Reflections From a Murky Pond

A great and fine American lady, Gov. Sara Palin gave us these words, “Don’t retreat. Reload!”

With our country on a most perilous cusp, these are words for every true son and daughter of America to take to heart and soul and live by lest our domestic enemies choose the course for America’s future – or lack thereof as anything recognizable as being America.

Don’t Retreat. Reload!

Banners and slogans are all right and good. They symbolize movements and crystallize thoughts while bringing people together under a single banner as a unified host who can enact change and exact retribution.

They can’t, however, be merely and solely that if those fine words are to have meaning. Words shouldn’t be empty. They should be the symbol and label of true and repeated action.

So do not simply chant, “Don’t retreat. Reload!” Do it! Live it! Take our country back and do so in a manner that will mean that it’s generations before our enemies can regroup enough to be, once again, an existential threat to our way of life.

~*~

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

Fashion photographer Terry Richardson, who is as well known for his sexual perversions and predation as for his work, has put a new photo set of the Hollywood’s favorite train wreck, Lindsay Lohan.

Lindsay Lohan Is Such A Tease

Let’s be honest with ourselves, if not with each other; when most of us see these pictures our first thought is, “Pull the trigger!” We might feel guilty over it – I don’t – but we do wish that Lindsay Lohan would suicide to put us out of her misery.

Frankly, it’s sad but true that it seems that the only way society can be freed from the media’s obsession with inundating us with the excruciating details of the failures of these human wreckage is for them to die. Then we just have to suffer through a few weeks of eulogizing these failures and are then left in peace.

In the case the three “D’s” are the disabled, degenerate, and dependent – the three meta-categories of people that no sane member of any society wants to reproduce.

The question is whether or not it’s ethical to encourage them to get sterilized so as to avoid their propagating the vast host of problems such breedings cause society.

Barbara Harris, the founder of Project Prevention – formerly known as C.R.A.C.K. (Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity) – thinks so, specifically when it regards drug addicted women – and a few men. Her organization offer cash incentives for such people to undergo sterilization procedures.

Others think that Harris and Project Prevention are hellish in nature. They claim that she’s taking advantage of women who are not able to make an informed decision about their health. They’ve called what she’s doing bribery. They’ve claimed that she’s taking away these drug addicts’ right to reproduce. And – of course – they’ve brought out the old canard of racism.

The Question Remains

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Personally, I find no ethical problems with offering anyone, especially the mentally disabled, the morally degenerate, and dependent, money if they’re willing to be voluntarily sterilized. I find it a far more efficient and moral choice than Planned Parenthood’s counseling these sorts to have abortions and any form of contraception that requires a regimen of intake is unlikely to be effective for these people.

Is it eugenics? Certainly, of a sort.  I see reason to be bothered by that.  Eugenics, when practiced on a voluntary basis, is no sin insofar as I can see. Killing unborn babies in order to save them from a nightmarish life is another story, as is ignoring their plight.

For good or ill I was exposed to a great deal of literature as a young child and encouraged to take full advantage of that privilege. Consequently, I became an avid reader starting at what most would consider a very young – I won’t, however, say “tender” – age.

It followed quite naturally that my reading greatly influenced my thoughts upon many things

While many, many books of varied sorts influenced my views on myriad topics, I truly believe that no single work influenced my thoughts on living more than Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love.

Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein finishes his “Future History” as presented to world by his then-editor, John W. Campbell. In it we are given a cornucopia of other stories, as Lazarus Long, now some 2300 years old, is induced to reminisce about his life as part of a complex deal to preserve the ‘wisdom’ of the oldest man alive. Each of the stories that Lazarus relates are fairly complete by themselves, and many authors would have chosen to publish each of them separately so as to maximize his monetary returns.

Heinlein, being the author and the man that we was, chose to keep them all as one piece, as each story helped to illuminate his overriding theme, on just what is love in all of its myriad aspects and why it is so important to man’s survival as a species.

This is a book that I strongly and most emphatically recommend for everyone, though not, perhaps, for children as young as I was when I first read it as it contains much that I prepubescent child cannot viscerally understand. This does, however, present a problem as many of the “lessons” contained within this work are best learned as young as possible.

Many Christians will have issues with this work; of this I have no doubts. I would suggest trying to get past this as the work contains many ethical and behavioral lessons of great worth.

If you can bring yourself to do so, put the situational details aside and absorb the underlying context and message.

Go to your your library and check it out if they have it. If not, buy it. In any event, read it. Personally, I’d suggest buying it since I’ve been returning to it for nigh on 40 years and love it still. It’s the sort of book that becomes an old friend and teacher – one that you keep coming back to and finding new meaning, joy, and sorrow in.

Time Enough For Love also contains two “interludes” which comprise the 64-page The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (Kindle), which I believe is a useful addition to anyone’s traveling library in the same fashion that Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Mushashi’s The Book of Five Rings, and Machiavelli’s The Prince are.

And yes, I know; it’s more than odd to include a work of fiction – science fiction at that! – alongside philosophical works such as I have done. Mr. Heinlein was that sort of man though. He, much like that radical rabbi from Nazareth, knew that parables teach far better than anything else.

It’s hard for people and societies to become who the God(s) intended us to be. It’s a complex process will little direct feedback. It’s also clouded by the plethora of disparate visions of just what the God(s) intended.

Becoming Who God Intended Is Hard

It seems to me that we need to make it easier for people and society to understand what leading a moral and ethical means. Rather than focusing upon what the God(s) intended us to become, people – and the world as a whole – would be better served by looking to Man’s Best Friend.

Becoming The Person Your Dog Thinks You Are Is Easier

For most people, if they concentrated on being the person that their dog already thinks that they are, almost everything else will fall into place quite naturally. Perhaps that’s even part of Natural Law, a part we’ve chosen to overlook with disturbing consistently over the last 15,000 years.

And let’s face it, there’s a solid chance that the God(s) intended each of us to be the person our dogs already think that we are.

I’ll even go so far as to posit that this may be why we have dogs. The God(s) may have provided them for just this purpose – to make it easier for us to be what we were meant to be. Of course, if this is true, then it’s equally likely that the God(s) provided cats to keep us in our place and from being too prideful. 😛