The State Versus Religion and Family

 

In the most recent times there has seemingly been a war waged over who is responsible for raising children. This battle was best epitomized when Hillary Clinton came out and stated at the 1996 Democrat National Convention as if it were established fact, “It takes a village to raise a child,” (Full Speech Below). The entire speech may have been her best presentation despite her almost Al Gore like metered cadence throughout the entire speech though once in a while she appeared almost attached to or excited by what she was proposing and her meter increased briefly. But the advice that the village, a euphemism for the government, is vitally interested in the raising of the child is a direct threat to the stability and autonomy of the family. This has become the watchword for the school teachers who receive additional training through approved courses which instruct that the teachers and school nurse or other medical officer and the principal are the first line of defense against improper ideas and concepts from being introduced to children because parents have been known to introduce archaic religious “indoctrination,” their phrasing, not ours, which must be instead replaced with the new age socialized concepts where the whole society teaches that which is beneficial to the society instead and above that which is beneficial to the family. The society is known by another name, another reference and that is government. But before we can even address the war against parents and government as the first parent of every child, we must first look back at an earlier conflict between science and religion which morphed into a battle between government and religion and has brought us to the world we have today.

 

 

The first concept required is to realize that all relationships whether private, public, familiar, governmental, religious and whatever; can be studied as living entities where the healthy and most adaptable grows in scope, influence and power and the lesser entities wither and eventually die. The earliest times in human existence, even before Homo Sapiens appeared, the basic unit was the family. This was because most of the groupings were clan based and one could tell your stature, standing, history and almost everything else about you by your name as it was an indicator of to what clan from which you arose. Different clans would have cooperative agreements often sealed with the exchange of women to show good faith and create and actual binding between the two families. This also served genetic diversity thus avoiding to some extent the genetic failings such as hemophilia and other disorders. With time clans merged to forge stronger and more capable collections which would supersede the family or clan unit. These groups were the first tribes which granted greater genetic diversity. All of this arose before the first modern man but was instrumental to development of complex society. The tribes grew to include numerous clans with some better at hunting and others at gathering knowing what was and was not edible while still others showed aptitude for healing and tending the young. In these more primitive conditions there were those whose task was the care of the youngest children but as they grew they would be trained in the skill they showed the best attributes by others such as a huntsman would train the young hunters, the gatherers would train the next generation of gatherers and so on. Tribes also began the concept of history, then simply known as the story. The story was one which was uplifting and always made the hunters as great warriors defending the tribe and the gatherer who risked life regularly trying new untested fruits and vegetables and if they survived and approved the tribe would add another plant to their diet which could have allowed the tribe to use previously unexplored lands. Such a person who would live to old age was likely rare but one who had along with the oldest hunters who reached an age where their use became telling of the stories. These positions evolved to become the job of an entire group who were to be the first priests who would eventually weave a set of codes which made the first religions.

 

With the onset of herding and farming, the time of city-states appeared and by now the tribal leaders were chosen by some method of testing or perhaps a single family’s eldest surviving son at the time of their father’s demise became the next ruler and the age of government had begun. It is important to note that the family was the initial and earliest defined obligation followed by clan and then tribe. With tribe we had the loosest governmental forms but religion grew into an actual class with priests who may have also been a warrior class which led the defense or assaults taken on by the tribe. Finally, about the time of the first cities, which would soon become city-states, did actual government take root amongst mankind. This was the first time that there would be actual laws enforced with proscribed punishment or at least delegating the one who proscribed the punishment for a particular crime. There came formalizations with religion already having led the way in this and they were followed by government. There came positions assigned with likely the first being the close guards who protected the ruling figure, then the ranking members of an enforcement group, the forerunners of modern police and judicial system. Often times the judicial system was also run by the clerical priest class as they were also the most learned class. This started the initial conflict between religion and government, even when a wise leader tied religion and government, blurring the difference and thus granting themselves the highest position in governance and religion. This was exactly what the Pharaohs of Egypt did when they proscribed for themselves a godly aura and was closely imitated by the Caesars of Rome.

 

There were a few exceptions to the basic complete authority of the governing leader or even the governing and clerical leaders which we have discussed a few times before, and that was the Torah which was the founding document for the Israelites who became over time today’s Jews. The rules given approximately three-thousand to three-thousand-five-hundred years ago were the framing of some of the ideas used by the Founding Fathers when drafting the United States Constitution leading to the proposed tight restraints on the Presidency. Such restrictions such as a President being withheld from granting themselves property or wealth derived from their knowledge of government workings nor could they simply invent and apply laws without the consent of Congress and were made answerable to both the Congress or the Supreme Court should they stray from the defined limitations of their office. These concepts along with the right of a state to leave the Union if they would so choose and do so in a prescribed manner and other limitations on a President were badly damaged or destroyed by Abraham Lincoln who basically became the government during the Civil War as he all but declared formally a State of Emergency permitting the President all but unopposable powers. Still, the limitations which were first set in Torah, the laws given at Mount Sinai in the book of Deuteronomy 17:14-17 which found their way even presumably to the present day in limits on the President of the United States and were placed as the very first laws limiting the powers and impositions of Kings where it read:

14  When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,”
15  you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. One of your own communities you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who are not of your own community.
16  Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You must never return that way again.”
17  And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself.

 

Meanwhile, somewhere between the gathering at Mount Sinai where the Israelites responded to the coming giving of “The Law” said, according to many translations, “We will obey and we will listen,” and today in much of Europe and the developed world where the people would not even listen to the religious codes and laws, let alone obey them as religion has been supplanted by government and the new priests are the lawyers who believe themselves the ultimate interpreters and applicators of the law twisting it to their will and whim. At some point around the rise of Persia and the rise of Rome religion and government became permanently separated in what would become Europe and much of the rest which came under either Greek or Roman rule. This began the contest between the two main centers of power outside the family unit. At that time the two still crossed boundaries with government infringing on religion for their advantage and religion infringing on government very much to their advantage. A sign of both comes as part of the Inquisition. Where it was an obvious usurpation of prosecutorial powers taken into the hand of the Church striping that power for the priest class who acted as judge, jury and often executioner, their prosecutions were also abused by government to destroy adversaries or other challenges to the throne or regional power structures. At the same time King Philip II of Spain used the purification edicts from the Church in Spain to raise and launch the famous invasion fleet of the Spanish Armada against England and Queen Elizabeth I which ran afoul of vicious storms and the fleet of English gunboats which were smaller, faster and more maneuverable capable of passing between the huge troop carrying Armada frigates who when firing at the English fleet had their shot pass over the top of the low slung English ships and simply blasted the other Armada ships in their own fleet. Almost all of the Spanish ships sunk and the remainder limped home and that ended this threat to England and its Church of England, a Protestant Church closely tied to the Tudors after being created by Henry VIII. The creation of the Church of England was another perfect example of religion out of the needs of the ruling monarch. Henry VIII needed a divorce which the Pope refused him; so he made his own Church after he went home.

 

Spanish Armada of Giant Frigates Holding Hundreds of Troops
and Cannon Ports Only capable of Shooting Over the English
Fleets Comprised of Sleeker and Low Slung Ships with
Deck Cannons and by the Hand of G0d Seen as the Weather

 

Over the ensuing years as science explains more and more of the unknowns and all appears to be explainable, the place of religion has diminished in the developed world. The need for religion to explain those things we did not understand had been greatly diminished but the final understanding is just as far out of the grasp of science now as it has ever been. The question surrounding the why, what and who caused the explosion which science has named the Big Bang is unknown and seemingly will remain unknown for the foreseeable future. Using Einstein’s equation of E=MC2 where ‘C’ is the speed of light which is times itself and multiplied just by the weight of the objects in our own little solar system and one gets a very large number and should that computation be done for all of the presumed objects just in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and that number almost becomes unimaginable and finally, if we add the viewable estimated number of Galaxies which the Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope took of a postage stamp piece of the sky thought to be virtually empty by all previous observations and that number is unimaginable by the average physicist, let alone the rest of us (see image below).

 

Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope Picture
Each Smudge and Pinprick of Light is an Entire Galaxy

 

Using science as a weapon of ultimate destruction, government in the developed world has assailed religion attempting to make any religious belief or system presumably archaic, its practices the equivalence of a rain dance, the prayers comparable to a voice at a séance, and its commandments, covenants, decrees or other rulings as the equivalence to Ouija board revelations. Concurrently government has replaced religion as the determiner of right and wrong, the provider of charity, the reason for a Sabbath renamed weekend, collector of alms as an integral portion of taxes and slowly rendered any expression of religious observance unacceptable in public. About the only suppressive action government has yet to take concerning religion has been to make religion illegal. The reason is likely because should they actually make religion illegal, religion would likely make a comeback just because it was outlawed. Especially any reference to Judaeo-Christian ethics,codes, holidays, prayer, deity, prophet or Bible passage, the government put the final clasp subduing even the slightest religious thought from the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, ignoring the dangers, those in governments are permitting Islamic religious teachings claiming that it is study of culture and comparison of governance and civics. This plus an extra-judicial importance placed on a statistically insignificant threat posed by anti-Islamic acts which have remained relatively constant since 2002 after a noticeable rise in the second half of 2001 while anti-Semitism acts are rising in some locations many folds but these acts are minimized or completely ignored. There have been those who have theorized the governments’ in the developed world preferences for Islam stem from the Islamic anti-Semitic and anti-Christian ethos and actions. This may also be behind the initial rush for European and developed nations taking in of “Syrian refugees” while not considering taking in Christian refugees facing persecutions in the Sudan and other nations in the Middle East and North Africa.

 

Finally we get to the family and the initial start of governmental infringements on the family unit. One of the initial assaults on the family used the equality for women fight to weaken any male claim of being better suited at any particular field of employment due to the differences which were previously thought to differentiate men and women. The most ridiculous of the denied differentiations was the strength requirement as it was agreed that strength requirements for men had to be restructured for women such that they required a similar percentile for women to be passed. One of the first to be altered was the strength testing to be a firefighter. The requirement for men to carry a full body double along with his fire suppression and breathing gear including wearing the mask down two flights of stairs and out of a building under fire simulated conditions had to be scalable. They had to take the weight of the dummy and scale it to meet the same percentile as women as it took for men to pass as well as scaled gear weight and so forth. This required new sized dummies and smaller breathing apparatus and other expenses just to train and test women applicants. The argument made by one Fire and Rescue company in court that in an actual fire the size of the person who may need be carried would not be scalable was rejected when they had a number of fire squad captains admit that they often set an order of people entering a building or if inside chose the largest and strongest to be tasked with such carries and thus the test really was not about actually carrying a real person from the building but actually a strength test and thus would meet those requirements for scalable testing. This argument was also the initial scaling of military combat arms testing including for Ranger, Green Beret, Seal and other special forces testing and training. The real aim was just as much blurring differences between men and women and removing any male dominated jobs from having such as their label. This blurring has continued that there exist work environments where the surname for all employees has been simplified to the unisex denotation using the letter ‘M’ for both genders. Then came the real punch to the gut, when some schools began to use a new picture book titled “Heather Has Two Mommies,” to depict that a family was not the conventional one of a Mom and one Dad. Such attacks were later continued with any combination which desired the status of a ‘family’ to be so denoted.

 

The gender wars and war on conventional definitions continued and we even saw women enter the military training at all levels until today women have been cleared to serve in any combat role even in actual combat condition, though this has not been tested to the best of our knowledge, not even in Europe where such equanimous ideas go to be tested. There was the court challenge against the classical definition of the family in a number of states establishing the right for other than heterosexual couples to adopt children. Eventually, we suspect, that multi-coupled relations will also seek equal rights in adoption as well as tax codes dealing with deductions for married couples where communal communities will be permitted treatment as what will likely be referred to as a ‘greater family’ or a ‘communal family’ and demand they receive treatment equal to a traditionally defined family. Eventually, through whatever means are required, the definition of what constitutes a family will be so weakened such that a person suffering from having multiple personalities will be able to be granted status as a family. Then, as with religion, the government will claim that they are the ultimate family and thus children will be raised by a licensed individual who will soon become a government employee much in the manner that teachers are now government employees. In an age gone-by, some name it the frontier age but really was anywhere a town was small enough and in an unpopulated area where there is no overseeing governance, when the citizens, particularly parents, desired a teacher who was knowledgeable in what was called the three ‘R’s (Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic, they were very adaptable) the wealthy peoples or person would hire a teacher and the one-room schoolhouse would be erected by the townsfolk and that was how early schooling was accomplished. Eventually the town would grow where grades by age groups, usually the young, middle and advanced groups, and multiple teachers were required, where in some fortunate places the wealthy people still provided the salary for the required teachers but eventually the entire community would jointly provide the teachers’ salaries with each parent paying their share according to the number of children they placed in school. This would eventually become some form of taxation collected by the governing body who also hired teachers and this will eventually become the department of child-rearing with the law eventually requiring all children to be raised from birth by the government.

 

Caring, educating and making every individual dependent on the state for everything from birth to death, cradle to grave care, thus makes everyone completely comfortable with doing exactly what the governing bodies demand. Just pray that by that time some overseeing the governing has been taken over by a self-repairing computer system and not by very fallible human politicians such as the wonderful and kind imbeciles who are elected or appointed in far too many societies for such to become all-powerful. Still, it is the nature of any organism, be it an individual organism, a collection of similar organisms, a collection of differing mutually beneficial organisms, a collection of balanced organisms, a collection of prey and hunter organisms, an organism composed of a collection of organ or any other imaginable system of organisms as such as today’s political class where they are dependent on others on which they prey (we are somewhat unsure which class they fall into to be honest) which exist in the many strata which we find defined in our modern society. The government grows by replacing existing and often very functional systems by meddling and regulating until they have subsumed the entire system and then they start to lower the expectations such that they are able to claim by the lowered standards how government run programs are superior. They will always point to the area where by their own defined criteria they prove to be superior. Often the criteria they point to first is inclusion as they will find groups which was at the margins or preferably outside the margins of the private run systems were capable of including and claim superiority due to the sheer numbers served. This has been evident most often with schooling where minorities of students are able to afford private school and the public education system serves all including those who would be unable to afford private school at the current cost. What they hide is that should they give parents a voucher which can only be used for attending private schools, that the very students they point to would easily be able to afford private school education. The truth is that there would be an entire market of schools which would educate children for less. The same would very likely be true in other government run institutions, but government has two basic advantages; first is they accomplish the assigned tasks with the minimal amount of effort from the people served and, even more importantly, they can make their providing of the assigned services required to be provided by government trained and licensed individuals thus making only government the sole provider by law/regulation.

 

The last thing which is an evil by which government grows and makes the government the beginning and the end in all places government desires to control is the power of laws made by fiat and without review by elected officials. The Federal Government is the most guilty of this intrusion and dictation over the people without review by the people’s elected representatives. This mechanism is known as regulations. The House of Representatives and the Senate will all too often pass legislation which sets goals and not mechanisms and then assign the flushing out of the how to accomplish these goals to a cabinet or department within the government to figure out who, what, where, when and how these goals will be defined and met. They do this without any input beyond the vague and often amorphous set of goals even leaving the final definitions of the goals and then formulate regulations. http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10871/Sunstein/ target=blank>Cass Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to be his Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Regulatory Affairs and assigned to review existing Federal Laws and find those laws which would allow for new and varied regulations to be fashioned in order to complete desired acts, actions, positions and requirements desired by President Obama and his team of Czars so that they could accomplish policy goals without involving Congress. Many of the regulations which Cass Sunstein wrote will lay waiting for complimenting laws and regulations to be passed or written and then they will also be applied. Very few if anyone other than the President and his former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs actually know all of what was found, written and sitting waiting for the appropriate time that these regulations will be required for government to accomplish another expansion of its powers. The regulatory route is what is most vital for government to grow and expand into new and various areas.

 

Sometimes one is required to look back centuries and research deeply into cultures and societies in order to see that which has changed. One area where this is particularly true is printing. There have been some radical advances in printing made because of computers but that is more in preparation as when printing mass numbers of items such as newspapers and books, the methods used have remained very constant since the invention of moveable type which was where each letter of the alphabet and each number from 0 to 9 along with spacers and punctuation were made on individual pieces as blocks and thus could be arranged in any order. With enough of each particular block one could print many pages of the same letters very quickly. Before that invention printing was done by a specialist carving out a master copy reversed often in wood and it would be used but had a limit on how long they lasted. Additionally, the letters carved into the master were permanently in place and could not be used in another page. A whole new master would need to be made. Before this method, things were even slower as the only people making books were a few crafts-people known as calligraphers and specialist Monks trained in calligraphy. Books in these times as well as anything else we would print today and requiring more than one copy were all made each copy by hand individually. The Monks trained in calligraphy would spend their entire lives on one book if many, many copies were required and those who had the finest styling and abilities would be permitted to make copies of the Bible. Making a Bible was the highest form of calligraphy. There are still some who are studied in this art who are hired to make such books and these books are rare, often one of a kind, and are extremely expensive, some priceless. There are still books and scrolls made today by hand. Torah scrolls are one such example and are written by trained Rabbis who often spend years making a special Torah scroll and months making normal Torahs. Just for the record, the government used to hire private companies to make their respective printed material such as pamphlets, maps, tourist informational material, records of Congressional actions and other necessary items. Today most of these are printed by the government with a vast number done at their Pueblo, Colorado printing facility. Of course all money is printed by the government at the mint. Thus far, schoolbooks are written and printed by private companies often following set guidelines set by, you guessed it, regulations. These regulations are changed at intervals as the government, the Department of Education, change their requirements or decide to emphasize different concepts. From some of the most recent textbooks we have read, it appears that much of what we were required to learn in school has changed drastically and not necessarily for the better. Concepts such as whole word recognition which replaced phonics and sounding out worlds, new math or newer new math, and history as well as civics texts have changed drastically. There is a reason so many college educated students know so little about history and government which may make for great fun on the Lettermen Show but is less funny when these same people vote. The lack of making informed choices was made, if one follows the news, obvious to many ‘informed experts’ by the two choices made as the candidates for President by the two major parties. We believe it could have been worse, but it might have been better. Our closing remark is a quote from Thomas Jefferson. It may be a reference to Jefferson’s comment to his nephew Peter Carr, “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” As noted in Jefferson to Peter Carr, Paris, August 10, 1787, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 12:15.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Can the World be Defused?

 

Once a while ago there were three leaders who defused the terrors and monsters of their day. There work took a while longer and they may never get the credit they deserve. They were the magic combination which comes around only when things seem darkest. In a much earlier time the combination of leaders need not all be present on the world’s fields of battle at the same time, but the world moves at a different pace these days. The old team which between them staved off Europe falling, thus eventually led to our modern age as we have known it, consisted of one hero in the west of Europe, The Battle of Tours pitting Charles the Hammer Martel defeating the Umayyad Caliphate led by ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, which halted the Islamic threat from advancing further eastward and eventually led to the forced retreat of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula under the reign of terror known as the Spanish Inquisition established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, a retrograde purge for which Spain would never quite recover as that evil, or is as some might claim the purification, left Spain without a curious mind in all the realm as the Inquisition allowed not such stray thoughts other than those found in the ‘Good Book’. A few hundred years later the Ottoman Turks were prevented from further adventures in Europe being turned back at the Battle of Vienna by a somewhat unusual hero, King John III Sobieski of Poland who struck a deal whereby his lands would be left untouched by the greedy hands of the other barons and monarchs while he and his entire army would cross to the southern end of Europe and free Vienna breaking the Ottoman siege. This would stall and lead to the end of Ottoman expansion into Europe.

 

Between these two battles was a smaller battle that gained a larger than life share of attention from historians but was still none-the-less of great importance by what it avoided. The battle of which so much is made was the almost war that King Philip II of Spain decided to bring to a conclusive end and forever rid England of its Church, which followed not the Pope in Rome, restoring the rightful ruler of Christendom, Pope Clement VIII. The Armada was assembled and sailed on its historic mission which failed as it was made up of large and cumbersome ships of the old technology which favored the retrograde habits left over from the Inquisition and the purification of thought within the rule of Rome where science would become as close to defined as sin and as a threat to the sanctified rule of a Pope. The defeat of the Spanish Armada allowed the Church of England to prevail and their more open attitudes and the advantage of a strong political royalty which ruled alongside the Church of England but separate when decision of State were decided and the rule of law endured while the Church of England was to content itself with matters of faith. This partial separation between Church and the State had its periods of difficulty but it also permitted great strides in science which eventually spread through Europe beyond where the Pope had extended the Church’s strangling long reach from Rome. Eventually Rome too saw the light of the reformation and the separation between religion and government became the supreme and crowning achievement which was a long time coming with the many fits, starts and backtracks that make history fascinating. The ancient Israelites (or Hebrews) had achieved a form of separation between religious influences and the rule of a king as the limitations of each were delineated in Torah leaving certain powers to the King, others to the Clergy and the freedom to override either, though solely through admonition and persuasion, went the Prophets during their era. The one unfortunate result of the separation of Church from the matters of the ruling elites was that Europe no longer had a single overseeing power structure that the Pope provided when all prayed in the manner instructed out of Rome. This would eventually lead to many wars between the many states in Europe culminating in World War II. With these conflicts came technology which placed Europe as the crowning achievement of its time.

 

The modern realms had a tripartite power structure which managed to work towards their shared goals in what resulted in a mutually supportive series of actions despite there being no treaty or visible connection where these three strong leaders actually were collaborating, instead each added to the strength and power of the others with minimal appearance of collaboration. The three leaders were the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, who presided in that office from May 4, 1979 through November 28, 1990, while Queen Elizabeth II was the supportive monarch; Pope Saint John Paul II whose Papacy began on October 16, 1978 and ended April 2, 2005 and was a strong advocate for the rule of the people and their rights to a government deserving of the people and not the reverse and strongly held to the traditional beliefs working tirelessly largely behind the scenes while making appearances often with intent to back freedom and human rights for all people; and lastly United States President Ronald Reagan whose Presidency began on January 20, 1981 lasting until January 20, 1989 and the challenging force behind the scuttling of, as he coined it, the Evil Empire which was the Soviet Union which he did as much as anyone in facilitating the sudden downfall of the Soviet system and its iron curtain fell in under one week from the inception of the collapse of Communism in Europe. These three people had as much influence in their short decade where all three stood at the pinnacle of the power that swept in a new life and vitality born of freedom and challenging the greatest tyranny which stood in opposition to all these three defenders of the people, their individual rights and their right to choose their own governance and take control of their national ship and steer it through the ballot box and supportive of human dignity and the sanctity of life.

 

The world is once again spiraling into the void that lies beyond the cusp where freedoms are forever lost and tyranny and darkness extinguish the light of hope and the dignity of the spirit. Once again a retrograde influence is oozing from every corner advancing across the plains devouring everything in its path. The seriousness of this threat can be measured in the resisting flames in the eyes of those readying to fight a battle they know they cannot win but fight it they will in the hopes that somewhere a leader will have the courage to step forth and hold the line from crossing beyond the cusp and darkness once again gripping the heart of Europe. This threat comes from every front and ignores all borders and had many masters of which not a one honors freedom, individuality and the rights of the people to choose their own destinies and those who will lead them into the light and not towards the darkness. Currently the forces of freedom sleep as their ruling head of state has little stomach for such as the struggles barking from the far frontiers. This man who leads by following knows only that the previous leadership suffered from flaws that came from striving and this leader swears not to make such mistakes and instead retreats before taking stands and charging forth as doing so may reveal his flaws as it did his predecessors, but he realizes not that timidity and failure of vision are his flaws though his slow shrinking before every challenge is his plan to avoid mistakes. This comes when Europe also means to do well by refraining from the competition and instead seeks to facilitate and placate their way to oblivion that also lie beyond the cusp where greatness fails the timid and the freedoms hard won become easily surrendered and lost as they tip beyond the cusp and fall into the night of oblivion. There are the few who have clear sight and identify the threats but can the world rely on the strength of those who previously held roles of a supportive nature and have not been leaders of the free world as is now asked of them. The leaders in some instance are up to the challenge while in other leaders we see the rage of mediocrity hoping only to hold the line as best as possible waiting for one of the historic leaders to step forward and take the helm once more. What must the few who can lead do when the majority in the world are too tired, fat and lazy to put their shoulders to the wheel and strive to remain free, to stop the mad plunge and assure that their people are not forced beyond the cusp as from there the return will take generations and may never recover as some points, once crossed, may well mean there will be no return for this will be the final fight, the final battle between freedom and all that does empower the greatness in the human effort and spreads the light of freedom giving every last soul the power of flight so as to soar to new heights and new greatness ever pressing forward the boundaries of the mind through new equations which describe the actual functions of the universe and to eventually voyage into the far unknown and visit those points of light seen in the night’s sake for as sure as there is light there is hope for the future or the death of the individual spirit and the complete surrender to darkness forever extinguishing those final glowing embers of hope and heart as we fall beyond the cusp.

 

I have been asked by some close friends why I spend anywhere from three hours to all too often more than the eight hours demanded by a regular employ to continue to write to my slowly growing field of readers. Truthfully, I write in the hopes that somewhere an individual will find something that elevates them such that it awakens within them that spark of imaginations, the boldness to fight mediocrity, the hope that the future will continue to be filled with light and just one person at a time engage more to fight against the ever increasing flow dragging mankind towards a darkness that knows it has little time before the ingenious minds make that singular breakthrough which cements the condition of mankind at the cusp of a great adventure as we spread our wings and fly out into the cosmos and forever have insured that never shall all humankind be swallowed by the darkness beyond the cusp, beyond the whirlpool that swallows all imagination, enslaves every mind, demands total and permanent surrender, insisting on complete compliance never once to again dare. The war to remain in a place where there are a plethora of alternative paths and nobody is forced into the restriction of thought or held to a permanence of class must not be lost but there is this trepidation that the youth are not made aware of the coming threats nor are they largely taught to think independently and are made to believe that there are molds into which every person must choose their mold never to expand or reach beyond the restrictions of their mind. I write to express the truth that no two people are completely alike and thus there are no molds, only self-imposed prisons of the mind and the extinguishing of every flaming spirits as the mold makers impose a correctness of thought and attempt to ridicule and intimidate any who refuse to fold before their stifling approved dictionary for acceptable terms and their definitions. Look up the word ‘discriminate’ and unless you have an unapproved and ‘outdated’ dictionary you will not find it defined as a positive trait through which one sets standards for excellence in all things and thus chooses to expand and investigate things beyond their strict education. Trust that the elite are given the lesson that discriminate is not solely an evil where people are categorized by physical, racial, religious or national traits and all else is ignored. Discriminate also means to choose wisely, something the programmers of the public school system in too many nations is not a part of their indoctrination. Resist the limitations and open your eyes and if you suspect that the teacher is not teaching you how to think but instead what to think, start your own rebellion, a rebellion of one at first as you will need to first arm yourself and then set out to change the world. Presuming you are an adequately proficient reader this list should not take more than a few summer’s free time. With these and a few other items of personal interest, yours, not mine, you may be ready to set out but remember one other item, failure is what redirects efforts towards accomplishments and may even tach us some lessons along the way. There often is more to learn when we fail than when we finally persevere and reach the necessary and inevitable conclusion after exhausting every conceivable failure along the way, or so it may seem.

 

Rebel by reading books, yes they still exist, and writings not on the approved list. Read books such as Atlas Shrugged or other Ayn Rand writings, Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell who was a socialist programmed by his education but who became disenchanted as he experienced life and later in his life wrote of the evils of socialism as he had witnessed it applied in his day, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Unintended Consequences by John Ross. Read books about history especially by those who lived in the times they wrote about starting with The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain with special attention to his travels in what is today Israel and his commentaries on Jerusalem and Bethlehem as well as his travels through the deserted lands and remember that his writings came from a period immediately before Zionists began arriving in greater numbers. Read the Bible, both New and Old Testaments, the Quran, and the life of Confucius and Buddha for some insights into the differing religions and investigate ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, Babylon, the Phoenicians, Hittites, Mongols, and acquaint yourself with Oriental religious and societal structures and their philosophies. Read some books on war and strategy as they are useful in life and interactions in the world even in peace times such as the writings of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz and The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Learn to play both checkers and chess. Learn logic both as taught in math and electronics as well as philosophy, this will arm you in debates. Arm oneself with knowledge and one will be prepared for anything life sends your way.

 

I also write for my own catharsis as it soothes the mind when one is forced to organize their thoughts so as to put them down as coherent writings, and if my writings have appeared to not be as clear as hoped and lacking in total coherence, then imagine the jumbled mess in my head and what that must be like, and then imagine living with such a racket of fighting ideas but not ideals as without ideals we wander undefined through a dark forest of frightening thoughts forever to remain lost. The world seems that way at this moment and it will take a few miracles to set things back to right, but fortunately the world is full of miracles if one only knows not only where to look but how to look and discern the hidden miracles behind so much that happened every day. Smell the roses and drink some strong coffee and find some simple pursuits in life and make then your anchor by which to have a place or item you define as normalcy. Mine is real, good and strong coffee brewed from just ground whole beans blended often with little care and allowing the mixture to give me a little bit of surprise in life. A little sweet chocolate seems to make it so much tastier and gives it a round robustness that is next to addictive. But everybody deserves one addictive vice they refuse to surrender before the demands for normalcy. Ah, normalcy, how boring a thing can be.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Who Will Pope Francis Blame When ISIS Slaughters in Jerusalem?

 

Pope Francis, during his visitation to the Holy Lands, was sure to make a very public statement over the plight of the Palestinian Arabs as he made a highly publicized stop at the exact section of the security barrier where Pope Francis claimed to make a prayer for a unified Arab Palestinian State emphasizing the proposed relationship to, as scrawled on that very section of the barrier, the similarity of the Warsaw Ghetto’s walls and the Israeli built security barrier, a separation object that is largely a fence but along certain stretches is required to be an actual wall such as within heavily built up areas so that it also keeps bullets and explosives from being easily launched into Israeli areas safeguarding both Arabs and Jews of all religions and all others from terrorist assaults on their lives and which has resulted in a highly effective tool in preventing homicide/suicide bombers, homicidal vehicle attacks and sniper attacks of various varieties bringing such attacks down to becoming a rarity compared to previous attacks before the barrier was constructed. Further, Pope Francis made it publically emphasized that his trip began with meetings with Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab Palestinians which he made sure to enter from Jordan flying initially into the Jordanian capital city of Amman specifically to avoid any possible meeting with Israeli officials. The Pope went further as he make a long procession, almost a victory parade, accompanied by numerous Arab Palestinian leadership from Bethlehem to Jerusalem emphasizing in his remarks the plight and flight from Bethlehem of its once predominant Christian population making heavy implications that such a sorry state of affairs had everything to do with Israeli ‘occupation’ and the hardships caused by the Israeli government, meaning the Jewish People, completely absolving the Arab Palestinians and their history of antagonism and persecution of the Christians causing the massive flight in fear for their lives from threats and actual terrorist aggressions.

 

This was followed by a visit to Israel where Pope Francis had a totally different persona becoming somewhat aggressive and antagonistic demanding the Catholic Church be granted their inalienable rights to ownership of large areas of Jerusalem with special emphasis on newly made claims to the building which houses the gravesite of King David claiming the room above King David’s tomb was a possible Christian Holy Site where the Last Supper had recently been claimed to have taken place moving it from the previous traditional spot where there were no contentious claims to this aggressively contentious place where it placed this Christian site above and over a highly Jewish site and further the Pope demanded rights to offer prayer services, a privilege granted and almost immediately abused by attempting to hold such prayers specifically on days where Jews had particularly offered up prayers from the site and taking assurances to hold these prayer before the scheduled Jewish services thus intentionally making the site void for Jewish prayer. The Pope was far from done with his assault on Judaism as well as launching additional assaults on Israel and Israeli claims within the Holy Lands in general at times appearing to insinuate obliquely that the Jews were without any religious claims as they were no longer recognized as having any religious rights having been supplanted and superseded making void any Jewish religiously made claims having been replaced by Christianity.

 

This particular claim made by the Pontiff has ramifications beyond the replacement theology where it is postulated that the Jews have become damned as replaced as the chosen people by the Christians, the Pope would claim the Catholic Church, and no longer favored by the L0rd and cast forth from Jerusalem specifically and without claims throughout the Holy Lands. Pope Francis has, by renewing the replacement theology of the past, set the precedent that Hashem can and has broken vows and promises made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, King David and others which identified the Jewish People as those chosen to carry His Message to the rest of the world has been abrogated and transferred to the Catholic Church which makes the supersessions claimed by Islam claiming that the Christians have themselves been cast off as were the Jews making the Muslims not only the replacement in eyes of Hashem but also the final chosen peoples to carry forth the messages of Hashem and, going one step further, the ones chosen to rule all of humanity going even further afield of a similar claim indigenous to the Christian faith as Judaism never held that the world would be their inheritance, they claimed only a rather insignificant measure of land strategic only in its central location to Europe, Africa and Asia being the region where the three continents converge and having ports which can connect the two main trade routes which have since been serviced by the Suez Canal.

 

The reassertion of the policy of the Catholic Church having replaced the Jews as those having a covenant with Hashem has left the Catholic Church also subjected to being replaced as the chosen of Hashem which is exactly the claim made by Islam. Carrying the replacement and the sole holy religion has also seen both Catholicism, in the more native guise of Christianity, and Islam to thus interpret such to authorize their sovereignty over the entire planet in order for them to properly prepare for the return of Jesus which had been carried one step further by the Islamic extremists claim that their religion being the sole religion Divinely inspired as the replacement, the final replacement of both Judaism and Christianity not only should rule over all of Earth but also be the sole religion practiced by all mankind. This has been carried out to the letter by ISIS as well as being the stated end goal by Iran, Hamas, Hezballah and various other claimants to being the sole pure remaining practitioners of Islam as defined by Muhammad and is behind a very real threat being made by ISIS and a number of their adherents. The agents for ISIS in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), why that redundancy is required by all that is politically correct makes me really desire to cease the practice, and I shall endeavor to do so going forth, are requesting for a list of all the Christians residing in (East) Jerusalem and their addresses to be given to those ISIS representatives by the faithful of Muhammad, note that not all are claiming faithful to ISIS following the practice of deference when outnumbered and until gaining sufficient numbers, somewhere around twenty percent, before becoming more forceful and soon thereafter, around thirty-five percent, taking rule by force and demanding total and complete allegiance followed by choice of becoming part of the faithful as defined by ISIS to the sword, otherwise death. They want these lists as soon as possible such that they can make the necessary plans and make sure they have the necessary power and people to carry out an ethnic cleansing of the Christians residing in Eastern Jerusalem. They have not requested such a list of the Jews residing within the area as they likely believe that those entire neighborhoods are easily known and identifiable.

 

This list will necessarily be assembled with an assault plan in mind by which the vast majority of the Christians residing in Eastern Jerusalem will be forced from the area implied by the sword and not by choice but such will probably be a logistics driven decision. The ISIS planners will take the precaution of having sufficient deployment of forces such that each unit will have a flanking unit on either side or at a close proximity allowing the massing of forces should any resistance be mounted such that they can quickly and without sacrificing their intended missions gather sufficient force to swarm any resistance counting on numbers to turn the tide of battle. Such has been the tactic used by ISIS as well as preparing the area for their assault before-hand. Not possessing sufficient artillery ISIS instead uses vehicle bombs and homicide/suicide bombers to soften their intended targets instilling confusion and disorganization amongst their intended target before they follow-up with swarming the target neutralizing any recovery minimizing their target any time to regroup and form a coordinated counterattacks or even an organized defense with overlapping fields of fire and the other considerations usually carried out well in advance and practiced including tactics of the enemy being interjected at unannounced times to test procedures for just such scenarios. The target in this instance is basically a cleansing operation intended to either clear an area of any opposition or make clear that certain types residing within an area should necessarily depart before they too face the determined business end of an ISIS representative’s weapon. Their announced target date for this cleansing of the population for Allah is the final day of Ramadan which falls in July 16, 2015.

 

The first determination which must be realized by Israeli police and military forces is whether to act as an intervention in force early on and prevent the organization of ISIS forces, wait until they have gathered so as to maximize arrests, intervene as soon as the assembled ISIS forces pose a threat or to simply ignore the threat and only respond to calls in an usual manner leaving the Arab Palestinians pretty much to their own ability. The final option is actually an option not supported by Torah and Jewish Law as we are directed to protect human life as even the lowest amongst us, the beggar, the infirm, the stranger and others we might normally divert our attentions from are still lives we are commanded to care for and keep safe. The concept that each life is potentially an entire nation thus if one saves one life it is as if one has saved a world. That basically means that Israeli defense and law enforcement forces must be prepared for and the one which is most feasible resulting in there being no loss of life be the ones sent for further considerations. Another consideration should be by which of the tactics that prevents any innocent casualties would allow for the most ruinous of setbacks for ISIS and at the same time making their claims of bringing the reincarnation of the Caliphate into question. There needs to be one more principled consideration, the threat to Israeli personnel and citizens, not to claim that any one life is of greater importance than another as that is beyond our ability to reason and is best left to the Creator who knows all things, Hashem. There is one consideration which must be made initially; which is whether or not this threat posed is valid and thus worthy of making and practicing for such an eventuality. Most ISIS threats issued have proven to be real and worthy of notice, but that does not necessarily mean that this attack threat must automatically be considered valid. This threat might be being presented to gauge the level of Israeli response to threats in order to more closely study the anatomy of such a response. Whatever the reasoning behind such a threat, Israeli leadership can be assured they will be held totally responsible for any casualties outside Israeli personnel. Any other nation would be the recipient of sympathy and offers of assistance with the aftermath with support in repairing any damage, aid money to augment responses training in preparation as if there is a singular attack response which would be universally applied to every attack and resolve all problems and serious planning for special situations such as a visit and speech by another head of state.

 

The importance of responding both effectively and forcefully against any initial attack while not going to an overboard approach cannot be overestimated in this instance. Should Israel present an overly cautious and overt response to this particular threat, then ISIS planners would have an effective but simple approach to fomenting fear within Israel by simply pretending to plan an attack and allow the overt, heavy-handed Israeli ramping-up of security measures. Fortunately, for actual events such as parades, speeches and other events or places where people congregate such as train and bus stations and malls; Israel does a fabulous and renowned level of successful security to meet the requirement necessary for each location and expected crowd. Since all ISIS would need to do to estimate the Israeli response to any situation would be to go study any previous similar situation and view the control of the threat level caused and they would have their answer. Pushing a threat against Israel on her own soil and thus giving her home field advantage will simply make everything that much more difficult for ISIS. In this instance Israel will be required to bring to the table an actual threat assessment and response plan as should ISIS actually follow through on a mission to slaughter as many civilian innocents, almost especially any of the numerous minority populations, as Israel is held to the highest expectation of levels possible in the world. Israel is the only nation expected to be capable of providing on a consistent and near universal level security superior to any European nation, any Western nation and even particularly the United States. Israeli security is expected to match when provided for the most insignificant of those amongst us a level of public security roughly the equivalent of that provided the Queen of England, and Israel has thus far throughout her brief but situation filled history met that challenge almost universally; Baruch Hashem. Anybody wishing an actual example of similar situations and the difference between Israeli response and another nation with proper expectations of being capable in a security situation such as a hostage crisis, simply compare the handling of the 1972 Olympic Games abduction of the Israeli team in Munich where most of the Israeli team consisting of six Israeli coaches and five Israeli athletes were taken hostage and ended up murdered along with one German police officer while five Black September members were eliminated in the regrettable failed rescue attempt where the plans for the rescue operation were poorly executed and all of the requested aid did not arrive on scene until two hours after the stand-off and siege began leading to the conflagration that murdered most of the Israelis tied up in the helicopter which was detonated with a grenade thrown by one of the terrorists compared to the Entebbe raid by an elite IDF unit responding to the hijacking of an Air France flight and the holding of Israeli and Jewish passengers and crew numbering over one hundred victims at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda, a distance of over 2,500 miles (4,000 km) in Operation Entebbe, as it came to be known, on July 4, 1976 (giving Israelis a reason to celebrate on as high a level as the people in the United States could on that nation’s bicentennial celebrations) where all but four of the one-hundred-six hostages were rescued with the IDF team suffering five injured and a sole fatality of one of the team commanders and older brother to a future Israeli Prime Minister, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, and all of the terrorists either killed or injured along with almost half of the approximately one hundred Ugandan military troops providing security for the terrorists. Israel had offered assistance and even to handle a rescue attempt with the German government who not only refused the Israeli offer but informed Israeli government officials that any Israelis sent to Germany would be refused entry at the airport and returned to Israel as this was a German operation and Israel had no right to interfere. Perhaps the Germans should have turned it over to the Israelis and thus make Israel responsible for the results.

 

But what is it they say about history, it is what it is and physics has not yet figured out how to alter history, only politicians and the media have such power. That is why when the history is written about the July 16, 2015 ISIS Ramadan assault intending to murder every Christian possible throughout Eastern Jerusalem the only credit or blame for this intended catastrophe in the manner of the cleansing of Mosul, the destruction of the two-thousand-eight-hundred-year-old capital of the Assyrian empire, Khorsabad, including its seven gates and the city with its most highly regarded sixty-four foot wall erected around 713 BCE by King Sargon II during his reign and nearly completely demolished in the beginning of the twenty-first century (or the fifteenth century on the Islamic calendar), parts of which have been preserved in museums in Baghdad, Paris, London and Chicago; destroyed thousands of books in libraries across the lands they have savagely rampaged with some of the books such as the rare books in Mosul are irreplaceable and singular remnants of wisdom and writings from ancient to the modern times; reintroduced slavery on a massive scale and especially the selling of woman as sexual slaves to the highest bidder, some women have been returned for receipt of a percentage of her resale price; burned, drowned, prisoners alive; shot, and beheaded people sentenced to death for even minor offences or taken prisoner; crucified Christians; blown apart prisoners shoved into a car with anti-tank missile; taken sledge hammers to ancient sculptures, vases, pottery destroying ancient displays in museums; and promised to bring this parade of horrors to every corner of the globe should they be allowed that possibility. This is the assembly of monsters across continents with fellow travelers identifying and subjugating their will all in a similar vein such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad; and other equally offensive and revolting acts all threatening to replace the comfortable lives of the decadent Western world should they be given that chance. That is their promise and where is the response from the supposed civilized world? They are either leading from behind or covering the back of the leader leading from behind all in all leaving Israel to fight the world’s war and stop the advance of those who desire a return to the tenth century, a backwards jolt on either calendar, especially the Jewish calendar which is in the fifty-eighth century.

 

Beyond the Cusp