Phoenix Breathes Sigh Of Relief

Thursday night Phoenix AZ breathed a sigh of relief. Georgia Lynn Baker was not hurt, or harmed, while eluding police in a high speed chase. The chase endangered the lives of many as they were going about their business, and took the life of a 28 year old police officer who was attempting to stop her, but the main thing is is that Baker is OK, and the city of Phoenix and the ACLU can breath a sigh of relief. Our right to go about driving under the influence of drugs, endangering the lives of our fellow citizens and police-should we ever feel the need to do so-without the fear of the police hurting us in their attempts to stop us, was not encroached upon.

The police officer, 28-year-old Chris Marano, gave his life while protecting these rights. Marano leaves behind a wife and four children. What a Christmas present. But hey, as I said, Miss Baker will experience this Christmas completely in tact, and that's the main thing... isn't it?

Finding The Philosophical

I spend quite a bit of time studying the integral workings of what I have come to know as "Worldview". In so doing, I have studied and marveled over the concept of beauty, philosophy, and the deep questions of life.

This has brought about quite a bit of change in my own worldview. I, for example, no longer look at art as beautiful in and of itself, or the artist as simply talented, although I do marvel over anyone's ability to create. I see the beauty as a the very finger print of God himself manifesting itself through one of his creations for all to see. This video is no different. While watching this, I marveled over what God has enabled man to do, in all its simplicity and humor, and what possible message was being conveyed, if any.

With the onset of the death of man in the sixties, which manifested it self, incidentally, as the death of God, Francis Schaeffer said at the time that "philosophers no longer ask the big questions classical philosophy has always asked", and that "the real philosophic expressions have tended to pass over to those who do not occupy the chairs of philosophy-...[such as] the film producer" (1)

This little cartoon may be such an example. While it does matter what the artist intended, I am not saying that my interpretation is the same. I had quite the laugh watching it, and as always, was struck by man's ability to create.

What I saw in this cute little video was man's desire to rid himself and the world of sin (the cat) without Christ. The more he tries, so he can get back to his own personal pursuits, the worse his life becomes until he is faced with nine times the hell in his after life. President Lincoln accused the South of being willing to burn down its barn to get rid of its rats. Current events and this little cartoon remind me of this phrase as I marvel over the follies being undertaken by our current government in its attempts at creating its Utopian paradise by stamping out, at the price of unfathomable debt, the consequences of sin; the result being the destruction of a nation and its economy.



H/T Casting Pearls Before Swine

(1) Escape From Reason, IVP Classics, pg 74

On Economics, thoughts taken from Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, Chapter 1

As I considered reading Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell, I anticipated a book about money. I was surprised to learn that "economics" is not about money at all, but about resources. Currency is only a system by which the value of resources is measured.

According to Sowell, economics is defined as:

The allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses.

This definition can be broken down into three parts:

1. Allocation
   
2. Scarce resources
   
3. Alternative uses

Allocation

Allocation is similar to method. Everyone who desires the use of a resource will not be able. This is one of the harsh realities with which we are all faced, and it is unreasonable to deny it, though many do. As the Titanic was sinking, this harsh reality came into play with the shortage of life boats. The modern and popular concept of equality was a foreign one, and absurd too, given the blatant realities on the deck of that ship. In fact, the only way to enforce that reality would have been to deny anyone access to the life boats. Ultimately, we all know how that decision was made, which was that the men chose self sacrifice in favor of the women. In any case, allocation is the method which determines who the beneficiaries of resources for a given society or situation will be, and it will ultimately depend on the governmental/economic system within which the resources are being allocated.

Scarce Resources

The value of a resource will depend on the demand for that resource verses its scarcity or availability. It only stands to reason that the lower the availability of a given resource, the higher the number of people there will be who will be denied its benefit, such as in the the previous example of the Titanic. Scarce simply means that there are limits on the availability of all resources.

Alternative uses

The lifeboat analogy breaks down here unless perhaps we create a hypothetical question of whether the boats might have just as well been broken up and used for a signal fire. But then the question would have been about the alternative uses for the specific resource, wood, as opposed to lifeboats. Would it have been better to use the wood for a signal fire or allow it to continue in its use as a lifeboat?

Wood, as a raw resource can also be used alternately in pianos, or in the construction of furniture, among other things. The question of "which alternative?" is answered by the system within which the question is asked? The goal with any system is to avoid a situation like a warehouse full of unwanted pianos while there is a shortage of wood for building furniture for which there is a demand? Meeting this goal will again depend on the method, or governmental/economic system, and in fact in some systems it may not be avoided at all. In the the old Soviet Union, with its central planners deciding what resources would be used for what, it was common for resources to be miss-allocated resulting in an abundance of things people didn't want while with a simultaneous shortage of things people did want. The thousands of central planners were no match for the allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses that happens daily and automatically in a free market system as millions of private individuals make millions of purchasing choices.

Free market = free choice

The free market describes just that, the freedom to choose. And although the average person living in a free market economy probably doesn't think about it, every time a choice is made to purchase one thing over another, that choice impacts the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. If more people want dressers than pianos, the demand for dressers will allow the furniture manufacturer to bid higher prices for the scarce resource, wood, thereby driving up the cost of building pianos as well as the cost of purchasing furniture. As a result of demand the price of the piano and dresser will increase until a sort of equilibrium is reached between supply, demand, and cost. The end result will be that more of the scare resource, wood, will be directed toward dressers as opposed to pianos. But, of coarse, nothing is ever static in an economy. It is for these reasons that no government will ever meet the challenge of managing it.

As Christians

As Christians it is important that we understand economic concepts lest we be led astray by our own envy, or by noble sounding arguments from those who stand to benefit from laws that regulate the economy. All economic systems are ultimately the arrangements of trade-offs. No system will lead us back into Eden and as such there will be faults and problems with any system; the first and foremost springing from man's sinful nature. We are also still under the curse. This means that we have to earn our way by the sweat of our brow; that is, the old adage that you can't get something for nothing, still applies. So when someone promises something different, we should have the discernment to know better.

Note: I have a fear of insulting the reader's intelligence in posting some of my attempts at writing This article was written some time ago and wasn't posted for just such a fear. I have noticed however that many people say that they don't understand economics, so I reconsidered that earlier decision. If you're still reading, I would sure appreciate any feedback on whether or not this article was helpful or informative.

Get Your Children Out Of Public School Now

I had copied and pasted a pornographic line in the first sentence of this post, then thought better of it assuming that no one but already-shocked-by-what-they-are-seeing readers would ever see it.

Gateway Pundit reported Friday morning that the (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) GLESN, founded by President Obama's current safe schools czar, has a reading list to help students learn to feel comfortable with there own, or accept other's homosexuality. The team at Gateway chose a handful at random from the over 100 titles on GLSEN’s grades 7-12 list to read. They were unprepared for what [they] encountered. It was described as thus:

Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren't merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem.

So what we have here is a President of the United States who has an unvetted "Safe Schools" czar, Kevin Jennings, who is the founder of an increasingly powerful organization that promotes pornography for children.

This however is not shocking to me, nor is it scary. There have always been creepy people, some of which have made their way into high and powerful positions. What is scary to me is that this will not reach the level of scandalous as scandalous was once understood. There once was a saner time when the like would have caused an avalanche resulting in the President and his Orwellian Czars in the dislodged rubble at the bottom of the mountain. This will not be the case in these current times. Unfortunately, I'm much more afraid of a society that is OK with these things, just so long as sufficient numbers believe that they will get their precious free heath care, and whatever other impossible Utopian promises are currently coming from on high. This indeed I find most terrifying.

Please visit Gateway Pundit and read the article, even including some of the excerpted passages from GLESN's recommended books.

New World Order American Dictionary additions

Some additions and one revision to my other blog, a one post blog, the New World Order American Dictionary linked at the right of this page.

Corruption-A label reserved for political law breakers-real, imagined, or accused, who disagree with Democrats.

Fair-A subjectively derived position or point of view mistaken or confused with objective truth.

Government-God

Good-see whatever

Hope- The opiate for the anti-religious masses.

Job Creation-a job shifted from the private to public sector.

Morality- archaic, offensive, The idea of right and wrong based on objective truth. used interchangeably with morality [the idea of right and wrong based on liberals.] Hence, the statement "you can't legislate morality" by those who legislate lots of morality must be interpreted under the archaic meaning.

Patriot- Any person who loves the dream he has for America. example: Army Major Nidal Hasan is a Patriot because he loves the dream he has for an America under Sharia Law. President Obama is a patriot because he loves the dream he has for a communist America.

Whatever- The culmination of liberal thought and theology in a word.

A Cap And Trade Bed Time Story

As more and more truth leaks out about the supposed global warming climate change "crisis", the commercials from evil corporations-who incidentally stand to make a nice profit from this global hoax, and the"news stories" from the state supporting media, who incidentally seek to gain more power from the same, are looking more and more ridiculous. My bet is that rather than tone it down in light of the piling evidence against this farce, they will ratchet it up by saying "shut up", which will look more and more like this. It is, after all, the communist way.

While we are visualizing world peace, may we also visualize a world in which news cycles report truth, and PSA's look like this:




H/T The Clay Tablet

12 Rules To Govern And Live By For Destroying An Economy And A Nation

1. Borrow every dime anyone is willing to lend.
2. Lend as much as your circumstances will allow as long as someone else will end up bailing you out if it can't be repaid.
3. Never take responsibility for your own actions.
4. Deny the existence of evil.
5. Assume that you are simply entitled from others anything at all.
6. Expect and support all intervention between action and consequence, sowing and reaping, by anyone willing to do the intervening.
7. Embrace the dichotomy that some people are greedy, but none of those who are would be willing to give away somebody else's money while masquerading as compassionate.
8. Ignore, deny, or otherwise downplay the best projector of our future available, history.
9. Accept the fallacy that people will work hard, be innovative, develop new ideas, medicines, and technologies, take financial risk that could eventually benefit all of society, or govern you, for only a modest gain.
10. Believe that ANY political party or corporation has your best interest at heart.
11. Reflexively exalt the poor and demonize the rich.
12. Deny the existence of God.

Rut Think

"I know you believe you think you understand what you think I said ,but I'm not sure you realize that what you think I said is not what I meant" (author unknown)

Sometimes I see things happen in a discussion and I think to myself, I've seen this before, it has a familiar feel to it. I finally tagged one of these "feelings" with a name. I call it Rut Think because it reminds me of a car driving down an extremely rutted road while attempting to stay out of those ruts. While it might be difficult but possible to stay out, you can bet all your doughnuts that it'll be pretty much impossible to get out once you've slid in.

This makes a nice metaphor for too many discussions I've had on divisive issues.  It is caused, I think, by the programming of our own thought-forms by what I'll call the big three: entertainment and news media and government institutions of education. It occurs when that almost constant programming trains our minds to intercept certain ideas with foregone, non-contextualized conclusions. I may well be describing a logical fallacy here, but I'm not aware of one. I assume that that is because Rut Think doesn't happen because of poor logic but rather because of an overdose of emotion.

Since it's easier to give examples that will probably resonate than would be to describe what I'm talking about, here are a few:

• When I say that, I am against Obama's health care reform plans, what is heard is: I am against poor people getting the health care they so rightly deserve and am perfectly happy with the current system.


• When I say that, The Church should not ignore politics What is heard is: The church should forsake her original commission and become an active arm of the RNC whose purpose it is to keep Republicans in power regardless of what they may or may not stand for.


• When I say, Intelligent design should also be taught in public schools, what is heard is: The education system should be turned over to a bunch of fundamentalist anti-science and anti-education, back-woods zealots who want to halt all quests for knowledge, and thereby use it to turn the country into a third world theocracy.


• When I say that, We should drill for oil, what is heard is, We should, with reckless abandon, without care for anything except our precious gas for our precious cars, wreck, pollute, destroy, ravage, and strip- mine the entire earth.

There are many more examples, these are but a few. It has been my experience that when you feel your "discussion" slide into the ruts you might as well end it. It has been commandeered by pre-programming and thoughtlessness. But on a positive note, It also keeps me on the lookout that I don't, myself, push a discussion into the ruts.

My Progression

IN my years before Christ I thought that just about all the problems in the world were caused by greed.

After becoming a follower of Christ, what I saw as the cause of the ills of the world began to change. In spite of the a-political approach of every church I had attended, as my mind was renewed I began to think that all the problems of the world were caused by the government.

As matured however I began to realize that the government was in power because we, the people, elected it. This was discouraging because it greatly expanded the problems from a small select group of leaders to everybody.

I finally began to realize that all the problems of the world were caused by the sin nature of all the people, of which I was one; and in fact that I had been, and continued to be, a contributor to "all the problems of the world"; but worse yet, I had likely contributed, in my few years, much more than my fair share!

At some point I no longer saw greed as the problem, and I had ceased to see electable and disposable politicians-at the whim of the people-as the problem. One notable change in my heart was that I realized that problems were a given. That the hOpe of utopia here on earth was a vein hope and a fool's errand. I began to realize that Jesus was in fact the only hope, and that his body of believers was a preserving agent in a world that would self destruct in short order in its absence.

In my current level of revelation, I see the world through the lens that, as far as the problems of the world can be mitigated, that mitigating influence must be effected by the followers of Jesus; that the level of suffering that a society endures is inversly proportional to the level of health enjoyed by the body of Christ. As I watch a nation filled to overflowing with churches, bankrupt itself in its attempts of satisfing material hunger while ignoring, and even propagating spiritual starvation, I realize that as goes the Church-which I am a part, so goes the nation.

So what do many of the churches that the child sees through the window of her car as she rides with her mom to divorce court, or to pre-K; or the young girl riding to the abortion clinic, or the little boy wondering what his daddy is like, offer? Well here's one example, an admitted extreme example in deed, but as our rotting society attests, not in heart.



If you get to feeling nauseous, advance to just before the 4 minute mark to watch the revealing end.

Civics 101

Since shortly after becoming a Christian I have viewed the world through the prism that man is not basically good. I cringe when I hear Christians-who ought to know better-say or imply that the opposite is true, for it is only a short step from there to trusting man's goodness with power over our lives. But worse, such a view of man cheapens the price payed on the cross for our redemption and salvation from God's wrath by reducing what in actuality is the bridging of an uncrossable chasm to a little nudge over a short wall.

This is a great ten minute civics lesson and I encourage all who come by here to watch. As you watch keep in mind the end result of a faulty premise on man's goodness. Although the video does not come right out and says so, it does imply a fallen view of man, especially as it pertains to democracies and the insight of the founding fathers into man's lust for power. It also clearly and succinctly demonstrates the end of the folly of thinking that man is basically good; an end that is almost defiantly what America's future holds.




H/T Joe Politico