What Is A People?

This question is very difficult to answer with complete and total accuracy. No one single socio-political factor, standing alone, can isolate and identify any exclusive and monolithic aggregate of human beings forming a race, nation or society. On the contrary, there are several factors collectively responsible for the cohesion of such a group. Some of these factors are obligatory(sine qua non), while others are discretionary.

The first obligatory factor of social cohesion is a common language. Without a common linguistic communication system, society will not inter-act for very long. A second obligatory factor is a common set of socio-political and moral values, perhaps expressed through religious institutions and activities of one kind or another.

Racial solidarity is a discretionary factor in defining sovereign nationhood: most of the world's nations go this route, but a few--including the United States of America--do not. Several races of people had a historic hand in bringing America into its existence.

Today, however, new immigrants from all over the world collectively threaten to end the identity of the American solidarity as a single people united in a common purposiveness. This is because the new immigrants abjectly refuse to assimilate to the culture of those Americans having deep ancestral roots in American soil.

Past historic examples prove that not all who are within the national political boundaries of a country are one and the same people. Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey are neither Arab nor Turk. Basques living in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France are neither Spanish nor French. Tibetans living within mainland China are not Chinese.

Israel is interesting: peoples from all over the world, having lived in its many divergent countries for several centuries, have immigrated in recent decades to that country on basis of claim of kinship with the people who lived there in ancient Bible times, two thousand and more years ago. Indeed, many eyebrows would be raised, to see actual familial historic records maintained continuously without hiatus for two or more millenia, to corroborate that claim. DNA blood-type comparisons, too, are dubious at best after being away from the alleged ancestral homeland for so long. Nevertheless, the existence of a Hebrew language and a religion called Judaism, both from Bible times, is indisputably well-documented and somehow continuous today.

History is full of examples where one group of people have adopted the language and culture of other peoples at a later date--a language and culture not originally their own. For example, very few black African-Americans and American aboriginals(incorrectly called "Indians") still speak fluently as native languages the languages of their ancestors from five centuries ago and earlier. QUESTION: Who and where are the Twelve Lost Tribes of the house of Israel, referred to in the Bible book of Revelations?

As best as can be expected, a people is defined as a distinct group of human beings sharing a common language and a common socio-political structure and agenda.

Finally, what about individuals who "swim up-stream" against the collective group's socio-political norms? Where is the line to be drawn between "politically incorrect" and "criminal", in terms of threat to the integrity of the society in question? There is always a conflict between prerogatives of individuals, and those of the group in the name of social unity and cohesion. So far, tolerance of differences between individuals and their group affiliation as a whole? Can collective society benefit from "wayward" individuals who march to the cadences of a different drummer? What about great individual writers, scientists, inventors, explorers, music composers and artists? These, and not government and political officials, are the people to whom the rest of the group should look as sources of inspiration by which to define group identity.

-LKM

Christmas: Bah, Humbug?

Is Christmas, December 25, really a humbug, as Ebeneezer Scrooge said it is?

There is no mention anywhere in the Bible as to the true birth date of the Lord Jesus Christ. The date of December 25 represents a compromise between year-end Roman pagan festivities and the early Christian church. The church sought to appease Roman paganism in order to stave off intense persecution at Roman hands, by adoption of December 25 as the date of celebration of Jesus Christ's birthday.

More important is the modern role of Christianity in society. Is it just a one-day, one-time flurry of kindness and good-will in an otherwise mean-spirited and ferocious dog-eat-dog world? Or does that one special day serve as a role model for ideal interpersonal relations throughout the entire year? The true value of Christmas is decided by the extent to which we permit the spirit of Christmas Day to permeate our lives daily all year long. Do we always love our neighbors as ourselves? "I am going to raise your salary, Bob Cratchet! Put some more coal onto the fire!"

-LKM

LKM Epistle To The Distaff Side

In an earlier BLOG article, I quoted John Wayne a.k.a. "The Duke", to say I totally agree with his pronouncement on the role of women in our society, that they should be free to do anything they want to----as long as they have supper ready for us men when we come home from work! Also, my BLOG article concerning the limits of freedom apply equally to both sexes as per the U.S. Constitution 14th Amendment. In no way should women be prevented from their pursuits of happiness, so long as by so-doing, they inflict no injuries upon the persons or properties of men.

This writer has on numerous occasions entertained the fascinating question in his mind: what if we male chauvinist pigs indeed turned over every ruling socio-political and financial institution in America over to the women--lock, stock and barrel--to run completely their way, while we male chauvinist pigs just rolled over in the mud of our pig styes and went back to sleep? Would the women of America--and even of the world--then be happy? Or, do women, at the end of the day, confess that they want--and even need--the good-old-boys' club to be around, to spice up their lives and make them interesting? This writer has doubts about any inevitable feminine felicity at the prospect of sexual segregation in our society, to the clear advantage of women. This is because women are just as individual and just as divided as men are, concerning their goals, tastes, preferences/prejudices, motives and tempraments. In total absence of men, there would be female power-and-prestige struggles of equal frequency and ferocity as those seen among men. Differences in age and generation would be a major contributor to such struggles, and intergenerational conflict knows no boundary of gender. That is because old people have within their memory vivid recollections of experiences, of which the younger have no-such recollection for similar chronological point-of-reference.

What about the issue of sexual freedom? Here again, freedom cannot be separated from individual responsibility. Whatsoever a woman may choose--be it monogamous or polygamous sexual relations--she cannot and should not expect the general public to relieve her of any adverse consequences visited upon her by her own choice of behaviour. She must pay for her own abortions and STD medical treatments--if any--as it is not the role of government to rescue people from the consequences of their own idiotic and fool-hardy choices. Government must protect people from the ferocities of one another, but not from the foolishness of themselves. I will get my hands off the woman's body if government, acting on her behalf, will get its hands out of my bank account.

Women size up men to assess their sexual desirability just as much as men do towards women. Monica did not choose Bill ("I did not have sex with that woman.")Clinton for nothing! In the Garden of Eden, Eve pulled Adam down into sin first! So, feminists in vain play the role of innocent victim here, whether or not they know, in this case, what "is" is!

What about women and military service for America? This question harks back to the issue of whether or not women are the "weaker sex", and so whether men should protect them from various evils and dangers. Feminists scoff in abject contempt at this idea as something rooted in romantic legends from days of yore, not in step with modern realities. It is they, who push so hard for equality between the sexes, for both opportunity and responsibility in the military. In such case, the military should make no categorical concessions for women, pertaining to combat training and readiness if, as feminists claim, there are no fundamental differences besides reproductive mechanism, between men and women. Equality means equality of obligation, as well as equality of priviledge. QUESTION: Would American politicians be so quick to commit America to war, if prospects were likely for equal number of both male and female dead military personnel returning home in flag-draped caskets? Are women's lives more valuable than those of men, such as to exempt them from this possible scenario? If so, why?--if equality between the sexes is the American ideal? Or, does the chivalrous male dragon-slayer rescuing the fair but helpless damsel in distress still occupy a higher level in American socio-political consciousness than mere children's story-book fables from Never-Neverland? Several foreign countries have full equality between the genders in their respective militaries, without second thought.

Some men recoil in deep resentment at the thought of having a wife earning much more money than they do. This BLOG writer, however, rejects the notion of money as the measure of a man--or of a woman. Capacity to love, in complete disregard of that financial consideration, is far more important. After all, pornography king Larry Flynt is undoubtedly among America's wealthiest citizens, but is still a slime-and-scum bag anyway!

Finally, the writer of this BLOG basically loves women and wants only the best for them. Still, oddly, he does not trust them beyond his fingernails, to love him in return. The feminist movement of the 1970s and the 1980s persuaded him to write off a priori without second thought all possibility of marriage to any fellow-American woman. Guilt-by-association, for how some other men horribly mistreat women, was also a powerful dissuader to his mind. Et tu, Brute? America's 50% national divorce rate likewise persuaded this writer not to marry in haste and repent at leisure! He freely acknowledges himself to be eons away from being adequately possessed of traits by which to commend himself to the female world, in context of the national divorce rate. Marriage was for 46 years his Mission: Impossible, but he did finally decide to accept it--hoping and praying to God he would not self-destruct later for having done so.

-LKM

The Utter Futility of Christian Denominationalism

"There is none righteous; no, not one.....for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.(Romans 3:10-23)" "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.(James 2:10)"

The Bible declares with these words total human incapability to win justification to God's salvation by his/her own works and devices. Sin is sin, and so it makes no difference in the sight of God, which or how many sins we commit: committing one sin is breaking the whole law of God, even as a rock thrown to impact a glass window at just one point will smash the entire window. Certain church denominations claiming to be Christian declare only their fellow co-religionists, under the protection of their denomination, can and will be saved by virtue of their church denomination affiliation. But this notion is belied by the scripture of Luke 23:42-43, recounting the act of pardoning of sin by Jesus Christ for a criminal on a cross next to Him who, in all likelihood, had never before been to a church, temple or synagogue religious worship service a day in his life.

"No man can come to me, except the Father which has sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.(John 6:44)" Words attributed in the Bible by this scripture to Jesus Christ. Justification and salvation of man, then, is entirely the prerogative of our Lord Jesus Christ. Human contribution to it is a big zero, as man has no power to oblige God to "keep His end of the bargain" in exchange for anything men may do. It is by faith alone, and not by works--including affiliation with a "correct" church denomination, to the exclusion of all others--that God confers His divine favor upon us, "lest any man should boast.(Ephesians 2:9)"

There is no way to build any perfect church out of sinful and imperfect people.

-LKM

Blue State/Red State--WHITE State?

The national news media has divided America into blue states(allegedly liberal) and red states(allegedly conservative). But why no white states? What is wrong with white, the third color of the American flag? Implication of politically-incorrect white racial hubris tacitly understood, perhaps?

In any case, white symbolizes purity. Contrast with either conservatism or liberalism could also be understood in this case. How about purity of the U.S. Constitution's rule of impersonal and impartial law, uncorrupted by partisan predilections of either blue liberalism or red conservatism? The U.S. Constitution is actually both: the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes once said we must abide by the U.S. Constitution when it pinches us, as well as when it comforts us. Otherwise, there is no point to governance by a national constitution.

The U.S. Constitution is like a two-edged sword: it comforts us with its liberalism as it allows us a latitude of exercise of freedom previously unknown in all human historic experience. At the same time, it pinches us with its conservatism as it places absolute demand upon us to yield to the equal legal prerogatives of other citizens, who see fit to exercise these same freedoms in ways which rub us the wrong way, and rattle our cages. Indeed, we often frown in abject disapproval upon those who dare to differ from us in the manner by which they exercise Constitutional freedoms. Yet, it is no test of the true strength of our Constitutional republic, and of our commitment to the same, if the only exercises of freedom we permit are those with which we all unanimously agree.

Without God-given, inalienable rights extended to individual citizens, there is precious little difference between democracy and mob-ocracy. Herein lies the danger of either blue-state or red-state mentality. Thomas Jefferson best expressed the case for white state consciousness by saying, "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty."

-LKM

A "Dirty" Eight-Letter "N"-Word

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, 'This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath never within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand!"

These words were penned by Scottish novelist Walter Scott in 1805, in The Lady of The Last Minstrel. Today, however, in context of massive immigration to the United States, both legal and illegal, the political Left is turning the word "nativist" into an extremely politically-incorrect epithet, if not an outright obscenity. They would have those of us having several generations of ancestral rooting in American soil to apologize for our status against the onslaught of immigrant demands upon American government for political and legal concessions to their life-styles.

The writer of this BLOG acknowledges the richness of some foreign immigrant contribution to American national culture, and to American national consciousness. Nevertheless, there are also some good things to be said for long-standing nativism in any soil on earth.

Nations, complete with national cultural consciousness, are not built overnight. It is often said that "Rome was not built in a day", and this mantra refers to spiritual and social abstractions of thought, as well as to the physically-visible. It is cultural tradition which is so very necessary, to maintain the socio-political cohesion and integrity of any society over time. This is why social innovations are often not immediately welcomed by society-at-large, and why those who have the temerity to be sufficiently individualistic enough to digress from collective social norms and "swim up-stream against the crowd" often find themselves ostracized by said society, even though they might not have violated any written laws, per se. Knowing this, foreign new-comers to America will often live together in ghetto-type situations, rather than voluntarily choosing to freely associate with the previously-established native populations-at-large. The writer of this BLOG is a very enthusiastic student of foreign languages. But he knows that no matter how well he may master the words and grammars of other languages, he will never be one of the "in-crowders" who use said languages as native languages, since he learned the languages outside of cultural context.

It is those people who are heirs to the cultural values of their ancestors, who while coincidentally occupying a particular piece of terrestrial real estate, who also have the greatest degree of social cohesion and integrity by which to administer the affairs of that piece of real estate. This is because every peoples must live off of the land upon which they exist, using whatever resources that land yields to their disposition. Any invasion or intrusion by foreigners raises at least the plausibility of dislocation of long-established traditions. Given that fear of all uncertainty is a primitive and long-established human psychic phenomenon, it is understandable that those steeped in traditions fear the worst rather than the best to come with changes brought from the outside.

Tolerance must be a two-way street, between both nativists and foreign immigrants. There is the saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." But this is not to say that outsiders have no wisdom or knowledge to teach to the Romans. Indeed, world history is full of examples, where one peoples have learned much over time from others. Romans learned much from the Greeks, their cultural predecessors: it is often said that while the Romans militarily conquered the Greeks, the Greeks culturally conquered the Romans. For example, the ancient Romans were a pretty stinky bunch, not knowing much about taking baths and using perfumes, until the Greeks came along to teach them these things.

In honoring the contributions of foreign immigrants to America--of which there have been many until now--the word nativist must not be a taboo word in the American vocabulary. Even the American aboriginals--incorrectly called "Indians"--would agree to that proposition. The first English settlers to the lands of present-day Virginia and Massachusetts in the 17th century, known as "Pilgrims" and "Puritans", owed their survival in the new world to education imparted to them concerning it by the long-standing natives on that soil.

-LKM

The Case Against Compulsory School Attendance Laws

In result of 12 years of formally-structured public school education, plus six years of college, this blogger comes to the conclusion that schooling on voluntary basis is far preferable to schooling on the basis of government coercion and compulsion. Here are the reasons for that conclusion:

1)"God loves a cheerful giver." The Bible, II Corinthians 9:7. The heart of a volunteer is sincerely devoted to his/her cause, purpose or activity, as contrasted with grudging attitude and lack of enthusiasm from those acting under compulsion. We want students in school because they want to be there, not because they have to be there.

2)The U.S. Constitution First Amendment freedom of assembly is also the freedom not to assemble, if one so desires. Compulsory school attendance may violate this Constitutional right.

3)The Declaration of Independence, as a back-drop raison d'etre for the Constitution, speaks of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as being God-given, and thus inalienable and inviolable by human governments. Thus, people have a right to pursue happiness on their own terms, and not on the government's terms, so long as they do not violate the just Constitutional rights of other people.

4)School administrators and teachers should have to sell their services in context of a free and open market-place, just as every other service and commodity must do. Guaranteed customer clientele means the service or commodity being sold requires coercion to sell it, thus casting doubt upon its value to society.

5)School must not be a substitute for prison, keeping youth occupied just to keep them out of trouble with the law. Also, school may, even though perhaps unsought, nevertheless teach would-be criminals how to commit more sophisticated crimes. Education is no final guarantee of obedience to law.

6)No names mentioned, but some of this blogger's high school classmates from 1964 found magnificent and splendid careers based on skills not learned in public schools. One classmate even flunked a grade in junior high school, but today still has a very successful business.

7)The Col. Zadok Magruder High School(where this blogger's daughter attends) Music Department is very popular, participated in by many of the school's students, all volunteers. There is no obligation for students to sign up for these music courses, either chorus or orchestra. Yet, the school has a nearly-full-sized student symphony orhestra, a jazz band, and several choruses. The truly successful teacher is the one who can inspire his/her students to pursue his/her subject on their own initiative, even after they have left his/her classroom. The high school's Music Department belies any claim that, without government coercion, nobody would go to school. Compulsory school is merely a guarantee of a captive student audience for mediocre teachers.

8)Even if we make mistakes in our life choices, it is far better that we make them, than that government make them for us. When government makes our mistakes for us, it rarely, if ever, takes any corrective measures to redress any injuries it may have inflicted upon us resulting from its decisions concerning our lives.

Before government tells students in school to quit bullying, it should first take a hard, honest look at its own policies, to see where it might be engaging in administrative bullying, just to feed its own ego. If we are to treat our youth like young adults, they must learn to take full responsibility for their own decisions. True enough, ability of responsible adult citizens to earn their own way without becoming a societal welfare charge is a legitimate concern, and to address that concern, the use of social welfare programs should be limited exclusively for the relief of those physically and/or mentally unable to work. Others must learn to put aside something for themselves for another time, when on the mountain-tops of life, so they may survive when they find themselves sojourning in its valleys.

-LKM

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel.....

One of the most controversial issues of our time is that of rights for homosexuals. Even fifty years ago, America never had to address this problem because heterosexuality had always "worked" for man-kind from time immemorial.

Thus far, there is no scientific evidence for existence of a "gay gene", which would occupy a parallel basis for homosexual rights, as an inherited and immutable trait similar to skin color, race and gender does. But genetics alone does not form the basis of our Constitutional rights: We have freedom of religion, and yet our religious beliefs are not genetically determined. Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution First Amendment does extend to all citizens a freedom of assembly, which by extension, also means freedom of association.

Homosexuals argue that government has no place in the human heart, to decide whom we can and cannot love. It is on this basis that the traditional Bible-based marriage model of one man for one woman, and one woman for one man, is being challenged. But this argument hinges upon how we define love: Indeed, the Bible does command its followers to love thy neighbor as thyself. The Bible does give several illustrated examples of love being extended to men by other men. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, comes to mind. Ostensibly, then, it is the marital relation, and not just "agape" or "filio" love which is under consideration here.

Given the presence of the 14th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, it would be extremely unwise to outlaw gay marriage--or any other unpopular behaviour--just for reason of its extreme unpopularity, per se. Such prohibition could put America on a slippery slope of outlawing any number of free exercises of constitutionally-legitimate behaviours merely for reason of their extreme unpopularity. We would all do well to remember that most of us are unpopular with somebody else somewhere, for one reason or another. Unpopularity cannot be a valid reason for cancelling out Constitutionally-enumerated freedoms, because these freedoms were and are extended to individuals, to protect them against mob-ocracy. It is to be admitted that the Constitution 14th Amendment in our day is being given extended applications beyond that of the original intent of its authors, i.e. to guarantee equal rights of former slaves with all the rest of the American citizenry. But words are words.

In my earlier BLOG article, "The Limits of Freedom", I stipulated that our exercise of Constitutional rights and freedoms are limited by whether a)said exercise inflicts physical injury upon other persons; b)said exercise inflicts physical damage or destruction upon anybody's property, and c)said exercise constitutes theft or fraud of anyone's money from them. If opponents of homosexual rights(including gay marriage) can come up with objective reasons why the exercise of homosexual rights would inflict physically-measurable damage upon other persons or their property, then indeed, homosexuality deserves no protection under our U.S. Constitution. Otherwise, homosexuals should be entitled to all the same rights under the 14th Amendment to which all other Americans are entitled, and should not be denied said rights merely for reason of their extreme unpopularity. It is true that homosexuals, as a class, have never been denied basic civil liberties, nor have they faced the economic deprivations that certain ethnic minorities have historically encountered. But past history should have no bearing upon our decision to acknowledge the rights of our fellow American citizens today.

Finally, we should also acknowledge that there are thousands of former homo-sexuals who have come out of that life-style, mainly due to the response of God to prayer from His people. What is impossible with man is possible with God.

-LKM

Two Questions About Jesus Christ For My Christian Friends

Christianity is the world's single-most popular religion today. Yet, Jesus Christ warned that the road to destruction is broad, many would go therein; while the road to salvation is narrow, and only few would find it. How do we separate sheep from goats, real Christians from fakes and frauds? (Matthew 7:13-27)

I have two questions to ask, of all who would name the name of Jesus Christ, claiming Him to be their Lord and Saviour.

Question One: If we could transport you back in both time and space to ancient Israel 2000 years ago, you see Jesus Christ alive in the flesh as the Bible New Testament gospels describe Him, and He is just now choosing out His first twelve apostles. He taps you, to be one of them. Would you be willing to accept His call upon your life, knowing there are no other Christians around at the time, and that therefore, to accept Him and follow Him means certain popular villification as a rebel, an "up-start", a trouble-maker, a boat-rocker, etc.? It is always easy and safe, to jump onto popularity band-wagons, and say "me, too". It is always most difficult to swim up-stream against the tide of popular opinion, and be the first in any new socio-political or religious movement proposing major societal change. One of the most popular church hymns today contains the words, "Where He leads me, I will follow....I'll go with Him all the way..." Really? What if He leads you into extreme unpopularity? Because this world is in the hand of Satan the devil, there is always a conflict between what is right and what is popular.

Question Two: If Jesus Christ were to return to us in the flesh now--today--where do you think He would spend most of His time and energies? The Bible describes Him as being a friend of sinners, the socially-outcast, the disgusting and the unpopular. Would He spend any time at all in the churches? Or would He be out in the streets with the homeless, the drunks and the drug addicts, and the prostitutes? Would He spend His time in the night-clubs and red-light districts? How about at the jails? He did say those who are sick need the doctor, while those who are well do not. (Matthew 9:10-13)

Saying and doing what is popular requires no courage at all. Jesus Christ describes these persons as "luke-warm Christians" whom He will spit out of His mouth.(Revelations 3:15-16) Jesus Christ started a movement to turn the entire world--not upside down, but right-side up. It was already turned upside down, when Adam and Eve chose to listen to and obey Satan in the Garden of Eden, and mighty was their fall through their disobedience.

-LKM

What Kind of World.....?

America today does NOT have a race relations problem. What is does have is a culture war, a conflict between two sets of socio-political values, in the which racial identity is being disingenuously exploited as a symbolic "Trojan horse", i.e. a pretext to advance the cause of one camp over the other.

The conflict in question is one of individualism versus group collectivism, of free enterprise capitalism versus Communism and socialism, of a nation whose societal values are influenced by religion versus one in which all religious theologies are absented from the national scene altogether. It is a question of acceptance of individual responsibility for one's own destiny, versus an insistence that society-at-large, acting through government as its agent, owes me a living. It is a question of whether or not the government should rescue me from adverse consequences of my own foolish personal choices.

Suppose we could somehow wave a magic wand, to permanently eliminate all racial differences between us, would this bring about a global Golden Age of peace, justice, love, brotherhood/sisterhood, and prosperity to all? Past history strongly answers with a thunderous "NO!" The historic human experience is replete with examples of nightmarish war between peoples of the same race. The American Civil War and European theaters of two global world wars of the 20th century come immediately to mind. North and South Korea, North and South Viet Nam, race brother against race brother, in mortal combat over questions of socio-political ideology. In Africa, too, protracted civil conflicts in the Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Sudan and former Biafra are reminders that racial similarity is no restraint against wholesale slaughter.

Even the Bible makes a pronouncement on race, in quoting Jesus Christ to say a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country and among his own people. Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4. Indeed: today, people of multiple nations and races world-wide venerate and honor Jesus Christ as the indisputable Son of God; while in modern Israel, His own homeland, nearly all the people hate and revile His name except for a small remnant of self-named "Messianic Jews for Jesus". Romans chapter 11.

In summary, then, racial homogeneity and solidarity is no guarantee of absence of conflict and strife among men. Race is therefore no more than a convenient pretext by which to "pass the buck" to other people, in allegation of cause for one's own self-inflicted difficulties and misfortunes. It takes a paramount degree of courage to look honestly at one's self in the mirror, and ask:

What kind of world Would this world be
If everyone in it Were just like me?

-Lawrence K. Marsh

Let Us Bring The U.S. Constitution Out of Exile

Reference is made to Judge Andrew Napolitano's book, The Constitution In Exile.

"God is not the author of confusion", wrote the apostle Paul in the Bible, I Corinthians 14:33. The Bible book of Acts quotes the apostle Peter, Acts 10:34, to say God is not a respecter of persons. Thus, the nation's founders, inspired by God's Word, sought to create an ordered society based upon impartial rule of law, in total renunciation of their Old World experience of capricious and arbitrary decree of royalty. "Lex Rex", they declared, not "Rex Lex"--the law is the king, not the king the law. The result of this proposition was the U.S. Constitution, which although initially far from perfect, still represents a work in progress towards the formation of a more perfect union.

The nation's founders also recognized the morally-fallen nature of man, based on the Bible scripture of Jeremiah 17:9, saying "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desparately wicked: who could know it?" No man can be entrusted with too much power, to exercise it equitably and justly. Accordingly, in their design of the U.S. Constitution, the nation's founders left much ruling sovereignty to individual states, wisely assigning to the federal government only those obligations of which individual states are administratively and logistically totally incapable, e.g. carrying on foreign relations, providing for a national military defense, coining and printing a common national monetary currency, and resolving interstate disputes. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments clearly spell out this legal mandate.

Today, however, the states have become virtually subservient vassals of the federal government. The development of this situation was long in coming, at least since the turn of the 20th century if not earlier, caused mainly by crisis situations in the which the federal government seized extraordinary powers in order to deal with national emergencies--usually war. Then when the crises passed, the federal government refused to surrender the usurped powers back to state and local control. Today, the recission of individual Constitutional prerogatives is also based on fear of imagined crises which might occur only--but have not yet occurred--if we allow individuals to exercise as they please their Constitutional civil liberties. Thomas Jefferson once said, "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." Unlike the intent of the nation's founders, our basic civil liberties are no longer seen by government as God-given and thus inviolable by human authority. On the contrary, they are granted and rescinded according to the momentary political expediencies of governments. The First Amendment free speech rights are now especially under challenge. For example, George Mason law professor David Bernstein wrote a book called, You Can't Say That!, in the which he copiously illustrates how anti-discrimination laws are killing free speech rights. Then, the DVD Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, featuring Ben Stein, documents how science professors are being fired from their jobs at prominent universities, for having the temerity to suggest, contrary to scientific orthodoxy, that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is flawed, and divinely-created design is a better plausible explanation for the origin of life. (It should be interjected here that, as neither creation nor evolution have ever been observed in actual process, neither can be claimed to be proven scientific facts, but are both merely plausible speculations.)

America was not founded by cowards, and the apostle Paul wrote in II Timothy 1:7, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Yet today, the doctrines of political correctness and majoritarian consent silence all but the most brave from speaking their honest minds on those issues of life so greatly important to us all. In the TV series All In The Family of four decades ago, Archie Bunker said out loud the thoughts millions of Americans were thinking, but did not themselves dare to publicly verbalize.

The purpose of Constitutional civil liberties is to protect individual American citizens from either government or majoritarian mob-ocracy. We must bring the U.S. Constitution back from exile, if individual citizen freedom is to survive: it is no test of the strength of Constitutional freedoms, if the only exercise thereof we permit are those with which we all unanimously agree. As Justice Charles Evans Hughes once observed, we must endure the Constitution when it pinches, as well as when it comforts. Otherwise, society will never benefit from the wisdom of the few brave souls courageous enough to say, "vox populi vox humbug!", and tell the nation those inconvenient truths of life we all so desparately need to hear.

-LKM

Government Or Private Sector Free Enterprise?

As long as this writer can remember, the general American public has been strongly imbued with the proposition that private sector enterpreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are wicked and evil conniving villains out to defraud an unsuspecting society, while government is comprised exclusively of "good guys in the white hats" who, without any profit motive, will surely keep those satanic private enterpreneurs toeing the straight-and-narrow line. and society-at-large thus benefits from the legendary and proverbial arrow-straight integrity of government.

The Bible says differently: "There is none righteous; no, not one....for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:10-23). President Theodore Roosevelt agreed, by saying, "Under government ownership, corruption can flourish just as rankly as under private ownership." Man never changes his basic moral character, according to whether he works for government or for the private sector. Can leopards ever change their spots? Again, the Bible speaks: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he..." (Proverbs 23:7).

-LKM

LKM Brief Autobiography

I, Lawrence Keeney Marsh, entered the world on June 19, 1946. I was born the second child of Dr. Paul Bruce Marsh and Mrs. Ruth Carolyn Keeney Marsh. I was given my middle name after the family name of my maternal grandfather. The first child, my sister, is Susan Jean Marsh (Ellsworth), born March 2, 1943. I was born at James A. Garfield Hospital on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.. This facility has long since been merged into the Washington Hospital Center on Michigan Avenue.

My father was a plant scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and my mother was a public schools music teacher. My father was born in Niagara Falls New York on November 21, 1914, and my mother was born in Mallard, Iowa on November 29, 1913. For one year after my birth, we lived in Washington D.C. at 3115 Newton Street N.E. just across the District line from Mt. Ranier, Maryland. Then, our family moved to 9509 50th Avenue in College Park, MD, where we lived until 1957.

I remember my childhood neighborhood well. I knew most of our neighbors, and often played with them. I also remember all of my elementary school teachers, and most--but not all--of my junior- and senior-high school teachers. (See my BLOG article on LKM school days recollections.)

I grew up in a musical family: My father played the clarinet, my mother and sister played the violin, and I played the violoncello, even as I still do until today. I arrived at cello as my instrument of choice by process of elimination: I did attempt to play brass-wind instruments, but gave them up because I was always getting pimples and boils on my mouth which disabled me to play. At age five, I had started to play the piano, but also gave that up because my little hands at the time simply could not make th reaches on the key-board which most music demanded of me. The cello became my instrument of choice because it is physically the most comfortable to play, and has a very pleasing tone quality if played in the hands of expert artists. Still, I wish to this day I had begun to play piano when my hands grew bigger, and had taken lessons on it to play it, side-by-side with cello. On Saturday evenings, we would often gather together as a family to play chamber music together, rather than to watch television. My musical activities, as I recall, made me extremely "culturally incorrect" (as a parallel to "politically incorrect") in the opinion of my contemporary peers, and I remember a sense of chagrin and embarrassment to let them know of my cultural predilections. Nevertheless, I so valued my musical life that I personally did not regret it then and do not regret it now. As a family, we did much over a period of several years, to bring into existence an all Prince George's County High School orchestra, this being largely thanks to my mother's position as a music teacher in the county schools. This genre of music, I felt, and still feel today, is definitely superior in quality to the latest "pop-culture" music. This latter is transient, here today and gone tomorrow; but the names of great Classical music composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and many others who lived between 1700 and 1900 live in immortality. So despite my extreme unpopularity among my peers, I had and still have the cultural better half! Today, I wear my badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with honor and pride. Politically incorrect and proud of it!

I remember well my four excellent cello teachers: William Stokking Jr., John Martin, Leopold Teraspulsky, and Mihaly Virizlay. I recall liking Mr. Teraspulsky the best because he did not smoke, and thus never smoked during my lessons with him. All four were excellent cellists and teachers per se; however, I did find the smoking habit of the other three most disconcerting, as I was raised as a non-smoker, and now the medical community knows it possible to contract smokers' diseases from second-hand exposure to smokers' smoke. I believe at least two of my four former teachers are now dead because of diseases linked to long-term smoking.

Bill Stokking was my teacher from age eight until I entered junior high school. At the time, he played in the Navy band orchestra, later moving on to become principle cellist in the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Sometimes, he would frighten me by telling me at my lessons that unless I played my lessons exactly as he demanded, he was going to "wrap that music stand around my neck". But Dutch-uncle Bill was still a lot of fun, as he often told tall tales in the which he always made himself out to be the hero! Despite his fast temper, he still had a great sense of humor to go with it. Then came my second teacher, John Martin, principle cellist of the National Symphony. He was much more of a gentleman, more easy-going, and I appreciated that! He was my teacher from the start of my junior high school days, until I graduated from high school. To this day, I always remember his immortal comment on my performance at my lessons: "That was nice for a warm-up; now, let's play it!" By that, he meant to say my playing lacked artistic expression, despite it being technically flawless. My third teacher, Leopold Teraspulsky, was at Indiana University Music School. I studied with him only two of the four years I was at Indiana University, and this was a distinctly disappointing experience. I had wanted to study with him for all four of my years at Indiana University, but I withdrew from the Music School after my sophomore year and returned to major in my foreign language studies in the College of Arts and Sciences simply because the Music School was greatly over-crowded and thus it was well-nigh impossible to get time to rehearse in the school practice rooms. All the cello faculty was great, and I felt guilty that I could not give them the practice-time in preparation of my lessons that they truly deserved. I temporarily took a hiatus-break from my cello, but returned to it in 1974, when I studied with my fourth teacher--Mihaly Virizlay--at the George Peabody Music Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This I did until 1980, when tuition for lessons became simply too expensive for my budget. I remember Mr. Virizlay as being an excellent teacher, when he taught! But the point here is that he often ran out on me, skipping out on lessons obligations to me in favor of concertizing in order to glorify and deify his own personal repute. He was one of the most conceited persons I have ever met: if he heard a clap of thunder, he would walk over to the window and take a bow! In all, I had 18 years of formally-structured cello education, and still continue to learn today by listening to CDs of the great cellists of the past to play, as well as to the performances of contemporary cellist colleagues.

Later in 1957, our family moved to Beltsville, and lived at 4203 Wicomico Avenue. I went to Buck Lodge Jr. High School in Adelphi, Maryland in grades 7 and 8, while Beltsville Junior High School, just at the end of our street, was under construction. I transferred to it at the beginning of the 9th grade.

I recall generally hating my years in junior and senior high school, they were sad and demoralizing because the Education Establishment had mandated me to take certain courses, ostensibly "for my own good", on compulsory basis. I also felt socially rejected because for all my gargantuan efforts, I was no good at sports, whereas our society at large glorifies and even deifies its athletes. I strongly felt at the time, especially as a member of the male sex, that being a smash success in sports is the only possible avenue to popularity and social acceptance. Given my failure in that endeavor, and culturally-incorrect involvement in musical endeavors, I sadly wrote off a priori all social life in my teenage years, feeling sure no woman in her right mind would care to be seen in my company. This factor was extremely damaging to my social development, and accounts for the fact that I postponed marriage until age 46, and that to a woman of foreign origin who herself gives no popular assent to the sports world. I do not harbor any ill will against my former class-mates, concerning my "culturally-incorrect" relation to them as a musician: they had no mean-spirited hate of me per se; rather, in their cultural ignorance of my musical endeavors, they just did not "get it". Indeed, the genre of music I play on my cello was never composed for consumption of the masses of common people. Rather, it was meant for the consumption of Europe's upper-crust socio-political elite at the time.

Academically, I always did reasonably well in both high school and college, always on the honor roll--but not at the very top of my class. In addition, while in high school, I was very busy with extra-curricular activities: I ran cross-country and track-and-field. I also took private lessons on my cello and in the Russian language, in addition to playing in the all Prince George's County High School orchestra. In my senior year, in addition to college entrance exams on my high school subjects, I also took the Russian language exam. Out of all my exams, I made the best score on my Russian exam, something which made school teachers and officials angry at me instead of pleased, to see me take academic initiative of my own.

My college years were much happier than my public school years, insofar as I was studying what I wanted to study, rather than what I was forced to study against my will. I will always say that the truly successful teacher is the one who inspires his/her students to continue study of his/her subject long after they leave his/her class-room. That describes my private teachers but a small number of my public school teachers. I went to college at Indiana University from 1964-1968, graduating from there with a B.A. degree in Middle Eastern studies. I also took cello lessons from the university's music school while there. I continued on for an M.A. degree at University of California Los Angeles, from January 1969 until June 1971. For the most part, my college years were much happier than were my junior- and senior high school years because my chosen academic endeavors in college were highly respectable in those institutions: not so in junior and senior high school. I temporarily discontinued my cello studies while at U.C.L.A., but later resumed them after graduation as I continued them at the George Peabody Music School of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, 1974-1980. I can truthfully say that my cello has been and still is an invaluable and irreplacable joy of my life. I would not trade the experience for any other riches of this world and this life. My cello is a rare find: made in Cremona, Italy in the year 1684, it is now worth about half the value of my house.

In 1968, our family moved within Beltsville from 4203 Wicomico Avcnue to 11105 Emack Road. When not in college, between academic sessions, I lived with my parents until starting government employment with the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency on June 21, 1976.

In my government career, I served as a geographic names specialist serving two government entities simultaneously: the Defense Mapping Agency and the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. Our work was primarily in service to the military, but secondarily was in service throughout the entire civilian government as well: our job is to standardize geographic names and thus end confusion as to their correct spellings, as encountered on various diverse maps and in other geographic publications. I felt greatly honored to serve my country, but found the supervisory managers to be quite demoralizing insofar as they managed the work-force negatively by heavy-handed fear and coercion, rather than positively through inspirational leadership and encouragement. They had not a clue about smooth inter-personal relationships; they were fine managers of information, but were anything but excellent leaders of people. As I review my overall career experience with the government, I would not say it was altogether a failure, there were some good times to be had. The pay and side benefits were also excellent, I had no complaint about those, until after taxes! Overall, I give the thirty-year experience a grade of "C". Perhaps the most demoralizing aspect of the experience was that my individual initiative to make suggestions for improvement in the agency were usually rejected by arrogant self-worshipping managers and agency officials who thought they know everything, and we the peon rank-and-file employees know nothing. Even if ideas were "wrong" in substance, the truly demoralizing rudity was that I was not even thanked for my initiatives and concerns. I was often sternly reprimanded by bosses for having the temerity to think for myself. Little did they understand that citicism of the present status quo is a golden opportunity for improvement in disguise, and we must think not only of ourselves at the present, but of future succeeding generations of workers coming after us.

I married Lidia Bertha Aguilar-Marin from Bolivia in Darnestown at the Poplar Grove Baptist Church on December 19, 1992. We moved into our present home shortly afterwards. Our first and only child, daughter Eva Keeney Marsh, was born to us October 11, 1993, at the Rockville Seventh Day Adventist Hospital. My mother passed into eternity in May of 1993, one day just before Mother's Day. My father did likewise on November 5, 1995, just three weeks shy of his 81st. birthday. It was sad to lose my parents, but it was well for me to start a new chapter of my life. We now live in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Today, I look back on my childhood and teen-age years with some degree of fondness, but admit if I had them to do over now, there are a few things I would not have done. Most notably, I would not have tried to succeed in the sports world. Why waste my time on an endeavor in which I have no talent? Also, I would not have taken certain academic courses, had I had the prerogative in my hand--most notably, math and science courses. To be sure, my teachers of those subjects were extraordinarily nice people, per se! Still, God does not endow all of us with equal physical and mental gifts, or even with equal levels of intellectual acumen. I doubt, too, that my math and science teachers could even have begun to play a musical instrument at the level which I play the cello, nor could they begin to tackle the mastery of a foreign language completely strange to English. In one word, Dr. Know-It-All is simply not out there! Still, it must be the goal of the education establishment to change the attitude of American youth towards education: we want students coming to school because they eagerly want to learn, rather than because they have to learn: school must not be a substitute for prison.

Were I to have time and resources to do so, I could write a book on my life a thousand pages long, recording some very humorous events and others not so humorous. But it stands well worth to say that some school subjects, while a dreadful bore in class at the time, may take on an unexpectedly strong relevance later in adult life. Such is the case of my experience with U.S. History. Today, now that America is re-evaluating itself with much intensity, the topic of America's past history is very interestingly controversial as it never was before. Especially captivating in American life is fascination with the American Civil War experience, it was a defining turning-point in America's history which demands further re-evaluation today.

Finally, I cannot close out this commentary on my past, without appropriate commentary on my view of the future. I am very confident that Americans will always make great advances in science and technologies, but fear a concommitant decline in morality because of unwise applications of new inventions and discoveries. Yes, Satan the devil also loves to go to school! For the future, my largest concern lies also rooted in the past: Will we ever have equal justice under law for all, as the words in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building boast? We have rarely, if ever, had it before. (See my BLOG article, "The U.S. Supreme Court Not So Very Supreme"). To date, some people have enjoyed great liberty at the cost of heavy sacrifice from many others. Tomorrow, when freedom finally rings throughout the land, will both poet and peasant hear it equally? Will they be allowed to do so?

-LKM

LKM School Days Recollections

I have always been a friend and strong advocate of education. I grew up in the home of a PhD summa cum laude father from Cornell University, and a Prince George's County Public Schools music teacher mother, graduated from Drake University and student of violin at Eastman School of Music. However, this by no means intends to say I have no disapproval of certain school policies I experienced while in public school, grades 1-12. Often, trouble can also spell opportunity, and so this essay is mostly based on inspiration for education improvement opportunity. Some fond personal incidents and events will be recounted, however!

I remember by name every one of my elementary school teachers, and most(but not all) of my junior high and high school teachers. It is reasonable to presume that these have all moved to the world of the great beyond by now. Hence, I will refer to them by name without trepidation or misgivings, while also refraining from mentioning any former school classmates by name, out of respect for the on-going repute of the living.

My parents had taught me to read, write and do basic arithmetic early-on. Hence during my first and second-grade years, I spent some class-time in the hall-way, teaching these skills to a slower-learning friend and class-mate. While this gesture was virtuous in itself, I should have spent that time on subject areas where I myself was weak, most notably in mathematics.

I recall my first grade books: Reading For Meaning, and Tip and Mitten(the saga of a dog and a cat). One story I recall was of a boy who put his dog on top of his head and shoulders, and covered the dog up to its neck with his coat. To this day, his ostensible reason for doing this still escapes me. But in any event, when the boy removed the coat and released the dog to its freedom, the boy had dog-excrement all over his head! Boy, did I think that to be hilarious!

My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Henrietta Guest, was a real pill: she was an embarrassment to some students. One day, while students were eating lunch in the school cafeteria, the relative quiet of the occasion was suddenly pierced with a loud shriek of her voice, as she frantically rang a desk-bell on the table. Pointing to one of the students, she shouted, "STOP EVERYBODY, STOP! THIS BOAH(BOY) IS EATING HIS PEACH LIKE AN UMBRELLA!" She went on to demonstrate in detail how that hapless little boy was just enjoying eating his peach in a manner strongly-contrary to her approbation. "What's the big deal here?", I thought to myself. In the end, the dunce of the day was Mrs. Guest, rather than the boy.

In fourth grade, I had Mrs. Ruth Howard for a teacher. I remember little of that year, except that I actually drew a picture of a night-time street scene which drew much praise from her. this was surprising because I generally suck at art.

Then in fifth grade, I transferred from Berwyn Elementary School to Hollywood Elementary School. One week-end day, I and a classmate friend decided to be adventurous(boys will be boys), and so we dug up the temerity to climb up onto the school building roof and look around! Fortunately, we came back down and no harm was done. Still, a few days later, the school principal, a Mr. Parker, found out about our little "Mission Impossible" and called us to his office to tell us on no uncertain terms that he took strong exception to it. He was visibly shaken by the incident. So, we did not repeat our bravado, and, as in years past, I continued to be a very good student otherwise.

In sixth grade, our family moved to Beltsville, and again I transferred to Beltsville Elementary School. There, my teacher was a Mr. Charles Harpole, whom I fondly remember for all his stories to the class about his adventures in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. For the most part, I was an excellent student there. But once again, I was a little bit naughty--boys will be boys! I just loved airplanes, and was reading a book about them which I found in our classr0om. One day, Mr. Harpole asked the class for the book: had anybody seen it? He said he needed it for reference at some conference he would attend. I had the book in my desk, but did not say peep one about it: I just loved those airplanes too much, and I was to be damned, if I would return the book to my teacher! A few days later, I was absent from school. Upon my return, I learned that Mr. Harpole had found the book in my desk in my absence! "Do you remember my asking for it?", he asked me. I must confess to lying: I told him yes, I remembered, but had located the book myself a couple of days after he asked for it(lie!). So in sixth grade, I was 95% virtuous, but not 100% so: I just loved those airplanes! I collected and assembled many plastic model airplane models at home.

Then came junior high school years. I do not recall too many momentous events of those years, but one bit of humor came from my seventh-grade science class. Another student wrote on an exam: "The sensory nerve is the nerve that senses, and the motor nerve is the nerve that motors." Brilliant! My first two years of junior high school were at Buck Lodge Junior High School in Adelphi, with the third being at the newly-constructed Beltsville Junior High School. I recall meeting a very outstanding music teacher at Buck Lodge by the name of Leonard Moses. You could give him any three notes, and from there, he could improvise at the piano a theme based on those notes after the structural styles from Vivaldi, Corelli and Palestrina, all the way to Elvis and the Kingston Trio, with Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin in between. WOW!

I also remember well my physical education teacher, Mr. Kenneth Hildreth. He had previously been in the Navy. He was a short fellow--5'6" or 5'7"--but he was very muscular, built like an Army tank, and you did not mess with him unless you are Chuck Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger. He taught us human anatomy for a while. I remember he taught us that the human heart is the strongest muscle in the body: if all its energy could be harnessed to some sort of lifting machine, the machine could lift ten(!) tractor-trailer trucks one foot off the ground! I will always remember a true-false exam he gave us: every statement he made therein on the exam is true! I missed two questions I marked "false". No other teacher of mine has ever done that, before or since! But I got an "A" grade from him for the course.

Social life was very difficult for me in my teen-age years, largely sad and miserable. Academically, I did reasonably well, always an honor-roll student. Still, I was a social reject. I had started to take music lessons on the violoncello at age eight, and started trumpet soon after. I did not mind telling my classmates I play trumpet: this is a band instrument, and bands are associated with football games. Thus, playing trumpet was and is "culturally correct". But cello? "Culturally incorrect" as per American culture. I recall feeling a sense of chagrin and embarrassment at the time, to tell my classmates I play cello. To be sure, I greatly enjoyed it personally and still play it today. But in my adolescent days, a teen-ager playing Classical music on cello was seen by my classmates as being as odd as a fish trying to walk on land. Most had--and probably still do not have--the first idea what the cello is all about. FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!

While at High Point High School, I made gargantuan efforts to excel at sports; but alas and alack, I was not made of the right stuff to do so, and sucked at them. Then, as now, sports athletes in our society are so deified that success or failure at this sacred endeavor is the defining criterion--at least for men--for acceptability into or rejection from society. Because I was a royal flunk-out at sports, I distinctly recall great chagrin and reluctance to socialize with my contemporaries, especially with the opposite sex. What woman in her right mind wants for her male consort a guy who plays cello instead of football? My years were sad at High Point High School because I was not honored and respected for the talents I did and do have. I was first-chair principal cellist in the all-Prince George's County high school orchestra for three years, but without any honor for it from the school administration: FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!

The High Point High School experience was not altogether somber and dark, though. The senior P.O.D. civics class with Donald Horner as our teacher was a blast, as we often discussed current public affairs. I remember doing for that class a statement made by an educator: "Facts wear out, skills obsolesce. So, what is the use of learning anything? Nothing, except the art of learning how to learn." I disagreed with that statement, citing the on-going value of learning and knowing foreign languages. They do not obsolesce so quickly within one or two generations so as to be no longer good after that. Then, our tenth-grade biology class was also great. Mr. Ronald Neafy, our teacher, was first-rate excellent! But I had troubles with chemistry and higher mathematics. My teachers--Paul Boston and Belva Hopkins--were just some of the nicest and most congenial of people I could hope to meet. Still, that part of my brain geared to math and sciences was woefully under-developed. I just could not "hack" those subjects! Still, my overall academic record in both junior high school and high school was always of honor-roll caliber. My sadness was definitely not caused by academic failure: rather, it was caused by 1)lack of academic freedom, i.e. compulsion to study course subjects contrary to my personal wishes, ostensibly "for my own good"; and, 2)I was a total failure in sports, and not socially acceptable for my musical endeavors. I was--and still am today--"culturally incorrect". I had grown up in a very musical family. and for that reason, I was the "white crow" among my classmates. At the time, I felt like an object of ridicule, a total social outcast. Today, however, the general public is getting pretty weary and disgusted with this doctrine of "political correctness". Hence, I now wear the badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with great pride.

I was glad to graduate from high school, and go on to college--first, at Indiana University(B.A.), and then at University of California Los Angeles(M.A.). There, I would have much more academic freedom than in high school. I did not always get the best grades I hoped for; still, I was much happier in college, pursuing academic endeavors I wanted to study, instead of putting my heart on "hold" to study something some education bureaucrat told me I must study. Also, at last, my musical endeavors were respectable at Indiana University. Football was still important there, but at least, I no longer had to feel any chagrin about playing the cello at Indiana University.

Finally, the story about Larry's revenge! I took private lessons in the Russian language for two years while in high school. In my senior year, when taking college entrance exams, I took the Russian language exam along with several others. I made my highest score of all on that Russian language exam, thus successfully thumbing my nose at all I had studied in public schools for twelve years!

A few of my former high school classmates likewise pursued greatly successful careers competely independently of anything they learned in twelve years of public schooling. Today, I feel it is a crime, for the education establishment to require specially-gifted students to put their hearts on "hold" while studying topics they have neither the talent nor the interest to study. "No child left behind" also sounds like "no child can get ahead" to me. School curriculae priorities are mandated according to the lowest common denominator, and so I begin to appreciate the true meaning of Ayn Rand's controversial book, The Virtue of Selfishness.

My hope for the future of education in America is that public schools will be operated much like colleges and universities, granting much more academic freedom than before. We want in our schools enthusiastic students eager to learn, rather than bored students finding it drudgery to learn. But judging by the low turn-out at our 45th anniversary high school reunion--just 12% of the former class--I gather most of our classmates prefer to forget those years of 45+ years ago, and just move on. My prayer is that this tragedy can be reversed by education reforms resulting in far more highly-cherishable class reunions of future generations.

There is dispute and debate between the merits and demerits of a "well-rounded" education versus high specialization in one subject. I see both virtue and vice in both choices. But in the final analysis, whether I be intellectually "rounded", "squared" or "triangular" is my business, not that of government. And even if we make mistakes in life, it is far better that we make them, than that government make them for us!

-LKM

LKM On Money

Money is still our universal king, even if sex is the crown prince. Money is an all-consuming focus of our attention in all human affairs, and nothing happens without money in the picture somewhere.

How does money relate to religion? The Bible New Testament mandates Christian believers to understand themselves as being not owners of money, but merely its stewards. Money, says the Bible, must be used to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and not to be consumed on personal carnal lusts: war and contentions among men result from the latter behaviour. Luke 12:43-48, 18:18-25, and James 4:1-3. The Lord requires of each Bible believer a measure of financial accountability concommitant with the extent of his or her financial blessing: "..to whom little is given, little is required, and to whom much is given, much is required.." The religion of Islam condemns usury, i.e. taking undue and exploitive advantage of those needing to borrow money. Judaism sees money as a ladder to heaven, saying few, if any, good works on earth are possible without money. Indeed, Christianity also has a long historic record of building academic institutions and hospitals, and rest assured these tasks were not accomplished for free! But money could also be a ladder to hell, if used for ungodly, diabolical purposes. Even so, the famous Bible New Testament parable of the talents(Matthew 25:14-30) agrees with the Judaic view of money, so long as its use is for cause of advancing the Lord's kingdom. Indeed, Jesus Christ said the unprofitable servant is to be cast out and rejected.

What of the conflict between capitalism and Communism? Karl Marx, the father of Communism, was descended from a long ancestry of Jewish rabbis. Some of his complaints about the social impact of capitalism are also shared by the Bible, e.g. capitalism makes a virtue out of greed, it destroys all human inter-personal abstract values and replaces them with shameless cash value, it leads to militarism and global imperialism, private property-owners are exploiters of working-class people, and, in the end, it digs its own grave through business failures and mergers, until monopoly is accomplished. This process, said Marx, is the historically inevitable evolution from capitalism to socialism and finally Communism. The Bible goes further, to record in Ezekiel 7:19 that in the Day Of The Wrath Of The Lord, men will throw their gold and silver in the streets as useless to the satisfaction of their needs and greeds, because "it is the stumbling block of their iniquity".

Still, the Bible does not advocate Communism, as once claimed by the late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during his hey-day of the early 1950s. Jesus Christ did advocate sharing of one's riches with the less fortunate, but on voluntary basis motivated by love for both God and man. Whereas, Karl Marx said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", Jesus Christ said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to the need of others". Communism proposes to solve the enigma of human greed by forcible confiscation of all private property from individuals by the government. The Bible, by contrast, proclaims that God loves a cheerful giver. II Corinthians 5:7. The Bible advocates private property, as seen in the Decalogue commandments of THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, and THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S POSSESSIONS.

As long as capitalism is based on voluntary exchange of goods and services without government intervention of any kind, the consumer is king in the free and open market-place, while Communism is largely discredited and doomed to the trash-heap of history. Economic Communism and socio-political free democracy simply will not cooperate to mutual benefit. Either we will freely decide for ourselves, or government will decide for us, and rob us of the capacity to decide for ourselves.

Who or what decides the purchasing power of the dollar? Most people today would point to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and to other financial institutions. But surprise! It is the heart and spirit of the individual person, who decides how many dollars he or she must receive in exchange for a product or service. This decision, in turn, is based on ability and willingness do distinguish between need and greed: how high-off-the-hog do people think they "need" to live? But the answser to this question necessarily includes potential capacity to bless and benefit other people, as well as one's self. It is great for us to have money, so long as money does not have us!

-LKM

That "Dirty" Four-Letter L-Word

Some words in the English language have always invoked strong social disapprobation among the more elegant and cultured among us, e.g. the "f"-word, the "s"-word, used by those persons of the common plebian classes. Other words, once used in earlier times with universal innocence, now have joined the ranks of understood obscenity. The four-letter word love is such a highly-controversial word in circulation today. It has been widely tossed about in society, to signify many varied notions. Thanks mainly to Hollywood and other popular entertainment media, this word love in recent decades has become synonymous with sexual lust, debauchery, lechery, and ruination of virginal innocence. Satisfaction of perverse carnal self-desire has replaced altruistic and sacrificial devotion to the welfare of other fellow human beings, usually segued by an eventual dumping of the objects of one's lasciviousness onto a personal trash-heap of history. A word which once signified the highest and most noble of social approbation has been perverted into a depriviledging of human life to the final extreme. Today, unlike in the generations of an idyllic past, most people lack the temerity to overtly declare their amorous sentiments to other persons, lest mutual understanding of ulterior sexploitive intent be presently extant.

What now do to? Is restoration of a new American Golden Age of Innocence still possible? Or are truly tender-hearted American patriots to believe the Bible's warning, that only The Second Coming, bearing the heavenly message IN HOC SIGNET VINCES will rescue humanity from its present moral mess?

True love signifies a valuing of one's fellow man, for some reason. What, then, to value in man? Physical strength, great monetary wealth, socio-political prestige, sexual attraction and symmetric beauty of external corporeal appearance are often cited as ideal human values. But in God's eternal scheme of things, such values, so typical of the flower of youth, are of light and transcient cause: few of us having these traits at age of 20 years still have them at age of 80 years. Will love still endure, despite degeneration of these very temporary values?

True love, then. seeks foundation and root in the soil of God's eternity, encumbered by values incorruptible by the passage of time.

-LKM

LKM On God, Israel and The Jews

Reference is made to Bible scriptures I Samuel 16:7 and Romans 2:25-29.

The nation of Israel is unique in the world, in that it was given by God to a people on the basis of a conditional divine contract. When one party to a contract declines to honor their obligations to it, the other party is also free to discontinue their obligation to it as well. What does the Bible record about God and the Jewish people?

The Bible makes it clear that God is not interested in racial hubris, since a)God is not a respecter of persons(Acts 10:34-35), and b)Both Jew and Gentile are under sin, and there is none righteous(Psalm 14:1-3, Romans 3:9-20). The Old Testament records God's use of Gentile powers(i.e. Assyrians, Babylonians) as His instruments of chastisement upon His original people for their straying from His divine statutes. So, obedience to God, and not physical fleshly identity, is the basis of Israel's right to exist. Whom the Lord loves, He chastens(Hebrews 12:6-10). Finally, as the Jews of the Old Testament times intermarried with Gentile pagans and adopted the customs of their nations, God agreed with their wishes by dispersing them into Gentile-world nations. QUESTION: Is God through with His original people? Does God have future plans for the nation of Israel? The answer to this question depends upon whether or not God's prodigal sons come home--in spirit, as well as physically. The apostle Paul wrote, in Romans 11:7-27, of God's original people being given of God a spirit of slumber, while Gentiles are "grafted in" to God's tree. Thus, we know God will save a remnant of His original people, but not all of them. Gentiles will take the place of those physical Israelites who rejected God.

Today, national Israel continues to exist, but as in ancient Old Testament times, it faces constant harassment from pagan Arab nations, while most Israelites are secular "Jews" not caring less about God and His divine statutes. For the most part, modern national Israel has forgotten that being Jewish is a state of spiritual consciousness, not one of physical existence. In such instance, Israel's existence will always be precarious. Still, God is not through with His original people, and will never let the Jew completely disappear from the earth--as evidenced in the 20th century by the failure of the ferocities of even an Adolf Hitler and a Joseph Stalin to completely erase them from all human memory. Many instances in human history can be cited, where, at every major turning point in human history, a Jew was always on hand, either behind the scenes or on center-stage, to make it all happen. No one individual Jewish person could possibly pre-arrange all those major events of history, to make them happen as they did. It must be God at work.

The Jews, for their part, must understand that the title of "God's chosen people" is not a divine priviledge, but rather, a divine responsibility. This phrase refers exclusively to those who accept this divine responsibility, and always walk faithfully according to the Lord's divine statutes for man.

God's promise to Abram, recorded in the Bible, Genesis 12:1-3, was made exclusively to Abram, and not to his descendants. Any of Abram's natural descendants would be blessed by God for blessing Abram, and cursed by God for cursing Abram, with reference to the divine covenant made between God and Abram. The nation of Israel, while promised to Abram, had not yet been created by the time of Genesis chapter 12. So, contrary to popular misapplication of Genesis 12:1-3, the nation of Israel as a whole is not heir to this promise. But it is certainly heir to God's promise of II Chronicles 7:14: "If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land."

-LKM

The God Delusion: LKM Answers Dr. Richard Dawkins

The basic thesis of Dr. Richard Dawkin's book, The God Delusion, is that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is the root cause of all the world's troubles, and IF ONLY we would abolish religion from the face of the earth forever, humanity would immediately usher in a new Golden Age of peace, justice, love, prosperity, and brotherhood/sisterhood. He boasts in his book that all persons of any religious persuasion who start to read his book will be confirmed atheists by the time they finish reading it. LKM replies:



1)Dr. Richard Dawkins says Christianity is stupid, for people who do not think. He says it is anti-science.



LKM replies: Science and the Bible clash only over the book of Genesis question of the earth's origin, and how life on it came into existence and subsequently developed. Questions of morality and socio-political relations, discussed extensively in the Bible, cannot be addressed by pure "hard" science. Science concerns itself with delineation in the physical realm between the possible/probable and the impossible, whereas the Bible concerns itself with the human spiritual realm, delineating what should and should not be, regarding moral relations between people. There is a world of difference between "can" and "should". Theologians may be just as educated and intellectual as any scientists. In fact, in Medieval times, there lived Islamic theologians who also were medical doctors or other genres of scientists. An example of this was Ibn Sina, known to the West as Avicenna. In any event, there can be no scientific explanation either in support of or in opposition to the Mosaic Commandments not to kill or steal.



2)Dr. Richard Dawkins decries wars and other physical violence against other people, supposedly instigated by "wicked and evil" Christianity.



LKM replies: There is no Bible New Testament scripture anywhere, in the which Jesus Christ commands that these wars and violences are to be done in His name and for His benefit. Jesus Christ taught forgiveness of moral wrong, love to one's enemies, and response to evil with good.



3)Dr. Richard Dawkins says it is child abuse, for parents to inculcate their children with their(the parents') moral and social values, before the child is old and discerning enough to refute the parents' values.



LKM replies: Child-rearing by other adults, even by government officials, is the same evil: children are being inculcated by some other adult's values, when the child is too mentally incompetent and knowledgeable to refute those views as well. Even in offering moral choices to children, Dr. Dawkins wants to be sure Christianity is not one of those choices.



4)Dr. Richard Dawkins says if only we eliminate religion--especially Christianity--the world would then enter into a Golden Age of peace, virtue, love and prosperity.



LKM replies: Has anyone checked out what life was like for average citizens in godless Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union lately? If atheism is so great, why the blood-baths in Communist China and in Communist Southeast Asian countries? Why do not atheist-Communist countries open their doors to unlimited immigration and emigration? The politics of envy, as well as religion, can instigate wars of race and economic class disparity. These could occur in a totally atheistic socio-political environment.



5)Dr. Richard Dawkins credits natural selection, not divine creation, for order in the biological universe.



LKM replies: Can Dr. Dawkins demonstrate to us with scientific data from experimentation, how the natural selection mechanism works? How is it we have both man and monkeys with us today, but the alleged "intermediary hominid" forms got "selected out" and eliminated for survival? Were they not "higher" on the evolutionary chain for survival than the monkeys, and thus "more fit for survival" than are the monkeys? Dr. Dawkins provides no examples in reality, to illustrate how this natural selection mechanism works.



6)Dr. Richard Dawkins says it is a fraud, to pray for God's divine intervention to improve one's own or other people's physical health situations.



LKM replies: God does not answer prayer or is obliged to answer prayer according to the dictates of men. God may answer prayer in completely unexpected ways, thus suprising even the supplicants. God thus demonstrates His sovereignty and pleasure in not being bound by human demand. Archie Bunker once said too much prayer to God gets to be nagging! Let God do His own thing.



7)Dr. Richard Dawkins decries persecution of scientists by the Christian church.



LKM replies: Communism has been hawked as a "scientific" form of government. All "smart" scientists will become first atheists, and then good Communists, the argument goes. All intellectualism leads to Communism, just as surely as death and taxes, so goes the argument. But under Communism, Christians have also been ferociously persecuted, thus proving Communist desire for thought-policing and control also. Communist regimes have also killed scientists and other intellectuals in great number. The pot calls the kettle "black" here.



8)Dr. Richard Dawkins, like Carl Sagan, says the physical universe is all there is. Anything we cannot sense with one or more of our five natural physical senses does not exist.



LKM replies: As a musician, I feel deeply sorry for Dr. Dawkins, then! He has no ability to aesthetically evaluate a piece of music, any more than does a crocodile. The ability to aesthetically evaluate an art form--music or otherwise--is a spiritual gift unique to man, and not in evidence throughout the alleged process of evolution. The Bible tells us God is a spirit, and if man is not any special form of creation in God's image, what else accounts for the unique human ability of aesthetic evaluation? Well, Dr. Dawkins?



9)Dr. Richard Dawkins says religion, even in relatively benign forms, cannot peacefully coexist with atheism. We must smash all religion, says he, because even religious "moderates" contribute to a socio-political climate of hateful and fanatical persecution of atheists.



LKM replies: In his clarion call to abolish all religion, Dr. Dawkins is proving himself to be guilty of the same intolerant bigotry of which he accuses Christians. When, in America, was there ever a government pogrom targeting atheists? He says no atheist candidate for elected public office could ever win an election. From my Maryland 8th Congressional district, we elected a member of Congress who declined to publicly state any religious affiliation or belief. He got elected strictly on secular merits.



10)Dr. Richard Dawkins says believers in God cannot also do good science, as they are too lazy-brained for that. They are all too eager to attribute to God anything they cannot scientifically explain,and will not exert themselves to do honest research.



LKM replies: The book, Men of Science/Men of God, by Dr. Henry M. Morris, lists many great scientists from the past who also believed the Bible. The more they discovered through honest scientific research, the more convinced they became, how infinitely great God is! The problem now is that science has been hijacked by atheists having an extra-scientific political agenda, and wish to enlist science as their ally, to accomplish essentially socio-political goals.



11)Dr. Richard Dawkins says atheists can behave morally, and do not need religion as a measure of discernment between right and wrong.



LKM replies: This statement is undoubtedly true, but what is the source of the atheist's morality? Dr. Dawkins does not so-state in his book. Atheistic societies and nations have never been moral leaders in modeling ideal human behaviour. Human life in ancient Greece and Rome was held to be extremely cheap without knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Most likely, today's atheists are still borrowing moral capital from the larger Christian-American socio-political concensus. Pagan Rome finally collapsed from within under the sheer weight of its own moral debauchery.



12)Dr. Richard Dawkins says the Christian church desires to severely restrict individual socio-political freedom, and stop people from enjoying life to the fullest measure.



LKM replies: I would challenge Dr. Dawkins to find one country on earth where the gospel of Jesus Christ has never before been preached, and still that country has more freedom than does America. Incidentally, it is by no accident or coincidence, that in centuries past, it was Christianity which strongly fostered education in both Europe and America. The Christian church has built countless schools and universities. The decline of academic excellence in American public schools is recent decades is directly tied to the dissociation of God from them. This trend is well-documented in David Barton's book, America: To Pray Or Not To Pray? On June 7, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered prayer out of public schools. Since then, the book illustrates, America's school-age youth have experienced precipitous decline in SAT and GED test scores, side-by-side with exponential increase in such social troubles as premarital sexual activity, STDs, crime, high divorce rates, single parent homes, violence in school, school drop-outs, "shacking up", children running away from home, and even youth suicide. Who. did you say, Dr. Dawkins, is anti-education? Even the U.S. military is worried: young people getting out of high school today still lack the education to master the new and sophisticated technologies today's military uses. In any case, atheistic Communism has most certainly stopped the people living under it from enjoying life to the fullest measure.



13)Dr. Richard Dawkins writes in his book of a "religious center" in the human brain, and cites an evolution of religious belief from primitive pre-historic polytheism to modern monotheism, cutting down on the number of gods worshiped, and then says atheism is the final step in that progression.



LKM replies: Hebraic monotheism is approximately contemporary with Hindu polytheism. Dr. Dawkins offers no archaeologic evidence to support his claim of this historic religious progression from many gods to one. He also offers no scientific evidence for a biologic "urge" of man to be religious, i.e. cannot offer proof of biologic origin of religion. Also, Dr. Dawkins calls religion "wishful thinking". driven entirely by basic primitive human desire and need for comfort and consolation. The answer, in the case of Christianity, is that the Bible often calls for its adherents to forego wish fulfillment, to deny self in the name of spiritual discipline, and put desires and needs of other people ahead of selfish greeds. These concepts run contrary to basic human nature.



14)On page 31 of his book, Dr. Richard Dawkins calls God a "control freak".



LKM replies: If thieves were to break into Dr. Dawkins' private abode to steal his most prized possessions, I wonder if he would call upon human earthly "control freaks" a.k.a. the friendly local police constabulary, to apprehend them? After all, the "unjust, unforgiving control freak" in the sky did say, THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.



15)Dr. Richard Dawkins says evolution is a completely established fact.



LKM replies: But in his interview with Ben Stein on the Expelled DVD, he admits not knowing how life first began. If you do not know how a process began, how can you say its continued progression is a proven fact? Nobody has ever witnessed the process of evolution in action. In his book, Dr. Dawkins gets way off his "home turf" with speculative plausibilities about the cosmos which likewise have never been conclusively proven, e.g. "the Big Bang".

The God Delusion is full of name-calling which does not get the ball rolling in terms of genuine criticism of theology. Dr. Dawkins engages in ad hominem attack and ridicule of religious people, in appeal to the very same irrationalism on the part of his readers which Dr. Dawkins himself so liberally criticizes. This BLOG writer, however, admits to some degree of amusement at the notion of having a divine deity to be called "The Flying Spaghetti-Monster". LKM's reply to this good humor is, "Try him, you'll like him!" What harmless good fun that is! No wonder the apostle Paul wrote in the Bible, I Corinthians 1:18-31, "as the world by wisdom knows not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe"; and, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise."

Whosoever thinks himself to be wise is a fool! But whoever knows himself to be a fool is wise!

-LKM

LKM On American Foreign Policy

Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. History has repeatedly proven that whenever single individual nations attempt to rule all the rest of the world, no matter how noble the intent to establish a global empire may be, said countries will eventually reach a breaking point when and where their resources will have become so thinly stretched abroad that internal domestic decline sets in, and leads to the collapse of the would-be empire nation from within.

America has a past history of repeated intervention into the international affairs of other nations, ostensibly for the latter's benefit. Such hubris presumes that America knows best, what is best for the rest of the world, and, in the name of superior virtue, imposes its will upon other nations, by military force of arms if necessary. QUESTION: Is the American government less sinful and corrupt, than those of other countries? Is not all government a synonym for bullying those out of power, by those who are in power? What is the difference, if any, between governing and bullying? Even in nations claiming to be ruled by documented constitutionalism, the citizenry knows all too well this bitter lesson, that mere words on official-looking parchment paper are not self-enforcing, to stay the hands of rulers ever greedy for more control over the masses of ordinary people.

The Bible declares, Jeremiah 10:23-24, that man is spiritually blind in his walk, without God's guidance over his footsteps. Psalm 14:1-3 tells us also that there is no man upon earth who does good, and sins not. Therefore, the substitution of American will over that of a local indigenous government in a foreign country can only mean substitution of one set of sins for another. As former President Ronald Reagan sagely observed, "Government tends not to solve problems, but merely to re-arrange them." President George Washington, therefore, was also wise, to advise America to avoid entangling alliances. Otherwise, God cannot bless America according to His Word, in James 4:4:--"Ye adulterers and adultresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God."

America must be the guarantor of its own liberty and prosperity, to the exclusion of that of all others.

-Lawrence K. Marsh

In Search Of The Babel Tower

The many and varied languages of the world: do they all historically derive from a single parent "proto-language"? There is much speculation on that question, especially with the use of computer technology to compare language data in order to find common elements and trends between languages. Happily, some languages have a well-known and well-documented parent language, e.g. Latin, Sanskrit, ancient Greek, Achamenid Persian. Yet, there is no conclusive proof that all human languages arose from a single blissful and proverbial Garden of Eden-type scenario, completely devoid of all communication confusion. Nevertheless, the more we discover similarities between existing languages, the more tempting the speculation of the existence of a prehistoric "proto-language" becomes, as an object of further academic pursuit.

The first most obvious sign of historic kinship between languages is similarity of vocabularies. Yet often, lexical items referring to sophisticated economic, religious and socio-political institutions, as well as to science and technology, may easily be borrowed from one language to another, with no evidence of historic kinship between the donor and recipient languages in question. Far less likely to be mere borrowings, and thus more likely to be relevant and useful to prove linguistic kinships, are words referring to mankind's most primitive state of existence. Those words are: 1)counting numbers, 2)names of body parts, 3)names of family relations, and 4)names of natural phenomena. In considering lexical items for comparison, phonological differences, as well as similarities, may point to a common origin of two or more languages, so long as the phonological differences are correspondingly regular, systematic and predictable.

Also important to compare is language grammar, far less transient than individual words in languages. Do the languages in question have similar sentence structure and word order? How do the languages conjugate their verbs? Do the languages in question decline their nouns and adjectives by means of a series of case endings, or is the spatial relationship between nouns defined only by prepositions and postpositions?

Most importantly, it must be remembered that no one single consideration alone proves and conclusive historic relationship between languages, but all evidences must be weighed together as a whole. The bottom-line point here is that definite and reasonable criteria do exist to guide us, in proving and defining historic relations between languages.

-Lawrence K. Marsh