The Increasing Hatred of Children and Familes

What an increasingly ugly and hateful culture we have become - and it is getting worse.

Here is the account of how a pro football player - Phillip Rivers, a Roman Catholic with a wife and six children - was treated by a "fan" and by the multi-gazillion-dollar bread-and-circus media outlet ESPN.

And here is a mother who is finding herself being charged with a crime for not being able to show up for jury "duty" with her nursing child.  What kind of savage judge and culture would treat a mother and infant in this way?

In the first case, the player is being "asked" - more accurately "berated" for following his religious dictates which do not permit him to practice contraception.  And the usual canard that people should not have children they can't "afford" does not apply to a quarterback in the NFL.  I would find it hard that he has trouble keeping the food on the table.  And yet there is unveiled resentment and hostility toward a man who, had he been a single father or the practitioner of some alternative lifestyle - or even if he had no children - would have been treated like a war hero.

Furthermore, think of all the professional athletes that father children out of wedlock by multiple women, in some cases not even knowing about all of the seeds he has sown across the fruited plain, regular Johnny Appleseeds.  How many "fathers" end up beating around their children's mother, divorcing them, or never marrying them in the first place?  Where is the outrage in those cases?  Often, such athletes are deemed role models for young people.

The issue isn't so much about large families, but large "traditional" families.  Rivers is married, a Christian, and has chosen, in accordance with his faith, to have a large family.  He is not asking anyone else to pay for his family through welfare payments or other force-based government programs.

In the second case, Laura Trickle is up against a wall.  When a baby is nursing, you cannot simply leave the child with someone else.  The child nurses from his mother.  If she is used to pumping breast milk, she might be able to leave the child with someone else for a time - so long as the mother is able to excuse herself every few hours to pump more milk - something that would be rather distracting in a courtroom setting.  Of course, even then, some children will not take to a bottle.

Moreover, she may simply have no relatives or friends whom she feels she can leave her child with while her husband works.  And in the case of jury "duty," she could be stuck with a long period of forced "service" - thus creating a real dilemma that goes well beyond one day.  The mid-boggling order of the court cited Mrs. Trickle because she "willfully and contemptuously appeared for jury service with her child and no one to care for the child."  Willful?  Contemptuous?  That is indeed how the state sees the exercise of liberty (will) and devotion to one's family (considered contemptuous).

Once again, this is a young, married mother.  She is not having children by numerous men out of wedlock and expecting the taxpayers to foot the bill.  She is also nursing her child - which has health benefits for the child and costs the taxpayers nothing.

How is she rewarded for her responsible behavior?  She is being treated as a criminal.  She is not bowing down and worshiping the state.

In an increasingly fascistic culture that is not only vapid, but also antagonistic against confessed Christianity, traditional families, and children themselves - this is precisely the kind of thing one would expect.

Some of the comments from readers are also illustrative.  It is often said that one gets the government one deserves.

You can glean a good deal about a nation and its people by how it treats its most vulnerable, as well as which behaviors and attitudes are rewarded and which are penalized.  It also speaks volumes how a society views motherhood, womanhood, and those who defend and nurture life.  All too often, wives and mothers are seen as impediments to "progress."

One can only wonder if this culture can be rehabilitated, or have the moochers and looters, the dull and the vile, the base and the barbarous - won the day?

The Feds: To Serve Man... With Bleach?

Here is the article.

Is this is why we have a federal government?  So bureaucrats can invade a picnic and pour bleach on everyone's food?

If this isn't tyranny, plain and simple, I would like to know why it isn't.  One of the problems with the federal government is that in spite of all the talk of "democracy" and "republic" and "of the people" and "freedom," what we really have is an oligarchical top-down empire held captive to two nearly-identical political "parties."  There is no check and balance from the states and the people as envisioned by the founders.  Neither do each of the branches of the federal government check the other.  They have all gone into cahoots - and this is the result.

Moreover, our "elections" are completely overseen by these two extra-constitutional parties with crazy internal rules designed to allow the parties (The Party?) to keep a stranglehold on the entire process.

And for the most part, in response, the people focus on a media-driven goose-chase of buying into the politics by blaming the other party, name-calling, aping platitudes and talking points offered up again and again as mindless mantras on talk radio and in tabloid TV.  The politicians are all "outraged" and promise "change" - all the while benefiting by keeping the people divided against each other while they literally do things like pour bleach on people's food.  CNN-watchers blame the FOX-watchers; FOX-watchers blame the CNN-watchers.  The "liberals" blame the "conservatives" and the "conservatives" blame the "liberals" - all the while those terms have switched places back and forth, gotten mixed and matched, and have become utterly meaningless labels.

Hooray for our team!

Meanwhile, once entrenched in Washington, Republicans and Democrats continue growing old agencies and creating new ones like mushrooms, generating reams and reams of new laws and regulations, destroying civil rights and national security, and printing dollars until they are nearly worthless.  Both "parties" support both warfare and welfare - while cleverly convincing their own members that it's really the "other" party doing it.

It's Laurel and Hardy.  And it would be funny if they weren't equipped with the power to tax, to regulate, to control, to execute, to torture, etc. and with enough nuclear firepower to turn the planet into a cinder - all with the brainpower and wisdom of two toddlers that have unlocked the liquor cabinet and the gun rack.  A little bleach anyone?

Instead of blaming Bush and Obama, and getting all wrapped up in getting their partisans elected, Democrats and Republicans ought to ditch the party apparatuses and apparatchiks and blame the federal government (comprised almost exclusively of functionaries of both of these parties) and its arrogant, imperial, bureaucratic attitude toward the people they are supposed to serve, not rule.  Whether we are Republican, Democrat, or neither, we would all benefit by going back to the Constitution and restoring the republic.

There was a time when federal bureaucrats did not pour bleach on food.  There was a time when Americans could not secretly be executed by the president. There was a time when people had the right to a trial.  There was a time when people were free to eat whatever food they wanted to eat.  The Bill of Rights (that historic relic) actually addresses these things, although every amendment has been whittled away or outright abolished de facto by partisan lackeys in all three branches of the federal government, by both alleged parties, and by their confederates in the state governments who play along to get ahead themselves.  We are no longer a union of fifty states, but rather an empire of two teams (Red Team and Blue Team, the Elephants and the Donkeys) of the same ideological philosophy of government that holds ordinary people in contempt.

And the people have been lulled into playing along, serving as "food" as it were to the monster.  To borrow the punch line of the old Twilight Zone episode: "It's a cookbook!"

One day, maybe the people will say "enough is enough."  This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when power is left unchecked.  A little Clorox on your porterhouse, anyone?  How disgraceful and shameful!  Pouring bleach on food to ruin a peaceful picnic.  "We the people" indeed!

Have you had enough yet?  Or are you waiting for some party hack from the Red/Blue Team to vandalize your dinner table?  Public service indeed!  

This is pure Soviet-style government...

Above: a cautionary tale from 1947

And it isn't in Russia.

Is this what the founding fathers had in mind when they declared independence from a government in which they complained of putting in place "a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance"?

By what right does any bureaucrat (who is getting his marching orders from Washington under the auspices of the USDA) have to come into a local school and interfere with what a parent feeds her own four-year old child?  Has a crime mentioned in the Constitution been committed here?  Has any crime at all been committed here?  At what point do we come together as a people and tell the federal government (and its surrogates in the state governments) "enough is enough!"?  I have not read the state constitution of North Carolina, but I suspect there is nothing in that document in which the people delegate to the state power to determine what parents feed their young children.  And if there is, shame on them!

And what a coincidence that these same "standards" in North Carolina are imposed by state bureaucrats in the other states.  What a coincidence, huh?

This is pure Soviet-style micromanagement of individual families and Kremlin-like domination over the states.  This is worship of the State.  This is not just Big Government.  Rather, we live in the days of the Government-god.  And the irony is that Americans call their national holiday "Independence Day" and spend fiat currency that says "In God We Trust."  You don't get much more Orwellian than that.

We are a people more dependent than our 18th century ancestors ever were!

In this North Carolina case, the dirty-work is being carried out by a state (as in one of the fifties) bureaucrat - but we all know the dirty little secret that our states today are mere puppets of Washington.  The federal government takes money from the people, and then doles it back to the people based on their state governments' compliance with (i.e. subordination to) Washington's dictates.  Isn't this yet more irony when you consider whom the City of Washington was named after?  The states have been reduced to being bossy big sister au paire surrogates of a super-Nanny State.  And there is a revolving door between the political offices in the state capitols and in Washington (which should really be renamed "Lincoln") - as the most efficient parasites who operate under the Democrat and Republican banners at the state level are tapped for bigger and better careers in looting at the federal level.

Once again, this is top-down tyranny - as all tyranny really has to be.

The USDA should be abolished.  The US Department of Health and Human Services should be abolished. All unconsitutional activity of the federal government needs to be brought to a screeching halt. And the people of North Carolina (whose ancestors accounted for a fourth of all of the quarter million Confederate deaths in the War Between the States) should stand on their hind legs and reclaim their rights as free people.  If you can't even send your four-year old to school with a non-government-approved sandwich, you are slaves.

And a good number of Americans think the federal objective of the War for Southern Independence was the abolition of slavery!  Another irony.

I wonder what it will take before Americans (whose modern notion of "freedom" seems to be some kind of abstract bumper-sticker slogan or "Go USA" type cheerleading) start telling their governments to mind their own business.  That is what real freedom is.  If you cannot even make a decision regarding family meal planning without bureaucratic oversight (even being compelled to purchase a state-approved meal), you are not free, Comrade.

HT: Mike Adams and Karen De Coster, the latter of whom sums it all up quite well:

The child was forced to eat processed chicken nuggets - after all, they meet the federal dietary guidelines! - in place of the lunch her mother chose for her. And the parents can be charged for the federalist foods provided to their children without their permission. Does this quote from the article bring you to the realization that you are sending your children to a centrally-planned, totalitarian gulag?

“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said.

This is the consequence of a government's fascist "war" on obesity and its fraudulent health & wellness paradigm.

Of course, as government takes over more and more, this kind of thing seems more and more "normal."  And when members of the political parties will typically excuse such actions as "for the health of our children" if these policies are being carried out under their own political party.  Even when they don't approve of such tactics, they won't cede the power because they think they will use such power properly when they are elected.

But then again, that is exactly how Soviet systems work: it is a bureaucratic and autocratic denial of liberty (often replacing parental authority with state authority) carried out in what appears to be a democratic process by a single party that claims it is acting "for the good of the people."

All that's missing is the hammer and sickle.

Should Counterfeiters Go to Prison?

The above is a recent speech before the European Parliament.  And Mr. Bloom is right!

Central banking (including our Federal Reserve System) is nothing other than theft by stealth under the color of legitimacy.  We are being looted by our own banking system.  Finally, people are waking up to this.  This should be seen as a moral issue (rather than being treated as arcane politics or as simple disagreements about economic policy).  If the local grocer were constantly changing the value of his scales (defining a pound as a little bit less and less each day), or if the gas stations were to jimmy up their pumps so that each successive gallon is smaller than the last gallon, we would be calling for trials!

The dollar is likewise a standard symbol of measurement.

This is why when private citizens print valueless paper and pass it off as dollars, they are convicted of counterfeiting.  It is a serious crime that undermines the entire economy.  In fact, the reason your quarters and dimes have serrated edges is because in the days when these coins actually contained silver, and the edges guarded against crooks shaving some of the silver off of the coins.  The joke is on us - there is today no reason for edging on any of our coins (with the exception of the nickel, which ironically is smooth-edged, as it is still made of real metal - at least for the time being).  The reason is because every bit of precious, or even industrial metals, has been removed (again, with the exception of the nickel. for the time being).  It's almost wrong to call them coins when they are really tokens.

So, counterfeiting is a crime, but when government (at the behest of bankers) manipulates the currency (by means of removing the metal from the coins and printing banknotes backed by nothing out of thin air - thus devaluing the dollar to their own advantage), we're all supposed to treat this as moral and legitimate.  Why?  Because the government says so.

Even the Scriptures condemn such playing around with standards of weights and measures.

Of course, a lot of people turn to Romans 13 to argue that government can do just about anything, because by definition, if they are doing it, it must be legal.  Some will distort Luther's doctrine of vocation to attempt to bully people into submission and subjugation to the state, even when the state is committing immoral acts.  Indeed, as the analogy goes, a surgeon takes off peoples' clothes and cuts them with a knife - and within his vocation, this is legal.  If someone off the street, not a doctor, were to do the same thing, it would be a crime.  Some use this analogy to make the case that if a private citizen were to print banknotes on his printer, it would be counterfeiting.  But if this private citizen were part of a super-secret elite group of bankers in bed with government - than somehow the very same act of counterfeiting is ipso facto legal.

This is a gross abuse of Luther's doctrine of vocation.

Government does not have carte blanche.  Theft is theft, and when government does it, it only compounds the sin by adding corruption to stealing.  We should hold those in government - especially judges and politicians - to extremely high standards of morality, as they essentially can, by force, take from us that which is ours - our property and even our lives.  Agents of the government have the power to put innocent people in prison or even to death.  We no longer have the right to trial or the guarantees of the fourth amendment in some cases.  A corrupt government is almost impossible to fight - especially a government that increasingly encroaches on the rights and the constitutional protection of its citizens.

And the sad part is that schools do not teach about money, banking, and the federal reserve.  Nor do colleges and universities typically even broach the subject.  Very few theologians would even see this deliberate theft as a sin.  Many, in fact, will congratulate themselves on voting for candidates who give fiery speeches about Christian morality all the while approving (or even abetting) the manipulation of the currency to the detriment of honest people who work for a living.

Also sad is how partisan people are.  No, Republicans, you can't blame Obama for this.  No Democrats, you can't blame Bush.  This is a bi-partisan syndicate that is 99 years old.  Almost no-one in the federal government will say anything bad about it or even approach it as a matter of moral principal.  But that is starting to change, both in Europe and in the U.S.  China (which is the number two holder of U.S. debt, right behind the Federal Reserve) is buying massive quantities of gold.  Gold-backed currency cannot be manipulated by bankers anywhere near the ability to do the same with a central bank with government-run printing presses.  Could it be that the Chinese Central Bank knows something our own bankers and bureaucrats don't?  Namely: ponzi schemes eventually run out.

Mr. Bloom's speech above shows that this is becoming a front-burner issue around the world, as every currency on the planet is today managed by central banks and manipulated by cartels of bankers, politicians, and bureaucrats.  Some countries (like China) may well see the writing on the wall as they try to find an exit strategy out of holding U.S. dollars (the post-WW2 world reserve currency) in savings, and instead seeking something of real value (such as gold) to store value and issue notes against.

The current system - even when it isn't ending up in riots and civil strife as in Greece - creates bubbles and booms and busts, transfers wealth from the poor to the rich, bankrolls federal boondoggles and military quagmires (in which central bankers, politicians, and their children do not shed blood), discourage thrift and savings and encourage borrowing and debt.

It also makes us (Americans) dependent on other nations to bankroll the whole ponzi scheme - and if and when they decide to get out, we will be left holding the bag.

Should someone in Weimar Germany have gone to jail when an entire nation was impoverished through outright theft of the value of the Deutschmarks in people's pockets?  This is money that people earned at a specific rate and then were forced to spend at another rate (think: some people were in a position to do just the opposite, namely bankers and those who can spend the cheap printed money before it devalues with the passage of time).  This is money under which contracts were signed at one value, and which devalued exponentially in the middle of the contract.

The same thing (hyperinflation) happened recently in Argentina and Zimbabwe.

Should those who benefit from this go to prison (like Bernie Madoff, who did not have government "cover" for his crimes)?

Actually, the founding fathers of the United States (who warned repeatedly against central banks and "paper" money) did not think such people should be incarcerated.  They had another penalty in mind.

Will there come a day when currencies are again honest and constant in value?  I'm afraid things will get a lot worse before they get better.  But on the other hand, thanks to the lessening of government control of information thanks to the Internet, this issue is now on the table.  And it is an issue that is being looked at from across the political spectrum: from conservative investment firms, mainstream conservative thinkers, and even youthful Occupy Wall Street folks on the left.

Ending the Fed is something people from all across the political spectrum ought to be able to agree on.  There are few teachings more universal than the Seventh Commandment.  The Fed has been allowing institutional theft from the people of this country for a century.  It's nice to see this being recognized in the European Parliament as well.

Thank you once again, Mr. Bloom!

Consider an investment: not of money, but of time.  The following 42 minute documentary (or read the transcript here) explains the whole thing - including why this is relevant.  The film's style is dated (it was produced in 1996) - which is actually good.  You can see how things have gone since that time.  A lot has happened in the world's economy - especially since 2008. 

The Remarkable Dr. Iris Mack

Dr. Iris Mack grew up in a housing project in New Orleans and has a truly remarkable story.

Even without the obstacles she overcame, just looking at her list of accomplishments is extraordinary and inspiring:

• High school valedictorian
• Double Bachlor's degrees from Vassar in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics
• MS in Mathematics from UCLA (Research Fellow at Bell Laboratories and holder of a patent in fiber optics)
• Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard (only the 2nd black woman to earn this doctorate from Harvard).  Dissertation: "Block Implicit One-Step Methods for Solving Smooth and Discontinuous Systems of Differential/Algebraic Equations: Applications to Transient Stability of Electrical Power Systems"   
• Executive MBA from the London Business School
• Investment banker
• Professor at MIT, University of San Francisco, and Clark Atlanta University
• NASA astronaut semifinalist
• Lecturer in London, Paris, and Zurich
• Whistleblower at Enron
• Tangled with two former treasury secretaries of the United States (Rubin and Summers)
• Correctly informed Harvard of the impending disaster facing its endowment because of risky derivatives (they not only didn't listen to her, at the cost of billions of dollars, but also fired her)
• Founder and CEO of Phat Math - a comprehensive approach to mathematical education
• Author of Mama Says "Money Doesn't Grow on Trees!" (available on Kindle for $2.99 here!) and currently writing Energy Trading and Risk Management as part of a multi-book deal with Wiley Publishing House
• She is also into serious weight training, running, and amateur aeronautics
• She currently works as an investment banker in London and speaks Spanish and French

More details here.  Her insights into economics and involvement in political matters can be read here.

And by the way, you may wonder who someone of Dr. Mack's economic insight and real-world experience is endorsing during this presidential election cycle (certainly no tinfoil-hat wearing racist kook, to be sure).  You can read about it here in Dr. Iris Mack's own words.  She believes that he is "the only presidential candidate who understands the current dire straits the economy is in and the only one with a coherent plan to fix things.... the only non-elitist candidate and the only candidate that would put the country back on the road to liberty."  Pretty high praise coming from someone of her caliber!

Where does this road end? And when?

Sobering.  Q: How long can we "kick the can down the road" spending "money" we don't have on a worldwide trillion-dollar empire of military bases abroad, and a spiralling ponzi-scheme of entitlements at home, desperately begging and borrowing from China (and whoever else will buy our increasingly risky debt) and printing money out of thin air to "pay" for it all?  A: Until the road ends.

Five Minutes on the Federal Reserve (Judge Napolitano)

Big Government is Crumbling...

...around the world. The writing is on the wall. Nigel Farage speaks the truth.

HT: Lew Rockwell

How Government Works

Every once in a while, one of them tells the truth.

You are being ripped off...

...if you are paid in U.S. dollars.

Ever since the creation of the Federal Reserve system in 1913, a collusion between private bankers and the federal government have been siphoning off (i.e. "stealing") your hard-earned money. This is worse than traditional taxation because it is largely unseen and it cannot be approved or repealed by vote. It's like an economic version of radon gas poisoning. It is the sneakiest of all "taxation without representation" schemes. Our founders - especially Jefferson - actually warned us about it (unbacked "paper currency"), as it was used to fund the American Revolution and nearly caused the early economy to collapse from the get-go. Subsequent dalliances with central banking all ended in failure. The Fed is just the latest incarnation of the scam.

The government is indeed stealing from us.

Do you think this is an exaggeration? Click here for a tool that converts the value of the U.S. dollar in any given year into the currency of any other given year. Notice that the value of your money always decreases over time; it never increases. There is a built-in and expected depreciation (inflation) that we have come to expect as normal. But it isn't "normal." Do the math with your own income. You can clearly see that what you think is a "raise" may well actually be a reduction in your salary. The fact that you make many thousands of dollars more now than you might have a decade ago only masks the fact that it's all smoke and mirrors. Given this reality, does it make more sense for people to save and invest, or rather to borrow and spend?

Yeah.

And imagine how hard it would be to make decisions regarding buying and selling goods and services if the units of measure - such as pounds, gallons, square feet, yards, and liters - were reduced in size over time. It makes capital investment decisions a crap-shoot - as a boom or bust could be just around the corner. In the ancient world, dishonest scales were so common that in several places Scripture denounces the practice as an abomination.

Furthermore, imagine if someone were allowed to "skim" the difference for themselves. And imagine further if it were actually illegal to audit the secretive institution that runs the whole thing. Imagine if the central bank, answerable to no-one, could make secret loans of billions of dollars to anyone it chooses - loaning "money" that doesn't even exist! That's the situation in the United States today.

Is it any wonder we are in such a mess?

The difficulty in gaging the "signals" of the market, thanks to this manipulation of the currency (especially when new "dollars" are being created out of nothing by the Fed and being loaned out at interest, which drives this constant devaluation of our currency), leads directly to the boom and bust cycle and to financial "bubbles" (which brought us the Roaring Twenties followed by the Great Depression, which began less than a decade after the creation of the Fed).

We're now about a hundred years out, and our dollar is today worth less than a nickel, all the precious metals have been removed from our circulating coins (beginning in 1964), the last link to the gold standard has been abolished (1971), our government actually mints a gold coin whose "face value" is $50 but whose actual market worth is about $1,200, and the United States is now so far in debt that mainstream economists are now talking about the dollar going into default. Our savings rate is lower than it ever has been, so low, in fact, that it is statistically less than zero! And is it any wonder? What is the incentive to save money for later if it depreciates? And thanks to the artificially low interest rate (especially combined with banking fees), why should anyone have a savings account?

Once again, this little application will show you exactly why this is happening.

It is time to end the Fed. In fact, righting this wrong is long overdue. But at least now people are openly talking about it. Sadly, most in our current political class and journalistic establishment (including "conservative" talk radio), with very few exceptions, would rather yammer on about about more lurid and emotional issues that ultimately have nothing to do with the collapse of our civilization. The Fed is destroying us at home and weakening our position in the world. It explains the deficit, the trade imbalance, and unemployment. It is statistically impossible for the scam to continue forever. This is why folks around the world who used to trust the dollar for their own savings are getting rid of them and looking for more honest forms of saving. The dollar is a ripoff, and our own elected officials are literally robbing and plundering us. They are killing the goose that laid the golden egg - only know, the "golden" egg is made of paper mache with a cheap coat of paint.

I hope our people wake up soon.

"Socialist" isn't just an insult

A lot of modern political discourse is childish name-calling. It happens so often that, like the boy who cried wolf, the words lose their potency. The term "Socialist" is thrown about so often that it would be easy to dismiss it as just another meaningless epithet.

However, the term "Socialist" is something that dozens of members of Congress actually claim as a self-description.

The Democratic Socialists of America is a modern Socialist organization in the U.S. It isn't a party, but rather a kind of Trojan Horse to use the Democrat Party as a means to elect Socialist candidates into office. Although it sounds like a pipe dream, it's actually been quite successful.

Here is a DSA newsletter from October of last year. It lists the names of seventy members of the current (111th) U.S. Congress who are (dare I say it?) "card-carrying members" of the DSA - including eleven members of the Judiciary Committee. This means there are 70 seated congressmen who openly and publicly consider themselves Socialists.

And the mainstream media is utterly silent about it!

I believe there are actually far more than this. I believe there are a good number of congressional members of both parties who are philosophically Socialists of one stripe or another: advocates of big government, be it the welfare state, the warfare state, or both. But these seventy seated members all shamelessly call themselves "Socialist." To run either a cradle-to-grave system of social security or a massive worldwide empire requires huge transfers of wealth from the people in the form of confiscatory taxation. And to ensure compliance, such a system requires an authoritarian state. These were lessons learned the hard way in recent times by the Soviet Union. The U.S. currently has more people incarcerated than any other nation - most for non-violent and/or victimless crimes. We are burdened with more and more laws and regulations with each passing day - so many so that congressmen have long abandoned the practice of actually reading the voluminous bills they pass with lightning rapidity. The United States has also given up on the idea of ever living within our collective means. We all know what is coming down the pike.

But ultimately, the welfare-warfare state is about control. It is driven by what St. Augustine called libido dominandi - the lust for domination.

What makes Socialism bad is not merely that it doesn't work, but the fact that it is immoral. It's theft. It is a system that turns ordinary people into criminals and turns the normal and natural human activity of free trade and commerce into a "black market." It criminalizes the very thing that impels human progress. It turns the state into a tyrannical master instead of a godly servant. Worldwide, this philosophy, when given the reins of power in elected governments, has brought us concentration camps at the worst and bankrupted economies and broken dreams and poverty at the very least. Even in relatively benevolent Socialist regimes, such as Sweden and Canada, religious freedom of speech is targeted and ominous tribunals investigate innocent citizens to make sure they aren't having "wrong" thoughts. It is impossible to exert control over people (the way Socialism must) without a system of compulsion - however well it is hidden or however friendly it looks according to the propaganda.

It is the living consequence of the cautionary tale of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

While railing against greed, this is exactly what Socialism is. It is the desire for a good or service while compelling, by force if necessary, someone else to pay for it. It is stealth slavery, a circumvention of the 13th Amendment. It crushes the human spirit.

And your Congress has at least 70 members openly committed to this philosophy.

The Mega-Church Bus

HT to my buddy Greg over at Our Holy Cause, who snagged this from The Sacred Sandwich.

I especially like the "landing strip for the pastor's jet" - a very practical feature for the $ucce$$ful Louisiana pastor.

Dearborn, the Police State, and Islam vs. the Constitution, Liberty, and Christianity

HT to facebook friend Ellie Corrow. Another example of the Constitution and liberty vs. the Police State and thuggery.

κηρύσσω ὁ λόγος! (2 Tim 4:2).

Melt-Up

A word to the wise...

Modern World Economics Made Simple

Thanks to the Rev. H.R. Curtis, a fellow LCMS pastor and fellow advocate of Austrian Ecomomics, for sending this along. It's funny, but at the same time, it isn't.

This is what the founding fathers warned us about when they railed against "paper money" - that is currency unbacked by gold and silver (which the dollar has been, beginning in 1913 and brought to completion in 1971). The current economic collapse around the world is because we did not heed their warnings. What you think is money is really stacks of IOUs backed by other IOUs that nobody can pay. The dollar bills in your wallet and in your bank account are basically monopoly money that only has value because China has been willing to buy back them in expectation of getting interest payments. When we can't afford the interest, they will stop backing them.

The Euro is collapsing because it - like the U.S. dollar - is a ponzi scheme, basically a chain letter of intertwined loans and promises - by nations so far into debt that they cannot pay. But now the payments are coming due. So, who wants to pay?

The economic system of the world is nothing more than an Amway pyramid. And Americans need to be ready for the dollar to collapse in the same way as the Euro when the Chinese (who have already backed off in buying U.S. treasuries and are carefully shifting their reserves into gold) decide to take our credit card from us.

If we, as a national economy, don't wake up soon and peg our dollar to gold (as the Constitution actually says the dollar is supposed to be), start saving money, quit spending money and going into debt, and roll back the socialism we have injected into the economy - we will be looking at economic ruin and a worthless dollar. The solution will require frugality, discipline, and shedding the notion that other people can pay our bills. It will require an economic and philosophic revolution. Otherwise, we're looking at hyperinflation and total collapse.

We won't be laughing then.

Crooked Theology

So, according to the Rt. Rich Rev. Duplanti$, living things cannot be "brought," God is not omniscient, Adam (not God) gave life to all of the animals, and then filled in God's ignorance about creation with his own superior knowledge. The amazing thing is that people (and not just a few) actually believe this nonsense! And shame on Duplantis for exploiting them. It is this kind of person that gives creationism a bad name and furthers the work of Satan in turning the world against the Church and the Scriptures.

If he doesn't repent, he had better hope he's right about man's ability to give life and God's impotence. Pro-tip: There are no private jets in hell.

When Shepherds Devour the Sheep...

Nice.

What amazes me more than the greed and contempt for Jesus and for the true Christian Church is the cultish devotion of the sheep who are being sheared by these wolves. These "ministers" never seem to run out of victims, people willing to buy into their theology of glory. These self-servants are only able to carry out their avarice because people are willing to send them money.

It only serves to suggest that there is more than slick salesmanship afoot here - something more than meets the eye.

Hopefully, the people who will inevitably become disillusioned with this kind of thing will not give up on the real way in which God works: the theology of the cross.

Politicians Telling Us What to Preach? "No."

Dear Mrs. Pelosi ("dignity and worth of every person"? Please),

As a Christian preacher, I have a simple reply for you: "No."

Tax Morons, er, Dollars at Work

We need protection from criminals and wild animals like these...

What would we ever do without zealous government bureaucrats? I mean, how could we ever live without such heroes of the common weal?

And to think independence was declared in the Keystone State, for reasons including: "swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance."

Oh, how a mighty and freedom-loving people have fallen into servility and parasitic infestation.

The Incredible Shrinking Dollar

Here is an interesting article about how the U.S. dollar is continually shrinking - now being worth around 1/1200th of an ounce of gold. That's quite a drop from 1933 when the dollar was worth 1/20th of an ounce of gold. This was just before the federal government made gold illegal for American citizens to own and pulled all the $20 gold pieces out of circulation.

If any other standard weight or measure were to continually get smaller and smaller by government tinkering, we would be marching in the streets. But this is exactly what the U.S. government and its puppet, the Federal Reserve, has been doing for nearly a century.

If you think about it, the dollar is no different than the gallon or the ounce. It is a standard of measure. And it is "legal tender" - meaning we "must" use it. The Constitution actually defines money as gold or silver. But since 1913 - one of the worst and most tragic years in our erstwhile republic - the dollar has been subject to outright manipulation by the Federal Reserve. Since 1971, all ties binding the dollar to gold have been severed.

And now it is worth whatever the Fed says it is. And it isn't much.

This manipulation is why the dollar routinely shrinks. Prices always go up. This is why government handouts are often doled out on a sliding scale according to COLAs - "cost of living adjustments." In fact, we're so accustomed to it, that when comparing prices over time, we have to "adjust for inflation" by measuring in "2010 dollars" or "1980 dollars" or some such. Why don't we ever speak of "2010 ounces" or "1980 gallons"?

It's because those measures don't change. But the measure of money does.

This is an example of the "dishonest scales" that are an abomination to God according to Proverbs 11:1. The manipulation of the U.S. dollar by big government and big banks is nothing less than a criminal enterprise. And guess who pays. Every time you see prices rise, you can answer that question. Inflation is nothing more than a hidden tax. It is indeed "taxation without representation." And inflation is not prices going up - prices naturally go up and down depending on the market. Inflation, rather, causes prices to rise because of the devaluation of the money used to measure the cost of an item.

In other words, if we changed the definition of a "quart" from 32 ounces to 31 ounces - and kept redefining it as one less ounce every year, a gallon (4 quarts) of milk would actually get smaller and smaller. Think where it would be headed in 20 years. And if the government actually did this, we would all be scratching our heads and demanding that they quit messing with us and making it harder to figure out how much to buy and how much to spend. We would be trying to figure out who is making money off of the sliding scale. But when they do it with money, we accept this as normal.

But in our real world of technological advances and competition, naturally falling prices (due to market forces) often cover up the manipulation of the dollar that is going on - but when the economy sours, that camouflage disappears. The emperor's nakedness is there for all to see. Rising prices garner our attention. And we finally start asking "why?"

I think this is what is happening now, as fortunately, more people are asking questions. Thanks to the public's outcry and Congressman Ron Paul's remarkable persistence, there is a popular and bipartisan bill in Congress to audit the Fed for the first time. Of course, powerful forces are also arrayed against shining any light into the process of why our money is being literally sucked out of our wallets. The federal government is the Fed's greatest benefactor. They are the ones stealing from us when the dollar continuously drops in value over time. The federal government borrows directly from the Fed to finance its deficits, and it "pays back" the loans in inflated money. It's a racket the Mafia could only dream of.

The bill to audit the Fed may or may not ever make it into being a real law with teeth (I suspect it won't) but the real blow for liberty and the first step to making government honest - or at least obedient to the Constitution again - will be to once and for all slay the dragon, make the dollar a sound and reliable measure, and "End the Fed!"