Israel

Saturday morning when the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas began, the world changed.  There is the world before Simchat Torah 5784 and the world after.  And there is the transition zone which, sadly, is where we are now.

We are not only on the brink of World War 3, but we have people cheering for annihilation of not only Israel but of all the Jews.  Pro-Palestinian protestors around the globe, including right here in the USA, shout “Kill the Jews”, “Gas the Jews”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” (meaning that the entire State of Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be destroyed). 

The history and facts of Israel from times before Christ to the present, do not support or justify the claims by Palestine against Israel.  An objective recitation of this history is hard, but not impossible, to find these days and I wish that more people would study it.  But, even assuming that the claims against Israel were true, even if one chooses to see Palestinians as some sort of victims of Israel, and even if they choose to mount pro-Palestinian protests, it does not justify supporting the heinous, violent, and inhuman acts committed by the Hamas terrorists.

We have totally lost our moral compass.   The bleeding hearts, who want to excuse every offense and create offenses where none exist, still cannot bring themselves to distinguish a terrorist from someone with an alleged grievance.  To do so would disrupt their utopian false truth; they cannot see that their utopic vision is not and never will be a reality.  And yet their hearts are cold as stone towards the atrocities committed against Jews.  That, in my book, is clear antisemitism.

The Current Dysfunction

How did we come to this point?  The answer to that has many layers.  We can start with the present which includes the current administration’s completely dysfunctional international policies and actions. America has gone from a strong international voice for, and beacon of, democracy to a weak and dysfunctional shadow of its former self.

The dysfunction of this administration includes:

• The Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco that allowed terrorists to supply themselves with American weapons.
• A failure to even attempt to understand the Russian view on Ukraine, while pushing Putin into a position where he was left with little choice but to attack Ukraine.
• Supporting not only the military actions in Ukraine but also the corrupt use of American funds to sustain the entire Ukraine economy.
• Failing to support the Abraham Accords and not only allowing but tacitly encouraging the rise in anti-Semitic behavior here and around the world.  
• Providing $6 billion to Iran, knowing that Iran is a supporter of the terrorist acts against Israel.

The press has not been silent, but it carefully edits its words to downplay the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah (also attacking Israel from Lebanon) are terrorist organizations:

• Rather than use the word terrorist they call them simply militant groups.
• The defensive acts of Israel are equated with the unprovoked terrorism of Hamas.
• Israel is blamed for collateral damage of their defensive strikes, but there is little notice that the terrorists intentionally targeted innocents, children, and babies and further that the death they imposed upon those innocents was prolonged with pain and horrendous suffering.
• The media mostly fails to report that while Israel attempts to avoid civilian and other collateral damage, Hamas actually uses civilians and especially children as shields as they place their military sites directly under or above places such as hospitals and schools.

You cannot equate the aggressive and horrendous actions of Hamas with the self-defensive acts of Israel!  Yet too many, whether with or without knowledge of the actual facts, do.

Beyond the Surface – Humanity, Purpose, and Amalek

The misguided and dysfunctional political and media actions only touch the surface.  We live in a country where the people have a voice.  Yet, that voice remains either silent or simply a thoughtless mouthpiece for the buzz words, phrases, and memes of the Left.  How did the American people lose not only their voices but their minds?

An Israeli soldier currently fighting in Gaza referred to his enemy as Amalek.   In the Hebrew Bible, Amalek is both a nation and a nomadic tribe seen to be the arch-rival of ancient Israel.   While the Amalekite nation no longer exists, Jewish wisdom holds that the memory of the devious enemy Amalek lives on in in all forms of antisemitism carried out against Jewish people.

According to Midrash (Hebrew Biblical interpretation) Amalek represents the belief in chance, of the haphazard dictates of “fate” and “destiny,” which oppose the Jewish belief in Divine providence. Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity or to creation itself, again the antithesis of Jewish philosophy.   Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.

Regardless of whether one believes in or has even read Judeo-Christian scripture and teachings, I think this description of Amalek provides a wonderful way to characterize and personify much of what we see around us and the causes of this void and valueless place in which the world finds itself today.  

Let’s just take the phrase, “Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity.”  All around us we see that human life has become or is becoming meaningless, with no value.  It has become disposable.  Why is it so easy to kill another human being over such simple things as who gets a parking spot?  It is easy if one believes that humanity is meaningless.  And if one’s life is meaningless, why would several lives suddenly have meaning?  Mass shootings, if life is meaningless, then are themselves meaningless; they are easy to carry out if one need feel no guilt about killing what one sees as a purposeless nothing nor compassion for meaningless corpses.  It becomes easy to be only concerned with satisfying one’s own urges at any one moment if anyone who might be hurt by that satisfaction is nothing but meaningless and valueless.

That sentence continues “or [no purpose] to creation itself.”  If there is no purpose to creation, no need to find meaning in something greater than oneself, then, again, there is no need to even have a moral compass let alone consider whether performance of some heinous act might violate it.  Indeed, “Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.” 

The influence of Amalek is seen well beyond Israel and the Jewish faith.  All around us we see people leaving their faith, people who have a huge void within themselves because they have nothing greater than themselves to believe in.  This loss in faith, this loss in human purpose is killing us all.

Will the world awake; will we save ourselves?

What has happened to us as a nation and a world?  We have listened to the voice of Amalek who has led us to doubt who and what we are.  But it is not just our belief in something greater than ourselves that is doubted and lost.  With a loss in faith we have lost all the values that come with that faith.  Our whole culture now leads us to doubt and deny everything that has made us the great nation that we are.   We are led to believe that we can and do take the place of God; that we need nothing but ourselves.  And with that seems to come the belief that we are entitled to whatever we desire regardless of whom that may hurt.

Those who see this as the Utopia they dream of do not want it questioned. They take command over what we learn.  Schools no longer teach children to use their minds to think and critically assess an issue.  We erase history, ignoring not only the sage wisdom that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” but also the fact that “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” 

We evolve as a society and civilization in part because we learn and grow from the past and in part because we value our purpose as one individual within humanity at large.  And when one has a purpose, one generally sees that purpose as a part of a greater good.  As such, one values human life beyond one’s own selfish being. 

Today’s leaders leave much to be desired.  But we the people also leave much to be desired.  We have stopped thinking.  We have stopped caring.  We have stopped believing.  We are being led by false but devious dreams created by Amalek and many leaders along with their followers whom he represents.  We have lost our purpose and our soul. 

There is time.  The terrorist attacks on Israel have shaken the world as have the reactions to those attacks.  The question is:  Are they enough to shake us all awake from the nihilistic nightmare future that the devious tactics of Amalek have put before us?

Joshua fighting Amalek, A print from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations in the possession of Revd. Philip De Vere at St. George’s Court, Kidderminster, England.  CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Education requires a questioning interaction – with oneself and with others

 It is easy to give up on America these days.  In considering what we need to move forward I always seem to return to education and the fact that our current education systems do not teach the basic thinking skills that allow individuals to make informed decisions about the direction they would like their country to take.  Indeed, today our education system seems to be more aligned with the narrowness of propaganda than with the open-mindedness that true education requires.

Recently I heard someone on the radio arguing that college is a waste of money because you can learn as much by simply looking up the subjects you would study on Google and reading the information there.

Certainly, one can read up on a subject and in so doing gain information about that subject – that is, learn something about the subject.  But that is not all that education entails and it is not all that occurs in a healthy college environment.  Learning in the sense of acquiring information is but one part of education.  Education also includes reflection both on oneself and on the information being learned, it requires an open mind in coming to information and in listening to views of others about that information.   Most importantly, it requires constant questioning – of the information being presented, of the presenter, and of oneself

Simply acquiring knowledge is not true learning.  Learning and true education have at their core the question “why?”  The student must be taught to ask that question repeatedly, to move step by step into a deeper understanding of the subject being studied and of the understanding of others about that subject. 

In a true educational setting students will be pushed to use “why?” to push themselves to levels of understanding and achievement of which they did not even know they were capable.  They will be asked to address topics with open and curious minds, not minds that are preset or predisposed to merely accept views of others as their own without question. 

Reading or otherwise acquiring information in and of itself does not require thinking and is more likely to simply result in acceptance of the ideas of others.  In contrast, a true teacher will ask a student to question what is read, perhaps to hear other views of the readings presented during a class discussion with other students.  Reading alone does not require the students to articulate their own views about what was read or push the students to stretch their mind to the deeper thinking that discussion with others often does.  Rather, it allows the students to remain in their own world without examining and questioning the values and assumptions of that world.

Those who try to avoid questioning or who try to block the questioning and its resulting mental growth in others are actually quite insecure.  They need a certain and unchanging world in which everyone agrees with their assumptions and beliefs.  (I suspect such is the case of the radio voice I heard – afraid that college might force questioning of his own firmly established views.)

Such people exist on both sides of the political aisle and are always dangerous.  They are the false prophets, the purveyors of propaganda.  They are in many ways the evil opposite of true educators. 

These false prophets tell people what they want to hear; they feed existing fears and provide false solutions.  They demand their students accept what they are told without question, presenting their own view on topics as the one and only acceptable viewpoint.  Their “teaching” provides comfort; it is easy to accept in its certainty. 

True education is anything but comfortable.  It demands that students embrace the discovery and investigation of new ideas, even when that information is painful.  Its lessons can be disturbing as the students explore the depths and uncertainties of their own minds and their world.  It demands that students read beyond superficialities and plunge to depths of understanding that in the end allow a deeper sense of a common humanity that joins us all.

Reading, acquiring information, is only a beginning.  Questioning that reading and being questioned about one’s own ideas about the reading force one to learn and understand rather than simply acquire information.  And interaction with others and their thoughts and understandings about the same information pushes one even further to understand and articulate their own understanding and knowledge about the topic.  Ultimately, this interaction of ideas and ultimately of humanity itself is what a true education will entail.

With that education comes a confidence in who one truly is and about the world in which we all live.  That confidence overcomes the fear of real learning that the propogandists purvey and the cowards accept.

Today in America we have a lot of cowards.  On both sides.  They have dug into their positions and both sides can make arguments supportive of their views.  But what they cannot do is listen to, let alone understand the views of others.  (I note here that understanding does not necessarily require acceptance or a change in one’s own position, but it does result in tolerance.) Too many are afraid to question their own beliefs and who they are and where they are really going – they are imprisoned by their own fears and insecurity, afraid to evolve, denying the humanity that is common to us all. 

True education requires that one not fear human interaction, even with uncomfortable ideas of others.  True education is far more than merely acquiring information.  In true education the student takes the acquired information and is both externally pushed and internally motivated to transform that information into a deeper knowledge of the world, humanity, and one’s place in it; the true student, like all of humanity, is ever evolving and that evolution is reflected in the student’s interactions in the world and with others.

Yet, today, we have teachers who do not educate.  They do not teach their students to think critically – to ask “why?”.  Teachers should delight when a student questions, even and especially when a student questions their own teacher.  But too many of today’s “educators” simply provide information that reflects their own world view and expect students to accept and adopt what they are told without question.  Students are too often punished rather than praised for questioning what they are told.  Too many “educators” are teaching students to become receivers of propaganda, primed to accept the words of false prophets.

The discord and dystopia that we see around us is not going to go away unless and until we once again become real students of our world and our humanity, until we encourage, indeed demand, that education be led by questioning, not simply acquiring.  We must think, ask “why?”, interact with open minds until once again we are able to know ourselves and see our true and common humanity.  This we must teach our children, and this we must model for them as adults.

 

The Story Does Not Have to End Badly

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once upon a time people took responsibility for their own lives. If they felt unhappy, suffered a setback, were hurt physically or emotionally, they might ask for temporary help or consolement, but would work towards, and then would, pick themselves up and move forward. Not diminishing the hurt and pain, but learning from it, working to see that it did not repeat itself.

Once upon a time, people were honest, or at least tried to be. When they made a mistake they would admit it, take responsibility, face the consequences, and, again, learn from it.

Once upon a time, people did not blame all their problems on others, without taking any responsibility for themselves, without acknowledging that sometimes life just isn’t fair, that things happen.

Once upon a time, people actually believed that things happen for a reason; reasons that mere mortals may not understand at the moment.

Once upon a time, people did not live only in the moment, needing immediate gratification and resolution. Instead, they had and respected the concept of patience, understanding that things take time to evolve and to come to fruition.  Understanding this, they were also willing to work for their and society’s goals without receiving immediate gratification or compensation or awards for their efforts.

Once upon a time, people did not need scapegoats for their or their nation’s problems.  They did not villainize based on first impressions or political agendas.

Once upon a time, people did not rush to judgment but instead waited for facts and evidence which they then weighed to arrive at their own well-thought-out decision.  They did not simply repeat conclusions delivered to them by others.

Once upon a time, people paid attention to rules, laws, authorities.  They did not do as they pleased but rather were guided by laws created by the society in which they live.  They used non-violent civil disobedience to voice displeasure with laws or their outcomes rather than violent and destructive riots (which they call “peaceful protests).  They also believed that laws should be enforced equally, rather than based upon where the violator falls on the political spectrum.

Once upon a time, people cared about things bigger than just themselves – family, country, God.  These concepts helped them to live and join together for a common purpose and good of all, even when they might differ about their own personal beliefs.

Once upon a time, people believed that people were more than the color of their skin or their political party and they could treat one another as individuals rather than cardboard cutouts of this or that identity group.  They saw humanity as One, rather than a bunch of separate warring groups and their “Intersectionalities” constantly urged by those seeking power to hate one another.

Once upon a time, people were tolerant of their differences one from another.  They were able to live together despite those differences, form families, communities, and a country, and work together and with patience to ever better their society.

THAT WAS THEN.  THIS IS NOW.

Today, too many people expect that every moment of their waking (and sleeping too) life should be happy and enjoyable.  If it is not, there is no looking within, but rather an unending need to blame others for every problem.

At the same time, these people demand others take care of them, believe that everything that they want is simply a “human right” to which they are entitled to be provided – by the government (which really means by their neighbors who pay the taxes that will pay for their gifts), by those who have worked hard (and perhaps just been lucky in the face of life) and acquired more than the people making demands, by those who their political leaders have labeled as oppressors or other villains.

Today, too many people demand immediate gratification; they are without patience.  They are willing to jump to judgment on any issue without examination of facts or consequences of varying forms of actions.  When their initial judgment is proven to be in error, rather than admit as much they will double down with hate against those whose truth has proven them wrong.

Today, too many people think that laws are nothing but a suggestion at best.  If useful to attack someone or something they find displeasing they will go all in  with legal approaches, but if they find those laws displeasing, standing in the way of their pleasure or their desired actions and policies, then they will just ignore the rule of law (which, by the way, is a core foundation of this country, the disrespect and disobedience of which will surely destroy America as we know it).

Today, too many people do not care about God or country or family; rather, their focus is exclusively on themselves and their own pleasure.  That prohibits them from working with others for the better of all humanity; but that does not matter to these people whose primary, if not only concern is simply their own satisfaction.

Today, too many people think that everyone should think as they do, that all should march in lock step to their singular belief structures.  They easily label those who are different, whether in thought, appearance, class, or other distinction, to be something evil, something less than they are, something that one should have no remorse about destroying.

Today, too many people are caught up in a superficial self-absorption that is moving at rapid pace to destroy individuality, individual freedom, family, country, society, and ultimately the world.

WE ARE ON THE WRONG TRACK - CAN WE CHANGE TRAINS?

"Train" seems an appropriate metaphor since Joe Biden loves to use the train as his symbol.  He wanted us to switch to his train in 2020, it promised a good ride for everyone, a ride full of love, peace, and happiness. 

That was a lie.  Indeed, one of the first things we learned about Joe the conductor is that he is a pathological liar. He has told lies about every major policy action of his administration:  Afghanistan; Inflation; the “infrastructure” acts, their cost, their content, their intent; taxes and the middle class; illegals in this country; the border; his opposition; his interactions with school unions and CRT; he and his family’s relations with foreign oligarchs; his travel; his health; his Vice President; his appointees; the economy; US independence from foreign oil and other needs; Coronavirus; and many many others.

Even when he makes a statement that is false and the proof of that falsity is placed squarely before him, Biden nonetheless doubles down on the lie rather than admitting his mistake.  Then he begins finger pointing to set the blame and responsibility anywhere but on himself.

Our conductor is not only a liar, he has no respect for the rule of law.  He repeatedly proclaims guilt and innocence (e.g. the border agents & allegations of whipping that were proven false; calling Rittenhouse a white supremacist and murderer before any trial).  He ignores law and court rulings that contradict his position (e.g. going ahead with the OSHA vaccine mandates even after a Federal appellate court declared this overbroad and unconstitutional).  

Indeed, making judgements in several politically sensitive cases before or during trial removes the jury’s duty, obligation, and right to make such decisions, as well as very possibly affecting the outcome.  Doing what he wants despite the law and legal processes is authoritarian behavior that is a clear attack on democracy and its rule of law.

Our conductor Biden also has problems following laws of his professed religion that he doesn’t like or which are not politically convenient for him.  That is a problem between he and his God; nonetheless, it does give us further refection of his true character.

There is a selfish, “let them eat cake”, attitude within this administration and its supporters as they suggest that in light of the huge inflation that it would be good for our health to simply eat less.  Tell that one to the mother of a couple of teenage boys whose food bill has nearly doubled along with the gas she needs to buy to get to the grocery store and to her job (if she still has one) where her paycheck buys less due to higher prices across the board along with higher taxes.  And with what little spending power she may have left, she has to deal with empty shelves due to supply chain issues - issues that our conductor Biden tells us are actually good for us and the economy.

Our conductor also, rather than giving us a ride of unity and peace, is dividing us into different cars based not only on external identity characteristics and political beliefs, but also on our core beliefs and values.  Not the gentle, kind “Uncle Joe” as was promised, our conductor is full of hate for all who do not agree with him and his policies. 

It is possible that there are those today who are fine with all of the above, those who, because they are not personally affected by any of the above (YET!) ignore what is going on or simply accept it.  These are the people who are helping our conductor, shoveling the coal (or the clean new energy) into the engine, allowing our conductor to keep us on his track.

This train is chugging along at a faster and faster pace.  It is headed for a crash. 

If this were a country and not a train, we would call that conductor authoritarian and anti-democratic.  Oh, wait, it is a country and that conductor is our president.  And he is moving with enormous speed to destroy America and society as we know it.

WE NEED TO GET OFF AND FIND ANOTHER TRAIN.

First step:  the majority need to admit that they were bamboozled by the brochure and picked the wrong train. ( If they still think they are on the right track they may want to get their heads out of the sand or listen to something other than CNN, or they are simply completely self-absorbed without concern for the society around them).  

It’s hard to admit mistakes, but if they are to be corrected, that is the first step.

Nest step:  the majority need to stop blindly accepting what they are told - by the President, by the politicians, by the media.  Everyone needs to instead start asking for all the facts, questioning those facts, considering conclusions and their consequences, and making up their own minds.

Next step:  the people need to speak up and do so civilly as a democracy allows and requires.  Speak to friends, but also to leaders and politicians.  Make everyone's' voices heard.  Ask the questions that need asking of the people who will be making the decisions that will ultimately affect the lives of all of us.

Next step:  become educated about our government and our political system.  Read the constitution.  Read about the three branches of government – who each is and what each’s role is and what are the limitations on each.  Understand how the three branches serve as a necessary system of checks and balances on one another.  Learn this from an objective standpoint, not from someone with a biased political agenda.

Next step:  Vote.  Not based on party.  Not based on what one is told.  Based upon investigation of the individual candidates, their role within their party, the role of the seat they are seeking within our system of government.  Understand what things that role can affect, how the individual candidates will carry out their role, and the effect that person’s decisions will have.

Begin your education today.  Consider what sort of train you want to be on.  Every election is an opportunity to change trains, but in order to choose wisely you must be prepared with knowledge and the ability to think critically about what you are told.  That preparation cannot wait until the trains are in, or about to leave, the station.  It is up to all of us how our the story of our journey ends.

Turns Out, I Wasn’t Buying It Even Then

In my last post I included Solzhenitsyn’s criticisms of the idea of situation ethics or relative morality.  When writing that post I was put in mind of my having read Joeseph Fletcher’s book “Situation Ethics: The New Morality” for a sociology class.  That would have been in the late 60s (the copyright date is 1966).  My memories were that I was swayed by the arguments in that book to look at my views of morality differently.  Turns out I actually still have my original copy (price on cover: $1.95) with my notes from the time.

My notes throughout the book reveal that I seem to have open mindedly considered as well as questioned the arguments and theses of the book, but that in the end I wasn’t sold.  Indeed, I seem to have at least intuited the criticisms spoken by Solzhenitsyn 5 or 10 years later.  The inside cover includes my handwritten comment that reads as follows:

whole book, & idea appears as just a way of rationalizing your sins, and “is trying to get out of it.”

makes us all out to be gods, who can choose to take a life for example, but we aren’t and we can’t.

Seems very slanted.  Only uses a very few Biblical examples over and over.

I don’t recall myself as being that perceptive.  But maybe it takes one looking back with later experience and history to see what one actually knew in the past.  The fact that my memory was that I had a fairly positive and transformative reaction to the book when I studied it is telling as to how the book and this new philosophy of relativism must have taken hold within our culture. 

Now, looking back with what I know and what I see around me today, I find the book truly frightening.  I see how right Solzhenitsyn was when he noted that the Communist ideology of relative (or class and identity) morality was a successful tool in its (and today’s Leftist Progressive ideology) anti-humanity crusade to gain power only for itself and gain the ability to fully manipulate the rest of us.

THE LURE OF SITUATIONAL MORALITY

The back of my copy of Situation Ethics touts it as “a manifesto of individual freedom and individual responsibility, elaborated within an ethic of love, which extricates modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes.”

That was the 60s.  Think how enlightened that sounded.  “Individual freedom and individual responsibility”: isn’t that what people of the 60s were discovering – their ability to be themselves, to not conform and be like everyone else?  “Elaborated within an ethic of love”:  love one another was a sound and phrase of the times, how could that be bad?  And with these positive slogans we will “extricate modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes”:  those would be the absolutes, the good and evil that served us well since civilized time began, the absolutes whose removal, Solzhenitsyn notes, leave us with nothing but the manipulation of one by another.

On page 56 of the book one finds a summary of the six propositions on which its philosophy of situation ethics rests: “The first one pins down the nature of value.  The second reduces all values to love.   The third equates love and justice.  The fourth frees love from sentimentality.  The fifth states the relation between means and ends.  The sixth authenticates every decision within its own content.” 

According to the author, “The new morality, situation ethics, declares that anything and everything is right or wrong, according to the situation.”  The author declares this new morality is not new, but is Bible-based and, like so many false prophets before and after him, he takes selected quotes from the Bible out of context to justify his philosophy that essentially comes down to:  do what feels good for you – if it feels good, it’s OK.

WHERE DID IT LEAD US

I think that in the 60s most who considered it didn’t notice the possible consequences of what embracing situational or relative morality might mean.  It is, I believe, a part of the lives of most of us today, and the Left has fully embraced it.

I think most everyone today will ignore otherwise rigid rules in at least some situations.  And probably people have always done this to some extent (is there anyone who has never told “a little white lie”?). 

But when there are absolute rules of right and wrong, good and evil, the breaking of these rules is less prevalent and is accompanied by some sort of guilt and understanding of one’s own wrongdoing.  When those “rigid” rules are gone one is ultimately left to do whatever one wants, regardless of what may be right or wrong for others.

Today, beyond more prevalent acceptance of excusing rule breaking in some circumstances, there are those who seem to believe that there really are no rules – they truly believe that a situation itself is the governing body in all circumstances. 

How else would we find people justifying theft and robbery (because they are just taking what they need), justifying the killing of police (because they are allegedly systemically racist), justifying violent riots called protests when they claim to serve a popular cause, even when they hurt or kill innocent bystanders, businesses, and government buildings (BLM riots after Floyd killing) but demanding severe punishment, even death to those whose protests violated the perimeter of the Capital building for a cause out of favor with the Left?

How else would we find people justifying the silencing of opposing viewpoints that they find uncomfortable, the disinviting of conservative speakers to college campuses because their views are offensive to Left-leaning students and faculty, the justification of harassing, namecalling, and sometimes physically attacking individuals who speak out in opposition to Leftist causes (most recently those who oppose CRT)? 

How else would we find the entertainment business and the elite and progressive individuals who profit from it justifying a daily diet of “entertainment” that sexualizes women and children while then acting as if they are horrified when someone whose politics are contrary to theirs commits even the slightest “MeToo” violation?

How else would we find the Left asserting its support for women’s rights and equal opportunity, then undermining those assertions when a biological male wants to compete as a female?   

How else would we find people believing that they can claim to be a devout follower of Catholicism yet be pro-abortion (a mortal sin in that faith) and demand they still be allowed to participate in the holy eucharist which requires adherence to the Catholic liturgy?

How else would we have a President requesting that social media censor and ban any posting that does not speak the truth, yet giving no criteria for what is “truth” or who will decide if a posting meets it, resulting, for example, in the idea that any suggestion that the Wuhan Virus came from the Wuhan lab should have been banned as untruthful, even though that now is the prevalent scientific theory?  How can science and humanity progress if no one is allowed to question or to present alternate ideas and theories?

THE RESULT OF EMBRACING RELATIVE MORALITY IS NOT PRETTY AND IT IS ANTI-HUMANITY

The above list could go on and on.  It includes just some of the examples of situation ethics in action that immediately come to mind.  I am sure every reader of this blog can think of many others.

We are destroying ourselves while believing that we have raised ourselves to some higher level of love.  Self-love seems to be the guiding principle – open any lifestyle magazine, any Sunday supplement, any self-help blog, any TV morning-show type supplement and you will hear about the importance of “self-care.”    That is where situational morality has taken us – to place the self as a god and the center of one’s universe. 

That’s fine if you live alone on some mountain top, but when two or more people come together who believe the situation and their feelings govern all even to the extent of justifying murder of the other, someone is going to have to determine whose self-love is superior. 

Once people have been manipulated into giving up absolute moral values, they need someone in power to decide what is OK in this or that situation.  That is where the progressive Leftist philosophy comes in.  They believe they can and should decide for each and every one of us, not because they know or care what is best, but because their philosophy requires and entitles them to do so.  They will take away humanity and replace it with manipulation and indifference.  As Solzhenitsyn so aptly noted, their goal is to destroy our social order.  The back cover of the Situation Ethics book essentially admits that as its intent.

My 1960s notes on Situation Ethics were more accurate than I understood at the time. I didn’t buy into it then, even though I thought I had.  Perhaps you didn’t buy into Situation Ethics either when you were first introduced.  But when there is what Solzhenitsyn calls a “constant dinning” and what we would today call propaganda with a daily barrage of one viewpoint taught from almost birth, it is easy to lose what one knows to be true and to buy into what we inherently know to be a mistake.   

We are not gods and relative morality, no matter how honorable and humane and even holy it may sound, is nothing more than a way to destroy the human essence and individuality and replace it with an ugly and oppressive power wielded by an elite and selfish few.  Each one of us who has let this destructive situation ethics into our lives needs to exorcise it immediately.

Equity Destroys Humanity As We Know It

Equity is just another way of saying dumbing down.  Like the many other politically correct euphemisms (integration vs. assimilation; containment unit vs. cage; etc.) it may not have the negative connotation of the original, but that does not change the reality of what it refers to.

Supposedly in the new lexicon of the Left, equity means uniformity:  everyone ends up with exactly the same thing.  That is, distribution of both the tangible and intangible is not equal but based on some external factor such as group identity or circumstance.   That unequal distribution intends to create a uniform result for everyone.  The problem is that such vision of equity, of uniformity, does not take into account the uniqueness and diversity of human nature.

Equity may sound nice, but let’s look at the reality.  One example comes from Virginia where schools are removing advanced degrees and eliminating advanced math classes.  The reason is that there are more of certain ethnic groups (primarily Asian and White) than other ethnic groups (primarily Black) in the advanced courses.  This, screams the Left, is not equity. 

Other schools remove the requirement of correct answers in math class because some groups find this standard more difficult.  Therefore, the Left’s equity demands that we must eliminate that which some students strive for or may have more talent for in order that all will be equal.  Essentially the students whose talents may lie with the advanced academics are now punished for having that innate talent or interest. 

Other examples come from hiring requirements that mandate a certain number of people with identifying factors be included in employment roles for specific jobs.  When current hiring criteria do not create that “equity” those criteria are often changed, removing certain competency factors in favor of other “equity” factors. 

So, the best pilot may not be chosen to fly your plane if equity determines factors other than competence to be more important.  For example, United Airlines has announced that 50% of the 5000 new pilots it plans to train in the next decade must be people of color.  What does that do for the aspirations of those with talent and qualifications who are not persons of color?  They can not be fully the person they were perhaps created to be but must dumb themselves down to fit within the equity codes.

The professionals who serve you may have been admitted to their medical or law or engineering or business schools to ensure equity of the class to the detriment of others with perhaps equal or more talent.  Your symphony orchestra may not include the most talented musicians if it has an equity code.  Your plumber or car mechanic, your children’s teachers, anywhere you look you will see “equity” but perhaps not the best and brightest that could be.

Equity is also discriminatory.  When President Biden announced he would select a woman of color for his VP he immediately excluded all men and all women not of color from any consideration.  Apparently, he and the Left determined it was OK to leave those people out of any equity distribution, even though many may have been highly skilled and competent, perhaps even more competent than any of those considered. 

That is, equity denies equality of treatment.  It does not equally consider each individual but rather treatment is based on some identity criteria that awards more or less favorable treatment to certain groups.  That is not the same as the equality that is promised and aspired to in America as she has existed for over 200 years.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked that we look at the quality of one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin – that is equality.  Today in the name of equity we do just the reverse.  We place people into identity groups based on skin color or other superficial characteristics and then we use things like Critical Race Theory, the 1619 project, equity training, etc., to discriminate.

Equity is also demeaning to those it allegedly intends to help.  It assumes that certain categories of people cannot achieve certain things unless they get special advantages.  This implies that without such special treatment they are individually incapable of succeeding.  Equity does not even consider that different individuals may have different interests and aspirations. 

Equity does not believe in the individual.  It would rather bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator at which everyone can function with equal result.  I like to sing but I cannot carry a tune. I don’t expect to be in a choir but what if I wanted to and equity said I could have a place, taking the place of someone who actually has a voice to sing?  Not only is that plainly not fair, but would you really want to listen to that choir?  And if the real singer is left out because we want choirs to only be at the level that all can achieve, then doesn’t that punish the real singer for having a good voice?

I can write a coherent sentence.  Should I stop doing so because some others cannot?  Should Mark Twain or Frederick Douglass or Maya Angelou or Rudolf Anaya have stopped writing because not everyone could write the sentences they could? The answer is NO.  For if they had stopped excelling at what they could and did excel at just so that there would be equity among them and other less gifted thinkers or writers, we would all have been left without their wisdom from which we continue to learn.

What equity does is demand that no one excel, no one can be too good.  It may protect from failure, but it also guarantees that many individuals will not achieve their full potential. 

Americans used to be able to dream of soaring to and maybe even achieving the greatest heights.  The flight of that soaring eagle that we each could imagine was unique to each of us.  And while some of us dreamed and aspired, and did great things along the way, some even actually achieved their entire dream.  But equity does not allow such dreams or their reality.

Rather, equity demands uniformity.  Instead of letting us soar to heights that only we each can imagine, it forces us all to the ground, like chickens in a coop just waiting for their next meal, all living the same existence but having nowhere to soar.

One of the great promises of America is opportunity – opportunity to be oneself and to aspire to and perhaps achieve one’s dream.  It is the promise to soar (or to choose not to soar) as our spirit takes us.  Its promise is equality – of opportunity but not necessarily of result.

Equity would make us all the same.  It dumbs us all down so that no one shines above the others.  There will be no role models to aspire to.  There will be no point in following one’s unique dreams or talents.  Equity will define us.  We will all have exactly the same and will then be exactly the same.

Equality on the other hand demands that each person will be recognized as an individual entitled to equality of treatment and understanding.  It refers to the uniform distribution to everyone of the tangible and intangible. In other words, each person receives the same amount of whatever is being distributed, rather than having such distribution be based on group identity or circumstance.

Equality does recognize that each individual’s circumstances, both innate and external, are unique and requires individual responses.  But it believes that everyone should get the same opportunity, not more or less of some tangible or intangible distribution based on one’s external identity.  It also recognizes the right of the individual to do as he or she chooses with whatever is being distributed.

Equality acknowledges that every individual has his or her own talents, strengths, and weaknesses and that sometimes these may be amplified or diminished by individual circumstances.  Equal treatment rewards the strengths and perhaps helps to correct the weaknesses.  But it does not try to remake humanity by abolishing the individual in the name of equity.

What equity does is dumb us all down; it demands mediocrity.  It destroys American excellence along with its equality.    In the end, equity joins the Left’s euphemism words of inclusion and diversity; the three together actually mean discrimination, exclusion and conformity. 

Equity is a nice sounding word, but it supports actions that destroy our humanity.  That should not surprise us since destruction of the individual is necessary for the “great new world” that the Left seeks to create. 

 

A Very Sanitary Future

 

The future.  It is often portrayed as so very perfect.  So clean.   Yet also so sterile and sanitized.

The sanitation has begun as cancel culture tells us what to think and how to behave.  Eventually we can become like the automatons that we see in futuristic portrayals.  All on the same bland even keel.  No ups, no downs, no extremes of emotion. People are calm.  They say only the right things.  They have only the correct behavior.  And they have no joy.  No humanity.

Today there are things you can’t say.  There is history that must not be taught.  There are books that cannot be read.  Our world, and especially the world of our minds, is being sanitized.  Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird are stories that if anything create an awareness and perhaps empathy for the Black experience in America.  Yet those books are cancelled because they use language of the times and are true to the times.  Dr. Seuss has now been cancelled.  I find it hard to believe that every child who was given a Dr. Seuss book to enjoy, to giggle at, and in the process to learn something of phonetics, I refuse to believe that those children because of that experience were turned into racists.

Soon our stories will be fully sanitized and will all read something like this: “They met.  They fell in love.  They died.”  No detail allowed - it might offend someone.  No joy, no sorrow, nothing to learn from.  Just a few words on a page, sanitized and approved.  (Those who are familiar with Russian history will of course think of the Soviet establishment of socialist realism as the only acceptable aesthetic for authors who were given basic mandatory plots to follow.  Any deviation was banned, sometimes along with the authors themselves.)

We learn from that which has not been sanitized.  Great literature teaches us about our humanity, about the human condition.  History teaches us about where we went right and where we went wrong, thus allowing us to not repeat the same mistakes.  Information, even information that might offend one or many, can spark thoughts, innovations, excitement in the human brain and the human soul. 

It is information and the spark of inspiration that it provides that allows humanity to progress.  Information feeds our natural curiosity.  It is as essential for our being as is food.

Human emotion is a part of us, both its positive and negative passions.  It cannot be banned; allowing us to be conscious of it means that we can learn about and from it and perhaps even control our own individual demons.

Once upon a time I wrote a poem about an Eagle and a Pigeon.  I don’t think I understood the significance of it then but let me use its spirit here.  The mighty Eagle soars and dives.  I don’t know how an eagle feels when it dives, but I do know that when it reaches the bottom it often gathers sustenance that allows it to soar again.  Our minds, indeed our whole being, when allowed to be open, are like the Eagle, soaring to great heights of joy, diving into sadness and depression, learning from both and indeed living as we humans are meant to live, full of spirit, emotion, reason, and passion. 

Yet with the onslaught of cancel culture we are becoming more like carrier homing pigeons.  Kept in cages, their route is always direct and level and predetermined by someone else.  Even the message they carry is not theirs but is instead written for them.  The pigeon does its job, but with how much joy or personality?

People are not perfect. Nor are they level and unthinking or unfeeling.  Their ugly parts cannot be banished and indeed it is the contrast with the ugly that allows us to experience our greatest joys.  Much as we might try, while we might be able to sanitize a city for a day, we simply cannot fully sanitize the imperfect being called human.  We can force the humanity onto the level and predetermined course of the pigeon, but sooner or later the individual human spirt needs to soar.

The sanitized future may look lovely.  A “perfect world.”  But it seems more and more like that perfect world, cold and devoid of emotion, requires us to sanitize our very selves so that we no longer exist.  We still have the ability to soar and to dive like the eagle, but every time a thought or a word or an action is banned from our access, we move a little closer to the pigeon.