Jonathan Cahn explains what he calls "The Mystery Of The Shemitah" for 77 minutes. Basically, there's this Biblical injunction that every 7th year the Jews were supposed to stop working and erase all debts (I'm still wondering what they were supposed to eat), but the Jews always defy God's comands, so they ignored this injunction for 490 years. As a result the Babylonians came in and destroyed Jerusalem and sent the Jews into exile for 70 years - one year for every sabbath year ("shemitah") they had ignored. At the end of 70 years the Persians come in and wipe out the Babylonians and the Persian king Cyrus rebuilds Jerusalem and puts the Jews back in their homeland.
Rabbi Cahn says the same rule applies to the United States, because the US was unique in that it was the only modern state that was founded on the principles of God's word, in effect setting up a new covenant like the one the Jews had thousands of years ago.
1870 - shemitah year - the US surpasses Britain as the largest economy on the planet
1917 - shemitah year - the US becomes a superpower
1945 - shemitah year - a new financial world order is established based on the US dollar
As long as the US (this rule only applies to the US and Israel) stays right with God then every seventh year will be a blessing, but if the US defies God then every seventh year will be a curse.
1973 - shemitah year - the US legalises abortion, defying God
2001 - shemitah year - 9/11, the symbol of America's economic might - the World Trade Center, which was built in 1973 - is destroyed, followed by a huge financial collapse of the stock market
2008 - shemitah year - the Great Recession starts, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression (which also started on a shemitah year)
What happens next? I don't know. The last shemitah year was September 2014 to September 2015, which passed, and while there weren't any further economic disasters or terror attacks, the Supreme Court did deem itself infinite power over all aspects of everyone's lives allegedly to protect the "rights" of maybe one tenth of seven tenths of one percent of the population, but really it was a naked power grab that followed 30 years of public indoctrination to move the overton window.
Is there anything to this? I don't know. This might all just be coincidence. It is an interesting hypothesis, and it is an interesting lecture.
Showing posts with label Abortion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abortion. Show all posts
Monday, September 5, 2016
Friday, September 4, 2015
The Worse Devils of Our Nature
2015 is a little more than half over and already wars have claimed 100,000 lives. In case you are wondering, that is more people than you will meet in your entire life. As I have been outlining every year since 2011 we are in a world gone mad. Tying into that thesis is a refutation of its antithesis, expressed in its most famous iteration in Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature, namely that this is the safest time in history.
To quote Samuel Johnson, I refute Pinker thus.
The 20th century was one long war, during which time more people died than at any time in history. And the wars have not ceased. There have been wars going on somewhere in the world during my entire life. 20,000 nuclear weapons sit on standby to wipe out humanity, up until the fall of the USSR there were stockpiles of enough biological weapons to kill 50 billion people. 200 million people have been killed by communism in the past century, another 500 million have been aborted, mostly in China.
On top of the out of control homicide of the past century there is the great danger of globalism in the spread of terrible diseases. The Spanish Flu in 1918 infected a quarter the population of the world, something that would have been impossible prior to the invention of trans-oceanic travel, killing 100 million people. The world has become so inter-connected that any disease can just hop a plane and be anywhere in a day. And with the insane level of sanitation and over reliance on antibiotics of modern society these diseases have once again become impossible to treat, just like the Black Death from six centuries ago. Germs never had it so easy.
The 20th century saw the unnatural deaths of 800 million people, making it, without question, the bloodiest century ever. If people died at this rate this at any other time in history humans would have gone extinct a long time ago.
This is absolutely not the safest time in history, it is by far the most dangerous.
And here's even more evidence. Look at all these wars, all over the world, with tens of thousands of deaths.
• Civil war in Ukraine has claimed nearly 2000 lives in these past 8 months
• The same for Libya
• 20,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan
• The war with ISIS has killed 10,000 people in Iraq and 30,000 in Syria
One inevitably wonders what ancient wars Steven Pinker hallucinated to reach his conclusion that the past was so much more dangerous than today? The only genocidal monsters from antiquity were Chingis Khan and Timur, and while the Islamic conquest of India and the Black Death were certainly horrific, humans were largely powerless to act on those catastrophes. Any modern army in the world could have prevented the genocide in Darfur or Rwanda, but instead chose to sit back and watch. Modern people are certainly no more moral than people from antiquity. In fact, the converse is probably true, that modern people are far less moral than at any time in history, choosing to do nothing while millions are raped and murdered around the world.
More people are dying today than have died before. There are more slaves today than at any time in the past. 85 people control half the world's wealth and use it to manipulate world events for their own benefit instead of wiping out disease, famine, and poverty for two billion people. People absolutely are less moral today than ever before, and the world is a far more dangerous place because of it. And if Steven Pinker thinks the opposite then he is deluding himself and is another part of the problem instead of the solution.
To quote Samuel Johnson, I refute Pinker thus.
The 20th century was one long war, during which time more people died than at any time in history. And the wars have not ceased. There have been wars going on somewhere in the world during my entire life. 20,000 nuclear weapons sit on standby to wipe out humanity, up until the fall of the USSR there were stockpiles of enough biological weapons to kill 50 billion people. 200 million people have been killed by communism in the past century, another 500 million have been aborted, mostly in China.
On top of the out of control homicide of the past century there is the great danger of globalism in the spread of terrible diseases. The Spanish Flu in 1918 infected a quarter the population of the world, something that would have been impossible prior to the invention of trans-oceanic travel, killing 100 million people. The world has become so inter-connected that any disease can just hop a plane and be anywhere in a day. And with the insane level of sanitation and over reliance on antibiotics of modern society these diseases have once again become impossible to treat, just like the Black Death from six centuries ago. Germs never had it so easy.
The 20th century saw the unnatural deaths of 800 million people, making it, without question, the bloodiest century ever. If people died at this rate this at any other time in history humans would have gone extinct a long time ago.
This is absolutely not the safest time in history, it is by far the most dangerous.
And here's even more evidence. Look at all these wars, all over the world, with tens of thousands of deaths.
• Civil war in Ukraine has claimed nearly 2000 lives in these past 8 months
• The same for Libya
• 20,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan
• The war with ISIS has killed 10,000 people in Iraq and 30,000 in Syria
One inevitably wonders what ancient wars Steven Pinker hallucinated to reach his conclusion that the past was so much more dangerous than today? The only genocidal monsters from antiquity were Chingis Khan and Timur, and while the Islamic conquest of India and the Black Death were certainly horrific, humans were largely powerless to act on those catastrophes. Any modern army in the world could have prevented the genocide in Darfur or Rwanda, but instead chose to sit back and watch. Modern people are certainly no more moral than people from antiquity. In fact, the converse is probably true, that modern people are far less moral than at any time in history, choosing to do nothing while millions are raped and murdered around the world.
More people are dying today than have died before. There are more slaves today than at any time in the past. 85 people control half the world's wealth and use it to manipulate world events for their own benefit instead of wiping out disease, famine, and poverty for two billion people. People absolutely are less moral today than ever before, and the world is a far more dangerous place because of it. And if Steven Pinker thinks the opposite then he is deluding himself and is another part of the problem instead of the solution.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Here's Why We Win
In
nature, which always triumphs, the one with the most children is able to
out compete everyone else. The progressives who have at best one, or no
children, there is no way they can beat religious people in the long
run, as a central tenant of most religions is to have lots of children
and spread out over the earth. Someone with one child is, genetically, a
loser compared to someone with seven
children. In fact, the only reason progressives still exist in 2014 is
because they spent the 20th century culling the population of religious
people, with the murder of over half a billion (China CELEBRATES 500
million abortions since Mao took over, to say nothing of the 200+
million killed during all the atheistic regimes - with a single Germanic
pagan occult exception). Progressivism can only exist by murdering vast
numbers of religious people.
It doesn't matter if short term
trends indicate a growth of secularism over the past fifty years. Fifty
years is a blink of the eye in terms of natural time scales. Written
history occupies only about 0.0025% of the total amount of time humans
have been around, and that was 5000 years. Secularism is over if it
keeps oppressing religion the way it is, and if secular people keep
trying to bring about their own extinction by not breeding.
It
is the very conceit of these people that will be their downfall. A
culture that values individual pleasure over strong communities and lots
of children is, in evolutionary terms, dysfunctional. It is an
aberration, a disease, a mistake nature will soon correct. That is why
Japan will collapse before the end of the century, as will China. Russia
is taking steps to correct the situation before it is too late, by
curtailing abortions which currently outnumber live births (more babies
in Russia are murdered than are actually born!). Russia is taking the
hard steps necessary for biological survival by telling the children
"your personal pleasure does not trump the needs of society," a lesson
many in the West refuse to listen to (Remember Star Trek, when Spock
sacrificed himself? And we still haven't learned).
The United
States? The Dollar is over. There is absolutely no saving it. Many
countries are already dumping the Dollar when purchasing oil. The
economy WILL collapse, totally, and soon. And when it does all the
fashionable people who love abortions, hate guns, and have eliminated
from themselves all manner of survival instincts while praising their
bestial sexcapades, will be among the first wave to go in the mass
die-offs. Before 2100, and I'm predicting closer to 2064, progressivism
will be over. Secularism in the United States will be over. Nature will
correct itself, as it always does, and to the breeders go the spoils.
They may celebrate the victories they have stolen, the worst generation
in the history of the planet may celebrate their whole childless lives
(unless they purchase children as status symbols) in their progressive
wonderland, but they're it. They will be the last generation to
celebrate their sickness. The future belongs to the religious.
nature, which always triumphs, the one with the most children is able to
out compete everyone else. The progressives who have at best one, or no
children, there is no way they can beat religious people in the long
run, as a central tenant of most religions is to have lots of children
and spread out over the earth. Someone with one child is, genetically, a
loser compared to someone with seven
children. In fact, the only reason progressives still exist in 2014 is
because they spent the 20th century culling the population of religious
people, with the murder of over half a billion (China CELEBRATES 500
million abortions since Mao took over, to say nothing of the 200+
million killed during all the atheistic regimes - with a single Germanic
pagan occult exception). Progressivism can only exist by murdering vast
numbers of religious people.
It doesn't matter if short term
trends indicate a growth of secularism over the past fifty years. Fifty
years is a blink of the eye in terms of natural time scales. Written
history occupies only about 0.0025% of the total amount of time humans
have been around, and that was 5000 years. Secularism is over if it
keeps oppressing religion the way it is, and if secular people keep
trying to bring about their own extinction by not breeding.
It
is the very conceit of these people that will be their downfall. A
culture that values individual pleasure over strong communities and lots
of children is, in evolutionary terms, dysfunctional. It is an
aberration, a disease, a mistake nature will soon correct. That is why
Japan will collapse before the end of the century, as will China. Russia
is taking steps to correct the situation before it is too late, by
curtailing abortions which currently outnumber live births (more babies
in Russia are murdered than are actually born!). Russia is taking the
hard steps necessary for biological survival by telling the children
"your personal pleasure does not trump the needs of society," a lesson
many in the West refuse to listen to (Remember Star Trek, when Spock
sacrificed himself? And we still haven't learned).
The United
States? The Dollar is over. There is absolutely no saving it. Many
countries are already dumping the Dollar when purchasing oil. The
economy WILL collapse, totally, and soon. And when it does all the
fashionable people who love abortions, hate guns, and have eliminated
from themselves all manner of survival instincts while praising their
bestial sexcapades, will be among the first wave to go in the mass
die-offs. Before 2100, and I'm predicting closer to 2064, progressivism
will be over. Secularism in the United States will be over. Nature will
correct itself, as it always does, and to the breeders go the spoils.
They may celebrate the victories they have stolen, the worst generation
in the history of the planet may celebrate their whole childless lives
(unless they purchase children as status symbols) in their progressive
wonderland, but they're it. They will be the last generation to
celebrate their sickness. The future belongs to the religious.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Interview With Dr. Nicholas Cummings
Nicholas Cummings is the former head of the APA (American Psychological Association) and has done all of this. He led the movement to have homosexuality declassified as a mental illness AND he supports same sex marriage. He can't possibly be "anti-gay" or "homophobic". He's done more for homosexuals than most other people have, especially the bully pulpit that has taken over the media with their megaphones and shout-down sessions. However he is deeply distrubed by the escalating trend away from science toward "political correctness" when studying homosexuality and developing public policy, as well as the intense venomous hostility toward all debate and even recognising that someone can hold an opposing viewpoint and deserve to live.
File this under crap I don't want to think about but I don't get that luxury because it's everywhere and I've learned way more about the topic than I ever wanted to, along with all this:
• Global Warming - now "Climate Change" because if it's getting warmer or cooler it's still YOUR fault and you should feel bad.
• Uri Geller (I STILL have never written anything close to being longer than "Forbidden Knowledge" for The Urban Mystic)
• The Arab Spring
• Feminazism
• Eugenics
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Dreams of Foreign Suns
Walking around yesterday I thought about my second great love (my first being freedom), and one of the three original goals I set for my life: space travel. I got to thinking about all those books I loved reading and how the future is almost certainly not going to be like that. The future will not be like The Stars My Destination, Harvest the Fire, Starship Troopers, or The Zero Stone. The future will not be like Star Trek (except maybe Deep Space 9 which was boring and grim and I never watched more than a few episodes) or Firefly.
It has to do with a phenomenon called Dunbar's Number, and a disturbing trend seen with the rapid advancement in technology and the social order.
John Stringfellow in 1848 built a steam-powered flying machine that was the absolute apogee of steam technology. While it did fly it was not powerful enough to carry a person. On 17 December 1903 the Wright brothers made what is recognised as the first piloted powered flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle.
NASA became operational 1 October 1958. 20 February 1962, a little over three years later, John Glenn got into orbit. 12 September 1966, eight years later, Gemini 11 completed the farthest ever orbit of the earth, never to be exceeded, and successfully created artificial gravity with the Agena Target Vehicle. 20 July 1969, ten and a half years later, Apollo 11 lands on the Moon for the first time. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finally demonstrated that that light in the sky is a real place, and people can go there. 11 December 1972, Apollo 17 spent the most time on the Moon. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent three days there, and when they left they became the last men ever to land on another celestial body, and the last to leave low Earth orbit.
The past 41 years have been spent doing high school science experiments at 200 km above sea level (and the Russians tried to see if they could kill people by keeping Valeri Polyakov in space for over 400 days. I think he was crippled for about a year after he returned).
Also in 1969 plans were drawn up for Big Gemini, which was superior to the Space Shuttle in every way, but they were scrapped. In 1972 Pioneer 10 was launched. Along with Pioneer 11, and later Voyager 1 and 2 - launched in 1977 - they demonstrated the possibility of sending unmanned spacecraft outside the solar system (as of August 2012 Voyager 1 became the first, and so far only, manmade object to leave the solar system).
NASA had plans for a Mars mission set for 1986 with a colossal football field sized NERVA nuclear rocket, that was successfully tested on the ground (they were buried underground with just the tail spouting highly radioactive jets into the air. At least two men died and had to be buried in salt mines in multi-tonne lead coffins.). The mars mission was scrapped when Congress decided killing Vietnamese people was a better allocation of the $10 billion necessary to build and launch the full size NERVA rocket. There were plans to send manned missions to the moons of Jupiter by the 1990s and Proxima Centauri by the early 2000s using nuclear rockets that were built and successfully tested in the 1960s and 70s. These too were scrapped.
The technology to go to the stars existed 40 years ago and has never been used for political reasons. Yesterday I had the feeling that, like freedom, once the initiative for space travel is lost it can never be gotten back. We will probably never land escape Earth orbit again. (Although the Chinese have plans for a colony on the Moon, let's face it, China is over. The Chinese economy is a house of cards built in mid-air waiting for a stiff breeze and some common sense to knock it over. Without the hundreds of billions in government spending, building ghost cities in the middle of nowhere, the Chinese economy will collapse and then the hundred million surplus men will become the largest demonstration of pure anarchy in history, as, like the man who castrated himself this past week, they have nothing else to live for. It is impossible to build a civilisation on population control and sex-selective abortion that produces 9 males for every 1 female. Sure, the military may crack some skulls and force its way to the Moon, like pretty much everything the Soviets ever did, but the Chinese dreams of empire and space travel are made of gossamer and the dreams of children.)
But there's something bigger than that. A new direction society has taken that threatens the very idea of space travel. As I said earlier:
There is the interesting side question of modern Western society, indeed any extremely affluent society, as to whether it does, in fact, represent a diseased PBC and not merely an alien one. All extremely affluent societies throughout history have been plagued by extreme narcissism and apathy, which is displayed in declining fertility rate. Some societies, such as Japan, are so affluent that they are literally on the fast track to extinction because they simply stop breeding. A PBC that cannot[3] produce children above replacement rate (2.1 births/woman) has no survival value and would, by the above criterion, represent a disease. After the inevitable collapse whatever society that arises to fill the void would be made of individuals who possess viable PBCs. As I mentioned in "Affluence and Apathy", there is a healthy form of affluence, though it has never seemed common enough to prevent an entire affluent society from collapsing. It would be possible for healthy affluent to form a viable society, and so I would classify healthy affluent as alien, though it has never happened before and probably never will.
The United States is the most affluent society ever. One third of the population is obese, including poor people. And along with affluence comes extreme narcissism and apathy, but there is something more. Something that was engineered by the power elite during the Apollo program. The creation of the welfare state coincided with a fundamental shift in the perception of sex in society. Both happened together because the government was setting itself up to become the new parent. No-fault divorce, ever expanding welfare programs, and the shift away from sex for procreation to sex for fun changed the way people viewed their place in society (to be sure, people had sex for fun since the beginning, but men always wanted sons as a matter of pride and women always wanted men around to provide for their children, and in the 1970s there was a shift away from that to "we'll hold off having kids until we're 40, if ever, and just enjoy our permanent adolescence now!"). Now, with the redefinition of marriage away from providing for children to some vague conception of love/lust, the coup d'état is now complete.
The US Department of Education was created in 1979. Before that all schools were run locally, with education tailored to the needs of individual students. Since there has been a shift in a one-size-fits-all education policy, with "no child left behind." The DoE is a gigantic indoctrination program, and they're not even covert about it. Common Core is demonstrably indoctrination. School officials in Memphis provide breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner to kids, and admit that if they had rooms for beds the kids would sleep there permanently. The government sees the only role of parents to be breeding. Once the children are born, they belong to the state.
How did this all begin? Urbanisation. Cities are a statist's best friend. It has to do with a fundamental limitation of the human brain. The human brain seems to be able to hold detailed interpersonal information on at most 150-200 people. There appears to be a correlation between the size of the neocortex of primates and the maximum number of individuals a primate can keep track of and maintain social relationships with. This is Dunbar's number. This is what kept population size limited during almost all of prehistory. (If humans have been around at least 200,000 years, and writing was invented only 5,000 years before present, then prehistory makes up 97.5% of humanity's entire time on the Earth. The earliest cities appear 12,000 years before present, 7,000 years before the start of written history, so cities make up 3.59% of the duration of prehistory. 94% of the time humans have been here was before the first city was built.)
When people live in small communities people care about one another because people can keep track of everyone living in the community. In a city of hundreds of thousands or millions of people this is impossible. People stop caring about the other denizens of the city, and the social structures that keeps a community together never form. The vacuum left over by the lack of a stable community is filled by the government. Private charity gives way to the welfare state, and education becomes indoctrination.
Technology isn't helping either. In 1980 the average person had 3 close friends. In 2011 the average person had 0 close friends. The advent of smart phones, social media, and people taking pictures of their sandwiches and posting them online has served to destroy human interpersonal communication faster than urbanisation ever could. People, for the most part, and especially the Millennials (the first generation to grow up totally under government indoctrination), are not connected to anyone anymore except the government.
Human sociality is necessary for space travel. Big giant space projects like the colonisation of planets require thousands of people working together, billions of dollars, and the support of entire societies. People stopped caring about space travel, and space programs died in the 1970s. Without all three elements of properly sociable, funded, and motivated people, then landing on Mars or going to the stars is impossible. We appear to have topped out: humans have developed to a certain point, but there is a definite limit to that development, and we're right about there.
Humans appear doomed to low Earth orbit. The future in space I dreamed of as a child seems like it may have evapourated along with the sex and welfare revolutions.
It has to do with a phenomenon called Dunbar's Number, and a disturbing trend seen with the rapid advancement in technology and the social order.
John Stringfellow in 1848 built a steam-powered flying machine that was the absolute apogee of steam technology. While it did fly it was not powerful enough to carry a person. On 17 December 1903 the Wright brothers made what is recognised as the first piloted powered flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle.
NASA became operational 1 October 1958. 20 February 1962, a little over three years later, John Glenn got into orbit. 12 September 1966, eight years later, Gemini 11 completed the farthest ever orbit of the earth, never to be exceeded, and successfully created artificial gravity with the Agena Target Vehicle. 20 July 1969, ten and a half years later, Apollo 11 lands on the Moon for the first time. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finally demonstrated that that light in the sky is a real place, and people can go there. 11 December 1972, Apollo 17 spent the most time on the Moon. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent three days there, and when they left they became the last men ever to land on another celestial body, and the last to leave low Earth orbit.
The past 41 years have been spent doing high school science experiments at 200 km above sea level (and the Russians tried to see if they could kill people by keeping Valeri Polyakov in space for over 400 days. I think he was crippled for about a year after he returned).
Also in 1969 plans were drawn up for Big Gemini, which was superior to the Space Shuttle in every way, but they were scrapped. In 1972 Pioneer 10 was launched. Along with Pioneer 11, and later Voyager 1 and 2 - launched in 1977 - they demonstrated the possibility of sending unmanned spacecraft outside the solar system (as of August 2012 Voyager 1 became the first, and so far only, manmade object to leave the solar system).
NASA had plans for a Mars mission set for 1986 with a colossal football field sized NERVA nuclear rocket, that was successfully tested on the ground (they were buried underground with just the tail spouting highly radioactive jets into the air. At least two men died and had to be buried in salt mines in multi-tonne lead coffins.). The mars mission was scrapped when Congress decided killing Vietnamese people was a better allocation of the $10 billion necessary to build and launch the full size NERVA rocket. There were plans to send manned missions to the moons of Jupiter by the 1990s and Proxima Centauri by the early 2000s using nuclear rockets that were built and successfully tested in the 1960s and 70s. These too were scrapped.
The technology to go to the stars existed 40 years ago and has never been used for political reasons. Yesterday I had the feeling that, like freedom, once the initiative for space travel is lost it can never be gotten back. We will probably never land escape Earth orbit again. (Although the Chinese have plans for a colony on the Moon, let's face it, China is over. The Chinese economy is a house of cards built in mid-air waiting for a stiff breeze and some common sense to knock it over. Without the hundreds of billions in government spending, building ghost cities in the middle of nowhere, the Chinese economy will collapse and then the hundred million surplus men will become the largest demonstration of pure anarchy in history, as, like the man who castrated himself this past week, they have nothing else to live for. It is impossible to build a civilisation on population control and sex-selective abortion that produces 9 males for every 1 female. Sure, the military may crack some skulls and force its way to the Moon, like pretty much everything the Soviets ever did, but the Chinese dreams of empire and space travel are made of gossamer and the dreams of children.)
But there's something bigger than that. A new direction society has taken that threatens the very idea of space travel. As I said earlier:
There is the interesting side question of modern Western society, indeed any extremely affluent society, as to whether it does, in fact, represent a diseased PBC and not merely an alien one. All extremely affluent societies throughout history have been plagued by extreme narcissism and apathy, which is displayed in declining fertility rate. Some societies, such as Japan, are so affluent that they are literally on the fast track to extinction because they simply stop breeding. A PBC that cannot[3] produce children above replacement rate (2.1 births/woman) has no survival value and would, by the above criterion, represent a disease. After the inevitable collapse whatever society that arises to fill the void would be made of individuals who possess viable PBCs. As I mentioned in "Affluence and Apathy", there is a healthy form of affluence, though it has never seemed common enough to prevent an entire affluent society from collapsing. It would be possible for healthy affluent to form a viable society, and so I would classify healthy affluent as alien, though it has never happened before and probably never will.
The United States is the most affluent society ever. One third of the population is obese, including poor people. And along with affluence comes extreme narcissism and apathy, but there is something more. Something that was engineered by the power elite during the Apollo program. The creation of the welfare state coincided with a fundamental shift in the perception of sex in society. Both happened together because the government was setting itself up to become the new parent. No-fault divorce, ever expanding welfare programs, and the shift away from sex for procreation to sex for fun changed the way people viewed their place in society (to be sure, people had sex for fun since the beginning, but men always wanted sons as a matter of pride and women always wanted men around to provide for their children, and in the 1970s there was a shift away from that to "we'll hold off having kids until we're 40, if ever, and just enjoy our permanent adolescence now!"). Now, with the redefinition of marriage away from providing for children to some vague conception of love/lust, the coup d'état is now complete.
The US Department of Education was created in 1979. Before that all schools were run locally, with education tailored to the needs of individual students. Since there has been a shift in a one-size-fits-all education policy, with "no child left behind." The DoE is a gigantic indoctrination program, and they're not even covert about it. Common Core is demonstrably indoctrination. School officials in Memphis provide breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner to kids, and admit that if they had rooms for beds the kids would sleep there permanently. The government sees the only role of parents to be breeding. Once the children are born, they belong to the state.
How did this all begin? Urbanisation. Cities are a statist's best friend. It has to do with a fundamental limitation of the human brain. The human brain seems to be able to hold detailed interpersonal information on at most 150-200 people. There appears to be a correlation between the size of the neocortex of primates and the maximum number of individuals a primate can keep track of and maintain social relationships with. This is Dunbar's number. This is what kept population size limited during almost all of prehistory. (If humans have been around at least 200,000 years, and writing was invented only 5,000 years before present, then prehistory makes up 97.5% of humanity's entire time on the Earth. The earliest cities appear 12,000 years before present, 7,000 years before the start of written history, so cities make up 3.59% of the duration of prehistory. 94% of the time humans have been here was before the first city was built.)
When people live in small communities people care about one another because people can keep track of everyone living in the community. In a city of hundreds of thousands or millions of people this is impossible. People stop caring about the other denizens of the city, and the social structures that keeps a community together never form. The vacuum left over by the lack of a stable community is filled by the government. Private charity gives way to the welfare state, and education becomes indoctrination.
Technology isn't helping either. In 1980 the average person had 3 close friends. In 2011 the average person had 0 close friends. The advent of smart phones, social media, and people taking pictures of their sandwiches and posting them online has served to destroy human interpersonal communication faster than urbanisation ever could. People, for the most part, and especially the Millennials (the first generation to grow up totally under government indoctrination), are not connected to anyone anymore except the government.
Human sociality is necessary for space travel. Big giant space projects like the colonisation of planets require thousands of people working together, billions of dollars, and the support of entire societies. People stopped caring about space travel, and space programs died in the 1970s. Without all three elements of properly sociable, funded, and motivated people, then landing on Mars or going to the stars is impossible. We appear to have topped out: humans have developed to a certain point, but there is a definite limit to that development, and we're right about there.
Humans appear doomed to low Earth orbit. The future in space I dreamed of as a child seems like it may have evapourated along with the sex and welfare revolutions.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ
I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.
In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.
We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.
And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Five Reasons I Like Rick Perry
And two that don't really do it for me.
Note: my commentary will be in [square brackets]. The rest of the text is directly from the Yahoo News story.
1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.
[Couldn't agree more. Kings serve for life, and we fought two wars to rid ourselves of the yoke of a king (the Revolution and War of 1812, when Britain fought back). By giving the judges lifetime tenure it divorces them from reality and from the people, the concent of whom is from whence they derive their power.]
2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.
[Maybe not a two-thirds vote, maybe something stronger, but nothing in government should be final. Even the Constitution can be amended, so should the Supreme Court, lest they become absolutist.]
3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.
[Last year this was one of two BIG things I said needed to be done to fix the country. If not possible to achieve a repeal I did propose an alternate income tax scheme.]
4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
Overturning this amendment would restore the original language of the Constitution, which gave state legislators the power to appoint the members of the Senate.
Ratified during the Progressive Era in 1913 , the same year as the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment gives citizens the ability to elect senators on their own. Perry writes that supporters of the amendment at the time were "mistakenly" propelled by "a fit of populist rage."
"The American people mistakenly empowered the federal government during a fit of populist rage in the early twentieth century by giving it an unlimited source of income (the Sixteenth Amendment) and by changing the way senators are elected (the Seventeenth Amendment)," he writes.
[This is even more important than getting rid of the tax. When the Constitution was written it was decided that the two houses of Congress would be populated in two different ways: Representatives are chosen by the people and Senators are chosen by the state legislatures. This was one of the most brilliant decisions in all of world history. The whole point of the Constitution was to maximise the power of the States, but reign them in just enough so the Union could stick together, which wasn't possible under the Articles of Confederation. Representatives were elected by popular vote and each state got a number of Representatives proportional to total population, this way we the people get our say. Senators were chosen by the state legislatures and each state got two so that the power held by big states and small states would be equal where it really counted. Having Senators chosen by the state legislatures was a guarantee to states' rights. The Senators represented the will of the states whereas the Representatives represented the will of the people. This was a brilliant balancing act to protect everyone from each other. Then along came the populists who wanted to turn the United States into a mobocracy and changed the Constitution to say the Senators are elected by the people too, taking power away from the states and giving it to whoever had the deepest pockets and the Federal government, as the two are one and the same.]
5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.
Of all his proposed ideas, Perry calls this one "the most important," and of all the plans, a balanced budget amendment likely has the best chance of passage.
"The most important thing we could do is amend the Constitution--now--to restrict federal spending," Perry writes in his book. "There are generally thought to be two options: the traditional 'balanced budget amendment' or a straightforward 'spending limit amendment,' either of which would be a significant improvement. I prefer the latter . . . . Let's use the people's document--the Constitution--to put an actual spending limit in place to control the beast in Washington."
A campaign to pass a balanced budget amendment through Congress fell short by just one vote in the Senate in the 1990s.
Last year, House Republicans proposed a spending-limit amendment that would limit federal spending to 20 percent of the economy. According to the amendment's language, the restriction could be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress or by a declaration of war.
[I want to scream in orgasmic delight at the thought of a balanced budget. I even like the provision that special circumstances, like war, can call for extra spending, because Hitler had to die whatever the cost in treasure.]
And the two I'm not too thrilled about:
6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.
[I don't think government has the power to make this decision. The government, including state governments, should stay as far away from marriage as possible.]
7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.
[I lean toward states rights on this one, but not entirely. There are circumstances where I think abortion is justified (e.g. certain congenital abnormalities that are always fatal, often with the baby surviving only a few hours or days), or even required (situations that lead to maternal death). Is Perry saying he would rather have the mother die to preserve "the soul of this country and to the traditional values [of] our founding fathers"?]
Note: my commentary will be in [square brackets]. The rest of the text is directly from the Yahoo News story.
1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.
[Couldn't agree more. Kings serve for life, and we fought two wars to rid ourselves of the yoke of a king (the Revolution and War of 1812, when Britain fought back). By giving the judges lifetime tenure it divorces them from reality and from the people, the concent of whom is from whence they derive their power.]
2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.
[Maybe not a two-thirds vote, maybe something stronger, but nothing in government should be final. Even the Constitution can be amended, so should the Supreme Court, lest they become absolutist.]
3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.
[Last year this was one of two BIG things I said needed to be done to fix the country. If not possible to achieve a repeal I did propose an alternate income tax scheme.]
4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
Overturning this amendment would restore the original language of the Constitution, which gave state legislators the power to appoint the members of the Senate.
Ratified during the Progressive Era in 1913 , the same year as the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment gives citizens the ability to elect senators on their own. Perry writes that supporters of the amendment at the time were "mistakenly" propelled by "a fit of populist rage."
"The American people mistakenly empowered the federal government during a fit of populist rage in the early twentieth century by giving it an unlimited source of income (the Sixteenth Amendment) and by changing the way senators are elected (the Seventeenth Amendment)," he writes.
[This is even more important than getting rid of the tax. When the Constitution was written it was decided that the two houses of Congress would be populated in two different ways: Representatives are chosen by the people and Senators are chosen by the state legislatures. This was one of the most brilliant decisions in all of world history. The whole point of the Constitution was to maximise the power of the States, but reign them in just enough so the Union could stick together, which wasn't possible under the Articles of Confederation. Representatives were elected by popular vote and each state got a number of Representatives proportional to total population, this way we the people get our say. Senators were chosen by the state legislatures and each state got two so that the power held by big states and small states would be equal where it really counted. Having Senators chosen by the state legislatures was a guarantee to states' rights. The Senators represented the will of the states whereas the Representatives represented the will of the people. This was a brilliant balancing act to protect everyone from each other. Then along came the populists who wanted to turn the United States into a mobocracy and changed the Constitution to say the Senators are elected by the people too, taking power away from the states and giving it to whoever had the deepest pockets and the Federal government, as the two are one and the same.]
5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.
Of all his proposed ideas, Perry calls this one "the most important," and of all the plans, a balanced budget amendment likely has the best chance of passage.
"The most important thing we could do is amend the Constitution--now--to restrict federal spending," Perry writes in his book. "There are generally thought to be two options: the traditional 'balanced budget amendment' or a straightforward 'spending limit amendment,' either of which would be a significant improvement. I prefer the latter . . . . Let's use the people's document--the Constitution--to put an actual spending limit in place to control the beast in Washington."
A campaign to pass a balanced budget amendment through Congress fell short by just one vote in the Senate in the 1990s.
Last year, House Republicans proposed a spending-limit amendment that would limit federal spending to 20 percent of the economy. According to the amendment's language, the restriction could be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress or by a declaration of war.
[I want to scream in orgasmic delight at the thought of a balanced budget. I even like the provision that special circumstances, like war, can call for extra spending, because Hitler had to die whatever the cost in treasure.]
And the two I'm not too thrilled about:
6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.
[I don't think government has the power to make this decision. The government, including state governments, should stay as far away from marriage as possible.]
7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.
[I lean toward states rights on this one, but not entirely. There are circumstances where I think abortion is justified (e.g. certain congenital abnormalities that are always fatal, often with the baby surviving only a few hours or days), or even required (situations that lead to maternal death). Is Perry saying he would rather have the mother die to preserve "the soul of this country and to the traditional values [of] our founding fathers"?]
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