I want to be a kid again…

I hereby officially declare that I don’t want to be a grown up anymore.

I’m tired of deadlines and bills due by the 1st of the month.

I’m tired of Insurance premiums and cut off notices.

I’m tired of working from sun up to sun down and have so much of my pay go to taxes and people that will not work.

I’m tired of traffic jams and idiot drivers.

I’m tired of crooked politicians and having to read the fine print.

I’m tired of car repairs and dripping faucets.

I’m tired of watching good people that fail to think for themselves, fall victim to slanted news and biased journalism.

I’m tired of rolling out of bed when I really, really, really don’t want to.

I want to look forward to Saturday morning cartoons like the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show on a black & white TV. It was actually fun to go outside and turn the antenna on the side of the house so that I could pick up that out-of-town CBS signal.

I want to crawl under the house with my Tonka trucks and play in the dirt, dig holes and play the doodle bug game with the sand bugs.

I want to climb trees and ride my bike until my legs give out.

I want to help He-Man defeat Skeletor.

I want to impress pretty girls on my skateboard again.

I want to go roller skating on Saturday nights in my parachute pants and feel cool.

I want to spend everyday in the woods with my friends building a super cool club house.

But you know what?

Tonight I’ll fall asleep after watching the news about how our country is going down the drain and our freedom is decaying by the day.

Tomorrow morning the alarm clock will sound and I’ll groan as I roll out despite my desire to stay in it.

I’ll climb in my truck and fight the traffic on my way to work, where I’ll put in at least 8 more hours of labor to support those that choose not to.

I’ve had a bad day…

Ok, I’m done…

This reminds me of one of my favorite lesser-known movies, The Adventures of the Wilderness Family. Particularly, the opening scene where Robert Logan is sitting in Los Angeles rush hour traffic, and suddenly realizes that he’s just sick and tired of the rat race.

He actually does something about it, like we all often wish we could, and this movie tells the story of his family.

NOTE: I’ll warn you that this movie is quite poorly produced… my kids would be bored before the opening credits finished rolling, but the story it tells is empowering to those of us who share UGA’s sentiments in the post I quoted above.

Her original due date was November 23rd, but we were expecting her to arrive a couple of weeks early, as both of our sons were. On Monday morning, we had a regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment, where they ran some tests to monitor Wendee’s gestational hypertension. Apparently, they were alarmed at the results, as we were told to check into the hospital for seven days of tests and monitored bed rest!

When we arrived at the hospital, the doctors on call reviewed Wendee’s test results and decided it was an overreaction to keep her in the hospital for a full week, but went ahead an admitted her for a 24-hour stay, just to keep an eye on her and make sure everything was alright.

After the excitement of the day, we were both having a little difficulty getting to sleep. Well, “a little difficulty” is an understatement for Wendee, whose hypertension was aggravating a pre-existing sinus condition and resulted in a splitting headache that just wouldn’t go away.

At around 12:30 in the morning, Wendee sat up and exclaimed that her water had just broken, so we called the nurse and abandoned all hope of getting a good night’s sleep. After consulting the primary obstetrician, the doctors decided to schedule a Caesarean section at 6:30 in the morning. When asked for some pain medication, to help her get to sleep, Wendee was told by the nurse that she’d have to wait until the anesthesiologist had come to talk with her, but was assured that he was “on his way.”

Well, at around 6:00, with no relief for her pain, the anesthesiologist finally arrived, but it was too close to the operation to give her any medication. The flow of nurses and doctors began to increase, as everyone was preparing for the upcoming surgery.

At about 6:45, we all wheeled into the operating room for the birth.

The team got to business right away, but I was a little disappointed that this hospital wouldn’t let me actually watch the operation, like I did at Holy Spirit Hospital in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania (for Joshua’s birth). They required me to stay on the head side of the little blue curtain they’d raised to prevent Wendee from seeing her own abdomen opened up. I recall finding the experience with Joshua to be very educational for me.

While we were waiting for Sophie to arrive, the nurse assistants were standing next to Wendee and myself, and they were just carrying on with all kinds of small talk, just like you see on those silly soap opera-esque hospital shows like Grey’s Anatomy.

Finally, we heard Sophie crying, and I jumped up to take a few pictures of her! Here’s the very first photograph of the most important woman of the 21st Century!

Needless to say, we are all very happy to finally have Sophie in our family! Both of the boys are very excited about having a new sister, but Joshua is particularly thrilled that he is now a Big Brother! Many times, throughout the day, he exclaimed, “I am both a little brother and a big brother!” Or, he’d say, “I’m going to be a good big brother for Sophie!”

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A T.R. Reid recently published an article in The Washington Post, wherein he attempts to defend Obama’s universal health care program against the five most common criticism.

It’s really just a reiteration of the same old talking points that keep scrolling over and over on Obama’s teleprompter, but I did a quick, off the top of my head, review of the article in the attached PDF file.

I was driving on the freeway the other day, following closely behind a black Mercedes Benz. In the lane to our left, next to the Mercedes was a maroon Buick. Apparently without looking, the Buick began to merge over. The driver in the Mercedes didn’t start waving his arms- he didn’t start honking- and he didn’t unnecessarily slam into the Buick.

He simply reacted perfectly- I saw him look to his right, and he merged onto the shoulder at the same speed as the Buick was merging into him, all the while gently tapping on his brakes to let me know that he was slowing down. I gave him plenty of room, and once the Buick was completely in his lane, he merged back on, in front of me.

While some people might fall into a panicked series of swerves of corrections, this driver handled a bad situation perfectly- I don’t think we even lost 10mph.
My point is this- THIS is the essence of the Armed Citizen. We don’t take things personally, we just see what needs to be done… and we do it. The driver in the black Mercedes could have retaliated. He could have been offended that this guy would merge without looking- but he knew that getting upset wouldn’t help him avoid an accident.

“The Armed American Report,” August 17, 2009, by Tim Schmidt

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The book I’m currently reading, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, by Ludwig von Mises, has been an exciting discovery of the logical science behind human behavior.

It occurred to me, this afternoon, while reading Chapter 2, “The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action",” that progressives have a fundamental flaw in their understanding of our society. They don’t understand the difference between the individual and the aggregate.

I and We

The Ego is the unity of the acting being. It is unquestionably given and cannot be dissolved or conjured away by any reasoning or quibbling.

The We is always the result of a summing up which puts together two or more Egos. If somebody says I, no further questioning is necessary in order to establish the meaning. The same is valid with regard to the Thou and, provided the person in view is precisely indicated, with regard to the He. But if a man says We, further information is needed to denote who the Egos are who are comprised in this We. It is always single individuals who say We; even if they say it in chorus, it yet remains an utterance of single individuals.

The We cannot act otherwise than each of them acting on his own behalf. They can either all act together in accord, or one of them may act for all of them. In the latter case the cooperation of the others consists in their bringing about the situation which makes one man’s action effective for them too. Only in this sense does the office of a social entity act for the whole; the individual members of the collective body either cause or allow a single man’s action to concern them too.

The endeavors of psychology to dissolve the Ego and to unmask it as an illusion are idle. The praxeological Ego is beyond any doubts. No matter what a man was and what he may become later, in the very act of choosing and acting he is an Ego.

Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (Yale University Press, 1949), p. 44.

When President Obama says “we,” he is including me (and, too often, excluding himself). When I say “we,” in reference to that aggregate known as “Americans,” I am including everyone who meets the citizenship qualifications of the United States of America… this may or may not actually include the President himself; for the purposes of discussion, though, I generally grant him the benefit of the doubt, and include him.

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The substantive nature of those rights which are inherent in all mankind was described by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England:

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislature has the power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture. (Commentaries, 1:93.)

The Founders Did Not List All of the Unalienable Rights

When the Founders adopted the Declaration of Independence, they emphasized in phrases very similar to those of Blackstone that God has endowed all mankind “with certain unalienable rights, that AMONG these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Let us identify some of the unalienable or natural rights which the Founders knew existed but did not enumerate in the Declaration of Independence:

• The right of self-government.
• The right to bear arms for self-defense.
• The right to own, develop, and dispose of property.
• The right to make personal choices.
• The right of free conscience.
• The right to choose a profession.
• The right to choose a mate.
• The right to beget one’s kind.
• The right to assemble.
• The right to petition.
• The right to free speech.
• The right to a free press.
• The right to enjoy the fruit of one’s labors.
• The right to improve one’s position through barter and sale.
• The right to contrive and invent.
• The right to explore the natural resources of the earth.
• The right to privacy.
• The right to provide personal security.
• The right to provide nature’s necessities—air, food, water, clothing, and shelter.
• The right to a fair trial.
• The right of free association.
• The right to contract.

Many Founders Used Similar Language Emphasizing “Unalienable Rights”

It was very common among the Founders to express their sentiments concerning man’s unalienable rights in almost the same language as Jefferson. Here are the words of the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted by the Virginia Assembly June 12, 1776 (before the Declaration of Independence!):

All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. (Annals of America, 2:432.)

The above is excerpted from The 5,000 Year Leap, by W. Cleon Skousen, pp. 124–126.

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A good friend of mine was reading Isaiah 53, and wanted my take on this passage, particularly concerning the answer to this question. All my Hebrew reference books are packed away, who knows where, as we are in the middle of our months-long move from Ohio to Florida, so I did the following little review of this passage, just from the American Standard Version translation to English.

This particular chapter actually starts in the middle of a prophecy, so I’ve moved back to Isaiah 52, to begin my analysis.

Isaiah 52 begins with:

1 Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.

Pasted from <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?version=8;&search=Isaiah 52:1;>

This clearly indicates that this passage is being addressed to Zion or Jerusalem. A few verses away, we see that YHVH is the one doing to speaking, and that when he speaks to Zion, he’s referring to them as “My people.”

4 For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, My people went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there: and the Assyrian hath oppressed them without cause.

5 Now therefore, what do I here, saith Jehovah, seeing that my people is taken away for nought? they that rule over them do howl, saith Jehovah, and my name continually all the day is blasphemed.

6 Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak; behold, it is I.

Pasted from <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?version=8;&search=Isaiah%2052:4-6;>

Looking at verses 11 to 15, we can see that YHVH is giving instructions to his people. The grammar appears to indicate that he is speaking to individuals, but it’s possible he’s addressing his people as a community.

11 Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; cleanse yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of Jehovah.

12 For ye shall not go out in haste, neither shall ye go by flight: for Jehovah will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rearward.

13 Behold, my servant shall deal wisely, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.

14 Like as many were astonished at thee (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men),

15 so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand.

Pasted from <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?version=8;&search=Isaiah%2052:11-15;>

After speaking to his people, he begins to describe “my servant.” I think it’s pretty clear, this defines a shift from speaking to his people in general, to speaking about a specific person or persons. While the English translation does, in fact, use the singular, the context would allow an interpretation that he is describing a composite character (or, a role) named “servant” rather than just a specific individual person. On the other hand, it could also be referring to a specific person that just doesn’t have a name specified.

All of this leads up to the chapter in question, Isaiah 53, where this “servant” is described with an enumeration of various traits and experiences. It is true that this list is very similar to the Christian description of their “messiah,” Jesus of Nazareth. However, the fact that the story of Jesus was written long after this prophecy was recorded leaves me a little suspicious. It is always easy, after the fact, to find similarities between prophecies and historical events. In fact, the recorded history of Jesus could very well have been composed specifically with this prophecy in mind, to emphasize the similarities.

This phenomenon is the same as used to “prove” that Nostradamus’ prophecies are accurate. In hindsight, we can easily find ways to interpret prophetic texts as describing just about any event… especially when we declare the prophecy to be poetic rather than strictly narrative. Poetry grants a huge license to be vaguely correct.

On the other hand, if you read this passage in light of the traditional Jewish concept of “messiah,” as I’ve quoted for you below (from the Zionism and Israel Information Center), I believe you’ll see this prophecy fits very nicely into that understanding, as well.

Messiah (Hebrew – "Annointed One") –

1.  In Jewish tradition, a person of the line of King David (a "ben yishai" – son of Jesse, father of David) who will return the Jews from exile, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and initiate a period of prosperity and peace. In that sense, belief in Messiah was simply belief in restoration of Israel and an end to present troubles. The Messianic idea became prevalent and gained adherents in times of extreme desperation, such as the conquest of Judea by the Babylonians, the Roman conquest, the rule of Hadrian and various periods in the Middle Ages. Additional beliefs associate the messiah with the resurrection of the dead, supposed to occur at the end of days, and with supremacy of Judaism. 

Pasted from <http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Messiah.htm>

A little further down the page, they also quote from one of the most famous of all Jewish sages…

One concept of the Messiah is given by Maimonides  (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon), in his commentary on tractate Sanhedrin, of the Babylonian Talmud:

"The Messianic age is when the Jews will regain their independence and all return to the land of Israel. The Messiah will be a very great king, he will achieve great fame, and his reputation among the gentile nations will be even greater than that of King Solomon. His great righteousness and the wonders that he will bring about will cause all peoples to make peace with him and all lands to serve him…. Nothing will change in the Messianic age, however, except that Jews will regain their independence. Rich and poor, strong and weak, will still exist. However it will be very easy for people to make a living, and with very little effort they will be able to accomplish very much…. it will be a time when the number of wise men will increase…war shall not exist, and nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation…. The Messianic age will be highlighted by a community of the righteous and dominated by goodness and wisdom. It will be ruled by the Messiah, a righteous and honest king, outstanding in wisdom, and close to God. Do not think that the ways of the world or the laws of nature will change, this is not true. The world will continue as it is. The prophet Isaiah predicted "The wolf shall live with the sheep, the leopard shall lie down with the kid." This, however, is merely allegory, meaning that the Jews will live safely, even with the formerly wicked nations. All nations will return to the true religion [monotheism, although not necessarily Judaism] and will no longer steal or oppress. Note that all prophecies regarding the Messiah are allegorical – Only in the Messianic age will we know the meaning of each allegory and what it comes to teach us. Our sages and prophets did not long for the Messianic age in order that they might rule the world and dominate the gentiles….the only thing they wanted was to be free for Jews to involve themselves with the Torah and its wisdom."

Pasted from <http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Messiah.htm>

My conclusion is that this passage can definitely be used by Christians as “evidence” that Jesus was prophesied to be a messiah (although, this particular passage makes their concurrent claim of divinity for this messiah quite problematic, as it’s a bit schizophrenic for God to be a servant to God). However, because it can just as easily be used to describe the traditional Jewish idea of “messiah,” I have to embrace that interpretation because it is a more organic corollary to the Torah, against which I believe all claims to authority must be judged.

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Here’s another one of those funny emails that get passed around the Internet… this one was funny enough, to me, that I thought I’d pass it along myself!

Three men were hiking through a forest when they came upon a large raging, Violent river.
Needing to get to the other side,
The first man prayed:

“God, please give me the strength to cross the river.”

Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs
And he was able to swim
Across in about 2 hours, having almost drowned twice.

After witnessing that, the second man prayed:
“God, please give me the strength and the tools to cross the river”

Poof! God gave him a rowboat and strong arms
And strong legs and he
Was able to row across in about an hour
After almost capsizing once.

Seeing what happened to the first two men,
The third man prayed:
“God, please give me the strength, the tools and the intelligence to cross the river”

Poof! He was turned into a woman.
She checked the map,
Hiked one
Hundred yards up stream
And walked across the bridge.

GO AHEAD, SEND THIS TO A WOMAN WHO NEEDS A GOOD LAUGH AND TO ANY MAN WHO CAN HANDLE IT!

If at first you don’t succeed, do it the way your wife told you!

Our interest payment to service our $11,000,000,000,000 in debt now stands at about $26,000,000,000 ($26 billion). Per month. That’s over $300 billion a year that will be sent (likely overseas) to our creditors instead of being used to upgrade our schools, roads, or national defense. Common sense tells us that is unsustainable—a country that cannot educate or secure its population is a country that will not be around much longer.

One of the tricks that our leaders have successfully played on us is the illusion of numbers. If I asked you to send me a check for $4,000 you’d probably think about what you could buy with that money (an amazing vacation, new furniture, braces for your child, etc.) and then you’d wonder why on earth you’d send it to me. But when our government asks us for $26 billion every month we don’t have the same reaction because it doesn’t feel personal. Well, let’s make it personal. With one monthly $26 billion interest payment we could fully fund the annual budgets of the Centers for Disease Control ($6.1 billion, annual budget), Coast Guard ($8.7 billion), and the Department of the Interior ($11.1 billion).

With our annual $300 billion in interest payments we could fully fund the Departments of Commerce ($8.1 billion), Education ($68 billion), Homeland Security ($42.3 billion), Housing and Urban Development ($52.3 billion), Energy ($23.2 billion), Justice ($25 billion), and Labor ($49.6 billion) for an entire year.

By 2019, annual interest payments on the national debt will balloon to a projected $806 billion! Why? Because, as you might know from your own credit cards, interest compounds quickly. Making only the minimum payments will result in the unpaid interest being added to our outstanding debt. It’s a cycle that’s almost impossible to pull out of and the damage to our country will almost certainly be irreversible. That $806 billion is more than what it cost us last year to fund the entire Department of Defense ($583 billion), Veterans Affairs ($86.6 billion), the Department of Transportation ($68.7 billion), and the State Department ($18.9 billion). . . combined.

Where will all of that money come from? Again, the politicians say “the rich!” or maybe “the greedy corporations!”—but if that’s our plan, then we are set up for dramatic failure. The total 2008 profits of Exxon Mobil ($45.2 billion), General Electric ($17.41 billion), Wal-Mart ($12.7 billion), and IBM ($12.3 billion) totaled $87.61 billion. If we taxed those profits at 100 percent we still wouldn’t even have on-third of the amount needed to pay the annual interest payment—let alone any of the principal!

So what about the wealthy? Look at it this way: if we took all personal income tax revenue from every American taxpayer for the next decade you would still NOT have enough money to pay off the national debt, even if you exclude interest. And, as a side benefit, we’d have zero dollars to fund the actual government over those years.

This is modern-day slavery, but instead of being sold to work in the fields our children will be working hundred-hour weeks at their jobs to pay off the debts we’ve amassed.

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, by Glenn Beck, pp 24–26.

Can you honestly tell me that you think this is the sort of change that we need in this country?