My Heart Bleeds

I am not a scientist or philosopher. I have not exhausted the depths of scientific discovery or waded into the philosophical pesterings of all the “why”s and “how”s of existence and nature and purpose. Nore am I an artist --not in any traditional sense-- but I do have a sense of what is communicated in art, even bad art, an expression of one’s self, being, perception, and experience.

One of my favorite artists is Bob Dylan; he confuses me and I have found why confusion is so admirable. He communicates, not an answer or direct interpretation of life, but rather, the confusion we all feel about war and love, beauty and suffering. Dylan, in many ways, has combined a strange string of sounds and words that seems to give a substantive realization of the pain that nurtures the human heart.

Beauty is not found in an evasion of life, but rather, an embrace of it. Recently, I had been given a bit more struggle than I cared to accept; but, as I denied any control over my life and accepted the hardness and painful situation I was in, I found that my heart hurt with a poetic sadness, an aching so profound that the tears and confusion, angry and soundless screams were only icons of reality, symbols of a situation far more independent of me than I will ever understand.

Burning in the lacerations of my soul were unanswered petitions to God, submitted under full moons and atop stained linoleum. The entire package of life weighed more than I could bear. It pressed me and hurt me, clutching me so tight that the very groans of my heart caused it to tear and split, opening it in an unexpected seizure of newness, aching, and illumination.

I do not want to discredit happiness, happiness is beautiful, but it is rarely memorable. Pleasure is nice, but it did nothing for my fractured heart; it seemed only to break it more, like a cracked windshield de-iced with hot water. It would have been my ruin if I were not wisely counseled to embrace life and the pain that comes with it.

This embrace delivered me to a very personal and irresistible conclusion about the cosmos. Not one based on philosophy or research (I’m not qualified to even write on those things) but on the fact of beauty. The confusion of Dylan or the chaos of Van Gough exemplifies a creativity that derives from am empirical source, a deliberate and conscious extraction of one’s heart. No one did not write, “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” Dylan did. Someone painted Starry Night, it was Van Gough!

I’m reminded of an anecdote about a man who believes he is dead. He is questioned by his doctor about being dead and what he knew about dead men. The doctor asked gently but deliberately, “Do dead men dream?” The man said, “I dream.” The doctor, dissatisfied asked, “Do dead men bleed?” The man, understanding they don’t, answered, “No, they don’t bleed.” So, the doctor pricked the man’s finger with a pin; the man retracted his hand, examined it, and responded, “I guess dead men do bleed.”

Same is for many who are in complete denial of something so obvious: we are here, humanity is a creation and an artist did it. The heart of a creator is exposed in us and around us, through and in everything. God condescended, like Chagall or Caravaggio, to a tiny brush, to expose a deep heart, filled with love and beauty. However, since many have an allegiance to a belief about nothingness, they deny the beauty of our existence, a world of grandeur manifests God’s artistry while many cleave to an abhorrence of fact, arrogantly concluding that dead men bleed.

A descriptive -ism

Permissiveness, often confused with compassion or tolerance, is really a distorted version of liberality, which deserves a particular suffix, -ism.

Permissivenessism is controversial while being an obviously popular attribute to our social ethos since it is in most forms of contemporary entertainment. The controversy is not around its existence, but rather, its intensity. From the time just after the civil war, we have had what is called a “cultural revolution,” that developed into a “sexual” revolution; this turning over and upheaval of the social norms raised hell in an inconsistent, but “moral,” society. The revolution brought idioms like, “if it feels good, do it,” and “it’s all good.” The mentality motivating an “it’s all good,” attitude is what sums up the permissiveness of our ethos.

Permissivenessism is well demonstrated in the television show, Friends. Friends is funny, sexually savvy, clever, and, most of all, young. The characters are not well established and immature; they really do not get life. Each character constantly comes to grip with the immorality that prevails over any sort of tradition, embracing the newness of the American joie de vivre. Moralists are negatively portrayed, if ever in the script at all. Usually, the characters are shedding any sort of moralistic tendencies. This is the religion of Friends, permissivenessism; the catalyst to “happiness.”

If you made it this far, you must be wondering where I am going, what direction is this diatribe taking you. Here it is; permissiveness is the prelude to a few things.

Being Judgmental: This false sense of compassion makes people who are given to permissiveness to judge acutely the motives, as though they know what they are, of another's opinions and beliefs. This false liberality is, in fact, a subtle way of making up excuses for behavior that is inconsistent with an individuals moral code, usually beset upon them by his or her parents or religious leaders.
Loss of faith: this is another aspect to permissiveness; faith which involves tradition and morality, especially a traditional morality, is incompatible with immoral lifestyles, so, once the judging starts, once the moral arrogance settles in one’s mind/heart, there is no room for a substantive faith. The guidance of morality and tradition are replaced by a blind allegiance to social fads like tramp stamp tattoos and political pseudo-messiahs like Barack Obama.
Disregard of human dignity: human dignity has really become the bitch of modern liberalism. Permissiveness has disregarded the mystery of human life and its intrinsic value, stigmatizing these notions as prehistoric. As human dignity took a backseat, we have seen sexuality smother common sense and whole-heart arrogance condemn the democratic voices of the past. As a result, humanity is now considered the offspring of a semen-swill that existed millions of years ago, a purposeless accident which has infected our earth with religion, patriarchy, and capitalism.

The obvious conclusion to this conclusion is a sense of hopelessness. Permissivenessism is hopeless; it is a nihilistic religion, which causes duty, morality, and honor to scurry from one’s creed like Baptists at a wine tasting. Real compassion considers consequences, real liberality is a form of kindness that is not based on prejudice; it is morality lived while permissivenessism is immorality imposed.

On hypocrisy and US ignorance.

...Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost – in Tbilisi.

Pat Buchanan - Full article found here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan93.html

A Human Life: Summary

January 29, 1950 Christopher Rory Hoops was born. He grew up in Southern California with four siblings and two loving parents. He was surrounded by love, books, music, and exotic plants from his father’s garden.

In his teens, Chris met the world. His good and bad relationships ultimately lead to a conversion to the Christian faith, returning him to the Lutheran and Catholic roots of his parents, seeking solace and comfort in Jesus Christ.

In his late teens, he studied constantly, absorbing as much wisdom as he could from his mentors, pastors, teachers, and parents. His late twenties we full of adventures, teaching full time, and leading many ministries while attending college.

When he was twenty-seven, he married a woman who would become the foundation of his home, the greatest gift God would bestow upon him, Gail Melinda Turner. When he was twenty-nine, his first child, Erin Christine, was born. And his second and third, Christopher Rory, Jr., and Michael Charles, were given to him when he was thirty-two and thirty-nine.

The day Michael was born, Chris was diagnosed with an undefined strand of Hepatitis and, a couple years later, it was named Hepatitis, type C. He was informed that his life must slow down and he needed to find a quiet place to live out the few years he had left. In 1991, Chris left the congregation he founded and pastured since 1980, and moved his family to the northeast corner of Washington State.

Washington had many trials for him. He lost his health and many friends, but the most profound loss was his daughter and firstborn, Erin, at age sixteen. Chris was able to receive a new liver, which blessed him with years of borrowed time. These fourteen years let him run his own book store, raise impressive gardens year after year, run a small farm, adopt three loving daughters, teach –which was his passion–, see Michael graduate high school, and Christopher’s wedding and college graduation.

Late 2001, Chris moved his family back to California, taking a teaching job for a year. A controversy over him using the Godfather Trilogy in Bible class and clear signs of his health failing lead him to a decision to move from Santa Cruz to Roseville, leaving the teaching job.

Late 2005, Chris’ health steadily declined and by late 2006, trips to the hospital became routine, scares about his passing were frequent. In winter of 2007, Chris’ health plateaued; by March of 2008 news about his kidneys subsequently removed him from the transplant list. The end was eminent.

Many people were able to visit him, and he was happy to receive their company. They talked about faith, politics, and life in general. He cried with some and laughed with many. Late June was when death’s shadow overtook him with discomfort, pain, and a helpless, nightly yearning to be with the Lord. Around 2:45 on July 17, a Thursday, Chris gave up his spirit, breathing his last with his wife by his side. He left behind a faithful, loving widow, children and siblings who love him, and countless friends who honor his memory.

Rich, Poor, Taxation, and Paris Hilton

Taxing the upper class is one of those ideological, liberal clichés that never really works. The upper class are responsible for providing opportunity, stability, and reasonable dynamics to the economy which would not otherwise be achieved. Money needs to be spent to make it, this is the greatest provision of the rich, they invest their capitol because they want more of it. They want to stay rich.

Providing jobs and capitol and creativity to the business world is what the rich are about, that is why they are rich. There are people like Paris Hilton and Michael Jackson who are now a laughing stock because of their perverse wealth; however, they are rich because of the lower and middle classes. Let me explain.

The Hilton family owns hotels. Paris scrapes the creme of the top, but, the Hilton family provides jobs and an excellent dynamic to the hotel industry. Something to emulate, something to surpass. This raises the standards because now, even lower classes can often afford to stay at the Hilton which has, through the Hilton families ingenuity, forced crappy businesses, like Motel 6, to step up their game.

The rich, or in this case the Hiltons, are a reason we have better hotels and so many of the lower and middle classes have jobs in the hospitality market that allow them to step up from rags. Paris is a loser, we all know that, she unfortunately gets to reap the rewards of her family’s hard work. But, that is their cross, so to speak.

Michael Jackson is rich because of the lower class as well. He was lower class at some point, he appealed to the irreligious lobe of the social brain through his post-gospel music, his swinging and jiving. This was the Jackson 5 shtick. The people bought it, funding his success. Same with the Beetles, from which Jackson, for quite a while, literally reaped the benefits.

Getting back to the investing rich… Not all rich are like Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton. Most of them we have never heard of, will never know. Many of them invest in companies, anonymously contributing to a conglomerate success which, in turn, necessitates a bottom line. The rich only invest to maintain a reasonably profit margin. When taxes are raised, expenses are likewise raised. This raises the cost of production (service, distribution, product) while shrinking the profit margin they so disparately need in order to stay wealthy.

To put it simply, if 10 loafs of bread costs $1.00, for all 10 to be made, then sold for $3.00 each this creates an income of (10x3-10) $20.00 revenue per every ten loafs. If the cost goes up to $1.50 for the same ten loafs this will impact the revenue of the company. When looking at 10 loafs, it does not seem like much, it is a .50 cent loss. Likewise, when a company is making thousands of loafs a day, a small increase in expense will ultimately impact the business to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year. Artificially, through higher taxes, the cost of living goes up because it will not be just bread, it will be everything involved in the cost of living; gas, water, meat, coffee, toothpaste, etc.

Adversely, lowering taxes for the middle class in only a compensation for the harm done to the upper class trough tax hikes. This strategy obviously will not impact revenue as much as it will cost.

The best case scenario, the status quo will be maintained; the most likely scenario is the cost of living goes up. This is what Obama has promised to do: raise taxes for the rich, lower it for the middle class. What this translates to, the middle and lower class quickly become one class and the leap from burlap to cashmere will be wide and virtually insurmountable. What needs be done-what makes the most sense-is lower taxes for everyone, working toward eliminating the income tax all together. This will naturally lower the cost of living, increase productivity, open the job market, buttress the stock-market while raising the standard of living for the nation simply because cost will decrease while profit margin goes up. The dollar conversely goes further.

What lowering taxes won't do is help the banks. They depend on poverty; alas, that is a different subject.

Ron Paul on Mancow's Morning Madhouse

As they say: "Live Free or Diebold"

Diebold is the company that manufactures and maintains the electronic voting devices. They have been under extreme scrutiny by everyone, besides the Government, even after many mishaps this year; in states like South Caroilna and Iowa, these machines eft no paper trail and are programed and maintained and adjusted by Diebold, who's name ironically discloses their trust-worthiness.

The Onion, a fake news organization which, by every observation and standard, rocks, has the obvious truth of Diebold pinned. As is often the case with satire, the truth is more like fiction then we would like to think.

This video says it all: