Oh happy day!

Oh, Happy Day!
After the Democrats suffered a horrid week with Yemen collapsing and Emailgate and Ted Cruz running and Beau Birddog getting desertion charges, finally some good news.  The co-pilot of the Germanwingding Flight has No Known Connections to Islam.  (Unless we find a bunch of Allah Akbars on his computer)  For the first time in years, since that unbalanced Nazi from Norway shot up a kids camp, the Dems can finally say with confidence that "Not ALL terrorism is Muslim".  Terrorism won't have to be labeled workplace violence or going postal or lone wolf self-radicalized or anything else.  We can now FIRMLY say that some terrorism is not Islamic and can begin anew persecuting conservatives because you never know when the KKK will rise again and surely they will be Republicans.  For years the Libs have hoped for, prayed to Gaia, and predicted a day like this. Every time a mass killing happens they cannot bring themselves to speculate about Islamic terrorism.  Every time the facts have proven them stupid as they speculate that it might be, it could be, it probably is Right WING conspirators.  Well, this time the guy on the right side of the cockpit, not far from the Right Wing did it.  So there!
Oh, Happy Day!

Race together

It was suggested by Starbucks that we should have a racial discussion. Then the whole thing died.  Well, rats.  Our Starbucks in this small town is so tiny, almost a kiosk.  We call it “Son of a Buck.” Moreover, if you are a lib, you probably don’t want to discus race with me. Sanctimony and solidarity marches will be easier for you.

Here’s the resume.  I have raised 9 kids through teenage years and several more mentor kids from DHS.  They represent every anthropological race except the Aboriginoid race. I’ve had heartfelt race discussions with kids we love, but that still won’t make you an expert.  So here’s how I feel and some suggestions.

I’ve been very hard-of-hearing all my life.  One of the hearing aid makers, I think it was Starkeys, had U. of MN do a study of what other people objected to with hearing impaired and aid wearers. They found something like 15% had dislikes such as “I have to speak up around them to get heard.”  “I don’t like the TV so loud.” “I hate it when they take them out or adjust them in public.”  “I just hate being around them because it reminds me of being old.” “I think they are just faking it sometimes.  They can hear but make you shout just so they are sure.”  The last comment borders on bigotry because it expresses distrust, the sort of things researchers try to find when they research racism or sexism,etc.  But only about ¼% of people have distrust or extreme dislike of people who wear hearing aids. 

On the other hand, this points out a number of things to me about deaf behavior I need to watch.  I’ve spent a lifetime orienting myself in a room or conversation so I can hear effortlessly.  The speakers probably are clueless, but it’s up to me to make do.  Sit right next to the TV.  Don’t mess with your aids in public. Apologize always about your disability so the speaker knows it isn’t their fault.  Tell them you have been deaf forever.  Put them at ease. 

It gets more interesting with race.  Research shows that fewer than 3% of Caucasians are hard-core racists who distrust or hate some other race, but about 30% who find some American Negroid behavior objectionable.  That’s cultural stuff. “I don’t like it when I can’t understand their language.” “I don’t like it if they are loud or rude.” This says to an Afro-American, Be Polite, Speak Normal English.  It goes a long ways towards making friends.  Amusingly a Congolese friend said those same things to me about Afro-American behavior, then grinned and said, “Well it’s actually kinda cool what they do say to one another, but they always have to translate it for me.”

Dr. Thomas Sowell’s landmark research on immigrants and minority groups points out 3 highly important cultural attributes. (true for immigrant groups worldwide like South Asians to Africa and others)  Regard for education, hard work and strong family ties were the 3 golden rules.  Sowell, a Californian and Afro-American, first began his research trying to answer the question of why Chinese succeeded admirably in California and Afro-Americans didn’t.  Both had readily identifiable racial characteristics, were poor and had cultures out of the mainstream, but the Chinese also had a foreign tongue and religion. It came down to the fact that too many Afros had former slave mentality towards working for a boss, didn’t trust the white man’s schools and saw a breakdown of family ties in the 1960s. 

And so Sowell concluded that the sudden success of Jews in the late 1800’s in America was due to support of the 3 golden rules. Ditto Germans, Scandinavians, Irish and Japanese.  Italians were laggard because they kept their own culture and language very dearly and didn’t have as much regard for education.  Here he also has some words of warning for Hispanics who are often lax concerning educational achievement.  Traditionally, they have some of the strongest family ties but USA is breaking that down quickly with a culture of irresponsibility and Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rate is high.

My thinking is for churches and charitable organizations to lead the way with the social hurdles because government cannot do it.  In the past, it happened that way.  And it can be done again.

Sig Eps and Hippies

I saw that video of the OU fraternity a couple nights ago.  No sooner had the first line of the chant been recited than I went, “Oh, golly! Sig Eps again!”  Back in 1969, my first year at Kansas State, I had friends in three frats all on one block—Farmhouse, AGP and SAE.  The Sig Eps must have been the movie inspiration for “Animal House”.  There is something about 19 year olds, who have their first taste of adulthood yet fear maturity.  Booze, hazing, panty raids, pot and parties—anything but growing up!  Sig Eps were in competition for the Bad Boys Award with the Betas and Teeks.

Now once again the Sig Eps are getting disciplined by the U.  Then come the inevitable marches by those they have offended with all sorts of speculation about how racism surely infects all of Caucasian society. (Isn’t that assumption racist?)  Ugh!  And the inevitable statements by the college Prez and Black Ministerial alliance.  I coulda predicted this. 

Come to think of it, all of us said stupid stuff at 19.  I remember OU’s Brian Bosworth lipping off.  Roll my eyes.  The sportscasters had a fit over his unbridled mouth—role model for the kids!  I just saw a 19 year old playing football. 

I guess I didn’t have the wild oats experience.  I tripped at the starting gate.  At 19, I was a single parent and scraping to fund college.  Two 20 hour jobs living somewhat betwixt a monk and desperate poverty.  No nonsense allowed.  Surrounded by hippies making love, not war and the frat rats, I just longed for a degree.  Worse, a degree in physics, a field everyone shunned because of scarce jobs.  You had to wait for someone to die to get a job. 

There once was a young man from Trinity

Who took the square root of infinity

But the number of digits

Gave him the fidgets

He gave up mathematics for divinity. 

I suppose many of the hippies and frat brothers have fond memories of their marches or the college sports or the bars along Aggieville.  I remembers the libraries. I used take a break from  theoretical physics in the libraries.  Found the architectural library in Seaton Hall.  From Ken Kerns and Frank Lloyd Wright and many others, I put pictures in my head of houses I would like to see which are still there, inspiring as I remodel houses today.  I would go the main library and read about commercial market garden farming and it gave me a lifelong hobby.  I especially remember the economics section, housed between those half-floor stacks.  Milton Friedman, Graham and Dodd, Hayek and Phil Fisher and Andrew Mellon.  All the better to become an investor who thinks about the business of business. Amazing how much I now realize I owe to the U. And even the matter of politics,

There is an advantage to having failures and struggles at a young age rather than the life of fast cars and radical politics.  I lived upstairs from a Harvard graduate who was heavily invested in the anti-war movement.  (Post grad work paid by daddy at KSU.)  And he landed me in the Young Democrats, which was an interesting diversion since it was stimulating and had free admission.  The young libs were rather like the frat bros but they “acted out” on politics instead of binge drinking and bigotted frat songs.   

Nothing in the world meant more to me in those days than my infant daughter and my faith.  I had gone to a Christian college but failure and a repentant heart made faith grow.  Later I would join The Navigators campus ministry.  One day I met a student on campus who spoke in a foreign accent and had only about half his fingernails. Why the missing nails? Disease?  No, he said, he and his parents had been Christians in Latvia.  To attend the church was to attend a place where the priest was a KGB agent.  So his folks had quiet house meetings to pray and read the Bible.  The communists found out and arrested, then tortured his dad.  His father wouldn’t tell who else was in on this conspiracy.  That’s when they brought his son in and began to pull out his fingernails.  He was 8 years old. 

I about choked, thinking of my precious daughter and the horror of such cruelty.  But I was skeptical.  I remembered one Young Dem who claimed quite loudly that he was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA Youth.  So I asked him if communism was capable of such things.  Instead of giving some placating negative, he began to trash Christianity and how we should all vow to defeat it.  What I didn’t realize at that moment was that you cannot join the Communist Party unless you swear to work to forever destroy Christianity and squelch any other opiate of the people. Why is Christianity singled out?  Well, as Wurmbrand wrote after interviewing Karl Marx’s children, Marx wasn’t really an atheist.  He was a Satanist who really did seem to have something going with Satan—altar in his bedroom, worship time where he could not be disturbed, plays written about Satanic beings he had met.  I speculate that Marx had a good information source that Jesus Christ was The Truth, unlike all the other opiates of the people.

I went home that evening musing that I had about had it with politics and would probably never get involved again, unless I ever ran across such Christian faith-hating in some way.  That setting seemed to come together in 2009.  Here was a President and a party that sued a church saying that the EEOC, not the church had a say in who got to be the ministers. Here was a party who demanded that a church fund abortifacients, that military chaplains could not preach the gospel in some instances, that gays had to be married and served by those of contrary religious faith.  We can survive Barack Obama. But can we survive a party that loudly votes to remove God from their party platform with boos and catcalls? Methinks the godless hippies and agnostic frat rats have taken over, only this time they are 60 years old.  And so the final thing I owe to my university education is the clear realization that there is a war going on between right and wrong and only God can declare the end to it.  But this question hangs in the air.  Are you ready to do battle?

Probably sounds goofy to you if you still think the Democrats are just good guys who want a bit more security from the government.  Admittedly, many rank and file are exactly that.  But there is something more sinister beneath.        

Free Range Blogger

I see where Silver Springs, MD Child Protective Services has ruled that two parents who let their kids go to the park unescourted are responsible for child neglect.  I’m a little stunned but have a solution.  How about somebody standing up in Silver Springs city meetings and loudly asking who in the heck would even think of relocating a business to such a city that is now so dangerous you can’t let your kids walk to the park?  Then go to surrounding towns to spread the sad story about how downhill Silver Springs has gone that it has become so dangerous.  Write editorials in the Washington papers about the tragic state of affairs in Silver Springs.  Oh, you don’t have to be from Silver Springs to do this.  In fact it is best that you live somewhere else.  Let the SS chamber of commerce defend the town and CPS. You could cite the behavior of parents in Oklahoma to contrast.  In 1879, George Washington Miller, the cattleman whose life would later inspire the character, Gil Favor, the trail boss in the TV show Rawhide, sent his 11 yr. old son to tell the Ponca Indian tribe that the best land offered for their reservation was near the Arkansas/Salt Fork confluence—near where present day Ponca City lies.  Joe Miller rode for 3 days, 180 miles, camped under the stars, crossed numerous rivers to reach Miami, Oklahoma and meet with tribal leaders.  The leaders put Joe in the center of their council circle and grilled him.  Were there wild turkeys?  How many wild plums and other berries could he identify?  Do the rivers flood, and is there a place near the rivers with a high hill capable of permanent housing? Joe answered with such honesty and conviction that the tribal elders nodded in agreement. Joe?  He became an honorary chief of the tribe later in life.  Now here’s my question.  Could any 11 year old in Silver Springs do such a feat?  Can they even explain why their city’s spring is silver or where it was located?

In another news item out of London, there has evidently been a massive earthquake in the Middle East. 2 million people killed.  The United States has raced to provide assistance to replace hospitals and police as needed.  Canada has pledged to provide replacement grain for food.  Australia and New Zealand have promised to provide replacement livestock (Sheep and goats).  Finally the patriotic citizens of the United Kingdom have pledged to provide 2 million replacement Muslims.  

Pictures of Jihadi John have surfaced and it turns out he is a well-heeled Brit and wears a Pittsburgh Pirate ball cap.  Turns out the fellow American jihadi who convinced him to wear the Pirates hat was a Cubs fan who was miffed that the Pirates no longer take the cellar in the National League Central.  Hopefully the Pirates will pay a large ransom to get Jihadi John to take off the darned cap and thus will undermine their club.

Here in Oklahoma we have a Burying Beetle. It’s an endangered species.  Every time we build a highway in eastern Oklahoma we have to pay shake-down money to the Federal government for preservation of the beetles. (Are the beetles threatening suicide if we don't do more payola?) A lot of rednecks are saying, “If you are more concerned with a disappearing species of beetle than about Christians disappearing in the Middle East, you must be a liberal.”

            Everybody was scandalized when Biden supposedly got too intimate with the new Sec. of Defense’s wife.  I think he was just whispering, “Have you seen Barack’s new movie, 50 Shades of Government?” That’s why she had such a look of horror on her face.  Biden also missed Netanyahu’s speech.  He was in front of his computer all morning searching the Net and Yahoo.

            I am told that DEA has found a batch of pot crazed rabbits who evidently found somebody's stash.  This reminds me a true story by a Conoco colleague in Houston some years back.  The downtown of Houston has an overhead dispersal loop of freeways over the downtown.  A semi jack-knifed and crashed on that overpass, managed to straddle the guardrail and hang the trailer over the edge.  The back doors of the Budweiser semi trailer then sprang open dumping thousands of cases of beer onto Main Street below.  The foam was two feet deep but guys from the McDonalds nearby on Main raced to get cerveza at great personal peril.  This all happened as he was trying to drive home out of the downtown.   

Libs and Muslims

Why is it, that Liberals are so careful not to attack Muslims and indeed defend them?  One author I read speculates that they wuss out.  They are scared to confront a true violent and dogmatic theocracy and instead pick on the soft target of Christianity.  I think there is more to it.  Here’s what I think motivates them in order of amount.

            Multiculturalism.  It is a strong belief in lib circles that no culture should dominate.  Hence Islam should be considered an equal.

            Political inclusion.  At one half a percent of US population, Muslims definitely make a minority with distinct values.  The way the Democratic party makes a majority is by enlisting minorities and locking down a significant majority of their vote.  Moreover, about 10% of Afro-Americans are Black Muslims.  That this group is despised by other Muslims doesn’t matter.  Just about every black person in USA has some relative who is a Black Muslim.  So by championing Islam, libs gain the good faith of blacks.

            Purposeful Theological stupidity.  A blind eye is taken to the fact that if America ever came under Muslim influence, the first folks threatened and abused would be the liberals.  But many libs disdain faith, don’t crack the Bible that much so why should they read a Koran?  Thus they naively accept the notion that Islam is peaceful and that fundamentalist Islam is not really Islam.  (Should we tell them that individuals aren’t allowed to interpret Islam as they see fit but must conform to a mullah or imam?)   

It rubs dirt in the eye of a conservative.  Anything a conservative wants, like defense of the country should be opposed in their minds. Stand with the Muslims! 

            Grievance.  Islam does not proselatize very much. Most conversion is not with reason but coercion. When Christians convert they use the explanation of God’s love and pursuit of us, and Jesus Died For My Sins.  Islam can’t do that with an unloving god and no grace at all.  So the way their faith is often argued is with grievance. The West has kept them in subjugation, if not colonially then surely with a tyranny of pop culture.  And this “Group with a grievance” appeals to the liberal mindset which has a whole grievance industry.

             

Maybe another question should be, “Should Conservatives oppose Islam?”

            Yep.  America was founded on the idea of the American Dream—that you can be the person you aspire to be.  Corollary to that is the Christian notion that God can have a unique relationship with each person and so each should be left to pursue that relationship and the dreams God give him or her.  Islam absolutely does not allow this freedom.  The name Islam means submission and the religion is intertwined with political philosophy.  It is fundamentally at odds with the American Dream and our founding documents.  For instance, freedom of religion is anti-Islamic. All men are definitely not created equal. Murder is often considered a means, not a crime. Sharia is the demand.

            Islam is trying to take  us over.  There is a big tradition of moving elsewhere and taking over just as Mohammad fled Mecca and took over Medina, then returned to subdue Mecca.  Muslims are told to produce as many offspring and bring as many to USA as possible to swell their numbers and at some point they will assert their power over our “corrupt system”.

            Islam is violent.  “Terrorize the infidels and beleaguer them.  Cut off their heads and cut off their fingers.” Sura 9:3, Koran.  The belief that all people go to hell, but possibly God will have inexplicable mercy on you at some point and grant you paradise, terrifies many Muslims.  The only exception to ‘all dogs go to hell’ is that if you die in jihad, God has to honor your effort with an instant place in heaven.  Thus it is not the poor, but the well-off Muslims who strive to achieve that one last thing of making it to heaven with violent jihad.

           They spread their revolution to other Muslims.  A Shiite will give a Sunni a weapon as long as it is directed against the rest of the world.