Curtis Dahlgren
"Coming Out Of The Shadows": Old C.O.O.T.S of the world, ARISE!
By Curtis Dahlgren
"I'm not ARGUING; I'm just EXPLAINING it better!" – words seen on a sweat shirt
BTW, I WAS AT WAL-MART when I saw this lady wearing that sweat shirt. I should have asked her where she got it. I suspect it was a gift from her husband, perhaps one of those husbands who are tired of hearing a counter-point for every casual point they make in an attempt to make conversation. It's an old phenomenon, but it'll probably get worse since college co-eds outnumber the boys 60-40. I use the term 'boy' loosely but, to the government health law, a 26-year-old is still a "child." As someone said, 26 used to be the onset of middle age! Now a 26-year-old might sue his/her parents for college tuition.
For those of us raised in the 40s and 50s, it was our job to help keep the family afloat. Whether you had a paper route or farm chores, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Without the work performed by my brother and me, our parents couldn't have made the monthly farm payment (I'm just glad they did, and I never sued for back wages).
In the era of Father-knows-best, economics wasn't an abstract subject; it was survival. And in the event Father didn't know best (a rarity), you knew that Mother certainly knew best. These days, government has even taken over the job of NAGGING us: "Boys shouldn't drive farm tractors anymore, and smoking an E-cig behind the barn might stunt your sex life – or something less serious."
How did America get so far off the track? I'm here to tell you it was no accident. We were derailed on purpose! So how did THAT happen?
Once upon a time there was a pundit long ago by the name of Balaam. He was offered a huge bribe if he could bring a curse on a certain nation. He was unable to bring the curse, because the Lord saw that the nation was still trying to, essentially, do the right stuff. As long as 50-some percent of the people had the right stuff, they couldn't be cursed. So the pundit knew what he had to do. If he were to collect the money; he had to first destroy the country's moral standards and education. The first thing he did, therefore, was having the teachers say that "we must not make value judgments."
Pretty soon there were no stigmas except the concept of stigmas. Instead of 10 commandments there was just one: "If it feels good, JUST DO IT." Sex became almost compulsory, and if anyone complained, they were told to just shut up; this is diversity!
AND SO, the nation collapsed and Balaam collected his "bet." He coined the term "follow the money" (no pun intended). It is called the Way of Balaam to this day. That true story comes to us from thousands of years ago, but human nature never changes. That is how America got derailed. We didn't fall; we were PUSHED – by academics in both the secular and sectarian world.
As a friend of mine wrote to our local weekly, "Americans thought they could do just fine without acknowledging God or actually reading the Bible." This has not worked out well at all for us. Columnist Michael Guido says that the problem is Dalmatian Theology: Too many people believe that the Bible is inspired only in SPOTS. Even in seminaries. Spiritual anarchy leads sooner or later to societal anarchy. I saved a column by Dennis Prager from April 2013 that "explains it best":
"I offer the single most politically incorrect statement a modern American can make: I first look to the Bible for moral guidance and for wisdom. I say this even though I am not a Christian (I am a Jew, and a non-Orthodox one at that). And I say this even though I attended an Ivy League graduate school (Columbia), where I learned nothing about the Bible except that it was irrelevant, outdated and frequently immoral . . .
"For well over a generation, we have been living on 'cut-flower ethics.' We have removed ethics from the Bible-based soil that
gave them life and think they can survive removed from that soil . . . If not from the Bible, from where should people get their values and morals? The university? The New York Times editorial page? They have been wrong on just about every great issue . . When the current executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, was appointed to that position she announced that 'in my house growing up, the Times substituted for religion' . . .
"The other modern substitute for the Bible is the heart. We live in the Age of Feeling, and an entire generation of Americans has been raised to consult their heart to determine right and wrong. If you trust the human heart, you [may] be delighted with this development. But those of us raised with biblical wisdom do not trust the heart" [human nature, minus God].
SCIENCE, of course, is a biggie. "God is dead, the professors said. At least the God of Judgment." The flaw is the slaw is that, without God, scientists can't be trusted either! I quote from an article from Creation.com, July 2013:
"Most of the known cases of modern-day fraud are in the life sciences. In the biomedical field alone, fully 127 new misconduct cases were lodged with the Office of Research Integrity (HHS Dept.) in the year 2001. This was the third consecutive rise in the number of cases since 1998 . . . As a result of the modern fraud epidemic, a Nature editorial concluded:
'Long gone are the days when scientific frauds could be dismissed as the work of the mad rather than the bad. The unhappily extensive record of misconduct suggests that fraudsters believe their faked results . . . '
"The accused include some of the greatest modern biologists, and the problem exists at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Baylor, and other major universities."
To which I would add East Anglia in the UK (the next person to bring up Global warming is going to get a pie in the face. It was seven degrees below zero this morning, nearly the Ides of March!).
CONCLUSIONS? SOME GOOD NEWS -
While students at Rutgers study the mating habits of the Tazmanian gerbil (see http://www.campusreform.com/ ) or Womens Studies (what's a "Womens"?), many young men are shunning college in favor of old-fashioned "vocational" training. Competition among colleges and universities is fierce (not just for athletes but for student-freshmen). One sign of good news was a recent Pew poll of 14 to 34 year-olds.
Pew concluded that these "millenials" are conflicted; they voted for Oboma, but global warming isn't one of their big concerns and they are boycotting ObomaCare. Also, while single parenthood is common, the majority doesn't approve of it. And they are becoming more pro-life, I might add – thanks to ultra-sound.
On the economy they are tired of unemployment and useless degrees. I suspect that the young see more clearly than the rest of us that the Fed-pumped-up stock market isn't translating into real-life money. The Good Book says:
"Wealth gained by vanity [a 'gift'] shall be transitory [shrunken], but he who gathers by labour shall increase."
In other words, you can't prime the pump after the well runs dry. Mark wrote, "What shall a man give in exchange for his SOUL?" (chapter 8:37-38), and then comes CHAPTER IX. Black-and-white theology. When the feds are borrowing 40 cents for every dollar "spent," you know it's not going to end well. UNLESS:
Rush says that the "conflicted, confused" younger generation is "ripe for reaching" and he's certainly TRYING (did you notice what's #1 on lists of children's books?). By the time you're 26, you shouldn't be believing in Santa Claus anymore, but you can still learn a thing or two. We the sons of the Silent Majority of the 60s – who are now old and grey ourselves – have been too silent for too long too!
Boys take after their grandfathers – personality-wise – and for some people that would be the Greatest Generation. Personally, my grandparents were probably born mostly in the 1870s. I saw a 5-generation photo in the local paper, and it made me think: If I were to go back to the fifth generation, I'd be in the time of President Madison or President Jefferson!
They would be rolling over in their graves if they saw how the Constitution is being paper-shredded. The prez acts as if he has a line-item veto, or MORE. He's a "historic" President – the first POTUS to fly by the seat of his pants on administering LAWS passed by Congress. He thinks he can re-write them like some people want to re-write the Bible? No way he can do that (not arguing, just explaining).
Anyway, if you're going to "reach out" – as Rush says – reach out to the young people in your family or neighborhood. That reminds me: someone said that it's cool that Catholics have a "Cool Pope" now. No comment (bless his heart), except that in clarification I just want to cite Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, "Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor":
Frank Magill says, "He asserts that all workers must receive decent treatment . . . But socialism and common ownership of property, he warns, is not the answer. Socialism is not only visionary and unworkable, but its foundation is contrary to nature and to God's laws. Man, as a reasoning 'animal' . . controls his environment, and to do so he must be able to have property, especially land, of his own.
"Man's reason also allows him to anticipate the future and to provide for it, a task he can do only by accumulating land or other wealth. [SO, as Leo XIII said]:
" . . every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own . . . it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things so, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession . . . "
P.S. And as the charter member of COOTS, I'm coming out of the shadows (not to ARGUE but just to "EXPLAIN BETTER")! More to come next week, but -
PPS: Pray for the Unkrainians. This is serious!
© Curtis Dahlgren
March 14, 2014
"I'm not ARGUING; I'm just EXPLAINING it better!" – words seen on a sweat shirt
BTW, I WAS AT WAL-MART when I saw this lady wearing that sweat shirt. I should have asked her where she got it. I suspect it was a gift from her husband, perhaps one of those husbands who are tired of hearing a counter-point for every casual point they make in an attempt to make conversation. It's an old phenomenon, but it'll probably get worse since college co-eds outnumber the boys 60-40. I use the term 'boy' loosely but, to the government health law, a 26-year-old is still a "child." As someone said, 26 used to be the onset of middle age! Now a 26-year-old might sue his/her parents for college tuition.
For those of us raised in the 40s and 50s, it was our job to help keep the family afloat. Whether you had a paper route or farm chores, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Without the work performed by my brother and me, our parents couldn't have made the monthly farm payment (I'm just glad they did, and I never sued for back wages).
In the era of Father-knows-best, economics wasn't an abstract subject; it was survival. And in the event Father didn't know best (a rarity), you knew that Mother certainly knew best. These days, government has even taken over the job of NAGGING us: "Boys shouldn't drive farm tractors anymore, and smoking an E-cig behind the barn might stunt your sex life – or something less serious."
How did America get so far off the track? I'm here to tell you it was no accident. We were derailed on purpose! So how did THAT happen?
Once upon a time there was a pundit long ago by the name of Balaam. He was offered a huge bribe if he could bring a curse on a certain nation. He was unable to bring the curse, because the Lord saw that the nation was still trying to, essentially, do the right stuff. As long as 50-some percent of the people had the right stuff, they couldn't be cursed. So the pundit knew what he had to do. If he were to collect the money; he had to first destroy the country's moral standards and education. The first thing he did, therefore, was having the teachers say that "we must not make value judgments."
Pretty soon there were no stigmas except the concept of stigmas. Instead of 10 commandments there was just one: "If it feels good, JUST DO IT." Sex became almost compulsory, and if anyone complained, they were told to just shut up; this is diversity!
AND SO, the nation collapsed and Balaam collected his "bet." He coined the term "follow the money" (no pun intended). It is called the Way of Balaam to this day. That true story comes to us from thousands of years ago, but human nature never changes. That is how America got derailed. We didn't fall; we were PUSHED – by academics in both the secular and sectarian world.
As a friend of mine wrote to our local weekly, "Americans thought they could do just fine without acknowledging God or actually reading the Bible." This has not worked out well at all for us. Columnist Michael Guido says that the problem is Dalmatian Theology: Too many people believe that the Bible is inspired only in SPOTS. Even in seminaries. Spiritual anarchy leads sooner or later to societal anarchy. I saved a column by Dennis Prager from April 2013 that "explains it best":
"I offer the single most politically incorrect statement a modern American can make: I first look to the Bible for moral guidance and for wisdom. I say this even though I am not a Christian (I am a Jew, and a non-Orthodox one at that). And I say this even though I attended an Ivy League graduate school (Columbia), where I learned nothing about the Bible except that it was irrelevant, outdated and frequently immoral . . .
"For well over a generation, we have been living on 'cut-flower ethics.' We have removed ethics from the Bible-based soil that
gave them life and think they can survive removed from that soil . . . If not from the Bible, from where should people get their values and morals? The university? The New York Times editorial page? They have been wrong on just about every great issue . . When the current executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, was appointed to that position she announced that 'in my house growing up, the Times substituted for religion' . . .
"The other modern substitute for the Bible is the heart. We live in the Age of Feeling, and an entire generation of Americans has been raised to consult their heart to determine right and wrong. If you trust the human heart, you [may] be delighted with this development. But those of us raised with biblical wisdom do not trust the heart" [human nature, minus God].
SCIENCE, of course, is a biggie. "God is dead, the professors said. At least the God of Judgment." The flaw is the slaw is that, without God, scientists can't be trusted either! I quote from an article from Creation.com, July 2013:
"Most of the known cases of modern-day fraud are in the life sciences. In the biomedical field alone, fully 127 new misconduct cases were lodged with the Office of Research Integrity (HHS Dept.) in the year 2001. This was the third consecutive rise in the number of cases since 1998 . . . As a result of the modern fraud epidemic, a Nature editorial concluded:
'Long gone are the days when scientific frauds could be dismissed as the work of the mad rather than the bad. The unhappily extensive record of misconduct suggests that fraudsters believe their faked results . . . '
"The accused include some of the greatest modern biologists, and the problem exists at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Baylor, and other major universities."
To which I would add East Anglia in the UK (the next person to bring up Global warming is going to get a pie in the face. It was seven degrees below zero this morning, nearly the Ides of March!).
CONCLUSIONS? SOME GOOD NEWS -
While students at Rutgers study the mating habits of the Tazmanian gerbil (see http://www.campusreform.com/ ) or Womens Studies (what's a "Womens"?), many young men are shunning college in favor of old-fashioned "vocational" training. Competition among colleges and universities is fierce (not just for athletes but for student-freshmen). One sign of good news was a recent Pew poll of 14 to 34 year-olds.
Pew concluded that these "millenials" are conflicted; they voted for Oboma, but global warming isn't one of their big concerns and they are boycotting ObomaCare. Also, while single parenthood is common, the majority doesn't approve of it. And they are becoming more pro-life, I might add – thanks to ultra-sound.
On the economy they are tired of unemployment and useless degrees. I suspect that the young see more clearly than the rest of us that the Fed-pumped-up stock market isn't translating into real-life money. The Good Book says:
"Wealth gained by vanity [a 'gift'] shall be transitory [shrunken], but he who gathers by labour shall increase."
In other words, you can't prime the pump after the well runs dry. Mark wrote, "What shall a man give in exchange for his SOUL?" (chapter 8:37-38), and then comes CHAPTER IX. Black-and-white theology. When the feds are borrowing 40 cents for every dollar "spent," you know it's not going to end well. UNLESS:
Rush says that the "conflicted, confused" younger generation is "ripe for reaching" and he's certainly TRYING (did you notice what's #1 on lists of children's books?). By the time you're 26, you shouldn't be believing in Santa Claus anymore, but you can still learn a thing or two. We the sons of the Silent Majority of the 60s – who are now old and grey ourselves – have been too silent for too long too!
Boys take after their grandfathers – personality-wise – and for some people that would be the Greatest Generation. Personally, my grandparents were probably born mostly in the 1870s. I saw a 5-generation photo in the local paper, and it made me think: If I were to go back to the fifth generation, I'd be in the time of President Madison or President Jefferson!
They would be rolling over in their graves if they saw how the Constitution is being paper-shredded. The prez acts as if he has a line-item veto, or MORE. He's a "historic" President – the first POTUS to fly by the seat of his pants on administering LAWS passed by Congress. He thinks he can re-write them like some people want to re-write the Bible? No way he can do that (not arguing, just explaining).
Anyway, if you're going to "reach out" – as Rush says – reach out to the young people in your family or neighborhood. That reminds me: someone said that it's cool that Catholics have a "Cool Pope" now. No comment (bless his heart), except that in clarification I just want to cite Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, "Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor":
Frank Magill says, "He asserts that all workers must receive decent treatment . . . But socialism and common ownership of property, he warns, is not the answer. Socialism is not only visionary and unworkable, but its foundation is contrary to nature and to God's laws. Man, as a reasoning 'animal' . . controls his environment, and to do so he must be able to have property, especially land, of his own.
"Man's reason also allows him to anticipate the future and to provide for it, a task he can do only by accumulating land or other wealth. [SO, as Leo XIII said]:
" . . every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own . . . it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things so, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession . . . "
P.S. And as the charter member of COOTS, I'm coming out of the shadows (not to ARGUE but just to "EXPLAIN BETTER")! More to come next week, but -
PPS: Pray for the Unkrainians. This is serious!
© Curtis Dahlgren
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
