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February 2010 |
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Monday, February 1, 2010 An illuminating picture: This picture helps us visualize the swarm of demons that coalesces around the soul they work to destroy. Today's Catholic Scripture Reading, beginning with Mark, 5:2, is directly connected: "When He (Jesus) got out of the boat, Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside. As always, Catholic Fundamentalism's desire for quantification sees the possibilities in this passage. There was a known quantity of two thousand demons trying to destroy the poor, possessed man. Though not a popular analysis among most professional psychologists and psychiatrists, when we see mentally disordered people, it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that the more disturbed they are, the more demons are disrupting their thought process. 2,000 may be the maximum number possible to work within a mind, though evil tyrants like Herod and Stalin may have a few more. The man they possessed had lots of problems. He was violent, uncontrollable, couldn't sleep, lived alone in bizarre surroundings, had amazing physical strength when angry, screamed in agony, and repeatedly hurt himself. Altogether, it seems reasonable to assume that he had 2,000 demons driving him nuts. Questions arise. Can we quantify the number of demons in a person by the aberrance of their behavior? If he only did half as many crazy things, would he have only a thousand demons within? If we have only one of his problems, like sleeplessness, there are obviously fewer demons, but how many? But, possessed as he was, he still wanted to be saved, and was able to think well enough to understand that Jesus could cure him. While the man still could control his destiny, approaching Jesus despite the horde of demons urging him not to do so, the demons still controlled him well enough to speak through him. Speaking as one, they admitted that they were "legion", and begged Jesus to let them stay in the neighborhood, even though they couldn't stay in the man any longer. So, the demons asked to be e-mailed into the two thousand pigs, each of which they promptly destroyed.
We may imagine that each of them was no larger than a electron. That, Catholic Fundamentalism assumes, is an appropriate size with which to begin to visualize spirits. Despite their small size, each of them was powerful enough to drive one pig to death, but two thousand of them could not do that to one man, though they certainly ruined his life until The Living Program, Jesus Christ, erased the living errors within him and restored his human program. By the way, one of the most bizarre things about this Scriptural Passage concerns the number of pigs. 2,000 pigs is a lot of pigs! It indicates that there were large, sophisticated animal husbandry practices in the area, almost comparable to the "factory farms" of today.
Getting through the swarm of evil spirits that surrounds our own soul involves moving beyond them, bringing our lovingly programmed soul closer to He Who lovingly programmed it. Just as the queen bee, hidden deeply within the picture above, can get away from the swarm and fly off to a better place than an isolated branch, followed in her flight by the buzzing horde, so our own demons will try to follow us when we try to leave them behind. "Remember all the good times we had?", they, in the form of living thoughts call after us, plaintively. "Remember when we did such and such and so and so and loved every minute of it?" When we put away childish things, much like the little boy or girl who, one day, puts his toy soldiers or her dolls away and never plays with them again, we grow closer to The Loving Programmer. But, we often see evidence of people who won't put away their toys. Once in a while, we even see a bumper sticker that proudly proclaims "He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins". An obsession with toys indicates an obsession with programmed entities that makes movement toward The Loving Programmer more difficult than it has to be. Politically, we see that this failure to mature reigns triumphant in the public sector. There, insatiable demands by legions of the selfish, who are as well-organized as they are greedy for greater pensions, salaries, and benefits, hurt their neighbors and destroy their nation. Those who are organized to forcibly take from, and impoverish, their own neighbors are too self-centered and short-sighted to comprehend how stunted their own spiritual and intellectual development is. We also see that their exaltation of their own desire for more allows the deadly sin of Greed to flourish, choking out the souls' yearning for He Who brought them into being. It's very hard to get such people to understand that their perennial demands for "More!" indicate that their souls are in danger of being lost, along with hordes of like-minded people who join in the calls for "More!" Indeed, they have embraced endlessly convoluted fields of study to justify their beliefs, calling such dogmas "intellectual", and, more bizarrely, "sensitive concerns for others". One is reminded that there have been rare examples of public servants able to rise above the temptation to legislate their own enrichment by self-dealing legislation, taxation, and regulation. Once, John Jacob Astor tried to bribe Edward Gallatin. Mr. Gallatin resisted all of Astor's temptations, telling him, finally, "Mr. Astor, I am a public servant, and it is my goal to die poor." Few other public servants have been able to escape the swarms of demons who've convinced most of them that the desire for "More!" trumps all other considerations and have found that taxing their friends and neighbors is the easiest way to get it. After a few generations, entire nations fall under the control of those who believe that it is right for them to prosper by devouring their neighbors. Of all the political movements there have ever been, Democracy has allowed more souls to send themselves to hell than any.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 When someone says, "We'll have to agree to disagree.", what we're really hearing someone say is that they want to avoid truth and/or change. If arguments can be ended by simply saying "We'll have to agree to disagree.", what's actually being agreed is that "If there is a right and wrong answer, it's not important. What's important is that neither of us, especially me, has to suffer with the fact that we're actually wrong." "We'll have to agree to disagree." is far more common among government workers than those in the private sector. The average widget producer either has a better widget or he doesn't, and he's not about to let a competitor get away with saying "We'll have to agree to disagree about which widget is better." Similarly, if two doctors disagree on a diagnosis, simply saying "We'll have to agree to disagree." they make the most correct diagnosis more difficult to find. Better to respond: "This is such an important issue that we really should find out what's right and wrong, rather than taking the easy way out."
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 Novenas. Praying Every Hour, Every Day. When one becomes a Catholic, one isn't given an instruction manual. The natural progression toward God takes place according to the abilities with which each soul has been programmed. After having been a Catholic for a couple of decades, it was time for my soul to take a step closer. So, on a scheduled dental visit, a substitute hygienist, a devout Catholic, whom I'd never seen before or since, got me ready for the dentist. We spoke briefly about Catholicism. She gave me a small, laminated card on which the Novena of Childlike Confidence was written. It consisted of three prayers: The first prayer: "O, Jesus, Who has said, 'Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.' Through the intercession of Mary, Thy most holy Mother, I knock, I seek, I ask that my prayer be granted. (insert prayer)." The second prayer: "O, Jesus, Who has said 'All that you ask of The Father in my name He will grant you.' Through the intercession of Mary, thy most holy Mother, I humbly and urgently ask that my prayer be granted. (insert prayer)." The third: "O Jesus, who has said 'Heaven and earth shall pass away but My Word shall not pass.' Through the intercession of Mary, thy most holy Mother, I am confident that my prayer will be granted. (insert prayer)." Shortly after getting the card, I began saying a Novena every hour for nine consecutive hours. At first, I said one Novena, but soon began "overloading" the "insert prayer" section until it was two or three times longer than the Novena itself. So, I split the prayer requests in half, and began putting each half into two Novenas every hour. Over time, those sections were similarly over-loaded, so I went to three Novenas every hour for nine hours every day. Now, it's four. There are times when I'm interrupted or distracted, and don't hit the hour on the hour. Sometimes, a long meeting, telephone call, or distraction will delay the hour's Novena. Usually, I continue to pray during meetings and calls. To my surprise, I don't lose track of what's going on, and when people are talking to me, I listen while saying the Novenas. My responses are often slow, but that seems to help conversations, and that has taught the valuable lesson that it rarely helps to speak at every possible opportunity. In one of the four Novenas, I pray for my neighbors. One can sense that the swarm of demons surrounding even souls most inclined to sin are penetrated with remarkable ease by prayers. As a result, I like all my neighbors, even the ones I didn't used to, more than ever. I sense that their own guardian angels are aware of my prayers for the souls in their care, and they prompt them to be more open, and friendlier, as well. That's been going on for a few years, now. The results are so startling, in a myriad of small ways, that it's easy to conclude that all the world's problems are caused by the fact that none of us pray for selves, family, friends, co-workers, and enemies nearly as much as we should.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 Not so much. It's hard not to predict another market melt-down. The stock market reflects hopes and dreams, and we look to be entering a hopeless nightmare. The only thing that's increasing is government spending, and that hurts all but those who receive the spending. It used to be that the economy was based on fulfilling wants and needs. Now, it's based on whatever the tax-addicted can get away with taking. No one is safe, not even the weaker tax addicts. As this increasingly carnivorous economy continues to devour itself by taking what's been made rather than making more, we may be reminded of various Roman Emperors who spent more than they took in. The budgets could only be balanced by invading other countries, looting property, and selling as many as possible into slavery. When there were no foreign countries to loot, cash-strapped Emperors began waging war on their own people. Nero was driven to burning Rome. While the ashes were still smoldering, he passed a law making it illegal for anyone to clean up their own property. His employees did that, sifting through the ashes to confiscate whatever valuables and bits of precious metal that could be found. He cleaned up by cleaning up. Today, our own assets are less safe than ever. Fortunately, God has not changed, and loves us just as much whether we're rich or poor. It's a good thing, because we're all going to be poorer.
Friday, February 5, 2010 A reasonably useless fact: Friday, February Fifth is notable because all three words of the date begin with the letter "F". It is among the Saturdays and Sundays that fall on September Second, Seventh, and Seventeenth and Fridays that fall on February First, Fourth, Fifth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth. A more ambitious person make the effort to calculate how many days a year such calendar onomatopoeia and assonance happens, but I, alas, am far too slothful to do more than note the unusualness. In trying to predict the markets, most of us look at graphs showing ups and downs. We try to get an indication of where things are going by seeing where they've been. This does little harm, and may do some good, but the futility of it was explained by a man who was able, in the course of a summer, to call 70 or 80% of market rises and falls. "If the chickens laid more eggs, the market went up. If they laid less, it went down." Hardly the sort of fact upon which to base our own futures. Now, it seems to be a fact that, at least once, a week that ends with Friday, February the Fifth is not a good week for stock values.
Politicians Spend a Lot of Time Triangulating. Playing endless variants of "Let's you and him fight.", politicians seek to gain support while weakening opponents. In fact, there are two great divides in America that few politicians wish to define. There are people who are employed by the government who are paid to perform duties neither enumerated nor implied by the Constitution. On the other side of this great divide are those whose money is taken from them to pay the wages, benefits, and pensions of those espousing, causing, and exaggerating any number of largely Imaginary Problems. The divide is clear, but perpetually blurred by triangulators. The candidates who say "Your taxes are too high.", and focus their theme on that tend to do well. Such people are always attacked by those desperate for more taxes to be levied. The "We just need a slight increase in taxes." people invariably believe that high taxes are the sign of an advanced society. It's not an exaggeration to say that many of them truly can't understand why people object to paying taxes. It's hard to keep from being fooled. Their control of the media allows them endless opportunities to propagandize for an uncountable number of programs that do little but pay the salaries of people whose only work is to increase their funding. Once we identify the basic divide, it only makes sense for conservative candidates to exploit it. Distinctions must be made between those whose only skill is to organize and control government's power and those who provide useful goods and services. The latter should be preferred as a matter of sound public policy.
Saturday, February 6, 2010 Historians Deciding What History Should Be. Most of us have taken history courses. In those courses, we usually read books about the periods being studied. It is rare to be assigned to read many of the source documents from which historians compiled the version of history that they preferred. Historical source documents are not particularly complicated. A typical example are The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which can be found on Google. As many ancient source documents, the Chronicles offer a digest of things that happened during the period they cover, in this case, the last part of the First Millennium and the first part of the Second in England, with passing references to occurrences in other countries. In it, they chronicle what happened to the mint operators. They debased the currency by adulterating silver with baser metals and thought no one would notice the resulting inflation. People did notice, and many refused to accept the coin of the realm. The King ordered that all the minters involved be called to London. When they arrived, their right hands were cut off. And, they were castrated. Small wonder that historians, who are largely paid by political entities whose inflationary practices involve the continual debasing of their own currencies, never seem to mention this occurrence and the sure and certain cure it offers a government to keep its currency from being debased.
Sunday, February 7, 2010 The Global Warming Lies Collapse Under the Weight of Snow and Cold. Washington is buried under nearly two feet of snow. Nearby places have even more. The credibility of the lie is collapsing with amazing speed. Actually, measured by satellite, last month was the warmest January on record. But, the high temperatures were only over some of the ocean areas. As those areas got warmer, the land, naturally, got much colder. Those involved with the Global Warming Lies know this, but find themselves muted by the effects of abnormally low land temperatures on voters. "Who cares what the temperature is over the middle of the Pacific Ocean? I'm freezing! Our electricity is off. Our pipes are freezing and bursting. The hotels and motels are all filled with people, and I have nowhere to go and nothing to do but get colder." Fortunately, the sun seems to finally be ending its long period of lessened solar activity. Our world will begin to absorb more heat and begin, hopefully, to get a little warmer. Then, of course, the Global Warming Lies will re-emerge with heightened urgency. Only the most gullible will be fooled into caring.
Monday, February 8, 2010 Public Pensions have long been one of the biggest economic problems that we face. Most public officials deal with the problem by ignoring it. Since their own pensions are important to them, their desire to avoid any reductions keeps them from paying more than cursory attention to the rising deficits. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away and will only ensure greater economic damage to more people, including them. In fact, pensions purchasing power generally go down because of inflation. If public pensions were reduced somewhere between 3 and 5% per year for several years, the problem would be reduced, if not eliminated. The reduction in inflation would translate to less reduction in each pensions' purchasing power, and may actually increase the net dollars each pensioner has. Pension reduction is the "third rail" of politics. Those receiving and hoping to receive generous public sector pensions are the most well-organized political groups in any nation. Their hostility to pension reduction must be met by showing that the damage to their own well-being is greater if pensions are allowed to remain as they are. We quickly understand that we are dealing with greed, the institutionalized and well-organized demons of which demand "More! More!" from taxpayers. At the same time, they blind themselves to the realities that their continued demand for "More!" impoverishes their neighbors to the point that they will develop counter-organizations, as is happening now with the Tea Party movement. One basis for such movements is the awareness that the private sector is being impoverished to pay for far better wages, benefits, and pensions than they, themselves, have any hope of getting. Most of us have no idea of how bad the problem is because those who do understand look at the numbers and see the tsunami coming. They whistle silently to themselves, and move on to something else. The only real, fair cure is a slow reduction in pension amounts. The best way to tell if any candidate for office is honest is to see if he agrees that pensions must be reduced and has the courage to say so publicly. If he starts fudging, he's not as forthcoming as possible.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 The Effects of Hatred upon us become more apparent as we think specifically about them. The fifty million babies that have been aborted felt the agony of hatred directly. Their parents go on feeling it. They often hide it by embracing more hateful beliefs in order to distract themselves from what they've done. The most hate-filled of all, those who pushed this hatefulness upon us, make themselves as oblivious to it as they can, pretending to be concerned instead with "a woman's right to choose" while rejoicing in the deaths they have caused. The same people unleash their hatred every way they can. There is never a lie that they do not enthusiastically disseminate. They embraced the Ozone Hole, Global Freezing, Global Warming, endless deficit spending, public education programs that made children more ignorant than ever, restrictions in every facet of life, and every other lie they could. No matter what aspect of our lives we consider, we see the effects of their hatred. From the ridiculous, as being forced to buy several kinds of more expensive gasoline depending on location and time of year, to the utterly lunatic, believing that plastic bags are killing billions of fish in an imaginary "gyre" of floating plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the haters pollute the world not with particulates but with lies. We see the hateful in every organization, always saying "No!" to anything helpful to families and freedom. We wonder why, and may understand that their minds are filled with demons leading them to their own spiritual destruction even as they try to destroy all that is good and decent around them. Their favored tool of those consumed by hatred is government. From the prison camp of Cuba to its twin in North Korea, from the gulags of Siberia to the swelling prisons of the Middle East, government agents and agencies do the work of visiting hatred upon their neighbors. Each new plan, each new bureaucracy, each new imaginary problem, and each new regulation results in hurting neighbors. They rejoice, and still say, "More!" The simply won't stop. There is nothing else they can do. After a soul is overwhelmed by the demons of Pride, Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Anger, Lust, and Sloth, it can only do as its spiritual controllers desire, and that is to spread their foul, spiritual diseases as far and wide as they can.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Visualizing Prayer. We may picture ourselves on the beach, under an umbrella. A hole suddenly appears, allowing a beam of light to reach us. Or, we may be taking a shower, and a tiny molecule of water miraculously goes right through skin and bone, into our brain, where it short-circuits a bad connection or makes a good one. We may be in a dark room, and a car turns, sending a beam of light into it. We may be wearing a raincoat, and a leak soaks our clothing. In a science fiction movie, a phaser may break through the force-field protecting the ship. Prayer is like that, suddenly something that shouldn't be there, all of a sudden, is. The Programmer operates on frequencies that we are not programmed to access. Adam and Eve, until the unfortunate incident in The Garden, could directly access Him. So could the prophets and saints. But, most of us live surrounded by a shield of self-centeredness and sin that both keeps us from dealing more directly The Programmer and keeps Him from doing likewise with us. When we pray, as Jesus taught, "Our Father, Who art in Heaven", we begin by recognizing His power and His separateness from us. After all, we're here, and He's in Programming HQ. "Hallowed be Thy Name" means that He should be praised and worshipped. "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done" means that we want to govern our lives according to His Operating Instructions, and be as close to The Programmer as possible. "On earth as it is in Heaven" means that we want The Programmer's Operating Instructions to be followed here, just like they are in Programming HQ. "Give us this day our daily bread" means that we recognize that He has, and want Him to use, Programming Power to download programming assistance to provide us with our earthly needs. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." clearly tells us that forgiveness is a part of The Program for us free-will creatures. We can access His forgiveness for hurting Him only as long as we forgive those who hurt us. As long as we are unforgiving, our own program cannot be accessed by His. Unforgiveness is a spiritual "force field" that keeps His love from getting through to us. "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." means that we want Him to provide Programming Assistance so that we do not disobey His Operating Instructions for our individual, living units. We can picture the prayer lessening the barriers between us and He Who programmed us each time we repeat it. He loves us. He wants to be with us. He wants us to be with Him. As soon as we ask, He begins to answer, sending living streams of angels to our aid.
Thursday, February 11, 2010 Lots of People Love to Insult Liberals. Liberals are often said to be callous, insensitive, and not overly bright. Frequently, those on the left are labeled as "self-centered", "uncaring about anything but what benefits them", and "loving whatever hurts others". Liberals are universally castigated every time they're caught in one of their many, many contradictions. Recent blizzards in Washington, DC have been enjoyed by hundreds of millions. "Where's the Global Warming?", is chortled, gloatingly. As every liberal lie , exaggeration, and grasp for public funding is exposed, they are labeled as losers, liars, and utter nincompoops. Many people enjoy calling them names. There's justification for doing so. Liberals often do personify the very worst names they're called. Most on the left know how heartily they are despised by the more honest, intelligent, harder-working people whose persons and goals they endlessly demean. Pseudo-intellectual pretensions are easily-popped balloons that invite pinpricks and rapid deflation. Some call them "over-educated white trash". Others enjoy throwing their contradictions right in their faces. On the right, making fun of liberals has provided many with full-time employment. Audiences, ravaged by leftist policies and programs, listen and watch. Those even partially aware of how liberal lunacies have impoverished them just can't get enough of bashing liberals, often saying to their radio or television, "You got 'em good!", or "Hit 'em again!" Amazingly, the liberals shrug off all criticism. They steadfastly continue to make fools of themselves. We see them endlessly embracing "jobs" programs that cause massive unemployment, "educational" projects doomed to carry on the continual failures of public education, "energy" programs that defy the laws of physics, "financial fixes" that push nations into bankruptcy, and "scientific concerns" with no honest thoughts behind them, all the while worrying more about baby seals than little boys and girls. Impervious to truth, they soldier on, marching in steady lockstep down the broad path to destruction as their always outraged and angry leaders take them from one Imaginary Problem to another, all the while ignoring the catcalls from those made to pay for their mistakes. Liberals do so much damage, and are so crazed in their thinking, that it's hard to like them. But, calling them names, no matter how well the names fit, simply doesn't work. Their poor souls are so shriveled they just can't comprehend that they have become, in varying degrees, a living mass of shortcomings in their spiritual, intellectual, social, and family lives. Telling liberals how blatantly wrong they are, even proving it to them with charts and numbers, has never, not once, helped a single one of them take even a baby step closer to loving God, truth, or neighbor. The more their lies are confronted by truth, the farther their minds, unhinged by the bitterness caused by their cherished anger at God, retreat into even less intelligent lies, clutching the tattered remnants of supposedly rational thought as desperately as babies grasp their security blankets. We might try loving them. It's hard to love vicious, destructive people who want to destroy all that is good and decent. Loving a liberal is a lot like chewing on broken glass. But, what more can we do?
Thursday, February 11, 2010 What Happens When Peoples Stray is perfectly illustrated by the Scripture passage assigned to this date by The Church: 1 Kgs 11:4-13 So the LORD said to Solomon: “Since this is what you want, The Passage's application to us is easily seen by understanding that Solomon does not only signify a man, but also, a nation. We may replace "Solomon" with the name of any less-Christian-than-before country, as The United States. Then, we see that our destruction is imminent because The Programmer has stopped directing His good wishes toward us. By replacing the name "Solomon" with what is symbolized in the text, we read: 1 Kgs 11:4-13 and turned to strange gods, So the LORD said to The United States: “Since this is what you want, Psalm 49:12 reinforces this passage. "Man, when he prospers, forfeits intelligence. He is one with the cattle doomed to slaughter." Using the same symbolism of "nation" for "man", we may interpret "Nations, when they prosper, forfeit intelligence. It's people are cattle, doomed for slaughter." As we see the endless stupidies foisted upon us, we see that the United States has "forfeited intelligence". We can but pray to be spared from the promised "slaughter".
Friday, February 12, 2010 Praying for someone is like calling in artillery from a distant, lofty battery. The far-off "guns" fire projectiles that are, for the sake of argument, the approximate size of an electron. They move at a speed that may be faster than light, arriving on target about the same instant that they are fired. When, for instance, we pray, "God, please let so-and-so be a happier person.", the target of our prayer is not the person, but the demons within who keep him from happiness. The angelic artilleryman knows which demon(s) should be targeted, and aims accordingly. The projectiles, themselves, are also alive. They arrive at the target, and, like a self-guiding missile, seek out the spiritual target whose removal has been requested. Saying a prayer for someone else is a lot like sending a termite into someone's house. The good spirit just eats and eats away at the venal, vain defenses that have been built to the minds of those who do not love God and neighbor. Good spirits are tireless. After a demon is hit by enough of these spiritual missile-termites, it will leave the person for whom we are praying, and try to find room within another. If it can't find a suitable dwelling, then it is recalled to the pits from which it came, and its agony begins, again.
Saturday, February 13, 2010 Can the Demons Who Inflict so Many of us be Saved? St. Ignatius makes the point that the first, great disobedience took place among the rebellious angels in Heaven. Once these angels fell, they began to inject viruses into The Program, and caused the second disobedience with Adam and Eve in The Garden. Since some of Adam and Eve's children could be saved through Baptism and Blood, could some of the spirits reverse their polarity, repent, and rejoin He Who programmed them among the vast cloud of heavenly beings? We know that when Jesus successfully prayed for the man with 2,000 demons that they were not saved, but were sent into a herd of 2,000 pigs that they promptly drove to their deaths in the sea. When those pigs were killed, what happened to the 2,000 evil spirits that had been sent out of the man? Did they return to Hell? Or, did some of them, like the man whom they had possessed, also return to Jesus and recognize Him as Lord of our world and theirs? The Church has considered this question, and answers: "These beings, because of pride, did not return God's love. God did not destroy them, but permits them a limited scope of activity. Their condition is permanent for no creature can turn away from the perfect good of the beatific vision once he has come to enjoy it, and no additional reflection could change the mind of a purely spiritual being who has turned away." We gain more by worrying about getting our own souls closer to God than to worry about those who have ultimately and finally rejected Him.
Sunday, February 14, 2010 Valentine's Day. The Second Emperor Claudius saw the Romans threatened by Goths. On a wide arc from Macedonia to Germany, Goths were advancing toward Rome on a wide front. Claudius II needed troops. To keep young men available for the military, he wouldn't allow them to be married. St. Valentine was a Catholic priest. His viewpoint was a longer one. "If people cannot be married and have families, the Empire will die later, rather than sooner." So, despite the Emperor's orders, he secretly married young couples. In the last half of the 200s, he was caught, and sentenced to death by clubbing, to be followed by beheading. His last note was to the daughter of the warden, which he signed "from your Valentine". St. Valentine's day remains a time for expressing love.
Monday, February 15, 2010 Today, Lying is Harder. Now that the Global Warming lies are more thoroughly discredited than ever, it's time for some new Imaginary Problems to surface. People are working harder than ever on them. Imaginary Problems used to be easy. "Dioxin, Killing Millions!" used to appear on state-run newspapers and news channels. Soon, places like Times Beach, Missouri and New York's Love Canal were bulldozed into oblivion. "Ozone Hole Blinding Penguins!" was all it took to put America's cooling systems at risk. Soon, cans of freon that were once sold at K-Mart for 99 cents cost twenty dollars. Only licensed professionals could put it in. Keeping machines and people cool had become a government function. Even then, people didn't believe their lies, but there was no other source of information. Our innate and trusting natures kept us from saying "Liar!" We just forked over. "Apples Sprayed With Alar Kill Children!" was more of an exercise in testing the profitability of alarmism. It worked. It was very profitable, and widely believed. Similar alarms, "Cancer From Cell Phones!" haven't caught on. Neither have the organic food lies. Plastic bag lies are quiescent. With the Internet providing immediate de-bunking, the bunco artists are having a harder time gaining traction. The first time one of their lies is run up a flagpole, it's quickly shot down by the blogging equivalent of a heat-seeking missile fired from an unknown, far-off launch site. And, More Expensive. We see financial meltdowns in media outlets that lie the most. The endless frauds, Imaginary Problems, scares, exaggerations, and panics embraced by the professional liars in the state-run media are wearing thin. More consumers are asking, "Why should I buy magazines and newspapers, or watch TV shows, that lie to me and try to make me worry about a lot of nonsense?" Increasingly, that question is answered, "I shouldn't." As a result, the sectors of the media that lie the most find themselves in the greatest financial difficulty. Many are operating at a loss. Few have any ideas about what to do about it. Readers and viewers might suggest "Start telling the truth", but that's an impossibility for those whose only abilities are exaggerating and lying. It may be that the greatest liars and exaggerators are those who teach in the various "journalism" schools. It's unconscionable that they continue separating journalism students from vast amounts of tuition to prepare them for jobs that simply won't exist.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 The Two Components of Reality We deal, on a daily basis, with two realities. There are the things programmed by The Programmer, summed up by the ancients as earth, air, fire, and water. Energies, sub-atomic, and atomic particles were programmed, compiled, and downloaded for us. He programmed them out of something we may consider as 3-D pixels, analogous to the way humans program realistic movies and games out of 2-D pixels. His basic programs, which include each one of our souls, are "God's Programs". The other part of reality is made from the re-programming that we apply to His basic programs. We will turn trees into lumber, lumber into boards, and boards into housing sub-structures. All that we human programs "re-program" from His basic programs are the other component of reality, the entirety of which boils down to "God's Programs" and "Man's Programs". We spend far more time working with, and focusing on, "Man's Programs" than we spend considering the huge, complicated programs provided for us by The Loving Programmer. The distinction between the two components of reality is less often made as vain, God-denying humans try to eliminate from consideration the fact that The Loving Programmer even exists, let alone that He is still capable of modifying, re-programming, and erasing any of His, or our, programs. (As an example of vanity, yesterday, I spent more time considering a new car than I spent thinking about God. Today, realizing my own programming error, the new car thoughts and justifications have been erased from my own agenda. Temporarily, at least.) When we think about His programs, it's hard to avoid concluding that we human programs are the most important programs of all. As we consider that thought, we may connect it with the fact that we were given Operating Instructions, by The Person Whom we may consider to be the living fullness of The Program in human form, to love our fellow human programs as much as we love ourselves. One manifestation of that love is to do what we can to let our fellow human programs know that there is a Loving Programmer, and that He has programmed us so that the greatest joy we can know is to be with Him, now and forever. So, we pray for our friends, our enemies, and our neighbors in an attempt to have the wavelengths from above break through the barriers of vanity that insulate separated souls from Him. As love of what humans re-arrange is replaced by a love of the complicated human programs, themselves, the world is made a better place. (To that end, I may try not to spend/waste any more time and effort considering the new car mentioned above. At least until Lent, which starts tomorrow, is over.)
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 It's Clear Why Many Don't Attend Church: "Several prominent Anglican British bishops are urging Christians to keep their carbon consumption in check this Lent."
When church leaders don't talk about God, sin, and salvation, they lose relevance. Once that happens, the only way they can find it is to parrot the latest lies, exaggerations, and frauds. Since they no longer believe that God is real enough to concern "any intelligent person", they are stuck with spewing the sort of drivel above. Even the Pope has made some recognition of "global warming's" horrors, but most of us believed he was joking, throwing out a sop to make pseudo-intellectual Catholics think that he cared about their growing weirdness, while the rest of us snickered at the speed with which they ate it up. "Finally, there is a light in the darkness. The Pope, himself, has recognized the vital importance of our raison d' etre." So, the Pope's perfunctory mention of a global obsession is one thing. But, for the Anglicans, already so distant from Christianity that they really don't believe in anything having to do with it, except for the embrace of some gooey love for the willfully unlovable, are, themselves, a living mockery of decency. To confuse the self-sacrifice that Lent implies with the politically correct eschewing of something utterly harmless is to denigrate Christianity, itself. People seem to agree. They are voting with their feet, and going other places than the Anglican churches that, in the not-too-distant past, provided at least an illusion of sanctity, even if it was only to be found in the pale imitations of the far more real Sacraments that preceded them, often in the very same buildings, now emptied of the Real Presence and presently occupied by what is, in fact, something worse than nothing at all.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 During Lent Catholics try to focus more on The Programmer than on the programmed entities around us. To that end, we try to give up things. Fasting and praying is part of this process. Once, in NYC for a trade show that spanned Ash Wednesday, I was walking down Broadway, and was struck by the number of people with ashes on their foreheads. Sophisticated Manhattanites carried a visible sign that they were serious about getting closer to He Who had programmed all, and their presence was encouraging to someone from the Midwest who thought New York was populated exclusively by the far left. As we ask ourselves what we should give up, we may consider a monk in his cell. There is a bed, a Bible, a few books, possibly a change of clothing, a chair, a lamp, and a kneeler. Pens, paper, and possibly a computer are on a desk. Then, we may look around our own rooms, basements, attics, garages, and storage sheds. After considering our vast accumulations, it's not unnatural to avoid seriously thinking about what we can give up. Many of us have moving vans full of things we'll never use, wear, or miss. Lent is a good time to think about getting rid of some programmed entities.
Thursday, February 18, 2010 Lent is also a good time to continue imagining God as The Programmer. Once we seriously try to visualize the concept that He has the ability to program, compile, and download in three dimensions, we see that He could, in a very short time, have downloaded the universe using the incredibly complicated systems of 3-D pixels among which, and whom, we spend our days in the clay. The viruses do not encourage us to think about God having the ability to have quickly and efficiently programmed all Creation. In fact, if you let yourself think about God's ability to program, almost instantaneously, systems of 3-D pixels, you will immediately feel a chorus of thoughts, living voices within, distracting you from taking such an idea seriously. Viruses, whose goal is to keep us complicated free will programs from getting closer to He Who programmed us, prefer that we see God, if at all, as an uncaring being, divorced from any real concerns about us. When we listen to what people say about believing in a God powerful enough to have programmed creation with 3-D pixels, we can quickly tell where those people are in the spiritual scheme of things. Those who encourage us to greater belief in, and obedience to, God are on the side of the angels, His beloved programming assistants. Those who would separate us from Him are, hopefully only temporarily, on the side of the apostate angel. As Hugh of St. Victor explained in the Didascalicon, those who choose to do evil are actually a part of the apostate angel's body. Everything they say is either a lie or a partial truth used to serve a greater lie. We may consider picturing our souls among the more powerful spiritual entities as a precious form of energy, sort of like rubies and diamonds among us humans. God wants each precious soul to spend eternity in the joy of reflecting forever His glory in Heaven. The viruses want those same souls clutched, besmirched, damaged, and in agony forever.
Thursday, February 18, 2010 A wonderful part of the Global Warming fraud is that it can help all of us. Let's say you had a real problem, one that left you with so many alternatives that you couldn't figure out what to do. So, you ask six friends, and get six different answers. All you have to do to find the likeliest right answer is to take the one proffered by the first person who stopped believing in Global Warming. He, or she, is your smartest, most perceptive friend, and will, therefore, be the likeliest one to think correctly enough to provide the right answer.
Friday, February 19, 2010 Collecting Leads to Collections My insurance company requires photographs of things in order to get full insurance value. Otherwise, they simply won't pay for a loss. So, I had to start taking pictures. There were things going back to my great-grandparents, and they all had to be photographed. An amazing accumulation had been brought together. For generations, my family had obtained things and passed them down. All that I had was but a tiny fraction of their total accumulations. Most of it had some value, some of it had a lot of value, and some had no value at all. But, for four or five generations, they have been packed up, moved, and added to. Many things hadn't seen the light of day since they were first packed away. Some things had been completely forgotten. When it goes to my children and grandchildren, it will be further separated. As long as some younger person says, "I'd like to have that.", older generations will try to make sure that they get it, so more boxes will be filled, moved, and, hopefully, passed on. It does give a mild sense of purpose. Though accumulated collections do distract from God, they may keep us focused on some aspect of family life. It's a way of passing the love we had for those who went before to those we hope will follow.
Friday, February 19, 2010 This was too good not to include. Taken from today's weaselzippers.com :
"The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed down from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In the Public Service, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: 1. Change riders. 2. Buy a stronger whip. 3. Do nothing: “This is the way we have always ridden dead horses”. 4. Visit other countries to see how they ride dead horses. 5. Perform a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve the dead horse’s performance. 6. Hire a contractor to ride the dead horse. 7. Harness several dead horses together in an attempt to increase the speed. 8. Provide additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance. 9. Appoint a committee to study the horse and assess how dead it actually is. 10. Re-classify the dead horse as “living-impaired”. 11. Develop a Strategic Plan for the management of dead horses. 12. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for all horses. 13. Modify existing standards to include dead horses. 14. Declare that, as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overheads, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line than many other horses. 15. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position." Sunday, February 21, 2010 Thanking Our Guardian Angel This is, like every moment of our lives, a good time to think about our own Guardian Angel. He is a link between us and the higher spiritual powers operating above. He obeys the Operating Instructions that keep him from manifesting himself directly to us, but he's there. Working 24/7, he guides our waking hours and our dreams. He never rests, but ceaselessly patrols among the tiny particles that have programmed to form our neurons. When we think of the trouble we've avoided, we have him to thank. When we think of the sins we didn't commit, we can thank our silent partner. When we consider the sins we did commit in thought and word and deed, we can but regret not having listened to his guidance. Our guardian angel is a little bit of God within us. We can thank our guardian angel directly, but should also thank God for having assigned him to us when our program was initially downloaded. When we pray for our own soul, we are automatically, if unknowingly, including in that prayer a request that our guardian angel will be given the power to overcome the error-loving spiritual beings within us, the demons clamoring for us to worship ourselves and the inanities upon which we often focus so excessively as to forget He Who programmed all. When we pray for others, we are, also automatically, if unknowingly, asking The Loving Programmer of All to strengthen the guardian angel within our "prayee". On resisting a sin, we may consider saying, "Thank You, God, for having provided such a wonderful, loving angel who has helped me choose not to disappoint You." One may imagine, after such a prayer, our little-thanked, and almost always ignored, Guardian Angel telling his friends, (when they know we're safe for a few seconds, they may instantaneously e-mail themselves up to Programming HQ to take part in the eternal celebration of The Loving Programmer) "You won't believe this, but my human's soul actually thanked me!" "Aw, c'mon.", nearly all the others will reply, "Humans are too self-centered to ever do that." After giving into some temptation or another, we may say: "God, I ignored you and my guardian angel's advice on better obeying Your Operating Instructions. First of all, please, please forgive me for my transgression. For the rest of my time here, please, let me listen better, obey better, and do better in knowing and doing Your will. Please, don't let my guardian angel give up on me, and please, don't let Yourself be so disgusted with my choices that you take him away from me. Instead, please download within him all the power he needs to keep me on the straight and narrow path that will lead my soul to You forever, and download within me all the power that I need to know, heed, and obey his instructions that come from You."
Monday, February 22, 2010 This, from dissectingleftism.com shows how the Associated Press Flacks hide what their controllers want hidden: "Evidence of Climate Fraud Grows, Media Coverage Doesn't When we wonder why so many of the state-run media outlets are going broke, this tells us all we need to know. Instead of telling us the truth, they're hiding it, and are now surprised to find that viewers and readers aren't interested in purchasing lies, deceptions, and half-truths. When we ask "Why don't they tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?", the only answer is, "Because they're told not to." The logical thing to do is then ask "Who's giving them their orders?" Answering that question takes us, inevitably and eventually, back to Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon: "Those who choose to do evil are part of the body of the apostate angel."
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Accessing the Source Code Very few people in any organization are given access to any program's source code. It is the very foundation of the operation of the system. With it, one can do, depending on the point of view, a lot of good or a lot of damage. Improperly accessing a source code is a criminal offense, and is punished. When we consider God as The Programmer, we realize that He has written a Source Code to His vast Creation Program that allowed Him to program all there is with the three-dimensional particles with which He downloaded it. Adam and Eve, it will be remembered, made an unauthorized access and download of the Source Code, and we have all been punished for it. The New Operating Instructions do give us access to some of the Source Code. When The Program came to earth in fulfillment of the Creation Program's running through time and space, He came in the human form of Jesus Christ. He gave us access to the parts of the Source Code that those who believed were allowed to access: “If you forgive men their transgressions, Forgiveness is one access to the Source Code by which we are able to download our knowledge of The Programmer and the Program through the Holy Wireless Connector. The inability to forgive keeps us separated from the Source of All. Forgiving others is something on which we should work tirelessly. By increasing the amount of our own forgiveness, we may access more of The Source Code, which allows us to move ever closer to He Who programmed each of us within the vast Creation Program.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 Stock markets were looking better until late last week. Then the Administration decided to reveal that it was making another big push to let socialists take over America's health care system. When they made their intentions plain, the markets began to drop. Investors know that there may be greater damage coming to the economy than ever, and are withdrawing funds. Most just don't know where to put their money. It's dropping in value every day, so some have "fled" to gold, thinking it to be a "safe" haven. They may not remember that 60 years ago, it was made illegal to own gold, and it was confiscated. The owners of gold were given a piece of paper with $20.00 written on it in exchange for each ounce they had taken from them. As soon as the Roosevelt Administration had the gold, it promptly revalued it at $35.00 an ounce, pocketing untold billions. Naturally, the value of the $20.00 bills began to plummet, and have been doing so at an accelerating rate ever since. In any nation, from Babylon to today, nations always end up debasing their currency. The excuses for debasing the currency are a manifestation of childish selfishness. "We need more, now.", cry the growing hordes of government workers and pensioners. The easiest way to satisfy their cries is to print more money. The results are obvious, and, unfixable; the natural and inevitable results of giving in to the demons of greed that lurk within us all.
Thursday, February 25, 2010 Inches and Feet, Millimeters and Centimeters, and The Discreet Directorate In the last couple of years, it appears that a discreet directive has gone out to use the Metric System instead of what we all grew up using. We are used to inches, feet, yards, acres, and Fahrenheit temperatures. Instead of what we can easily visualize and deal with, we are now bombarded with once apprehensible information in new, unfamiliar, confusing forms. Most of us cannot help but be less conversant with much of what's going on around us. Conspiracy theorists ask "Where did this silent directive originate?" Like so many false alarms and imaginary problems, it came from the Discreet Directorate. It's not important who's running the Discreet Directorate. It's been around since Babylon. Part of our life on earth is the growing realization that there actually is some hidden power that determines, for instance, when it's time for people to be forced to start thinking in terms of kilograms rather than pounds and ounces, hectares rather than acres, and Celsius rather than Fahrenheit. When governments have a greater need to confuse and obfuscate, they make confusing changes, keeping people distracted from what they're doing by changing the familiar basics of our lives. England offers a perfect example. When their government forced a confusing change from pounds and ounces, shillings, and pence to metric systems, they used the confusion to sneak in changes to immigration, education, and finance that allowed them to more easily ravage their people. While the "news" was getting people to focus on the outrage of shopkeepers being arrested for weighing bananas in pounds rather than kilos, the Discreet Directorate was effecting changes in far more important arenas. It's an axiom of life that the Discreet Directorate churns out changes when it wants to implement an increase in its power. The bigger the change they want to implement, the greater the confusions in traditional thought patterns must be introduced to more thoroughly confuse and distract people. The growing replacement of traditional measurements with "better systems" signals clearly that there are some big power transfers in the offing that the Discreet Directorate wants to facilitate. As the "news" about the world becomes harder to relate to, we're seeing this latest billow in a larger smoke-screen accompanied by an expanded drive to control medicine, manufacturing, insurance, energy, and finance. It's not a coincidence, and never has been. Back in the mid-fifties, an American soldier was released from a North Korean prison camp in which he'd spent several unpleasant years. When he returned home, he thought he would "catch up" on the years he'd missed. He went to to the library and spent a few months reading the previous four years of Time, Look, Life, The National Geographic, and other magazines and newspapers. When he had finished "catching up" with what had gone on during his painfully sequestered years, he said, "You know, it was amazing. There were more articles, drawings, and photographs describing and illustrating how Korean homes were heated with Roman-like hypocausts, under-floor vents hooked up to outside fire pits, than about any of the far more serious issues affecting both foreign and domestic policies." The Discreet Directorate, always beavering away.
Friday, February 26, 2010 Two Kinds of Catholics. Or, Three. Traditional Catholics believe in structure and form. The Pre-Vatican II liturgies, Councils, and beliefs are of vital importance to them. They are outraged at the "watering down" of Catholic beliefs. Modern Catholics say they are more concerned with faith. "The 'old' Church simply doesn't meet the needs of the people. To be truly saved, one has but to "try to be good". The Sacraments are not as important as our inner feelings of 'goodness'." Traditional Catholics analyze the changes in The Church since Vatican II. "If what you on the Left think is working, then why are our Churches emptier, our birth rates declining, the number of priests, nuns, monks, and brothers diminishing, our Churches and schools closing?" Modern Catholics are driven to reply, "Such things are not as important as developing an 'inner spirituality' that is sensitive to the needs of others." Some point to an older division in The Church between the Dominicans and the Franciscans and use it to justify their attacks on structure and tradition. It's true that the former were more rigorous; the latter, less so. But, it's a false analogy. The most liberal Franciscan was far more traditional than today's leftist Catholics. It's hard to face the fact that, as Pope Paul VI said, "The smoke of satan has entered The Church.". Hard to argue with him about what he saw happening first hand. While few of us are in a position to change, or, better yet, eliminate Vatican II, we can consider it as an important step to Catholic Fundamentalism. Rather than focusing on problems caused by lost souls whose desire is to eliminate the presence of The Church, we may wish to better spend our time contemplating and understanding that God's power is so great that He can program energies and particles, compile them into systems and beings, and download them in the Creation Program. In a week! When we see that each of us free will programs, the most complicated components of the Creation Program, are lovingly programmed and downloaded within the greater Creation Program, we begin to see a little of His power. Then, we see that The Church, and it's Sacrament-providing structure, is the most important thing on earth. We also begin to see that theories like evolution are just plain silly in light of God's power to program and download The Creation Program in a week, out of what we may visualize as 3-D pixels compiled into 3-D fractals. As we focus on Him and how we fit into His Creation Program, we avoid the nonsensical theories designed to separate our souls from The Loving Programmer. Then, each of us can focus on getting our own souls into His presence forever. Catholic Fundamentalism is a way to put the false world of Conventional Reality behind us, and move towards the Kingdom of the Loving God Who Programmed All. We either move forward into Catholic Fundamentalism, or remain mired in confusion and argument with those who have chosen to neither understand nor respect truth, logic, and consequences.
Friday, February 26, 2010 Catholic Fundamentalism is The Catholic Counter-Reformation to Vatican II. In reacting to the liberalizing evil that swept through The Church with Vatican II, we may well remember the changes that The Church put into place after earlier Protestants, who were at least honest enough not to pretend to be Catholic, began to follow the false shepherds like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. Then, The Church responded by demanding closer allegiance with its traditional teachings. Today, Catholic Fundamentalists do the same thing. Sweeping away centuries of carefully crafted intellectual silliness designed to keep us from knowing and loving God, Catholic Fundamentalism shows the reasonableness of returning to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and the programming power of He Who had it written. When we Catholic Fundamentalists say to those whose faith in God and Scripture is not as deep, "You silly people! Can't you understand that God has the power to program particles, bringing them into being with the power of His Own Will? Won't you realize that He has the ability to compile those particles into living beings; beginning with His sub-Programmers, the angels who helped Him download the myriad of 3-D sub-programs out of which the Creation Program is written, compiled, and downloaded into being and forms the universe around us? Is your vanity so great that you won't let yourselves by humbled by even thinking about how powerful He is, to have downloaded The Creation Program in six days?" As we each begin our own pilgrimage from lies to truth, we see that we are simultaneously moving from hate to love. Those who compile, believe, and propagate the theories that keep us from seeing that we are His beloved human programs living within His vast Creation Program are lost souls. They work, often with diligence, to bring all others into preferring the confusion and enduring pain they have chosen, as well. We can escape into His love and truth by simply asking Him to send an angel to help us better understand, "God can program energies and particles. With the help of His angelic sub-programmers, He has those energies and particles multiplied and compiled into systems and beings. Each of us is a unique human program, written and downloaded at the moment of our conception within the Creation Program. Our souls, the compiling essences around which our own bodies are coalesced, will live forever. If we obey His Operating Instructions, He will take our soul to Heaven to be with Him forever. If we choose to disobey, He won't." Moving into Catholic Fundamentalism requires moving away from the world and human theories about it. It's hard to see how many lies have been incorporated into our minds by those who want to lead us away from God. Seeing God as The Loving Programmer and the universe as His program is a beginning. It's not supposed to be easy. But, as St. Columban said, "Without a battle, there is no victory. Without a victory, there is no crown."
Saturday, February 27, 2010 When We See Catholic Fundamentalism as an uncontradictable alternative to the vain, supposedly intellectual exercises that take form in the God-denying and God-distancing theories embraced, and often subsidized, by politicians who use them to gain earthly power and wealth, we get a tiny bit closer to comprehending The Loving Programmer's awesome power. We also understand that He follows His own Programming Instructions. We may, for instance, pray to purchase a winning lottery ticket and see such prayers come to naught. Since we are frequently denied His miraculous programming assistance in such matters, we may find our faith diminished. We are encouraged to rise above seeing unanswered requests as reasons to lessen our faith by realizing that His Operating Instructions plainly state that "All things work together for good.", or, in Catholic Fundamentalism terms, "His Program operates perfectly." That tells us that we, His beloved programmed entities for whom the entire Creation Program was created and downloaded to provide us with free will, should not use that freedom to choose to distance ourselves from The Programmer because He has not provided us with the programmed entities we request. Instead, we should endeavor to grow closer to Him that our anger with the way things are is replaced by love for Him and what He has programmed and ordained. We are each in a battle in which we spend our lives choosing between loving God and loving our own vanities. As we win that battle, we grow in understanding that it is not what we have that is important, but what we do. An old hymn sums up how we are to operate within The Program: "He has no hands but ours." "He has no hands but ours." may be paired with the old adage, "Idle hands are the devil's playground." We should get busy, and stay busy, helping to build the Kingdom of God on earth, each of us striving to avoid sin and the near occasion thereof while doing whatever bits of good we can.
Sunday, February 29, 2010 All of us Have One Thing in Common. We are all driven to maintain the cash flows that sustain us. Maintaining our cash flows is a more consuming part of our lives than we realize. While we may appear to be "above" such things, and may go to some trouble to convince ourselves that we are, outside of those who embrace their faith with a missionary zeal that involves voluntary vows of poverty, most of us are swimming in some sort of economic stream, working diligently to have cash flows diverted to our own selves or extensions thereof. Most of us do not calculate how much time we spend trying to create and maintain favorable cash flows. If we did, we'd find a surprising number of our waking hours are devoted to maintaining and increasing the monies that we can direct to ourselves, our families, and the organizations of which we are a part. Some cash flows are better than others. "Good" cash flows are based on providing goods and services valued enough to cause free people to freely choose to buy them. "Bad" cash flows involve taking money from neighbors at gunpoint. Plans and plots that do that are little less than thievery authorized by those who are, themselves, beholden to such cash flows. One thing that all people involved in "bad" cash flows have in common is that they are able to convince themselves that what they're doing is "good". So, their waking hours are spent justifying lies, often with far greater gain than they would have been able to accumulate in the freer markets. The danger is that souls who choose to mandate cash flows from their neighbors to themselves at gunpoint end up drowning in the stagnant pool of dirty money in which they have chosen to immerse themselves. When we point out this danger, for instance, to someone involved in some particularly silly, destructive government program, we first hear, "What we're doing is good." When we show why it isn't, we often hear, "Well, it's not as bad as what a lot of people do." When we find ourselves saying that, it's time to start doing something else, even if it causes a reduction in cash flow. |
