Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Marxism and the One Ring of Power

J. R. R. Tolkien hated allegories, so I freely admit that what I'm about to do violates one of those sacred trusts: respecting the authorial intent. But the parallel I'm seeing here is just too good to pass up: Marxism is like the One Ring. Why do I say that? 

Well, here are the characteristics of the One Ring: very powerful, seductive, and evil. But the most interesting characteristic I'd like to point out is the reason why neither Elrond, Gandalf, nor Galadriel would take the ring: they knew that they could overthrow Sauron with his own ring, but then they would themselves become evil and tyrannical. To use rather leading language: the One Ring had the ability to replace one kind of oppression with another. 

And that's just what Marxism does. Marxism starts with the incredibly naive (i.e., flat-out wrong!) assumption that all history is based on class oppression, and then procedes blithely to replace one oppression with another. Marxism, of course, insulates itself against all truth or logic, so that the glaring inconsistencies, including the one I've just mentioned, don't bother any poor brainwashed soul inside the system. Indeed, truth, logic, and even language itself are conveniently labeled as weapons of oppression, despite being quite the opposite! Marxism has an inveterate hatred of Christianity so that Christians are 100% certain to be oppressed by Marxists. One is highly tempted to wonder at what point in that oppression (such as happened in the USSR and is happening right now in China) the Christians could claim to be in the oppressed group, but I digress.

I was wondering if we might take another page from Tolkien's book, again greatly against his wishes, and ask the question: is there a Frodo who can take this One Ring to Mount Doom? Here's a wonderfully appropriate Gandalf quote during the Council of Elrond, concerning the idea of casting the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, from The Fellowship of the Ring: 

'Despair, or folly?' said Gandalf. 'It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.'

So it is with Christianity, except that we DO know the end beyond all doubt: we look at the repulsive Marxist ideology, and reject it. Its fundamental assumptions, epistemology, all the way up to its applications are false and ugly. Just like Sauron, Marxism obsesses about power. We must be like Gandalf, here, and, if we ever do get power, we must use that power to get rid of oppressive power wherever we find it!


 
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Monday, January 11, 2021

On DuoLingo and the Usual Tired, Leftist Narrative

Don't know if you've ever used DuoLingo, but I have quite a bit, and I find it nice for learning languages. The thing is, like so many large companies lately, it's gone quite left, politically. Here's how it plays out at DuoLingo:

Certain language courses, like Latin-from-English and German-from-English (and probably quite a few more, though I have not noticed it in Hebrew-from-English) introduce obnoxious sentences like these:

Livia uxorem habet. (Livia has a wife; note that Livia is a female name.)

Julia hat eine Frau. (Julia has a wife.)

In the Latin-from-English course, this would be a comical anachronistic error if it wasn't so deadly serious. Of course, it's extremely preachy, self-important, not to mention outright sinful.

The problem is, the presence of these sentences makes DuoLingo inappropriate for children. I can grit my teeth and bear it, because I want to learn and DuoLingo is a great platform in many ways. There is NO WAY I would let my children learn a language from DuoLingo if it has sentences like that. 

So, just a heads-up: be discerning in your use of DuoLingo.


 
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Wednesday, January 06, 2021

The Beginning of the Accelerated End of the United States of America

It is Jan. 6 as I write this; yesterday, two Democrats got elected as the Senators from Georgia. Today, the Electoral College votes will be opened. It sounds like there will be objections, both from the House and the Senate, but I have little doubt that Kamala Harris [sic] will be sworn in as President (I don't consider Biden to be of much weight, nor likely to live long). That the United States of America, the land of the free, could even consider a Communist like Harris for president is astounding. It really means that the United States of America no longer exists. Welcome to the communist Union of American Socialist Republics (UASR). The door is wide open for the persecution of Christians (and people of other faiths, but primarily Christians) in the UASR on a scale not seen since... last week in China. 

But the moral and ethical decline of the United States began a very long time ago. It was Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote that America was great because America was good. Well, America isn't good any more: 
  1. Abortion was the number one killer in 2020. 
  2. Pornography is rampant, and somehow considered to be "free speech", despite its exploitation of women and children, but also of men.
  3. Sexual ethics from the Bible are largely ignored by most people. Having a child outside of wedlock is considered normal.
  4. Laziness is enshrined and even encouraged in the government welfare system, in direct opposition to what the Bible says in 2 Thess. 3:10b. 
  5. Crimes such as rioting and looting go unpunished.
So these incredibly evil "leaders" that we've "elected" are precisely what the UASR deserves. 

How did we get to such an evil pass? No doubt there are many reasons, but I would put the blame largely at the feet of the church (including myself), and I mean the true church that preaches the gospel of free salvation crafted by the only true and Triune God who has revealed himself in the 66 books of the Bible as well as in the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, in hypostatic union with a completely human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. That true church has failed to do many things:
  1. Preach the gospel. 
  2. Evangelize the lost.
  3. Help the poor and the oppressed (about to become a much larger group of people).
  4. Disciple the nations. 
But I would also put the blame somewhat on the shoulders of the Founding Fathers. Bless them, they did well, but they failed to recognize mechanisms of the power grab, such as Saul Alinsky outlines in his book Rules for Radicals, which I would put at the second-most-evil book ever written, just behind The Communist Manifesto. The Founders recognized that a disarmed people is a vulnerable people, and hence you get the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment, unfortunately, wasn't worded as strongly as it should have been, with that somewhat confusing tie to the militia. It should have been worded like this:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

But there are two other major sources of power that the Founders didn't account for fully: education and money. 

It was in the mid-1800s that the Unitarians took over Harvard from the Calvinists, the single most important event in the entire history of American education. That led to public "education", the most powerful weapon of brainwashing ever seen. Military oppression pales in comparison to it. So the Founders should have had strong language to prevent public "education" from ever arising. Governments always do things worse than private citizens (unless it's national defense, making laws, or enforcing laws, and possibly roads), so education should be privatized to be the best it can be.

Money, and I include goods and services of any kind along with that, has been shown in all ages to be a powerful corrupting force when used as a bribe. Let me be clear: the Bible establishes quite clearly the right to private property. It simply assumes that. Moreover, there is nothing inherently evil about being rich, or wealth in general. However, the Bible has a LOT to say about bribery. And what is lobbying these days, mostly, except bribery? If lobbying were simply reasoned debate back-and-forth, who could object to that? But when a lobbyist says to a senator, "Hey, I'll take your family out to Disney World.", the line has been crossed into bribery, which is utterly evil. So the Founders should have had strong language about how money, goods, and services get from public officials to private people, and vice versa. Because there is inverse bribery as well, and we've seen that on a large scale: the buying of votes. In the 2020 election there was a lot more voter fraud than that, contrary to the completely untrustworthy Far Left Formerly Mainstream Media (FLFMM). And there should be strong laws about voter fraud.

But really, if you have a generally righteous, self-governing people, with all the safeguards in place I have mentioned in order to protect the people from the encroachments of government, then public officials will have very little power, anyway. Those offices will be much less attractive to the power-hungry, and the issue of bribery will likely be a lot less.

So now what are we to do? I just read Psalm 56 this morning for devotions, and I would commend it to you. We must trust in God. God's people have been in worse situations than this, and God has never let his people down or failed on a single promise. He will not leave us or forsake us. Strengthen yourself in God, as David did when he came back to Ziklag and found all his family gone. 

Pray that you will not forsake your God when persecution comes your way, and it is coming. Remember that evil people can kill your body, but not your soul. And you will eventually get a resurrected body! 

God is greater than all your enemies; so pray for them. If they do not repent of their evil actions, they will go to a place so horrible you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy: hell itself. Communists need the gospel, the same as do we all. Love your enemies, as Jesus said. Hate the evil ideas, absolutely. Tear down every idea or argument that sets itself up against God, as Paul says in 2 Cor. But don't hate the people who hold to bad ideas, even when they persecute you, hate you, say all kinds of bad things about you, etc.



 
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