Identity Politics

The Left seeks to define people in terms of the group or groups that they spring from. I believe these associations are significant, enriching but of second tier significance. What really matters is being other-identified and self-identified as an individual and an individualist first. Where such occurs, the possibilities are endless. Where group-identity is of paramount emphasis, it serves as a glass ceiling on personal achievement.

Free Will

Here is a quote that I read on Facebook today: "Free will doesn't mean doing whatever you want. It means the freedom to do what is right." This quote seems very mistaken to me. I realize what the writer is striving to achieve. She wants each morally responsible adult to do what is right all the time, versus doing whatever feels good or is tempting to do. I would rewrite this quote: "Free will means having the power to do whatever you want, although you often will not exercise this power in ways detrimental to others or yourself. Free will means the freedom to do what is right or what is wrong, with accompanying full awareness of the implications of choices made and implemented." Free will doesn't mean to do whatever you want. It does mean that you have the innate power of choice to choose to do and to do whatever you want to. It is not advising that you do whatever you want to; being free means you can choose to and literally can elect to race a car into the side of a train at 100 miles per hour. Doing so of course is highly dis-recommended. Being freed up to choose and do whatever you desire to do entails moral, legal and spiritual consequences in this world and in the next, for God keeps tabs on the free choices we make, and we of course answer for all we do and choose. Free will, again, does not mean doing whatever you want. Free will means having the power to do whatever you want, though self-restraint is highly advised. Free will means having the freedom or power to do as self-elected, be the action right or wrong. A moral agent in possession of and wielding a free will means having the say to do whatever you choose to do or actually do.

The Pilot

I shuttle many pilots and co-pilots to a airlines simulator certification center where they have to demonstrate proficiency in handling an aircraft in a mock emergency setting. It is a nerve-wracking and serious certification, redone every six months or so as long as they fly and need their license. I told a grizzled fifty-year old veteran about the real worry and fear in the faces of younger pilots, worried about flunking the certification. He quickly and brusqely brushed their worrying aside. He suggested that the only way to overcome such anxiety is to master every aspect of the training required and offered, so that one is so steeled, skilled and confident, that the four hour simulator episode is just another routine experience. He criticized them: he noted that they were under-prepared and on some level knew it, so they were right to be worried. Most of them still pass the simulated test, but his criticism struck a cord with me. His recommendation is consistent with what I have heard about winning trial lawyers. The biggest winners are not the Perry Masons or towering intellectuals: it ordinarily is the one that work the hardest and are the most prepared. The self-realizer needs take note of this recommendation: she who works the hardest and is the most technically prepared and skilled in her craft, will be well-positioned to create art or insight or an invention, based upon what she intuits.

Drew Bledsoe

Drew was being interviewed on a sports talk show, and he set two conditions for a quarterback progressing in the NFL. First, he said the player and his handlers must figure out what he is doing wrong, and then eliminate these missteps. Second, the player and his coaches must figure out what he must do right, and then he must successfully execute these positive steps. I was thinking to myself that these two strategies would work nicely for a budding individuator. First, she must come to understand what self-destructive behaviors there are that she habitually repeats, and then she must come to recognize them, and cease engaging in them. Second, she must learn who she really is, and what would make her content and complete as a person. Once she accomplishes these two, and sets up a plan for doing her thing and becoming who she is meant by God to be, then she needs to get after it. These attempts will make her successful and happy.

Government Effort

Going to the government to alleviate a social problem is like directing a sun beam through a magnifying glass upon a piece of paper in order to reveal what is written there. Light meant to illuminate the writing will only set the piece of paper on fire.

Not Anti-Christian

Just because I am not a Christian does not in any way indicate that I am anti-Christian--or against any other religion.

Love Of Country

My heart is heavy with worry for the future of our nation this morning. King Obama has summoned the NRA to the White House for a conference on gun violence. Chicago has very stringent gun laws and a very high murder rate--so much for gun control. What Obama and the Left are really after is raw power--to set up one party-rule in America with Obama as dictator for life. He and they may achieve their aims. America, the greatest nation that ever existed, is being brought to its knees by these evil intellectuals. love of God, guns, country, the Constitution, capitalism and the American way are what they hate, seek to destroy, and are well on the way to accomplishing. I am not heard at all. I feel like an Old Testament prophet crying in the wilderness. When will people wake up? When will enough be enough? When will the forces of good and righteousness on the Right fight back and reclaim this country, and then take that message to the world?

Follow Your Dreams

To each young person I urge: follow your dream. When the majority of the young actually follow their dreams, their mighty efforts and the prodigious outcome will be the tide that lifts all boats.

Man-Child

Today I was listening to Mike Gallagher on the radio, and he lamented that young men today are not as masculine as they once were; that they are being feminized. He is correct. We can raise up a generation of manly young men that individuate without being cave men, or holding down their women and children. Gallagher had some sharp academic woman on talking about young men today as working but unattached to marriage, family, institutions, churches or civic organizations. She contrasted this phenomenon with more mature young men in the 1960s. She is correct. I believe that the solution is to teach young men and young women to individuate. Then, as the Bible urges for believers to put away the ways of a child, and now to act like an adult, then they will mature faster and better and assume their adult roles of running society as did their forefathers before them. Again, the lack of the right set up values is what is allowing them to choose to underachieve

Incrementalism

Many pundits lately have been warning about the dangers of incremental expansion of federal powers steadily creeping into private lives. For example, just now Minnesota legislators are considering requiring a new license to drive a boat. Incrementally, the state is licensing every aspect of Minnesotan lives, and we have less liberty, each year. We let our freedom and independence be taken from us a piece at a time as the modern Leviathan grows bigger and bigger. This is why the gun rights people do not and must not trust the Left on banning gun rights. They will start with background checks. They will then register all private gun ownership in America. They will the move to license, based on passing a psychological evaluation, or refuse to license all gun owners. They will finally pass legislation to confiscate all guns in private hands. We lose our liberty a little at a time, incrementally. Intellectuals on the Left accuse NRA leaders of being extreme in opposing even the slightest, most modest, the most reasonable restriction on regulating private gun owners. Leaders at the NRA know the recent history of incrementalists in most other areas of American life where the government has incrementally extended control over private lives. Incrementalist are devious, mean, power-hungry and completely untrustworthy. They are not moderate. They are stealthy liars on the Left. Confiscation is their goal and they are fanatical ideologues that talk moderate to swing over and deceive the masses while they extend federal and state power reach into private hands. There are two solutions. Lovers of liberty must oppose forcefully any control on gun rights. Then they must push a counter-incremental decentralist, anarchist, libertarian agenda of devolution of federal power and size to release power back to the people. If the majority of the people adopt this as their goal, they can begin to cut the Leviathan down to size.