for the initial incursion, but at some point, they would need to be re-supplied. And that won't be easy if Russia encircles their encampment. In addition to physical containment, look for Russia to put in place its vaunted electronic warfare jamming system, cutting off the Ukrainians from all outside communication. As we noted in the Battle for Bahkmut, a city now under Russian control, the Russian Battle Plan of encirclement (the Cauldron), when fully implemented, proved nearly impossible to escape. That could be the theme of this entire war, the most significant conflict of the 21st century. Although, it utilizes some of the most advanced military hardware ever seen on a battlefield: drones, missiles, electronic positioning, and surveillance satellites of today's well-equipped armies. Still, each battle seems to come down to a man-on-man struggle, pitting one soldier against another, not unlike those dreadful days a century ago in Verdun. ** Follow me here on ThinkSpot for more stories from the ValueSide.

President Biden reviews NATO Troops, 2022. On August 6, Ukraine forces launched what is euphemistically called an "Incursion" into Russia. An "Incursion" that was equipped, managed, and planned by United States and NATO forces. Most startling of all, this incursion, in reality, an invasion, occurred precisely on the 79th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima - an event that marked the beginning of the Nuclear Era. While the weapon used at Hiroshima pales in comparison to the nuclear bombs of today, it was, nonetheless, so devastating that most responsible leaders have promised never to use them again. Throughout these 79 years, a central tenant evolved: M.A.D., Mutually Assured Destruction. This concept states that neither side would initiate a nuclear confrontation because to do so would destroy both countries. Although nuclear treaties would come and go, this M.A.D. Doctrine would be followed by the world's two nuclear superpowers, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) and the United States. Until Kursk.Regrettably, the M.A.D. The doctrine did not eliminate war completely. The latter half of the 20th Century, and now the 21st Century, have seen many regional "brush" wars. These more minor conflicts have sometimes become an opportunity for the major nuclear powers (the US and USSR, and now the Russian Federation) to square off against one another through their "Proxies" - the regional combatants. It's a new way of fighting that began less than five years after Hiroshima and the beginning of the Nuclear Era. The war between North and South Korea began in 1950. Supporting the North Korean "Proxy" were both the Soviet Union and China. The Soviets supplied North Korea with munitions, medical equipment, and their top-of-the-line MIG-15 Fighter Jets. Although China was the more visible, the Soviets were the nuclear power, having produced their first successful "A Bomb" a year before, on August 29, 1949. Korea became the first of what would become a continuing model of Proxy Wars between the two principal nuclear powers of the Soviet Union/Russia versus the United States. One of America's most decorated soldiers, General of the Army Douglass MacArthur, led the South Korean and UN/American forces. In short, this back-and-forth conflict reached a stalemate that MacArthur wanted to break with a decisive thrust into North Korean territory, something that Washington saw as much too provocative. US Leadership saw the risk of such an escalation as leading to another worldwide confrontation that would likely go nuclear. In the end, President Truman relieved MacArthur, and the principle of restrained regional war began. It was the MAD Tenant in action: Proxy Wars must not be allowed to morph into general conflicts between the two Nuclear Powers.It should come as no surprise that one of the most adamant opponents to the current Kursk Incursion has been Kim Jung Un, the leader of North Korea. Newsweek reports that Kim's spokesman said: "Washington and its allies are "wholly responsible" for the new Ukrainian offensive, which could spark "a new all-out war" in Europe ..." https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-reacts-ukraine-incursion-russia-1940928 It's clear that the current leader of North Korea, Kim, clearly sees the dangers of escalation. The Watch Word - Restraint Throughout the intervening years, a series of "red lines" were established to prevent any direct confrontation between the US and the Russians. There were often heated debates behind closed doors in Washington to determine just how far the American military might go before antagonizing its chief opponent. For years, America refused to mine Haiphong Harbor, the chief supply route for Soviet Ships to North Vietnam. In ordinary times, cutting the supply lines of America's enemy would have been job number one. However, the United States under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson refused this strategy as it might destroy Soviet Ships. It was only at the end of the war that President Nixon finally mined Haiphong. But only after sufficient warning was given at the Paris Peace Talks. In the Soviet-Afghanistan War (War #1), it has now been reported that there were extensive arguments among the Carter Cabinet and Advisors on how far their support of the Mujahidin should go. President Carter established the American Strategy, which conformed to stringent constraints that would eliminate confrontation between the two Nuclear Powers. So, American support was limited to supplying arms and providing American advisors. This constraint was observed even under President Reagan, who came to office with the reputation of an uber War Hawk. Russia returned the "favor" by also restraining its support of the Taliban during the American Ukraine incursion that ended in November 2022. Although the specific red line sometimes changed, as when the US finally mined Haiphong Harbor, one thing remained inviolable: the two nuclear superpowers must never directly confront one another.That is until the Kursk Incursion. The Best Description of Where We Are Today The best description of where we find ourselves today was provided by United States President Joseph R. Biden Jr just five months after the Ukraine War began. Speaking before the DNC Senatorial Election Campaign Committee, Biden said: "Let me put it this way. Think about it: We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. We've got a guy I know fairly well; his name is Vladimir Putin. I spent a fair amount of time with him. He is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical and nuclear weapons, or biological or chemical weapons, because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming. It's part of Russian doctrine that they will not — they will not — if the motherland is threatened, they'll use whatever force they need, including nuclear weapons. I don't think there's any such thing as an ability to easily lose a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon. "https://www.whitehouse.gov/?s=biden+speech+october+6+2022 Emphasis: "If the Motherland is threatened, they'll use whatever force they need, including nuclear weapons. Although some may quibble with Biden's characterization of the Russian Military's performance in Ukraine, there can be little doubt that he is right in assessing Russia's ability and willingness to use nuclear weapons. As this is written, it is being reported that Ukraine has launched its most significant Drone attack on Moscow to date. By land and air, NATO, Ukraine, and the United States are deep into Russia's "Motherland." **Follow me here on ThinkSpot for more stories from the ValueSide.**

My grandmother, my father's mother, is a formidable woman, carved from the raw stuff of endurance. At 94, she has seen more life than most—outliving her parents, her husband, the bulk of her siblings, and even two of her four children, along with a grandson. There’s a certain grit etched in the lines of her face, a stubbornness born not of defiance but of necessity, the kind needed to weather nearly a century's worth of storms. Widowed in her thirties, she bore the burden of raising four teenagers alone, with a strength that defied the odds. It goes without saying that a person like her would carry a trove of tales, each one more compelling than the last. I find myself drawn to her stories, as they transport me to a world that seems almost unrecognisable in today’s society. It’s been fifty years now since the old house, the one I still call home, was built back in 1974. Back then, my grandmother lived across the street, renting a room with her children. She recalls, with a certain wistfulness, how my father and his sisters and brother watched, day by day, as the house took shape, each brick set in place. They called dibs on rooms that weren’t theirs yet, in a house that belonged to someone else, but in their hearts, it was already home. The dreams of moving into that house, once little more than fleeting fancies, took root in reality. In the years that followed, the house was bought, my grandmother took up her place within its walls, and everyone found themselves in the rooms their hearts had quietly longed for. As I step inside, the wall before me bears the stern gaze of an oil portrait of my great-grandfather, reminiscent of those old homes where the patriarch's likeness once presided above the mantelpiece. In that weathered house, beneath a roof that had witnessed the weight of seasons and time, all four of her children found their spouses and futures. The house swelled with life as their families grew, its rooms resonating with the cries of newborns and the laughter of children. And then, just as sure as dawn follows dusk, much of the next generation also got married beneath that same roof. Over the span of half a century, that house has been a quiet witness to no fewer than ten weddings, six births, and four passings. Yet it stands like a lighthouse upon some rocks and waves, guarding the enduring spirit of my grandmother’s resilient Kumaoni blood, holding within its embrace the last of her descendants. I was among those born within the walls of that old house, spending the first eighteen years of my days there. I remember plucking guavas from the tree in the backyard, chasing squirrels up the old mango tree, and playing catch in the garden with my cousins. Each year, it seemed the house gave way a little more—perhaps a piece of the roof would cave in, the garden swing would fall off its hinges, or the hand pump would run dry, necessitating its closure. Yet every return to that place stirs a torrent of nostalgia within me. Each crack in the wall holds a story of the past. In my generation, the meaning of a house seems to have slipped away, lost between the lines of ledgers and the cold calculations of worth. It is not just the price of brick and mortar we fail to grasp, but the soul of a home. When our families call us to “come home,” it carries a weight far beyond mere words. We, who were born in the quieter corners of India, often find ourselves drifting to the big cities in search of education, careers, and the promise of a better life. Our lives have become a restless journey, packing up our belongings and moving on before we’ve even unpacked them. We rent spaces where the walls remain strangers, never feeling the warmth of our touch, for we know we won’t linger long enough to make them our own. And yet, we are fortunate to have experienced the security and stability once afforded to us by our home—a house that once held us close, a house that still stands, should we ever choose to return. As I stand on the brink of buying a place to call my own, I recognize a truth about my generation: most of us will likely live in apartments, especially if we make our lives in the sprawling cities. The cost of owning a house has climbed beyond reach, an echo of the old dream now blurred by the haze of rising prices. It is the success of those who came before me that has provided the stability and shelter I’ve known. I dream of the day when I might return that gift, passing on to my children, and perhaps to their children, the same strength and security that was once bestowed upon me, if fortune permits me to follow in the footsteps of those who came before. ““Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything,” he shouted, his thick, short arms making wide gestures of indignation, “for ‘tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don’t you be forgetting it! ‘Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for–worth dying for.” - Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell.

Lurching Towards Outright Despotism Posted on August 23, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, the world is lurching towards outright despotism, in the name of democracy. The elite, think tanks and experts, who are absolutely certain of the rightness of their cause, need totalitarian powers else they could be stymied. Their tyranny is our redemption. The ruling class believe that absolute government is not only just, but needed, in these times of chaos, technological wonders and potential. Rapid advances in technology threaten to free mankind from the need of government, creating chaos in the halls of power, that require extreme measures, else inhumanity can’t reach its fullest potential. Willing to use violence, lies and bio weapons to further the cause… our elites have the stomach to make the hard decisions… dragging us to a Star Trek like globalist utopia. Many innovative ideas are fluttering through the heads of our betters today. They’re mulling such notions as, global nuclear war is survivable, male and female are interchangeable, and that despotism is a legitimate form of government. Moreover, when the elite are convinced of a thing, they impose it on the rest of us, by whatever means necessary. For our own good of course. Modern rulers look back at history and see slavery was eliminated by the elite of the time. That those elites were religious, not secular elites, isn’t important in their chemically enlightened minds. So, the idea that despotism is a legitimate form of government makes perfect sense… if the despot(s) are as wonderful, flawless and wise as our elites are. Humility is for the lessers. The end justifies the means, or so Machiavelli said, in his letters to the Medicis. If the end is noble enough… then much evil is justified. Imagine a world where human nature itself had been overcome and Shangri La was established globally. No war, poverty or suffering of any kind. A world of peace and prosperity unrivaled even in the minds of our wisest sages. Eden if you will. If someone really truly believed that notion, they would be able to do the most heinous things, and sleep well at night. Because the work they’re doing is so wonderful. I’m sure that’s how the death camp guards, Young Turks, Khmer Rouge, and Red Guard justified their evils. The work may be dirty but the goal is beautiful. So goes the mental process that allows fiends to consider themselves saints. To people so driven, using biological weapons against their foe, is not only justified, it’s an obligation. Creating Covid and the vaccine that wasn’t was only the opening salvo. The experts are assuring us Monkey pox is next. If the future Star Trek utopia is at stake, isn’t subverting democracy worth it? The consent of the governed is a nice idea, but if it stands in the way of progress, then it’s just an idea. An idea that can be resurrected once the public agrees with the elite again. Law and justice, as Thrasymachus said, are cons the strong use to abuse the weak. To claim the weak deserve it. Our experts agree wholeheartedly, except they use law against their political foes, not the weak. Law is now a weapon in the hands of our rulers to protect the weak, themselves, from the strong, us. So, the world lurches step by shambling step towards global despotism, in the name of democracy. “Democracy” being a euphemism for a Star Trek like global utopia. A goal worthy of absolutely any atrocity. Things like free speech, consent of the governed and blind justice are road blocks to the goal, so must be subverted. The end justifies the means… or do the means taint the ends? Is any goal that requires atrocities to bring about really human hearted? What if the goal is impossible? The crimes against humanity wouldn’t be justified, they’d be crimes against humanity. Moreover, evil done is evil, regardless how the evildoer justifies it in their own spastically mental minds. In despotic governments, a crime is only a crime if the elite say it is… and the elite can’t be criminal, they’re the elite. Sincerely, John Pepin

It began at a time when it was obvious, at least to me, that large corporations, especially Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Media, and Big Retail were pushing leftist ideologies, socialist ideas, globalism and political correctness down our throats. And then, there were the organisations which I would like to call the self-appointed globalist governments — UN, WEF, WHO along with their WHOCCs. All of these organisations, as far as I am concerned, are agencies that seem on the surface to be doing good, but can be said to be subverting cultures, manipulating minds, and exerting significant influence over societal norms, and not necessarily for the best outcome for humankind. When Donald Trump ran for presidency in 2016, it became painfully obvious to me that it was no longer possible to speak freely about things I believed and cared about on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube and even LinkedIn. At that time, I had made a few posts on why I thought Donald Trump would become the next president and what I believed he could achieve. I had made several posts on other things such as the immorality of choosing to support LGBTQ ideas and lifestyles, feminism and political correctness and that being a real Christian demands of us that we stand against these things. Needless to say, I came against much opposition by people who had been brainwashed by the Big corporations and the influential members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of the USA. The Clintons and the Obamas had fooled the world. The media controlled by Soros worked to ensure that many minds were subliminally programmed to welcome communist ideas in the name of democracy. Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates were part of the global cabal that was influencing the world in ways we had never expected or imagined. Using technology, Big Pharma, Big Ag and leaders of nations to control what we think, say or do under the pretext of diversity or inclusion, sustainability or health security, and combatting misinformation. Posts that I made on social media were flagged as offensive, disinformation, removed or shadow banned. I was put in Facebook Jail for stating facts about my personal experience that did not reflect well on the LGBTQ community. If you are not part of their groupthink, you should not speak out about it. If you did, you would be threatened with potential loss of social capital. Well, I, for one, cannot be threatened this way. I have no problem losing every connection I have made over time since I had begun using any platform. I dropped Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Blogger and even LinkedIn. When clinical psychologist Dr Jordan B. Peterson announced Thinkspot in 2019, I was happy I had an alternative platform. In fact, there are now a plethora of alternatives. VK, OK.RU, MeWe, Gab, Rumble, LiveJournal, Telegram, etc. Although, I may not have as many contacts on these other platforms, I am happy that my time is used more fruitfully with likeminded people. And being among such people means I do not have to make my political inclinations or philosophical ideas more obvious and do not have to keep providing evidences to show that the leftist ideas are destructive and lead to hell. There are sufficient members of this community who already share ideas along those lines. To me, this allows me to spend my time doing more useful things, like sharing ideas and thoughts about subject matter such as science, mathematics, English language and things of interest, such as DIY, travels, culinary arts, etc. And so, this is what I will do with this platform. I believe my posts will be useful to members of this community and I think such articles will add to the variety of information this platform can carry. Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Peterson for his effort in developing this alternative platform. Going forward, let us build useful connections and be a part of each other's journey. Thank you for being a part of mine.

We’re pleased to announce that the thinkspot Writers’ Contest has returned! For our first contest in April, you shared some amazing, provocative content, and thinkspot wants to amplify quality thoughts like yours. For the September contest, we’re offering a chance at $900 in cash prizes, a lifetime thinkspot Writer’s membership, and a special feature in our Newsletter. We’re hope you enjoy our September writing contest, open to all current thinkspot Thinkers and other curious minds. Contest Details: First Prize: $500, lifetime thinkspot membership, and top placement in a thinkspot Newsletter. Second Prize: $300, 1 year thinkspot membership, and featured status in a thinkspot Newsletter. Third Prize: $100, and featured status in a thinkspot Newsletter. Submission Deadline: September 24th, 2024, 9 am US Eastern Time Zone (UTC - 4) Winners Announced: September 30th, 2024Eligibility: Applicants must register for a free thinkspot Writer’s account, or be existing thinkspot Writers. Entries must be published on thinkspot on the Writer's own account. Limit of one entry per participant. Entry title must be prefaced by “THOUGHTS ON BALANCING FREE SPEECH RIGHTS,” followed by a descriptive subtitle. Entries must be original works not published elsewhere. Entrants must be able to prove authorship of their submission. To be eligible for prize money, entrants must be able to receive bank transfers from Stripe, and link Stripe to their thinkspot account. Essay Length: 500-1000 words Judgment Criteria: Essays will be judged on their clarity, coherence, originality, relevance to the selected topic, and quality of research. Essay Prompt: THOUGHTS ON BALANCING FREE SPEECH: RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS, PLATFORMS, and GOVERNMENTS In today's digital age, the right to free speech faces complex challenges. Individuals are often targeted or silenced for expressing their opinions, while online platforms struggle to navigate the spread of misinformation that can mislead or manipulate the public. Meanwhile, governments worldwide are adopting increasingly sophisticated methods to enforce censorship laws, sometimes infringing on fundamental rights. How can we strike a balance between protecting free speech for individuals, maintaining the integrity of information on digital platforms, and allowing governments to ensure societal safety without resorting to undue censorship? Consider the ethical, legal, and social dimensions of this issue and explore potential solutions that honor the principles of free expression while fostering an informed and secure society. In 1000 words or less, please share your thoughts on balancing free speech with the responsibilities of individuals, platforms, and governments. How should freedom of expression be balanced with the need for government regulation to curb disinformation or assist in criminal investigations? What role should AI algorithms have in the tension between freedom and censorship? Who decides what qualifies as misinformation or disinformation? Should humor, satire, or memes be subject to legal restrictions? What would a balanced solution to these issues look like, and who should define it? How can we protect against the misuse of power by governments or corporations? These questions aim to provoke thoughtful consideration of this complex topic. Our panel of judges looks forward to seeing how you push the discourse ahead. Best of luck, The thinkspot team

Purgatory exists in Catholic theology because they understand the requirement for the human soul to be wholly sanctified to gain access to the ultimate presence of God. It’s not because Christ’s work on the cross was insufficient for salvation—such is the common Protestant objection. The question is, if Protestantism rejects the concept of purgatory, then how do they expect the imperfect human soul to be granted access to perfect union with God? Their answer: Christ as our intermediary wholly represents all souls who trust in Him; thus, it is not the perfecting of our souls that grants us access to the throne of God, but the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. If a soul needs further purification after death, they say, that accuses the blood of Christ of lacking the power and completeness necessary to bring the soul straight to perfect union. But this reasoning is a misunderstanding of the role of Christ’s sacrifice, of what it does and doesn’t do, not what it can or cannot. No one questions why the cross doesn’t automatically turn every human heart to complete devotion to God. Such would violate the human will, one would say. Yes it would, and why wouldn’t that be a necessary component every step of the path toward heaven? In other words, if a soul dies with imperfect devotion to God, why would they start the next life at the same place as another who is more perfect in their love? This reasoning of the Protestants is reflective of the heart of the Reformation, which, while arguably necessary, was predicated on a misguided focus: that the ultimate concern is of what is minimally required of the soul to enter paradise. I say the Reformation was necessary because it was a response to corrupted practices of Catholic doctrine; however, it was misguided due to the same reason: the movement was a correction of a fault, not an understanding of the true journey of the soul. Because the roots of Protestantism were concerned primarily with the minimal requirement for entry into paradise, they miss the point of purgatory: to continue the sanctification of the soul into a more perfect love that makes complete union with God possible, the same sanctification process one undertakes in this life. Now, what of the cross? If it doesn’t automatically bring one into perfect unity with God, what was its purpose? I argue it is no different than what is already stated in Christian theology: that the cross makes possible, and symbolizes, the soul’s death of the old and rebirth of the new. And it is in this new life that the road of sanctification is undertaken. Stated differently: the cross puts the soul on the road towards heaven, not automatically in it. I argue the cross was borne for that purpose, and Christ’s work was perfect and complete for that purpose. Nothing more. Furthermore, if we are to believe that “imputed righteousness” means “when God sees us, he sees Christ,” would that not devalue the individual soul and fail to take into account all its choices, formations, and places along the journey of sanctification? Would that doctrine not be guilty of the same thing accused of the pantheists, that individuality is erased in the final analysis? If we are to affirm the individuality of “the multitude of every tribe and tongue,” we must affirm it here as well. When God sees us, he sees us, accounting the formations of our desires and the state of our love for him. I would observe that C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce lends itself to what I am arguing (though I’m sure he would soundly rebuke me for misappropriation if we do meet someday). In his narrative, Lewis depicted sinners separated from Heaven not because they were locked out, but rather because they chose to have nothing to do with it. Those who enter Heaven do so freely because they want to be there. While Lewis clearly disclaimed that his narrative was not intended to be a literal description of how Heaven and Hell actually are, we can see his point: to Lewis, what keeps one out of Heaven are their thoroughly misordered loves, as Augustine would say; on the other hand, what brings one further up and further into Heaven, closer to God, is indeed their love for that great country and its King. There is one thing I would change about Lewis’ story (if I may be so presumptuous). In The Great Divorce, a simple bus ferries the souls between Heaven and Hell. Any soul who desires so may get on the bus and be taken up to Heaven. When they get off and experience the place, albeit its edge and not its fullness, they may just as easily get back on the trip back to Hell if they decide Heaven was not for them. I think Lewis made it too easy. What if, rather than a simple bus ride, the trip to Heaven involves climbing a dizzyingly tall mountain? The hike would take forever, but no worries: we would have all the time in the afterlife, after all. But the journey to Heaven would be one step in front of the other as we contemplate why we are even embarking on it in the first place. The climb would be tough, and many would give up before even tasting Heaven. But is that not the journey of sanctification? Are not the joys of perfect, surrendered love for God experienced only by the one who comes to that place? And here another objection may be: this purgatorial view of sanctification is nothing more than “works righteousness,” and it is unbiblical to think we could earn our way into Heaven. And you’d be right. But there are two problems with that objection: First, it’s a misunderstanding of what I am saying. I’m not saying we earn our way into heaven by means of purgatory, but rather, as Lewis portrays in his narrative, we get into heaven due to our love for it, which I believe grows on the road of purgatory. Second, such thinking reflects the modern Protestant peril of a “soft Christianity,” where they expect to reap all the benefits with none of the sacrifice. How can you expect to see Heaven when you have never shed a drop of blood for it? Let me state this plainly: Christ didn’t die so that you wouldn’t have to — he died so that you can do the same. Are you not called to take part in his death and resurrection? Are you not instructed to take up the cross as he did? If there’s one thing the Scriptures tell us, it’s that Heaven is built on the blood of those who spill it in faith and love.

The Upcoming About Face Posted on September 4, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, should Trump win, we’ll watch the fastest about face mankind has ever witnessed. Democrats will flip from demanding prison for election deniers, to, arguing that denying elections is a constitutional obligation. Exposing their hypocrisy to anyone with eyes willing to see. So absolute is the lack of self awareness of the left, they won’t even be able to understand their own hypocrisy, when it’s pointed out to them. I predict riots in every major city in America if Trump somehow wins. Despite the tsunami of election fraud that’s stacked up against him… and us. The progressives will call out their Brown Shirts, Antifa and BLM, to sow chaos, and ideally, make the nation ungovernable. Meanwhile, the same deep state that jails election deniers, will do an about face on election denying. With millions of illegal aliens set to vote, this will be the dirtiest election since the last one. They seem to get more corrupt and more corrupt election cycle by election cycle. Mail in voting is the pinnacle of corruption. With it’s sister peak of digital voting. Both are designed for election fraud. Then you have courts actually overruling the legislature and making it illegal to require voter ID, or even ask for citizenship, when registering to vote! Despite the US Constitution giving election powers explicitly to the legislature. In Post Constitutional Amerika, the courts have no need of the Constitution’s antiquated ideas. Between the courts and the administrative state, the legislature has become redundant… but dangerous. So must be controlled. By the FBI, CIA, along with mail in and digital election fraud. The deep loathing the American people now have for the elitist, globalist anti human faction, radiates from society like heat from a fire. Despite the blinding gaslighting of polls, lies and censorship, the progressive faction is more hated now than in the 1940s. When they exposed themselves as demons before. Even traditional democrat voters are fed up with the corruption, hypocrisy and anti humanism. In Europe, of all places, populist conservative parties are becoming ascendant. All adding up to make this year a landslide for the conservative faction in the US. Which the elite plan on stopping with election fraud. If that fails though… the progressive faction will turn to open violence again. As they did the first time Trump was elected… when they burned down DC. This time the progressives will burn down America in their wrath. Cities with strong democrat rule will be the hardest hit. As in the summer of love 2020, when democrats destroyed their cities, in “Fiery but mostly peaceful” riots, and passed Covid across the land, in their rage over Trump’s escaping the Russian collusion frame… pretending it was over a drug addict’s death by fentanyl, while in police custody. In 2017 the progressive faction burned down DC. Damage that I hear still hasn’t been repaired. If the election fraud fails and Trump wins the electoral college, the elite will go insane. Not that they’re actually sane now. But that madness will turn into wrath. Because they’ve broken every law there is, to steal from us, stay in power and limit their foes. The criminal elite are not only angry about losing power and privilege. but with their crimes they’re afraid of consequences. They are, after all, the worst criminals in human history. Tamerlane killed millions of Hindus mercilessly… but he didn’t create a virus that killed tens of millions. Hitler started the second world war… but he didn’t use biological or chemical weapons. John Wayne Gacey murdered little kids… but he didn’t sterilize them and manipulate them into suicide. These globalist elites in power today have no morals, ethics or standards. They’re literally demons. That’s why they’ll cross any bridge, then turn and burn it… to stay in power. The globalist elitist faction, is full of pride, fear and wrath. Such people are more dangerous than a pack of rabid dogs… and they can turn on a dime. Sincerely, John Pepin

In the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, Congress is not allowed to create any laws curbing the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. However, censorship and regulation of speech through "cancel culture" has continued to trend over the past few years to the point that clearly shows that people that appear to have free speech actually portray the illusion of free speech. For example, Elon Musk attempted to shatter the illusion of free speech when he bought Twitter almost two years ago. He was looking to create a platform where anyone could say whatever they wanted to on his social media platform that is now called X. However, governments from around the world have looked to censor free speech on X. Earlier this week, the government of Brazil blocked X from being used in the South American country. In the past, X has been forced to remove content from the platform in Turkey and in India. The illusion of free speech occurs whenever criticism is posted. Even though Musk is a billionaire, he still does not have enough money to pay for free speech. The illusion of free speech has permeated into the mind of Musk as well because anyone that is critical of Musk on X ends up being shadow-banned. Shadow-banning on social media platforms is not free speech; shadow-banning gives the illusion that free speech is maintained on social media platforms. An example of shadow-banning on X occurred earlier this week on the social platform when a person created videos on the site complaining about his horrible experience with the Tesla Cybertruck that he bought earlier this year. Then, he sent out some posts on X showing how those videos received thousands of views on TikTok, but less than a thousand views on X. He proved that he was shadow-banned by X. You can have free speech on X until you criticize Elon Musk or Tesla. The very reason that Jordan Peterson created Thinkspot was due to so many content creators being demonetized by social media platforms for previous things that were said in videos. He was fed up with the illusion of free speech on other social media platforms. Peterson was censored twice on Twitter back in 2022. The first time he left the site was in 2022 because he did not want to see fat women in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. He thought that he had free speech by saying that he did not want to see fat women in those pages, but he quickly learned about the illusion of free speech. Then, he was suspended again for calling Elliott Paige "Ellen Page" after she had a sex change. The backlash was so thick that Peterson was no longer allowed to continue his psychology work with patients in Canada. However, he is still on X under the illusion of free speech. He chose to raise himself up from being hopped up on benzos only for the illusion of free speech to try to keep him down. There's no point in balancing free speech because free speech is an illusion.

Leading questions, Loaded questions, Milgram questions, etc., can be fallacious, and even nefarious. No right has come more ‘under fire’ recently than that seemingly most pivotal concept: Freedom of speech, expression, and freedom of the press. Logical fallacies permeate contemporary mainstream discourse. Consider the proposition: ‘balancing free speech’. It inherently implies that the right to free speech ‘MUST’ be balanced. But, should it? Many have evinced this argument, not just after 1776 but even when Demosthenes delivered the Phillippi speeches in 4th Century Greece. So, where does this entitlement of “needing” to ‘balance free speech’ originate? Let’s gauge: “How can we strike a balance between protecting free speech for individuals, maintaining the integrity of information on digital platforms, and allowing governments to ensure societal safety without resorting to undue censorship?” [Implying some censorship is alright]. Furthermore, ‘How should freedom of expression be ‘balanced’ with the need for government regulation to curb disinformation or assist in criminal investigations?’ [Balance indicates parity, an equal value. So is free speech only as valuable as government regulation of misinformation?]. Herein lies some of the fallacies implicit in the propositions concerning the right to free speech, including the False Cause Fallacy, Begging the Claim Fallacy, Leading Question Fallacy, etc. But, we must begin by framing a crucial aspect of ‘Rights’. Do you know the first right enshrined in the Universal Charter of Government Rights? No, it is not freedom of speech. If the trick question escaped your notice, there is NO charter of government rights. That’s right. Governments have no rights, and they shouldn’t. Why? Because the very creation, existence, and maintenance of most rights exist to protect people against violations of liberty, typically through governmental abuse. When the Founding Fathers, Constitutional Convention delegates, etc., strove to enshrine these fundamental freedoms, they did it because they were cognizant of the inherent power imbalance between the individual citizen and the governing State. The ability of citizens to truly exercise their rights is what determines whether the accurate adjective to describe a republic is ‘constitutional’ or ‘banana’. Free speech is not just a right; it is the quintessential right, without which all other rights vanish. It’s the First Amendment for a reason. It’s the right most talked about in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This underscores its paramount importance and the need to protect it at all costs. For the false equivalency fallacies mentioned earlier, controlling misinformation, disinformation, etc., sure sounds noble. Here is the problem, though. There is no right to truth, information, etc., except where the government is involved. People can demand truth and information from the State because Popular Sovereignty is the concept on which every republic is based on. Government is a servant to the public, as much as people try to make it appear otherwise. But, people do not have the right to demand or procure truth from fellow citizens. We're all equal under the law and thus, coercing people to speak the truth would be a definite violation of free speech rights. It’s the right to free speech, not honest speech. [Of course, there are exceptions such as perjury and defamation, but once again, exceptions don’t make a rule] The exercise of any right cannot be made by violating the rights of another nor by coercion of another free citizen. That’s a Crime. Now, does that mean misinformation, disinformation, and faulty criminal investigations are not major crises? Of course not. They’re severe problems. Nevertheless, the fallaciousness lies in asserting that free speech is somehow the primary cause. On the contrary, who are the most malicious purveyors of criminal behavior, misinformation, and disinformation? When Noam Chomsky wrote about the Censorship Industrial Complex in his seminal book, Manufacturing Consent, who were the chief villains? When the Equal Justice Initiative and the Innocence Project successfully freed people from death row, who did they just defeat? When two innocent people were imprisoned for several decades for “assassinating” Malcolm X, who was the perpetrator? Why are secrets kept from the public in the name of “national security” when, in a republic, citizens should hold ultimate decision-making power? How do you make judicious decisions without the facts? Yes, there is no worse offender than the State. Power corrupts, and absolute power… you know the rest. This is why the ability to speak truth to power is so vital. Everything rests on this primigenial liberty. Now, let’s address one aspect of “free speech” restrictions: ‘hate speech’, ‘incitement’, ‘misinformation’, etc. Let’s highlight the principle underlying hate speech and incitement. In its simplest form, abolishing ‘hate speech’ and vilifying ‘incitement’ effectively places the responsibilities of a person’s actions upon the words of another. Yes, if the blame for a fully functional adult’s actions can be placed on the words of another (thereby legitimizing the inane and insane people who scream, “Speech is Violence”), then by definition, the person doing the action is not an autonomous, free, individual. They are not sovereign individuals. They’re slaves. Why are they then given all these rights? Why are all citizens considered equal under the law? We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have freedoms, rights, and equality under the law, and then censor free speech because words could manipulate people into committing certain actions. Does the State have the right to control people's actions? Aren’t crimes already punishable under the law? The consequences of an action should be borne by the enactors alone, not the incitor. Any other variation would be a gross violation of freedom and equality. It’s fundamental: if you are free then you and you alone are responsible for your actions. In the end, here are a few propositions to ponder over. In history, there has never been a tyranny where real free speech was allowed. Finally, and most unfortunately, today, there is NO country in the world where there is genuine free speech. None! Are we then living in a constitutional setup, or are we as a society slipping into anarchy when that most precious right will soon be peeled and trampled for good? References Herman, Edward S.; Chomsky, Noam. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 306. Kozyreva, A., Herzog, S. M., Lewandowsky, S., Hertwig, R., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Leiser, M., & Reifler, J. (2023). Resolving content moderation dilemmas between free speech and harmful misinformation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(7), e2210666120."The Universal Declaration of Human Rights vs. the US Constitution: What You Need to Know". USIDHR. 4 September 2024 Gould, Rebecca Ruth (15 November 2018). "Is the 'Hate' in Hate Speech the 'Hate' in Hate Crime? Waldron and Dworkin on Political Legitimacy". Jurisprudence. Holmes, Kim (22 October 2018). "The Origins of "Hate Speech"". heritage.org. The Heritage Foundation.Bennett, John. "The Totalitarian Ideological Origins of Hate Speech Regulation." Cap. UL Rev. 46 (2018): 23 Kreander, Miisa. "The Widening Definition of Hate Speech – How Well Intended Hate Speech Laws Undermine Democracy and the Rule of Law." (2022) Downs, Daniel M., and Gloria Cowan. "Predicting the importance of freedom of speech and the perceived harm of hate speech." Journal of Applied Social Psychology 42, no. 6 (2012): 1353–1375

The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. English is not an easy tongue. It is frequently confusing even for the literate. However, the First Amendment to our Constitution suffers from no such confusion. It’s plain enough for all to know exactly what it means! And yet, here we are being asked to consider the “balancing of free speech rights” when, in fact, in the United States, the Constitution clearly rejects any such concept! For the First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” the operative word here being “abridge.” According to the dictionary, abridge is presented – when associated with the law – as “intended to curtail a right or privilege,” while “curtail” is a verb meaning “to reduce in extent or quantity or to impose a restriction upon” something. Thus, taken together, obviously the First Amendment forbids the “abridging” of the freedom of speech and the curtailing of that “freedom” without exception! This interdiction cannot be denied and as our Constitution prohibits foreign laws and statutes from taking precedence over American law or being adjudicated in American courts – even in global matters – the issue is settled! Indeed, Americans are also prevented from advising other nations on this matter as these are not subject to our Constitution! Of course, there is that old adage invoked to “limit” what the Constitution says cannot be limited: “one cannot yell ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater!” People accepted that proviso (often expressed in courtrooms) as demonstrating that even speech is not under all circumstances, without restraint! However, today’s culture is afflicted with contentious nonsense designed to “abridge” our laws and silence our speech rather than protect what the Constitution has declared can be neither abridged nor silenced! According to the United States Constitution, no laws can be made to “balance” free speech rights as any such attempt would, of necessity, abridge that right! Yet, if someone speaks or writes or some “platform” presents a sentiment that “offends” the ever growing gaggle of giddy idiots on constant watch for all things “offensive,” there arises a public outcry that, in the past, would have only accompanied some great iniquity! Thus does our present culture inflate foolishness while trivializing wickedness! Therefore, is it even possible for an American, to take a position on this matter? Does considering the implementation of attempts to “balance the freedom of speech” imply our acceptance of the legal right to do so? Going back to our dictionary, “balance” is both a noun and a verb requiring action upon the object “being balanced” – in this case, freedom of speech. As this is forbidden under our Constitution, the very question is itself “questionable.” A platform may prohibit a criminal form of communication such as direct threats, but to be able – or forced – to remove posts because they are deemed “offensive” or to deny an individual access to a platform on the basis of his use of constitutionally protected speech – especially in today’s WOKE culture! – proves that the only things being “removed” are our constitutionally guaranteed liberties! No matter how staunchly defended, attempts at limiting speech in the name of “fairness,” – another idiotic criterion! – violates both our God given rights and our Founding principles. Further, there are two matters that prove the futility of the question itself! For it is obvious that there is no way to “balance” anything when dealing with the Left! How many reasonable “solutions” have been adopted in disputes between these two worldviews only for the Left to make further demands whose adoption eventually ends with the total capitulation of the Right? Thus, to speak about “balancing” these two irrevocable and irreconcilable worldviews is to abandon the path of reason! Worse, to seriously ponder this question as if there were a legitimate answer, is to condemn to oblivion what remains of the United States! Any attempt to “balance the freedom of speech” – however calculated to prevent that concept’s eventual extinction – invalidates not just the First Amendment but the Constitution itself. But this is not the first time that right has been assailed by our government! In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus without meeting any of the constitutional criteria required for him to do so! When dutifully challenged by the Supreme Court, Lincoln threatened the Justices with arrest and internment should they interfere! He also declared war without Congress, that body not even being in session at the time (see Article 1, Section 8: Congress has the power to declare war . . .). Further, he closed opposing newspapers, arresting and imprisoning their editors and finally, he made war upon eleven States that had constitutionally – therefore legally! – seceded from the Federal Union – treason under Article 3, Section 3 of that same document! Much of what is wrong with our country can be traced to men who decided that a sufficiently formidable and orchestrated “emergency” – Lincoln’s threatened “civil war!” – together with unrestrained federal power and a beguiled American public would – and actually did! – nullify that document that all Presidents take an oath to protect and defend – the Constitution of the United States of America! As a result, today, there are, for all intents and purposes, very few true “constitutional guarantees” remaining! Thus, we must be very careful about perhaps the greatest of those that do remain, our freedom of speech by recalling the cautionary words once spoken by the greatest of Americans: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington

Christianity’s greatest achievement is the conception of God. Its second greatest is the conception of the devil. While other religions have deities that personify various vices, most of them are portrayed as amoral, and few have gone to the extent that Christianity has to encapsulate the heart of evil in a single, malevolent figure — Satan. Rather than a mere philosophical description of sin, this tradition had decided that giving a face to evil is more effective and profound. And they are right. The figure of Satan has inspired countless works of imaginative genius, each a thesis on the nature of evil. In Milton, Satan is a complex and charismatic character who puts forth so convincing an argument against the regime of Heaven that one might begin to wonder if he is actually a misunderstood hero. In Dante, Satan is frozen in the deepest pit of Hell and possesses three faces that represent an unholy trinity. He is incapacitated by his thorough corruption, a monstrous king of Hell. The conceptualization of the devil is an achievement because it gave us something real to fight against. Satan has captured the imaginations of countless civilizations, weaving cautionary tales, philosophical treatises, and superstitious rituals. These interpretations are vivid and enduring, contributing to the personified archetype of evil, and they ultimately serve to render the abstract concept of sin in a concrete way that we can grapple with. But we must not fall into the trap of thinking Satan is an external force from which we are separate and on whom we can lay the blame for the sins of the world. Rather, the devil is within us, for we are our worst enemy. Christians understand this to a certain degree, given their insistence on the corruption of the human heart and our need for God to free us from it. (They still debate, though, on the doctrine of original sin). There is an awareness that the root of evil is within the human heart, despite the temptation to attribute it to an outside being. The enemy without is almost always the manifestation of the enemy within. Likewise, Christ is not an external savior in whom we have no part, but he is in us, representative of the redeeming power of the soul that walks in righteousness. William Blake observed that depictions of Satan, such as in Milton, are often more creative, engrossing, and passionate than descriptions of God, which are often strangely limited, monotonous, and even stifled. He suggested it is because what we call “evil” and “hell” find their roots in the creative and chaotic aspect of the human psyche. Satan in Hebrew means “accuser” or “adversary.” He is the spirit that stands before the Ideal and points out our failings and corruptions. He is the prosecutor against our souls. And aren’t we already familiar with this spirit? It is the voice in our heads that judges, criticizes, and deprecates us. It has a finger constantly pointing out the ways we fall short. It defines us by our shortcomings, that hinders us from rising above ourselves by shackling us to our sins. Sometimes it is helpful, but often it is corrupted and full of lies. The Accuser lives in our psyche. And he has a purpose. He questions our preconceptions of what we think to be true. He urges the shadow to rear its head and demand our attention. He is the trickster who introduces chaos into the established order, keeping us on our toes. He is the serpent in the garden. He is necessary. But of course, while the agent of chaos is necessary, it would be a mistake to put him on the throne. To do so would be to invite Noah’s Flood. The voice of the Critic requires us to find a higher truth to which we must be subject. The shadow of chaos invites us to integrate it into paradise. To cast him out of the garden would be to create demons. Onto Satan we have hauled all our darkest aspects. The twisted desires we suppress, the guilt of our impulses, the temptations of our lowest selves. Just as we consolidate the highest good we can conceptualize into the figure of God, so we put together the worst imaginable things into the creature of Satan. From him all evil flows, and to him all the fruits of evil return. We painted a picture of him, pointed at him, and named him the Enemy. He is the scapegoat. And somehow, despite our conjured hatred of him, despite how foreign we may try to make him seem, a part of us can’t help but find affinity with him. As those terrible eyes and twisted horns stare back at us, we sometimes get the sense, if we take the time to notice, that we are not gazing upon a foreign creature — but into a mirror. Originally published at https://nathanaelchong.webflow.io/articles/the-devil-in-the-mirror

AI means a lot of things to a lot of people. Usually what it means is not very well thought out. It is felt, it is intuited. It is either adored, worshipped or deemed blasphemous, profane, to be feared. In this article, I explore what society at large really means by artificial intelligence as opposed to what researchers or computer scientists mean. I want to clarify for the non-technical audience what can realistically be expected from AI, and more importantly, what is just unrealistic pie-in-the-sky speculation. I am worried that blind fear — or in some cases worship — of AI is being used to manipulate society. Politicians, business people, and media personalities craft narratives around AI that stir up deep emotions that they use to their advantage. Meanwhile, the truth is only to be found in dense technical literature that is out of reach for the ordinary person.What do we mean by intelligence? Is intelligence a purely human characteristic? Most people will consider some dogs to be more intelligent than others. Or dogs to be more intelligent than Guinea pigs, so clearly intelligence is something that an animal can have. If a dog can have intelligence, can a bird? How about an earthworm, or a plant? Where do we draw the line? There are many definitions of intelligence, but one that I like (from Wikipedia) is: "the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context“ Seems reasonable? Some people argue that, by this definition even plants can be intelligent. So why not computers? This is the intelligence to which AI researchers generally refer. Yet the reality is that when average people speak of or think about AI, they are not thinking about plants or animals. Most people would not get too excited one way or another about the idea that a computer might be able to operate at the level of a plant, a guinea pig, or even a dog. Equally, people do not really care of a machine can do what its creator intends it to do; what it is programmed to do. Handguns are created to kill people, and they do, yet no one worries that handguns will develop consciousness and kill all the humans - as they are "programmed" to do. If we are going to be honest, we must admit that what the average person means by "artificial intelligence" is really "artificially like a human", and what they worry about (or celebrate) is the possibility that AIs could spontaneously come up with motivations of their own.The human factor Motivation is key; human motivation has a different quality than that of all other animals, and this difference is arguably what makes humans unique. The great mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing had suggested that instead of asking what it is to be human — which he considered a practical impossibility — we could simply say: "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..." Turing's proposal was that if a computer program could pass a written interview without the interviewer realizing that they were interacting with a computer, then the computer could be said to be for all practical purposes an artificial intelligence that was human in character. However this does not really answer the question of whether a computer program could make the same kind of complex decisions in real time that a human does, whether it can have motivations that were not preprogrammed into it. Above all, a written interview encompasses only a very small part of human experience. We live in a world of action, and many actions have very real and immediate consequences. The decision of whether or not to walk down a dark alley is a complex one, and many of the factors that influence our decision are unknown. Every day, we make decisions without knowing all the data, and the fact that the human race survives and thrives is indisputable proof that on the whole we are amazingly successful at doing this — if one defines success as survival.Value making machines How we pull this trick off is a matter of debate. But most serious scholars would agree that it is almost unavoidably the case that the human propensity for assigning value is at the heart of things. Humans are "value making machines" and we do it at a speed that no computer network could hope to match. If you hear an unexpected sound, you will have a reflex action in 170 milliseconds. To put this in perspective: it is 30 milliseconds faster than Google's recommended time for the first byte of data to hit your browser after you click on a link, and Google recommends a 500 millisecond time for the page to finish loading after the first byte. Loading a web page is a trivial action for a computer, and still it takes more than twice as long for the computer to do this as it does for your brain to figure out whether an unexpected noise is threatening (a snapping twig or a metallic sound) or delightful (ice cream truck bells or a child's laughter) — which by the way; it does instantly and with virtually no data at all. Identifying something as threatening or delightful is what we mean by assigning value, and it is something that we do instinctively, automatically, "without thinking". Yet without doing it, we would be unable to "think" as we know it. Say you are thirsty; you must solve the problem of what to drink, then you must solve the problem of getting it. Suppose your choice of what to drink is between pond water and fresh sparkling well-water. You are thinking right now that obviously we want the well-water. But what if you are an escaped prisoner, and the pond water is safely out of site in the forest, and the well is in a town square where you might be seen? Now you are thinking pond water. You are motived by thirst, but you are more highly motivated to remain free. This is because the value you place on staying free is much higher than the value you place on the freshness of your water. Human motivation is completely dependent upon values. A thirsty dog will simply drink from the first available water it finds, because its motivation is survival, unaffected by values. Let's consider an example unrelated to survival: would you push a button that would definitely kill one person, or would you refuse to push it even if it meant that 10 people might die. Your thinking about this question is not in any related to your own physical survival, yet it has a moral urgency that few people could deny. Your thinking will be entirely directed by the values that you assign while evaluating your options.Where do these values come from? The truth is that we don't know. For some it is a question faith. Sincerely religious people belive that our values are a reflection of God's will. The few people who truly believe in evolutionary theory and all of its implications would say that our values are that/those which allow(s) us to survive and which consequently perpetuate itself/themselves. Almost everyone else holds the view that values are a self-evident truth. That we have these values because we all have them; it is just obviously so. As Sam Harris puts it: "When we really believe that something is factually true or morally good, we also believe that another person, similarly placed, should share our conviction." As far as a claim to understanding goes, this is weak tea. It provides no useful grounding for explaining why some values are culturally dependent, while others seem to be universal or nearly so. It does not explain the origin of values, and so, for the most part, the religious and the evolutionists notwithstanding, we have no useful explanation of how values work. And it is in values that we find the consciousness gap. In the above example you are motivated by thirst, a biological factor. An AI, equipped with the appropriate sensors, could also have that sort of motivation, for example the need to charge a battery that is running low. But what motivates you to take a picture of something beautiful to share with your loved ones, or to argue politics with your friends? What motivates you to watch a scary movie or to learn a sport? What about the button pushing example? On what basis could a computer make a decision like that without a human first providing values such as one life is worth less than ten, or that killing is wrong no matter what the circumstances. Our morality, our ability to assign value in the blink of an eye, has evolved over millions of years. How would a computer — in a single generation mind you, because they have natural reproductive mechanism — arrive at a moral grounding on its own, without a blueprint first being provided by a human? Would we even want it to? Human history suggests that tens of thousands of generations were required before we arrived at what we now consider civilized behaviour. Would we really want a race of AIs to make the same slow and painful march towards civilization? Sure we could give them a "jump-start" but then we are back to the consciousness gap: if we program in the jump start, basically programming in the values of some human, can the AI be said to truly have human-like consciousness, capable of spontaneous motivations? As you may have guessed; I believe the answer is probably not.Wherein the danger This is not to say that AI is totally and completely uninvolved with anything dangerous or any area for concern. The use of AI is no more and no less subject to the law of unintended consequences than any other field of human endeavour. We can be absolutely certain that the use of AI for things such as curating the content of your social media feed will lead directly to unforeseen results that many people do not like. This is not due to any inherent quality of AI. It is the nature of the world in which we live. It is inherent to human decision making, and whether that decision is to import Cane Toads into Australia (to control pests), or to use AI to make automated stock purchases, the overwhelming probability is that catastrophe will ensue.Party tricks We cannot imagine trying to present the "button problem" to a dog. We have no reason to believe that a dog would have any moral framework within which to make the problem relevant, no reason to believe that dog would care one way or another. We have no more reason to believe that we could present this problem to an AI than to a dog. We have no evidence at all that any AI anywhere has a moral framework guided or informed by the sort of spontaneous value-making that marks humans. It is irrelevant that computers can calculate faster than a human or can predict certain classes of problems faster or better. Winning a chess game against a human is a landmark in programming and computer science, but it is of little consequence in the real world. The ability to calculate a very large number of permutations within a very strict, and very limited, set of rules is in no way indicative of general intelligence or the ability for a computer to develop consciousness. Computers being able to triage and diagnose medical conditions as well as — or possibly better than — human doctors is also not quite as impressive as it sounds. To be sure it is very helpful to automate checklists and decision trees; in a medical emergency a computer is faster than cracking a book. And it is true that without these checklists, humans are prone to all sorts of perceptual and cognitive biases, but you would be very wrong if you assumed that the AI that can do triage can also decide if the shadow in front of your car is a cardboard box or a child on a tricycle. Sensationalism sells. The sky is always falling, and the failure of last week's prophecies of Armageddon (the “Y2K bug" or New York City’s West Side Highway under water by 2019) never seem to slake people's thirst for this week's prediction of impending doom. The same can be said for sensationalist idealism. The repeated failure of utopian ideologies to actually produce the predicted earthly paradise seems in no way to hinder the convictions of the true believers that this time...AI is nowhere near as exciting, or mysterious, or dangerous, or magnificent, as it promoters and detractors would have you think. It has become for the most part a branch of the mathematics of probability, glorified actuarial work. It has all the sex appeal of an otaku or anorak lecturing on their favorite subject. It is a one trick pony. In short: it is nothing to worry about or get excited about. We return you to our regularly scheduled program.

Healthcare Posted on September 7, 2024 by john Dear Friends, It seems to me, the third rail of medicine is saving lives, and costing big pharma. Because it’s not only big pharma that benefits from sickness and death… but the elite. Who, oddly, seem to live to extreme old age themselves? Probably nothing. There’s no money in curing disease… the money is in long term treatment. Monthly income. Cure a disease and you get paid once, treat it, and you get paid for years. That’s why there will never be a cure for cancer. Well, there probably is, but it’ll never see the light of day, since it would cost the healthcare industry tens of billions of dollars a year. There’s a reason it’s more profitable to spend money on lobbying than R&D. Of course, I’m not a doctor, and would never presume to give medical advice. This is my opinion about incentives pertaining to our health. I have no idea if supplements help, do nothing, or hinder. It’s hard to trust anyone nowadays. We do know that the FDA, CDC and WHO, are bold faced liars though. They lie when the truth would serve them better. Proven by the Covid and “vaccine” debacle. The lies, and censorship to protect those lies, were thick as tar. So we know who we can’t trust. The proven liars say supplements are worthless. On the other hand, how are we supposed to trust some hippy’s anecdotal claim of benefit? As the wielders of empirical evidence can’t be trusted, and those with differing narratives are shady, what are we to think? I try to cross reference as much as possible. Verify the hippy’s claims with empirical studies. Because, I’ll trust a hippy hopped up on weed… before I’d trust a liar. (Not that Dr Berg is a hippy or hopped up). I’m pretty certain that exercise helps. In my anecdotal experience, those who have maintained their weight, and kept active, stayed healthy longer. The exceptions always being cancer and accident victims. Then again, you don’t see many 400 pound men racing motocross or riding super bikes. So in that case obesity is protective. Nevertheless, keeping active and in decent shape, is crucial to being healthy. Which is maybe why our kids are being told an obese inactive lifestyle is healthy. To harvest more profits from them. The fatter and sicker we are, the more money we’ll spend in the healthcare system. Doctors have yacht payments too. Though I’m not sure it really is in the self interest of the healthcare system, to remove largess from their patients, instead of tumors. It’s probably nothing… that the uber rich tend to live to extreme old age. With few if any of the issues everyone else has. Like George Soros. Maybe they have the best genes, perhaps it’s clean living, or baby blood. Regardless of why, the fact is, they do. Not all the uber rich. I bet Elon Musk hasn’t been given the forever juice, like Steve Jobs wasn’t. Those who don’t play the game don’t get the juice, or whatever it is. One of my best friends since childhood was struck in the head while logging, and the blow triggered an aneurysm. The same time, an old wealthy politician had a stroke, triggered by a similar aneurysm. She was well taken care of and walked out of the Hospital. While Barry died a year later in a coma in his 30’s, due to a lack of care. Who you are effects the level of care you get. If someone came out with a pill that cured everything and increased our lives to immortality, that person would be killed immediately, in an unfortunate lab accident, and the pill memory holed. Because such a thing would harm the elite profoundly. Old people are a cistern of knowledge. You can’t memory hole a thing if people remember it. You have to drain the cistern first. The elite want a diminishing population. Improving our health would only increase the numbers of us hoi polloi. Plus, it diminishes the utility of wealth, if everyone can have perfect health. Then there’s the loss of billions of dollars of profit from the health care system. For these and a myriad of other reasons, the incentive for the health care system and elite, is to keep us sick, stupid, fat, lazy, depressed and dying young. Sincerely, John Pepin

Hedonism is something that comes up in Peterson’s talks regularly. The Must talk was the last one that comes to mind. It didn’t get much off the ground from what I remember. What is a guy with three wives, Western style, going to have to say against hedonism? It would be like getting an admonishment from Trump for jumping into the mud wrestling pit. It is not as if pleasure is not a big part of the lifestyle of the rich and famous, but the difference between a Musk and someone who spends their hours in video games, fantasy football and porn is not the lack of hedonism on behalf of Musk. It is the lack of vision, the forfeiture of desire really, the resignation of hope of fulfillment of what would give us most pleasure, on behalf of basement dwellers. At any rate, I really can’t get worked up against hedonists, those who live to party, those who study the age old redneck question of whether there is such a thing as too much fun. Of course it come all crashing down with the cancer diagnosis, but a life of austerity is not likely able to discern meaning in the wake of your child’s suicide any better than a life of fun. Asceticism on the other hand, the lifestyle of the severely virtuous, of the desert saints and castrates, is what makes us cruel. Turning our passions for cruelty inward hones them, sharpens them. Hairshirts dull the empathetic senses to another’s discomfort likewise. Granted mud wrestling is immature and shallow, but nobody died of pleasure. Pleasure is the principle that drives life. Pleasure is something that we should want for each others, as we would want to be treated ourselves. We live in an age of moral police already. Too much morality, too much willingness to wear the hair shirt of guilt, too much self abnegation of the body through cutting, then anorexia, also destroying it with unbridled overeating, white guilt, simps for Kamala, abortion for Gaia, the asceticism impulse is much stronger in this society than any Christian society previous. Cruelty is the offspring of asceticism, and adding two drops of hedonism to every recipe is the antidote to cruelty. The offspring to hedonism, ultimately, is children. The newborn infant is the ultimate hedonist and he is the one that is the call to pleasure.

Village of Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard is currently the worst mayor in America and could go down as the worst mayor in American history. Here are some of her low lights since she declared herself the "super mayor" after she was elected in 2021. She set up a 24/7 police security detail because she claimed that she was unsafe in a town of only 6,000 people. This detail cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to have the officers work overtime solely to drive her around town to work and to the store. She set up a non-profit organization that she started by taking $150,000 out of the village funds. She refused to approve business licenses and permits to any owner in the village that refused to pay her a bribe on the side. She established a local ordinance to reduce the annual salary of the mayor from $200,000 to $20,000 only after her tenure as mayor is completed. She set up this ordinance to ensure that nobody would have any interest to run against her when the monetary incentive was taken away from the opposition. She had political billboards put up all over the southern suburbs of Chicago. In Illinois, it is illegal to use billboards for political use when someone is an elected official. These billboards were paid for by taxpayers' money. In her three years as mayor, she has not paid any bill that is owed by the Village of Dolton. She paid for trips for her and her entourage to Las Vegas and to Mobile. During the trip to Las Vegas, one of the males in the group sexually assaulted one of the females in the group in a hotel room. She is currently being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). Results of an independent investigation has shown that when she became mayor, the village had a surplus of $5.6 million. Currently, the village is now in debt by $3.65 million. She used the village's credit card to buy $40,000 worth of furniture from Amazon.com and Wayfair.com for her own personal use and bought $10,000 worth of clothing and other personal items from Target and Walgreens. If you can think of any mayor worse than her, then please leave a comment.

The parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) is one of the most famous of Jesus’ parables, but there is a part of it that I have never heard anyone address: The Father’s role in what happens. Many scholars and teachers will point out that this parable is more about the Father’s role than it is about either of the two sons. I agree, but one thing bothers me about this parable when looking at it with God representing the “father” character: God orchestrates the entire course of events. What I mean by this is that the younger son comes home, and the last thing he is looking for is a party. He was more hoping to be one of the servants. The older son would have completely agreed with the younger one. But the Father character flips the tables. He honors the son that was not seeking honor, and he knows that this will bother the older brother. This entire situation is orchestrated by the Father. God uses this as one additional example of those who seek honor being humbled, and those who humble themselves being honored. There are ample examples of Jesus’ sharing this truth in all four gospels. Why does this bother me? I’m not sure, but perhaps it is because I can understand the older brother’s perspective. If I had stayed faithful to God, and it looked like He had displaced me for someone who had fallen away, I could easily understand having annoyed feelings. If I were in the older brother’s shoes, I would have been offended at the idea of the younger brother being given a feast of honor. But the truth is that God wants the older brother, and all of us, to understand something deeper about Him – and His character. He is focused on the moment, and this moment holds the return of His lost son. In any moment with this event, would you expect a loving father to react any less? This post first appeared on ReflectiveBibleStudy.com What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Leave your thoughts below.

Last Friday, Aug. 9, the State Supreme Court heard a case that argued the secretary of state had not properly validated signatures on the seven citizen’s initiatives submitted this year. The plaintiffs were seeking an injunction to keep four of the initiatives off this fall’s ballot. You may recall that three initiatives were passed during the legislative session last spring, and four other initiatives are scheduled to appear on our ballots for the fall general election. With the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court justices COULD have prevented the initiatives from appearing on our November ballots. Fortunately for the voters, the justices ruled against the plaintiffs, Defend Washington and Washington Conservation Action Education Fund. Any Means Necessary The powerful progressive groups fighting against the initiatives want to maintain power over the voters no matter what. Let’s Go Washington founder Brian Heywood released a statement that said “Their latest move is a blatant attempt to silence the 1.2 million [unique] voters who said they want choice on the ballot this November. Hanauer and friends are afraid if the voters have a chance to vote this November, it would disrupt the special interest profiteering pipeline they have created… Vote Yes, Pay Less, and let’s fix what’s broken.” Ironically, the same powerful people who support mass illegal immigration, all mail-in voting and no voter ID, are now ALSO arguing that the signature verification process used by the Secretary of State for the initiatives was NOT STRICT ENOUGH! It’s not about principals or good governance. Power-hungry progressives will use any means necessary to maintain power and control. When they think no voter ID will will elections, that’s what they fight for. When they think MORE voter verification will stop initiatives, that’s what they fight for. If progressives thought strict voter ID would win elections and allow them to maintain their control of state government, Washington would have the most strict voter ID laws in the country. Ferguson and Hobbs conspire to disenfranchise the people Oddly, the initiative sponsors, including Let’s Go Washington founder Bryan Heywood and the organization’s attorneys, were unaware of the case before the state Supreme Court which was about to decide the fate of the initiatives until a reporter called them for comment. The original case was filed against the secretary of state, Steve Hobbs. The attorney general, Bob Ferguson is the attorney who defends the secretary of state. Washington Gun Law President William Kirk pointed out in his podcast that Ferguson and Hobbs should have contacted Let’s Go Washington or its attorneys to let them know about the lawsuit in order to get their assistance in defending the initiative process. “I can assure you that if any other attorney general had been in that spot, and absolutely and positively wanted to make sure the will of the Washington voter was properly defended, they would have got Let’s Go Washington involved in it,” Kirk added. It’s as if Ferguson and Hobbs were conspiring with the plaintiffs to disenfranchise the millions of voters who participated in the initiative process. It’s a disgrace. If Bob Ferguson won’t properly defend the rights of the voters, is he the right person to become Washington’s next governor? Should Steve Hobbs remain as the Secretary of State? I think not. Vote Yes, Pay Less Fortunately, the four initiatives will appear on our general election ballot. Just remember the phrase “Vote Yes, Pay Less,” and don’t let deceptive advertising trick you into voting against them. I-2066 will stop the natural gas ban and protect energy choice. “This measure would require utilities and local governments to provide natural gas to eligible customers; prevent state approval of rate plans requiring or incentivizing gas service termination, restricting access to gas service, or making it cost-prohibitive; and prohibit the state energy code, localities, and air pollution control agencies from penalizing gas use.” I-2109 will repeal the capital gains tax and protect small business owners and innovators. Small business owners who take risks, work hard, and create jobs for our communities should not be punished for their success and growth. Taxation is theft. Vote yes and pay less. I-2124 will allow workers to opt out of another bad tax supporting the state-run long-term care insurance scheme. Workers should be able to choose to participate in the government program, rather than be forced to participate in a program that they may not even be able to use. Remember to vote yes, and pay less. Finally, I-2117 will stop the hidden gasoline tax which was imposed by the Climate Commitment Act. “This measure would prohibit state agencies from imposing any type of carbon tax credit trading, including ‘cap and trade’ or ‘cap and tax’ programs, regardless of whether the resulting increased costs are imposed on fuel recipients or fuel suppliers. It would repeal sections of the 2021 Washington Climate Commitment Act as amended, including repealing the creation and modification of a ‘cap and invest’ program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by specific entities.” If you want more money in your wallet after a fill-up, and lower prices on goods in your grocery store, vote yes to pay less. The special interest groups are terrified of YOUR vote, and will be working hard until the election to confuse you and discourage you from voting YES on the initiatives. For all initiatives, vote yes to pay less. Nancy Churchill is a writer and educator in rural eastern Washington State, and the state committeewoman for the Ferry County Republican Party. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on thinkspot, Rumble and Substack. Support Dangerous Rhetoric Sources: 1) BREAKING: Secret effort to invalidate initiatives FAILS, [un]Divided with Brandi Kruse, 8-9-2024, https://bit.ly/4danTyh 2) BREAKING: Did Bob and Steve just try to Disenfranchise the Washington State Voter?, Washington Gun Law, 8-9-2024, https://bit.ly/4fA7k0p 3) State Supreme Court rejects latest attempt to throw out initiatives, Lynnwood Times, 8-10-2024, https://bit.ly/3WKwMYa 4) Lets Go Washington, https://bit.ly/3S70dBy

During Jesus’ first commission to His disciple, He shares a brief idea about how spiritual loyalty works. On the surface, this idea sounds obvious, but even with all its obvious characteristics, this idea is often ignored. In His first message directly to His group of twelve followers after bringing them together as a group, Jesus includes the following big idea: “Those who declare publicly that they belong to me, I will do the same for them before my Father in heaven. But those who reject me publicly, I will reject before my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32-33 GNT) There are several layers of this truth that are worth paying attention to. The first is that this concept relates to public declarations. This is significant because while what we do in private for God is important, what we live, say, and do for God is even more important. If we live completely for God in private, but then live completely counter to God’s will in public, then we have missed the truth about discipleship. Declaring our allegiance to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in public is rarely ever popular, but it is what Jesus says is important. This does not mean that we stand on a street corner with a bull horn declaring to everyone who is within earshot that we belong to Jesus, but instead that we don’t shy away from living our beliefs and siding with God’s plan for our lives even if others around us choose to live differently. Declaring publicly means that we let people know that Jesus is the reason for us living the way we do, whether this declaration is to a stadium full of people or to one or two friends we are with away from the crowds. But if we have messed up and rejected Jesus publicly, have we closed the door to Jesus ever accepting us again? Not at all! Jesus’ star disciple, Peter, is known for speaking before thinking, and this character trait got Peter in trouble more than the other disciples. Throughout all the gospels, Peter is the disciple who is known as the one who publicly rejected Jesus, not just once, but three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest. In this event, Peter is our example for what happens when someone who has followed Jesus chooses to publicly reject Him. Following Jesus’ resurrection, we learn the answer: Jesus invites Peter to be His disciple again. (John 21:19 GNT) For those who have messed up or fallen away from God and Jesus, the invitation is open to come back to Him. This invitation won’t always be open, because Jesus may return before we take the chance or our lives may end before we have made the decision. While the invitation is open, we would be wise to take Jesus up on it. When we publicly declare that we belong to Jesus, He will draw us to God and we will be saved for eternity. This declaration comes with a wiping away of our past sins, and it marks the beginning (or restart) of our live with God! This post first appeared on ReflectiveBibleStudy.com What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Leave your thoughts below.