What Can Man Know About God?

      Even as a committed Christian I have problems with organized religion and church services, not Christian theology.  So much of what so many ministers or priests say about God, His mind and purposes, presented as absolute truth, must be specualation or interpretation.  I am convinced that they claim to know, and doubtless believe that they know, much more than they do and that God is considerably more mysterious and inexplicable than they think He is.  Given the difficulty of understanding how television works, let alone Einstein's theory of relativity, it seems very unlikely that any human being, smart as the species is, can really know very much about God  on his own initiative.

     When a sailor in the mid-Pacific or the wayfarer in the Sahara or a tenement-dweller in New York, looks up at the sky and exclaims 'how great is God' he probably has come close to stating about all he can really know on his own, except for a few ideas originated by philosophers, about God being omnipotent, omnipresent, and all  that.  "Oh God, How great is thy sea and how small is my boat", the sailor's prayer, just about does it though we can embellish it a bit with the child's prayer;  "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so", which is a simple affirmation of all that may really matter in the end.  How He reacts with someone else is something I probably can never know, or know completely, and may be something I couldn't understand anyway. 

      We can know some things about Jesus because He was here and was written about by persons in a position to know.  But I submit that God the Father, the Great Spirit, the Emperor over the Sea, the ineffable Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, is beyond our intellectual capacity to know or ferret out.  Didn't Jesus Himself suggest as much to Nicodemas?  Speculation is all right I suppose (anyway, we will continue to do it) but it is very adviseable to recognize its limited value.  Yet we can know a fair amout about Jesus Christ, His life and work, His promises and expectations.  And the belief that God chose to limit Himself temporarily in order to take the form of  that same Jesus, in part so that He could cause mankind to understand some things he needs to know is both reasonable and supportable by a very high level of evidence.  Added to the 'leap  of Faith, we begin to see the way to Salvation. 
        

    

The Danger of Love

     This is about being 'in love' and is addressed specifically to heterosexual males, of which I am one, though the principles apply to females as well.  The subject is important and practical, because most people have had or will have the experience, or think they have.  All but an infinitesimal fraction of the population can do anything to settle matters between Israel and the jihadists but a great many people will experience the circumstances discussed here.  So the Middle East is important but this subject is important and practical as well and one fraught with deadly consequences literally and figuratively.

     When a man falls in love with a girl (and all women are 'girls' when you're in love with them) what is it like and how is it distinguished from lust?  It is like this; a consuming obsession with the object.  You think about her all the time.  You can't think very long about anything else.  You want her so much you can hardly stand it and you think "I would rather be miserable with her than happy without her".  And you really mean it.  It is an experience which I believe some men never have, though they may think they have.  It is not lust.  In fact, it excludes lust, and that is one very odd thing about it.  At your peak powers of male performance you lust after every attractive girl who walks by, particularly in a bikini.  If you are wise you control the emotion but the emotion pressures you at every turn.  For that matter, you can lust at any age, though your ability to do anything about it may abate.  Your motto is something like this:  "If I'm not near the girl I love I love the girl I'm near". 

     The test is this; ironically, if you are 'in love' you think very little if at all about sex.  That's not what you want.  You want the girl, not something she can give you or withhold from you.  You want her on any terms you can get her. 

     And here's the danger.  If the object of your affection is married to someone else, or if you are, you are likely to think that there's something almost spiritual about falling in love with her.  That's when you hear such nonsense as "We didn't want it to happen.  We didn't plan it.  We were just 'good friends' and just wanted to have lunch together and reminisce about old times" --- and all that garbage, for that's what it is.  'It' is not something that happens to someone.  You cannot separate 'it' from 'you' and thus absolve yourself from  blame.  Even if the situation never evolves into a physical affair --- thought the danger that it will is ever-present --- a mental affair is likely to be just as bad and almost as damaging. 
     There is only one possible answer, or solution, to this if the temptation arrives, an eventuality which is hardly unlikely, as it probably besets more people at one time or another than it leaves alone.  Only one course is decent and civilized, rational and moral.  Drop the matter.  Leave it alone. Do not fall for any of that just-good-friends nonsense.  Don't make the date for lunch, for it would in fact be a "date" whatever you think it is and whatever you call it.  If you have already made the date, cancel it.  Extra-marital affairs ruin lives, families, careers and friendships.  They corrupt character and cause a wide swathe of misery and despair which probably can never be repaired.  Don't think it's innocent because it seems so civilised when it starts.  It is not innocent and you are to blame if you encourage it or do not stop it --- at once and completely.  And if you see the girl in the supermarket, go the other way.
     Of course, if you are both single and unattached pursue your dreams.  If you encounter problems write to Dear Abby.

Fire in a Crowded Theatre

     The left does not have much imagination.  Once they latch on to some belabored phrase or slogan they won't let go of it until they realize that no one is impressed by it anymore or they find a new toy.  A current liberal mantra is 'fire in a crowded theatre'.  Whenever a lefty wants to squelch free speech he reminds us that a Supreme Court justice once opined that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech does not protect a man who falsely yells 'fire' in a crowded theatre.  He will seek to squelch free speech through the 'fairness doctrine' or its equivalent by another name, and through campus speech codes which ban all expressions of politically incorrect views as racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on, whether or not such expressions have anything at all to do with those subjects.  If you argue the First Amendment to them they will remind you that it does not protect the yelling of 'fire' in a crowded theatre when there is no fire. They keep going until everything becomes the equivalent of fire in a crowded theatre.  If they could have their way even the Declaration of Independence would approximate 'fire' in a crowded theatre.  (After all, they might remind us, wasn't it a rather alarmist document)?
     One of their goals currently is to use the Fairness Doctrine to silence conservative talk show hosts.  This would occur, or so the left hopes, by causing local stations and advertisers  eventually to cancel current-events daytime talk shows by claiming that they aren't being "fair" with their conservative  broadcasting.  The idea is that stations and advertisers would decide that the game is not worth the candle and go exclusively to sports, music and local issues. It hardly matters to the left that the reason that conservatism predominates on daytime radio and Fox News is that conservatism gets the ratings and the ratings and public preferences are what they are in a free market.  The liberals retain massive quantities of liberal media outlets, but they want it all.  If you tell them that they ought to respect freedom of speech across the board and be consistent they may respond that the First Amendment is all well and good but it doesn't protect someone yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre and, of course, anyone who goes around saying things they do not like is equivalent to a man who yells 'fire' in a crowded theatre.
   

Conservative Women and the Gender Gap

          Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Christine O'Donnell, and Michelle Bachmann, among  other conservative women, are savaged in a daily barage of phony ethics charges (Palin) and trumped up campaign finance investigations (O'Donnell) for the express and sole purpose of silencing all conservative women.  Sarah Palin alone frightens the left out of its wits.  The goal of the left is exactly the same as that of the Bolsheviks  in Russia, the emasculation of conservatism and freedom in the United States, their inability to articulate rational argument being rather obvious.  Radical leftists know that the survival of their party, the Democrat Party, depends on the gender gap and gaining and keeping the Latino vote in a solid block, like the always dependable African American vote.

     Make no mistake about it; the Democraticic Party has fundamentally changed since the days of Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and other good Americans who simply went too far with spending and high taxes.  And make no mistake about this either; the radical leftist could not care less about the "oppressed masses".  He cares about power --- his own.  His strategy is simply to cobble together a collection of minorities, women and the disaffected at election time, largely conceding the majority of white males to the Republicans.  Without the gender gap in their favor the left is toast and they know it, so they must try to destroy conservative women who dare to callenge them.  It takes courage for conservative women to stand up to the radical left and they deserve the support and encouragement of all conservatives. 

                                                                                                

Death Panels and Tom Daschle

     The claim that there was never a provision for "death panels" in the original version of the 2009 health reform act is hogwash.  There was, and now the Administration, having failed to insert it into legislation which Congress would not enact, is attempting to ram it down the unwilling throats of the people by executive fiat by claiming that it isn't there.  The Nazis and Soviet Communists both had the idea that those who could not work were expendible but in recent American history it was discovered and advanced by Tom Daschle, former Democratic senator from South Dakota.  Daschle was intrigued by the notion that Government could usefully decide when senior citizens had become too infirm to warrant expensive measures to keep them alive.  (And, after all, seniors tend to vote Republican).  Of course they wouldn't be called 'death panels'.  Daschle wasn't that stupid.  When you want something which no one else wants you invent some euphemism  for it.  As his reward for coming up with such a brilliant idea, Obama tried to give him a cabinet post.  Fortunately that failed.

     But that's exactly how the idea was, and is, intended to function because it is perfectly obvious that health care will have to be rationed under Obamacare and what better way is there to do it than to get a foot in the door and keep pushing the Saul Alinsky way?  First you create some law or executive order which appears innocuous enough.  Call the program end-of-life-counseling or some such nonsense.  That's the 'foot in the door'.  Then you "interpret" what you now have, and then go from there.  Voila, you have a death panel.

What is Socialism and What Isn't?

     A recent letter to the editor of a large urban newspaper expressed reservations about conservatives who inveigh against socialism.  The writer opined that we already have socialism in the form of public libraries, fire departments, schools and bridges, among other similar things, and nearly everyone approves of that.  Aren't those things socialistic and aren't conservatives hypocrites when they support them and then denounce proposals for such things as universal health insurance as socialistic?  No, that kind of question reflects a misunderstanding of what socialism is.  It is not taxation of the general public for purposes which serve the undifferentiated mass of people on a non-discriminatory basis.  Libraries serve all the people, rich, poor, both genders and all races.  One may choose not to use a library, but it's there for anyone who does.  Schools serve a general public purpose even for those who have no school-age children.  Even if such purposes are served by excessive taxation or bureaucratic excess they are not socialistic.  They are objectionable, if at all, on other grounds. 

     Socialism is the taking from one group of people, usually the "rich", to benefit another, generally for political purposes.  It's chief tools are income-leveling devices such as the graduated income tax, welfare and the like.  The purpose and result are different from public-purpose spending of which almost everyone approves when it is proportinate to a valid public purpose.

The Job of a Corporate CEO

     The job of a corporate CEO is to earn a profit for his stockholders through the cost-efficient production, allocation and distribution of goods and services.  This serves the interests of the stockholders, the labor deployed for these purposes, the consumer and the country as a whole.  A CEO who builds a factory at home in order to employ more American workers when he could build it in Europe more cost-efficiently can fairly be questioned by the stockholders.  He has no right to play Mr. Bountiful with their money any more than he has a moral right to loot the corporation for his own benefit. 

     For  over thirty years I worked with and around CEOs and other executives of corporations, mostly large ones.  From the standpoint of intelligence, character, personality and generosity top executives are, on average, a cut or two above the general population.  A few are crooks.  Some are skinflints.  Unfortunately there is a problem here with greed when it comes to outlandish compensation packages in too many cases.  On the whole, however, I would sight unseen bet  on the CEOs and other top executives of large corporations against those who never stop complaining about them but are typically tight-fisted with their own money, frequently with Scrooge-like tenacity.  Their generosity applies to your money, not theirs, in all too many cases.