Simple Economics

At almost any time in any nation's history, the issue of the economy is in the forefront. A vibrant economy creates jobs, brings prosperity, & enriches the nation. It provides a broader tax base for infrastructure, & can become a juggernaut of growth & affluence. And conversely, a weak economy brings poverty, austerity, & decline.

The wealth of a nation is tied DIRECTLY to several factors:
1. The Industry of the Citizens. A small nation like the early US & more modern examples of Germany & Japan show that an industrious people with a strong work ethic can work their way to prosperity, even with limited natural resources. Minimal dependency, minimal collective demands, and a culture of industry, opportunity, & growth all work together to bring prosperity to the nation.
2. Natural Resources. The more resources a nation has, the more they can harvest the bounty from the earth & convert it to national wealth. The US has abundant natural resources, & they used them to build the most prosperous economy in the history of man. Conversely, some nations with abundant resources seem unable to overcome the lack of industry from the people, or the corruption in the governmental system. Mexico is an example of this malady, as is Haiti & many African nations.
3. Minimal demands from the collective organizational system, AKA, Government. Some nations have an industrious people, but are hampered by an oppressive collective organization. Corruption & an elite ruling class burden the producers, & sap their motivation to excel. The more the working man is able to keep the fruits of his labors, & reinvest them in HIMSELF, the more industrious he is, & it snowballs the entire national economy. This one is the most crucial, as it can kill the other 2.

Those are the 3 basic factors needed for a prosperous society. As they decline, so does the national economy. All other 'fixes' are smoke & mirrors, & do not address the fundamentals. If we want a vigorous, vibrant economy, we have to encourage & stimulate these 3 things. With this as a foundation, here are a few basic Truths in any human economic system:

1. Wealth comes through production. It is not declared, & it cannot be printed. Only intelligent, industrious LABOR produces what is needed for human survival. All wealth begins with food production, as it is the most basic need. After the food needs are met, whatever is left goes toward shelter, protection, play, & luxuries.
2. All of society DEPENDS on the producers. Food, housing, energy, protection, clothing.. anything necessary for existence has to be WORKED for & created. The very young, the old, & the infirm all depend on the PRODUCTION of the working people around them. The more people there are in productive, useful labor, the richer & more prosperous the society is. And conversely, the more people there are in dependency, the poorer the society, & the greater burden on the working producers. The producing worker can have too many dependents, & be unable to overcome that financial drain on his resources.
3. Govt can do little to promote a healthy economy, but it can do a great deal to kill it. Too much govt interference, red tape, & bureaucracy only increases corruption, crony deals, & is a hindrance to a prosperous society.

Govt is the Great Fiction, that deludes people into thinking that everybody can live off of everybody else. It is a lie. It has NEVER worked, & has been attempted numerous times in human history. Too much collective dependency, with too many leeches on the working man take too much of his increase & discourage industry. Govt is an expense of the working producers, & needs to be kept in check, or it will become infested with looting moochers who will plunder the treasury & fleece the producers of the nation.

National economics is much simpler than it is presented. It is just simple human economics on a larger scale. But the same principles are in play. To have a vibrant, prosperous economy, you need the above dynamics. Industrious citizens, abundant natural resources, & minimal demands from govt are the 3 key factors for a growing, healthy economy. There are no short cuts. There are no magic pills or beans. It takes intelligent work from a majority of the citizens, with minimal govt, to bring prosperity to a nation. Govt does not help this process with energetic intrusion into the collective. The economy grows best when govt is unnoticed & minimal.

Revival

40 years ago, during the 'Jesus Freak' movement, the hubub was 'the late great planet earth', where Hal Lindsey predicted the end within a few years.. Before that, there was some guy who talked a bunch of people into sitting on a hill to wait.. he knew the date when the world would end. Of course, there are the real wack jobs, who drink kool aid & try to catch a ride on a comet as they die, but some kind of apocalyptic view of the world seems to be universal. Martin Luther.. the reformer.. was in a time of great persecution. Martyrs were dying regularly. Someone asked him what he would do if he knew the Lord was coming back tomorrow. 'I would plant a tree', was his reply.

If you're 60 or so, these are the last days. You might live a few more years, but plenty of your friends are gone who died much younger than you, so you know it can happen. I have been a philosopher obsessed with death my whole life, so it seems like a familiar friend. But i have no idea how i will cross the river.. whether with great faith & victory, or in terror & despair. My will is inadequate in this matter. I leave the welfare of my soul (if there is one) with the Creator.

But as far as the last days of America, that seems fairly obvious. All of the fundamentals for a stable collective system of organization (aka, govt) are out of whack. The currency is in shambles. Dependency is rampant. Enemies of America have infiltrated every institution. Corruption, lies, & every imaginable immorality runs freely in this land that was once a beacon of stability, morality, & freedom. The cry of innocent blood rises against us, & demands justice. We will have to face our Maker, & we have no excuse. We have loved amusements & opulence, & have lost our place in the universe, history, & humanity. Instead of the light of Liberty, we bring the stench of Death.

If there is a judgement in my lifetime.. If fire & brimstone falls from heaven & leaves the land barren.. If gnashing & wailing are all we have to look forward to, all i can say is that God is just. Our collective sins have risen to the heights, & cry out against us. Millions of dead babies will stand in judgement upon this generation, & all we can do is hang our heads. We have stood idly by while thieves, murderers & liars have taken control of our once proud system of self rule, that once shook the world & was the envy of the nations.

But while there is life there is hope. A spiritual awakening.. a moral revival.. a return to the standards that brought us to the pinnacle of human freedom.. these *might* turn away the wrath & judgement of God. But that has become a trite saying.. a religious cliché that people parrot, but without feeling. Revival. It could save America, but it seems impossible. The irreligious are entrenched, & there is no fear of God in our culture.

Hos 4:1Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites,because the Lord has a charge to bring
against you who live in the land:
“There is no faithfulness, no love,
no acknowledgment of God in the land.
2There is only cursing, lying and murder,
stealing and adultery;
they break all bounds,
and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
3Because of this the land dries up,
and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
and the fish in the sea are swept away.
4“But let no one bring a charge,
let no one accuse another,
for your people are like those
who bring charges against a priest.
5You stumble day and night,
and the prophets stumble with you.
So I will destroy your mother—
6my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.

Spiritual Awakenings, Part 2

WW2 was, IMO, the pinnacle of enlightenment thinking. The concepts of the scientific method, technology, human equality, & Natural Law were in sharp contrast to the axis views of power, elitism, & racial superiority. Post WW2 church attendance was very high, & the baby boomers were the result. Strong religious views & family values are connected. But by the 60s, the trend began going the other way.

In 1950, 2% of people said 'none' for religious preference in the gallup poll. By 2010, this had grown to 16%. I'm sure it is higher, now. Why is this? Has science proven that there is no god? Why has atheism exploded in western culture? I see one central reason:  Indoctrination

IMO, atheists are made, not born. Years of indoctrination from the naturalistic, atheistic, secular humanist educational system, complicit with the media, entertainment, sesame street, national parks, & nearly EVERY worldly institution have convinced young people from an early age that belief in God is quaint & outdated. Science has proved that religion is all a myth, they assert, & the naturalistic view of the universe has become the default western view. Years of affluence & opulence have removed the sense of fear & dependency on nature for survival. Beginning in the late 60s, the super-naturalistic view of the universe has steadily declined. This is not because of any scientific discoveries, or proof of naturalistic origins, but is mere indoctrination & removal of any competition in the educational system. Evolution is no more a proven fact than it was in the mid 19th century. In fact, the discovery of dna & the science of genetics has dealt the 'theory' a severe blow. But the indoctrinaires have not been deterred, & not only has evolution been allowed to be taught since 1925, it is now the ONLY allowed theory, as creation is forbidden as being 'religious'.

And as the spiritual beliefs of people in the west have declined, so has the expansion of socialism & marxism. People no longer look to God for their direction, provision, & wisdom for life's problems, but to the state. It has become the new god, & the alter of statism has become the new place of worship.

It seems to me that the growth of socialism/Marxism EXACTLY parallels the growth of atheism in the west. Marx believed that religion was the 'opiate of the masses', & had to be eliminated. Atheism was the necessary ideological basis for Marx's brand of collectivism to flourish. And in those places where atheism flourishes, Marxism is the dominant ideology. In the 50s, America was at war with the 'godless commies'. But now, godless Marxism has become mainstream in American politics. Admitted socialists are valid candidates for president. Anarchic Marxists openly protest & commit violent, anarchist acts in the streets, under racial cover.

If you look at this world map, it is hard to not see the correlation between atheism & the embrace of Marxist ideology.



And it is also plain to see that in places where state indoctrination is high, so is the perception of atheism. And of course, this has no bearing on reality. Atheism is no more a proven fact than theism, from empirical evidence. The mysteries of life, origins, & the universe have no scientific explanation, but only philosophical ones, either by naturalistic or supernatural assumptions. So these percentages do NOT indicate a presentation of Truth, but only successful indoctrination by the propaganda of statism. Reason & enlightenment have not compelled these beliefs, but state sponsored, ideologically driven propaganda.

Is there another 'awakening' on the horizon? I don't know. But without a spiritual revival, & a return to enlightenment values of Natural Law, freedom, & human equality, western civilization is finished. The other competing world views are both based in elitism, power, & control. Both Islamism & Progressive leftism will destroy the basis for western civilization, & return us to the dark ages.

To wrap up this article, i challenge the reader to consider the source of their beliefs. Is it based on personally acquired knowledge, or from sources with an agenda? The universe is vast & mysterious. Don't limit your perceptions with dogma from propagandists. Wake up! Don't be driven underground by a bullying ideology that tries to trivialize & ridicule any alternate beliefs. Seek the truth, & don't let anyone deter you from that noble quest.

You shall know the Truth, & the Truth shall make you free.
Jesus

Spiritual Awakenings

One of the great flaws of a secular education is the ignoring of spiritual movements in history. Great effort is made to interpret the actions & thoughts of people through the lens of purely secular motivations. But this ignores the very real & very significant impact of spiritual beliefs in society. It would be like future historians trying to explain the current terrorist actions without the driving belief system of Islam. You can explain everything with a purely secular view, but it misses some important factors in our interactions.

I won't be going back too far. Any discussion about spiritual awakenings has to include the biggest one in human history: The reformation. Some people view this as just political maneuvering. But they ignore the great volume of written works that provided the ideological basis for resisting the established religious institution. The Anabaptists, the Huguenots, & the concurrent protestant revival that swept through Europe unhinged the status quo, & threatened their power base. The establishment fought vigorously against it, killing, torturing, & undermining this spiritual awakening, for it not only upset the basis for their rule, but it went against their core beliefs. The divine right of kings, a professional priesthood, an aristocracy of privilege, & their right & duty to control the rest of humanity were all under attack by this awakening.

So they fought it. They killed the apostates. They gave them 'second baptisms' by drowning them. They tortured them to deny this new found faith in late night inquisitions. They burned them openly at the stake, to deter any more departures from the status quo. But it did not work. Instead of nipping this new awareness in the bud, it spread like wildfire. The priesthood of believers, not a professional religious class. The authority of scriptures, not the ruling elite. The equality of man, not a divine order of elitism. These were earth shaking revelations. It changed the course of history, & opened up the enlightenment era of reason, human freedom, & human equality. Philosophers began to question the authority structures, & called for them to be based on Natural Law, not mandates from a monarchy. The king was a mere man, & was not above the law.

About this same time, the new world was being settled with refugees & rejects from the European inquisitions. Quakers, Presbyterians, & Puritans moved en masse to start their religious utopias. They fled the intolerance & oppression of the European status quo, but at first, kept the intolerant part, demanding strict conformity to the tenets of their faith. Many religious colonies formed in the new world.

Massachusetts- Puritan separatists, with some English congregationalists.
Pennsylvania- Quaker, Mennonites, Moravians, Calvinists, Lutherans & more. A large segment from Germany came here.
New Amsterdam- Primarily a trading port, it become more diverse than some of the others. Jews, Lutherans, Scandinavian & Dutch fortune seekers mingled with the varied religious beliefs.
Virginia- Anglicans, loyal to the church of England were the bulk of the colonists there.
Maryland- In the irony of the reformation, English Catholics were no longer comfortable in protestant England, & many came to Maryland.
Rhode Island- The famous 'religious tolerance' colony, where outcasts from all the other colonies could come. It was not a large colony, but significant as a refuge for dissenters.

Almost all the colonies had some kind of religious basis.. they were formed as religious utopias, where the faithful could practice their beliefs without fear of persecution; all of them a direct result of the reformation. But after a few generations, the original religious fervor waxed cold, as it always does. Heartfelt piety gave way to ritual instruction, & the power of spiritual living waned.

But by the mid 1700s, a significant movement began sweeping across protestant Europe, & it found its way to the new world. This was the first Great Awakening. George Whitefield, a preacher in this time, drew huge crowds in New England, & Benjamin Franklin, a non Christian, was so impressed with his speeches that he printed the text in his newspaper. It was a movement that emphasized PERSONAL spirituality.. a living relationship with God, & centralized Jesus as the way of salvation. It was characterized by great emotion, often with tears.. 'white gutters' on the cheeks of weeping coal miners. The idea of the priesthood of believers was rekindled, & itinerant preachers fanned out across the new world bringing the message of salvation. Lost souls were their targets, & they sought to bring people back to God. Race was immaterial to many of these preachers, & many targeted plantations & slaves, & included them as equals in the Kingdom of God.

This Awakening led DIRECTLY to the American revolution, the Declaration of Independence, & the writing of the constitution. Reformation concepts, such as the equality of man, Natural Law, & individual sovereignty found its collective expression in the revived spiritual climate of America.

Thus was born the Experiment in self rule. These was not academians, pontificating about dry concepts of philosophy, but fiery eyed true believers, filled with zeal for God & inspired to LIVE and DIE for a cause higher than themselves. It was religious revival that sparked the American revolution, that brought not only the philosophical basis for the beliefs, but the earnestness & passion that is needed for any social change.

It should be clear that the earnest beliefs of the early American Christians did not predispose them to intolerance.  They saw the value in FREEDOM, & preferred that over partisan theology.  That is why so many of the founders did not support a Christian based govt, but only in the principles of freedom & Natural Law.  Multitudes of reference were given to God, as the Creator, or the Lord of Nature, but defining Him in denominational terms went beyond their desire.  They saw the State as the enemy of religion, & THAT was the basis for the separation clause, not that religion was in enmity toward the state.

The inclusion of the spiritual condition of the people provides a much clearer, insightful analysis of history, rather than trying to force humanity to act from purely secular motivations. The reformers in Luther's time, & the Awakening in the mid 1700s provide a better foundation for the actions of the people, their motivations, & their ideological basis. Man is not a pure animal, but acts from his beliefs. It is ridiculous to ignore those beliefs when learning from history.

After the American Revolution came another period of slow spiritual decline.  The first Great Awakening in the US brought vigorous activity: the founding of universities, outreach to the Indian tribes, & conversion of African slaves.  But the subsequent generation had only the stories of the revival, & were not smitten by 'holy ghost power' like their predecessors.  So expediency trumped idealism, & acceptance of moral decline became the norm.

Slavery as a symbol of human oppression was not widely embraced, until the next Great Awakening, which occurred early in the 19th century.  There was some reaction to the advent of Deism & the age of reason, where skepticism & cold rationalism became a popular mode of communication, writing, & speaking.  The second awakening was characterized by more emotion & romantic views of life & God, & not just the cold, calculating reasonings of the logicians.  Intermingled in this was the view that the Advent, or the second coming of Christ was imminent, & some believed it was their Christian duty to prepare the way, by promoting social change & legislating morality.  Abolitionism exploded during this time, & radical actions were taken by some to usher in this era of moral purity.  The civil war was the ultimate expression of the second great awakening, & the north, especially, carried the banner of Jesus & took the moral high ground.

Consider the lyrics & even the tune of the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

CHORUS:
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
CHORUS

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgement Seat.
Oh! Be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
CHORUS

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
CHORUS

The significance of this 'hymn' cannot be overlooked.  The tune comes from 'John Brown's body', a pop tune ridiculing abolitionists.  'John's Brown's body lies a moldering in his grave', was replaced with the coming glory of the Advent.  The call was for the faithful to follow Christ's example, & 'die to make men free'.  The south lacked this moral high ground, & was much more laid back in their religious overtones, though they still tried to rally the troops to die for the southern cause.  But it was not as altruistic as dying for the freedom of Man, in service to the Almighty.  For the common soldier in the south, dying so the plantation owners could keep their way of life did not have the same appeal.  Of course there were many factors for the south's loss, but the spiritual drive of the northern moralists was certainly one of them.

But the second great awakening laid the foundation, morally & spiritually, for not only the abolition of slavery in the US, but throughout all of Europe, where the same spiritual fires were burning.  That movement went on to be the source of classic liberalism, fought for women's suffrage, the banning of alcohol, & promoted moral purity in schools & public life.  Education was hailed as a great tool for instructing morality & the foundation of their views, & literacy exploded in the nation.  History, science, & religious instruction went on simultaneously, with no conflict.  The second great awakening moved into our collective social structures farther than the previous awakenings had.  Earlier ones concentrated on individual piety, & the personal transaction of salvation between God & man.  The second awakening included social activism, & was the logical next step for a nation of self rule taking charge of their governance.

This religious revival early in the 19th century had a profound impact on not only the fledgling nation, but the world.  'Manifest Destiny' was the belief in not only America's right & duty to conquer & subdue savage people, but was the basis for European imperialism.  Add to that the mix of Darwinism, that took off mid 19th century, & the moral imperative was clear for the white man to subjugate the uncivilized world.  The western culture was one of science, technology, & moral superiority, & they forced the whole world into the modernization of the 20th century.  With expanded travel methods, global communication, & a superior war machine, no one could argue that the white Europeans (which included America) had every right & duty to civilize the world, & bring order, justice, hygiene, & Law to the uncivilized, barbaric worlds they invaded.

Early in the 20th century, the Nazis & American eugenicists took it to the next logical step, that of purifying the human race into better suited, more highly evolved beings.  This same ideological movement into social activism extolled the virtues of a centralized State, empowered to enable the superior social engineers to do their necessary job of managing the inferior masses.. supported, of course, by these same masses.  It was a return to aristocracy, or maybe just a simple changing of the guard.  The jumbling together of religious morality, righteous indignation, social Darwinism, & the new concepts of collectivist atheistic Marxism, coalesced into the perfect storm of progressive, liberal thought.  This is the mismatched jumble of ideology that progressives try to combine into a single ideology, & provides the charges of irrationality that are so often thrown their way.  They have conflicting ideals, but cling to them with the same religious fervor that their predecessors had.

I get it.  This is not  a popular subject, especially in a post Christian, revisionist age, where the past is viewed through the prism of secular humanism, & all advances are proclaimed to be from atheistic scientists.  But that is an illusion, & it too will pass.  IMO, there are other awakenings before us, yet to occur, that will revive the soul of the nation & return America to her spiritual roots.  But that is a future hope.  This is an analysis of the past.  Let us continue.

During the period from the late 19th century into the early 20th century, there were not any major spiritual revivals.  The 'gay 90s' was a time of abundance & affluence for many, & the cult of youthful idealism took off.  Parties & socializing became a mainstream event.  Epicurean ideals of pleasure & self gratification rose, replacing the age old monastic, austere values of more difficult times.

Technology & mechanization took off during this time, as travel & communication shrunk the world.  Great ships made ocean voyages easy, & the internal combustion engine changed the world forever.  One man with a tractor could out produce 10 men with horses.  Food production exploded & became cheaper.  Wealth building of the nation grew, as more money was available for consumer items, & new industries burst onto the scene every year.  Change & advancement became the norm, & modernism swept the civilized world.  The old notions of spirituality were fading, & the self made man burst onto the scene.  Man makes himself, & is not subject to provision from God or gods.  A brave new world was forming before everyone's eyes, & nothing was impossible.

Political upheaval continued in Europe through the 19th century, & into the new millennium. Monarchies continued to fall, & enlightenment thinking regarding Natural Law & Absolute morality lost traction.  Collectivist Marxism & social Darwinism replaced the trend toward human freedom & equality.  Among the intelligentsia & social elite, the concepts of a Creator granting 'unalienable rights' seemed old fashioned & quaint.  This was a new age of elitism.  The highly evolved rose to the top.  Their technology & knowledge of machinery & harnessing the laws of physics seemed boundless.

The Russian revolution began the national experiment of Marxism, a totalitarian system of collectivism, that claimed to be the wave of the future.  They held the keys to the future, & would usher in a human utopia, free from oppression, war, famine, & any of the typical fears of man.

Imperialism became the duty of these new elite.  They were bound by nature to lead all humanity into their brave new world of technology, hygiene, medical advancements, & civilized rule.  The new ruling elite brought a world of order & control, & the British hegemony exemplified the European's burden to civilize the world.

This was a time of European expansionism, & included America & her responsibility of manifest destiny.  But with great social pride & elitism came competition among the major players.  Large central power was the new god.  More area.  More colonies.  More expansion.  The world was not enough, so they began to covet their neighbor's turf.

The Kaiser began expanding Germany to his view of superior domination.  He was the first grandson of Queen Victoria, ironically, but envied & hated the British hegemony.  Power was the only true god.  Massive war machines were built, & the first world war ushered in a global conflict, where the imperialistic nations battled for supremacy across the globe.  In less than a blink of an eye, historically, the world went from WW1 to WW2, as the Germans again pursued their right to dominate the world, based on their evolutionary superiority.  The Nazis blended the collectivist, state centered ideology of Marxism with the ideals of Darwinism & the duty of the highly evolved elite to manage & control the earth.

Many people in America supported the National Socialists in Germany.  It was good & proper, they reasoned, for the more highly evolved among us to weed out the inferior stock.  Everyone knew who the elite were.  They were the white Europeans, who held the keys of power & technology.  Their weaponry was proof of that.  Their intelligent harnessing of technology was proof to the world of their right & duty to dominate.  God & gods are always appealed to by despots, but these new power mongers worshiped the god of technology, & the fear of that god swept the world.  The Japanese added to the fear, as they also used their cultural superiority to vanquish the lessor beings.

This set the stage for a new spiritual awakening, not based on the typical philosophical concepts of the individual soul, but on national survival.  Across Europe & much of the world, a cry to heaven arose to deliver them from the godless aggressors.  This was a mini awakening, but it became the mainstream view.  Church attendance boomed, & talk of God & religious devotion became mainstream again.  Politicians & civic leaders openly prayed & acknowledged God in their civil duties.  'There are no atheists in foxholes', & in a time of national crisis, the call was for mercy & strength to face the evil foe.  For a time, the rise of modernism stalled.  Their victories in the Scopes trial in 1925, where evolution won the right to be taught alongside of creation was forgotten, & calls to the Creator for deliverance drowned out the rising global elitism.  WW2 became a symbol of God fearing traditionalists vs godless elitists.  It was 'God vs the Devil', in this never before seen global conflict.

I don't really consider the early 20th century revivals 'great awakenings', on par with previous ones.  They were significant, but they were more of a reaction to world events, rather than shaping them, as the earlier ones did.

Life is Impossible, yet here we are

I find several truths to be very disturbing.

1. Life is impossible. The universe is hard, cold, & uninhabitable by living things, as we know them. Yet in the midst of it, a planet formed that had a delicate balance to allow conditions for life. But that is not enough. Somehow, living things filled the earth. Varieties that our minds cannot imagine populate the planet. But we don't stop there, either. Not only is this life impossible.. we cannot define it, or see how, where, or why it is here. With all of man's knowledge, he cannot create a gnat.. or even an amoeba. Life surrounds us, yet we don't know what it is, or how it came to be. We speculate. We come up with all kinds of hare brained 'theories' of how & even why, but we don't really know.

2. The universe is impossible. A purely naturalistic explanation of the universe seems more absurd to me every day. The universe would have dissipated any matter eons ago.. billions times billions of years would have expanded the universe into distant nothingness, all stars burnt out, & life would be impossible. How could this matter appear, in a universe devoid of anything? How & why would electrical impulses arrange themselves into different compounds, adhere to some unseen natural laws, & produce a universe of order? We can barely define matter, can't replicate it, & have no clue how or why it is here.

3. That we can ponder such abstract concepts is amazing. How can there be this ability? We have the capacity to ponder abstract thoughts of eternity, infinity, & other dimensions. With all our technological prowess, we cannot create matter. We cannot create life. We cannot really grasp infinity or eternity. And some among us claim insight into other unseen dimensions. We can't even grasp empirical reality, yet some people add a metaphysical reality, too! .. and not just a few crackpots or loons.. millions of people throughout history have claimed some kind of supernatural experience. Naturalism cannot explain this. Naturalism cannot really explain anything. It is an absurd attempt to blend science & philosophy, promoting atheistic explanations to things that cannot be explained. They dogmatically declare that only the visible is possible. But how? The universe is much too vast, complex, & impossible to try to explain it in purely naturalistic terms.

4. There are 2 disturbing & terrifying possibilities:

We are alone in the universe.
We are not.

Neither of these brings any comfort. Neither of these gives us an explanation as to how or why we are here.

5. God is impossible. How can there be a all wise, omnipresent, omniprescient, eternal, all powerful Being? How can there be a spirit world, with incorporeal beings living with consciousness, apart from matter & time? How & why can anything exist apart from our visible reality?

Yet with all these impossible things, here we are. We exist for a short time on this earth, trapped in space & time. We don't know what we are, or how we came to be, or why. As thinking entities, we still have no consensus on these questions. We speculate about God & the spirit world, but we don't really know. Life is too mysterious & fantastic to draw any conclusions. It is unbelievable, impossible, & beyond our grasp, but here we are in the midst of it.

The Equality of Man

Elitism seems to be the natural state of mankind. For millennia we have believed that certain people are endowed with special dispensations.. divine privileges to lead & rule over the lessor humans. Physical might used to be an indicator of human superiority, & is still highly regarded. Egyptian Pharaohs were considered to be gods, as were the Roman emperors. The concept of 'divine right of Kings' was widely believed for thousands of years in Europe & in most of the world. Chinese Emperors & even African tribal lords were seen as being empowered with special privilege by the gods, or were gods themselves.

But then came the Reformation. Martin Luther & others reasoned against the concepts of special human privilege by the clergy. They had no power to absolve sin, or to declare someone pardoned or grant 'indulgences' for a price. Salvation came through faith, alone, & had nothing to do with any human hierarchy or pontifications. There was an allegiance between the religious leaders & the aristocracy, & most clergy were part of the elite. But as reformation thought burned through Europe, the lofty view of the clergy came down, & along with them their secular enablers. What were kings but mere mortal men? They lived & died like anyone else, & were mere humans.

As the Reformation morphed into the Enlightenment, and the 'Age of Reason' took hold, the logical consequences of this line of thinking brought the idea of the Equality of Man. There was nothing special about the nobility. Kings were mere men. The aristocracy were just elitists who lived off the labors of the working man. The commoner labored in poverty to keep the royal classes in opulence. They began to evaluate the purpose of human governance. Locke, Rousseau & many others reasoned that man was endowed with Natural Rights to life, liberty, & property. Locke said that govt had no other purpose than the preservation of property. Montesquieu reasoned that govt should be split into separate powers of the legislative, judicial, & executive branches. Jefferson, Franklin, & Paine stirred them all together & the American Experiment was born. 



But even then, there were some differences. Hobbes believed man was stupid & brutish, & needed a strong central govt to keep him in line. Many believed in 'manifest destiny', or the duty of the white race to control & manage the rest of the world. But this was in opposition with the basic idea of human equality, & caused a conflict. Eventually, slavery was outlawed by the people where enlightenment thought was dominant. Even in the wilds of America, a great civil war was fought to settle this issue. The idea of the dignity & equality of Man, had become mainstream. Monarchies were relinquishing power, & representative governments were replacing them, either peacefully or by force.

The foundation of this view was in that of a Creator. Man was endowed by his creator with unalienable rights, as Jefferson put it in the declaration of independence. But even for the Deists & naturalists of the time, 'Nature' or 'Nature's God' also worked as the source of these natural rights. 3 of the most significant philosophical leaders in the American theater were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, & Thomas Paine, all deists. They did not believe in Christianity or the Bible, but still saw the divine empowerment of the individual with basic, equal rights, granted by Natural Law.

But the enlightenment did not usher in an era of peace & utopia. The French revolution was a disaster, with mob rule & bloodshed seeming to confirm Hobbes's analysis:

"During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." ~Thomas Hobbes

The American thinkers concluded that their experiment in self rule could only succeed if the people were moral.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." ~Benjamin Franklin

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." ~John Adams

But the correlation between a 'moral & religious people' & the equality of man are clear. Without morality & a sense of a higher 'Law', only force matters. Force is not equal, but favors the ruthless & amoral. So the view of man as equal & having inherent rights is incumbent upon a moral & religious people. To the enlightenment thinkers, force was something for a moral people to own & control, to secure their rights, not to be used for despotism & exploiting your fellow man.

But as the enlightenment era drew to a close, new thought was beginning, rooted in the works of Karl Marx & Charles Darwin. These were anti-enlightenment concepts, based on a naturalistic view of man & nature, & moved man back to a more elitist view. They undermined the power of religion & morality, declaring religion to be the opiate of the people, not a force for social good. Man was not a created being, in the image of God, but a mere brute.. an animal evolved from lower forms with no moral law or purpose other than survival. Both of these concepts laid the foundation for the Russian revolution, based on Marxism, & the rise of the Nazis, based on the evolution of the Master Race. The equality of man took a big hit in this time, as powerful elitists pushed their own agenda, empowered by their acquired force. Even in the American Experiment, progressives were gaining power, based on their elitist view. They were duty bound by the cosmos to manage & control the huddled masses, & of course should be provided for lavishly for their administration. Eugenicists like Margaret Sanger & other progressives hailed the virtues of elitist central power. They would engineer society & end all injustice. FDR compiled his 'second bill of rights', which is a collectivist, central power agenda, not one of individual freedom & Natural Law. Progressives need an elite of superior intellect & zoo like management skills to control the workers, which is what they have worked tirelessly toward for decades.

And here we are, in the death throes of the enlightenment, with the dignity & equality of Man slowly dying. Natural Law gives way to imperial decree, & we are plodding a steady return to elitist rule. We are in a convoluted blend of enlightenment memory concepts of Higher Truth & morality, & the conflicting conclusion of a world without God, purpose, or higher law. And with the death of Natural Law, so goes the concept of the equality of Man. Social engineers might give lip service to it, for propaganda purposes, but it is not inherent in their basic world view. They are elitists, & view the inferior beings with contempt. It is a short ride to genocide from this collectivist village. They worship only power, as there is nothing higher than that to the naturalist elites. They view the principles of the enlightenment as charmingly quaint, but completely irrelevant in their brave new world of elitist control. The achievements we have made in women's suffrage, abolition, worker's rights, & due process will all give way to imperial rule by a New King.

So is that it? Will the values from centuries of progress toward self rule, human equality, & natural law give way to another ruling elite? This time, they don't claim Divine Ordination, but are appointed by the god of power, to rule over the pathetic lower race of men. Will we revert back to the dark ages? Will we surrender what has taken millennia of blood, sweat & tears to arrive at, only to see it tossed aside for a lie?

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."  ~Thomas Jefferson

A Central Bank

Our current problems with currency & the economy is not the direct problem of the federal reserve, but that is where the currency dilution began, in America. The fed was created to allow increased fractional reserve banking, remedy bank runs, & encourage bank savings, instead of gold buried in a fruit jar in the back yard. That was a noble concept, but it opened the door for expansion via debt, rather than production. People could borrow, invest, work the system, & become fabulously wealthy, without producing anything. It is ponzi scheme parameters.. skimming off each new 'investment' until the bubble bursts. ..and it ALWAYS bursts. The great depression, though exacerbated by the dust bowl & drought, was primarily caused by a bursting bubble.. the stock market crash of 1929.

When the fed was restrained by the gold standard, it could not expand its power or control over the currency by increasing debt. That was why FDR ended it in 1933, to keep the fed solvent, as people were converting their savings to gold, instead of buying federal reserve notes. It was govt mandating the use of their currency, to control the people & the economy (or so they thought). That is a typical tactic of statist systems.

I'm not singling out the fed, nor am i condemning fractional reserve banking, as it has been around for centuries. And while i agree that a moral people make laws less necessary, simple, fair laws, with a system of checks & balances is more difficult to corrupt. A central banking power, with no public accountability, but has control over the currency of the nation, is NOT a good system, & needs to change. Here are a few things we can require for a central bank:

1. oversight by elected officials.. congress is responsible to spend money, they should be responsible to provide a stable currency.
2. Hard assets.. something solid to base the currency on.. gold, silver, oil, land.. improvements.. even military hardware or national parks.. but a basis for the currency, not some ginned up numbers reflecting a fake gdp.
3. Limits on fractional reserve banking. .. a minimum requirement of assets to loans, so banks do not loan irresponsibly, or just borrow cheap money from the fed to loan out.
4. Money created from actual production.. no Quantitative easings 'just because', or 'for the children!' If the productivity of the nation did not grow, neither should the money supply. This would cut down on inflation, & lessen the impact of corrections, which will always happen.
5. balanced budget. this is mostly related to the fed, & is not a direct currency issue, but if the govt can borrow for future spending, they will, for votes. It compounds the problems of the currency. If the govt was required to keep a balanced budget, they would have more motivation to keep a stable currency.

Some form of bankruptcy has been around for centuries. Perhaps you were sold into indentured servitude for your debts, or all your assets taken to cover them. There was also 'debtors prison'. That was the 'bite' in borrowing.. you had to be sure you could pay it back. Banks & money lenders were also under those laws, & if they went under, they often took others with them. 'Caveat Emptor' was always the rule of the day for investing in any bank or savings plan ..even life insurance or mutual funds.

But the feds policies removed the threat of default from the banks. They could overextend themselves, & loan more than they had fractional assets to cover, & the fed would bail them out! That's why gold didn't work. There was more money being 'created' by the lending process than was actually justified by production, so any jitters in the market would spell an end to the system.. it would crash unless it could 'create' more money by fiat.. which is what they did. It had no basis in production, but was simply 'declared'.

IOW, the system is corrupt by default.. but it is almost imperceptive. It SOUNDS good, & promises lots of benefits, like most ponzi schemes. But its basis is in dilution, not production, which is why it is failing, & seems to be out of control.

I have come to see this as THE most crucial issue of the day, & one that will have the most impact on everyone. The politicians cannot control the fed. They cannot stabilize the currency, because it would cause a collapse of the system. It would take years of austerity, from both the people & the govt, to bring us to a solvent financial state. Even though this would be best for our long term health as a nation, & future generations, i don't think it will happen. Each generation kicks the can down the road, hoping it will hold up for a few more years.