A Brief Insight On Easter

Today Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, an important event signifying that the corrupt powers of this world cannot murder truth. Yet many of these selfsame Christians have forgotten or distorted Jesus' teaching to signify something rather different, like a manual for leading a pleasant and prosperous existence within the world. This is a serious mistake, a category error that forgets how a true Christian is in the world but never really of it. For example, the story of the rich man whom Jesus tells to give all his belongings to the poor is distorted to focus on the worldly benefit done for the poor, when the true message is the spiritual benefit done for the rich man. After all, if the rich man gives everything away, he will now be poor as well, so there has been no improvement in worldly terms. The improvement is spiritual. Jesus instructed that poverty should not worry us nor the treasures of the world entice us; it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass through the gates of heaven, not because wealth alone is corrupting, but rather because the acquisitiveness and worldliness necessary to gather it are. If you observe Easter as a Christian, take at least this much from it: follow what is right and true regardless of unpleasant consequences, least of all to yourself.   

Unbelievable

This generation's capacity for critical thought is even more impaired than I suspected. Today I have witnessed a flood of treacly pronouncements in the news and in social circles demanding that the Supreme Court make everyone "equal" as to marriage. The thinking (as it were) goes something like this: "it's totally unfair that homosexual couples are banned from getting married, so the Supreme Court should rule that they have just as much a right to marry each other as heterosexual couples."

I've posted about this before, but let's review for the people who are still sucking their bongs.

First, homosexuals are not banned from getting married anywhere in the United States. Nothing prevents them from marrying each other. There are no fire hoses, barking dogs, or lynch mobs who will stand in the way. What's at issue here is something very different, namely whether citizens of a state (in this case, California) are free to withhold their public seal of approval from such unions. Everyone chanting about freedom and equality is, in truth, seeking to impose slavery by forcing those citizens to approve of something they do not wish to. Like feminism and all other forms of leftism, the gay-rights movement seeks to force its will onto society and cannot tolerate dissent. 

Second, whether you support gay marriage has absolutely nothing to do with whether the Constitution requires it, which is the question before the Court. It is juvenile and barbaric to assume that your preferences form part of the supreme law of the land, especially here, since only a lunatic would conclude that the same Constitution that once allowed states to criminalize homosexual activity now requires states to sanctify it. The only proper response to such lunacy (which surely won't come) is for the Court to strike down what the lower federal courts did as an assault on the Constitution, a deviation from precedent, and an incursion on California's sovereignty.

Third, everyone already is equal as to marriage. We all have the right to marry one person of the opposite sex if that person is above a certain age and beyond a certain degree of kinship (but perhaps those are the next "rights" in the bullpen). The fact that you do not wish to exercise this right does not make your situation unequal or unfair. There are plenty of people who never wish to marry, and there are others (like me) who are divorced and will never marry again. And guess what? My fellow citizens have every right to acknowledge and reward their marriages as more desirable than my singlehood. I accept that the enhanced public status of marriage will never be mine again, and I am not so arrogant as to demand that the community treat me as "equal" in this regard. To sanctify everyone equally is to sanctify nobody, and believe me, that's the real goal afoot here and with leftism in general -- dragging everyone down as opposed to allowing only some to rise up.

This episode captures so much that is fallen about our modern condition, such as the triumph of emotion over reason, of courts over the people, and of centralized power over the Constitution.

Rand Paul Sells Out

By rolling out the red carpet to interlopers. This was easily foreseeable, for it is impossible now to attain or occupy federal office while holding the fundamental convictions necessary to preserve America. To be fair, I'll wager that Paul honestly believes that the founding principles of this country are universally applicable and workable, revealing a depth of naïveté to match his father's dream of resurrecting the Constitution. Surely people the world over savor the fruits of limited government and the rule of law, but precious few of them possess the self-restraint necessary to till that soil. If they did, there would be no need for them to barge in here; they could simply read our founding documents and duplicate the magic in their own countries, which never happens.     

Random Thought On The True Benefits Of Exercise

I believe that if most people had the option, they would swallow a magic pill to make them perpetually fit without having to expend any time or effort. This is another manifestation of materialism, a society that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. The act of forcing oneself to maintain a consistent workout schedule -- and consistency is key -- is itself a strengthening experience. Strength must be both physical and spiritual; a magic pill eliminates a fundamental part of the equation.  

Why Do I Do This?

Blogging, that is, although I haven't had time to do much of it lately. Because this is my sanctuary. Here I can explore matters of fundamental importance and escape from the blue-pill world, where modern Americans live entirely in the present; treat life as if it were a theme park; leave important questions to "experts"; and wallow in complete ignorance or denial about the barbaric forces chewing away at the civilization that our (or at least my) ancestors founded. I couldn't tolerate such a world if it were in my face every waking moment; I come here to expunge some of my angst. 

People sometimes ask me why I'm angry. My response is to ask how the hell can you not be angry? The Magna Carta is dead. The Constitution is dead. All mainstream political discourse, whether "liberal" or "conservative," is off the legal or moral reservation. The blood-soaked lessons of the twentieth century about the dangers of government power are already forgotten. The President claims unilateral authority to make war on foreign countries and to murder American citizens here at home. More government spending and higher taxes are equated with prosperity. We are drowning under a public debt that can never be repaid. No politician can suggest even slowing the increase in obscene federal spending, lest he be tarred as seeking "cuts." No real cuts are imaginable because legions of Americans -- perhaps even the majority -- have become parasites who cannot conceive of life other than at someone else's expense. The Federal Reserve wields Soviet-like power to control interest rates, and it is beyond the reach of public scrutiny. Savers and investors are punished in order to rescue profligate spenders and deadbeats. Winners and losers are chosen by political favoritism rather than allowed to find their natural place through work or merit. Foreigners waltz across the border and demand public largesse as a right; anyone who cries foul is denounced as a racist or xenophobe. Marriage is dead. Infidelity is celebrated and promoted. Divorce is merely a routine, like douching, and it promises rich rewards for many who pursue it. Bastardy and STDs are rampant through all sectors of the population. Young boys are forcibly medicated to make them act like girls. Ordinary people out in public look and act as if they were just paroled. Intelligence, sincerity, decorum, and manners are ridiculed. Every lawsuit, no matter how petulant or farcical, deserves its day in court. Literature is dead. Art is dead. Philosophy is dead. Manhood -- real manhood, not the caricature in modern movies and television -- is dead. The stench of political correctness is everywhere and threatens anyone who might offend a protected class. 

And that's just scratching the surface of the insane world I find myself inhabiting. One of the craziest things of all is that most people accept this world as normal or even good. I cannot identify with this, or with the multitudes who do. I reject it as a sick, twisted, and (mercifully) unsustainable state of affairs. One thing I do appreciate, though, is that it makes it easy for me to understand who I am: virtually everything that the modern world is not. A woman from my former life once remarked that something about me just seems "negative," and she was right because in her mind the modern world is a positive force, and I indeed am opposed to it . . . to the core of my "negative" soul.

EDIT

I have been expressing a thorough level of societal alienation, something I recently discussed with regard to leftism. You should note, however, that it is not civil society that alienates me; it is the uncivil society that leftism has created that alienates me. My alienation is conservative and counter-revolutionary.

Visit To Cuba Reveals As Much About Us As Them

Having spent a week in Cuba, I am left with the impression that it is the exact opposite of the United States, and that's not a bad thing.

Cuba suffers material poverty but enjoys spiritual wealth; all of the people I met were kindhearted, happy to be alive, polite, well adjusted, and eager to improve themselves and their communities.   The United States boasts material prosperity but is a spiritual toilet; people are rude, crude, entitled, mentally deranged or strung out on psychotropic drugs, care only about gratifying their id, and have no sense of community or righteousness.

Cuba has a culture and the "mystic chords of memory" that give people an identity and a purpose. The United States has no culture anymore and no shared historical memory, since everyone is his own god and regards any sort of taboo as an unjust imposition.

Cuba is trying to learn from its mistakes and is experimenting with sweeping changes to allow more freedom. The United States has learned nothing from the clear lessons of history, but rather continues to centralize power, destroy freedom, and piss away the greatest patrimony ever received.  

Cubans have real problems and dig deep to overcome them.  Americans have no real problems, but rather invent them to overcome the meaninglessness and boredom that their spoiled status generates.  For example, the first news item I saw upon returning concerned the hysteria surrounding a "sequester" of a tiny percentage of the grotesquely inflated federal budget -- Americans have become so addicted to government plunder that they cannot imagine surviving without it.  Please go to Cuba and learn something, you fools.