Why I don't trust the American News Media

Is it true that social media is full of dubious news stories from illegitimate sources?  Yes, it is.  Fake news is a real problem.  But it's a problem the mainstream media created for itself, by driving out all ideological diversity from its ranks, and thereby driving conservative views to the margins of the profession, and treating it as illegitimate, which some conservative news vendors quickly became, and by offering far too many fake news stories of its own.

The problem isn't going away anytime soon because the one institution that could do anything about it, by policing itself, the mainstream media, has zero moral authority to do so. But the fake news sites on the internet are no better or worse than the supposedly real stuff at the New York Times, and the mainstream media will just be the pot calling the kettle black until it gets its own house in order.

i learned at a fairly young age that newspapers are extremely unreliable.  Every single local newspaper article I have ever read in my life, that described an event which I personally witnessed, from a funeral to a court hearing, has gotten major details of the story factually wrong, and spun the story to fit a pre-constructed spin.  So why should I believe that bigger mainstream media sources are any better? From a lifetime of observing, here's several reasons why I do not now and never will trust the mainstream media, from their lies to their many examples of hypocrisy.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIES AND FAKE AND FALSIFIED NEWS

1. CNN edits videotape of Black Lives Matter Supporter calling for violent protesters to take their violence to the suburbs, by editing out her "take that sh** to the suburbs" statement, and calling the segment they do air: "a call for peace" by the young woman.

2. NBC edits portion of 911 call in Trayvon Martin case to delete 911 officer asking Martin Zimmerman for the race of the person he is following, to make it appear that Zimmerman volunteered this information as a sign of his racism.

3. Dateline NBC fakes the blow up of a GMC truck on video to claim the vehicle is unsafe.  (No wonder NBC created MSNBC, they needed an outlet for this phony news stuff.)

4. Dan Rather reports a fake news story about a forged letter supposedly criticizing a young George W. Bush for missing National Guard pilot duty.  Amateur typography enthusiasts are able to point out the falsity of the letter within moments of the report airing.  Dan Rather loses his job, but Hollywood later makes a movie, called "Truth" claiming the letter was accurate.

5. Rolling Stone publishes a fake news story about a gang rape that never happened at a University of Virginia fraternity. Shortly after being hit with a multi-million dollar libel verdict for this fake news story, Rolling Stone publishes an interview with Barack Obama earnestly complaining about fake news on social media.  Neither Rolling Stone nor Mr. Obama seem aware of the irony of this moment.

6. Long after it has been proven false that Michael Brown was saying "hands up, don't shoot" when slain during a tussle with a Feruson, Mo. police officer, the mantra is being repeated by news media across the country.

7. Walter Duranty wins a Pulitzer Prize for whitewashing the horrors of Stalinism and helping the Soviets hide the truth about the genocide of Ukrainian kulaks, while enthusiastically reporting on the glories of Soviet Stalinism for the New York Times.  Of course, one could take any given year of New York Times reporting over the last 100 years, and find at least a dozen left wing lies per year, from enthusiastically endorsing the Piltdown Man hoax, to misreporting virtually every aspect of the Valerie Plame scandal.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA HYPOCRISY

1. Dan Quayle misspells potato.  MAINSTREAM MEDIA REACTION (hereinafter "MMR"): "Too stupid to be the Vice-President."  Barack Obama brags of having campaigned in 57 States. MMR: "Most intelligent candidate ever to run for the office of the President."

2. Bill Clinton terminates all 50 U.S. Attorneys in the nation, immediately upon taking office, and replaces them with hand-selected successors, in a throwback to the spoils system which so outraged Americans of an earlier generation that it was outlawed by early 20th Century Civil Service reform. MMR: Crickets.
George W. Bush, long after taking office, terminates 8 U.S. Attorneys. MMR: "OUTRAGEOUS!!  A MAJOR SCANDAL!!!"

3. Ronald Reagan's 1980s are a decade of prosperity.  MMR: "Let us bemoan this decade of greed."
Bill Clinton's 1990s are a decade of prosperity. MMR: "Let us celebrate this decade of prosperity!"

4.  Republican Senators, holding a majority position, consider changing the Senate's rules to make it easier to override a minority party's filibuster.  MMR: "This is a terrible idea!  A 'nuclear option' which represents an immoral evil threat to the Republic, which would silence the minority and deprive and strip them of all rights and overcome Constitutional assurances of checks and balances; and lead to lions and tigers and bears and cats and dogs living together oh no!!"
Democratic Senators, holding a majority position in the senate a few years later, don't just consider, but actually enact the so-called "nuclear option" and make it easier for themselves to override minority party filibusters. MMR: "This is a great idea."  Indeed, the New York Times editorial board actually publishes an editorial claiming it has changed its mind, and now favors implementation of the new rules, and has suddenly decided that it now disagrees with its own earlier editorial, published a few years before, arguing against the so-called Nuclear Option when Republicans were in the majority and were considering it.  You can't make this stuff up.

5. Richard Nixon erases 18 minutes of a conversation from an internal White House taping system before turning it over to investigators to respond to subpoenas in the Watergate scandal.  MMR: "Impeach this man!"
Hillary Clinton erases 30,000 emails, and has her personal assistants, literally, take a hammer to smart phones and tablets, which she never does turn over to investigatores to respond to subpoenas in the scandal involving her mishandling of classified information while Secretary of State. MMR: "Elect this woman!"

6. Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney is accused of having had yard work done by illegal immigrants (who were not hired by him, but were employed by a citizen-owned landscape company Romney had hired to do the work and whom Romney had instructed not to employ illegals).  MMR: "Let's send a reporter to Guatemala to interview one of the illegal laborers who worked on Mitt Romney's lawn!"
Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign events are all picketed by a group of Haitians protesting the Clinton Foundation's graft and corruption in Haiti. MMR: "Should we send a reporter outside to talk to those Haitians?  No, that would involve walking several yards, with all of our camera equipment in tow.  We don't have the resources for that!"

7. Margaret Thatcher dies.  MMR: "Three Cheers!!!  The evil hag who proved the flaws in English socialism and helped win the Cold War is dead!!!  Let us bring in an expert panel to discuss how horrible she was."
Fidel Castro dies.  MMR: "Let us mourn the life of this courageous revolutionary, and discuss all the wonderful things the 'longest serving President' of Cuba did for his people, whom he loved.  Viva la Revolucion!!"

8. A white police officer shoots a black suspect during an arrest. MMR: "The police are all racists and it's time to end police violence!!"
A black Black Lives Matter supporter takes sniper shots at police officers in Dallas, killing 5 of them, while ambush style assaults against police officers increase by 300% in less than a year.  MMR: "The police are all racists and it's time to end police violence!!"

9.  A county clerk refuses to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, after ordered to do so by a federal court.  MMR: "She has a duty, as a local public official, to follow the federal laws, regardless of her personal opinions about those laws.  Order her to comply or arrest her."
City officials declare their municipalities to be "sanctuary cities" which will not enforce federal immigration law.  MMR: "Such courage!"

10.  Clarence Thomas is accused of having once said "there's a pubic hair on my coca-cola" to a female staff member.  MMR: "This man has committed sexual harassment and is not fit to be on the Supreme Court."
Bill Clinton is repeatedly credibly accused of having raped, groped, exposed himself to, and otherwise sexually assaulted several different women, throughout his life, including during his time in the White House, and perjures himself about having sexually exploited an immature young intern during both working and leisure hours in the oval office.  MMR: "Let's all just move on. This is a personal matter that has nothing to do with Clinton's continuing fitness for office."

11 Conservative Movies

Hollywood is, as everyone knows, the ultimate bastion of leftism, and a skilled purveyor of the many defining myths of the liberal ethos.  Many films could be cited to prove this point, but perhaps the easiest example is James Cameron's Avatar (which can serve as a proxy for many different movies, since it stole so freely from hundreds of liberal cinematic homilies that came before it).  Avatar is a kind of cinematic Mass for the 21st Century Secular Liberal soul, dramatizing with cutting edge 3D and Special Effects liberals' most cherished paradigms (since corporations are horrible, and the military satanic, combining them creates the ultimate evil); deeply felt prejudices (my own closest neighbors and family relations are hopelessly xenophobic, so I will prove my sanctimonious superiority by embracing, nay becoming, the more enlightened others my lesser co-citizens currently fear); and vaguely articulated but sacredly viewed beliefs (worship nature, not God; on some planet, somewhere, surely nature will actually respond back in kind, proving that the indigenous pagans were right all along).  

But, once in a while, through some quirk of physics or something, a movie with a conservative message somehow gets made.  Here are 11 such films: 

The Dark Knight Rises  This final film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is basically another cinematic cover of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.  That means we get lots of imagery about the dangers of revolutionary movements, which subvert the civil order of the boring old conservative status quo, like the Scarecrow presiding over a Kangaroo court handing out arbitrary and capricious death sentences to anyone who engages in counterrevolutionary activities. Also, Occupy Wall Street-type protesters are shown to be the dupes of an evil power-hungry tyrant (Bane = George Soros).  And the police are celebrated as overcoming the protesters and restoring law and order to the streets, rather than vilified as the evil henchman of a Black Lives Matter morality tale. But the single most important conservative moment in the film comes in a scene where Catwoman is spending time with the revolutionary revelers in a home they've stolen from some hapless middle class family, whose photo, in a destroyed frame, she finds laying amongst their belongings:  

"Catwoman (viewing the photo and looking horrified): This was someone's home.
Catwoman's ditzy stoned friend (ignoring the troubling question of what happened to the family who once lived here): Now it's everyone's home."

All this anti-collectivist scene needed was the obvious next line, "Which means it's nobody's home" and it could have been written by William Buckley or Ronald Reagan.   

The Way Back This 2010 film about a group of refugees fleeing a Soviet Gulag earns its conservative stripes at the moment when the main characters are about to leave the borders of the Soviet Union, only to be greeted by images of Stalin at the border of the country (Mongolia perhaps? I can't remember) they are fleeing into.  They are crushed, and one of them mumbles something about "it" (the evil of Stalinism) having spread to other lands.

Ghostbusters  A group of academics lose their public grants and have to start a small business in the private sector, where, one of them notes, "they expect results."  Their successful efforts at providing a needed service are then thwarted, and the city of New York threatened with annihilation, because of an overzealous and power-hungry federal bureaucrat from the EPA releasing toxic ghost matter into the city rather than allowing the small business owners to store it without a license.  In the end, the evil federal bureaucrat gets what's coming to him. 

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Frodo keeps trying to give the ring to all the most pure and noble souls in Middle Earth: Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn. They each demonstrate that they are truly pure and noble, by refusing the offer, knowing, as Gandalf says, that, though they would use this ring out of a desire to do good, through them it would work only great evil.  Such is the nature of concentrated power.  Clearly, none of these Tolkien characters would have had much good to say about U.S. Supreme Court Justices who abuse their concentrated power by legislating from the bench, or about Fidel Castro, but they all would have cheered on George Washington when he gave up his commission at the end of the Revolutionary War. (And clearly, Canada's Castro-loving Prime Minister Bieber Trudeau has never read the Lord of the Rings.  Or if he did, failed to understand it.)  

Gattaca  A refutation of the modern liberal paradigm of a purely materialistic and mechanistic universe, in which there is no such thing as human agency, such that none of us may be held accountable for the outcomes of our pre-programmed decisions (see, for example, Sam Harris's book, Free Will, which denies that there is such a thing, or Barack Obama's "You Didn't Build That" speech). This film, by contrast, argues there is no gene for the metaphysical human spirit.   

Amazing Grace  William Wilberforce is arguably one of the most important men in history. This story of his successful, and Christian-motivated, crusade to end the slave trade, is a helpful rebuttal to modern liberal sneers at the evils of Christianity.   

A Man for All Seasons  One of the reasons I know I'm a conservative is because of my cranky annoyance at the belief that we can legislate away or reeducate away hard and objective scientific truths about human biology, sexes, chromosomes, and non-asexual reproduction. Nothing better encapsulates this conservative worldview, than the following defense of objective truth, uttered by Sir Thomas Moore, in this film about the famous Catholic martyr's contest of wills with Henry VIII over the definition of marriage: "Some men think the earth is round; others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question.  But if it is flat the King's command will not make it round, and if it is round, the King's command will not flatten it." [The movie version of this line is stronger than in the original play, where it is phrased as a question.] Lincoln, our first and still greatest Republican President, made a similar argument about the stubborn implications of objective truth, when he contended that if you call a dog's tail a leg, the dog still has only four legs, because calling something a leg doesn't make it so.  The same goes for humans, who remain human, even if you call them property, or fetuses. 

Groundhog Day  It is possible to misread the message of this movie and see it as just another liberal celebration of the sexual revolution: the purpose of life is to get the girl into your bed.  But, despite that terrible ending, that's not really the point.  This is a movie about a lost soul's realization that life's purpose is to be found in personal growth, accompanied by joining, and serving, a community.  Charles Murray has argued that the film is a good substitute for reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. I don't know if that's true, but it's certainly a lot more fun. 


Blast from the Past  The polar opposite of left-wing screed, Pleasantville this film instead provides a gentle defense of the lost values of pre-1967 America, as embodied by a young man who spent his life being raised by his 1950s-era parents in a bomb shelter and was thus never slowly brought to a boil, like the hapless frog of the oft-repeated conservative analogy for America's slow embrace  of modern immorality.   


http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/reviews/reviews98/movies_worst.shtml) 


The Island An explication of why we don't create or tamper with the sanctity of human life merely for scientific research.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  For obvious reasons, any film based on the life or writings of C.S. Lewis (who spent his youth in socialist folly before converting to Christianity) will resonate with conservatives.  I could list movies and books all day which, in my humble opinion, end with a symbolic retelling of Christ's atoning sacrifice, at least as I choose to apply and as I choose to understand the plot of those stories.  There's less viewer's choice here, as the story deliberately sets up an analogy and an allegory for each element of the central doctrines of Christianity: the existence of an objective moral law, temptation, sin, betrayal, atoning sacrifice, redemption, death, resurrection, and the battle against evil. Normally, as Tolkien believed, such forced allegory, as opposed to chosen applicability, is a bad thing. But because Lewis understands the theological points which he is making so well, the story works, not only as a good children's story, but as a helpful source of theological clarity. The movie is, in my opinion, much more powerful than the book (especially if the sequel is watched shortly thereafter), and transcends its juvenile literature source material, primarily because the actor who plays young Edmund does such an amazing job of portraying the differences in his character's character, before versus after his countenance has been changed by his recognition of what someone else did for his redemption. 

The Problem With Arguments About What "the Founders" Believed. An overlong essay on a minor pet peeve.

Political arguments in the United States of America often revolve around discussions of whether we have strayed too far from (or, for some, have adhered and clung too slavishly to), what "the founders intended" or what the "founders believed."  Frequent corollary debates then contest exactly what it was that the "founding fathers" believed or intended. 

But here's the problem.  It can be dangerously simplistic to speak of the "founders" as a homogeneous collective, and "what the founders believed" or "what the founders intended" in conclusive tones. These are much more complicated questions than most want to admit, especially when arming ourselves with the founders' thoughts and ideals in service of some 21st Century Political debate. Yes, the founders had much in common.  They were mainly comprised of land-owning white males of a certain socio-economic status, who would have been considered minor gentry in the British Empire, and therefore near the top of the local hierarchy in the American outpost of that Empire.  Yes, many of them were recently arrived at that status, and therefore idealized and exaggerated the virtues which the nobility were supposed to believe in.  And yes, they were creatures of their time and their place, many of them educated in the prevailing philosophies of their era, inspired by the words of Locke and Montesquieu, as the enlightenment devotion to reason was displacing trust in Biblical revelation, and deism was all the rage.  They were British colonists, and saw the world from that viewpoint. Most of them were far better educated than most Americans today in the history and languages of classical antiquity, and they were especially fascinated by the history of Rome, and its lessons, especially the period surrounding the fall of the Roman Republic and its transformation into an Empire, governed my military dictators beginning with Julius and then Augustus Caesar.  Their understanding of science was elementary compared to our own, and their trust in reason without the data which modern scientific instruments have allowed, sometimes led them into absurd beliefs, as for example, Jefferson's refusal, along with other members of the scientific societies to which he belonged, to believe that meteors ever fell from the sky and impacted the earth. They were angered by the events of their time and by their shared interpretations of those events.  

But for all of that commonality, anyone who has read even a single (well-written) biography of any one of the founders, and delved into the sometimes violent disagreements they had with one another about the meaning and purpose of the American Revolution, and the proper role of the Federal Government under the Constitution, soon discovers that the way we often speak of "their" vision, in some collective sense, can be incredibly inaccurate and misleading.  

Let us take just one commonly believed meme, as an example: "The founders were deists."  Everyone who has ever engaged in a freshman dorm argument about the separation of church and state has heard this before.  So, what would be involved in trying to defend or refute this commonly shared belief: 

The first job would be to define terms. Who "counts" as a "founder" for purposes of this claim? Anyone living in America in 1776 who supported the Declaration of Independence? Or just the members of the Second Continental Congress who approved its final draft and eventually signed it? That would give us Clergyman John Witherspoon, definitely not a deist. But we should of course also include the guys who signed off on the Constitution as it came out of Philadelphia in 1787.  Do we include the legislators of the various states who voted to ratify that Constitution in 1788? If so, does that mean we exclude people like Patrick Henry, who argued against ratification, even though most people would think of the person who said "give me liberty or give me death" as, definitely, a founder?  Do we include the members of the First Congress to assemble under the new Constitution in 1789, and gave us the Bill of Rights?  Or just those that were on that particular committee?  

Maybe we just limit the term to the big names we've all heard lots of times before: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison etc.  But even here we will run into problems.  Does Thomas Paine count?  Were it not for the influence of his pamphlet, Common Sense, the Second Continental Congress would never have had the popular support necessary to vote for independence. But Paine held no governmental office, and the biblical history he used to support the arguments in that pamphlet were accepted by an American public which would never have embraced the arguments against Christianity which he asserted to inspire the anti-clerical French Revolutionaries. Still, it's an important question: If I'm arguing for the deism of the founders I'm definitely going to want him on the founers' team. If I'm arguing against, I'm definitely going to want to exclude him. 

But even if we can agree on whose opinion counts, we will find further difficulties.  At what particular point in a founder's life does that founder's opinion get counted?  Alexander Hamilton became far more religious in his older years, after the death of his son, than he was as a young man. It's extremely easy to make the case that Jefferson, who personalized his copy of the New Testament by removing and redacting all the miracles, was a deist.  The case is especially easy to make if we focus on the statements he made after his wife died and he took up with his slave Sally Hemmings, in a relationship that certainly did not accord with orthodox Christian teachings, and spent time in France during that nation's very different revolution. But the younger, married, Jefferson, the one who became one of the big-name founders by writing the Declaration of Independence, seems to have been extremely comfortable including religious themes within that document, which relies on the "protection of Divine Providence" and speaks of those rights with which all men have been "endowed by their Creator" and to which they are entitled by the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."  Since Jefferson's biggest contribution to the founding was his authorship of the Declaration, does it really matter what he believed about God later in life?   Or were his beliefs at the time of his authorship of the Declaration more important to our modern understanding of what the founders were trying to accomplish?  Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration was so infused with religiosity that Benjamin Franklin asked him to tone it down, by replacing the phrase "we hold these truths to be sacred" with "we hold these truths to be self-evident" as Jefferson's original wording "smacked of the pulpit" to Franklin.  So, OK, Franklin was a deist.  But wait: in his final years, Franklin insisted that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia should start beginning their meetings with prayer, to invoke the assistance of divine intervention (a concept which deists don't believe).

The best example of this difficulty, with ascertaining a given "founder's" beliefs, on any particular subject, given that their own views were susceptible to change, during the course of each of their own individual lives, is of course James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" whose views on the power of the national government under that document kept changing.  Madison brought a plan to the Philadelphia Convention which would have given the national centralized government far more power than most of the other delegates were comfortable with, and he left bitterly disappointed that the final document created a much weaker national government than he was hoping to achieve.  This opinion changed, however, when Madison realized that the Constitution he envisioned would never have been ratified in the State conventions, and he found it extremely handy to argue that the States should be comfortable ratifying the document, as they were to remain sovereign over all responsibilities and powers which were not expressly delegated to the Federal government in a system of dual sovereignty.  Still, he wrote the Federalist Papers with Jay and Hamilton, arguing against the Anti-Federalists' fears of the national government. Subsequently, however, under Jefferson's influence, Madison would start speaking like one of the Anti-Federalists, as he challenged Hamilton's views of the powers which should be assumed by the Federal Government, and joined with Jefferson in creating the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which asserted that individual states had the power to veto federal legislation (a complete inversion of the federal veto power over state laws for which Madison had argued at the constitutional convention, and a theory which would provide the philosophical justification for the secessionist movement that led to the Civil War).  After Jefferson's death, Madison's opinions would change again, as he argued in support of a strong federal union during the Nullification Crisis. 

This all means that we should be very cautious when throwing around bumper-sticker arguments about what "the Founders" intended, believed, or opined.  

That is not to say that it is always a hopeless task to determine what a majority of the founders believed or intended at any given point in time. English is a highly effective and efficient language, and the words that the founders ultimately included in their final signed drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights contained within its first ten amendments are with us still, to guide and direct how the workings of our government are supposed to operate. We can read those words, and, where the meanings have changed or grown obsolete (see for example, an "establishment of religion") we can research the original meanings, to understand the basic parameters of the system the founders created.  And we can construe from the system of government which they created, and their writings about the same, what the underlying beliefs and concerns were which motivated their decisions. 

We can also look to the precedents the founders created as they established the real government systems which gave life to the words of the written documents.  It should be remembered, in that regard, that the American Revolution was fought, in large part, because of many Americans' beliefs that their rights under the British Constitution were being trampled.  Britain does not however have a written "constitution." But its citizens have long spoken of a British Constitution, and what governmental actions are or are not "constitutional" thereunder, based on those precedents, charters, historical developments and legislative enactments which have, over time, in fits and starts and in a somewhat organic fashion, created the system of constitutional government (or government as properly "constituted"), which exists in Britain today, or which existed in Britain in earlier eras. Notwithstanding the existence of a written Constitution in America, our own system of government has developed in a somewhat similar fashion, as our written Constitution is not long enough nor detailed enough to answer every possible question. That was its point, to give us a framework for conducting political arguments and operating the government, and to delineate some of the boundaries of what was legitimate (or constitutional) within that system.  

But even as we engage in the exercise of understanding the constitutional system the founders erected, we must be cautious about speaking of them too collectively, and we must approach the task of developing a better understanding with a degree of historical literacy which it takes some time and effort to acquire.  And as we acquire it, we may be surprised to discover that some of the founders' most deeply held beliefs and opinions, were focused on subjects which have little if anything to do with our modern political arguments, and cannot be readily marshaled to defending our own opinions on modern political controversies.  

This is true, for example, of many of the founders' fears, which are given little attention in modern times. [Citation to be inserted]

 

A Glossary of Legal Terms for the New Lawyer

Alter ego: The Judge’s law clerk.

Arbitration: A place where lawyers develop bad habits they have to unlearn in court.

Beneficiary: The person at the funeral everyone is trying to befriend.

Campaign contribution: A cost of doing business for lawyers in states with an elected judiciary. 

Contested Divorce: The transfer of a couple’s wealth to their lawyers.   

Difference:  Two things which are not the same.  As in the old joke: “What’s the difference between God and a Federal Judge?  God does not think he’s a Federal Judge.”

Election of Remedies:  Not an option in the 2016 Presidential race.

Fool: (1) Someone who represents himself.  (2) The lawyer who handled the case before you were hired to replace him. 

Government: Corruption.  

Hearing Officer: An employee of a local government agency, with no legal training and the power to ruin your life.

Hearsay: Evidence which is so incredibly unreliable that there are only 2,714 exceptions which will allow it to be admitted.  

Insurance:  Originally intended as a method for avoiding accountability.  Which is ironic, since you are more likely to be sued if you have it than if you don’t. 

Intellectual Property: Real estate that’s really, really, clever, and likes to read.

Joint Tenancy: A bad way to co-own property if the other owner has ever been convicted of a violent felony.   

Judge: (1) The person assigned to decide all questions of law in your complex secured transactions case.  Hopefully, she wasn't just appointed to the bench shortly after spending 20 years as a public defender in the criminal justice system, where she had no exposure to secured transactions law whatsoever.  (2) If that hope fails, a good reason to mediate.   

Jury: (1) The group of people assigned to decide all of the extremely technical questions of fact in your complex secured transactions case, hopefully seven of them are not currently "between jobs." (2) If that hope fails, a good reason to mediate.

Kangaroo court: A court that rules against you.

Liable: A common misspelling of libel.

Libel: A common misspelling of liable.

Lobbyists: The authors of the U.S. Code and the Nevada Revised Statutes. 

Mine: “A hole in the ground with a liar on top.”  Mark Twain.

Parole Evidence Rule:  How you misspell “Parol Evidence Rule” if you were watching COPS with the closed-captioning on when you should have been focused on your First Year Contracts homework.  

Principal: (1) A common misspelling of “Principle”.  (2)  What you call someone you think is in charge of a company when you aren’t sure what exactly his or her title is. (3) The person you knew in your youth, a visit to whose office is now what you are reminded of when you have been called to appear before the Discovery Commissioner or the Federal Magistrate. (4) The very last thing a bank will apply your payment towards.

Principle:  Things that matter.  For example, when a potential new client says, “It’s not about the money; it’s about the principle of the thing” this means: “Get a big retainer; because I’ll be ignoring your invoices." 

Res Ipsa Loquitur: A latin phrase meaning “We don’t know whose really to blame, so it must be you.”  

Retire the Debt Party: A chance to make amends if you contributed to the losing judicial candidate.

Rule Against Perpetuities: A court rule that limits briefs to under 30 pages.

Sausage Factory: The Legislature.

Sausage Ingredients:  Greed; Human misery; Special Interest Groups seeking legal treatment in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution; Things at which someone has taken umbrage; constitutional provisions which mandate that the legislature meet every two years, whether they really need to or not.  

Separation of Powers: A myth they taught you in High School.  

Sovereign Immunity: Why government workers don't need liability insurance. 

Stare Decisis.  A latin phrase meaning “Just as some financial institutions are too big to fail, some judicial errors are too old to correct.”  

Tax lawyer: “A person whose really good with numbers, but didn’t have enough personality to become an accountant.”  (Hat tip to a law professor whose name I can’t remember.)

The: A definitive article which the Nevada Bar considers unethical in lawyer advertising.  You may call yourself “A big kahuna” on your classy Billboard, but not “THE big kahuna.”

Tortuous: (1) How Microsoft Word (and therefore your paralegal) thinks “tortious” is supposed to be spelled in a personal injury complaint. (2) Waterboarding.  (3) Attending a CLE Seminar on commercial leases. 

TOTBAL: "There ought to be a law" as in: There ought to be a law that Netflix cannot stop streaming the TV show you've been binging without giving you 90 days notice. 

52 Truths

I have learned in my life that the following statements are true: 

1.  Nothing is free.

2.  This too shall pass. 

3.  Everything is authentic.  It may be mis-advertised, but it is what it is.

4.  There is an inverse relationship between how creatively a child's name is spelled and the likelihood that the child will graduate from High School.

5.  The greatest privilege a young human can be afforded in this lifetime is to be born to, and raised by, his or her own married mother and father.  Any cultural trend or political policy which decreases the number of children who are afforded this privilege should be opposed.  

6.  If you start a sentence with the word "Whereas" or "While" you are about to write a sentence which is too long and will need to be split into two sentences.

7.  Good mechanics, good lawyers, and good doctors, make most of their money from people who should have hired them sooner. 

8. Power corrupts, and tends to be welded by the incompetent.  

9. Most legislation is stupid, unconstitutional, overly expensive, geared towards special interests and therefore in violation of equal protection principles, and likely to do more harm than good.  The best legislators are those unsung heroes who have spent most of their time blocking bad laws, rather than worrying about the much less important task of passing good ones.

10. Having what you believe to be high-minded political opinions does not make you a virtuous person, nor excuse you from the real-world work of becoming a decent human being, treating others with respect, and living by the same rules of kindness and integrity as everyone else. Ditto for your wealth, your athleticism, your talent, your good looks, or your intelligence.  If you believe otherwise, stop it.  

11. Human nature is such that every society will eventually fall and fail and topple, either to foreign invasion, or to internal conflict and revolution, or to unsustainable public expenditure and corruption, or to apathy and dissolution. No tribe, no city-state, no nation-state, no empire, has ever put off this fate forever.  But some societies, which are especially unfortunate or whose leaders are especially corrupt or unwise, get there more quickly than they have to. The best that can be hoped for is some lengthy and relatively stable duration between a nation's dawn and its death.  If you live in a time and a place which is mostly peaceful, mostly prosperous, and mostly free, then gratitude for the past and pessimism about the future are both appropriate.

12. No one will ever care about someone else's well-being and happiness as much as that person's mother.  

13.  The charge to you will always be more than the provider's cost.  Where there is no competition, the gap between the cost and the charge will be larger.  Where the government provides, the gap will be largest.

14.  Government subsidies cause exponential inflation.  See skyrocketing college tuition rates. Ignorance by the consumer of the actual price being charged also causes exponential inflation.  See skyrocketing health care costs.  Ignorance by the consumer of the price being paid, coupled with government subsidies, causes exponential inflation cubed.  See, anything the government claims it is providing you for free or helping to make "more affordable." 

15.  Think twice before doing business with a company that has the word "Honest" in its name.

16.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  A society's values, legal and political traditions, and cultural customs cannot be negated without being replaced.

17.  Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.  

18.  Wealth is not necessarily a sign of virtue or competence. 

19.  Aristotle was right about the golden mean: finding the proper balance and median between excess and deficiency, is the key to everything.

20.  Most stupid ideas are good ideas taken too far. Every virtue, if taken to an excess, becomes a vice.  Every truth, over-extended, can become a falsehood. 

21. Inequality is the price of liberty.  Totalitarianism is the price of equality.

22. Human beings come in two sexes.  Not one.  Not twenty-seven.  Two. These sexes are objectively and scientifically determinable, based on one's chromosomes.  They are not "assigned" and are not subjective and are not capable of being altered via cosmetic surgical intervention.  Our society's recent decision to deny these fundamental scientific truths, and the harshness with which any dissent from the new unscientific orthodoxy is punished, proves that the story of The Emperor's New Clothes was one of the wisest parables about human nature ever written.   

23. Men and women are very different.  

24. Men and women are very similar. 

25. Change should not be confused with progress. 

25. When the Judge agrees with you, sit down and shut up. 

26.  Virtually every hot savory dish can be improved by adding sauteed mushrooms and sauteed onions; and virtually every dessert can be improved by adding whipped cream.     

27.  A calorie may be a calorie may be a calorie, but I've never had to start dieting because I'd been eating too many fruits and vegetables.

28.  The scientific method is an incredibly powerful tool for unlocking certain kinds of truth and developing certain types of technology.  It does not and cannot however answer the questions of ultimate meaning and purpose.  

29. You will never be as great as you could be, at anything that you do for some other reason than the intrinsic love of the intrinsic value of the thing itself.

30.  Most of us judge other people in accordance with our own strengths.  Thus, the rich tend to be appreciative of wealth, the athletic tend to admire athleticism, the intelligent are impressed by intelligence, and so forth. If we can break free of that tendency, the range of people whose gifts and talents we can appreciate and admire will grow exponentially. 

31. It's a good idea to understand the basics of how aperture priority mode and shutter priority mode work on your camera.  

32. It is hard to be depressed when you are busy, and have people to see and things to get done. 

33.  Science is performed by humans, and its results are reported by humans, which means it's just as prone to error and politicization and dogma and logical fallacies and blindspots as any other human endeavor.  Take nothing on faith except Faith.  At least half of what you read "studies have shown" will be wrong. 

34.  People who talk during plays and movies should be given a fair trial before they are shot. 

35. Blessed beyond measure is the person who can look in the mirror and say "I love what I do and I'm really good at it."  

36. Everything is more fun if you have taken the time and made the effort to get good at it when it wasn't fun.  

37. We would all love to be trust fund beneficiaries.  But when two 45 year-olds meet at a reunion, one of whom has been taken care of, and one of whom has grinded away, paying their dues to become quietly capable in their profession, the latter is going to be the happier and more confident person. 

38. If you sometimes don't recognize the people on the magazine covers as you are standing in line for the cashier at the grocery store, and are often unsure who they are, or why they are famous, you are doing something right. 

39. Believers tend to be happier than atheists.

40. The educated and well-read tend to be happier than the ignorant.

41. The married tend to be happier than the single. 

42. People who read tend to be happier than people who watch television. 

43. Participants tend to be happier than spectators. 

44. The gainfully employed tend to be happier than the unemployed, even when the unemployed have generous means of support. 

45. The talented, competent, and skilled tend to be happier than the untalented, incompetent, and unskilled. 

46. When a society stops believing in God, it has about 125 years left before its expiration date.  When it stops believing in free will, it has about 50 years left before its expiration date. 

47. Money spent on experiences is better spent than money spent on things. 

48. Nothing will cause us more joy, nor bring us more sorrow, than our relationships with others.  So it's a good idea to keep in contact with your friends; to write a thank you letter to someone who mentored you or taught you or coached you or led you when you were young; to volunteer in ways that allow you to play those roles for others; to go on dates with your spouse and to invite family members to dinner.  If you don't have time for these things, why wake up in the morning?

49.  Whenever large numbers of politicians promise the electorate that they are going to make something "more affordable" that something (be it health care or higher education) will soon become much more expensive, far outstripping inflation in all other areas of the economy.  If they ever start promising to make food "more affordable" find another place to live before everyone starts starving to death. 

50.  Cicero was right when he said that "Gratitude is the parent of all the other virtues." It is the soil from which all the other virtues take root and can grow. 

51.  Just because your bitterness and anger are justified, doesn't mean they are healthy. 

52.  Selfishness is the root of all evil. 

53. Morality means treating other people as ends and not as means.

Is Natural Beauty an Evidence of God?

This is the view of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, as seen from just outside the largest church building in the car-free hilltop village of Wengen, Switzerland.  

Lauterbrunnen was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's Rivendell, and this view of it is, in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful view on planet earth. But then, I am partial to Switzerland.  

Near the Church stands a plaque containing a written prayer, composed by one Arnold Lunn. [Endnote 1]

I won’t attempt a word for word translation.  But the gist, if my rusty LDS Missionary German is still any good to me at all, is essentially as follows:  The author and offeror of the prayer thanks his dear Lord for the beloved mountains of his youth, the call of their peaks and the tracks in their snow; for the friends who were the companions of his youth, and for his other blessings.  But most of all, he thanks the Lord for the ongoing revelation he feels he receives every time he views the beauty of the mountains around him, the timebound beauty of which strengthens his faith in the eternal beauty of God, which shall not end.  

I love this little prayer.  Indeed, just the word timebound (“zeitgebund”), was worth the journey to that Church, almost as much as the view.  What an incredibly great word, especially when placed in juxtaposition to the word eternal (“ewig”), to describe that not bound in time: so much more evocative than “temporal” or the German “zeitlich” into which it is generally translated.  But I mainly love this poem because, like Lunn, whose faith in eternal beauties was strengthened by their earthly counterparts, I see evidence of God’s design when I am confronted by natural beauty. Indeed, the Doctrine and Covenants, at Section 59:18, teaches that the purposes of God's creations include "to please the eye and to gladden the heart." 

I can already hear my more scientism-oriented acquaintances raising their objections. [2] The beauty of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, of the entire Berner Oberland which surrounds it, is, after all, wholly subjective, and therefore presumably has nothing to teach us.  What’s more, everything which Lunn found so strengthening to his faith in God has a non-religious, natural explanation.  The valley of the Lauterbrunnen was carved by a glacier in the last ice age. The hills and the alps which rise above that valley arose through tectonic forces. The waterfalls which grace the cliffsides are the inevitable result of the water cycle in action: As the winds of Europe hit the Swiss Alps, they release the moisture evaporated from below and snow it upon their lofty peaks, where it melts into the waterfalls, as the melting water seeks the sea through the force of gravity. Every disappointed Zermatt tourist who has ever cursed the cloud blocking his view of the Matterhorn has seen this process in action.  While the water cycle and its ongoing recycling of fresh water is incredibly important to human and all other forms of life, and while perpetual waterfalls are a lovely way of being reminded of this important natural phenomenon, it is, after all, a natural phenomenon, and the waterfalls are, in the end, merely places where lots of water happens to plunge over a cliff, on a journey to the sea no more or less important than that of any other water taking any other route.

And I get all of that. I understand (not well, but in its basic fundamentals) the science.  I even understand the social science, political and economic, that explains why the citizens of Lauterbrunnen built a multi-story automobile garage for the tourists to utilize, and then put grass on its roof so it wouldn’t spoil those tourists’ view.  

Nevertheless, I cannot look upon the Lauterbrunnen Valley without persisting in my belief that I am seeing the handiwork of God.  The same is true of many other natural scenic wonders which I count among my favorite places on earth, both in Switzerland, and in the American West: Appenzellerland; Ebenalp; Seealpsee; Hoher Kasten; Oeschinensee; the waterfall in Yellowstone; Red Rock, on the Western side of the Las Vegas, Nevada valley, in the morning when the sun is shining on its red and white and vermillion colors; Zion National Park; Mount Timpanogos.  Like C.S. Lewis, who defended the objectively sublime nature of waterfalls in his masterpiece, The Abolition of Man, I just can’t bring myself to look upon such beauty and see only an uncreated place, exhibiting purely natural phenomena, and of purely utilitarian interest.  

Or if I can, I can’t take the next step.  The bottom line, for me, is this: I could perhaps believe, if I absolutely had to, that a place like the Lauterbrunnen Valley might come to exist for purely natural reasons, which neither require nor allow for any explanation involving any metaphysical agency or intent or design.  But what I can’t believe is that such a place would haphazardly come to exist in the same Universe where someone like Arnold Lunn, or myself, could also, equally haphazardly, come to exist, and, looking upon the Lauterbrunnen, would call it beautiful.  Indeed, it is not so much that it is impossible to conceive of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in a Godless universe.  It is, rather, more so, that it is impossible for me to conceive of a Godless universe whose inhabitants have a word which means “beauty.” The Lauterbrunnen Valley may or may not evidence the design of God, but poetry about Lauterbrunnen surely does.  

Endnote 1: I assumed Lunn was a local boy, but Wikipedia advises he was the inventor of the slalom ski race, founder of the Alpine Ski Club which encouraged skiing in the Swiss Alps, a youthful agnostic who later wrote defenses of the Catholic faith, and an anti-Communist writer for National Review.  No wonder I loved his written prayer, it's as though two of my favorite writers, G.K. Chesterton and William F. Buckley, were combined into someone who also loved two of my favorite things in the world: Switzerland and Snow-Skiing. 

Endnote 2: For the difference between science and scientism, see The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism  by Michael D. Aeschliman.

A Brief History of the Rise of Western Civilization and Its 20th Century Suicide

BIBLICAL PRELUDE: MAN HAS A DIVINE PURPOSE.

@ 2100 BC Abram becomes Abraham, covenants with God.

@ 2000 BC forward: Abraham's grandson Jacob's name is changed to Israel, he fathers 12 sons, including Levi, Joseph (father of Manasseh and Ephraim) and Judah, who become the progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel.

@ 1450 BC forward: Moses liberates the Israelites from Slavery in Egypt and delivers the Ten Commandments, Torah written.  Old Testament begins to be written.

@1010 forward:  King David reigns in Jerusalem. First Temple in Jerusalem built.

931 BC King Solomon dies. Israel splits into two kingdoms.

721 BC Assyria conquers the Northern Kingdom of Israel and its Ten Tribes.  The remaining Israelites in the southern Kingdom surrounding Jerusalem, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and the Temple Levites, eventually come to be known as the Jews. Further Old Testament histories written, which will become the fundamental narratives of the Western World until the 1960s A.D.  Implicit in these histories is the idea that history is not merely circular, but progresses and advances; that God created humans; that God is our Father, and that individual humans therefore have divine individual worth and purpose.

GREEK CULTURAL ASCENDANCE: MAN HAS A RATIONALLY DISCERNIBLE PURPOSE.

480 BC Greece's unlikely victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, after an earlier, similarly implausible victory at Marathon, paves the way for Greece's Golden Age, and makes a future Western Civilization version of Europe, rather than an Eastern or Zoroastrian version, possible.

@ 320 BC Aristotle produces the Nicomachean Ethics, describing the virtues based on the reasonably ascertainable purpose or end (telos) of a man. Though based on reason, rather than revelation, Greek philosophy implicitly agrees with the religion of Israel that human beings are created and have, in philosophic terms, the ability to instantiate their rationally discernible purpose, or, in religious terms, the ability to fulfill the measure of and reason for their creation.  This idea of man having a purpose, or telos, will remain central to Western thought until it is challenged by philosophers during the Enlightenment, and by the masses in the 1960s AD.

@146 BC Rome conquers Greece but adopts Hellenic philosophy as its governing culture.

@146 BC Rome destroys Carthage.  This lack of external opposition proves unfortunate to Roman unity, and leads to class strife and internal disunion at Rome.

23 BC After crossing the Rubicon, Julius Caesar establishes a military dictatorship. The Roman Republic becomes the Roman Empire, led by military dictators beginning with Julius Caesar, and then Augustus Caesar, giving us the name of the 7th and 8th months, and establishing the basic plotline of George Lucas's Star Wars movies.

THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY: MAN'S PURPOSE AFFIRMED.

April 6 (March 25 on the Julian Calendar) of @ year 1 AD: Jesus born.

@ 30 AD  Jesus teaches the Sermon on the Mount, which becomes the fundamental text of Christianity until the Nicene Creed, and which teaches that we should address God, in prayer, as our Father.  Christ's other teachings include the Golden Rule, to do unto others as we would have done unto us. Christ teaches his followers to spread Christianity through evangelism, not the sword.  They sometimes get that right.  Christianity adds new virtues: faith, hope, and charity, to those spoken of by the pagan philosophers.

@ 33 AD Jesus crucified and resurrected.

@ 36 AD forward: Paul's conversion and ministry.

70 AD Romans sack Jerusalem. Jewish Diaspora begins.

70 AD to 300 AD Christianity spreads throughout Roman Empire. 

1 AD to 500 AD Basic elements of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization fused together, including the three-legged stool of Judeo-Christian Biblical Religion, Greek Philosophy and democratic ideals, and Roman Law.

312 AD Constantine gives Christianity favored status in Roman Empire.

325 AD Nicene Creed.  Creedal Christianity replaces biblical/revelatory Christianity.  But on the bright side, establishes and maintains (with some unfortunate losses) the essence of the Bible, which becomes a guiding text of Western Civilization until the 1960s.

476 AD Fall of the Western Half of the Roman Empire.

610 AD forward: Establishment of Islam and Publication of the Koran.  Islamic Jihad spreads the religion of Mohammed throughout the East via the sword.  Soon the religion and its Jihadists come to a Europe struggling to move from the dark ages to the middle ages.

732 AD Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer) wins the battle of Tours against Islamic Jihadist invaders, making the continued existence of a Judeo-Christian Biblical Europe possible.

THE MIDDLE AGES: WESTERN CIVILIZATION MAINTAINS AND TRANSMITS THE IDEAL OF MAN'S PURPOSE.

1265-1274 AD Thomas Aquinas writes the Summa Theologica, incorporating Aristotelian Philosophy with Roman Catholicism.  The idea of man's and nature's telos, or designed purpose, remains central to Western thought. 

1400-1900 Western Civilization's 500 year great rise, from the Middle Ages to world supremacy: Increasingly technologically superior Europeans begin to migrate to, colonize, and settle throughout the world, spreading Western languages, religions, and philosophies with them.

1350-1400 Italian Renaissance.

1453 Fall of the Byzantine Empire (i.e., fall of the Eastern half of what was once the Roman Empire).

1492 Spain ousts the Moors.  Columbus discovers what Europeans regard as the New World.

1492 forward: European colonization of the New World.

1517 Martin Luther posts the 95 Theses. Protestant reformation begins.

1588 England defeats the Spanish Armada.  Spain in decline.  England and France in ascendance.

1750 to 1850: The Age of Enlightenment.  Scientific Method replaces religion as dominant method for understanding the world. Reason displaces revelation.

1776: America's Declaration of Independence

1789: America's Constitution and Bill of Rights.

1830: Restoration of Biblical / Revelatory Christianity.

1830: Pure and precious truths removed from the Bible are restored through the publication of the Book of Mormon.

SCIENCE TRIUMPHANT: MAN'S PURPOSE DENIED.

Late 1800s.  The relationship between science and religion, which had for thousands of years been seen as largely compatible methods for ascertaining truth, is severed, and reason begins to be spoken of as not compatible with, but instead in competition with, religion and revelation. Educated Europeans cease believing in God and cease believing in any telos.  The entire premise of Western Civilization, which has guided Western thought for 2,500 years, namely, Aristotle's telos, and revealed religion's belief in a Creator who created us for a divine purpose, which allows us to fulfill the measure (or telos) of our creation, is replaced by a worldview in which human beings have no telos, and are no more than a part of a natural order which can be entirely explained through causes and effects which are completely haphazard and natural and non-directed, and are not the result of any outside agency or design, but which have no design, purpose, or meaning. (On the bright side, the Enlightenment does eventually give us a cure for Polio, put a man on the moon, and allow us to livestream Netflix and play videogames with really cool graphics--whether these advances are worth the cost shall, however, remain highly debateable.)

1886.  Nietzsche announces that God is Dead, because educated people don't believe in him anymore, and publishes Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche's basic philosophy, which comes to be adopted by most of Western Civilization is predicted and summarized in 2 Nephi 2:13 and Alma 30:17. It is the polar opposite of anything written in Aristotle, the Hebrew Bible, Summa Theologica, or the Book of Mormon. There is no telos.  Therefore, there is no virtue.  Therefore, there is no good or evil, only power, and those who are willing to obtain it.  Nietsche predicts the coming violence which will shake Western Civilization as it moves into a new phase of history based on his philosophy, and the total eclipse of all values represented thereby. 

Late 1800s to early 1900s.  Western man, having rejected God, tries to "find something other than God which will make him happy." (C.S. Lewis.) Various alternatives are proposed, including fascism, nationalism, socialism, Marxism, Fabianism, Nazi-ism, etc.  The writings of G.K. Chesterton argue that it is the doctrines of Christianity which have allowed freedom and liberty to be enjoyed in the West, and that none of these isms will credibly replace it.  But despite being a best-selling author, his critics do better in the polls.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: SUICIDE OF THE WEST.

1914: The new isms which have replaced God begin a war, and the post-Enlightenment, non-telos believing Europeans go to the "Great War" with each other, thus beginning Western Civilization's post-Enlightenment 20th Century suicide, in a culture beyond good and evil, enjoying the total eclipse of all values.

1916: Millions of Europeans slaughter each other in the Battle of the Somme, and other WWI battlefields, using the weaponry made possible by their own advanced technologies, thus continuing Western Civilization's post-Enlightenment 20th Century suicide.

1917: Bolshevik Communism takes over Russia which eventually becomes the Soviet Union.  Purposeless man is given a new purpose in the atheist worker's utopia: to serve as a cog in the wheel of the all-powerful, all-important, totalitarian State. 

1918.  The Great War ends.  The unfair treaties imposed upon the losing nations set the stage for the rise of totalitarian dictatorships, and the beginning of:

1939-1945: WWII, which continues Western Civilization's post-Enlightenment 20th Century suicide.  The Great War is renamed "WWI".  Millions upon millions of Europeans are never born, because their potential fathers and grandfathers never returned from the battlefields of WWI and WWII to start a family.  How all these millions of never - lived lives and never-formed families would have impacted Western Civilization will never be known. 

1948: Iron curtain descends, as the Soviet Union refuses to depart from Eastern Europe after WWII, and sets up satellite communist states.  Israel established.  UN Created.  Post-WWII international monetary system established, and the other elements are put in place for:

1948 -1989 The Cold War.  The United States of America, still largely religious, and hostile to totalitarianism, and the Soviet Union, officially atheist, supposedly based on reason, and hostile to the individual rights which would stem from a telos-believing philosphy, face off indirectly across the globe.

1956-2015.  The crushing of Hungarian revolts against the Soviets signals that Eastern Europe has been abandoned to Communism.  War - weary atheist West Europeans trade in Christianity for socialism and stop having children, thus continuing Western Civilization's post-Enlightenment 20th Century suicide. They soon realize that being cradle-to-grave dependents of the State requires workers and that they don't have enough workers, since they stopped having children.  Thus they look to neighboring countries where men and women are still procreating, from which new workers can be imported, and they then begin inviting massive numbers of Muslims, who are still having children, into their countries.  The ancient Greek soldiers who fought at Salamis and Marathon roll over in their graves. Thus continues the 20th Century post-Enlightenment suicide of Western Civilization.

1960s: The stupidest implications of the non-telos world take root in the Sexual Revolution.  Between 1960 and 2010, America will see its out-of-wedlock birth rate rise from 5% to almost 50%.  Welfare spending explodes in response to (and as one of the causes of) this phenomenon.

1970 to 1979.  America's welfare rules subsidize illegitimacy.  Illegitimacy rates continue to rise.  Weird.

1973: Roe v. Wade

1980: God gives America one last chance.  Reagan elected.

1989: Reagan's policies win the Cold War, and usher in 25 years of economic prosperity.  Americans celebrate by resuming and continuing the stupidity of the 1960s.  In the coming years, without a Communist enemy to define themselves against, Americans soon begin emulating more and more of the elements of atheistic Communism in their own political beliefs and voting patterns. 

1996.  Tom Wolfe publishes his article, "Sorry but your soul just died" in which he predicts that some new Nietzsche will soon arrive to announce that agency is dead, as educated human beings no longer believe in free will.  It's a telos free world indeed.  Not only is there no Divine Agent whose will is at work in the universe, but our own individual actions are not based on any moral choices, and are instead the by-products of purely material and purely chemical reactions in our brains.  The new Calvinists have determined that all of our choices are predetermined and programmed into our brain via millions of years of evolution, and all of our choices throughout our lifetimes could be predicted beforehand if only a powerful enough machine existed to do so.  Soon, all educated people will understand that we are all just puppets who have been given the illusion of free will. Wolfe also predicts that the WWI and WWII era violence which shattered the world as it descended into an "eclipse of all values" once it stopped believing in God, is nothing like the coming eclipse of all values which will descend upon us once we stop believing in our own agency. So we have that to look forward to.  

1992-2000: News media make sure Bill Clinton gets the credit for the Reagan policies which continue to bear economic fruit throughout the 1990s, which credit Clinton uses as cover to sexually exploit women while keeping his poll numbers up.  The same feminists who regard Clarence Thomas as a sexual predator for having allegedly once used the phrase "pubic hair" in front of a woman, love Clinton despite the number of women who credibly accuse him of sexual assault and rape.  They also love his wife, who is in charge of the goon squads which silence and intimidate his victims. Go figure.  It's a telos-free world.  The only thing that matters, as Nietzsche or Korihor would say, is power.  One Time Magazine reporter, Nina Burleigh, explains that she'd be happy to give Bill Clinton oral sex just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.  This may seem an odd statement for a woman who describes herself as a feminist, and therefore allegedly pro-woman, to make.  But remember, it's a telos free world.

September 11, 2001.  World Trade Center and Pentagon attacked by Muslim terrorists.  Americans learn that history has not ended after all. Worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.  America first responds, under Bush II, by going to War in the Middle-East, to force regime change in Iraq, which was not involved in the 9-11 plot; and then, under Obama, by inviting unprecedented immigration into America from Islamic nations, while pulling the victorious troops from Iraq, which allows the rise of ISIS. 

1990 to 2016: Massive immigration from the third world allows the demographic make-up of the electorate in America to be transformed, from the type of electorate which would vote for Reagan, twice (the second time by 49 States to 1) into the type of electorate which would vote for Obama, twice.  The pitch to immigrants apparently goes something like this: "Come to America.  We are more prosperous than the country you are fleeing.  But you don't understand why, do you?  Good: Once you get here, vote for the same policies that made your home country a third-world hell-hole.  They will magically work here, even though they didn't work in your home countries."  This sales pitch apparently works, not just for immigrants, but also for America's own citizens, most of whom are too uneducated to have the slightest idea of why America works and Venezuela doesn't.  Some blame the leftist political indoctrination which increasingly takes place in public government schools for the ignorance of the American electorate.  Others blame Videogames and Netflix.

2012.  Sam Harris publishes "Free Will" fulfilling Tom Wolfe's prediction of the imminent arrival of a new Nietsche, as he announces that agency and free will are illusions.  Thus, argues Harris, violent murderers and rapists should not be held accountable for their conduct, as they had no choice but to act the way they did.  Republicans, however, who continue to believe in free will, and accountability, should be held accountable for holding such a dangerous belief.  Apparently, this lack of accountability thing can only be extended so far. This leads us to the "total eclipse of all values" which Tom Wolfe said would come next . . . . 

2013.  Schuette decision upholds the equal protection clause, and rules that, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's case law allowing affirmative action as an exception to the equal protection clause, States are not mandated to discriminate against white males.  The Obama appointed Justices, however, dissent, and, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, argue that the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution does not just occasionally allow, but in fact mandates that white males be discriminated against by State governments. And that voters are not allowed to vote down such discriminatory policies.

2015: The Obergefell Decision.  The Supreme Court puts an exclamation mark on the sexual revolution, which has done so very much good in the world, and furthers the total eclipse of all values, while officially announcing the era of the Post-Christian West, by announcing that men and women are indistinguishable and interchangeable; that the pre-political institution of marriage is a creation of the federal government; and that the authors of the 14th Amendment secretly included a provision, in invisible penumbra ink which only the very wise can see, mandating that every State in the Union recognize the union of a man and a man as a marriage.  And also that a tail is a leg and a triangle can have four sides if the Supreme Court says so.  And also that children don't fare best with both a mom and a dad and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of a hate crime.  The citizens of the nation react by enthusiastically telling each other: "The emperor is fully clothed!  No, really, he is, he is!" "You don't see his clothes?"  "You must not be as virtuous as me.  Come on now, bigot, just agree with me that the naked emperor has clothes on, and you can be virtuous too!"

2016.  The Governments of Europe allow a million Muslim refugees to enjoy residency within their borders.  Thus continues the post-Enlightenment suicide of Western Civilization in Europe.  Charles Martel and the soldiers he fought with at Tours roll over in their graves.  Some of the Muslims have a deeper sense of irony, and a longer view of history, than the European Governments have.  They resume their jihad, which was not, after all, ended by Charles the Hammer, but merely delayed and interrupted for all these inconvenient centuries.  They begin to terrorize the local populace, secure in their understanding that European societal suicide continues apace, and that the future belongs to the fertile.

2016.  Even as socialist economies the world over, from Venezuela to Greece, are collapsing, millions of American Millennials enthusiastically embrace the candidacy of an American Socialist, who runs on a platform of "What has never worked anywhere, will surely work just fine here."  Americans are not sure where blame should be placed for the utter idiocy of their Millennials.  Some blame the leftist indoctrination doled out in public schools.  Others blame Netflix and videogames. 

2016.  Americans' two major political parties nominate for the office of the Presidency the two worst and most unqualified and corrupt and narcissistic candidates in the history of the Republic. Many are baffled as to how this could have happened.  Personally, I blame cable television. And Nietzsche.   Most voters are discouraged by their choices in the general election.  But most voters ignore their candidate's serious character flaws, and vote on the basis of their ideology.  This is made easier to do by the fact that the other side's candidate is so awful.  But more importantly, there is no telos, and therefore all that matters is power.

THE FUTURE: NOW THAT THE WEST HAS COMMITTED SUICIDE, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

2024. U.S. Constitution amended by the U.S. Supreme Court to guarantee free food, free healthcare, free minimum income payable by the government for all citizens, and free education through graduate school to all Americans.

2030.  China demands that all future U.S. debts be secured, via deeds of trust against federal and state owned property, U.S. military equipment, and all U.S. and state infrastructure.  President Michelle Obama reluctantly agrees, as there is no way to keep her campaign promises of  honoring the new "constitutional" amendments, created by judicial fiat, for free stuff and a minimum income, without running up additional debt, which China will no longer grant on an unsecured basis.

2032.  Chief Justice Sotomayor announces, under the now prevailing doctrines she first described in her Schuette dissent, that the equal protection clause requires that only non-whites will be allowed to vote in State and Federal elections, until further notice.  After all, if the Constitution not only allows, but mandates, that white males not be afforded the rights secured under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, then does it not logically follow, that no Constitutional rights were intended to be given to whites, at all?

2036: Chelsea Clinton, although not herself allowed to vote, wins the nomination of her party (known as the Black Lives Matter Party) for the White House by promising to give the Southwestern United States, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, back to Mexico.  

2046: China forecloses on the $125 trillion in U.S. Debt which it holds. Allows America limited sovereignty but only over its own domestic affairs.  Takes over all military equipment, all national parks, all infrastructure, and all federal lands.

2075.  The West is dead.  Europe is 90% Muslim.  America is still allowed some degree of political sovereignty by China, which is exercised under the control of a single political party known as the "Black Lives Matter" party, which holds regular public executions of white police officers.  The history of the rise and fall and death of Western Civilization would make for a fascinating book.  But no one cares enough to write it, let alone to read it.   What's on Netflix?