BELIEVE ME!

I am sick and tired of hearing conservatives, with whom I am close politically, talk about God.  Why oh why oh why oh why oh why is it so difficult for God believers to see these truths:

1. Religious beliefs are not knowledge...one doesn't KNOW there is a God, one BELIEVES it. Is the distinction between those two words not clear?

2. Since they are only BELIEFS, yours are no better...no more true, no more right...than ANYONE else's. Is that not clearly clear?

3. Because of #2, believers promote and endorse terrorism. Today's terrorists base their terrorism and wanton killings on BELIEFS. Throughout recorded history, religious beliefs have been used as the basis for murderous violence. If your argument for doing right, doing good is based on your unproven subjective beliefs, then how can you say that what the jihadists are doing is wrong, is evil? Their beliefs, their God, is allegedly commanding them to kill nonbelievers. What makes their beliefs any less reliable, less appropriate, than your beliefs? NOTHING.

4. Believers are frequently heard to claim that God alone is the source of our rights. Nonsense. There are hundreds of religions, hundeds of thousands of different religious beliefs, and each belief system sponsor its own list of rights, and each list would be as valid...or invalid... as any other.

5. I have written before about where your rights come from.

When a cat tries to fly like a bird off the roof of a 10-story building, it is not God that punishes him (to answer those believers who blindly claim that without God there would be no punishment)...it is his nature. The cat can't fly like a bird. You cannot escape the reality of your nature and the punishments (mental and physical) which it inflicts when you seek to evade or deny it.

Freedom is not a right given to us by God; it is given to us by our nature. Humans are not programmed by instincts or anything else to do the right things to sustain and nourish our lives. We have to make choices using the facilities nature has given us...our thinking mind, our five senses to learn about and KNOW the world we live in...so that we can make good decisions that further our lives.

Are you not yet sure where your rights come from? Take that "fly off a 10-story building" test and find out.

6. In line with #5, political policies are not right because the Founders believed them. I enormously admire their contributions to civilization, but they were not always right (remember slavery), THEY WERE NOT GODS. And even if they were all believers...they weren't...it is not their BELIEFS that made them right when they were right. It was the fact that they recognized man's natural state, and needs. See #5 again.

7. America was not formed on Judea-Christian beliefs, as is commonly claimed,  but, in part, on a separation of Church and State.

Conservatives believe you should act not on knowledge but on beliefs. 

Correction: They want you to act not on beliefs but on THEIR BELIEFS.

THE HAPPY MEDIUM ISN'T

Compromise is the name of the game today.  Middle of the road is where most of us are urged to be and seemingly want to be.  Dems and Repubs are urged to meet halfway on virtually all issues:  abortion (ok, lets allow them for the first 6 months), border security (lets let another 40 million illegals in and then we can tighten security), mandatory health insurance (lets limit premium increases to 40%), and on and on.  Holding firm to a political position because you believe it is right is considered hard-nosed, and you an extremist. Don't want any of those around here!

Where would we be today if the Founding Fathers had compromised their views?  I guess we would have unalienable rights on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays only.  If Lincoln had freed only half the slaves, if the Allies had opened only half the concentration camps, if Rosa Parks had moved to the middle of the bus?


We wouldn't be America, that's for sure.  We wouldn't be a semblance of it.  Is it not clear to all that when the good compromises with evil, when right meets halfway with wrong, it is evil that wins, and wrong that prevails.  Should the FBI meet with the underworld and agree not to crack down on its members until they have killed a certain minimum number each year, or sold a minimum amount of hard drugs to children?  Are you not an extremist, an absolutist, when it comes to protecting your family and those you love?

I suspect many who hold the right views on the issues are happy to surrender halfway because they can't  prove the correctness of their positions...and thus, in a way, are not sure they are right. When I first heard Ayn Rand speak, the very first thing she said was "Don't accept a thing I say unless I prove to you that it is right."  I had never before heard any public figure say that...and haven't heard another since.

Saving our country from overbearing, controlling, politicians begins with education.  Which is why the government should not be in charge of it.

Read my post, Proof of Freedom.  It can come in handy some day.

FREEDUMB 2

Makes no sense...at 18 you are legally old enough:


to vote
to get married
to get divorced
to have children
to have an abortion
to drive a car
to serve in the military
to be a police officer 
to be a college professor
to be a Supreme Court justice
to bungee jump
to buy a knife


...but but but, not to buy a Bud.

THE ONE TRUE REALIGION

...that is based solely on universally-known truths, including the nature of the human species and the world in which it lives...

...no tenet of which is based on mystical beliefs, fantasy, revelations or subjective feelings

 ...that preaches the supreme glory of human life here on Earth

...that reveres the value of each human life, and respects the dignity of each human being, until he/she forfeits that dignity by denying it to any other

...that offers the rewards of certitude of knowledge and indestructible convictions

...that has no commandments

...that places none in an authoritative position to another, nor imposes any duties on its members

...membership to which is not bestowed on any individual by reason of birth but by such individual's independent and continuous manner of thinking and choices of action

...that does not claim to know the unknown

...that does not offer the incongruous promise of life after the end of life.

Welcome to the realigion of Reason.

FREEDUMB I

*  We are not free to represent our child or spouse or friend in a court matter, even though they want us to, if we don't happen to be lawyers
*  We are not free to purchase a medication in a foreign country that is not approved by the FDA and bring it back to our home in the US, even though we have a critical/terminal disease and will die without it
*  We are not free to open a shop anywhere in our country and sell alcohol, open a casino, drive a taxi, perform marriages, get a divorce, and a thousand other things without first meeting arbitrary government requirements
*  We are not free not to risk our lives and fight in a war even though we think the war is unjust, if the government insists we do so
*  We are not free not to help pay for our neighbor's college education if the government mandates we pay taxes to do so
*  We are not free to serve as President of this country even though 100% of the population wish us to, if we were not born 35 or more years ago here in the U.S.
*  We are not free not to have personal health insurance.
*  We are not free throughout this country to marry another person or adopt a child with another person who doesn't have different genitalia than we do
*  We are not free to burn a piece of material that has been made to look like the image of an American flag
*  We are not free to kill a cat and eat it even though we are starving to death, though we kill millions of other animals each day for the same purpose, or for pleasure
*  We are not free not to serve as a juror
*  We are not free to retain the home (and the property it sits on) which our family has lived in (and on) for generations if the government unilaterally decides it wants it
*  We are not free not to testify in a criminal case even though our lives and the lives of our family are in jeopardy if we do so
*  We are not free to choose our own name without government permission
*  We are not free not to put money aside  for our retirement...money we desperately need now
*  We are not free...

STOP SALUTING GENERAL WELFARE

What confounds me is why it isn't as obvious to everyone as it is to me.

All questions we humans have are ultimately to be answered by Nature...man's nature and the nature of the world in which he lives.What is good for us or bad for us to do, what is pro life or anti life, is determined by Nature...nothing else.

When the Founders talked about freedom..."rights"  they called it...they manifested their understanding of the singular significance of the point I am making  when they said that the source of our freedom, our right to live our lives as we choose, was given to us by our Creator.  In other words, not given to us by other men, nor by society, nor by government...but by our very nature as humans.  That idea was further strengthened when the Founders characterized our rights as "inalienable".   Not retractable, not subject to limitation or abridgement nor temporary suspension...neither God nor Nature would take kindly to that...bur cast in stone forever and ever and ever.

So what is it I don't understand, what is it that confuses me?  How virtually EVERYONE thinks the passage of laws curtailing our freedom is justified if the curtailment is warranted by the perceived general welfare of society.  With convoluted reasoning that betrays a lack of appreciation of the source of freedom, they think nothing of limiting, restraining, in one way or a thousand ways, how I can choose to live my life.  More appropriately said: they think not.

There is  NOTHING...no law, no program, no so-called benefit...that could possibly enhance the general welfare of society if it entails the denial of my freedom...that is,  my nature.

Nothing, nil, nada, naught.

CEO HILLARY? SERIOUSLY?

Why would anyone in his right mind want the federal government or any other government to run any industry...the way our current President wants to run the auto industry, the gas and energy industry, the health industry, the education industry, the farm industry and every other damn industry he can get his hands on?

Aide from the "minor" point that our Constitution does not give the government the right to run any business, and that powers not granted to the Government are reserved to the people, here are a few other things to keep in mind:

1.  Competition between companies drives them to produce better products at lower prices...to get your business.  That competition benefits all of us.

When the Government takes over an industry, it is a MONOPOLY...they have no competitors.  It freely does what it wants to do.

2.  The profit motive in the free enterprise system drives companies to come up with innovations that will attract the consumer dollar.  Government has no profit motive.  It loses money?  It raises taxes, it prints new money (which devalues our currency), it borrows profusely (notice our $16,000,000,000,000 federal debt).

3.  The`Government is run by people who almost always have DONE NOTHING, ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING and KNOW NOTHING about the business world.  Obama never ran a candy store for one day in his life.  You seriously, prudently, logically, want him to be CEO, chief honcho, top dog, of your company, or smiling Biden to run the oil industry?

Businesses that cannot make it in the free marketplace will fold, leaving the marketplace open to those who can produce the goods the public wants at a price the public is willing to pay...a sort of "economic survival of the fittest".

Our goal should not be full employment (all the slaves had jobs), nor lower interest rates, nor a reduced rate of inflation.  Our goal should be a free marketplace, the only marketplace which affords to each of us the economic environment to which we have a moral right.