Suppressed Truth

The Real Reactionaries in our Midst

2012-01-07T09:33:00.001-05:00

Methodist Circuit Riders - Agents of Progress

According to Wikipedia “reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is radical”. Liberals and leftists, who love labels, are fond of characterizing Christian conservatives as reactionary.

Now the problem I have in agreeing with leftist on this score is that it assumes Christian conservatives desire to preserve the past against the possibilities of a better tomorrow, fashioned by self-proclaimed “progressives”. In matter of fact, all true followers after Jesus Christ take up our crosses daily with the objective of lifting mankind up out of his fallen condition, and leading him to a better future under the governance of our resurrected Master in a restored creation. There is little about the present that any true Christian wishes to preserve. Verily, Apostle Paul wrote that not only Christians, “but the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” for the fulfillment of God’s plan. A proper understanding of history is - 1. God created all things out of nothing; all of it good; 2. Good creation has been subjected to “bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21) by means of sin entering the world through man’s disobedience to God; 3. God is going to restore all things to perfection, including human relations, through the agency of His Son, Who is Savior.

Now, Jesus is seated, at present, in heaven at the right hand of God, Who has granted Jesus authority – headship - over all creation. Under His headship, Christians are to be Christ’s body – the church – here on earth as Jesus executes God’s plan to restore all things. Modern Christians, then, are busy (like Methodist circuit riders of old) about making progress for the kingdom of God, not seeking to preserve some illusionary status quo.

The real reactionaries in our midst are the misled personages inspired by flawed ideologies which would restore some primitive, mythical status quo. Environmentalists imagine a past where man as hunter-gatherer lived in harmony with nature. Hedonists imagine an idyllic biological evolution that forged our sexual impulses, impulses crying out to be experienced; impulses repressed by Christian morality; impulses in need of restoration to rightful dominance in our lives. Socialists, instructed by Marx, suppose that man evolved, like apes, to be natural communalists, but notions of private property (aided and abetted by Christian teachings) ruined the class-less paradise that socialists hope to restore.

Who Says God Has Poor Judgment?

2012-01-01T22:00:00.001-05:00

This is not child abuse?

I don't know about you the reader, but I've heard the charge that if God really cared about humanity, He wouldn't have limited Himself to involvement in human affairs way back in the days of ancient Israel and during the time of the Roman Empire, He'd be doing stuff now.

Well, as the People's Cube sagely observed, if Jesus were born today, the results would be catastrophic - either His birth in a drafty manger would prompt a state seizure of baby Jesus on the grounds his parents are unfit, or the plight of the destitute family would prompt a fusillade of accusations from the Left against the heartlessness of reactionaries around the world who deny the "right" of every man, woman and child to free, government supplied health care and affordable housing.

And think about how modern DNA testing would make life unbearable for Joseph and the courts - how to prove who's Jesus biological father is for purposes of extracting child support payments?

The Great Recession: What Really Caused It?

2011-12-26T12:55:00.001-05:00

Hey pal - want to get rich on real estate?

Not disposed to permit the truth to undermine an opportunity to score political points, the political party, and its allies, who coveted re-capturing the White House in 2008 were not about to lay the blame for the onset of the Great Recession that began in 2007-2008 at the feet of the most deserving - the American middle and upper-middle class [see "What Caused This Terrible Recession?"]. No indeed, their votes were needed.

Now, quietly, behind the scenes, the truth emerges - in a December 5, 2011 study by the New York Federal Reserve titled, "'Flip This House': Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble" it is revealed that it was speculative "investors" in residential real estate - meaning, every American who could afford to buy a home with prospect for appreciation - who "played a very important role in the housing downturn by defaulting in large numbers" when the party (helped along by high oil prices) came to an end:

•Investor shares of home purchases roughly doubled between 2000 and 2006.
•At the peak of the boom in 2006, over a third of all U.S. home purchase lending was made to people who already owned at least one house.
•In 2007-2009, investors were responsible for more than a quarter of seriously delinquent mortgage balances nationwide.

Moreover, in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida:

•While investors were responsible for one third of all home purchases nationwide in 2006, this number is approximately 45 percent in these four states.
•Furthermore, investors with three or more properties constituted 20 percent, which is triple their share from 2000.
•In the years following the bubble burst, investors were responsible for more than a third of delinquent balances in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.

Moreover, this Federal Reserve study fails to account for Americans who were investors" by dint of flipping their primary residences.

Of special note above is that "Investor shares of home purchases roughly doubled between 2000 and 2006". Notice how nicely this coincides with 9/11 and the subsequent collapse/stagnation of the stock market. In short, yuppies saw their dreams of lavish retirement threatened in the wake of 9/11 and placed their bets in the best safe haven they could think of - residential real estate (see "14,164.53 - The Genuine "Most Important Number in the World""].

Sources for this post include: "Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble", National Center for Policy Analysis

Wife Beating - The Truth

2011-12-17T15:24:00.001-05:00

Marital Bliss?

There is a public service radio advertisement being aired in my area that claims one-in-four women have been "violently" assaulted by their husbands [1].

Whether or not this claim is true, which seems improbable, what is true is that a veritable industry has sprung up in the United States surrounding domestic abuse, with most participants signing the same song - "We care the most about women, we are here to help; we are here to shelter you from your big, bad husband.". The bottom line of this spiel is the allegation that all men are suspect; only a few are worthy to be steady companions to women. Lesbians have a significant voice in the anti-domestic abuse industry.

Any thinking person ought sit up and take notice that after so much attention has been showered on domestic abuse over the decades, the problem is alleged to remain so severe. Why should that be?

I think I have the answer - at the end of the day all these persons and organizations clamouring to provide succor for the abused woman are no substitute for an intimate relationship with a flesh and blood male, even an abusive one. The Bible makes it clear that more injurious than blows are words. This is supported by an abundance of testimony of victims of the Soviet secret police - the victims stated that severe beatings were among the least feared methods employed by the KGB.

Which is better, to be physically struck by someone who remains involved in your life, or to be patronized by a domestic abuse worker who is not there to greet you when you come home for work every night, and who isn't there to curl up on the couch with you for a movie and a bag of popcorn at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night?
In our present age, when a man strikes his wife, it's case over - the man is in the wrong, the woman in the right. How many domestic abuse workers force a woman to come to terms with what she, the victim, might have done to provoke the assault? We can all agree that murder is unacceptable, but is every murder victim innocent of provoking the assault that caused his demise?

Disagreements, sometimes serious disagreements, are part of, not foreign to, intimate relationships. Men are prone to lash out physically when upset; women are prone to lash out with cutting words. In all my years I can only remember a handful of the serious physical blows I received through organized sports, accidents, etc. I remember far more of the hurtful remarks that were directed at me, and many of them still smart.

Rather than run to a domestic abuse counselor, women would be far better advised to pick up a Bible and find out what it has to say about living harmoniously within holy matrimony. It takes two to tango.

[1] "Quarter of U.S. women suffer violent attacks by their partners - and one in FIVE is raped, shocking new figures reveal"; read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2074239/Domestic-violence-Study-reveals-1-4-women-violently-attacked-significant-others.html#ixzz1gp5ffKA7

The Death of Judgment, Experience, Inititative, and Character

2011-08-15T18:38:00.001-05:00

There is, I have heard, somewhere around fifty different kinds of intelligence. America's public schools, I have heard, only instruct and test in about thirteen. I tend to believe it. However, my voice alone may not convince the reader. For that reason, I have recorded below the sentiments of French psychologist and sociologist Gustave Le Bon on the subject of instruction and education -

Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931)

Foremost among the dominant ideas of the present (time) is to be found the notion that instruction is capable of considerably changing men (and women), and has for its unfailing consequence to improve them and even make them equal...

(Now), (f)rom the top to the bottom of the social pyramid, from the humblest clerk to the professor and the prefect, the immense mass of persons boasting diplomas besiege the professions...The number of the chosen being restricted, that of the discontented is perforce immense...

One might consent, perhaps, to continue to accept all the disadvantages of our (educational system)...did the superficial acquisition of so much knowledge, the faultless repeating by heart of so many text-books, raise the level of intelligence. But does it really raise this level? Alas no! The conditions of of success in life are the possession of judgment, experience, initiative, and character-qualities which are not bestowed by books.

To under-gird his point, Le Bon proceeded to quote Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), the French critic and historian -

Ideas are only formed in their natural and normal surroundings; the promotion of the growth is effected by the innumerable impressions appealing to the senses which a young (person) receives daily in the work(place).; at the sight of tools, materials and operations; in the presence of customers, workers, and labour, of work well and ill done, costly and lucrative. In such a way are obtained those trifling perceptions of detail of the eyes, the ear, the hands, and even the sense of smell, which, picked up involuntarily, and silently elaborated, take shape within the learner, and suggest to him sooner or later this or that new combination, simplification, economy, improvement, or invention. The young (person) is deprived, and precisely at the age when they are most fruitful, of all these precious contacts, and all these indispensable elements of assimilation. For (ten, or twelve, or sixteen years) on end (she) is shut up in a school...

At least nine out of ten have wasted their time and pains during several years years of their life - telling important, even decisive years...Too much has been demanded of them...(and) on a given day...before a board (of exams) they..be living repertories of all human knowledge. In point of fact they were, or nearly so...on that particular day, but a month later they are no longer...(Soon enough) (s)ettled down, married, resigned to turning in a circle, and indefinitely in the same circle, (they) shut (them)selves up in (a) confined function, which (they) fulfill adequately, but nothing more.

In the three stages of instruction, those of childhood, adolescence, and youth, the theoretical and pedagogic preparation by books...has lengthened out and become overcharged in view of the exam(s), the degree, the diploma, and the certificate, and solely in this view, and by the worst methods, by the application of an unnatural and anti-social regime...by mechanical cramming...by overwork, without thought for the time that is to follow, for the adult age and the function of man, without regard for the real world on which the (student) will shortly be thrown, for the society in which we move and to which we must be adapted...for the struggle in which humanity is engaged, and in which to defend herself and to keep her footing she ought previously to have been equipped...This indispensable equipment, this acquisition of more importance than any other, this sturdy common sense and nerve and will-power, our schools do not procure...

In consequence (the student's) entry into the world and his first steps in the field of action are most often merely successions of painful falls, whose effect is that he long remains wounded and bruised, and sometimes disabled for life. The test is severe and dangerous. In the course of it the mental and moral equilibrium is affected, and runs the risk of not being re-established. Too sudden and complete disillsion has supervened. The deceptions have been to great, the disappointments too keen.

Now the skeptic of this article and of what Le Bon and Taine, both Frenchmen, thought and wrote over one hundred years ago might be tempted to argue that little of what is contained in this article applies to 21st Century America. Allow the author to make the following observations:

What are 21st Century employers saying about the preparedness of today graduates?

A good place to look for answers to that question would be in the recently released book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, which makes the following point (among others) -

According to (the author's) analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, forty-five percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills - including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing - during their first two years of college.

What has changed in American education since Le Bon and Tine wrote the above?

A failed school teacher named John Dewey corrupted America's educational system. See John Dewey & Decline Of American Education: How Patron Saint Of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching & Learning. Things are probably worse in education in the United States since Le Bon and Tine wrote what is quoted in this post.

Primary source for this article: The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon

America's Credit Rating and America's War Against Albania

2011-08-12T11:06:00.000-05:00

I Pledge Allegiance to...One Destitute Nation, Under God

The 1997 comedy motion picture, Wag the Dog, starring Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman, is about a Washington spin doctor who, just days before a presidential election, distracts the electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer to construct a fake war with Albania.

The movies succeeds as farce only because just a tiny minority of Americans could locate Albania on a map, and fewer still would take seriously that America could be threatened by a nation so obscure.

Now, in the 1980's when I was a stockbroker, although a far cry from a power-elite insider, I was at least able to recognize accepted "truths" of that era. And in that era, the notion that America's credit worthiness - rated then at AAA - could ever be called into question seemed as probable as that we might be threatened in war by Albania. Nevertheless, here we are; Standard & Poors has downgraded the creditworthiness of the USA to just AA, in the wake of a doubling of our national indebtedness in just five years, mostly under liberal Barack Obama.

The Bible is very clear that it is God who determines the fate of nations - he holds them in the palm of His hands, to exalt them or bring them low. The breathtaking change in America's creditworthiness is testimony to God's power and unassailable will - God will bring to pass whatever He purposes, and no power in Heaven or on Earth can stand against Him.

Mob Behavior, or Why the Bible Seems So Bizzare

2011-08-09T09:55:00.004-05:00

Jonah and the Fish - History or Fancy?

Anyone who has had occasion to read the Bible has certainly experienced moments when its contents ring insincere, its logic flawed, its credibility suspect. I think those portions of the Bible that inspire such reactions vary from reader to reader. Some persons find it difficult to swallow the resurrection of the dead; others - the notion of a world-wide flood; others - that three men could survive unscathed in a lion's den. I submit that what we, as individuals, perceive to be truth is often largely a function of cultural conditioning. To a typical westerner, dog as food is abhorrent, but dog is delicacy for many Asians. Which "truth" about dog flesh is true? Post-modern man attempts to resolve this dilemma by asserting that all truth is relative, but this so-called insight about the nature of truth easily collapses under pressure - a man who claims all truth is relative will simultaneously insist that it was absolutely wrong that someone stole his property, or violated his wife, or that George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential contest against Al Gore.

I submit that the reason the Bible does seem, in certain passages, bizarre, is that it is the one document wholly true, and truth is a phenomena so foreign to us that we have trouble recognizing it.

The Bible is, of course, a history. About history French social psychologist and sociologist, Gustave Le Bon - in his best selling work, La psychologie des foules (The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 1896) said this:

...works of history must be considered as works of pure imagination. They are fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts...

Now Le Bon, in his opinion may not be easily dismissed - Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and modern mass media have made profitable (for them) use of Le Bon's ideas. Le Bon insist that the very fact of multiple witnesses to a historical event make it suspect -

To say that a fact has been simultaneously verified by thousands of witnesses is to say, as a rule, that the real fact of is very different from the accepted account of it.

Has the reader ever witnessed the transformed behavior of an otherwise friendly dog, once introduced to a pack? Group behavior, group mentality, is something altogether different from the thoughts and behaviors of a solitary individual. Consequently, history, which is usually the record of the accounts of multiple witnesses, often, if not in fact, usually, is the product of a group-mind or recollection, not of individuals. And group-think is unreliable, as is the attitude and behavior of a mob.

What is unique about the process of recording the books that comprise the Bible is that the flawed consciousness of mobs and individuals is purged by the Holy Spirit leaving us with a perfect record of what actually happened, and what is important for us to know. This last has always been a source of marvel to me - the things that God chooses to include and leave out of his history of the world defies logic. The Bible bears God's fingerprints, and we have trouble recognizing those prints; we are accostomed to the man's grimy prints.

Much Ado About...5% of the Population

2011-07-07T19:17:00.003-05:00

Given all the hoopla, one would think Americans visit their doctors every year as often as their local gasoline stations. For goodness sakes, with an U.S. economy on life-support President Obama chose to devote his first precious year in office fighting to get universal health insurance passed into law, presumably since he thinks most Americans are likely to find themselves in need of hospital "life-support" systems. Access to health care is a crisis in America, right?

In fact, according to a National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation report, just 5 percent of Americans are responsible for almost half of all health care spending in the United States and for rising premium rates.

Moreover:

The report stated about half of the U.S. population accounted for only 3.1 percent of all expenditures.
But 10 percent of the population hogged 63.6 percent of all health spending, the survey found.
The top 5 percent of the population accounted for 47.5 percent of all spending, and the top 1 percent accounted for 20.2 percent.

(Suppresst would add this observation to the above facts - 100 percent of the 63.6 percent who hogged all the health care spending will die just as surely the 50 percent of population who consumed just 3.1 percent of it.)

Sources:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/healthcare/report-5-percent-of-people-account-for-half-of-u-s-health-care-spending-20110627

http://nihcm.org/images/stories/NIHCM-CostBrief-Email.pdf

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20825&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncpadpd+%28Daily+Policy+Digest%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

The Death of "Peak Oil"

2010-12-16T21:19:00.000-05:00

New York Times (November 2010) -

Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.

Moreover -

With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas. [1]

[1] North America: The new energy kingdom (theglobeandmail.com)

The Insatiables & The Road to Destruction

2010-10-02T10:45:00.007-05:00

Pie-in-the-Sky

With America running unprecedented, unsustainable budget deficits in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and a failed progressive/liberal $800 billion dollar stimulus plan (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) the American left, under the organizing leadership of the Tides Center, descends on Washington D.C. today in a rally that is the signature event of a project dubbed "One Nation Working Together". At the rally will be a phalanx of leftist rabble-rousing organizations including:

the American Muslim Association of North America, United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, the National Council of La Raza, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Green Party, Planned Parenthood, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the International Socialist Organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the NAACP, the Center for Community Change, the Earth Day Network, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, and more (for complete listing see citation [1]).

Apparently unconcerned about fiscal reality, these rabble-rousers are calling for, in the weeks preceding the 2010 mid-term congressional elections, the following policy prescriptions:

1.) living-wage laws to guarantee that all jobs “pa[y] enough to support a family”

2.) an end to “racial profiling and re-segregation”

3.) “a fair path to citizenship” for illegal aliens, so as to “fix the broken immigration system” and alleviate immigrant children's fears that their “parents will be deported”

4.) “a clean environment, so no child is ever forced to decide between drinking the water or breathing the air, and staying healthy”

5.) an end to “tax cuts for the wealthy”

6.) an end to “unjustified military spending”

7.) “full equality for all women in all communities, indulging an end to wage discrimination”

8.) an expansion of taxpayer-funded unemployment benefits, healthcare benefits, and mortgage assistance, with particular emphasis on helping “populations and communities in the greatest need”

9.) an increase in federally funded “youth summer jobs and training initiatives”

10.) more federal spending to “stimulate job growth and retention”

11.) more federal “aid to states and cities—including direct job creation at local levels—especially in education, health care, social services and first responder workforces”

12.) more federal loans and grants to small businesses

13.) more federal “infrastructure investment,” particularly in “clean energy enterprises” and “green jobs”

14.) federally funded “training opportunities for workers who want to advance their careers”

15.) the provision of “paid sick days and paid family leave for all workers”

16.) an expansion of “access to the polls for everyone, including former felons,” so as to combat “voter disenfranchisement”

17.) an end to “discriminatory practices within the criminal-justice system,” particularly those practices that have a disparate impact on nonwhite minorities

18.) an expansion of federally funded programs “to help ex-felony offenders reintegrate into society, including job training [and] educational opportunities”

19.) “increase[d] federal support to institutions of higher education that provide opportunities for underserved communities”

20.) greater investment of taxpayer dollars “in public education systems, not prisons”

21.) the provision of “more education opportunities for incarcerated youth”

22.) the creation of more taxpayer-funded “affordable housing”

23.) the creation of a “public option” in healthcare, where a government-run health insurance agency would compete with private insurance companies

24.) support for the Dream Act, which would offer illegal-alien students a path to citizenship and would make them eligible for in-state college tuition discounts

These pie-in-the-sky policy prescriptions only underscore this author's contention that no compromise with the left is possible or desirable. It's them, or us.

[1] International ANSWER, the American Muslim Association of North America, United for Peace and Justice, Pax Christi, Sojourners, Color of Change , the American Friends Service Committee, the Campaign for America’s Future, Code Pink, the National Council of La Raza, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Working Families Party, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Progressive Democrats of America, the Green Party, Planned Parenthood, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the International Socialist Organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, Tikkun--Network of Spiritual Progressives (founded by Michael Lerner), Campus Progress, Green for All, the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the SEIU, USAction, the National Action Network (headed by Al Sharpton), the United States Student Association, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the NAACP, the Center for Community Change, the Earth Day Network, the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Apollo Alliance, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Democracy For America, Women's Action for New Directions, Veterans For Peace, Win Without War, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Reform Immigration For America, School of the Americas Watch, People For the American Way, Physicians For a National Health Program, the Peace and Freedom Party, the National Urban League, the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, the Midwest Academy, Interfaith Worker Justice, the Institute for Policy Studies, Friends of the Earth, Free Speech TV, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, UNITE HERE, Peace Action, Jewish Funds For Justice, the American Association of University Professors, and the AFSCME

Major source for this article: DiscovertheNetworks.org

Free at Last & Guilty No More - the Death of the Rap Across the Knuckles

2010-08-03T14:41:00.074-05:00

Do you recall getting a C- minus in secondary school English-class grammar, despite the fact that you were able to communicate effortlessly with everyone with whom you came in contact? Oh sure, perhaps your spelling needed a little polishing, you needed to improve upon your ability to format a paper or letter, and you were grateful to get assistance with punctuation, but beyond that hardly anyone corrected your speech except to point out teen slang such as "I dunno", or "I ain't gonna do that."

Parts of Speech
Have you ever wondered why you needed to be able to label parts of speech when you are perfectly adept at putting those parts where they belong, have been ever since you can remember, and have learned the hard way that the parts of speech defy simplistic definitions and rules of usage anyway?

Now, this is no trivial matter - parts of speech of speech have dominated grammar instruction for centuries - Lowth's 1762 edition of his influential A Short Introduction to English Grammar devotes 47.8% of its content to parts of speech and just 10.3% to punctuation.

Not every interested party has always supported the teaching of traditional school grammar, its just that your English teacher most likely would have preferred to die before allowing you exposure to dissenting opinions...such as -

If there is one thing I dislike in grammar, it is definitions (of parts of speech) too often met with in our textbooks. They are neither exhaustive nor true; they have not and cannot have, the precision and clearness of definitions found in textbooks of mathematics, and it is extremely easy to pick holes in them...And thus we might go on to the definitions found even in the best grammars: they are unsatisfactory all of them and I do not think they are necessary. [1]

Perhaps you are wondering who wrote the above quote - perhaps one of the Three Stooges? No it was Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (July 16, 1860-April 30, 1943) a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language and was a professor of English at Copenhagen University from 1893 to 1925.

About learning grammar Edgar H. Schuster, author of Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers through Innovative Grammar Instruction, made this observation about persons claming to know the parts of speech:

...what did they learn about English grammar? My guess is that they finally learned how to apply terms to the grammar they already knew. They learned a metalanguage; they learned how to talk about grammar. They'd always known that X was a noun and Y was a pronoun. They did not know that X was called noun and word Y, pronoun. Is this knowledge worth having?

Or how about this from Joseph M. Williams (August 18, 1933 - February 22, 2008) professor Emeritus of English and Linguistics at University of Chicago:

Until we recognize the arbitrary nature of our judgments, too many of us will take bad grammar as evidence of laziness, carelessness, or low IQ. That belief is not just wrong. It is socially destructive. [2]

Now, this last quote might just as well come from the Bible since the book of Acts tells us this about the attitude of the rulers, elders and teachers of the law who stood in judgment of Jesus Christ's disciples -

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus...they...commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard [3].

Notice the Bible does not say that Peter and John spoke with grammar perfectly acceptable to the rulers, elders and teachers - just that Peter and John spoke with courage and power.

Yes, long before traditional school grammar was foisted upon unsuspecting children, great men were shaping the world, not with perfect adherence to arbitrary rules of grammar, but with speech content that mattered.

Standard English Usage
What is standard English? Can anyone define it?

According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language:

1.) It is the standard fare of printed materials - newspapers, books.
2.) It is used by most broadcasters.
3.) It match the average level of attainment of persons who have completed secondary school.

Thus, standard English might best be described as the English employed by those who control the flow of information in society..."those who run things".

This neat little world begins to disintegrate when we realize that spoken and written standard English differ. One cannot gain approval writing could of, or should of (could've or should've is standard) but those-who-run-things speak of with could and should all the time.

Or consider the word ain't - it is unacceptable today among those-who-run-things, although it was used for centuries by educated speakers. Who decided it was no longer acceptable?

Use of double negatives (I ain't got no more) is sure to get bad marks in school and frowns in polite society, but who will quarrel with this usage of double negative - No, I didn't commit the crime -, or strongly object to this usage - You can't not admire those people.

Can anyone imagine a news broadcaster describing an attack by one politician on another thus - That was the most unkindest cut of all? Nevertheless, Shakespeare liked that line, for he put it into the mouth of Mark Anthony, referring to Brutus' stabbing of Caesar.

In 1941 John C. Hodges catalogued 280 standard English usage errors in Harbrace Handbook of English. 57 years later only 65 of those "errors" were still considered errors, as catalogued in the 1998 edition of the same work. If only all the little boys and girls who flunked English in 1941 could get their grades reevaluated!

Can You Identify the Bad Writer?
The following was written, informally, by a fifteen year old girl about King Henry VIII -

It is however but Justice and my duty to declare that this amiable woman [Anne Boleyn] was entirely innocent of the crimes with which she was accused, of which her beauty, her elegance and her sprightliness were sufficient proofs, not to mention her solemn protestations of innocence and the King's character; all of which add some confirmation, though perhaps but slight ones when in comparison with theose before alleged in her favor [4].

Can you find the errors in the above sentence? Find all you can and only then see citation No. 4 below to discover who the author was.

About writing John Steinbeck observed:

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel., and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers too near the sun [5].

As author and educator Edgar H. Schuster has pointed out -

contrast the hours we have spent practicing speech to the hours spent practicing writing...And writing must be practiced...even by those who appear to be gifted writers...We don't correct the speech of eighteen-month-old-children...many eighteen-year-old college students are in the same position (when they write) [6].

Retired English professor Gary Sloan demonstrated in an article published in College Communication and Composition that professional writers make almost as many errors as Freshman English students - the pros had no spelling, apostrophe, capitalization, or subject-verb agreement errors but were twice as verbose and fifteen times more trite. Pros had almost as many comma errors and wrote almost three times as many sentence fragments [7].

Major sources for this article include:
Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction, Edgar H. Schuster

Citations
[1] Cited in Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction, Edgar H. Schuster, p. 19

[2] ibid [1] p.47

[3] Acts 4: 13-20

[4] ibid [1] p. 93; author was Jane Austen

[5] ibid [1] p. 97

[6] ibid [1] p. 96

[7] ibid [5]

Conservatism - The Leading Ideology in America

2010-07-28T14:38:00.000-05:00

Conservatives have maintained their leading position among U.S. ideological groups in the first half of 2010. Click here to view supporting Gallup survey.

The Organic Food Hoax

2010-07-27T18:59:00.001-05:00

Notice the amount of space devoted to organic foods in your favorite grocery store is growing? Thinking about getting on the organic foods bandwagon, but don’t like the higher prices?

U.S. sales of organic food and beverages are growing 20 percent annually, and the increasing shelf space in area grocery stores devoted to organic foods, which cost anywhere from 10 to100 percent more than conventional foods, reflects this trend. Are they worth the higher price?

You should know that while the U.S. Department of Agriculture determines whether or not a food can be sold as officially “organic”, the USDA, does not claim that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional foods because the evidence is conflicting. Nor does the USDA make any claims that organic foods lead to better health, such as preventing certain diseases, since there is no conclusive supporting evidence [1].

One important reason consumers pay premium prices for organic foods is they assume they are pesticide free. This ignores that Sir Richard Doll, the foremost epidemiologist of the 20th century, along with epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto, concluded that “the occurrence of pesticides as a dietary pollutant seems unimportant (as a cause of cancer)”. Their conclusion was corroborated by the US National Research Council, the American Institute of Cancer Research, the World Cancer Research Fund and others. Moreover, Americans consume far more natural pesticides (99.99 percent of dietary intake) than synthetic ones (0.01 percent). Natural pesticides (there are 10,000) make up 5-10 percent of a typical plant’s dry weight [2].

Perhaps you’ve heard that modern high-yield agriculture (employing fertilizers and pesticides) rapes the land and contributes to global warming, so that even if produce from high-yield farms is just as nutritious and is safe to eat, buying it contributes to the destruction of the planet. The truth is the opposite - a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled “Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification” argues convincingly that high-yield agriculture is good for the environment. The study shows that if pesticides and fertilizers had not been used since 1961, an additional 6.8 million square miles of land - area larger than Russia – would have to have been cleared from forests (including tropical forests), and developed for agriculture to keep the world fed. Moreover, the study shows that high yield agriculture avoided 161 gigatons of carbon emissions, an amount equal to 34 percent of the total 478 gigatons of carbon emitted by humanity from 1850 to 2005 [3].

In short there’s no reason to spend more money on organic foods to preserve your health or the planet. Let the guy or gal next to you spend more for no good reason. You go and enjoy affordable, abundant conventional foods and do so free of guilt and worry.

[1] "Nutrition Made Clear", Course No. 1950 @ The Teaching Company, Roberta H. Anding, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital; M.S., Louisiana State University

[2] The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomberg

[3] "Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification", Jennifer A. Burneya,b,1, Steven J. Davisc, and David B. Lobella (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/14/0914216107.abstract)

Americans Haven't Learned a Thing - And They'll Regret It.

2010-07-26T22:05:00.000-05:00

New Barna Group study shows that hard times have not strengthened American's ties to family or faith.

"Has the Economy Influenced Americans' Priorities?"

14,164.53 - The Genuine "Most Important Number in the World"

2010-07-26T21:32:00.004-05:00

Perhaps you've heard it said that 350 parts per million is the most important number in the world.

There's a whole lot of people who think it is.

What is 350 parts per million? 350 parts per million is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that many environmentalists - including James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies - say is the safe upper limit. The consequences of carbon dioxide staying above that level is, according to those same environmentalists, world catastrophe induced by runaway man-made global warming.

However, I say, in truth, a different number is the most important number in the world.

I say that number is 14,164.53.

What is 14,164.53? 14,164.53 is the record level that the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached on October 9, 2007. At that level, with a record percentage of Americans invested in the stock market through the 1980's invention - 401(k) -, a record percentage of Americans found themselves in a position to not only retire early, but retire in luxury. As they examined their retirement account statements their eyes popped.

Then just one year later they found their 401(k)'s worth just over half of what they had been., and they saw all their dazzling hopes fizzling.

For this reason they swept into a power a community organizer with a funny name, because he promised hope and change. The hope and change that this demagogue held out was about ethereal matters such as social justice, but what they thought he really was going to change was the value of their 401(k)'s. And this community organizer knew that the people thought he was really talking about hope for their 401(k) account,, but what he really had in mind was to exploit the people's gullibility so he could usher in an era of big government and control over the lives of the people.

The people sold out everything - their principles, the American Dream, their children's and grand-children's future -; sold out everything for the number 14,164.53.

Proof of a Left-Wing Media Conspiracy to Suppress Truth

2010-07-23T10:27:00.000-05:00

Below is a link to an article on David Horowitz's site DiscoverTheNetworks.org (a site devoted to revealing how the political left organizes and communicates) that exposes a deliberate consipiracy by prominient leftists journalists, via a listserve, to suppress bad news of a significant nature about Barack Obama and cast conservatives in a negative light:

“Journolist”: The Smoking Gun of Leftwing Media Collusion

Did Someone Say "Peak Oil"?

2010-07-14T19:48:00.000-05:00

Scientists working for the US Geological Survey say Venezuela's Orinoco belt region holds twice as much petroleum as previously thought.

This news comes at a time when "Peak Oil" is the buzz phrase among environmental activists, global warming scaremongers and other assorted zombies opposed to human progress. Peak oil is the point in time (alarmists say the time is NOW) when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.

Medical Helicopters, Like Sharks, Have to Keep Moving to Survive

2010-07-03T15:03:00.001-05:00

When you read or hear about the employment of an air ambulance for an accident in or near your community, you probably assume it must have been a bad accident; right? Don't be so sure.

In its infinite wisdom, bureaucrats in Washington mandated Medicare reimbursement for air ambulances in 1997. Since then the number of available air ambulances in the Unites States has tripled. However, in some states close to 50% of patients delivered to hospital via air ambulance are discharged with 24 hours. Can the reader imagine why?

Consider this - a ride as short as 15 miles in an air ambulance can cost $17,000. A helicopter with pilots and support crew is expensive to maintain. A helicopter sitting on the tarmac earns no money. Do you begin to get it?

Moreover, medical helicopters are exempt from many of the safety mandates that keep commercial aviation relatively safe. Employment aboard a medical helicopter is the most dangerous job in America; fatal crashes are common.

In fact it might be safer to swim with sharks than be transported to hospital aboard a medical helicopter. And unlike riding on medical helicopter swimming in the ocean is free most of the time.

Primary source for this article - "Critical Condition", Popular Mechanics, July 2010

Nuclear Battery Buried in Your Backyard - Coming Soon?

2010-06-24T21:44:00.003-05:00

While environmentalists and assorted green nail-biters have been making loud about alleged Peak Oil and a climate they say can't handle one more oz. of carbon dioxide, over in New Mexico a little company called Hyperion Power Generation have been quietly laboring to commercialize a safe, clean, sustainable, and cost-efficient small modular nuclear reactor designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists leveraging forty years of technological advancement.

Hyperion nuclear power modules are about the size of a hot tub. Each produces enough to power for about 25,000 homes (25-30 megawatts). No water is needed for cooling but it is impossible for the module to go supercritical, “melt down” or create any type of emergency situation. The radioactive material inside is unsuitable for use in proliferation.

According to Doug Hoffman, co-author of the book, The Energy Gap, -

...(t)he reactor has a uranium hydride core, surrounded by hydrogen gas. The hydrogen acts as the moderator for the reactor, slowing down neutrons to promote a sustained chain reaction. As the reactor heats up the hydrogen gas expands and vents into a holding area, causing the nuclear reaction to diminish. This allows the reactor vessel, including its hydrogen, to cool, drawing hydrogen back into the reactor and increasing the nuclear reaction. The balance between heat generation and gas temperature makes the whole unit self-regulating—no need for computers or human operators to control things. Think of it as a nuclear battery [1].

Because of its small size the power plant's applications are limitless and could fuel a huge variety of important facilities including: hospitals, desalinization plants, emergency facilities, industrial parks, factories, military bases, and even small towns for many years. Moreover, Hyperion’s module's has the ability to bring heat for industrial uses and electricity for infrastructure and homes to remote locations with no reasonable access to reliable energy. For example: over 25% of the world’s population does not have access to clean water. Hyperion can solve this problem by providing the power to pump, clean, and process water, possibly helping turn the tide on disease, poverty and social unrest.

Meanwhile President Obama, who waxes enthusiastic in speeches about making America energy independent, seems unconcerned that his own Nuclear Regulatory Commission has has stated that it has no plans to review the Hyperion design in the near future.

[1] "America's Atomic Folly", Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth

Liberals to Legislate by "the Word" - No Double Standard Here!

2010-06-15T11:58:00.002-05:00

To comprehend in a moment how much vitriol has been directed from the political leftist in America at the rise of the religious right; to comprehend in a moment how many leftist think the "religious right" intend to establish theocracy in America just do an Internet search for phrases like:

Right-wing theocracy, George W. Bush theocracy, Republican theocracy, Christian Fascism, etc.

But click here to hear and see sitting Speaker of the House, liberal Nancy Pelosi proclaim that public policy ought to be "in keeping" with the Word of God as proclaimed in the gospels.

Of The Gaza Flotilla and Branch Davidians

2010-06-05T12:51:00.001-05:00

Branch Davidians burn and no outrage from the left

The worldwide god-hating left rose up as one man to condemn Israel for using deadly force in the botched boarding of supposed aid-ship Mavi Marmara. The condemnation denounces Israel for, at the minimum, using deadly force against protesters armed only with metal pipes, stun grenades, chains and the like.

Israel on the other hand, in the wake of the incident has reasserted her right to protect herself by inspecting ships delivering cargo - supposed to be loaded with only humanitarian supplies - to her declared enemies in the Gaza Strip under the governance of Hamas. Hamas - classified by the governments of the European Union, Israel, Japan, Canada, and the United States as a terrorist organization - that won civil parliamentary Palestinian Authority elections in 2006 and took over de facto government in the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority by way of its own political maneuvering and armed militia in July 2007, while consolidating power by violently removing the Palestinian Authority's security forces and civil servants from the Gaza Strip.

Now, as the whole world knows it was leftist Janet Reno under leftist Bill Clinton who laid siege to the Branch Davidians at the Mount Carmel Center compound in Waco, Texas culminating in seventy-six Brand Davidians dead, including more than 20 children and two pregnant women. Let the reader try to imagine a scenario under which leftist Reno and Clinton would have allowed humanitarian supplies to be delivered in bulk to the Mount Carmel Center at Waco without insisting on such deliveries being inspected by armed federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents.

Disappointing News for Vegans - God Commanded "Eat Meat", and it Was Good

2010-06-01T19:41:00.001-05:00

A new Harvard University study found no increased risk of heart disease among meat eaters.

However, this conclusion applied only to unprocessed meats - eating one serving per day of processed meats like bacon, sausage, salami, hot dogs or processed deli or luncheon meats was associated with a 42 percent higher risk of heart disease and 19 percent increased risk of diabetes.

Notably, the heart risk in processed meats wasn't the saturated fat or cholesterol - both whole cuts of meat and processed meats contained the same amount per serving The big differences were the levels of sodium and chemical preservatives - processed meats had about four times more sodium and 50 percent more nitrate preservatives than unprocessed meats.

Source: "Don’t Bring Home the Bacon", TARA PARKER-POPE, New York Times, May 19, 2010, linked to from the National Center for Policy Analysis

The Truth About Arizona's Immigration Law

2010-05-19T19:42:00.001-05:00

There are 6,000 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tasked with restoring the rule of law in a country that already contains between 12 and 20 million immigration law-breakers.

By comparison, the New York Police Department, with a current headcount of 35,000, feels itself greatly understaffed in a compact city of eight million residents, only a portion of whom are law-breakers.

The Arizona law, were it to be widely emulated, threatens to disrupt the calculus of illegal immigration...There are 650,000 state and local police officers in the United States. If a significant portion of those officers received the mandate of the Arizona law -- to inquire where practicable into the immigration status of an individual they have legitimately stopped, if they have a valid reason to believe he is in the country illegally -- the balance between law enforcement and law-breaking would be changed enough to likely deter illegal border crossings and to persuade many illegal immigrants already in the United States to return to their home countries rather than face arrest and deportation.

Source: Heather Mac Donald, "Arizona law is hated because it could be effective," Washington Examiner, May 5, 2010

How Could Anyone Conclude the Left is Extreme?

2010-05-05T07:56:00.002-05:00

See beehives? Leftists see "rape racks".

According to author Wesley J. Smith in his book A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement the animal "rights" movement has reached the ideological milestone of concluding that beekeeping ought to be outlawed as it amounts to putting the queen bee on a "rape rack".

H. L. Mencken Exposed

2010-04-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

God-haters love to quote Henry Louis Mencken (an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a student of American English; regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century) when it suits them; particular gems like these:

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth.

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

Nowhere to be found among the Mencken quotes God-haters cite, at least in America, are some of his other "gems":

Most ordinary people are contemptibly weak. Only the minority are worth are attention, and only the chosen few can lead or even contribute to civilization.

The existence of most human beings is of absolutely no significance to history of human progress. They live and die as anonymously and uselessly as so many bullfrogs or houseflies...they are robots who leave their mark upon time only by occasionally falling into the machinery and so incommoding their betters. [1]

[1] Source: "Conservative Tradition"; Course No. 4812 (36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture), Emory University. ; Patrick N. Allitt, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley,