Monday, March 28, 2011
Christianity Not Imposable Upon Unbelievers
In the course of national debate and discussion of the proper role of religion in other areas of national life--most notably in politics--the Christian community has fallen victim from the atheistic secular Left to the accusation that Christians are trying to forcibly impose their religious beliefs upon unbelievers. I would like to clarify the truth of this matter to both Christian and non-Christian alike. The Bible scripture of John 6:44 quotes Jesus Christ to say, "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." So the entire question of who shall/shall not be a follower of Jesus Christ is completely out of the hands of any man to resolve. This prerogative belongs exclusively to God, He chooses His own people at His pleasure. Both Christian and non-Christian must understand this principle. How do we know if God has placed His loving hand upon our lives, to choose us to be one of His people? We know this when we have a continuous on-going desire to live our lives in such a manner as to please God. The author of this BLOG makes claim to this experience: Jesus Christ is indeed the paramount apex of my life, changing it as nobody and nothing else has or ever will. This is not to say I am a sinless saint, as I continue to spiritually grow and develop in Christ daily: this does involve making some stumbling mistakes into sin from time to time. But the difference between this and the unbeliever is the intended direction in which we are going: the unbeliever makes a deliberate point to go in the opposite direction in defiance of God's divine ordinances. Finally, a word about The Great Commission and the good news of Jesus Christ: the atheistic secular Left accuses that Christians are harshly judgemental and condemnatory to those who refuse to embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ and trust Him for their salvation. The truth is just the opposite: the Bible indeed acknowledges that every human being is sinful, believers and unbelievers alike. But the Christian message is not one of condemnation, but of salvation, redemption and reclamation available to all who acknowledge their sins and repent of them. This is the good news of the Christian message. We serve a God of second, third, fourth etc. chance, Jesus did say to forgive other sinners as we would like to have our own sins forgiven. Matthew 7:1-5: With what measure we judge others, that same measure of judgement will return back to us. -LKM
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The Way We Were Not.....
The author of this BLOG will never suppose that America has ever enjoyed a sinless Golden Age of saintly virtue. To varying degrees, crime, sin, vice and immoral depravity have always been with us since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Still, those old enough to remember the decade of the 1950s--as this blogger does--are compelled by the facts to admit that 21st century America has witnessed a dramatic downward morality shift by comparison to where it was sixty years ago, to wit:
1)In the 1950s, children obeyed immediately the commands of their parents without question or debate. THOU SHALT HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER was still a command, not a mere suggestion.
2)Divorce and extramarital sex were comparatively rare in the 1950s by today's standards, albeit that it certainly existed then as well. Still, divorce and extramarital sex were shameful sixty years ago, while today, they are brazenly shameless and mainstream: what is the big deal here?
3)Pornography and other overt reference to sex was almost non-existent sixty years ago as relatively taboo topics of conversation. Today, those topics are shamelessly mainstream. Yesterday's "hard core" pornography is today's "soft core" pornography, if indeed considered pornographic at all.
4)Sixty years ago, parents did not fear to spank their unruly and rebellious children. But today, thanks to Dr. Benjamin Spock, parents can go to prison for doing the same, on charge of assault and battery, and of child abuse.
5)Sixty years ago, the notion of "political correctness" was unheard-of, and unlike today, people did not fear to speak their honest minds. Today, "political correctness" has trumped our supposed First Amendment right of free speech.
6)Homosexuality was virtually unheard-of sixty years ago, and to date, a "gay gene" has yet to be discovered. Anyone suggesting sixty years ago that two persons of the same sex should be permitted to marry would have been laughed out of town!
7)Traditional male chivalry towards women, unquestioned sixty years ago, is now subject to controversy and debate. "Liberated" women now say women need men like fish need bicycles.
8)Senior citizens. once unquestionably respected sixty and more years ago, are now contemptuously viewed by younger generations as being half-dead old fogies who do not know which end is up. They should all just die quickly, and get out of the way, to give more living space to the young. Age is no longer respected: youth call their elders by first name with no accompanying title of respect.
9)In the 1950s, Christian churches were full on Sundays. Today, in churches not requiring attendance by their members, pews are half-empty, while shopping malls do a brisk business on Sundays.
10)American patriotism and belief in American exceptionalism, once strong in America sixty and more years ago, is today sneered at in contempt by most Americans(especially the foreign-born). John Wayne is dead, and globalist multiculturalism tells us America is "just another country among many", nothing special.
11)Between 1950 and 1980, America bravely fought wars against Communism in Korea and Viet Nam, only now to have Communism advocated by pointy-headed pseudo-intellectual college "professors" on university campuses. In education, Communist indoctrination has replaced honest education.
12)In the 1950s, the man was the unquestioned ruler and master of his own house, and all who were in it with him. Since then, extremist radical feminists have unequivocally declared to American maledom, "We have taken over your office, and here's a list of our demands!" Men are slowly but surely being deprived of their manhood because of this sexual revolution. On the TV show JAG, was Admiral Chegwidden wrong, to tell Colonel Sarah McKenzie that there will never be any female Navy SEALS? This blogger wonders when the U.S. Navy will sing, "Anchors aweigh, my girls, anchors aweigh...."
13)Repair shops were plentiful in the 1950s. One could take broken TVs, radios, watches, shoes and bicycles to them to be repaired. But today, we have become such a throw-away society that such repairs are no longer done. The afore-mentioned commodities, when broken, now must be discarded and new replacements for them bought. Repair shops of yester-year are now gone, and things are no longer valued and conserved as they were by our parents and grandparents who grew up in the disastrous 1930s Great Depression years. It might be well to remember that the earthly profession of Jesus Christ was that of carpenter: where would He be today, in this throw-away society of ours? This blogger believes that His ministry of restoration and redemption of human souls was at least in part inspired by the physical example of his carpentry, i.e. repair of broken pieces of furniture.
14)In the 1950s, the worst things kids did in school was run down the halls, shoot paper-wads with rubber bands in class, and maybe put a live hop-toad in the teacher's lunch box. Today, police are required to be on school property, with cameras and metal detectors installed, out of fear of students committing violent crimes against other students, teachers and school administrators.
15)The tradition of marriage of the 1950s is not quite yet completely gone, but the number of young couples "shacking up" together without formal marriage is now on the increase. Shamefully, governments extend to them all the same benefits they give to validly-married couples.
In conclusion, America is morally going to hell in a hand-basket with younger Americans totally impervious to that danger, i.e. they have no living memory of earlier decades, nor have any sense of historic obligation to the past socio-political and moral values of their once-great country.
-LKM
1)In the 1950s, children obeyed immediately the commands of their parents without question or debate. THOU SHALT HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER was still a command, not a mere suggestion.
2)Divorce and extramarital sex were comparatively rare in the 1950s by today's standards, albeit that it certainly existed then as well. Still, divorce and extramarital sex were shameful sixty years ago, while today, they are brazenly shameless and mainstream: what is the big deal here?
3)Pornography and other overt reference to sex was almost non-existent sixty years ago as relatively taboo topics of conversation. Today, those topics are shamelessly mainstream. Yesterday's "hard core" pornography is today's "soft core" pornography, if indeed considered pornographic at all.
4)Sixty years ago, parents did not fear to spank their unruly and rebellious children. But today, thanks to Dr. Benjamin Spock, parents can go to prison for doing the same, on charge of assault and battery, and of child abuse.
5)Sixty years ago, the notion of "political correctness" was unheard-of, and unlike today, people did not fear to speak their honest minds. Today, "political correctness" has trumped our supposed First Amendment right of free speech.
6)Homosexuality was virtually unheard-of sixty years ago, and to date, a "gay gene" has yet to be discovered. Anyone suggesting sixty years ago that two persons of the same sex should be permitted to marry would have been laughed out of town!
7)Traditional male chivalry towards women, unquestioned sixty years ago, is now subject to controversy and debate. "Liberated" women now say women need men like fish need bicycles.
8)Senior citizens. once unquestionably respected sixty and more years ago, are now contemptuously viewed by younger generations as being half-dead old fogies who do not know which end is up. They should all just die quickly, and get out of the way, to give more living space to the young. Age is no longer respected: youth call their elders by first name with no accompanying title of respect.
9)In the 1950s, Christian churches were full on Sundays. Today, in churches not requiring attendance by their members, pews are half-empty, while shopping malls do a brisk business on Sundays.
10)American patriotism and belief in American exceptionalism, once strong in America sixty and more years ago, is today sneered at in contempt by most Americans(especially the foreign-born). John Wayne is dead, and globalist multiculturalism tells us America is "just another country among many", nothing special.
11)Between 1950 and 1980, America bravely fought wars against Communism in Korea and Viet Nam, only now to have Communism advocated by pointy-headed pseudo-intellectual college "professors" on university campuses. In education, Communist indoctrination has replaced honest education.
12)In the 1950s, the man was the unquestioned ruler and master of his own house, and all who were in it with him. Since then, extremist radical feminists have unequivocally declared to American maledom, "We have taken over your office, and here's a list of our demands!" Men are slowly but surely being deprived of their manhood because of this sexual revolution. On the TV show JAG, was Admiral Chegwidden wrong, to tell Colonel Sarah McKenzie that there will never be any female Navy SEALS? This blogger wonders when the U.S. Navy will sing, "Anchors aweigh, my girls, anchors aweigh...."
13)Repair shops were plentiful in the 1950s. One could take broken TVs, radios, watches, shoes and bicycles to them to be repaired. But today, we have become such a throw-away society that such repairs are no longer done. The afore-mentioned commodities, when broken, now must be discarded and new replacements for them bought. Repair shops of yester-year are now gone, and things are no longer valued and conserved as they were by our parents and grandparents who grew up in the disastrous 1930s Great Depression years. It might be well to remember that the earthly profession of Jesus Christ was that of carpenter: where would He be today, in this throw-away society of ours? This blogger believes that His ministry of restoration and redemption of human souls was at least in part inspired by the physical example of his carpentry, i.e. repair of broken pieces of furniture.
14)In the 1950s, the worst things kids did in school was run down the halls, shoot paper-wads with rubber bands in class, and maybe put a live hop-toad in the teacher's lunch box. Today, police are required to be on school property, with cameras and metal detectors installed, out of fear of students committing violent crimes against other students, teachers and school administrators.
15)The tradition of marriage of the 1950s is not quite yet completely gone, but the number of young couples "shacking up" together without formal marriage is now on the increase. Shamefully, governments extend to them all the same benefits they give to validly-married couples.
In conclusion, America is morally going to hell in a hand-basket with younger Americans totally impervious to that danger, i.e. they have no living memory of earlier decades, nor have any sense of historic obligation to the past socio-political and moral values of their once-great country.
-LKM
Monday, February 7, 2011
Of Music Makers and Toastmasters
As a post-script to the immediately-precedent BLOG essay on Toastmasters, I, Lawrence Keeney Marsh, cellist since age eight, testify that I helped establish a local club of amateur musicians called Music Makers, nearly forty years ago. That club is still in fully-vigorous existence today, meeting always the first Sunday afternoon of each month in various club-members' private homes.
Many long years of prior experience with music performance in front of Music Maker audiences was a great help in becoming a Toastmaster of far more recent time. Granting that speaking and instrumental music-playing are not identical skills, the two nevertheless do share some degree of common ground with such skills as artistic phrasing, dynamic contrast, tempo, rhythm and clarity of articulation. In serving as a Toastmaster speech evaluator, I critique speeches of other people with the ears of a trained musician.
More importantly, however, many long years of Music Maker experience have in large measure conquered the severe trepidations I might have otherwise had in my early days of Toastmaster speaking experience. Most important: I know that in both settings, I am among friends, and nobody in the audience has a shot-gun across their lap, waiting to blast me away a la John Wayne style, the first time I stumble a little.
-LKM
Many long years of prior experience with music performance in front of Music Maker audiences was a great help in becoming a Toastmaster of far more recent time. Granting that speaking and instrumental music-playing are not identical skills, the two nevertheless do share some degree of common ground with such skills as artistic phrasing, dynamic contrast, tempo, rhythm and clarity of articulation. In serving as a Toastmaster speech evaluator, I critique speeches of other people with the ears of a trained musician.
More importantly, however, many long years of Music Maker experience have in large measure conquered the severe trepidations I might have otherwise had in my early days of Toastmaster speaking experience. Most important: I know that in both settings, I am among friends, and nobody in the audience has a shot-gun across their lap, waiting to blast me away a la John Wayne style, the first time I stumble a little.
-LKM
Friday, February 4, 2011
What Toastmasters Means To Me
As of the time of this writing, I, Lawrence Keeney Marsh, testify that I have been with Toastmasters International for twenty months.
Other people always see us from different sides and angles from that by which we see ourselves. We cannot possibly see ourselves from the same perspectives as those by which others see us. One man's villain is another man's hero, one man's coward is another man's diplomat. Are we bold and brave, or are we brash, reckless and foolish?
Toastmasters is to me a golden oppertunity for reality check, concerning the status of my relations with other people. As we speak to an audience, we expect certain audience reactions to our words, according to how we ourselves would also react. With some listeners, we are not disappointed. With other listeners, we are shock-surprised, for better or for worse, at the unexpected emotional impact our words have on them.
Often, we form our opinions of other people based on incomplete and limited information about them. We judge books by their covers. If we stay with Toastmasters for several years, we realize that in some cases, our first guesses about other people were correct; while in other cases, we were very wrong. Abraham Lincoln once said that it is better to remain silent and be thought to be a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. President Calvin Coolidge was a man of few words and little action. Was he lazy, or was he judicious in his exercise of presidential power? In Toastmasters, we learn who are the ambitious and aggressive, and who are the restrained and reserved. When people do dare to open their mouths to speak, all doubts about them are indeed removed. Can there be such a thing as a "reticent Toastmaster"? Should there be? The answer to that question depends on the limits people want to place upon information about themselves they give out to other people, and upon their ability to live with the concomittant judgements other people pass upon them accordingly.
Finally, a strong criticism of Toastmasters: It is ideologically too much bent towards needs of corporate business America, when other professions, too, could use Toastmaster skills of communication. For instance, Toastmasters should also seek alliance with academia, so as to help teachers and professors to become better teachers and professors. Educators, for their part, should have some hand in the content and design of Toastmaster manuals. I would suggest publication of a new Toastmaster manual called Toastmasters For Teachers. The extant manual called Speaking To Inform is a first step in that right direction, but it does not go far enough. More cooperative research and brain-storming between Toastmasters and academia must be done.
How can teachers and professors turn mediocre students into excellent students? Is it not true that the success or failure of educators in their profession rests upon their ability to effectively communicate their academic subjects to their students? Perhaps a Toastmaster DTM should be one prerequisite for entering the teaching profession. By the same token, expounding upon new methods of marketing some new product, or re-arranging company financial policies and practices, is a very different concern from that of pedagogical methods in the teaching of science, mathematics and foreign languages. No academic subject is truly hard to learn, it merely seems hard to learn if there are gaps in the logical sequence of progression from one principle to another, such that students fail to see relevant connections between them. This is especially true of sequential subjects like science and mathematics, where grasp of a succeeding principle necessarily depends upon understanding of a related prior one.
To this end goal, Toastmasters communications techniques have almost infinite potential to boost academia to new heights of excellence.
-Lawrence K. Marsh, CC
Tech Corridor Toastmasters
M.A. Near Eastern Studies U.C.L.A. 1971
Other people always see us from different sides and angles from that by which we see ourselves. We cannot possibly see ourselves from the same perspectives as those by which others see us. One man's villain is another man's hero, one man's coward is another man's diplomat. Are we bold and brave, or are we brash, reckless and foolish?
Toastmasters is to me a golden oppertunity for reality check, concerning the status of my relations with other people. As we speak to an audience, we expect certain audience reactions to our words, according to how we ourselves would also react. With some listeners, we are not disappointed. With other listeners, we are shock-surprised, for better or for worse, at the unexpected emotional impact our words have on them.
Often, we form our opinions of other people based on incomplete and limited information about them. We judge books by their covers. If we stay with Toastmasters for several years, we realize that in some cases, our first guesses about other people were correct; while in other cases, we were very wrong. Abraham Lincoln once said that it is better to remain silent and be thought to be a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. President Calvin Coolidge was a man of few words and little action. Was he lazy, or was he judicious in his exercise of presidential power? In Toastmasters, we learn who are the ambitious and aggressive, and who are the restrained and reserved. When people do dare to open their mouths to speak, all doubts about them are indeed removed. Can there be such a thing as a "reticent Toastmaster"? Should there be? The answer to that question depends on the limits people want to place upon information about themselves they give out to other people, and upon their ability to live with the concomittant judgements other people pass upon them accordingly.
Finally, a strong criticism of Toastmasters: It is ideologically too much bent towards needs of corporate business America, when other professions, too, could use Toastmaster skills of communication. For instance, Toastmasters should also seek alliance with academia, so as to help teachers and professors to become better teachers and professors. Educators, for their part, should have some hand in the content and design of Toastmaster manuals. I would suggest publication of a new Toastmaster manual called Toastmasters For Teachers. The extant manual called Speaking To Inform is a first step in that right direction, but it does not go far enough. More cooperative research and brain-storming between Toastmasters and academia must be done.
How can teachers and professors turn mediocre students into excellent students? Is it not true that the success or failure of educators in their profession rests upon their ability to effectively communicate their academic subjects to their students? Perhaps a Toastmaster DTM should be one prerequisite for entering the teaching profession. By the same token, expounding upon new methods of marketing some new product, or re-arranging company financial policies and practices, is a very different concern from that of pedagogical methods in the teaching of science, mathematics and foreign languages. No academic subject is truly hard to learn, it merely seems hard to learn if there are gaps in the logical sequence of progression from one principle to another, such that students fail to see relevant connections between them. This is especially true of sequential subjects like science and mathematics, where grasp of a succeeding principle necessarily depends upon understanding of a related prior one.
To this end goal, Toastmasters communications techniques have almost infinite potential to boost academia to new heights of excellence.
-Lawrence K. Marsh, CC
Tech Corridor Toastmasters
M.A. Near Eastern Studies U.C.L.A. 1971
Saturday, January 29, 2011
John Wayne: A Reality Check
John Wayne was one great American who by way of his Hollywood movie career portrayed to America, what it really means to be a man. Not only was he tough on screen, he was unabashedly and refreshingly honest, always to say truthfully what is on his mind. None of this political correctness nonsense for him! If ever a Gloria Steinem or Germaine Greer-type woman got uppity with him, he had no second thoughts to turn them across his knee and give their fannies the true-grit paddling they so richly deserved! Yet, he was actually very generous in his attitude towards women and their rights. Shortly before he died, The Duke said, "Women can do anything they want to....as long as they have supper ready for us men when we come home from work."
Fair enough: throughout the history of America, men have done a very great deal, from which women have benefitted. So there is some justice to be had in a little gracious compensatory gratitude back to men from the distaff side.
For all his portrayal of male machismo on the Hollywood movie screen, however, John Wayne never actually served in the U.S. military armed forces, despite being of appropriate age to do so in World War II and in the Korean conflict. (He was born in May 1907.) He never led any real-life charges up San Juan Hill, nor did he ever ride into the proverbial very jaws of hell and return again, unscathed. A college football injury was responsible for his marked absence from military service to his country.
John Wayne may have had great basic physical strength, but as an alleged inveterate smoker off-screen, he never had any enduring stamina to display in any of his movies, i.e. he never ran or swam continuously for any great distance. He also never participated in the Olympic Games. These facts create something of a credibility gap between his on-screen invincibility, and his real-life athletic capability. But at least, when we Americans turned off the TV after watching a John Wayne movie, we felt damn good to be an American! Stars and stripes forever, and no bowing to foreign heads of state to apologize to them for America's past doings abroad!
Yet, John Wayne was never gratuitously pugnacious or petulant. He was always well-reserved, saving the full force of his wrath exclusively for those who deliberately provoked it. He obliged both good and evil with the utmost of equity becoming a patriotic American.
This blogger confesses that John Wayne was every bit the man yours truly never was and should be. He has it in mind that when he dies and goes to heaven, his first question to God will be, "Lord, why did you not make a John Wayne out of me?" God's answer may well be, "But Larry, John Wayne knew not a lick about music! Look at all the musical talent with which I blessed you!" "I am mighty grateful to you for that, Lord", I would reply in kind. But all my musical talent won me more scornful and jealous enemies than admirers in my lifetime, even among alleged friends and family relatives. John Wayne was far better-off in the popularity department with an America which admires crude brutality over refined cultural erudition.
Thanks to the stereotype of such effeminate music composers as Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn, this musician blogger never dated girls in high school and college, feeling assured no woman in her right mind would be caught dead in the company of a sissy-wimp cellist. Yet, the reality is that even The Duke himself experienced divorce several times in his life. Maybe wives exposed to the private lives of the rich-and-famous know something about wowie-kazowie men the rest of the general public does not know about them.
No, there is never any rose without thorns, even if that rose is named John Wayne. Still, it is well beyond dispute that on the Hollywood screen, The Duke was and still is a hero--a great American hero--to tens of millions of Americans. In an American Rust Age of anti-hero, The Duke still remains rhetorically an eternal torch in the hearts of those who remember him, of all those traditional values which built America into the world's greatest and uniquely-exceptional nation.
-LKM
Fair enough: throughout the history of America, men have done a very great deal, from which women have benefitted. So there is some justice to be had in a little gracious compensatory gratitude back to men from the distaff side.
For all his portrayal of male machismo on the Hollywood movie screen, however, John Wayne never actually served in the U.S. military armed forces, despite being of appropriate age to do so in World War II and in the Korean conflict. (He was born in May 1907.) He never led any real-life charges up San Juan Hill, nor did he ever ride into the proverbial very jaws of hell and return again, unscathed. A college football injury was responsible for his marked absence from military service to his country.
John Wayne may have had great basic physical strength, but as an alleged inveterate smoker off-screen, he never had any enduring stamina to display in any of his movies, i.e. he never ran or swam continuously for any great distance. He also never participated in the Olympic Games. These facts create something of a credibility gap between his on-screen invincibility, and his real-life athletic capability. But at least, when we Americans turned off the TV after watching a John Wayne movie, we felt damn good to be an American! Stars and stripes forever, and no bowing to foreign heads of state to apologize to them for America's past doings abroad!
Yet, John Wayne was never gratuitously pugnacious or petulant. He was always well-reserved, saving the full force of his wrath exclusively for those who deliberately provoked it. He obliged both good and evil with the utmost of equity becoming a patriotic American.
This blogger confesses that John Wayne was every bit the man yours truly never was and should be. He has it in mind that when he dies and goes to heaven, his first question to God will be, "Lord, why did you not make a John Wayne out of me?" God's answer may well be, "But Larry, John Wayne knew not a lick about music! Look at all the musical talent with which I blessed you!" "I am mighty grateful to you for that, Lord", I would reply in kind. But all my musical talent won me more scornful and jealous enemies than admirers in my lifetime, even among alleged friends and family relatives. John Wayne was far better-off in the popularity department with an America which admires crude brutality over refined cultural erudition.
Thanks to the stereotype of such effeminate music composers as Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn, this musician blogger never dated girls in high school and college, feeling assured no woman in her right mind would be caught dead in the company of a sissy-wimp cellist. Yet, the reality is that even The Duke himself experienced divorce several times in his life. Maybe wives exposed to the private lives of the rich-and-famous know something about wowie-kazowie men the rest of the general public does not know about them.
No, there is never any rose without thorns, even if that rose is named John Wayne. Still, it is well beyond dispute that on the Hollywood screen, The Duke was and still is a hero--a great American hero--to tens of millions of Americans. In an American Rust Age of anti-hero, The Duke still remains rhetorically an eternal torch in the hearts of those who remember him, of all those traditional values which built America into the world's greatest and uniquely-exceptional nation.
-LKM
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Behaviour Unbecoming
In both the civilian government and the military, there exists in the law code a broad and disturbingly-vague category of punishable wrong-doing, simply called "behaviour unbecoming", i.e. behaviour inconsistent with and contrary to a perfect role-model example of someone in government service at public tax-payer expense, whether in civilian service or in the military. This legal category is itself unbecoming to the rest of the body of law because it is so very imprecise and thus subject to partisan political or otherwise whimsical and capricious interpretation by any would-be tyrant using that power of government office for personal hubris and self-aggrandizement. In order to insure equal justice under law, law itself must be narrowly and accurately defined.
Many Americans--this blogger included--proudly believe in American exceptionalism: we say there is something about America which sets it uniquely apart from all the rest of the world's nations. We believe this American exceptionalism to be a gift from God, a gift which the Lord will rescind, should America decline its obligation to play its exemplary role of unique destiny in world history.
In recent decades, grave American governmental and societal departures from that unique obligation have heralded a new era of behaviour unbecoming to the unique greatness America alone has heretofore been priviledged to know and exercise. What are these behaviours unbecoming to America? Lest we, too, be accused of being vague and imprecise, let us declare them to the world:
1)America has condoned law-breaking by certain "politically correct" demographic segments of society, based on alleged claim of victimhood from generations past now long-dead and gone. 2)America has tolerated leaders in high government office who shamelessly talk dirty four-letter-word bathroom-wall language. This behaviour is an assault upon the solemn dignity of public trust in high government office. 3)America has invaded the privacy of its citizenry in the name of national security, by use of politically-motivated surveillance without warrant. This government behaviour opens the door to possible use of federal agencies for partisan political purpose. 4)America has engaged in excessive taxation of its citizenry, thus robbing the people of God-given right to pursue happiness on their own terms. 5)America has cowardly abandoned freedom of speech in favor of political correctness. 6)America has winked its approval of certain sexual behaviours not tolerated in this country one hundred years ago. The mass communications media shamelessly places these sexual perversities on center stage before the public, in daring defiance of traditional marriage. 7)America has zipped the proverbial rug out from under the feet of the nation's parents, to discipline their own children as they see fit. Consequently, America has recently raised generations of defiant young brats who feel America owes them a free living with no obligations on their part in return. Dr. Benjamin Spock is largely to blame for abolishing parental boards of education applicable to young seats of learning. 8)America has recently replaced beauty with ugliness in public display of both audial and visual arts, saying in the name of political correctness that ugly is just as good as beautiful, and there is no absolute and objective measure of either. 9)Inferior public school education threatens to render future generations of Americans unable to successfully compete in international global markets. 10)Numbers substitute for absolute principles in determination of right from wrong. 11)America has adopted quick-easy divorce laws allowing nullification of marriage for relatively light and transient reasons. This practice is an assault upon a God-ordained and sacred social institution. 12)After sacrificing thirty-five-thousand American lives in a war against Communism in Korea, and sixty-thousand more in a later war against Communism in Viet Nam, we slowly but surely adopt Communism for ourselves, even by our own collective hand, as we convince ourselves that individual liberties are too dangerous and the uncertain vicissitudes of a free market place are too discomforting for America's own good. The hottest beds of Communism in America are in its halls and classrooms of academia, where honest education is supplanted with political indoctrination. 13)Thanks to reckless and irresponsible government economic policies, the American dollar continually loses its purchasing power every year. This decline has international repercussions as foreign governments also lose confidence in the American dollar as the world back-up monetary currency.
To be sure, America has never witnessed a Golden Age of Victorian sinlessness and moral rectitude. Nevertheless, the certainty of moral decline in America over the last one hundred years is beyond dispute. Behaviour unbecoming to the ideals of the American character are now more endemic than ever before. That said, we need not listen to the clarion call of some who declare that America's better days are now irreversibly behind her. We have many other sources of leadership to look to for inspiration besides those in government and politics. What about our pioneers in science and technology? What about our innovators in education? What about our literary writers, music and theatrical drama composers, our architects and our automotive industry designers? What about our inventors and discoverers? It is these people who will courageously carry the day for America, popular majority opposition and cynicism notwithstanding. All that is necessary for a revival of American greatness is for every American to quit saying "Let George do it", look at himself or herself in the mirror, and say in full confidence and conviction, "I will do it."
-LKM
Many Americans--this blogger included--proudly believe in American exceptionalism: we say there is something about America which sets it uniquely apart from all the rest of the world's nations. We believe this American exceptionalism to be a gift from God, a gift which the Lord will rescind, should America decline its obligation to play its exemplary role of unique destiny in world history.
In recent decades, grave American governmental and societal departures from that unique obligation have heralded a new era of behaviour unbecoming to the unique greatness America alone has heretofore been priviledged to know and exercise. What are these behaviours unbecoming to America? Lest we, too, be accused of being vague and imprecise, let us declare them to the world:
1)America has condoned law-breaking by certain "politically correct" demographic segments of society, based on alleged claim of victimhood from generations past now long-dead and gone. 2)America has tolerated leaders in high government office who shamelessly talk dirty four-letter-word bathroom-wall language. This behaviour is an assault upon the solemn dignity of public trust in high government office. 3)America has invaded the privacy of its citizenry in the name of national security, by use of politically-motivated surveillance without warrant. This government behaviour opens the door to possible use of federal agencies for partisan political purpose. 4)America has engaged in excessive taxation of its citizenry, thus robbing the people of God-given right to pursue happiness on their own terms. 5)America has cowardly abandoned freedom of speech in favor of political correctness. 6)America has winked its approval of certain sexual behaviours not tolerated in this country one hundred years ago. The mass communications media shamelessly places these sexual perversities on center stage before the public, in daring defiance of traditional marriage. 7)America has zipped the proverbial rug out from under the feet of the nation's parents, to discipline their own children as they see fit. Consequently, America has recently raised generations of defiant young brats who feel America owes them a free living with no obligations on their part in return. Dr. Benjamin Spock is largely to blame for abolishing parental boards of education applicable to young seats of learning. 8)America has recently replaced beauty with ugliness in public display of both audial and visual arts, saying in the name of political correctness that ugly is just as good as beautiful, and there is no absolute and objective measure of either. 9)Inferior public school education threatens to render future generations of Americans unable to successfully compete in international global markets. 10)Numbers substitute for absolute principles in determination of right from wrong. 11)America has adopted quick-easy divorce laws allowing nullification of marriage for relatively light and transient reasons. This practice is an assault upon a God-ordained and sacred social institution. 12)After sacrificing thirty-five-thousand American lives in a war against Communism in Korea, and sixty-thousand more in a later war against Communism in Viet Nam, we slowly but surely adopt Communism for ourselves, even by our own collective hand, as we convince ourselves that individual liberties are too dangerous and the uncertain vicissitudes of a free market place are too discomforting for America's own good. The hottest beds of Communism in America are in its halls and classrooms of academia, where honest education is supplanted with political indoctrination. 13)Thanks to reckless and irresponsible government economic policies, the American dollar continually loses its purchasing power every year. This decline has international repercussions as foreign governments also lose confidence in the American dollar as the world back-up monetary currency.
To be sure, America has never witnessed a Golden Age of Victorian sinlessness and moral rectitude. Nevertheless, the certainty of moral decline in America over the last one hundred years is beyond dispute. Behaviour unbecoming to the ideals of the American character are now more endemic than ever before. That said, we need not listen to the clarion call of some who declare that America's better days are now irreversibly behind her. We have many other sources of leadership to look to for inspiration besides those in government and politics. What about our pioneers in science and technology? What about our innovators in education? What about our literary writers, music and theatrical drama composers, our architects and our automotive industry designers? What about our inventors and discoverers? It is these people who will courageously carry the day for America, popular majority opposition and cynicism notwithstanding. All that is necessary for a revival of American greatness is for every American to quit saying "Let George do it", look at himself or herself in the mirror, and say in full confidence and conviction, "I will do it."
-LKM
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Thomas Jefferson On The Political Correctness Doctrine
The pernicious doctrine of political correctness is one of Communist origin. Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Tse-T'ung wrote about it in his Little Red Book several decades ago, calling it "right thinking". In Communist countries, political dissidents have been sent to "mental hospitals", to get their political thinking "straightened out". What would Thomas Jefferson say to this doctrine of political correctness, were he to be alive today to witness it? In America today, threats to supplant free speech with political correctness, especially on pretext of protecting the feelings of certain demographic groups of people against all possible emotional injury, are becoming ever-more pervasive. In his book, You Can't Say That!, George Mason University law professor David Bernstein gives many examples of how individual civil liberties guaranteed us under the Bill of Rights are being rescinded by anti-discrimination laws.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." Around the inner-wall dome of the Jefferson Memorial today, we read others of his words: "I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD, ETERNAL HOSTILITY AGAINST EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MINDS OF MAN."
-LKM
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." Around the inner-wall dome of the Jefferson Memorial today, we read others of his words: "I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD, ETERNAL HOSTILITY AGAINST EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MINDS OF MAN."
-LKM
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