Reflections From a Murky Pond

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. Both were dire, dystopian works that speculated upon a horrid future. The two great authors were, however, wildly divergent in their fears and warnings.

George Orwell v. Aldous Huxley – Divergent Distopian Predictions

Both Orwell and Huxley feared a future when we would be a captive culture. Orwell feared captivity by the State but Huxley feared captivity by own venality and pleasure seeking.

Orwell depicted a future society where books were banned and where the State would deprive us of information. Huxley posited a future society where would be no reason to ban a book, because there would be no one who would want to read one, but where so much data would be provided that we would be sunk into egoistic pacifism.

Orwell feared that the State would conceal the truth from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned out by the constant nattering stream of irrelevancies.

Simply put, Orwell feared hate and pain whereas Huxley feared love and pleasure. There is grim sense in both men’s fears; both the “carrot” and the “stick” are used to gain and maintain control.
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On Monday, August 23, 2010 a US federal judge blocked the Obama administration from funding human embryonic stem cell research via the National Institutes of Health (NHS). The court ruled that the President Obama’s planned financial support Human Embryonic Stem Cell (HESC) research violates an existing  federal law barring the use of taxpayer money for experiments that destroy human embryos.

So much for President Obama March 9, 2009 Executive Order 13505, with which he supposedly tried to fund the practice with taxpayer money.

From the Washington Post:

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the National Institutes of Health from funding the research under the administration’s new guidelines, citing an appeals court’s ruling that the researchers who had challenged the less-restrictive policy have the legal standing to pursue their lawsuit.

The decision, a setback for one of the administration’s most high-profile scientific policies, was praised by opponents of the research.

The preliminary injunction will, if some vestige of the laws of America still exist, be followed with a final ruling that permanently blocks Obama’s directive. This is not because HESC research is wrong but because a President’s Executive Orders do not overrule the laws as created by the Congress and, therefor he cannot approve such funding when a law explicitly prohibits it.

That is a much more important point than whether or not Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research gets federal funding – unless one suddenly likes the idea of the “Imperial Presidency.”

In Aesop fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper a grasshopper spends the warm months singing and idling while the ant worked hard to store up food for long, cold winter. When winter arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger, and upon asking the ant for food and shelter, is rejected and castigated for its idleness and sloth. Soon the grasshopper dies of cold and hunger.

The story was once used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of laziness and improvidence.

That, of course, was a story for a vastly different age. Now such a parable would be derided as an example of greed and the ant would be cast as the villain.  Yet, even so, The Ant and the Grasshopper can be recast in a modern light:

The Ant and the Grasshopper: A Parable For Today

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, NPR, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green…’

ACORN busses in hundreds of angry protesters and stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We Shall Overcome.’

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake, demanding that they must kill any God that did not damn this ant.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act, making it retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, rumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing down the rest of the free world with it, and in some dark, but suddenly nearer Hell Pazuzu smiles.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2010 and 2012.

Sadly, we’ve degenerated very far since the time of that 7th Century BC Thracian Fabulist, Aesop became famous across the ancient world as the preeminent teller of fables. Now the Ant would be cast as the rapacious, selfish, capitalist and the Grasshopper as an oppressed minority or an example of “The Ant’s Burden.” 😉

Is your housemate and Atheist? Is he or she one the Godless? Refer to the chart below for some common indicators:

Is Your Housemate an Atheist?

The are a couple of cautionary points to remember though. Firstly, not all who look like this are Godless, just as not all the Blacks who emulate the ghetto thugs’ manner of dress and hygiene are actually thugs themselves. Secondly, while a certain level of reasonable caution is warranted due the inherent morality issues of Atheists, there is no reason to panic; most of the Godless are harmless to anyone but themselves. 😉

In these quickly darkening and degenerate days Americans are under siege from the Leftists – the Liberals and Progressive – who live within our nation but are no true part of it just as a cancer may be within the body but is not of the body.

The Left is quick to attack Americans. They do their worst to paint us as racists, bigots, selfish oafs, and anything other lie that they can dream up.

These viscous verbal assaults, along with the low-grade but consistent use of physical violence, are based upon fear, however, far more than they’re based upon the hate and/or loathing that the Left feels towards America and American.

One need look no further than to how these Liberals and Progressives, along with their minority tenants, responded to the town hall meetings during the run-up to ObamaCare or the Tea Party protests to see that this true. They are terrified of our anger because they have no recourse to it.

Americans need to either shrug off these slanders or embrace them as a motivation and a guide book to how to purge the body of America of the diseased tissue within it. To do otherwise is to become complicit in the crimes that these Leftists seek to commit against America, the Civilized World, and humanity as a whole.

The 19th century Dutch politician and theologian, Abraham Kuyper, said it better than I ever could.

When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.

— Abraham Kuyper
Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader

That is how it must be if we are to save America from depredations of the Leftists and prevent President Obama’s followers from enacting his plan to “fundamentally change America.” Battle must be our calling; peace has become a sin because that peace is paid for by loss and corruption of our nation and the future of our children and our children’s children.

To those who would name me “extremist” I say, paraphrasing Barry Goldwater, “Extremism in the defense of America is no vice; moderation in pursuit of American liberties is no virtue!”

Remember though that not all wars are fought solely with the open clash of men and arms. War, even within the mortal realm, is fought on many planes and in many ways, not all of which involve physical violence and many of which employ it in only small, targeted amounts. It is war nonetheless and American must steel themselves to offer up sacrifices of blood and treasure upon the alters of America if we are to have any hope of victory.

If we can do that though, I believe we will achieve victory for our progeny because our enemies, as evidenced by the nature of their fears, do not have the faith and the will to do similarly.

~*~

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