12/31/24 – The “Enlightenment” brought the world slavery. Christianity brought the world abolition. The Judeo-Christian belief is that all people are human beings and are created equal by their creator. No exceptions. If anybody says any different in Christianity’s name, they are not practicing Christianity. On that note, we close out 2024.
12/31/24 – Mary’s Song
46 And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
12/31/24 – AI is doing surgery. Now, AI should do CEO. Let’s take this all the way.
12/31/24 – Vivek Ramaswamy seems to want to import the Hindu caste system into the United States. Oh wait, it already existed. Hm, but who is in the Brahmin caste?
12/30/24 – There is no morality in the bogus evolutionary theory. That’s yet another fiction imposed on it and on us by the ignorant atheist elites, the intellectual dregs of our society. They are also intellectually dishonest. They are liars. “Crucially, truth is never personal or individual. Commitment to moral virtues divinely ordained is necessary. The only piece of practical advice Dostoevsky gives to the mother is to get her child ‘acquainted with the Gospel’ and ‘teach him to believe in God.’ There is nothing better than the Savior, the great writer tells her. This is an absolute must for Dostoevsky—no person can grow up to be good without Christ…. Herein lies the terrifying part, for the work of parenting starts with my own self—my love of truth, rectitude, goodness of heart, freedom from false shame, and constant reluctance to deceive. I have to embody the love of truth and goodness and live them out in my daily life if I want to teach my children to love what is good.” If you don’t model it, do you actually believe it? And if you don’t believe it, then why are you saying it?
What Dostoevsky Taught Me About Sending My Son to College
12/30/24 – “Billionaire author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott acknowledged another $2 billion in donations in a blog post on Wednesday, bringing the total she’s given away since 2019 to $19.2 billion.”
Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott reveals another $2 billion in donations in 2024
12/30/24 – To the Washington Propaganda: We understand you to be full of intellectually, socially and personally, especially spiritually, deficient trolls pretending to be journalists and intellectuals. You have no capacity for any level of depth in the insights you present because you have no depth of thought or understanding of the human condition. We understand that when someone mentions God, you think money, materialism, memes and me. You have been indoctrinated by the “greed is good” doctrine, and you are indoctrinators of it. You think in superficial stereotypes and modernist absurdities because you are ridiculous, much like ridiculous yachts. Michelangelo, il divino, doesn’t give a s—t what you or anybody thinks of him. He didn’t care in his lifetime. He certainly doesn’t care now in his eternal home. He knew who he was and who he served. You don’t know anything. So, take your religious bigotry and f—k off.
12/30/24 – The Catholic Church would do well to align with the indigenous people throughout the world to realize Laudato Si. They know better than anyone else how to practice care for our common home, and it would be an opportunity to repair the harm from past wrongs and to do so with restorative practices. We understand the difference between worshipping the creator instead of the created, but can one truly love the creator when violating his command to us to be good stewards of his creation?
12/30/24 – It’s very easy to get wrapped up in politics, but as Christians, we are called to keep our eyes fixed on God and to do his will. As a genuine man of faith, Carter understood the trappings of the world well. He kept the faith. His fidelity to the Lord and his integrity are his legacy. Ay-men. (It’s a cute accent.)
What I Learned From Praying With Jimmy Carter
12/29/24 – President Carter was a man of deep faith. He has gone to the Lord. We respected him, and he made the nation proud. He, his late wife, and his family are blessed. May our God of love bring them comfort. May they know that President Carter will remain beloved by the American people.
12/29/24 – Today, local Catholic Churches marked the start of the Jubilee Year. The idea comes out of the Jewish tradition, our parent religion, specifically from the Book of Leviticus (the third Book of Moses/the Torah). “The Catholic Jubilee Year, established in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII, is rooted in the Jewish tradition of releasing prisoners, forgiving debts, and restoring harmony every 50 years. [The Catholic Church does it every 25 years.] During the Jubilee, Catholics can receive plenary indulgences, which remove the temporal punishment for sins already forgiven. These indulgences can also be offered by the living for the relief of souls in purgatory.”
In order to fully appreciate any religion, you need to understand that their histories are often intertwined in ways you might not expect. You also need to understand that religious identity is often the central part of many people’s identity, and it too can be more complex than you might expect. For example, I have ancestral roots and spiritual formation in both the eastern and the western Catholic Churches. Both churches existed since the beginning of Christianity, and this legacy continues. Within what we call the “church,” there have also always existed various ethnic groups, and after the birth of the faith, their identities became defined by both the religion and the preexisting genetic, cultural and linguistic history of the ethnic group.
This is not unique to Christianity, which is a religion with the most global adherents and the most geographical diversity, but it can also be found in other religions that are often not associated with this diversity, such as Judaism. The best known Jewish ethnic group are the Ashkenazi Jews, but there are also populations of Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews. The Bagdadi Jews are a Jewish ethnic group from India, not Iraq, also within the broader ethnic group of the Jewish people. There are also Cochin Jews, who were original to Kerala State in India, Bene Israel Jews also in India, and Beta Israel Jews, original to Ethiopia.
Now that we’ve blown your mind a little, we’re going to blow your mind a little more. People often retain the culture that they are living in within their faith tradition. So, here is an Indian dish, Gulab Jamun, which is delicious, common during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which this parent religion shares with its offspring religions, such as Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. “Gulab jamun is one of India’s most famous deserts, though it was introduced by the Persians around 500 BC. The word ‘gulab’ is derived from the Persian words ‘gol’ (flower) and ‘ab’ (water), which refer to the sweet’s rose water-scented syrup. Interestingly, gulab jamun is commonly served at Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, which, much like our own festival of lights, Haunkkah [sic], celebrates bringing light into the world and good triumphing over evil.” Enjoy the richness of our religious and spiritual heritage and the dessert!
12/29/24 – The church is a cross. We turned an instrument of torture and death into the symbol of our faith. In the western tradition, the symbolism of the cross is captured literally in the architectural structure of the church. The big “aisle” in the center is call the nave. As you walk toward the altar at the front of the church, there is an “aisle” that runs perpendicular to the nave. It is called the transept. Together, the nave and the transept form the shape of a cross.
The most common prayer for Christians is the sign of the cross, and in the western Catholic tradition, we do so by tracing the shape of the cross on our bodies. We first touch our finger to our forehead and say silently or aloud, “In the name of the Father,” then the center of our chest (near our heart), “and of the Son,” then the front of our left followed by right shoulders, “and of the Holy Spirit,” “Amen.” This is the Trinity, our God. The prayer is an act of respect for Jesus’s sacrifice for us and a blessing of ourselves. The cross is both suffering and salvation. It is both death and eternal life. We both bear our cross and place our cross at the Lord’s feet. God walks with us through it all. You are not alone.
Note: We have different crosses, and the Jerusalem cross is a traditional one. (It is not associated with a political movement.) We have also different church structures and different rites. Christianity is an ancient religion with diverse traditions. That’s how it was born, and that’s how we want it to stay.
12/29/24 – One can sense that Biden might be having some regrets, what we call “Catholic guilt.” What he and his enablers did was wrong. Biden was selfish and deceived the American people. He shouldn’t have done it. It was a sin. His personal work is to do an examination of conscience and take his findings to God (and the confessional). Of his findings, what he brings to the American people is up to him, and each American can decide what to do with it.
However, as a country we have a problem with people being unwilling to retire and/or give up their positions of power. It is disgraceful and damaging to our nation. It is selfish. Since this problem does not seem to be self-correcting, we need term limits. All of that said, Biden’s greatest legacy is that the nation is not concerned that he will not transfer power peacefully. Harris conceded graciously, as is our tradition, and we all know that Biden will transfer power peacefully. Great men know how to win. Even greater men know how to lose – with grace and patriotism.
12/28/24 – Likely some other denominations as well, but Catholicism has a way of leaving an imprint on the soul. It’s a long initiation and moral formation process, almost intentionally designed to help you find your way back to God if you get lost. (Many of us get lost. You would definitely not be alone in that regard. Some people have yet to be found.) Sitting in a silent church is how I started my own journey back way back when. (I was raised Catholic, and I never stopped being Christian. I just stopped practicing for a while.) I can’t think of a better way to start one’s spiritual journey. A silent church is solace. You can walk through the doors and just sit and be still with God. You don’t have to say anything, do anything, be anything. You’re just there together: creator and created.
If you go to a Catholic Church during off-mass times, a few people might already be there. There has never been a time when anybody was anything but quiet and reverent. It’s very peaceful. (In the grander churches, cathedrals and basilicas, however, be prepared for some tourists….) Pilgrims are visiting Christians, so they’ll be like the rest of the worshippers. You might be able to find the Magnificat, and silently read it. You can pray the rosary. You can kneel in a chapel (off of the aisle) or in a pew. You can also just sit in a pew, and as Michelangelo did, reflect on the crucified Christ. (PS People cry all the time in church. You wouldn’t be alone in that regard either.)
12/28/24 – To the people who are perpetually online memeing, tweeting and whatever else it is you people do, do us all – and yourself – a favor and go on a multi-day silent retreat. No talking. No phone. We’re all sick to death of your ridiculousness….
Find the Divine
12/28/24 – We have a news flash for everybody – meaning everybody, no matter your genetics. You can’t really get “intelligent” at something unless you work on it. People have different natural talents. To get good at anything, they all put in the time, effort and work. You have to do the work!
Another misconception is that all education takes place in a classroom. It doesn’t. You choose your setting. Obviously, K-12 education is required, as it should be, and it should have an equal balance between (logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic). A misconception is that writing is easy. It’s not. It’s arguably a harder skill to develop than a lot of the logical-mathematical work people end up doing for their jobs. Most good writers are also good readers, and even though these skills might have fallen out of favor in terms of employment, human beings are more than their jobs, and we want them to be able to practice all of these skills (math, reading, and writing) well and to continue to work on them during lifelong learning.
Students need to go to school and do their homework. They need to go to school! No cellphones! Outside of that, they shouldn’t have every aspect of their day be controlled and predetermined. Overbearing parents are killing the development of their creativity, their ability to develop holistically and are interfering in their own discovery of their identity. Kids should choose one or two extracurricular activities (naturalistic, body-kinesthetic, musical, and visual-spatial). They should also have some type of job or volunteering during the summer. This will give them hands-on, real-world experience and build interpersonal skills. The rest of their time should be outside (naturalistic) with friends (interpersonal) – without using their phones. No phones! They should also spend time in their religious places of worship (interpersonal, intrapersonal, metaphysical) on a regular basis, at least weekly. This structure will give them a well-rounded, holistic development, potentially developing every type of intelligence.
Education doesn’t stop once you become an adult, and all adults need to do lifelong learning. They need to model this for their children if they have them and do it for themselves. It’s not about professional ambition. It’s about living a fulfilling and balanced life. They can take classes formally or informally, or they can do what many people do, they pick a couple of things to work on and do it in a social context (interpersonal). It could be learning another language (verbal-linguistic), or a hobby such as gardening (naturalistic) or cooking (body-kinesthetic). It could be a sport (body-kinesthetic), playing a musical instrument (music) or some form of art (visual-spatial). Importantly, all people should spend some reasonable about of time volunteering to help others. Instead of coming home from work and watching hours of TV, doomscrolling or engaging in other bad habits, adults need to model the right behaviors for their children. Give them a balance between structure and freedom, and everybody needs to give themselves a proper, balanced development that continues throughout their entire lives.
12/27/24 – Setting aside the basics for a moment, on a deeply personal level, we cannot have everything that many of us took for granted in our youth simply be discarded. We spent time playing outdoors (developing naturalistic intelligence) with our friends (developing interpersonal intelligence). We read books (many forms of intelligence), which is the foundation for much knowledge. So many middle-aged and older people have mentioned how they feel sad for our youth. We should feel sad for them. This is a tragedy. But we should also feel sad for our whole country. This is no way for us and especially young people to live.
We also need religion to make a forceful comeback. Many people misunderstand religion, and many religions have brought this misunderstanding on themselves. Religion is not a bunch of rules to be memorized and followed. It is a continual process of changing oneself for the better. When practiced correctly, all religions and spiritual traditions are about connecting with the divine. This has a spiritual benefit that is grossly underestimated. It is the opposite of the ill-effects of cellphone addiction, and it is a form of intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence.
In the Christian tradition, fully practicing Christians go to church regularly. This is active application of both intrapersonal intelligence (praying and meditation) and interpersonal intelligence (being in communion in a church and at other related church functions, such as charity drives), and many also study the Bible and related texts either on their own or with others (metaphysical intelligence). It’s three forms of intelligence being practiced within the context of one thing – religion.
The loss of religion has been a tremendous blow for our society, and it has led to intellectual, spiritual and personal shallowness. People are not forming substantive knowledge, soul connection, or identities. They don’t even know how to do any of these things or that they should be working on them. Instead, they create cardboard cutouts and prop them up, slapping stickers to signify to the world who they want the world to think they are. The shallowness of our culture and our people is a sickness, and we must remedy it as soon as possible.
12/27/24 – We have to take care of our people. This is nonnegotiable. We will not have a country if we don’t do this. Everybody must be housed! It is a moral imperative, and we will not be backing down on this. We cannot have people living on the streets. Everybody must be fed! This is also not optional. We cannot have a national crisis regarding food insecurity. Focus on these two things. Start here.
12/27/24 – How might the status quo described below be related to the red-hot immigration debate? When the majority of the country feels disrespected, having immigrants flood the country, whether legal or illegal, will definitely give the people a sense of being replaced. It amplifies the disrespect they already feel because the disrespect is real. They are not imagining it. Effectively, the elites, who look down on the rest of the country, have chosen to stop investing in the people of the country, and the people know it.
Homelessness has risen dramatically, and this is a dangerous situation for our country and our people. We have said this before, and it must be fixed immediately. We are basically not taking care of our people. And the rest of the country know that the atheist, liberal elites don’t really care about immigrants. They care about virtue-signaling. This is all they ever care about.
We shouldn’t have any more immigration legal or illegal – right now. (Emphasis on at this time.) We should focus on serving our people much better than we have. We also don’t need any more technology, and many of the legal immigrants end up working in sectors, such as technology and finance, that have long stopped contributing much of anything that is genuinely helpful to our society. These immigrants are also just making our rising inequality and the hierarchy described below worse.
We need to make the people who actually do what we need in this country feel heard, valued, and respected. This is not about race or anything like that. It’s not about xenophobia. It’s about the dignity of work and actually treating our citizens with respect and taking care of them. Right now, none of those things are happening.
12/27/24 – Let’s consider the status quo, which has been in place for decades if not centuries. Atheists, who are so, so rational (we should worship them and their superior brains), are smarter than religious people, who are stupid and believe in fairy tales. White-collar people, who on average make more money and sit in clean offices, are smarter than blue-collar people, who on average make less money and do physically harder and dirtier jobs.
No direct value is placed on interpersonal intelligence, and no value of any kind is placed on intrapersonal intelligence. Some people who are exceptionally good at sports (body-kinesthetic intelligence), music (musical intelligence), entertainment, and the occasional artist (visual-spatial intelligence), who likely remains obscure to the general public, are well-regarded and well-compensated, but everybody else is discarded in the social hierarchy as intellectually and professionally deficient. This includes people who help others for a living but don’t make much money, such as social workers (interpersonal intelligence), the farmers (naturalistic intelligence) who feed us and without whom we would likely starve to death, the blue-collar workers, such as construction workers (visual-spatial intelligence) who build our houses and without whom our country generally wouldn’t function, and the clergy (interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, and uncategorized, metaphysical intelligence), who provide pastoral care and nurture our souls.
When these super smart, rational atheist, white-collar workers start losing their jobs, and they start falling in social status, will the society at large still view them as smart? Will these people still parade around with pretentious plumage, brandishing their worthless pedigree, and basking in their smug pseudo-knowledge? These are the same people who spend much of their time online, producing memes and other performance art, to flatter themselves and their insatiable egos, feeding their endless narcissism. Will the society at some point compare, for example, memes to metaphysics and wonder, maybe they were ignorant idiots this whole time, and we just didn’t see it because we actually couldn’t see anything? We were too blinded by the trappings of materialism, money and memes to actually see anything clearly. At that point, will the present social hierarchy invert?
12/26/24 – As a clarifying point, the argument for metaphysics as the highest form of intelligence, aside from epistemology as presented below, could be as simple as it’s the hardest to replace with AI. Arguably, it is also the most abstract. As a thought experiment, ask yourself, what is the hardest intellectual job that exists today, and then see if AI could replace it. Physicists, yes. Mathematicians, yes. Etcetera. Metaphysics, not so much. It’s ancient, and there are secular and religious varieties, such as Christian metaphysics, but they all grapple with questions that aren’t conducive to simple answers.
12/26/24 – In fairness to the dumb atheists and elites, they are doing what most people in our society have been trained to do. They have specialized in one way of thinking. Society rewards this approach with money, prestige and possibly fame, and they have little incentive to deviate from it. After a lifetime of this, they end up intellectually stunted and unable to objectively assess their actual intelligence based on a holistic framework. They also incorrectly generalize from the way of thinking they have mastered to other ways of thinking even if the other ways are actually quite different. (Intelligence and thinking are used interchangeably in this context because they go hand in hand.)
Unless these people decide to pursue other interests for personal fulfillment, they have no incentive to master other ways of thinking. As someone who has studied various subjects that were rather different, I noticed that to be successful in them, I would often have to change the way I was thinking. One could think of it as similar to code-switching for people who know more than one language fluently. Or imagine approaching a creative writing assignment or an art project like it is a math problem, a research paper, or data analysis. It’s not going to work. You have to change the way you’re thinking.
There is a pervasive and real problem in our society: intellectual shallowness and the homogeneity of the elite class. This is the unfortunate result of a society that gives people with effectively the same type of intelligence all the rewards without recognizing that they are also creating hidden societal problems, such as biases and unjustified confidence in conclusions, especially as it relates to empirical matters. It has also amplified group think since these homogeneous elites think and are trained to think in a similar way. In terms of the professional world, let’s face it. Many of the presently high-paying technology and some other white-collar jobs will be replaced with AI. AI will likely be more accurate, more cost-effective, and the simple reality that these workers can so easily be replaced says something about the nature of the work and the intelligence and the thinking involved in the work. It is over-rated. The hard truth for them is that these people have always been over-rated.
12/26/24 – Are the media and other liberal atheists and elites the dumbest people in the country (and in the world)? This is a fair question, and one that we should seriously consider. We know that there are multiple intelligences. What if the highest form of intelligence is metaphysical intelligence, which would include epistemology, since knowing the nature and limits of knowledge would be the foundation for understanding all knowledge? It’s easy to feel smart when you’re actually a dumb person copying other dumb people who have been unjustifiably elevated to positions of power or prestige based on a wrong measure of intelligence, thus treated as smart people. Perhaps many of the difficulties we’re experiencing around the world is because dumb people who think they’re smart are running the show.
8 Intelligences – Theory of Multiple Intelligences Explained
12/26/24 – Metaphysics during dead week is perfect…maybe even divine.
12/26/24 – There is or are important things in the Garden of Eden related to the story and points below. (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament) What is it/are they? Jesus admonishes his disciples for doing something related to the story and points below? (New Testament) What was it?
12/26/24 – Let’s assume that there is a God who created everything. Then, ultimately, we only know what God wants us to know. He can add or subtract from our knowledge as he chooses. The power over knowledge that we think we have and take such pride in is actually an illusion. So, you can call it “supernatural” because it doesn’t fit with your observation, knowledge or doesn’t sound plausible to you. But if there is a God, which believers think there is, to him, there really is no meaningful difference between the natural and the supernatural because they would both be following God’s order. Basically, if you want to do metaphysics well, you have to think in a very different way.
12/26/24 – This is a true story.
God: It’s getting tedious down there. Jesus, should we mess with them a little?
Jesus: Sure, why not.
Believer: What is this thing? God, what do you want us to do with this?
God: I don’t know. I just create stuff. You have to figure out what to do with it.
Believer: It’s ugly and seems rather useless.
God: Your problem.
Scientist: What is this? This is amazing! It’s the missing (evolutionary) link.
Believer: Great. Thanks, God.
God: You’re welcome.
This is life on earth.
12/25/24 – We like our Christianity intense, demanding, gloriously weird and focused on God, not on ourselves. One of the key benefits of a Christian spiritual life is you get to get out of yourself, your neurotic musings, your absurd narcissism, your meaningless materialism and other mundane aspects of the world, including dissecting every joyous interaction with the marvel that is creation into sterile “scientific” dross. By communing with God, we come as close as we can to touching the hem of the divine, and even just the proximity is transcendental.
12/25/24 – The Christian Bible is not the Jefferson Bible. Stop trying to make Christianity into something it’s not so that it would be more palatable to “humanists,” whatever they are, or anybody else. Christianity is also not the Prosperity Gospel, which is heretical. As one can see starting with Jesus’s birth in a manger, surrounded by animals, animal feces and such, it was a humble beginning, and Jesus’s life was characterized by teaching, healing and the ultimate sacrifice. As Jesus said, we cannot serve both God and mammon. Jesus did God’s will. He served God, and Christians are also called to serve God – not themselves. There is no debate on these points. They are theologically settled.
12/25/24 – A Jewish person invited me to their synagogue, and my first response was, “You can do that?” I really didn’t know you could do that. So, I get it. Anybody and everybody is always welcome to our churches. You don’t have to ask, and don’t feel intimidated. If they have one, grab a bulletin at the entrance. It will help you follow along with the mass/service. You can ask ahead of time or when you get there what the rules are for the Eucharist (the body and blood of Christ). Different denominations have different rules. In the Catholic Church, you need to have received the Sacrament of Holy Communion in the Catholic Church because its beliefs about it are a little different from other churches. Also, many Catholic Churches have evening masses because they have a lot of people to serve. The main point is this. Be respectful, observe what is appropriate for the faith tradition you’re visiting and your own if you have one, and just enjoy worshipping with others and connecting to the divine. God loves you wherever you are in your spiritual journey. God bless you.
12/25/24 – Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! Everyone belongs.
12/25/24 – This has been an emotionally conflicted Christmas, but it is what it is. Jesus was born as a refugee in a manger. God came to us in the flesh as he did. We go to God as we are. Everything belongs.
12/24/24 – It might be hard to believe, but you know what else is about Christianity – Christmas. We know. It’s a lot to process. Maybe this will help you figure it out. “My own dog, gone commercial!” Et tu, Snoopy? Et tu?
Charlie Brown Christmas Special: An Inside Job
12/24/24 – A Christmas Carol is about Christianity? What? No. It’s only a great redemption (and conversion) story with supernatural elements that changed a mean, materialistic man into someone filled with compassion, charity and joy. (See David Brooks below.) People don’t read. People don’t know how to read fiction. (And yes, you do also need to know the Bible to be able to make these connections.) This is where we’re at as a country. It’s truly sad.
No Scrooge He: The Christianity of Charles Dickens
12/24/24 – It is a personal point of embarrassment for me that even having noticed all of these unfavorable characteristics of the left for a long time now, I had still underestimated the scope and the magnitude of the problem. I hope to never repeat this mistake again. It is a hard lesson.
12/24/24 – And don’t think we didn’t notice the timing. The elite liberal atheists (and perhaps satanists) with no moral formation at all, the shallow, superficial and unserious elite university educated, godless hedonists tried to co-opt Christianity right before Christmas to push through their progressive agenda on the death penalty. They think they fooled us. They didn’t. We noticed.
12/24/24 – As a clarifying point, if you ask conservatives about their inconsistent position on abortion and the death penalty as it relates to the sanctity of life, they will likely tell you that they are considering the guilt or innocence of the person. Fetuses are obviously innocent. People found guilty of heinous crimes are obviously not. (If mistakes are being made in the judicial process, then the system needs to be fixed. The irony is that the liberal “institutionalists” are also cherry-picking when they have confidence in the institutions and when they don’t…based on…oh, that’s right, what’s popular in liberal circles.) Therefore, even if you disagree with conservatives, their position has an internal logic that is theologically founded and, at least, understandable. What is the liberals’ internal logic? It doesn’t exist because they have no moral foundation that they use to base decisions on. Also, if we increase abortion rights and eliminate the death penalty, we would become more liberal than Europe. Perhaps their “internal logic” is simply to out-lib the libs….
12/24/24 – Our Christmas gift to you this year is insight into how the richest, most powerful country’s elite make decisions. The liberals copy each other, including positions from liberals in other countries. This is their “intellectual and moral” decision-making process. Birds of a feather flock together.
12/23/24 – For the record, my personal position on abortion and the death penalty are informed by my faith. In terms of abortion, in certain cases, I prioritize free will, which is a theological concept, over the sanctity of life. In terms of the death penalty, in certain cases, I prioritize punishment, which is found throughout the Bible, including capital punishment, over the sanctity of life. What I am not basing my judgment calls on is what other western countries, such as European countries, are doing because I’m not going to decide what’s best for our country on some other part of world, as if they are superior to us (and nonwestern countries). Bear in mind that when the liberals and the liberal media, “the great defenders” of American minorities, use Europe, the godless hedonists in demographic, economic, social, and moral decline, as their moral north star, they are implicitly engaging in bias and racism. All of the nonwestern countries are majority nonwhite and more conservative than the west. One might call this hypocrisy.
12/23/24 – Although people might disagree with the Catholic Church, it is consistent in its position on both abortion and the death penalty. It’s opposed to both, without exception, on the grounds of sanctity of life. In his commutations for all but three cases of federal death row inmates, Biden, a Catholic, is also consistent. He makes some exceptions on both abortion and the death penalty. (This is also our position and likely many Americans’ position.) What’s interesting is that the media seems inconsistent. Many of them seem to want more abortion rights and no death penalty. Just by chance, this also happens to be the inverse of what many conservatives want: no abortion rights and death penalty. Shall we place bets on what “deep values” are informing the media’s inconsistent position? Might it be whatever is popular in liberal circles…and the opposite of the conservative position? Its position is certainly unlikely to be theologically informed because the media are ignorant atheists…perhaps some are even satanists. One never knows…. (The invasion of the occult is real.)
12/23/24 – What should appall the American people is this. Not only have the elites been looking down on ordinary Americans, the people who actually make the country work, but said elites also don’t know anything! For decades, it’s been clear that they are intellectual cowards who parrot each other’s ideas for career advancement and also simply because they are intellectually shallow.
What is becoming more and more apparent is that they haven’t done any work on any level, including on a personal level. This is why they feel so comfortable perched on their self-righteous ivory pedestal preening in their moral superiority. They haven’t taken the time or put in the effort to do any personal work, including spiritual work. And even though they have not done the work, these shallow, superficial, unserious people are simultaneously looking down on the people who have. For many people who come to faith, it’s a long and/or deeply introspective journey – a genuine inquiry of the mind, heart, and soul. The lazy know-nothings are looking down on the people who’ve done the work and actually know something.
The American people deserve to know how much nepotism and “friendship” is actually the basis for hiring because that seems to be part of why we’re getting an elite class that is homogenous, ignorant, and shallow. For example, how many people at the pretentious rag, The New Yorker, were actually hired based on their talent? All these elites, whose ideology is rather suspiciously similar, do is copy each other. They live in an intellectual, spiritual and personal echo chamber. Their ideas aren’t being challenged. They preen each other like birds in a flock.
12/22/24 – Everything David French wrote here is correct, and he presented his argument well. The problem is that people are conflating the way Christianity is or has been practiced with the truth of the thing itself. If a scientific theory is true, it doesn’t become less true simply because scientists don’t put it into practice correctly. You have to differentiate between the truth of the thing and its application. Human beings are fundamentally flawed, and they will never put Christianity (or many other things) into practice perfectly. Did you also know that the grass is green, and the sky is blue? What other obvious statements need to be made here? I’m not seeing any work – truly any work at all. I’m seeing intellectual and spiritual laziness – everywhere, and it’s pissing me off. You have to put in the work. You have to think. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.
Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?
12/22/24 – The society is shallow, superficial and unserious because the people are shallow, superficial and unserious. You have nobody to blame but yourselves. I am going to justifiably exclude myself. Sorry folks, but I actually take myself seriously and put in the time and the work. I’m not lumping myself in with you, ridiculous people. Everything is performance, and everybody is a performance artist.
In this video, David Brooks talks about hitting a personal low, and then making the slow climb out of it, starting his faith journey. It is very common for people to start their spiritual journey at a low point in their life. This is personal growth. They recognize that they need something important, and they take the time and make the effort to pursue it.
However, this was not my case. I was doing fine. I simply had more time than I normally did. I seized upon it because who knew when it would come around again. The extra time gave me the spiritual and mental space to fully engage in what I, as someone who grew up in a deeply religious Catholic family, intuitively understood would require a lot from me.
I took my spiritual journey seriously, not because of my life circumstances, but because that’s who I am. I have always taken myself and my life seriously. This doesn’t mean that I don’t take risks or make mistakes. In fact, I’ve probably taken more risks than the average person, and like most people, I have made many mistakes. It also doesn’t mean that I haven’t had any fun. I’ve had a lot of fun. It means that I am not going to sell myself short and be satisfied with a life that doesn’t live up to my high standards. I am not talking about money, prestige, etc. I’m talking about genuine fulfillment on substantive – not superficial – measures in every aspect of my life.
If you don’t want to take yourself seriously and put in the work, that’s on you. You own it. Know this though: Your laziness and selfishness are also contributing to the slow and steady erosion of our society. It is retrograde. Our society is moving backward instead of forward. People are asking themselves questions that have already been asked and answered by much greater intellects than the performance artists will ever be – much greater intellects than anybody that exists in our modern world with all of its scientism and self-worship.
Go read some books that force you to think hard. Read and think. Previously, I shared a story about a girl who told my friend that she didn’t want to think, and how my friend and I were just floored by it. “Who doesn’t want to think?” Well, that’s our society now. The Chosen is a good series. As they will tell you themselves, it is intended to be a supplement to the Bible – not a substitute. I’ve been dealing with this for decades now, and I’ve had enough. Do not come to me with your laziness and expect sympathy. I will tell you to do the work. Do not come to me with your superficiality and expect me to respect you. I will tell you to do the work. Take yourself and your life seriously, do the work, or just go home. Happy Sunday!
‘The Interview’: Jonathan Roumie
12/21/24 – There are only two questions to ask: Is there a God, and who/what is that god(s)? In terms of Christianity: Is there a God, and is Jesus Christ the Son of God? Your answer options are yes/yes (Christian), no/moot (atheist), and yes/no (figure out who/what is God). If you haven’t worked out the basics, like the difference between worshipping the created and the creator, or do people who don’t believe in the Christian God go to hell, and such, we can’t help you. Either take this seriously, or just go home. You need to do that work on your own. It’s not hard. Those questions have been asked a million times, in a million ways. In fact, almost all of the questions anyone asks on this topic have actually been answered. You could also try asking Jesus, we mean Jonathan Roumie, but he might be busy dealing with the occult that has invaded our state capitols. Good luck.
12/21/24 – Let us distill the “New Testament question” to its essence, shall we. You either believe the account in the New Testament, one that is often unflattering to its main figures, or you don’t. If you don’t, ask yourself: What did they gain by “lying to us”? Death, often brutally. The disciples just witnessed Jesus being crucified. Some courageous and principled souls are willing to tell the truth even if it comes with death. Do you know anyone who would be willing to lie for no personal gain or even purpose even if it comes with death? It would be a truly novel form of suicide. Someone once said, either Jesus is crazy (delusional), or he is who we believe him to be? These are the choices before you: deception, insanity or truth. There really are no other options. Discern for yourself.
12/21/24 – If you believe in God, let’s put it into more “palatable language” for some, that a “higher power” created the universe, but simultaneously have difficulty believing in the virgin birth or Jesus’s miracles, or basically anything supernatural, we have this to say to you: This is not a logical position. If there is a God who created the universe and everything in it, God can do anything. Happy Saturday!
12/20/24 – We need to open up our national conversation to the religious experience, in its variety and its intensity, not a censored, sanitized version but the full experience with its mysticism and even its strangeness. For many people, this is the most personal and important part of their lives. It shouldn’t be withheld. It should be shared. We want to hear their stories.
12/20/24 – We’re only a few days away from Christmas, for Christians, the day of our savior’s birth. We were given an undeserved gift. The best gift you can give anyone is to act as Jesus did, to show them compassion, love, kindness, and to listen to them. It’s free, and it will be a gift to yourself as much as it is to them.
12/20/24 – Homelessness is a problem we must fix. It is a moral imperative. “There’s no cookie-cutter solution to homelessness. There are basic reasons for the problem, of course (mental health problems, addiction and the like), but once you peel back that onion, you begin to see trauma and particular challenges that require a deep, relational understanding of the individual.” Settled also tries to address this relational component of homelessness.
I’ve been homeless and served the homeless. Real help starts with listening.
12/19/24 – As someone who postponed and postponed and postponed my final sacrament of Christian initiation, I understand well the long spiritual journey. I would say to myself, when I have the time, I will do it. (It was in the Catholic Church, and it’s a process, as it should be.) But it really wasn’t about time. When have I not made time for something I really cared about? I postponed it because I took it very seriously, and I was scared.
I didn’t want to make the single most important commitment I would ever make without being 100 percent sure. This is a commitment between God, my maker, and myself, after all. Nothing else compares. Well, God had other plans. I did a small fraction of the intellectual and spiritual work I had intended to do. The truth is that I confirmed by grace. God knew better than I did that I was ready. How do you explain this to people? Is it logical? What is that?
Similarly, what does one say to someone who experiences a conversion, as David Brooks shares here? “Congratulations,” like it’s the person’s birthday? Maybe it is, in a way. It’s, as they say, a mystical experience. By definition, it is hard to find words, which are used to describe our worldly experience, that are appropriate for or do justice to an otherworldly experience, which by definition a conversion is.
As a Jewish person, Brooks has the great privilege of being able to be both Christian and Jew, or, what some might call, a Messianic Jew. (It’s not Team Christian…. We aren’t in competition with each other or with any other religion.) Most of the Bible is Jewish and incredibly illuminating, but, as someone who’s totally biased, the New Testament, which is considerably shorter, is also extremely powerful.
It is very common after a conversion to feel intoxicating zeal. You want to share it with everyone. You just can’t believe it. The thing you had been fighting becomes the thing you’re fighting for. In our pluralistic and secular society, often times, people temper this exuberance for practical reasons. We don’t want to offend or impose. We don’t want to be obnoxious. But how can we not share this joy? It’s just incredible! Here is Brooks’s share.
A hopefully helpful word to Brooks and others: Beyond any institution, find a supportive spiritual community. Nobody is good at any of this. It’s not about attaining anything. It really is about the longing and the trying. God “rewards” the effort, not the perfection, which we can’t attain even if we wanted to. All God wants is your love. Often times, my prayers consist of nothing more than “God, I love you so much,” and I mean it as much as I could possibly mean it. Trust God completely, and give your heart over to him. It will be in good hands. Shalom and peace be with you, brother.
The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be
12/18/24 – Atheists, agnostics and nones, especially atheists, are one of the best reasons to run, not walk, away from the Democratic Party.
12/18/24 – We want you to reflect on how remarkable it is that in opening of the Jewish religious texts, the story of the creation of the universe in the first (the book of Genesis) of the five books of Moses (the Torah), God rests. Here is this omnipotent, omniscient God, who only has to speak words to create the universe, and the text pauses to inform us that after God creates the universe with his words, God rests. It is the single most incredible detail in any creation story.
Words are a type of sound. When you learn music, you don’t just learn the notes. In between the notes are spaces, and one type of space is formally called rest. The rest of the spaces between the notes are informally called rhythm. Imagine if you had continuous sound with no spaces, no rests. We have another kind of rhythm with space – our breath, the thing that gives us life. Our heart beats to a rhythm, and part of its rhythm is rest.
As a centering exercise, as you reflect on this, connect your breath, with its rest, to the word, with its rest, to God, the divine who rests. As you take in air (inhale), you can feel your chest cavity expand. Then, as you release the air (exhale), you can feel your chest cavity relax. It rests. Rest is part of life. It is necessary to life.
We are trained to think about doing. We forget to think about doing nothing, and that in the doing nothing, we are doing something very important, something designed into life. By doing nothing, we are honoring the God who did everything and then did nothing. God simply rested.
PS If I’ve learned anything from Torah study, it’s that there is never a good translation. Thank you to all of the rabbis for being meticulous and demanding and for regularly reminding us of this point.
Genesis
12/18/24 – The Hebrew Bible and the Jewish religion came first. Then Christianity. Then Islam. There is the Old Testament and the New Testament. It’s called the Old Testament for a reason. Do not argue with us on these established facts. We’re looking at you, Muslims…. We understand that some of you might hate the Jewish people, but your hatred doesn’t change the facts. Those are the facts.
12/18/24 – Pope Francis shares the importance of humor to life and the use of self-deprecation to elevate all human beings. Self-deprecation in this context is a form of vulnerability without the discomfort for oneself and for others that can sometimes come with it. Also, all clergy are simply human beings, and they would do well to remember this.
Pope Francis: There Is Faith in Humor
12/17/24 – If the heads of tech could keep their pandering to a certain person to a minimum, the American people might retain a modicum of respect for them, which is already at an all-time low. Have some courage and conviction. Have some dignity.
12/17/24 – It goes without saying that nobody wants a dictator either. Don’t delude yourselves. It would be worse than a monarchy, and we already had a war to end it. We are a free people, and we’re going to remain free.
12/16/24 – This was a thought-provoking anecdote from the article below. “To make forests amenable to scientific quantification, planners had to redefine what forest meant. Trees became timber, and everything not a tree was designated as underbrush—useless stuff that got in the way when workers tried to efficiently harvest the timber.
The German rationalists reorganized the forests, planting new trees in neat rows and clearing away all the underbrush. At first, everything seemed to go well. But as the Germans discovered too late, the trees needed the underbrush to thrive. Without the organic messiness that the rationalists had deemed superfluous, the trees’ nutrient cycle got out of whack. They began ailing. A new word entered the German language—Waldsterben, or ‘forest death.’
By focusing on only those parts of the forest that seemed instrumental to their uses, the planners failed to see the forest accurately. In trying to standardize and control the growth process, the planners murdered the trees.
The modern meritocracy misunderstands human beings the same way the German rationalists misunderstood trees.”
Whenever people bring up Germans, we think Jews because they tried to exterminate them. The Jewish people are entirely capable of efficiency. In fact, they have been some of the most industrious people in human history. What might their secret be? Could it be found within the wisdom of their religious texts, which have also asked them to grapple with human complexities and…messiness? The entire Hebrew (and Christian) Bible is a long philosophical consideration of God, life and pretty everything with few easy answers and many hard questions. The messiness is part of the design of the universe, of human beings, of life, of everything.
Lastly, the Hebrew Bible is likely the oldest religious text in the world, and in its opening, it says that on the seventh day, God rested. It commands us to do likewise. In fact, if we don’t sleep, we will die. It’s a disease. More generally, rest is like allowing a field to lie fallow. We do it so it will continue to bear fruit instead of being farmed to death. Responsible rest is not a waste of time. It’s an investment in life.
Best of How To: Waste Time
12/16/24 – This article also by David Brooks brings up good questions, especially regarding who should run the country and what kind of academic training makes for good leaders. We’ve done monarchy. The Revolutionary War rid us of that parasitic nightmare, and none of us want it back. We’ve done aristocracy. Nobody wants spoiled, airhead nepo babies with refined affectations and crude characters. We’ve done elite-university technocrats. (By the way, it’s elite, spelled just like that, not élite, with a French accent aigu. There is also no native English pronunciation of the word with the French é sound. At most, some native English speakers might pronounce it with the French e but never é….) Does our country run by the elite technocrats look like it’s working? It’s clearly not working. Now, a certain person wants to run the country with billionaires. Yes, indeed, this must be the solution. Let’s assume that because they achieved some level of success in one domain, for who knows what reasons, it must generalize to everything. So, of course, this would make them qualified to run the country. Therefore, what’s left? How about the American people in our diversity and collective wisdom run our country. We might not have them élite, fancy degrees or billions of dollars, but we actually know our country and care about it, not just about ourselves. Let’s actually be a democracy.
How the Ivy League Broke America
12/16/24 – “After a visit to one London institution, Dickens wrote to a newspaper to enlist the attention of the readers to the efforts ‘to introduce among the most miserable and neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of the commonest principles of morality and religion; to commence their recognition as immortal human creatures.’” The connection that Dickens draws between moral formation of outcasts and “their recognition as immortal human creatures” is as pure an expression of Jesus’s teachings as can be. We call it salvation, but the term has lost this explicit understanding.
The Rabbit Room’s ‘Christmas Carol’ Draws on Dickens’s Pure Religion
12/16/24 – The whole piece by David Brooks is worth your time. “America’s Founding Fathers studied the history of democracies going back to ancient Greece. They drew the lesson that democracies can be quite fragile. When private virtue fails, the constitutional order crumbles…. Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and respected. That’s very different from how we treat people now—in ways that make them feel sad and lonely, and that make them grow unkind.”
How America Got Mean
12/15/24 – One of the greatest indictments of western culture is its lack of emphasis on hospitality. It wasn’t always this way. In The Atlantic’s article on George Washington, posted here in October, after winning nothing less than the Revolutionary War, he and his wife performed their duties in the reception of guests, meaning hospitality. It was a remarkable detail. It gave a lot of insight into the American culture of the time. The individualistic turn that western culture has taken has coarsened the cultural component that most defines civilization – hospitality. On this Sunday, ask yourself: how do you treat the stranger? As Jesus said, how you treat them is how you treat God. Happy Sunday!
12/15/24 – The greatest “public space” ever created is the planet God gave us. Nothing else compares. We can sit in the shade of a tree or build a fire in a natural clearing, and we have all we need for community. The “infrastructure” of community is actually not in buildings, but in our posture toward each other and God. You have to actually want to be in community with each other.
That said. Many institutions, particularly religious ones, that we have created are intended to facilitate community within and beyond the physical. Not only is there community, but there is man-made beauty for our senses. It is a lovely complement to our abundant natural beauty. So, maybe just go to church.
“Beck: I mean, how do you get to that place with neighbors and people in your community without a church?
Jackson: I think it’s tough.
Beck: Yeah. It is tough.
Jackson: I think it’s not impossible. I mean, there is something about a shared set of values sometimes that comes from the church, that allows making friendships to be a little bit easier.”
In general, if you have a hard time approaching strangers, think of it this way. Anybody who is well-formed and well-bred is warm, friendly and welcoming. They go out of their way to help others feel included. In many countries and cultures, hospitality is extremely important. If others don’t receive you well when you’re this way, that’s an indictment of them and their upbringing – not of you. You just keep being the way one ought to be. Your persistence in this regard makes the world a better place.
Best of How To: The Infrastructure of Community
12/14/24 – We are not fans of people becoming reliant on drugs for the rest of their lives. Although we all might need to use drugs to manage our health at various points in our lives for different reasons, the general goal is to make one’s way off of them and to return to the body’s natural balance. There are always tradeoffs in economics and in life. If you decide to take a shortcut, such as choosing to take a drug, understand that it’s not a free lunch.
We are also not fans of assailing what are proven and effective vaccines. The timing is worthy of being analyzed to keep them effective but perhaps less overwhelming, especially for young children.
We live as natural lives as we can, and this has helped us stay healthy. Unfortunately, the world has become polluted with chemicals and processed foods, and we are living more sedentary lifestyles.
RFK Jr. is over-the-top, but the general sentiment is not wrong. In fact, many indigenous cultures have been using traditional, natural medicine and continue to use it alongside modern medicine. Generally speaking, the best approach is to start with the most natural, least invasive approach and incrementally try stronger ones if they fail. As mentioned above, one should also try to get off the stronger approaches as soon as possible.
12/14/24 – Israel has indirectly weakened Russia by weakening Iran, and Ukraine has directly weakened Russia. It is in Europe’s interests to finish Putin while he is still reeling from these blows.
12/12/24 – A clarifying technical point on short selling. Naked short selling is illegal, but we all know it’s not being enforced. Therefore, although short selling is presently legal, since the illegal variant is not being enforced, it is arguably safe to presume that much of short selling is in practice also illegal.
12/12/24 – A certain Bishop is rather too enchanted by the siren call of fame and the perilous narcissism that comes with a well-trained mind blessed with natural gifts, too focused on the number of Christianity’s adherents and not focused enough on, well, “the impoverished, self-denying carpenter,” Jesus Christ.
The Catholic Church has committed mortal sins. It will redeem itself completely and without equivocation – and it will change to orient itself totally and completely to Jesus Christ. There are many great priests. We are blessed to have them serve our communities with their kindness, their pastoral care, their knowledge, wisdom and eloquence, their insights into the faith and the human condition, and their guidance. May they remember that they are humble shepherds of a flock that trusts them. God does not betray his flock or its trust. He is true to them and to his Word.
Dumbed-Down Catholicism Was a Disaster
12/12/24 – We have often said that Christianity is a subversive religion. That’s because it is. Coming out of the Jewish tradition, with stories that sound fantastical yet piercingly true to the human condition, Christianity tells a story that goes completely against the human grain – the instinct for survival. Every great author has one thing in common. The stories they tell aren’t about themselves. They are about us. They call the Bible the Good Book. It is a lens into our psyches and our souls. It is also an opportunity for salvation. It’s not the hand of the person who wrote the Bible that’s dangerous and powerful. It’s the power of the word. The salvation is in the Word.
12/11/24 – Should we ban short selling? This is a serious question. It very well could be time. Obviously, investors would still be able to sell stocks. They just wouldn’t be able to sell borrowed stocks. This move might create more competition and bring down prices by helping markets function correctly again or at least better than they have.
One can think of short selling as a run on a healthy bank in the sense that a healthy firm can also come under price pressure not for fundamental reasons (such as liquidity, solvency or other fundamentals) but simply because of the whims or the machinations of market participants. If the argument is that we don’t want runs on banks and go to great lengths, such as FDIC insurance, to prevent them, then why would we want “runs” on stocks? We ban or regulate all kinds of financial activities. Why not ban short selling?
12/11/24 – A research idea for anybody who knows how to correctly compile and analyze financial data. We know that mergers and acquisitions can consolidate firms, thereby, decreasing competition and potentially increasing prices. (For laypeople, this is not price gouging, which has a specific definition and criteria.)
Another way this can happen is…short selling. Here is the argument. Short selling is typically a natural part of a healthy market, but just like a part of the body, it can become unhealthy. Imagine a situation where short sellers are colluding with or are originating in powerful hedge funds, such as Citadel, to drive down the prices of otherwise viable and promising companies, potentially into bankruptcy, on the pretense of market fundamentals.
However, in reality, they are doing this to protect or to inflate the prices of the assets already in their portfolios, such as established companies that already have large market shares,…and perhaps also to protect these dominant companies from (potential) competitors by forcing them out of the market via short selling. In other words, the short sellers could also collude with these established companies to drive their (potential) competitors out of the market.
12/11/24 – One of the problems with doing research is that it is extremely time-consuming when one or a few people work on it. How do we create community research projects while maintaining high quality, accountability and proper attribution? Ideas? A track-changes documentation process for the entire research project, start to finish?
12/10/24 – Journalism has a nepo baby and elite university graduate problem. These people are liberal-biased, arrogant ignoramuses who are out of touch with the American people. The legacy media needs to rid itself of this problem.
12/10/24 – On an unrelated note, we’re fans of getting rid of daylight savings time. It’s unnatural and disruptive. Standard time is healthier, and we need to make things simpler. We hope that this is an easy place to start.
12/10/24 – The beautifully flawed Saint Peter, at the end of his life, basically said that he stayed true to the Lord until the end. He answered the Lord’s call. He did what the Lord asked, and he kept the faith. That’s really it. Nothing more. It’s a divine parsimony.
12/10/24 – Thank you to Paul Krugman for the education. His research, his books and his opinion pieces, his writing in general, were accessible. Parsimony is supposed to be an academic virtue, but it is not treated as such. Also, teaching can often feel like a thankless job, and one wonders what their students are going to do with what one teaches. Often it’s just to serve themselves, but it’s not always. There’s always hope that what one has taught will end up being used, with a purity of heart, for the greater good. Everybody makes mistakes, and Krugman is not an exception. Ultimately, for all of us, the motivations matter more than anything else, and there’s hope in that.
12/9/24 – Can someone rein in a certain person and his personal vendettas and delusions? This isn’t about him. It’s about the American people. Is the incoming administration going to serve the country or what? Liz Cheney or anyone else on the Jan 6 Committee didn’t do anything illegal. The evil one did because he incited an insurrection – the single most shameful moment in American presidential history. We will never forgive him for it. May he burn in hell for it. All of the Jan 6 criminals should serve their time for engaging in unpatriotic and despicable criminality. Serve the f—king American people, a—holes.
12/9/24 – Academia needs to be purged of its anti-Semitism and its religious bigotry. One shouldn’t have to be an intellectually ignorant, bloviating pseudo-intellectual quack and hack, a bigoted, racist, anti-Semite to succeed in an industry that should demand not just knowledge, but as its ultimate goal, wisdom. Academia has become about cultural power, money and prestige. It has stopped being about truth and about serving humanity. It has become a vanity project controlled by immoral, self-worshipping atheists with subpar intellects. This would be a good project for the incoming administration.
12/8/24 – We don’t want to provoke anyone or any more tensions. They are absolutely terrible as it is. However, we do need to state some facts. One assumes that everyone knows this, but many Muslims are intentionally misinformed about their religion and their history. Christianity was born in the Middle East out of the parent religion, Judaism. It basically started out as a Jewish sect. Christianity has existed in the Middle East for about 2,000 years, since the very beginning of the faith. During those two millennia, it did not have “religious wars” on the scale and with the brutality that Europe had.
Islam is the youngest of the Abrahamic religions. It is not fair to Jews or to Christians for it to dominate the Levant. Muslims, no matter their sect, need to learn to live side-by-side with other religions, as mentioned, Judaism and Christianity, but also other lesser-known religions with fewer adherents, in peace. One’s right to practice their religion freely, openly and peacefully should never be conditional on the religion being the country’s majority religion or the number of its adherents. It’s a fundamental God-given right that no person can take away.
So, our hope is that we can open a new chapter for the Middle East, one that establishes a true democracy in a Muslim-majority part of the world that genuinely respects religious freedom, not just in the transactional way that Assad practiced. George W. Bush, an evangelical Christian, said “Islam is peace.” May it be peace in more than just words, but in deeds.
12/8/24 – We’re glad the Assad regime has been toppled. The rebels say that they will extend a hand of peace, freedom and democracy to all Syrians. We hope that the rebels remain true to their word. They pulled off a remarkable victory. May they also pull off a remarkable governance. The Syrian people have suffered tremendously, and they, like all people who live under brutal dictatorships, deserve to have self-governance and to be free.
As always, we pray for the persecuted church, and today, particularly for the Christian minority in Syria. May they be allowed to practice their faith freely, openly and peacefully, and may they be agents of peace, reconciliation and religious harmony in a region that desperately needs all of God’s children to live in peace. Be true to the God of Abraham.
12/8/24 – You might still be able to livestream the Washington National Cathedral’s Handel’s Messiah. It seems that there will not be a recording. Happy Sunday!
Handel’s Messiah
12/7/24 – Damascus has basically fallen. Why does it feel like we don’t have a president? It has often felt like this for the past four years. Hey Biden, maybe less focused on saving your guilty son’s behind and more focused on the people’s business, you know, the people you’re supposed to be serving. What’s the plan here?
12/7/24 – We understand that the loony left’s Palestinian-supporting faction is high on their brain rot induced ignorance pretending to be actual knowledge and their anti-Semitism cloaked in compassion for a people and a culture and even more so a region they do not understand at all. However, they might want to briefly set aside their self-glorifying virtue-signaling whose sole purpose is to solicit admiration for themselves and their “enlightenment” to actually try to understand the situation in the Middle East in its labyrinthine geopolitical complexity. And no, this is not really about religion. It never is. It’s about power and money, as it almost always is.
Iran (autocracy, backing Hezbollah) and Lebanon (totally dysfunctional, Hezbollah) and Russia (autocracy that is trying to destroy a democracy, Ukraine) is allied with Assad, a despotic ruler who has used chemical weapons on his own people.
The Syrian rebels (terrorists) are supported by Turkey (quasi-autocracy) and indirectly aided by Israel (flawed but actual DEMOCRACY) because they are trying to defeat the Hezbollah terrorists.
Now, we would like to ask the loony left’s Palestinian-supporting simpletons: Who are the angels in this situation? You can say the Palestinian people, but aren’t the innocent people throughout the region, who are simply getting caught up in this insanity, just as deserving of compassion. Whose side are you on? If you have an actual working brain cell, you would be on the side of democracy and freedom. Let’s make this very simple for the simpletons: Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is not interested in democracy and freedom. That’s what would take over if Israel loses.
More generally, as the articles says, governments close to Iran, which is on the verge of building a nuclear bomb, end up being toppled because, hard to believe, but citizens actually want their government to serve them, not be a proxy for another country. “Nothing is as shockproof and reliable as a state army composed of citizens whose interests match your own.” This is our suggestion to the loony left’s Palestinian faction. You’re out of your league. Maybe it’s best to just shut up and sit down.
The Fall of Aleppo Was Oddly Familiar
12/7/24 – DeSantis is a better choice. Can we do this?
12/6/24 – There is an institution that specializes in this service. What is it called again? Oh, that’s right, the church. The idea is not to clear your conscience of shame or guilt or to purge yourself of these unpleasant feelings. The idea is to do the work to reconcile yourself to God and to your fellow human beings. In fact, it commonly goes by two names: confession or the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You have to own your sinfulness, confess your sins, do penance and – change your behavior. You actually have to put in the work. What a concept.
Unburden Yourself of Secret Shame and Feel Happier
12/6/24 – A while back, Ray Dalio, who’s probably not a household name, said that the pitchforks are coming for the greedy rich and that capitalism needs to be reformed. It does need to be reformed – desperately so. Also, in case people have missed it, not only is the world generally on fire, but there have been more assassinations or assassination attempts. Unlike what some paranoid people like Elon Musk think, this is not some Democratic or left-wing conspiracy. It simply reflects a growing anger within the world’s population. We have a question for the greedy rich: Do the pitchforks just come with you as innocent, passive bystanders, or are you inviting them with your avarice? Was Marie Antoinette innocent?
12/6/24 – If war comes to our shores, will we be ready, or will a certain person be preoccupied with undermining our military on some witch hunt for “wokeness”? Please tell us: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? The Ottoman Empire would like to know.
12/6/24 – The Middle East is poised to blow up…even more so than it has. Democracies around the world are in distress, including ours, and we’re in the middle of a presidential transition. Just an average day in an average life, I guess.
12/5/24 – What can we do? We can perform a magic trick. One day, you’re over here on the left. You disappear. Abracadabra, you reappear over there on the right – on the other side. The name of this magic trick is middle finger to the elites.
12/5/24 – Americans: The propaganda gave Biden a pass, and, now, they are trying to gaslight us about it. It’s insult upon insult.
12/4/24 – He made a mess of Ukraine, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the border, the economy…. What didn’t he make a mess of? The Conservative Republicans wanted him to be more aggressive in arming Ukraine. Now, they’re f—ked. He listened likely to the progressive wing, you know, the pie-in-the-sky people who don’t know how to govern anything. He opened the border without thinking through the ramifications both in terms of the integrity of our nation and the economics. He bailed out the plutocrats – again. Oh, and he’s corrupt. In fact, much of the Democratic Party is corrupt. After all those years in Congress, Biden was still bad at governance, and he lacks integrity. That’s why the Democratic Party lost.
How Biden Made a Mess of Ukraine
12/4/24 – Was it an opinion with a red line underneath it when the propaganda refused to accurately and objectively report on Biden? This is a widely shared opinion by the American people of the propaganda. Was the propaganda’s clear double-standard in coverage also an opinion? Was it an opinion to act like an arm of the Democratic Party? There is a reason the American people have a low opinion of the propaganda. It’s because they deserve it. It’s not because we’re delusional. You can’t play favorites. Do your job!
12/4/24 – Just like that, center-right. Barely had to move at all. You can do that in this country. Do you know why? Because we’re a free country and a free people, and we’re going to remain a free country and a free people. Not the right, not the left is going to bully us, coerce us, force us, or oppress us in any way. See Bangladesh and South Korea; well, the American people are a little crazy, and we are a tough group of people. Know it now.
12/3/24 – Hey elites, suck it, you bloviating, pseudo-intellectual quacks and hacks. We’re liberating ourselves from you…forever.
12/3/24 – Biden didn’t just lie about the pardon. Another very important thing he lied about was running again. He is one of the worst presidents in American history.
This Is Who Joe Biden Has Always Been
12/3/24 – Conservatives, figure out the economics, and we’re onboard. The labor secretary pick is a great start.
12/3/24 – The way Democrats win is by turning off all the centrists/moderates and frankly normal people in the country. The country gave you the middle finger, and it’s going to keep giving it to you. Hey, special interest groups, you’re winning the legacy media, but understand this, you’re still losing over and over and over again. So, the country gets to give you and the legacy media the bird. It’s two for one.
12/3/24 – Speaking of said elites, they can’t read books…but we already knew that didn’t we. Liberal excess is a surefire way to a shallow brain. One can’t train a brain to read lengthy, complex texts, when the brain has already been trained by social media, extrinsic motivation and other factors to simply build a façade of erudition. They are an illusion of intellectualism. Walk behind it, and there’s nothing there.
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books
12/2/24 – For those who are counting, this is in addition to The New Yorker, which was removed a while ago because it is too much a slave to the loony left and seems to have no interest in or connection with the vast majority of the country. We’re not interested in being indoctrinated. We’re looking to be informed, and there is a big difference between those two things.
By the way, Notes from Underground is a reference to a novella by Dostoevsky, who was nearly executed for reading banned books and became a devout Christian. It is not a reference to a now dead Hamas terrorist who orchestrated the massacre of innocent Jewish people. There is a big difference between those two people and things as well. If you’re supposedly an erudite member of said elite class, you might want to know a thing or two about literature and about life. It was practically sacrilegious to use his title in that way.
12/2/24 – There is too much to read as it is. The Washington Post is out. It is a puppet of the Democratic Party and its advocacy groups and too close to the Washington elite and its institutions, almost all of which need reform. It does not meet the journalistic standards we expect.
12/2/24 – We would like to ask the Jewish people, who do you think would treat you better: MAGA with their tiki torches and “Jews will not replace us,” the racist liberals with their “Zio b—h,” or the actual conservatives? George W. Bush, for all of his flaws as a president and bad policies, was the same person who said, “Islam is peace” in the aftermath of 9/11. These people are also protectors of religious freedom in general, meaning no matter the religion.
We would like to ask all of the immigrant communities, of these three groups, who do you think will respect your God-given and Constitutional freedom and rights? Who will let you maintain and even respect your traditions and simply allow you to be instead of trying to control your words, even your thoughts? In other words, who will actually let you be free instead of forcing you to be like them with their cultural imperialism and cultural hegemony?
The answer is clear – conservatives. We don’t like their economic policies (too much trickle down, too much tax cuts for the rich, too much faith in the markets (they can fail, people) and too little safety net), and they need to be more judicious in their foreign involvements, but they have principles, and they do the best job of respecting our humanity in its diversity and its complexity. They treat us like children of God because they usually believe in God. These are important qualities to have.
12/2/24 – This might come as a surprise, but the people who genuinely seem the least racist are the practically nonexistent conservatives. They are also the people who have lost the most.
12/2/24 – This is what the American people have for governance. It’s hard to process how bad this is.
12/2/24 – The Republican Party is also corrupt, and a certain person is the worst of them all.
12/2/24 – The Democratic Party, the party of racist white liberals, is corrupt, and the media has been propping up this party and these people.
12/1/24 – We’re so blessed to have such a great community. Community is everything.
12/1/24 – Happy First Sunday of Advent!
“O come, O King of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind.
Bid all our sad divisions cease
and be yourself our King of Peace.”
O Come, O Come Emmanuel