The Cult of the Body

 If morality requires respect for the life of the body, it does not make it an absolute value. It rejects a neo-pagan notion that tends to promote the cult of the body, to sacrifice everything for its sake, to idolize physical perfection and success at sports. By its selective preference of the strong over the weak, such a conception can lead to the perversion of human relationships.

CCC 2289

I have a certain admiration for smokers. They disregard the sermons from their doctors and family members and the Surgeon General's warning on every pack of smokes they buy, and they light up. Certainly, smoking is bad for your health. But those smokers know something that many of us have forgotten. It was the one bit of wisdom John Maynard Keynes actually possessed which is that in the long run we are all dead.

It is not my intention to promote smoking or cigars and whiskey as good things. But the mentality behind those things is a good thing because they refute what the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to as the "cult of the body." This cult of the body has its roots in ancient Greek culture that placed a heavy emphasis on physical prowess and perfection. You can see this emphasis in the statuary from that time.

It is difficult to find this Greek perfection in reality as even the most sculpted of athletes today retain flaws whether they are crooked teeth, acne scars, or what have you. Plus, they all get old which brings the sags and the wrinkles that time inflicts. Yet, these imperfections do not keep people from pursuing this perfection and the vanity of it all by spending countless hours at the gym, adhering to strict calorie restricted diets, wearing expensive clothes and make up, taking botox injections, and going under the knife for cosmetic surgery.

Now, health and fitness are good things because they enable us to function and do things in service to others and also take care of ourselves. We shouldn't abuse our bodies with drugs and alcohol and other risky behaviors that are detrimental to health and well being. But we shouldn't worship our bodies in vanity. If you want to know what this looks like, visit one of those fancy gyms with the chrome weights and the mirrors on the wall. The mirrors are a clear indicator of the cult of the body. Gym rats will say that the mirrors are for checking proper form until you see how much time they spend just flexing in front of those mirrors with their shirts off in admiration of their muscles.

In antiquity, you see a rejection of the Greek cult of the body with the rise of Roman culture. To look at Roman statuary in contrast to Greek statuary, you see the Romans sculpted their heroes as they actually looked. The statues include wrinkles and scars and male pattern baldness. There is an ugliness to them but also a certain manliness to them as well. The Romans were certainly not metrosexuals.

The mean between the extremes of worship and abuse would be care for the body. This means bathing, brushing your teeth, getting adequate rest. eating healthy food, taking exercise, and the usual things we know promote the proper function of our bodies. It also means not abusing tobacco and alcohol. It's hard to serve others with cirrhosis of the liver or coughing up a lung.

The cult of the body manifests itself in vanity. The number one issue for these body cultists would be aging. They go out of their way to diminish or hide wrinkles. They worry about gray hair or losing teeth. But this is aging which happens to everyone. Trying to fight this starts to look very pathetic especially when it comes to the extremes of plastic surgery. There is dignity in wearing the face that God and time have given you.

Fitness is another area of body worship especially people who spend extra hours trying to burn off that last bit of stubborn belly fat. Who cares? Then, you have men who lose their minds when they lose their hair. They feel compelled to fix this calamity with various drugs and rugs.

Finally, we have people who think they can cheat death and achieve immortality. I recommend a vegan diet for health and longevity but even vegans die. Our bodies are destined for the grave, and the best we can do in this regard is to postpone that date with death. But death comes to us all. In between, we are going to endure diseases, injuries, scars, and aging. This should not cause us the slightest bit of grief.

I don't know if the superfit hot bodies at the gym or the guy with his cigars and whiskey have it right, but my gut tells me that the cigar man comes closer to the correct mindset than the guy with the washboard abs. The fitness fanatic hopes to achieve immortality by simply not dying. But seeing a bunch of middle aged Catholic guys smoking cigars and pipes might seem decadent and unhealthy, but that smoke testifies to hope in the resurrection. We all die, but we should look to the time when we live again. When that time comes, we may elect to keep some of the scars and wrinkles we've earned in this life.

The Misery of Fun

I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.

MARTHA WASHINGTON

Philosophy seems like a waste of time and money. Tell someone that you have a degree in philosophy, and they will make jokes about careers involving french fries and drive thru windows. But the philosopher is better able to handle life than the unemployed STEM major who can't understand why he lost his well paying job to an Indian immigrant who works for half the pay. Math and science majors focus on how the world works, but they never ask why the world works and for what end. They just know they need money for high price gaming PCs and their ham radio shacks. For them, everything is done for the ultimate aim of fun. But there is a problem with fun. Fun is the precursor to destruction.

We learn this truth at a young age. As children, we turn to toys and play. These things provide fun. Then, they don't. Because evil is never satisfied, fun needs ever increasing sources of variety. So, the bored child turns to broken glass, rusty nails, gasoline, matches, and helpless animals to be tortured. Do all children end up going down this destructive path? No, they don't. Most children have parents who discipline their kids before these destructive tendencies begin or soon thereafter. But those impulses remain. We see this when these children become teenagers.

When kids hit the teenage years, their fun may turn to sports and pop music. But they will probably favor whiskey and cars that go really fast ending up wrapped around telephone poles. By college, depraved sex and drugs have entered the picture along with binge drinking and the bacchanalia known as spring break. Then, if they survive, they buckle down to a lifetime of misery as they grind out their work days for the Man. They may find respite from this misery by playing golf or watching televised sporting events. Or, they may turn to cocaine and the extramarital affair. Finally, they hope to earn enough to retire, so they can wrap up their miserable lives with a bit of fun at the end and hopefully not eat Alpo.

Now, my wife claims that I am being a Puritan on this topic, and there is an element of truth to this. Like the Puritans, I do not believe in fun. Here is what Nathaniel Hawthorne had to say about the Puritans:

...the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.

Puritans did not believe in having fun. Instead, they believed in doing work. This is how we got the famous Puritan work ethic. The problem with Puritanism was that its severity extended to the religious domain disallowing religious feasts and even the celebration of Christmas. This is why Puritan churches were so plain and drab, and Puritan sermons were so torturous as if they were relentlessly pounding a nail into your soul. Without a doubt, this was an error. But when it came to fun, the Puritans were entirely correct. Here's a bit of that Puritan wisdom from Richard Baxter:

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves.

Now, a Catholic may decry this sort of mirthless existence as being anti-Catholic, but it isn't. Here are the words of Saint Benedict on the matter:

Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.

The Puritans and the Benedictines are in agreement on this matter. Idleness leads to sin which is just another way of stating my thesis that fun is the precursor of destruction.

The antidote to fun is work. Virtually no one will dispute me on this because everyone seems to agree that work is no fun. But this is not entirely correct because it implies that work is not satisfying. The reality is that fun is not satisfying. If it was, it wouldn't lead to so much destruction.

If fun is the precursor to destruction, then work is the precursor to construction. When we work, profitable and fruitful endeavors flow from this activity. Aside from the frustrations that come from work, work is probably the most pleasurable thing you can do with your life. If work is so awesome, then why do people hate it so much? It comes down to one's attitude.

People hate work because it involves submission to rules, schedules, cooperation, and being obedient to the will of a boss or a customer or just one's own needs. The hatred of work is rooted in rebellion. We are obligated to work, but we are not obligated to play. We hate this obligation, so we hate work.

The rebellion and hatred of God is hidden in the rebellion and hatred of work. This is why people of a religious bent enjoy work while those without that religious orientation despise work. In choosing fun, they celebrate this rebellion. You can see this sort of rebellion at something like Burning Man which ends the fun with a rite of destruction in defiance of God.

Fun ends in destruction and misery. The detritus of it all is left for others to clean up. The fun people go home to nurse hangovers or wake up in jail.

Certainly, there are ways to have fun that don't lead to destruction. It is possible to have fun in this way. You can dance or compete in a sport or play a game or enjoy some music. But all of these fun activities require rules and structure which eventually looks like work.

Punk rock is more fun to play than classical music but far less satisfying even after you have smashed your guitar to pieces. Likewise, slam dancing is more fun than ballet even after someone has knocked out some of your teeth in the melee. There is simply no satisfaction in destruction.

The opposite of work is not fun but rest. Rest is simply the contemplation and enjoyment of the products of our labor. It comes when a pianist listens to his own recording of a Bach composition. It comes when a poet reads his own poems. It comes when the chef can finally sit down and eat his own dinner. Work and rest are linked together.

The path of work is better than the path of fun. But precious few people get this. They have such a poor attitude towards work that they find no delight in it. This is because of that fundamental anger towards God. Yet, the joy of work can be experienced the moment someone puts away this rebellion.

Frustration in work is the price we pay for our rebellion against God. Just as we frustrated God's plan for us, God allows frustration in our plans and our work. Yet, you will find these frustrations become lessened as you submit more willingly to God's will. The key is to keep working despite these frustrations. By enduring the frustrations and offering them up to the Almighty, we pay our temporal debts and fill our eternal treasure chests. What was a curse becomes a blessing.

The way to end the misery of fun and find the pleasure of work is to do more work. Just keep at it. Forget the vacation. Forget the holiday. Forget the retirement where you spend your golden years playing shuffleboard and filling your diaper. Just stick to working as much as you can for the benefit of yourself and others and for the glory of God. As miserable as this may sound to you, you will find the greatest pleasure and satisfaction in this lifestyle.

What about hobbies? You will find the best hobbies are just different forms of work. Gardening is a good hobby along with woodworking. Painting, playing music and even writing a blog on the internet are all constructive hobbies. The worst hobbies are activities like collecting things. Collectors merely accumulate the work of others and show an underdeveloped mind. They can't do their own work, so they become mere spectators in life instead of engaged participants.

What about rest? Certainly, everyone needs a break. But the sweetest rest comes when it is earned. A day spent in activity will give you greater sleep than a day spent in idleness. True earned rest is the second half of the joy of work.

Fun is the precursor to destruction. Work is the precursor to construction. I don't expect all of my readers to get this wisdom. This is why those philosophy majors have a leg up in life even if they are reduced to flipping burgers for a living. What makes a thing joyful or miserable comes down to what we think about it. We merely have to change our minds to access this joy and pleasure. Most people can't and won't do this. They exchange the pleasures of work for the misery of fun. And they don't get why they are so dissatisfied in life.

Charlie's Rejection of Certain Modern Assumptions and Conventional Wisdom

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.

NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

I am an odd guy. I'm not odd like the way the Unabomber was odd. That guy was looney tunes. But I do find myself out of step with the rest of the world in terms of my customs and habits. I would notice more if I cared, but I usually don't. But other people notice. These people embrace certain modern notions and habits that I reject. Naturally, they would like to beat me into some sort of conformity until they meet with the jet blast from the furnace of my anger. I don't like when people push on me, and people like to push on you. It's not enough that they have lives to live. They want to live yours as well. This desire ends when they drive headfirst into the brick wall of my defiance.

I don't care to live like everyone else. This is because everyone else is stupid. That would be an arrogant thing to say except that it is true. On the whole, the rest of the world is a herd of imbeciles. They march in drumbeat to disaster. I'm not saying that I have all of the answers because I don't. But I do ask the questions that few ask which is why my path makes divergences from the mainstream. I am neither a revolutionary nor a conformist. I just have arrived at a different set of answers in opposition to the herd. Here is a list of those different answers:

1. Debt.

I don't believe in debt. I have used debt before, but I don't believe I was better off for it. Debt is the rich man's trick on the working man. The company store got replaced by MasterCard, but it's the same old con. It is the scheme to convince you to rent your food instead of buying it. You may laugh at that until you recall the dinners you put on your Visa. You may still be paying for them.

The difference between the rich and the poor is time. The rich believe in later. The poor believe in right now. Because of a crisis today, the poor mortgage tomorrow. The result is a lifetime of neverending crisis and more debt which begets more crisis. This is debt slavery. I refuse to do it.

My antidote to debt slavery is that I do without. If I don't have the cash for something, I don't buy it. The result of these choices is that I live a fairly austere life and accumulate money as a consequence of consuming less than I earn. If I were really clever, I would become a lender to idiots and get filthy rich. But I find this distasteful. It is enough to stay out of the trap without luring others into the trap.

2. Vacations.

I hate vacation. This goes back to my childhood when the old man would take us to places like the beach, but his ill temper made such trips a living hell. Subsequent trips and outings have done little to improve my viewpoint on these things.

What makes me hate vacations is twofold. The first is the people. I love going places with my wife, and that's about it. Most people go with family members, and the truth about family is that these are the people you would never be friends with in life except that you had the misfortune of being related to them. So, you cram yourself together with people who think they have a license to behave badly because you are related to them. This is why family relations are such a comedy goldmine for television sitcoms and movies. Family members are more civil with their co-workers than they are with the people they profess to love. Spending extra time with these people you can't stand in some different place is a recipe for disaster. Yet, the family vacation endures as some indispensable rite of suffering.

The second reason I hate vacations are the places. The hellish pit of all time would have to be Disneyworld and the other attractions in Orlando, FL. There are other places in similarity like Myrtle Beach or Gatlinburg. I've been to all of these tourist traps, and I just don't like them. These places are designed to excite the senses, but they are tacky, contrived, and ugly.

The places I really enjoy visiting are not the ones they charge admission to experience. These would be parks, museums, libraries, and churches. I call these the "quiet places." These places tend to be beautiful and/or tranquil. And that is what makes me separate from the herd. In my leisure, I seek tranquility and quiet. Everyone else seeks excitement and noise.

3. Retirement.

If I had it in my power, I would raise the retirement age in this country to 85. As it stands, we have people who spend almost as much time in retirement as they spent working. I find this to be a shame and a disgrace.

I don't believe in idleness, so the idea that I have to work to pay for someone else to spend decades in idleness sticks in my craw. We are not talking about feeble and crippled seniors with walkers. These able bodied people are running marathons, climbing mountains, and going to the gym even in their seventies. Unlike the grandparents of yesteryear, old people today don't have bodies destroyed from backbreaking labor and workplace injuries. They had it easy in life. Now, they feel entitled to take it even easier for the last 30 years of their lives before they croak and enter eternal damnation.

4. Man caves.

I'm not sure when these became a thing, but I have always been against them. The typical man cave is a place where a man and his friends can gather to watch sports on a big screen television while drinking beer, smoking cigars, and scratching their nether regions. They may even debase themselves further with video games. The man cave is really swank if there is a bar along with various sports paraphenalia decorating the walls.

Because men have debased themselves to the level of adolescent brats, they feel entitled to a play room where they can indulge their vices and separate themselves from their wives and families. These men are hedonistic and selfish which is unmanly.

The man cave is a variation on the study which gentlemen of a different era would go to read books and write. These men were literate, and the study allowed them to develop their minds. But men don't read anymore. They play with toys when they are not playing with themselves to smartphone porn in the bathroom.

I am against man caves because I believe a man's space within a home should be small. My space in my home is a desk made from a very large table bought from a thrift store. This desk sits in the living room, and it is the place where I do everything such as writing this blog, reading the internet, answering email, etc. I have some clutter on the desk that needs to be cleared. Except for my desk, my home belongs entirely to my wife. She makes the home, and I am fine having my small space in it.

The only legitimate spaces for men are the yard and the garage/workshop. Men are made for work not playing like children or lounging about. This is why I don't care about having a man cave.

5. Eating out.

I hear various stats about the frequency of people eating out. It is usually 3-5 times a week. This is more than I eat out in an entire year. The only time that I eat out is when I am traveling far from home. I will stop at Taco Bell and Subway and eat something. But even when I arrive at my hotel, I will go to the nearest grocery store and buy food that I can eat in my room. My wife is totally on board with this.

I have two reasons for not eating out. The first is that I am vegan and eating out for a vegan is a nightmare. Plus, nothing tastes as good as home cooking. The second is that I am a cheapskate. Eating out is expensive. Not eating out will save you a ton of dough.

In addition to not eating out, I also don't go to bars or coffee places. I make my own coffee at home and put it in a travel mug. Cold drinks go in a stainless steel tumbler. I don't buy coffee from Starbucks or soda pop from convenience stores. This will save you a lot of money. I also pack a lunch for work and snacks for trips.

My wife makes this lifestyle possible, so I need to give her credit. But if she went on strike tomorrow, I would still make my own sandwich and cook at home. It just wouldn't taste as good as her cooking, but it will still taste better than eating out.

6. Smartphones/social media.

I still prefer a flip phone. I have never owned a smartphone. I deleted all my social media accounts, so I am Facebook free for years now. The result is that I am present. I have conversations with people. I don't terrorize people on the highway while looking at my smartphone instead of what is in front of me. I can enjoy an outing without the need to post it on Instagram.

I get looks and comments when I pull out my flip phone to answer a call. People wonder how I survive and live without one of those rectangles. But I live the same way I lived before those things ever came into our lives. I do use a computer and the internet, but these things are confined to my desk. I don't even own one of those stupid tablets like the iPad. I write, so I need a keyboard.

7. Toys.

I don't buy toys, and I never will. These toys would be things like a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a bass boat, an RV, a Jet Ski. or a sports car. You can also add expensive exercise equipment, large screen televisions, and hot tubs to the toy list. These things are decadent and wasteful.

I know many people who buy these things usually on credit except they don't have time to play with them because they have to work so hard to make the payments on their toys. Then, there is the storage for all of this crap which costs even more money. I don't have time and money to waste on crap.

I prefer buying tools. This would be things like lawn movers, old tractors, utility trailers, and pick up trucks. I like drills and saws and wrenches. If it enables work, then I am willing to spend money on it.

8. Hunting, fishing, and playing golf.

This one is a corollary to the one on toys. Where I live, men do one, two, or all three of these things. Basically, hunting, fishing, and golf allow men to abandon their wives and go sit outside somewhere. That seat may be a deer stand, a boat, or a golf cart. If you do all three, you always have a weekend activity for the entire year.

I don't pull the trifecta because I am a vegan which kills two of the activities, and I don't have the time or the money to waste on that crap. Plus, I really hate golf.

9. Hobbies.

I only have one thing I consider a hobby, and you are reading it. Writing costs me nothing but time and a miniscule amount of supplies and equipment. Everything else are temptations which I resist. Then, there are interests that I don't consider to be hobbies but necessities. This would be things like firearms, self-defense, gardening, homesteading, and what have you. I consider these things not so much as fun pastimes but as necessary things for survival and prosperity.

I don't waste time and money with stamp collecting, coin collecting, baseball card collecting, stocking a wine cellar, playing musical instruments, ham radio, collecting vinyl records, and things like that. I have barely enough time for my single hobby. I know this makes me a boring person, but I am fine with it. For me to pursue an interest to the level of a hobby, it has to be for some sort of practical benefit. I might build things out of wood one day if I ever get a shop. A chair is a practical thing.

I know too many people with cluttered garages from hobbies they started and never stuck with. I don't want to be one of those people. The truth is that people's number one hobbies today are watching television and goofing off on social media.

10. Meathead diets.

First, there was the Atkins diet. Then, there was the Paleo diet. Then, there was the keto diet. Then, there was the carnivore diet. They are all essentially the same diet. They are heavy on the meat and light to non-existent on the carbs. In addition, you can throw the gluten free insanity on this pile of stupidity.

You can lose weight on these diets in much the same way that taking up smoking will help you lose weight. But these meathead diets are not healthy. They wreck your digestive tract and promote cardiovascular disease. Bacon is not a health food. Steak is not a health food.

The best and healthy way to lose weight is to eat a low fat vegan diet and embark on a fitness program with an emphasis on aerobic exercise. Carbs are good. They provide energy you need for exercise. They curb hunger. They will not give you a heart attack.

11. Porn.

I don't do porn. I have two reasons for this. The first is that I am Catholic. Viewing porn and the activity that goes with it is a mortal sin which means you will pay for it in Hell. You can receive forgiveness for this if you confess it to a priest and receive absolution. This is its own hell.

The second is that I am married. Wives are not cool with husbands looking at porn. Spouses are shocked and dismayed to learn why men carry their smartphones to the bathroom with them. This is also why I never care to touch another man's phone because I know where it has been.

Most men look at porn, and its ubiquity has made it an almost acceptable vice in our modern internet connected culture. But I reject this. It is filth and sickness leading to all sorts of evil. If you doubt this, merely imagine your sister or your daughter doing porn. Imagine coming across someone you know and loved locked into videos of this sickness.

I pray three Hail Marys each day for purity, and I use an image of Our Lady as the wallpaper on all my devices. The Mother of God is the secret to chastity, purity, and custody of the eyes. Her intercessions will keep you from sin and temptation.

12. Nominalism.

I attend Catholic Mass each Sunday which I have not missed in seven years. I also make Holy Days of Obligation and attend daily Mass. I pray the Rosary each day. I read the Bible and other spiritual books. I know and practice my faith.

It is popular among many Catholics especially Catholic men to just sleep in on Sundays or to let the wife take over the religious leadership in the home. These men are half ass in their faith. They think this is OK because deep down they don't really believe. They don't have the courage to declare themselves as atheists, so they opt for the functional atheism we know as nominalism. This would be CATHOLIC IN NAME ONLY.

Men who do not practice religion are not manly. They are a disgrace lacking neither courage nor conviction. What would these men fight and die for if they don't even have the stones to get to Mass on Sunday morning?

13. Sports

This is a sort of corollary to the man cave thing, but I do not watch sports or ESPN or listen to sports talk radio or hang out at the local sports bar. I used to do this with basketball being my favorite sport to watch and discuss. Then, one day it hit me that I was wasting my life on this stuff. None of it really mattered to my life or the wider world.

Think about it. Why watch a basketball game when you would derive more benefit from playing a basketball game? Why not use the time you watch athletic people playing a game when you could just go to the gym and get in shape? Even if you just want to relax, you would be better off sitting down with a cup of coffee and a nice book.

I don't follow sports. I follow politics. This means that none of my conversations are safe. Men use sports as a safe topic of chit chat, but I am not a chit chat guy. My conversations tend to be controversial and confrontational. I make a lot of people mad, but I don't care.

Conclusion

The one thing you can derive from all of these things is that the C-Man is not a fun guy. I actually find great joy and satisfaction in the few things I do which would be reading and writing. As for the rest of my life, it is simple and functional. The upside of these rejections is that I derive great enjoyment from life at a very low cost. I don't need a lot of things or a lot of space or a lot of money. It may seem that my life is starkly different from others, but I don't think it is that different. My life is probably the same as yours minus all the junk and wasted time and money.

Forbidden Information

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

GEORGE ORWELL

Censorship has always been one of the primary tools of tyranny. Now, as a Catholic, I do not believe in an absolute freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Various forms of pornography should not be permitted especially those forms involving minors and revenge porn. In addition, libel, slander, and calumny should not be permitted either. I am also not a fan of doxxing which is the publication or revelation of private information of individuals to make them the target of violence. That particular practice is what made me do away with the combox on the C-Blog many years ago.

The First Amendment gives people a virtually unfettered right to free expression in the United States. It is so ingrained in the American psyche that people believe that it is a Divine Right. But this is not precise. Every person has the right from God by virtue of natural law to speak and express that which is true. We are forbidden to misrepresent the truth. We know this from the eighth commandment which forbids the bearing of false witness.

Liberty is the freedom to express the truth. Tyranny is when the freedom to express the truth is forbidden or punished. This relationship to the truth must always be emphasized. This is why we do not permit things like libel, slander, and perjury. Anyone who pushes the libertarian viewpoint on freedom of expression is in error. This would be virtually all libertarians and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. But this leads us to Pilate's pointed question to Jesus. What is truth?

We do not always know the truth on a matter. For instance, did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone or were there others involved? Did people within our government have prior knowledge of what was going to happen on 9/11? Did Donald Trump collude with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election? All of these things belong to the realm of conspiracy theories. These things occupy a middle ground between truth and lies. Because they are theories, they are subject to investigation to either find support for them or facts that dismiss them.

Should conspiracy theories be protected speech? I think they should. This doesn't mean that people should publish false information. It does mean that people should be free to ask questions. What really happened? Who was involved? Is this true?

Tinfoil hat conspiracy theories are those that are so ludicrous that sane people basically ignore them. This would be things like the flat earth or time travelers or the Loch Ness Monster. We don't put disclaimers before a Stars Wars movie telling people that the movie is fiction. Likewise, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories need no disclaimer either. This is why you can listen to some really outlandish stuff each night on Coast to Coast AM which causes less controversy than what you will hear during the day on the same stations from the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin. It is enough for people to dismiss these things by labeling them as conspiracy theories.

I enjoy these fringe programs in much the same way that people enjoy watching The Twilight Zone or Star Trek. I take these things with a grain of salt in much the same way that I know a Hollywood biopic will take liberties with the source material for the sake of entertainment or that pious legends about various saints in the Catholic Church may not have happened. For something to be a lie, it must be something the liar knows to be absolutely false but is presented to others as absolutely true. For nutty people, they may not know a thing is false even if we do. They may truly believe the earth is flat, and I am tolerant of these delusions.

Heresy is another matter. Because of the Protestant Revolution, Western societies have become tolerant of heresies. But there is no Divine Right to heresy in much the same way that people are not allowed to advertise rat poison as a health tonic. Rat poison kills the body. Heresy kills the soul. When Thomas Aquinas called for the death penalty for heretics, he was correct in this. We consider it tyranny today because we no longer believe in God or the soul or the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals. Basically, Aquinas believed that you do not have the right to lead souls to Hell.

The Founders being influenced by thinkers of the Enlightenment were heretics. Thomas Jefferson was a heretic. But so was Pontius Pilate and Nero. Yet, these men were ordained by God to rule over us. And they were not wrong on everything. They were right on some things and wrong on others. This is why Catholic monks could preserve pagan literature and philosophy like Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, and Homer. So, when Jefferson talked about being endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights, He was correct. When he denied the Trinity or the miracles and incarnation of Christ, he was wrong.

We know instinctively and by natural law that none of us has an unfettered right to free expression. The Supreme Court already acknowledges this. This is the famous screaming fire in a crowded theater argument. Likewise, divulging true information for the sake of harm like telling the location of a protected witness to the Mafia is also not permitted. We can conceal the truth when it is necessary, prudent, and moral to do so. We just can't misrepresent the truth by telling lies.

It is vitally important to have this proper concept of liberty in mind. This is a conservative view of liberty based in Christianity and natural law and not the libertarian view of liberty based upon abstract Enlightenment principles. Abstraction leads to error. A classic example of this error would be the case of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

Julian Assange clearly subscribes to the abstract version of liberty instead of the Christian notion. The man has indicated no religious beliefs at all, and I suspect that he is an atheist. His organization, Wikileaks, publishes information that is essentially unredacted. Some of this information has exposed crimes, atrocities, and human rights abuses. This is laudable. Unfortunately, Wikileaks has also exposed the identities of people that has put them in danger. This is criminal. This publishing of raw information without regard to the consequences is what led Edward Snowden to eschew Wikileaks and to take his information to Glenn Greenwald, a reputable journalist who does not publish his facts in the same irresponsible manner as Wikileaks.

Is Julian Assange a hero? Unfortunately, I have to say that he is not. He is clearly a man devoted to his principles, but those principles are not Christian. If you expose the killing of innocents, that is a good thing. If you enable the killing of innocents, this is an evil thing. It is essentially the same thing as giving the name and address of a protected informant to organized crime knowing that he will probably end up dead. Because Assange believes in his abstract principles, publishing the truth is always right regardless of the consequences.

Opinions are another matter. It would be a lie to say someone is a criminal if I know they are not a criminal. But I can say honestly that I think someone is a criminal in much the same way that I can say what I think about a particular food or a bad movie or whatever. The expression of an opinion is not the same as a lie. This is why we treat the front page of a newspaper differently than the editorial page. People are not entitled to their own facts, but they are entitled to their own opinions. It is in the realm of opinion that issues of censorship really matter.

An opinion is not so much an expression of a truth as it is an evaluation of that truth. What weight and importance should we give to the facts? For instance, a politician may be an open homosexual in a declared relationship with a fellow sodomite. I think this is disgusting where other people think this is awesome. They express their opinions. I express mine. You make your own decisions on these things. Should these opinions be allowed? Absolutely.

Tyranny is opposed to liberty. Tyranny uses two primary tools to advance its cause. The first is the suppression of contrary truths and opinions. The second is the promulgation of lies through propaganda. The left wing in the United States of America employ both of these tools of tyranny as they publish and broadcast propaganda and lies and censor all opposing voices. Their oppression on these things has permeated work places, college campuses, social media, and even government with criminalization of various forms of hate speech and even pronouns. Let it be known that the left wingers do not believe in either a conservative or a libertarian form of freedom of speech. The only freedom of expression they permit are those expressions that gain their approval.

Left wingers must always resort to force and tyranny when it comes to their views on things. This is because they are fundamentally untrue, wrong, and evil. Free people are repulsed by these tyrants and their hatred of liberty. The only way they can win arguments is with guns in their hands. This is why the hands of tyrants are always covered in the blood of patriots and martyrs.

The argument that progressives make is that so-called "hate speech" should not be permitted mainly because they offend certain groups and may inspire violence against them. The basis for this argument comes from the mistreatment of blacks and Jews during awful times in history. Clearly, the political oppression of these minorities for simply belonging to a different race is a crime against humanity. People have a right to be secure in their lives, their liberty, and their property from evil and tyranny. But do they have a right to not be offended? We have to be careful how we answer this one because this leads to the suppression of virtually all opinions as all opinions are bound to offend someone somewhere at some time.

You can't take away someone's opinions. You can't make someone like something they don't like. You can't compel someone to believe what they do not believe. Not even God Himself does this. We should love God and our fellow man, but this is a matter of our own free wills. There is no compulsion on these things. Yet, progressives abrogate to themselves a power that not even God in His omnipotence exercises.

It is beyond our power to make a Nazi love a Jew or a Klan member to love a black man. Similarly, no one can make another love God. Not even the Roman Catholic Church attempts this leaving conversion to the free will decisions of people. Likewise, I can't make these commies love capitalism or vote for Donald Trump.

Progressives attempt to force others to think or believe things against their will. This is why all communists throughout history have resorted to assassinations, intimidation, imprisonment, torture, and re-education to force the conformity of human will to their sick ideologies. This is also why they find common cause with Islamic fanatics who believe totally different things but use the same tactics. In these things, they wish to force the good to submit to evil. They belong to the Devil, and they do his bidding.

Christians and conservatives are accused of the same things, but these accusations are lies. Where progressives force conformity to evil, Christians and conservatives promote conformity to the good and the restraint of evil. You can't force someone to be good, but you can prevent them from doing evil to others. Imprisoning a murderer is not tyranny. It is tyranny to put a murderer in charge of a nation which is what progressives seek in their deluded idiocy.

All of this is a prelude to the case of Alex Jones and the various ways he is being censored across various internet platforms. The one thing we can establish beyond any reasonable doubt is that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube do not allow freedom of expression on their platforms. Moreover, the only opinions they allow without restraint are left wing opinions. Now, this is perfectly fine except they have advertised and promoted themselves as something other than what they are. In short, they are guilty of fraud. It would be like a landlord who agrees to rent an apartment to a couple and collects that rent but locks the door to their apartment one day for no good reason whatsoever. Likewise, these platforms offer space to users to express themselves freely within the constraints of the law but then rescinds that offer for no good reason just like the evil landlord I used in my example. Essentially, these platforms are in breach of their contracts with users.

No sane person would choose to live in an apartment complex that locked out its tenants on an arbitrary or random basis or for unknown reasons. But this is exactly what social media platforms are doing now. We know the real reason. They hate conservatives. They should say at the outset that conservative opinions and viewpoints are not allowed on their platforms. But this would be a level of honesty these liars cannot muster. They want the lie of allowing freedom of expression while denying it. This amounts to collecting rent on a property that doesn't actually exist. This is fraud.

I am confident that these platforms would lose a class action lawsuit against them for breach of contract. It is not a matter of constitutional law so much as it is a matter of civil law. I agree that demonetizing and deplatforming individuals who have violated no terms of service is an injustice. The remedy is to either declare their bias against conservatives or abide by their agreements with users.

When things become a criminal matter is when these platforms collude to deny service across all platforms and services. This would be a platform like Facebook convincing Uber and Lyft to not allow ride sharing with conservatives. This rises to the level of organized crime as it becomes a matter of extortion and intimidation. The KKK used such tactics against black civil rights workers, and they are against the law.

This brings us to the issue of Alex Jones. Alex is guilty of one political crime--helping to elect Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States. For this crime, Jones and others have been deplatformed and are now being subject to increased levels of criminal intimidation from organized leftists conspiring to deprive the man of not only his liberties but even his ability to live. These are crimes and nothing short of pure evil. I can't stand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but I would never seek to ban her from social media or deny her the ability to get a ride with Uber or fly on airplane. If anyone did this to her, I would oppose it with the same vigor that I oppose what is now happening to Alex Jones.

Individuals have the right to deny service to people they don't like. If a Jewish deli wants to ban Neo-Nazis from eating there, I am cool with that. This is the same reason why I support Christian bakers refusing to bake gay wedding cakes or even some left wing commie cafe refusing to serve me a cup of espresso because I might be wearing a MAGA hat. But when they all conspire to do this thing, it becomes a criminal matter then. On such a basis, you could literally starve people to death as you deny them access to food, clothing, shelter, and the like. This is known as racketeering.

The Chinese government already does this with their social credit system. If your social credit score drops too low because of various offenses against the tyranny there, you can be denied basic human services like loans, employment, transportation, and even food. And take a wild guess who has helped the Chinese tyrants in this endeavor. This would be Google and Facebook. For this alone, the upper management of those companies should be arrested and sent to an international court for human rights violations.

The left wing is without conscience or restraint. They are pure evil. Facebook, Google, and Twitter are overrun by these left wing tyrants who have found power to abuse within their gigantic enterprises. In short, they have colluded with tyranny and evil. Should the government do something about this? Absolutely.

Social media platforms make the absurd claim that they are not publishers. They are not able to control what gets posted on their platforms, so they should not be held legally responsible for the content that ends up on their services. So, if ISIS and other terrorists post threats on social media, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are not responsible. Yet, when they censor conservatives, they show that they can control what goes on their sites. Consequently, they should be held legally liable and even criminally responsible for what gets published on their sites. Or, they can return to being free speech zones.

The bottom line is that these platforms have colluded to make sure Donald Trump is not elected to a second term. Because they can't win the argument, they are attempting to shut down the argument. Leftists have always done this and always will do this. It is their nature much like the tale of the frog and the scorpion. Instead of fighting to get back on these social media plantations, conservatives need to establish alternative media, and this includes social media. Because of left wing efforts at censorship, this is why we have AM talk radio, Fox News, OANN, and websites like Breitbart. We just need to go one step further and establish our own social media and video platforms. Stop whining and start working. Our liberty is not lost yet. We just need to exercise it.

Providence and Prudence

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.

SAINT AUGUSTINE

People who believe in God often have trouble with a particular issue. It has to do with the relationship between being prudent while at the same time acknowledging total dependence on God in everything. Who is doing the work here? Is it us? Or, is it God? The answer to that question is obvious. It is both.

Anyone who farms for a living or just has a garden understands this relationship between our work and God's work. We can till the soil. We can plant the seeds. We can pull the weeds. We can irrigate if this is required. But once the seed leaves our hand, it really is up to God to make it grow. You can plant and water those seeds, but it is God who gives the increase.

The first error we encounter is the proud atheist or semi-atheist who does not acknowledge God's hand in his affairs. He is the type who scoffs at "thoughts and prayers" when calamity strikes. What is needed is intelligence and science and whatever. It is not the hand of God but the ingenuity of man that does the trick. The result is that this man's wisdom leads to hubris and arrogance which results in a great deal of foolishness.

The second error we encounter is the thick headed fideist who believes that God will provide and presumes upon it. They put away common sense and reason and "live by faith." This usually takes the form of a prosperity gospel believer who charges up her credit cards trusting God to make the payments for her. Something recoils in our souls when we hear of things like this. This is disgusting behavior.

A fundamental concept that all believers need to embrace is fides et ratio--faith and reason. These things are not in opposition. Since the Enlightenment, these things have been put in opposition with Protestants taking one side and atheists taking the other side. But the correct answer is that you need both.

In life, you need to rely on Providence while exercising prudence. This means praying to God that He will provide for your needs then clipping coupons to help save on groceries. It means saving your money for a rainy day instead of spending it. It means storing up food for the winter while saying grace before every meal in acknowledgement that God has provided even though it was your paycheck that covered it. In these things, we remain free of both arrogance and laziness.

A group that figured out this relationship between providence and prudence were the monks especially those that embraced the Rule of St. Benedict and the motto ora et labora--pray and work. When we pray and work, we embrace both providence and prudence. As a consequence of this, those monks built and preserved what we know as Western civilization. They were devout but also brilliant. They learned theology but also practical things like tending to their gardens, blacksmithing, raising animals, making clocks, and other things. They planted the seeds of science and invention. They preserved the philosophy of the Greeks.

My wife and I enjoy watching videos from homesteaders, and we have noticed a trait that many of them have. They have a great deal of practical wisdom combined with deep faith in God. Many of them turned to homesteading out of necessity especially during the Great Recession. They work hard, but they also pray hard. People in agrarian lifestyles grasp ora et labora. They are too poor to be prospetarians, and they are too reliant upon God to see them through to ever become proud. These people are truly the salt of the earth.

We make it through life with both Providence and prudence. When we say grace, we should also be thankful to God for the wisdom and prudence He gives us. Likewise, we are most prudent when we see the Divine Hand in all of our projects. Faith and reason are not in opposition. They reinforce each other. Everything we have and do comes from God including our own works. God always has us in His hands. Nothing we do succeeds apart from His will. Consequently, we should be both humble and wise. There's a reason the Book of Proverbs is in the Bible. We should the use the brains God gave us without forgetting that it was God that gave us those brains.

How To Suffer Well

Paul said to the centurion, and to the soldiers: Except these stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.

ACTS 27:31 DOUAY-RHEIMS

The story of Saint Paul's voyage and shipwreck in Acts 27 is an interesting one. If you read the Acts of the Apostles, you will realize that Paul took a lot of beatings along the way in his life. From the time of his experience and conversion on the Damascus road, Saint Paul was on the path of suffering. The new life in Christ was not an easy one. But Paul's example especially in the shipwreck show us that it is possible to suffer well.

There are two ways that you can suffer. You can suffer poorly, or you can suffer well. The difference is what happens to us internally during our trials. This is why God allows our suffering. He tries our souls in order to perfect them. Our sufferings are tests. We should strive to pass these tests. Here are some tips for passing the tests.

1. Recognize the inevitability of suffering.

Suffering in this life is not optional. There is not a suffering and non-suffering section when it comes to life in the temporal realm. Everyone suffers. Some suffer more than others, but even those who suffer the least externally often suffer the most internally. No one has a painless life except unbelievers who are granted some mercy for a time before their eternal damnation.

Our Lord suffered. No servant is above his master, so it makes sense that we should suffer, too. Some Protestant heretics will make the claim that the Christian life is one of endless blessings and bliss, but these people have never read or they choose not to remember what our Lord said in John's gospel:

These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world. 

JOHN 13:33 DOUAY-RHEIMS

Because of these Protestant heretics, believers will mistakenly conclude that their suffering is the consequence of something they have done wrong. What did Job do to deserve the calamities he endured? What did St. Peter and St. Paul do to deserve their beatings and executions? What did the centuries of saints do to deserve their strife, tortures, griefs, imprisonments, and martyrdoms? The simple fact is that if you are not suffering then you are probably doing something wrong.

2. Trust the plan.

When the hard times hit, the Devil will whisper in your ear all sorts of errors and blasphemies. Satan will tell you two things. God doesn't exist. If He does exist, He clearly doesn't know what He is doing. But God does exist, and He knows what He is doing.

We don't know the plan, and we don't need to know the plan. God lets you know what you need to know. Because His plans and His ways are often inscrutable to us, we're not going to comprehend it. Does a general consult with the foot soldiers about his strategies? Of course not. They just need to carry out their orders to the best of their abilities.

God's plans do not fail. We are the ones who fail. Even if we fail, God will not fail. When we fail to trust the plan, we tell God two things. I don't trust you, and I can do a better job of it than you. But we know these things are ludicrous.

Trusting the plan is known as abandonment to divine providence. The great Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade wrote a great book with that title. You can also read Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence for a shorter version of the same idea. These writings will bring you great comfort in trials and help you trust God's plan when it looks like absolute chaos from where you are sitting.

3. Quitting is not an option.

The temptation in any and every trial is to abandon the faith. People have grown accustomed to quitting their jobs and even quitting their marriages. Therefore, quitting God becomes an option especially in those times when you are suffering, and God doesn't seem to be there for us. We like to think that we are not quitters, but this is what Saint Peter thought before that cock crowed. Let's not have hubris on these matters. If a saint who had witnessed countless miracles including the Transifiguration can turn tail and run, we should not think we are better than this.

You should make a resolution in your brain that it is either God or nothing. Quitting is not an option. Then, we need to ask for strength in prayer to endure and persevere in our trials. Perseverance is not a natural trait but a supernatural trait. Saint Peter would go on to persevere to the thing he feared--his own martyrdom.

If you believe that quitting is an option, you will take it inevitably. This is what trials reveal. It shows the reservations we have made in our commitments. This mental reservation is called "double mindedness" This is what the Bible has to say about double mindedness:

A double minded man is inconstant in all his ways. 

JAMES 1:8 DOUAY-RHEIMS

To be double minded is to make oneself a monument of instability. You can never make a full commitment or follow through. You can't keep your eyes on the prize if you have one eye on the exit door.

But if you take that quitting option off the table, your life will go much better no matter what comes your way. You will become more stable and firm. You will have greater peace in your life. You will become like a rock in the ocean that is pounded by the surf but does not move.

4. Keep praying, keep working, and keep the faith.

When you're going through a trial and you know quitting is not an option, you are left wondering what you should do. We think we need to do something heroic or different to try and change our circumstances or to fix the world. But sometimes, the only heroic thing you can do is to put on your work boots each day and just do your job.

When the tough times come, keep praying. Never let your rosary go idle. If anything, you should double down on your prayers. Then, keep the faith and keep working. That's it. We doubt the things we were doing before because they must not be working for such calamities to strike. But you weren't doing anything wrong. If it is the right thing to do in the pleasant times, it is still the right to do in the troubled times.

Prayer is what carries us through our troubles. This is why Jesus prayed so earnestly in the Garden of Gethsemane before they came and took Him. The others were lax in their prayers unable to watch for a single hour. Naturally, they hit the exit when their Messiah was led away to be tried and crucified. Jesus said that the devil sought to sift them like wheat, and the devil did.

The goal of the devil is to strip the faith from your soul. After this, your soul can be stripped from your body and plunged into eternal damnation. The only thing you have to do to prevent this is to not quit. Just keep praying, keep working, and keep believing.

Conclusion

Times of trial and suffering are going to come. Do not think they won't. God allows these things to test and strengthen your soul. Saint Paul endured many trials as an apostle of Jesus Christ. His life would end with his beheading. And you better believe that Paul still held true to the faith that began on that Damascus road. Once he saw the Risen Christ, quitting was not an option. He held on to the end and received the prize that belongs to all martyrs. You can do the same. We suffer well when we choose not to quit.

Putting Your Dreams to Sleep

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

I don't have any dreams for my life. I suppose that makes me an old man, but I stopped dreaming a long time ago. I think I was 30 when the dream died for me. This was 2000. The tech bubble had burst, and the Federal Reserve began printing more money to paper over that disaster. 9/11 hit, and this really turned on those printing presses at the Fed. This fueled the build up of the real estate bubble that would implode seven years later. Naturally, the answer to that has been more money printing as the Fed reduced to a virtually free money policy resulting in the Japanification of our economy.

Barack Hussein Obama II did not help things. He took a very bad healthcare scheme in America and made it into the nightmare we know today as Obamacare. It will be known as Obamacare forever. When that son of a bitch is roasting in Hell, a demon will whisper Obamacare in his ear for eternity. On top of Obamacare, BHO doubled our national debt. Because of this, the Federal Reserve has its hands tied on interest rates. And DJ Trump doesn't seem inclined to remedy this problem.

They call it the American Dream, but it isn't really American. It is the human dream. It is what people and families have wanted forever. It is normative. It is hardwired into our beings. Men and women want to get jobs and start businesses. They want to buy property. They want to have children. They want to send them to college to become doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, and religious professions. In short, they want to be trees bearing fruit in accord with their nature.

People of a libertarian or progressive bent don't have these same dreams. Their days are filled with fornication, sodomy, pornography, masturbation, video games, watching comic book superhero movies, and smoking dope. There is the MGTOW movement of Men Going Their Own Way as males eschew true manhood and adulthood mainly because they can't earn enough to afford it. For everyone else, the dream is to no longer have to follow their parent's rules for living. It was not to become an adult and have a family of one's own. They want to take their adolescence and extend it forever like Hugh Hefner. They have replaced the dream with cheap hedonism. Families take planning and work. Hitting the bong takes no work.

For someone wanting to live the American Dream, here is what they face. They can go to college and pay for the bloated tuition with student loan debt. Regardless of the major, they will graduate into indentured servitude to that debt. Then, if they can get a job, they will need a car which has experienced its own bloat courtesy of car loans. Many eschew cars altogether. Then, they will attempt to buy a house in the reinflated housing bubble and hope their years of payments don't vanish in foreclosure. They will get married, and their first child will drop even more debt on the new couple as they are stuck with the enormous copay from the bloated hospital costs and their crappy health insurance. A second or third child are out of the question, so they opt for either temporary or permanent sterilization.

The Roman Catholic Church preaches about the evils of artificial contraception. Yet, they offer no assistance to couples who want to have children. They sold off their hospitals long ago while the bishops supported Democrats and Obamacare to the detriment of those families. The options left are for couples to not have children or to have kids that end up in foster care because their overworked parents are too broke to pay back the debts they owe and also feed their children. The result is that the Catholic Church is an instrument of pure evil as its liberals support the progressive state which is anti-family while the conservatives condemn couples with zero to two children as "selfish." Both beat up on the family while doing nothing to help those families. Then, they have the gall to expect those debt burdened families to send their kids to Catholic schools that they can no longer afford.

Who is to blame for this great evil? This would be the twin towers of darkness known as the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government. Both institutions have destroyed the middle class in America. This demise began in 1971 when Richard Nixon cut loose the last tether the US dollar had to the gold standard. The result was inflation which is the "hidden tax" that devalues the currency and drives up prices to the benefit of the wealthy and to the government who live off of the inflated currency. The rest of us are stuck with the consequences. The first consequence was that mothers could no longer stay home with their families but had to join the workforce with their husbands. What only took one salary or wage now took two. Additional shortfalls would be covered with debt. And additional children were out of the question as artificial birth control went from mortal sin to accepted practice.

Family life was reduced or destroyed while debts increased. The public would get some relief in the 1980s from Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and Paul Volcker's double digit interest rates. But this was a tap on the brakes. Governments and central banks know neither restraint nor common sense. The dreams of the masses were destroyed and replaced with the nightmare of massive debts and loneliness. Since the administration of the George W. Bush administration to the present day, the national debt has ballooned to stratospheric levels that can never be repaid while the Federal Reserve has created one wealth destroying bubble after another.

The government answer to these things is abortion, birth control, gay sex, and the legalization of drugs like marijuana and opioids. Drugs and sex take your mind off of your misery like they did in Huxley's Brave New World. For those strapped for cash, they simply pushed for easier access to credit. Finally, we face the specter of communism as socialist candidates like Sanders and Warren actually have a shot at getting elected. If they win, it will be on the promise of freeing college graduates from the indentured servitude to those student loan debts and a promise of a lifetime government check.

People like to blame capitalism for these things, but capitalism has not failed. Democracy has failed as virtually every sector of our society has lined up for freebies at the expense of someone else. This would be the Social Security check, the welfare check, and food stamps. This would be farm subsidies and crony capitalism. Finally, it would be interest free loans courtesy of the Federal Reserve that debase the currency to increase the wealth of the elites. And when they blow this money, Uncle Sam gives bail outs to these cronies and sticks the rest of America with the bill. And when the masses howl over this, the socialists make offers of free college and universal basic income. Somehow, all of these free lunches will get paid by someone else and not us.

The remedy to these ills is no mystery. We must abolish the Federal Reserve. We must return to the gold standard. We must cut and eliminate taxes. We must trim down the size of the federal government by abolishing everything beyond the basic functions necessary for law and order and protection from foreign enemies. But none of these common sense things will ever be done because they would require virtue on the part of the American people. People would have to work for a living instead of scheming for a living. They would have to refrain from living on the dole and engaging in government aided larceny. All of these things require nothing short of a complete change of mind in people's religious and political views. But people being stupid will only learn what they need to know in the harsh school of bitter experience. They will only gain enlightenment when the lash of tyranny hits their backsides and not a moment sooner.

Democracy is what has killed our Republic. The evil have overwhelmed the good. Virtue and morality have declined leading to a growth in the size of our government. Tyranny has replaced liberty as the common people have shown themselves unfit to be free. This leaves the few remaining good people who merely want what is just and right and good and normal to put their dreams to sleep as the parasites eat out their substance and kill our once great nation.

The good people in this country are just a remnant now. They were potent enough to elect Donald Trump, but evil is regrouping as you read this. You should look less at the shenanigans in DC and look at your family, friends, and neighbors. How are they living? Are they going to church? Are they working hard? Are they trying to live righteous lives? Or, are they spending their days trying to get over, satisfying their genitals, and smoking dope?

The calamity of our times is that the innocent must suffer with the damned. But those innocents are doing what they can to mitigate the damage. They eschew debt. They work. They homeschool their children. They join healthcare coops. They buy gold. They establish a homestead which they hope and pray will not be filched from them by the tax man. They load up on ammo and supplies and prep for the worst. They vote for Donald Trump. But they are like so many sheep among a pack of wolves. These wolves are our disgusting fellow citizens who are too stupid and too lazy and too damn immoral to do what is right. They are an abomination deserving destruction and eternal damnation. The only relief we may have from them is to see their splattered brains and bullet riddled bodies in a violent civil war. They will certainly not hesitate to kill us as all communists have done throughout history. The USA will look like Venezuela does now before it is all done.

How did we get here? We, the People, have done this to ourselves. If you believe our founding documents, our government has done this to us by our consent. We were complicit in our own demise. We voted for this. We were silent when it was done. We were asleep in the eternal vigilance that liberty requires. Now, we are awake to see our house in flames. May God help us.