Nibbled to Death for Your Own Good

Americans are deluding themselves about the amount of freedom they have.

I'm not saying we're suffering from the sort of oppression that occurred under Nazism or Communism. Here, it's more along the lines of being nibbled to death by the State.

Here's some examples:

A friend of mine was driving through Texas on the interstate when he noticed a state trooper going the other way had slowed down and was looking at him. Looking in his rearview mirror, he saw the trooper make a u-turn. Obviously, he told me, the cop was going to pull him over. But why?

Then it occurred to him – what if Texas had a seatbelt law? Being from out of state, he didn't know. Quickly, he buckled his seatbelt.

Sure enough, the cop pulled him over. Here's what this disgrace to his badge – who I'm sure thought he was doing the right thing – asked him:

"Did you just put that seatbelt on before I pulled you over?"

"No, I've had it on since I got into the car." That was his story, and he stuck to it. He had nothing else to say. He knows that anyone who talks to the police is making a big mistake. Martha Stewart found that out the hard way you can't trust them.

The cop had to let him go. He wasn't being what police officers are supposed to be – "peace officers." He was a fool playing a scam for the State, but too stupid to figure it out. "Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money," said Thomas Hobbes, hundreds of years ago.

Those of you who approve of the State telling you that you have to wear a seatbelt, think about this – the day may come when you're told to wear a helmet while driving. You think not? What about a law saying your kids have to wear helmets while in your car? You think that wouldn't pass?

That's not the only time I've seen such silliness. A 72-year-old man I know was pulled over because he was driving with his little dog in his lap. The dog, being a dog, liked to stick his head out of the window.

The cop told this man what he was doing was illegal. There's really a law stating, "No driving your car with a stupid ugly little dog on your lap"? The cop didn't give him a ticket, but told him not to do it anymore. The man still does, anyway.

I'd like to see anyone point out one just one wreck caused by people driving with a little dog in their lap. What next? Seatbelts for dogs? How about little dog-seats, like the ones you put babies in? Helmets for dogs? How about cats? Think of all the money to be made by manufacturers churning out tiny helmets for dogs and cats!

A woman I know was given a ticket for "improper usage of a seatbelt." She had the shoulder belt slung under her left arm and then across her chest. She had, let's say, an excessively endowed chest, making it uncomfortable to wear a seatbelt the normal way. She said she was given a ticket for having big . . .

A few months ago, while on vacation, we rented a pontoon boat in which we puttered around the lake. The owner told us it was illegal to drink while in the boat, and we had to watch out for the Water Patrol.

The two hours we were out we didn't see any Water Patrol boats, but still, we couldn't drink one beer or a glass of wine while operating a boat that maybe went 10 miles an hour? Even if we were completely drunk, exactly how much damage could we cause if somehow we did crash? What? We'd crash our pontoon boat into another pontoon boat piloted by drunks, on a meandering lake so gigantic that we got lost on it?

If we were drunk, how would the Water Patrol determine it? It's not like we could walk a straight line on the water, not unless they thought we were miracle-workers. The whole thing was ridiculous.

I know of one guy who was arrested for drinking on his front porch. The police said he was "a public danger." He was too soused to be a danger to anyone. He couldn't make it off the swing. It's gotten to the point the police are the public danger.

The State is trying to crush all the fun out of life, under the guise of it being for our own good. Right now it's no drinking or smoking or driving a car without a seatbelt. What next, laws against being chubby? How about eating at McDonald's, because the food may not be the healthiest in the world? Uh. . .forget I said that.

Liberty is very rarely lost all at once. It's lost degree by degree. It's like the old joke about boiling a frog. You don't put the frog into the boiling water, because he'll jump out. Instead, you put him into cool water, then slowly heat the water up. Before the frog knows it, he's croaked.

C.S. Lewis said the same thing, only not in a joking way. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Stormtroopers of the Empire

Maxwell, Chief, Hymie: CRASH! BAM! POW! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Achmed: Hey, what the heck is going on here?! Look at all those holes you put in the walls!

Chief: They match the other ones put here before! Now get on the floor! We're here to liberate you!

Achmed: You almost shot all my kids! Look at the part you put in that one's hair!

Chief: Collateral damage! Doesn't mean a thing!

Achmed: Can't you guys knock?

Chief: Dynamic entry! (Looks thoughtful.) Although, it's really just an excuse for power-mad sadists to shoot people and destroy things.

Achmed: You guys look just like those stormtroopers in those Star Wars movies! How do you see out of those helmets?

Chief: We can't. That's why we shoot so many innocent people. But they're nifty suits aren't they? They're all the rage among stormtroopers. Hard to go to the bathroom, though.

Achmed: Anything else you want, besides throwing me and my family on the floor and kicking us in the ribs? See? Each of us has our own special spot, we've been thrown down so many times.

Chief: (sticks his Frum 2000 disintegrator into Achmed's face) To free you and bring democracy and liberty to you! Now are you gonna be free, or do I have to anncoulter you?

Achmed: Okay, okay, we'll be free! Will you leave now?

Snickledoodles: Arf! Arf!

Max: CRASH! BAM! POW! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Little Achmed: Dad, look what he did to Snickerdoodles! Yech!

Achmed: Were you guys police officers back in the US?

Chief: How did you know that?

Achmed: Because you just shot a Pomeranian 45 times!

Max: Sorry about that, chief.

Chief: Forget it. The dog was going to attack us, anyway. Anyone got any cuffs for it? Somebody find the paws somewhere. Oh, there's one, stuck on the ceiling.

Max: (twitching) You know those drugs the military pumps in us makes all of us a bit jumpy! I think I've had enough Psychotic Serial Killer Serum for this week!

Little Achmed: You just wait until I grow up!

Chief: Quiet, woglet, or I'll rub you out. All I have to do is call in an airstrike from 20,000 feet.

Achmed: Do you guys have any brains at all?

Hymie: If the military wanted us to have brains, they would have issued them! Personally, I enjoy being a brainless fascist robot. Saves having to deal with questions of right and wrong.

Achmed: Ow! Quit that! Would you mind getting your jackboot off of my neck? It really hurts!

Chief: You ungrateful wog! We're been trying to bring you freedom and democracy for 75 years, and still you resist us! We only wish to improve the quality of your lives!

Achmed: That's the same thing the Borg Queen said!

Chief: Who?

Achmed: Wife of George the Eighth? Your emperor? Inbred guy with the little tiny head? Mumbles a lot? Sleeps in a flight-suit with a beer in his hand?

Chief: (scandalized): That's the Emperor George Herbert George Walker George George George Bush you're talking about!

Achmed: Ever heard the saying, "All tyrants call themselves benefactors"?

Chief: Who said that? We'll give him a little taste of a man-pyramid!

Achmed: Jesus said it.

Chief: My Emperor says otherwise! And God talks to him!!

Achmed: Do you really think you can change people for the better by brutalizing and murdering them?

Chief: It'll work someday! There ain't no end to doing right!

Achmed: The road to Hell is paved not only with good intentions, but justifications.

Chief, Max, Hymie: Huh?

Achmed: Forget it. Just a meaningless little observation.

Max: So, where's all the flowers?

Achmed: What flowers?

Max: The ones that were supposed to be carpeting the street when we entered as liberators.

Achmed: Wow! I wish I lived in such a great fantasy world! This would be a comedy if it wasn't a tragedy! You invade our country, kill thousands of innocent people, conquer us, and now say you're liberating us?

Max: Yep! You got it, buster! We're from the government and we're here to help you!

Achmed: My God! America used to be respected all over the world. Now it's an empire, running roughshod over everyone, using the false excuse that everyone hates you and wants to attack and destroy you. And you really don't have a clue as to the real reason why people hate you, do you? You think the way you're treating us now might have anything to do with it?

Hymie: So where's all the hot babes?

Achmed: You mean all the grateful babes who were supposed to be throwing flowers in your path while ripping their clothes off?

Max: Yeah, those babes!

Achmed: Look! I think I see one way down there on the street! She's trying to hide by running on all fours and disguising herself with a tail!

Chief; Hey, I'll bet she looks a lot better than those nude Madeleine Albright pin-ups the military gave us! Let's go, boys!

Max, Hymie: (firing Frum 2000 disintegrators in the air like a gang of drunken bandits): God, I love the War on Terror!

Chief: Me too! Yay! Ow! Dang, I just fell into a ditch! I'm as blind as a bat with this cheapo Fascists-R-Us helmet over my head! Ouch! You guys get off of me!

Max, Hymie: Hee hee! This is pretty funny! The blind following the blind, and both of us have fallen into a ditch!

Sacrificing to Gaia

When I was in college one of my friends and I shared an apartment which, quite typically for a lot of college students, had not one piece of furniture in it. Since we didn't want to sleep on the floor (or in the bathtub, which both of us had done), we took my 1980 Datsun B-210 hatchback and wandered around town, picking up, in a fit of silliness that can afflict nearly all college students, many of the couches, chairs and recliners tossed out, and used them to stuff our apartment so full we could not walk through the living room but instead had to walk on the furniture to get from the front door to any of the other rooms.

Very shortly, we decided this arrangement was not going to work, mostly because he was always putting his foot through my gizzard since I usually slept on one of the couches. So, we took two of the recliners and put them in the back yard, with a table between them. This worked out just fine, since it allowed us to sit in the backyard at midnight, drink beer and watch shooting stars.

One night, while we were doing this, he said to me, "Do you see what I see over there on the pavement under the streetlight?"

I did, but from that distance we couldn't make out what was going on. From where we sat it looked like some sort of dark, moving, swirly-pattern. When we walked over to investigate, what we saw were about half-a-dozen cockroaches apparently having a square-dance. We just stood there with our beer bottles in our hands, staring at them in disbelief. It felt like we were in a dream.

Now these weren't the little one-half-inch ones that college students find on the bathroom sink waving their antennae. These were the big two-inch Terminator ones that could probably hide under a car by lifting it up. These guys weren't going to go down the drain with a little water from the faucet. For one thing, they wouldn't fit in the opening. They'd probably just lie on their backs and point at us and laugh.

I had only seen one of these Intergalactic Death Roaches once before in my life, when a woman caught one in a jar and showed it to me. Now I was looking at maybe six of them. My friend had never seen ones this size, and had a look on his face that would have fit just fine on a character in a Stephen King novel when he finds the door to the Bioweapons Laboratory ripped open from the inside.

We weren't about to stomp on these creatures because a) if we succeeded there would have been a horrible mess that required throwing our shoes away because we weren't going to clean them, or b) not succeeding and possibly being body-slammed to the ground by these things, which then would probably get an ankle-lock on us.

"Imagine the headlines," I said. "'Giant Mutant Roaches Terrorize College Students.'"

"'Two College Students Missing,'" he answered. "And when they interview the police chief, he'll say, 'We think they stumbled on the Secret Roach Hootnanny.'"

"And then we'll be found with signs on the parts that are left of us, ones that say, 'Death to all Hu-mans.'"

We both went ha ha ha, although not with much enthusiasm.

These sonsofguns were living in our back yard, right under our noses. Maybe even under our recliners. It was like something out of one of those stories were two universes intersect and you find that in one of them cockroaches really did outlast mankind.

To this day neither of us know what those roaches were doing. Maybe it was a mating ritual, or maybe they just were having the roach version of a rave. I've never bothered to research it, and neither has he. We've been content to know that for a few minutes we stepped into a Far Side cartoon, which was enough for both of us until we decided to return to the civilized world of booze and Barcaloungers.

Whenever I think of that episode (along with the one in which I found a garter snake swallowing a toad while the toad was screaming), the next thought that often occurs to me is how foolish and naïve are those Rousseau-reading Noble Savage nitwits who idealize nature and think it's our friend.

Primitive man certainly didn't think nature was his friend. He wanted to get as far from it as fast as he could. Nobody put a hat on Smokey the Bear until the 20th century, when the free market and technology had advanced civilization enough that people could go camping with sleeping bags, tents and .45 caliber semi-automatics in case real bears, as opposed to cartoon ones, decided that humans, snackwise, were the ursine version of Cheesy Poofs. And even with all our technology, we still can't do much when Trailer Court meets Tornado.

Nature is certainly beautiful on the surface, with mountains and blue skies and sunshine and cute little prairie dogs, but, underneath, now that's a different story. It's a good thing insects aren't any bigger than they are; the wars they have with each other would make our 20th century look like kids' dirt-clod fights. I'd hate to have to keep a Tommy gun in the house in case one crashed through the door looking for bread crumbs.

Animals are a lot better than insects only because we've semi-tamed them. But we'll never completely domesticate them. My parents had a cat that would consistently bring home live birds and mice, all of them held daintily in his mouth. When I asked a vet why he was doing this he answered, "You're supposed to kill them and eat them."

"I'm supposed to what?"

It turns out a lot of animals bring home live prey to their young so they can learn to kill them. Our cat was treating us like we were kittens. When I shooed away the mice and birds he probably thought I was nuts, the way human parents might think something is wrong with their kid if he always threw Oreos and milk out the window.

And yet now, we have people - environmentalists - worshipping the earth and all the serial-killer bugs and animals inhabiting it. Although, I suspect, in their minds, they don't really see it that way. The two-inch roaches and cats with the birds and mice don't really figure into their calculations. All they can see is humans as some kind of skin cancer growing all over the surface of the earth.

One of the things I decided a long time ago is that religion will never be gotten rid of, contrary to the claims of the materialists and the secular humanists (both of which are themselves religions). For one thing, as far as I am concerned, everything is religion. Some are just better than others. Others aren't worth anything at all.

We can either search for the truth, or take the easy way out and believe in lies and superstition. The problem is discerning which is which. I don't think it's that hard. The Earth and what inhabits it are not to be worshipped. That prohibition is up at the top of the Ten Commandments.

One of the lies that people believe in, a Strange God they worship, is environmentalism. For those who believe in it, it is a religion, although they don't see it as one. They see it as the truth, separate from religion.

The writer Michael Crichton has called environmentalism "the religion of choice for urban atheists," and has labeled it a "perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."

"There's an initial Eden, a paradise," he says "a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe."

Crichton is right on the mark (being "off the mark" is harmartia, which is usually translated as "sin"). Environmentalism even has its own theology, that of junk science. It also has something of which Crichton did not speak, but which all perverted religions have - human sacrifice.

We rightly perceive ancient peoples who rolled their infants into the fires in the belly of Moloch as a bunch of savages worshipping false gods. But when environmentalists today want to see millions of people die to "save the
environment," what exactly is the difference between the their savagery and that of some primitive tribe? The difference is that the modern ones kill more people. A lot more people.

Paul Ehrlich, an insect biologist-cum-knucklehead-cum-Elmer Gantry environmental prophet, claimed that 60 million Americans would die of starvation in the 1980s. He's been saying these kinds of things since the '60s. Everything he's predicted has been wrong, but some people are still mesmerized, because he's one of the high wizards of a false religion based not on facts but on faith.

And it certainly sounds to me as if Ehrlich wants these people to die, to be
sacrificed for the false god known as Gaia. A high wizard calls for human sacrifice to appease his god so it won't kill everyone. Am I talking about today, or 4000 years ago? Both.

Environmentalists believe in the fairy tale of Pure Good and Pure Evil, in themselves as the Children of Light, opposed to those who disagree with them and want to pollute the earth and kill Thumper and Bambi, the Children of Darkness. Environmentalists are religious fundamentalists in the worst sense of the word. All Eric Hoffer True Believers are the same, no matter what they worship. What unites all of them is their belief that those they define as their opponents need to be sacrificed on their Altar of Not-Truth.

We're running out of oil, these false prophets wail. Global warming will fry us, and nuclear power will give three eyes and a foot growing out of the top of our heads. Overpopulation will suffocate the world, so thank God AIDS will devastate us. And let's not forget the depletion of the ozone layer. And on and on and on. Their solution? In two words: human sacrifice. A new Flood (although not as water but as disease or famine) to cleanse the earth, and afterwards, the few Chosen left will step out of their Ark and start anew on a pristine earth.

Another part of the not-the-answer involves giving money and power to these self-anointed modern preachers of Woe&Doom. "Oh, no," writes P.J. O'Rourke in All of Trouble in the World about the tactics of groups like Greenpeace, "Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me silver and I will make him spit her out."

So far, environmentalism has killed between 10 million and 30 million people since the 1970s, all sacrificed to the non-existent god know as "the environment." And let us certainly not forget that the World Trade Center collapsed prematurely because the builders were not allowed to spray asbestos on the upper floors. To "save one life" from non-existent asbestos poisoning we lost 3000. That's not a fair trade to anyone but environmentalists with heads full of voodoo.

And why were all these people sacrificed? So two-inch-long cockroaches can roam free and unmolested?

Human sacrifice is alive and well. Its supporters just go by different names now than in the past; instead of Aztecs they're called members of PETA. And they've got a leg up over ancient murderers in being more subtle than simply ripping out their victims' hearts in public. Now they do things like get DDT banned so millions of kids die from mosquito-borne malaria.

God forbid that wretched, fanatical buttinskis like Ehrlich and Al Gore and Ralph Nader gain the political power they so crave. All have the same motto - "People - we just need a whole lot less of them. And we'll make sure it happens."

I'm sure every roach in the world would dance to that tune.

A Plague of Incompetent Demons

Pity poor Wormwood. As Screwtape's wannabe-demon nephew in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, he aspired to the depths of depravity to which Screwtape had sunk. Unfortunately, Wormwood was incompetent. So Screwtape had him for a snack.

There's a lesson here, somewhere. Incompetent demons always get done in, maybe? I hope so. It's always happened in the past, with wannabe demons like Herod, Nero, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung and Pol Pot.

We have our own wannabes right here in the US. I can even give you some of their names (obviously, this list is not necessarily in order of demonic-wannabe incompetence.):

Max Boot
Paul Wolfowitz
Richard Perle
Douglas Feith
David Frum
William Kristol
Norman Podhoretz

Lewis "Scooter" Libby (What kind of grown man calls himself "Scooter," anyway? It reminds me of a dog I had that used to scoot around on a brand-new carpet.)

John Bolton
Elliot Abrams
Robert Kagan
Bill Bennett
Michael Ledeen
Frank Gaffney, Jr.

These incompetent wannabe-demons (currently known by the name "neocons") are the ones stumbling into war in the Middle East, and dragging the US with them. The blind leading the blind? Yep. What's that over there? A ditch? You bet.

If I had a large enough hand-basket, I'd stuff all of them in it and toss it straight to Hell. Have a nice trip. Don't write. Speaking of Hell, Lewis defined it as a bureaucracy in which "everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment."

And why do these plagues of incompetent demons always come in groups? The demon that Jesus kicked out said, "My name is Legion, for there are many of us." Why could he have not said, "My name is Joe, for there's just one of us in here"?

And then Legion got stuffed into some pigs and sent over a cliff. Afitting end to all demons, I'd say. Ditches and cliffs and falling into them and over them sure do seem to figure prominently in the lives of the stupid and evil. I think I'll write that on my palm so I don't forget it. I will look at it often. Every day, in fact.

I know these neocons supporters of the "Let's conquer the Middle East" wars are blindly self-righteous to the point of fanaticism, but the truth, unbeknowst to them, is that they are a legion of incompetent (and therefore minor, and annoying) demons who are bollixing up everything they touch.

Not only are these guys not wise, they're not even knowledgeable. "My people perish for want of knowledge!" moans Hosea. Not even wisdom, just simple knowledge. "False swearing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery! In their lawlessness, bloodshed follows bloodshed." Hosea's remonstrations are directed at the local kings. Uh oh.

Something I'll write on my other palm is the fact that so many of the preachers today criticize the common people, telling them they're going to Hell unless they believe as the preachers do. Yet, these same preachers rarely say anything about the depredations of those with political power, instead apparently believing they are going to be instrumental in bringing Jesus back. But, in the past, the prophets' ire was directed almost exclusively at the really naughty guys, the rulers. And, boy, if Jesus does come back, I suspect there are going to be some really surprised people! One of which will not be me.

Let's put it this way: when's the last time Jerry Fallwell said, "Hey, George, God didn't choose you to be President and doesn't talk to you no matter how much your booze-damaged brain tells you He does. And, I might add, I think you'd better buy some flame-proof underwear come Judgment Day."

The people who are the real prophets are ignored and insulted, just as they were in the past. They are without honor in their hometowns. However, in 200 years, people won't be calling them traitors anymore. By then they'll be respecting them as the real (although dead) prophets, and the names of the real traitors will be used as insults, the way "Pharisee" is, even after 2000 years.

Although, to be totally honest about it, even in 200 years there's never going to be a quote in the Bible that reads, "And the people listeneth not to Bob the Prophet, for their heads cleaveth to their butts." (Considering "cleave" has a dual meaning, I know there's a pun in there somewhere.)

Hosea may have been around a few thousand years ago, but he knew what he was talking about, just as the true prophets today do. And what kind of knowledge was Hosea talking about? The same that is true now as it was then: false swearing, lying, murder and stealing. Hmmm . . . sure sounds like some of the Ten Commandments, doesn't it?

Obviously, in the past (as now, and in the future) the local rulers always exempted themselves from the prohibitions contained in the Ten Commandments (actually, "Commandments" is a completely incorrect translation – it's "Ten Words" or "Ten Utterances").

Notice that Hosea says "lawlessness." He's talking about Natural Law, the law of the universe, of human nature. If these are laws of human nature he's talking about, then they are imprinted right on our DNA. Some of those people on the Human Genome Project going to be surprised when they find morality at the genetic level! Ancient wisdom and modern science, shaking hands over a chromosome.

I used to wonder how these old guys got to be prophets. No more! It's easy. They tell people to follow the Ten Words. And even better, they had no exemptions for those in political power. If the local ox/cab driver couldn't/can't murder, steal and bear false witness against his neighbor, then neither could/can kings/presidents. Or their advisors. It doesn't matter how much they believe in that false god known as their own Monstrous Egos, which, as Russell Kirk accurately pointed out, is the source of all evil. (That source ain't out there, by the way. It's inside us.)

Of course, kings and their advisors never believed what the prophets said, then, or now. No matter. The Law is the Law. When the Bobby Fuller Four sang that old song, "I Fought the Law, and the Law Won," even though they didn't know it, they were singing about something far beyond all the local Barney Fifes deluding themselves they are enforcing real Law by ticketing speeders on the interstate.

All of recorded history (what, maybe 4000 years?) has shown that murder and stealing and bearing false witness and worshipping false idols has never worked. If they had worked, then we wouldn't still be having wars. It almost seems we've involved in a war a few thousand years old, with a few intermissions every once in a while.

All of this is just pretty nuts, which reminds me of the best definition of insanity I've ever heard: trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. "Hey guys! Let's murder and steal and bear false witness . . . what? We'll still be doing the same things 4000 years in the future? But it's for a good cause! And I'm the king, too. Are you really sure about that?" Oh, yes, very sure.

These guys certainly need to call "Mr. Obvious" and get a little advice. Although they won't listen, even if he told them to take the sun shields out of their car's front windows while driving. Which, for all practical purposes, is exactly what they're doing with the USA.

Demon wannabes . . . ugh. If they were lawyers, they'd belong to the firm of Stupid, Arrogant, Blind and Insane. And if anyone founded that firm, it'd be Screwtape.

Worshipping the False

There are a lot of definitions of idolatry, but I think all of them can be distilled into this one: worshipping the Created instead of the Creator; to see a partial aspect of reality as the whole of it; and to see the false as true. All three are related. The Created is a partial aspect of the whole, and because it is not "ultimately" true it is in a sense "false." (By the way, the word "whole" comes from the same root word as "holy" and "healthy.")

The Commandment dealing with idolatry eads: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments."

Pretty baroque language, in a King James kind of way, even to the point of extreme severity. But then, it is several thousand years old. If you look at it as good practical advice instead of "religion," it makes a great deal of sense.

You don�t even have to use the word "God." You can do like philosophers do and use "the Absolute." Use "Ultimate Truth," or "Natural Law." Read the Commandment as "Lead your life in accordance with Truth, or bad things will happen." Sorta like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

If you want to update it a little bit, and make it a more philosophical, you can read "You shall have no other gods before me" as "You shall believe in nothing but the truth." (The whole truth. Because if people don't, unholy -- unhealthy -- things usually happen. And we have about four thousand years of recorded history as to what the Truth is.)

Some current modern "other gods" -- idols -- have been such things as the State, country, the flag, Communism, science, the Earth, animals, and Nature, and Man. All of them are the Created instead of the Creator, partial aspects of the whole, and in that sense are "false." And when people believe in them ("worship" them) bad things automatically happen ("visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me...")

"Visiting iniquity upon the children" surely sounds like a comment that when people do bad things it reverberates throughout the generations. Which, of course, it does. We're still paying for World War I.

I think it's pretty obvious that the worship of that false idol known as the State has, in the 20th Century, had some very bad effects. The historians I'm familiar with have settled on the number of dead as 177 million, although I've seen estimates of up to 200 million. That's "the iniquity visited upon the children" when eople worship the False instead of the True. The Devil instead of God, if you want.

Communism, Nazism and fascism all were about the worship of the State. And all came out of Europe, too (Ray Bradbury has written, "If it comes out of Europe, it's probably wrong."). Currently, many European countries still worship the State (after two world wars, why haven't they earned their lesson?). And someday, fairly soon, bad things will happen to them for letting Muslims into their countries. I hope we don't save their keesters this time ("Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." What saying covers the third time?)

All three of those idolatrous philosophies were about the worship of Man. Communism, especially. If you'll read some early Communist writers you'll find they actually thought Man could become God on Earth. Of course, Communism is officially materialistic and atheistic.

And since the U.S. is starting to believe more and more in the State, bad things will happen to us (we have the whole of history before us. Why haven't we learned its lessons?).

Then we have the saying everyone knows: "God and Country." Well, I dunno. Nearly all countries claim God smiles upon them and frowns upon their enemies (I've always found it amusing when athletes, on TV, thank God or Jesus for their team's win. Someday I expect one guy on the losing team to burst into tears and say, "It's true! God hates us! Jesus hates me! He deflected my pass!")

The Commandment, "Do not use God's name is vain" doesn't have anything to do with saying naughty words. The correct translation is "Do not carry God's name in vain causes." Like "God and Country." When soldiers marched off to war by the hundreds of thousands, to foreign countries that weren't a threat to us, to die for "God and Country," that is a vain cause indeed.

I consider myself a patriot, but I don't see how "pledging allegiance" to a flag (and isn't that a "graven image"?) has anything to do with patriotism.

The Gaia-as-God environmental movement, with its worship of Nature, the Earth and nimals, is worshipping idols. Bad things will come from it. The philodoxer Pete Singer, the nutcase founder of the modern animal-rights movement, believes in infanticide, euthanasia and bestiality (specifically, sex with the higher primates. Someday, I'm going to write a satirical article about him and call it, "Your Monkey Wife, But Not Mine.")

If you want to describe the extreme environmental movement in one sentence, it's the worship of "anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Even science can be an idol. I used to watch the late Carl Sagan on TV looking up at "anything that is in heaven above" with a breathless, almost religious look on his face. He was, not surprisingly, an atheist and a socialist. Science was his religion. He never realized (and would never believe it) that he was worshipping an idol.

Most modern science believes the material universe is all that there is. Life is just an epiphenomena. It's a dead universe, gigantic beyond human comprehension, with a few infinitesimal and maybe temporary sparks of life. The religious view (and the view of much Idealistic philosophy) is that the truth is the exact opposite. The material universe (the Created) is the infinitesimal part. It's just a teeny-tiny itty-bitty little part of the Creator, like the surface of an ocean.

When you have science based on philosophical materialism, it believes only that the Created exists, that the part is the whole. It believes in an idol. And bad things will come from this. That's why it never surprised me when I found out the Nazis were strongly influenced by evolutionary theory (and evolutionary theory is indeed just an infinitesimal and in some ways amusing explanation for a tiny part of that Whole).

When I see Muslims, Jews and Christians fighting over a sliver of land in the Middle East, I wonder, "Do they really think God lives in a piece of dirt?" Or in a house, like a church? Or in a piece of cloth, like the clothes someone wears? Or in a flag? (I learned a new word a few days ago: "revanche." It means "the policy of a state intent on regaining areas of its original territory that have been lost to other states." The root word is "revenge.")

The human race has a decided, and thoroughly unfortunate, tendency to ignore the lessons of the past -- to see them as primitive superstitions. It's especially bad in the "elites," who often have no ears to hear, no eyes to see, ditches they rarely avoid, and handbaskets-to-Hell they're always falling into. It is, to say the least, an unhealthy tendency. You can even all it unholy. It certainly leads to unpleasant things, even -- or is it most especially? -- for the innocent.

Good Shepherds, Bad Shepherds, and Their Sheeple

”Men do not follow causes --- they follow leaders.” -- John Thomas Cripps

I don't consider this my opinion; I consider it a fact. A lot of good practical wisdom about life is in the Bible, especially the Gospels. Forget the "religion" in it. That's not what I mean. What I mean is that you can find out a lot about human nature if you just think about what is written in the Bible. Put it this way: it wouldn't have lasted for thousands of years unless it was of immense practical value.

Let's consider the well-known fact that Jesus called Himself the "Good Shepherd" and referred to His "flock" and His "sheep." That almost sounds disturbingly like an insult. If you look at it in a certain way, it is. But then, on the other hand, most people are sheep. So it's not really an insult; it's just a statement of fact about human nature.

Another fact is that He called Himself the "Good Shepherd." That means there must be Bad Shepherds. And there certainly are. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot more Bad Shepherds than there are good ones, and it's been that way throughout history.

Wilfredo Pareto, whom I consider one of the few essential political philosophers to read, wrote that most leaders -- political leaders I must emphasize -- are either Foxes who use fraud, or Lions who use force. He also referred to the masses of people as "Sheep." Those Foxes and Lions can only be the Bad Shepherds, ones that the Sheep often obediently follow.

If the Sheep didn't obediently follow Bad Shepherds, how then, I ask, did we end up with the battle of Stalingrad, in which it is estimated a minimum of one million, and a maximum of two million, were killed in the worst battle in the history of mankind? If people aren't Sheep following Bad Shepherds like Stalin and Hitler, how did we end up with the 20th Century, in which historians estimate anywhere from 177,000,000 to 200,000,000 people died in various wars? If most people aren't Sheep, and most political leaders either Foxes or Lions, how did so many people get conned into marching to their deaths?

Americans like to pride themselves they aren't Sheep, but they are. Here we are a nation of almost 300 million people, and we're involved in two wars plotted and designed by about 25 people who have gained political power. If some 25 or so people can lead that many people, with only a very small percentage protesting, if that is not conclusive proof the overwhelming majority of people are Sheep, then nothing can be.

Traditionally, throughout history, about ten percent of the people, the ones who have gained political power, have used that power to appropriate (okay, steal) about two-thirds of the wealth. Usually societies end up with about 20 percent of the people with 80 percent of the wealth. Pareto called that the 20/80 law, which is another reason everyone should read him.

These people always set themselves up as political, economic, intellectual and moral "elites" (I use the term "elites" neutrally). They then attempt to impose their will and their visions on the masses of people, by force and by fraud. The most well-known observer of this phenomenom is Antonio Gramsci, who although a Marxist certainly was right on the mark with what he noticed.

Of course, it's obvious that if 20 percent of the people -- the Lions and Foxes -- end up with 80 percent of the wealth, that means the remaining 80 percent have to share that 20 percent of the wealth that is left. Not very much, is it? And the Sheep always put up with this until things become unbearable.

Wouldn't you say there exists the possibility that the Foxes and Lions want people to be Sheep? Horace Mann wrote in 1848: “If one class possesses all the wealth and the education, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it matters not by what name the relation between them may be called; the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects of the former.” Perhaps such an observation is why Jesus referred to the political, economic, intellectual and self-styled moral "elites" of His time as "sons of Satan" and as vipers who would steal the last pennies of widows and orphans.

If I had to describe politics in one sentence, I say it's Bad Shepherds leading the Sheep to their deaths. The only way that so many people look to the government to take care of them is because they can't tell the difference between Good and Bad Shepherds. They can't tell shepherds from wolves -- or from Foxes and Lions -- until it's too late.

It appears to be an instinct for most people to follow leaders, just as sheep do. John D. MacDonald, the late mystery writer, in his novel, The Green Ripper, wrote that people are "herd animals, social and imitative." He's right; we're herd animals, like sheep or dogs, and almost all of us play follow the leader, even if that leader leads his flock right over a cliff. They, unbelievably, do so willingly.

It's got to the point I can't even say religious leaders are Good Shepherds, not when people like John Hagee and Pat Robertson and Hal Lindsey are cheering on war, because they think they can kickstart Armageddon and get Jesus to return. These people, and their Christian Zionist followers, want the world to end. I wouldn't call these leaders Good Shepherds, but I'd certainly call their followers brainless and deluded Sheep.

I've come to the conclusion the masses of people don't really think. They feel. That's why they don't really follow principles, as John Thomas Cripps pointed out. They follow leaders, no matter how bad of shepherds they are. Why else would so many people have defended Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot? The answer? Because they're Sheep who fall for the most simplistic of propaganda techniques.

The Sheep, as always, are for the taking, by the wolves and the Foxes and the Lions. They never know it, though, until they become dinner. Then, of all things, they act surprised.

Donnie Darko: On Not Saving the World

I don't think it's possible to "save" the world. I don't think it's a good idea to even try. Usually -- maybe always -- it involves wars and other destructive coercions of the State. "Saving the world" is just a rationalization for trying to conquer it, usually so we can try to remake it in our image. As both an Aesop's fable and the Bible points out, tyrants always call themselves benefactors.

The closest anyone can come to saving the world is to stop trying to club people into being good, and just leave them alone to work out their problems. Any help they want they can ask for. George Washington had it right in his Farewell Address: trade with the rest of the world, but otherwise stay out of its political problems. But certainly don't try to "save" it. Such good intentions, as the wise old saying teaches, are the road to Hell.

A current example of trying to save the world? Our attempt to "save" Iraq, in order to impose the leftwing, anti-American delusion of "democracy" on it. It has resulted in nearly going-on-4000 American deaths, and many more wounded, some permanently. It has cost tens of billions of dollars, with more to come. It has caused the deaths and wounding of tens of thousands of Iraqis. And now we've got a bunch of sadistic, dim-witted white-trash hillbillies making piles of naked prisoners and jumping on them--and taking pictures of it. That's saving Iraq , all right. God forbid we try to save the rest of the world using the same methods.

However, I think it's possible to save individuals -- family and friends. What Edmund Burke called those "little platoons" of family and neighhood. The famous saying about this is, "No man hath greater love than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends." There's not a word in that saying about laying down your life for country (which almost always means government) or "society" (whatever that is) -- just your friends (and that also means your family). Excluded is "saving" the world, which always backfires anyway.

Saving friends and family is something good artists understand, even if only intuitively. The inability to save the world is something politicians, court intellectuals and "You fight and I'll watch" armchair warriors don't, no matter how many times reality smacks them in their faces. Because of this, I'll pay more attention to an accurate movie than to some pompous twit with three names who has a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard or Yale.

The last movie I watched that dealt with the ability to save a few people, and the inability to save the world, was Donnie Darko. This movie, which has become something of a DVD cult classic, works on several levels: it's a science-fiction alternate/parallel universe story, a brutal but accurate satire on public high schools, and a tale about a (maybe) disturbed teenage boy redeemed by love.

The satire I can write about without spoiling the plot, but not the rest of the movie. High school is portrayed as a dungeon. Kids snort coke in the halls and carry switchblades. One good teacher is fired; another tells Donnie he cannot discuss religion because "I could lose my job." The principal is a clueless bureaucrat ("We're losing these kids," a new teacher tells him. "I'm sorry you've failed," he responds, as oblivious to reality as a stuffed bird under glass.). Another of the teachers is a human version of fingernails on a blackboard. The writer and director, Richard Kelly, said these things were based on his experiences in high school in the '80s.

Now I'll have to spoil some of the plot to explain the rest of the film. It doesn't matter, because the movie doesn't make much sense with just one viewing. It makes the best sense if you read the fictional book mentioned in the movie -- Roberta Sparrow's "The Philosophy of Time Travel."

Donnie is a teen-age boy, about 16 years old (the movie never gives his age), who has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. I wonder about that, though. Mostly he is highly intelligent, and has the added ability to see all the emperors who have no clothes. Put a kid like that in a public high school, and is it any wonder he's considered bonkers?

Here's where things get weird. Donnie is in bed one night when he hears a voice. He goes outside to find a six-foot-tall rabbit (named Frank) waiting to talk to him. As he's talking to Frank, a jet engine falls through the roof of the house into Donnie's bedroom. Had he not been outside talking to the Frank, he would have been killed.

Here's where I have to spoil the plot for everyone. When Donnie got out of bed, the universe split off into a parallel universe. Everything that happens after Donnie gets out of bed is in a parallel (or as it's called, a Tangent) universe. The problem with the Tangent Universe is that it's not supposed to exist, and unless Donnie (and only Donnie) can merge it back into the Primary (or original) universe, the world will be destroyed.

Yet when Donnie is informed the world will be destroyed, he says, "Cool." He doesn't care, because it means nothing to him. Why, then, does he spend the rest of the movie trying to make things right and merge the Tangent Universe back into the Primary one?

He does it to save a girl whom he has just met, with whom he has fallen in love. Unless he merges the two universes, she dies. At the end of the movie, after the universe is put right, Donnie is back in bed again, with the jet engine falling toward him. He doesn't get out of bed, because if he does, the Tangent Universe splits off again, and the whole mess starts anew. The woman he loves will die. He'd rather die than her. Yet, for the first time in his life, he is at peace. It's the first time in the movie he smiles.

The movie can be summed up in that saying, "No man hath greater love than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends." Only in Donnie's case, it's for the woman he loves. He gives his life to save her. Otherwise, as far as he's concerned, the Primary Universe can go to Hell. What saves it from Hell is Donnie's love for one person, not some non-existent "love" for humanity.

That is the main message of the movie -- you can save a few people, especially the ones you love, but you cannot save the world. Change has to be done one person at a time, not the whole world at one time. The "whole world at one time" is the fantasy of lunatics, whose hopeless attempts at change always involve war and destruction.

Even though Donnie technically does "save" the world, it's still a mess, consumed with violence and lies. It's not "saved" at all, except in the physical sense. The only thing truly saved is his girlfriend. For that matter, Donnie is also saved from his problems by his love for her. And even though Donnie doesn't survive (at least in our fallen universe, the Primary one), it is still very much an uplifting film.

It's a shame that an obscure film-maker in his first film has more of an understanding of reality than the crackpots who almost always make their way to the top of the heap known as the State. Advanced degrees, decades of experience and high salaries (on the public dole, of course) -- who needs them? The track record of those kind of people is ghastly, with bloody wreckage strewn across thousands of years. They'd be better off -- and us, too -- if they bought an $25 DVD player and watched at least one funny, poignant, perceptive -- and wise -- movie.