iPandora

My Path, My Fear

matthew — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:30:25 +0000

One of my greatest fears is leadership.

I’ve felt the call to lead in various roles many times in my short life, but I tend to shrink from that responsibility.

My fear is of my struggles. I fear that the things I struggle with in my life combined with a position of leadership will bring God shame or damage His name.

So here again I stand at a cross-roads. I am being encouraged to take a position I’ve seen proven over and again is something God has brought me to. But once again I fear.

What did he say?

ShatteredChina — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:05:42 +0000

So,I assume the majority of the readers of this blogs are already familiar with the media’s misrepresentation of the truth about the candidates. However, just in case you need more evidence, here is a stunning survey that tells what really happened this election. This video tells some more.

And a quick quote to wet your interest . . .

“After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace,” said Ziegler.

Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned.

83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry.

Obama Fanatics Can’t Cope With Victory :)

matthew — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:40:04 +0000

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

FYI: IMHO Palin No Dummy

matthew — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:41:10 +0000

The demonization of Sarah Palin post-election loss is spurred by two things:

People who have believed the media mischaracterizations and lies regarding her. How many have read the uncut transcripts of her interviews and seen how much they differ from the aired versions? If I were a judge I’d consider that serious grounds for libel, slander, and defamation.
People who think that muderate political vision (intentional, anyone remember BC comics that far back?) combined with a weak message and campaign are not to blame for failure in the face of such an alternative as we had this election.

Just sayin’.

I don’t know the future, but from where I stand I’ll be very ready to welcome Sarah back in 4 years. Lets start the Jindal/Palin train right here.

Inclusion Not Dillution Or Surrender

matthew — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:00:56 +0000

Michael Medved opened my eyes.

On his radio show he was trying to explain on “Disagreement Day” to disheartened conservatives that trying to “purify” the Republican is not the correct course of action. The root of his argument:

You win by making your group bigger, not smaller.

First: you should not win by selling out. A win bought at so dear a price may not be worthwhile.

Second: you should not compromise your deepest principles either.

But, in my stands and beliefs there is a hierarchy: Abortion is one of my strongest concerns, to not value life is to not value life, there is no grey area. The issue of homosexual privilege is strong, though not as strong as abortion. Abortion is more external and more obviously a violation of laws and human rights and can be dealt with more legislatively than homosexual privilege.

The economy is a matter of principle: free market economics benefit the most people in a way most conducive to supporting Free Will as divised by God. But we can witness to people regardless of thier economic station and a faulty economy is less of a harm to people’s souls than abortion or homosexuality.

By balancing the hierarchy of beliefs and convictions and principles I can find ways to include people who I may have less in common with in reaching my goals.

I have no qualms working with members of the Mormon church to work for significant reinforcement of traditional marriage and the preventing of special privilege for homosexuals beyond the privilege accorded to heterosexuals, despite my serious disagreements with their beliefs.

I have no qualms working with Catholics to further the protection of the innocent unborn despite my belief that most Catholics are decieved and not Christians.

I have no problem working with athiests in pursuit of a libertarian economic policy despite serious disagreements on probably every other issue due to our differences in root beliefs.

The point is: Being wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove, I will work with any I can to achieve the ends which follow my convictions. I will be accepting and friendly to all as people so that none will have reason to say that I’m not for them as they could be for me.

With the devious I will be devious, with the narrow I will be narrow. The goal being that by any and all means, except those which violate my conscience and God’s law, we can advance the cause of physical and economic freedom here on earth for as many as possible, and hope and eternal freedom in the life hereafter for as many as will believe.

Refining this ideal is the fact that people follow a leader with a vision. It does not have to be a clearly defined vision so much as a stirring vision (or at least one spoken of stirringly, see Barack Obama). Reagan was the “Great Communicator” and people followed his visions. Barack Obama has a way with words, a visible empathy that stirs people to want to believe what he says.

Individually, we need to be ready and willing and able to act in concert with all kinds of people, making the “big tent” an actual Big Tent. Seek common ground more than ideological purity within the bounds of our own individual abilities to accept differences. Instead of finding people most like us, find people most able to bring most of us along with them in a path headed towards truth.

As a group we need to find those people who have strong and principled stands we can agree with mostly who are also strong communicators and vibrant individuals. Vision and passion have few foes who can stand against them working together.

That is my plan for real change.

Why I’m An Independent

JPennStar — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:02:56 +0000

I will grant - to the point - I voted for McCain/ Palin, but honestly what choices did I have this election as a conservative? Truly I was rooting for Palin who is a real conservative; in contrast to McCain who has a moderate/ Rhino history - working with Kennedy doesn’t get him marks in my book. But the socialist Obasmic Democratic “elect” is out of the question. I’ll grant it is great to have an African American as our President; but that is as far as I will go. Now the Republican party is cannibalizing itself.

If you were listening to Rush Limbaugh today you’d heard how the Republican party threw Palin under the bus - for why they lost the election by a landslide. Of course it had nothing(!) to do with McCain’s lack of allegiance to the conservative movement, nor his inability to tag Obama as a CLEAR socialist (merely hinting via Joe the Plumber), and him not having a clear distinction from Bush. “My fellow Americans,” and “My friends” will only give you so much encouragement in this economy. If you ask me McCain should have followed after Palin - she should’ve been the lead of the ticket. Granted even then she would’ve not won because the Bush party set the Republican party up for failure, but she would’ve done better than 155 electoral votes - last I remember. Point being the Republican party is tossing this beautiful woman under the bus. This is why I’m an Independent and have little hope in BOTH parties which are, for a lack of better words, screwing us.

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, it is worse than I thought. It is worse than I thought inside the Republican Party. What the Republican Party, led by disgruntled and failed McCain staffers are trying to do to Sarah Palin, is unconscionable and is unacceptable.

Rush LINK

If you ask me the Republican party is treating her like a cheap date - humped and dumped!

Read the rest of the story and ask yourself if you want to reform the party, which has become more and more like the Democratic party, or be more like another party - a separatist. Michael Savage has been saying this for the longest time - both sides are against the American values - and FINALLY maybe you’ll see this truth; while both Rush and Hannity have been carrying the Republican water bucket and drinking the red cool-aid. I’m not insulting Rush or Hannity (I listen to them regularly) but we - the next generation of voters - need to consider our future. Changes are needed, NEEDED!

So I’m an independent. Once you come to this realization, in honor of American history (ie Pilgrims and Puritans), we may then be able to talk about what to do.

My Response: Steven Curtiss Chapman “God Is God”

matthew — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:03:56 +0000

StoryOfStuff - Part 7

matthew — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:39:39 +0000

Continued from part 6

Salvation: God set up a system of free will. It is not the nicer, or cleaner, or prettier system. But it is the best system. In the short run (life here on earth) there is much pain and suffering, but in the long term those who find the truth and are set free through their acceptance of it experience the personal peace and freedom which the rest of the world will never understand.

Also, looking at America. God does not necessarily reserve His blessing for those who follow exactly in His way, and we often cannot see why it is God bestows blessing upon one and appears to withhold it from another. America, for whatever reason, is blessed far beyond any other nation right now. We have an incredible level of personal wealth spread throughout a percentage of the population unprecedented in the history of civilization. This has many benefits, dangers, and opportunities.

The benefits are obvious: a level of development and technological advancement with only a few equals, a level of stability and available leisure unmatched through history by a greater amount of the populace, and many other. The dangers are real: an apathy for anything worthwhile. The opportunities are endless: the ability to send money and resources to corners of the Globe with such volume that entire nations make base their economies on our own, sending us goods to get our money.

The Christian in this economy has many responsibilities. The foremost is to not allow themselves to be controlled by anything except Christ. The next is to provide for his own as God has given him. The next, but not less important, is to use what he has been given to meet the needs of those around.

This is done with wisdom and grace. Even Paul used strong language when advising the churches that they should not give money to just anyone who asks. He said that it is wrong to give money to someone who is able to work and does not. He said that hunger will teach that person the necessity of work. It is better to allow the person to starve now and learn, than to feed him and harm him by that food.

Further, in the StoryofStuff, it become obvious that the narrator believes the entity primarily responsible for her desired salvation is the government. Our Constitution prohibits the government from taking that sort of responsibility from private industries, a policy Barack Obama knows about and wishes to change. The very idea of government being capable of successfully supporting the social needs of a dependent population is a historical, philosophical, and theoretical demonstrably false idea.

Think Communism/socialism/Marxism. Think the philosophers of the French Revolution and Enlightenment. Think of who is best able to decide how to use their own money? You or the government.

And even if you think the government is better suited to that task than yourself: who then will God hold responsible for the use of the resources He has gifted to us? The Government? I think not.

God will judge governments in His own way, and He will judge me by how I made use of the resources available to me. If I abdicate my responsibility by passing my buck to the government willingly, allowing them to decide how to spend my dollar wastefully, I am held responsible by God for that abdication.

No, I stand with the resources God has given me, knowing the myriad problems plaguing the world, and using my resources to accomplish the most good according to the conscience God has given me. I can and will do no less.

StoryOfStuff - Part 6

matthew — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:39:26 +0000

Continued from part 5

10 Little and Big Things You Can Do:

1: Hypocrisy: Publicly-”Green” people tend to fly more, take more expensive and expansive vacations and use loop-hole systems such as Carbon Offsets to make the claim they are caring about the environment (ie: Al Gore).
Demonizing Corporations: Requires corporations.Solar panels require extremely high amounts of wealth and take extreme amounts of time to recoup the dollar and energy costs.

2: Average people are better at this, the cost of items drives conservation. Growing up we always used paper garbage bags for our trash bags in the kitchen. I upgrade computers for several years, replacing internal parts piecemeal as my needs change.

Potential Hypocrisy: “Visibly engage in re-use”: It’s what we do when people aren’t watching that shows who we are. We should simply engage in re-use, not visibly or invisibly, but as part of who we are.

3: Good, but know where the rational, reasonable, and practical parts are, and avoid the conspiracies, fallacies, and manipulations which use the Green movement to further enrich callous liars such as Al Gore.

4: Al Gore, wrong poster boy. John Doe, right poster boy. Climate change, arguable issue, plenty of science on either side. Cyclical, “hockey stick” graph magnifies an infinitesimal temperature change, ignore the fact that the pollution spike follows after the temperature spike. Sun spot cycles are more closely correlated in a casual relationship.

5: Good, but Chemical and Toxic do not necessarily equal. Is not government’s responsibility. Internet and modern communcation allows ’small’ people to have large voices and affect real and substantive pressure for change on private industry.

EU example: “Tin slivers” are dangerous, lead better, more reliable, safer for the reliability it has. Forces private industry to make inferior products.

6: Agree. This is the Church.

7: Public transportation does not ease congestion, is prone to government-induced cronyism and corruption in the lucrative contracts. Dirty, inefficient, cannot profit. Is not federal government’s responsibility. Privatize public transportation. Airlines and bus lines and Ocean lines are profitable and successful. Why not trains? Government run failures.

Master-planned communities tend to be less diverse economically and inhibit the upward- and cross-mobilism that is encouraged by an open and spread community system. Is government going to require people live within 5 miles of their job? Who can do this? Do you want to be forced to live next door to the supermarketor the office building? This inhibits personal freedom and the meeting of needs by artificially conforming all members of a community to lead similar lives in a pre-defined economony. This is a tried and proven recipe for economic stagnation, poverty, and dissatisfaction (ie: communism/socialism). Causes harm.

8: Hypocrisy: CFLs (”energy efficient light bulbs”) contain mercury, which is released when they are disposed of or broken. Talking about toxins: Mercury is known bad. Also, some people are more sensitive to the 60-Hz “flicker” of fluorescent bulbs, causing headaches and other physical problems. It’s a good idea at its root, but more wealth allows for more development which allows for better solutions. CFLs are not the solution to the lighting problem. Corporations need the freedom to innovate further to address the needs which we present to them through the force of the market.

Answer is to innovate and develop and start own corporation which will produce the solution.

9: Recycled bottles take more energy to make than “original” bottle of similar dimension. Needs innovation and development to make effective. Only because we have corporations allowing people to make money and get rich can we afford to support economically wasteful systems which are cleaner and more “Green”.

10: Good… but. Wal-mart. Average family in Wal-mart neighborhood has $2000 extra at the end of the year because of the price deflation a Wal-mart forces on the area. Thats $2000 they can spend on glasses for their kids, medicine, etc, without going to the government. Wal-mart hires people not as ‘acceptable’ at other places: mentally handicapped, older, etc. Without Wal-mart keeping their costs down they would be forced only to hire healthy, good-looking people like everybody else. What is better: An Old person with self-respect due to a productive job who has to pay for their own health insurance or an old person decrepit and decaying in the lounger at the nursing home paid for at exculpatory rates by money taken from you and me by government-run bloated social welfare programs which I can no longer use to give to my Church so they can’t keep up the outreach to the nursing home or to pay for medicine for my children?

Yes, there is a problem and the root of the solution is not all that complex.

Continue reading in part 7

StoryOfStuff - Part 5

matthew — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:38:43 +0000

Continued from part 4

CONSUMPTION: “Golden arrow” “heart of the system, the engine that drives it.
“Protecting this arrow (of consumption) has become the top priority for (government and corporations).”
After 9/11 President Bush told US to shop. - The economy had been hurt. It was not the only thing he said. Bush said many things during that time, among them he dealt with the serious blow to our economy. He was standing well in his position with the bully-pulpit to minimize the effect the attacks had on us. The goal of the terrorists was to cripple our nation in as many ways possible, including economically. To address this specific threat Bush did make statements encouraging us to not sit tight and hunker down. If the economy took a hard hit from people acting in fear, people would have lost their jobs, lost money, experienced much more damage than we actually did. This was not a cold-calculated attempt to shore up his ‘buddies’ in business, this was Bush’s way to keep Americans acting from a position of strength.
Percentage of resources still in use 6 months after purchase: 1% -
99% trashed within 6 months - How much of this is packaging? Terrible packaging, wasteful. Can the government do better? They can’t design a simple tax system. What do you think their packaging would look like? Once again, the private citizen using the resources available to them can change this. In the news just today Amazon.com reports they are redesigning packaging and encouraging other companies to do the same to minimize waste and improve the user experience with packaging in response to one person’s ‘encouragement’. It’s not that this isn’t a problem, it’s just the implied solution is far from the best.
“It didn’t just happen. It was designed.”
“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.” Victor Lebow, 1955 - This is idolatry to a Christian who participates to the extent people such as Lebow desire or prescribe. That is undeniable. But it is wisdom to participate to the extent God allows us, for in our participation we expand the gifts God has given us (Parable of the Talents), benefit others through the melding and expansion of each others resources, and enable ourselves to support ministries which further His work on this earth.
Purpose of the economy is to create more consumer goods - NOT: Health care, Education, Safe transportation, Sustainability, Justice. Governments have a God-given responsibility to apply Justice. We ourselves, as individuals and together as an independent society have the opportunity to meet all the other needs through the strength of the economy. If there was not this vehicle for spurring innovation and creating wealth, how would any development and growth occur in any of these other categories?
Planned obsolescense: “Planned for the dump” OK for smaller things, packaging. Now bigger stuff too. - Solution? Research and buy more reliable stuff. I purchase a quintessential toss-away technology item, a portable CD player, 10 years ago. I paid $150, which is significantly more than people pay on average for such devices. However, mine is still running. My cost is therefore only $10 per year. A good price. And no extra junk for those 10 years from disposing of cheaper products. It’s not like I’ve not abused the device, it’s followed me to work and school in my pockets, walking, on the bus, bicycling, etc… It’s just better. Armed with the extensive knowledge we have today, we are more able than ever to verify products reliability. All this ability is because of the capitalist system which encourages innovation.
Percieved obsolescence: “Convinces us to throw away stuff that is still perfectly useful”
Not keeping up with the times.
“It’s to keep us buying new shoes” - We are allowing ourselves to be controlled and defined by media. There is nothing which says we must act a certain way as defined by the media, there is just our decision to allow such things control in our lives. If we allow ourselves to be controlled, we are not victims, we are weak but nevertheless guilty independent moral agents.

National happiness peaked in 1950s (post war). Why? - Because we were all working, on a post-war high. Industry was thriving. Poor people 20 years previously were now part of the exploding middle class. More people were going to school and getting college degrees than ever before. All because of the incredible wealth ingenuity and innovation supported by a free-market, capitalist system which had just vanquished a strong enemy in the form of Fascist Nazi Germany.

DISPOSAL: Trash - 4.5 pounds each day per person

Dumped in landfill or burned and dumped - Burning trash was the main power generation method in Woodland, CA. It may not be cleanest, but it does use the the output in a creative and productive manner.

Climate change: incineration, super toxins, Dioxin. - Climate change does not enjoy the scientific consensus many would like it to. After the UN report on climate change came out, several scientists sued to have their names removed from its list of endorsers, claiming they’d been misled in the content of the report. The climate change models popularized by Al Gore are suspect at the very best, with causation and correlation confused and data manipulated in ways that ought not be in serious scientific pursuits. Further, the aims and goals of many of those claiming catastrophic global warming are more damaging to society than they are helping to global climate change.

Recycling helps - Recycling is not energy effective. It takes more energy to recycle paper and plastic than it does to make more and new. Not that recycling is bad, it just takes a wealthy society to support an effective recycling system.

Core of the problems? - The solutions proposed in so many of these arguments engaged the government in taking over huge sections of private industry in an attempt to make it all work in some happy circle. Individuals building corporations to provide creative and effective solutions or convincing other corporations to clean up their acts is more effective and do not have the same crippling effect on the economy and devastation on people’s lives as the government intrusion.

Labor rights, blocking landfills and incinerators, taking back government (of the people by the people). - How do labor rights get in here? This is not a list of solutions, it’s a laundry list of the speaker’s favorite pet socio-political projects. Taking back government is an excellent course of action, one I can definitely sign on to. But I think her ideas and my ideas of what that government ought to do are very different and mutually irreconcilable. Instead, make government small and increase the ability of people to convince corporations to act responsibly. At the same time remove the protections from people who do try to convince those corporations so that frivilous suits over pointless and wasteful stupidities will be deterred from their damaging and greedy quests.

“Chuck the throw-away mindset” - Excellent idea. All for this one.
“Local living economies” - Read: “Master-planned communities” Who plans those communities? Allowing communities to grow naturally is better. Zoning laws needlessly restrict the growth of communities along the predetermined lines preferred by city planners.

People created problem, people have to create solution. - But can we? All these problems are symptoms of a single, much larger problem: human sin. And we are unable to resolve it. We do what we can as part of our changed and redeemed natures as Christians to fix problems as we can with the first goal of bringing others in from the dark of sin and into the light of Christ.

Continue reading in part 6

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