America is the last great hope of the world, because in America a person can be free. Free, but not absolutely free. The constraints upon their freedom under which Americans live are unique in the history of the world. They are not the arbitrary dictats of a hereditary Monarch. They are not the equally arbitrary, but historically far bloodier and more destructive, dictats of an ideologically driven elite (though the Democrats, and never was there a more bitter irony than the naming of that pa...
I caught a snippet on Fox News tonight. Apparently that vile insect, that despicable fraud, liar and hypocrite, Tony Blair, formerly British Prime Minister and now superannuated irrelevance posturing as a 'special envoy to the Middle East' (I don't like him - can you tell?) has announced to the world that he is a Christian. This is not news to anyone who lived in the UK during his first two terms in office (there are no term limits to the service of a Prime Minister of the UK) and endured ...
I got the letter I'd been waiting for today. The first paragraph reads: "Congratulations! Your request for the removal of the conditional basis of your permanent resident status has been approved. You are deemed to be a Lawful Permanent Resident of the United States as of the date of your original admission or adjustment of status." The rest tells me when to expect my new Green Card (within 60 days) and various other bits of useful trivia. But the above is the paragraph that counts.
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I'm tired of you, you so-called 'religious'. You prate your pious nothings, endlessly quoting scripture you don't comprehend and expounding dogmas you have no understanding of. As I've said many times, your gods are delusions and your faith no more than over-anxious self-deceit. So now I'm come to challenge you with a question. Christians may answer it. Muslims may answer it. Jews may answer it. Those who adhere to sects which are subsidiary branches of those three great streams of faith m...
There are very few benefits to the study of philosophy - other than coming to know the truth and falling in love with it, of course. Other than that, the study of philosophy teaches you two things. It teaches you yourself, and it teaches you the world. Not the world as it actually is, of course, but the world as we consider it to be. I would like to tell you something, in all sincerity. Something that I have learned after (let's see, how long has it been?) close to twenty years of the most...
What is the State? The State is an instrument of wider society. It's defining characteristic is possession of a monopoly on all forms of violence. The State has no morality, it has no purpose other than the perpetuation and extension of its own existence, and it has no conscience. Neither has it any rival. The State is not the government. In American terms the government is best described as 'The Administration'. The State is composed of Offices and Institutions. 'The Administration' is co...
I'm English by ancestry, and that means I am a propenent of the authority of the State by nature, breeding, and inclination. England is not the country most Americans imagine it to be. It is by nature Authoritarian, secretive, and indifferent to the privileges granted, over the ages, by the Crown to the subjects of the Crown's dispensation. Let one small example stand for all the differences between the life of an American citizen and the life of a subject of English Authority. In England,...
Something that has impressed me in the worst possible way is this nation's preoccupation with what can only be called 'getalongness'. So long as everyone likes each other, so long as everyone gets along with each other, so long as everyone feels part of the team (no matter how utterly incompetent any given part of the team is), American employers would rather hire the getalong guy rather than the guy who knows how to get the job done. "Despite a labor shortage in many sectors, some employe...
The fear of the lord is not well understood. It, the fear of the Lord, relates to the way we commonly understand the word 'fear' in the way the word 'sky' relates to the word 'atmosphere'. The sky is what we see. The atmosphere is what is. And the two are not the same, but they are fundamentally related. There are two senses in which 'the fear of the Lord' is used in the Old Testament of the Bible. One sense is outright terror - the kind of terror you would feel if you knew, for a certaint...
James River City. There’s something old here, old and bloody. And it’s so stinking hot most of the time that you Fail to notice the white chill of the air The kind of white that’s best seen Stained with blood. There are houses in England that are older than America But there’s nothing in England that’s older than what’s here. This is a place accustomed to hate, and those of us that Live here know how to manage it. We hate each other Discreetly. Joyously killing our own kin...
Boredom. No word more laconically conveys anguish. And I suffer it in its most extreme form at work. Every job I've ever had has bored me to tears, and beyond, within a month or two. Except one. But that's another blog for another day. From my observation of the rest of you, boredom seems, for most people, to be a minor annoyance. Something you take in your stride, with which you cope admirably if not always easily. Not so for me. It's a torment that poisons my life. I leave work feelin...
Renaissance - when not referring to a revival of the arts and learning the word means, generally: a renewal of life, vigor, interest, etc.; rebirth. A major factor in my recent rejuvenation has to do with the fact that I'm no longer addicted to Vicodin, as I have been for the last several months. This isn't the first time I've come close to losing myself to that wonderful, pernicious drug. This is my second go-round with it. And I'm now completely certain that taking even one pill, ever...
There is no such thing as original sin. There is no such thing as 'sin' at all. Original sin as sexual sin began life with the writings of Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential Christian writers and thinkers in the history of the Church. Augustine was not always a Christian. He was a convert from Manicheanism, and before his fascination with Dualism took hold he had been, by his own confession, a drunkard and a general debauchee, possessed by a rabid appetite for sex. W...
As of approximately fifteen minutes ago I am an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church Monastery. I will shortly be receiving my Ordination Package, including a legal certificate of ordination which I will immediately present to the County Clerk, who will authorize me to solemnize marriage in the Commonwealth of Virginia. An astounding thing to any European who has even a passing familiarity with the bitter history of intolerance, religious warfare, persecution of heretics, witch-b...