Destroyed for a Lack of Knowledge

We are living in an interesting period of time which has been unknown to the many generations which has come before. It seems like a new Dark Age is upon us where traditional Bible-based Christianity is systematically being phased out by a more progressive liberal spin, by Social Justice Crusaders trying to meld Christianity with academic racial philosophy, or by evangelical atheism. Where are the voices of Bible-believing Christians in a time like this? It seems like too many Christians are either hiding or compromising at alarming rates. On my social media feeds, I receive constant links to blog posts about how the old ways of Christianity are either too harsh or too hateful for different groups to bear. It seems the Word is not as important as the feelings of individuals.

The Liberal World Order: What is Really Causing It's Collapse

It has been some time since I have last written here at the Geek’s Guide to Christianity. Much has happened in my life, most of which has been been positive, and now I am back just in time to weigh in on the current excitement in Great Britain and Europe. Of course, I am speaking about Brexit. 

Where Have All the Good Guys Gone?

The unfortunate attacks on Charlie Hebdo have brought out quite a bit of emotions and viewpoints to the forefront of international discourse. Many media outlets have come out in support of the magazine, broadcasting its sacrilegious cover, showing solidarity against terrorism. It seems like some on the Left are finally waking up to the brutal nature of these agents of evil, but I must ask: What took them so long?!

Terrorists who have shared the killers’ ideals have been killing people as far as I can remember. In 1983, terrorists bombed a military barracks in Beirut killing 299 American and French servicemen. They didn’t wake up then. Terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 killing six people and injuring 1,042 others. Leftists refused to wake up then. The American embassy in Kenya was bombed in 1998. Fatalities totaled 213 people who paid the ultimate price and, yet, the Left did not wake up. In 2000, the USS Cole was bombed in a suicide attack killing 17 sailors; still, nothing.  September 11, 2001 woke up some for a little while; but, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq heated up, many in the Left went back to their old ways. Opinions were largely unchanged after the London bombings in 2005 and 2007 and the brutal killing of a British soldier in 2013.  

Who Really are the Intolerant Ones?

“Many times, I have found atheists to be more tolerant than Christians.” Does this sentiment sound familiar? Chances are it does due to the fact that almost every Christian has said the statement at one time or another. I know exactly why we do too. It can be said to show solidarity with the unbeliever telling them we know we have some problems in the Church, it can come after a talk about intolerance (i.e. the Westboro Baptist Church, abortion clinic bomber) where we don’t know how else to defend our viewpoint, or we may say it because we know an atheist or agnostic who doesn’t seem so bad and we don’t want to rile him or her up. No matter the reason we state that atheists are more tolerant, it can be one of the most dangerous and damaging statements we can ever make.

America the Collectivist.

I have been reading Ian Toll’s book Pacific Crucible about the war in the Pacific from 1941-1942 and I came across an interesting fact. The Allied forces did not seem to think that Japan could train excellent pilots because of the lack of individualism exhibited within Japanese culture at the time. The Allies were very wrong of course, but this question of individualism had me thinking about life today in the United States. Can we still claim individualism as a strong trait in the country today? I would answer with an astounding, “No.” You might be thinking, “Whatever could you mean? School taught me that everyone is unique and special.” Yeah, they told me that when I was in elementary school too; however, I have come to same profound conclusion stated within The Incredibles, “When everyone’s special, no one will be.” This is a very true statement and one that amply puts the argument of individualism vs. collectivism square in the minds of the young and old alike (because, let’s face it, The Incredibles was a great movie enjoyed by all ages).

Still not convinced? Let’s look at how the education system in this country has been acting as of late toward those individuals who dare think differently or question the academic status quo or consensus. The first example is of a Columbia State Community College general psychology professor who forced her students to wear “Rainbow Coalition” pins and noted that anyone who opposed homosexuality is a bigot. Another example is the secret removal of a pro-life display by the University of Alabama. Yet another instance involves the bullying of a 15 year old high school student by teachers because of his conservative beliefs. The last incident involves a North Carolina teacher who said it was against the law to criticize president Obama in answer to opposition of her comments about the president. I could on and on with story after story, but you get the point. Coupled with the report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) that the top 25 liberal arts colleges are guilty of restricting free speech, do any of these cases sound like they are meant to encourage free and individual thought? No, it sounds more like there is encouragement of support for only one world view and it definitely is not a view of freedom and liberty.

What does every one of these examples of educator intimidation have in common? The professors and teachers are all leftists. When looking up the definition for leftist on Wikipedia (I wouldn’t recommend it), I found the most ridiculous definition as one who supports social equality with the Right Wing supporting social inequality. Isn’t Wikipedia’s bias just wonderful?  Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the left wing as “the part of a political group that consists of people who support liberal or socialist ideas and policies.” Thus, a leftist is one who holds to this world view.

While the leftist might support social and economic equality, equality does not always correlate with the terms liberty or fairness. Government subsidies, themselves originated from left-leaning social programs, are even noted by Revkin (2010) in the New York Times as lacking fairness for certain energy firms while promoting others. Additionally, the Soviet Union sacrificed freedom and standard of living for its own version of “equality.” McClelland (2014) states that Communism under the Soviets failed to motivate the workers to produce enough goods to promote a high standard of living.       

It’s quite convenient that these leftist educators are in league with socialism. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, stated, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” This same sentiment is being bandied about today as the leftists indoctrinate our children into collectivist drones to serve the statist agenda. The idea is to get them young so you’ll have them for life.

According to Biddle (2012), “Collectivism is the idea that the individual’s life belongs not to him but to the group or society of which he is merely a part, that he has no rights, and that he must sacrifice his values and goals for the group’s ‘greater good’” (para. 3). This is the opposite of individualism which promotes the idea that the life of the individual person belongs to himself or herself. In an individualistic society, a person is free to choose his or her own path regardless of the state’s desires.

Why mention collectivism in a discussion about socialist education? I mention it due to the fact that collectivism is the wood that fuels the fire of the social agenda. Without all of us being on the same page, socialism would crumble without the financial support of the agreeable and eager sheep. A socialist society needs the producers to provide money for the programs that assist the “disenfranchised.” This is the reason leftists like to trivialize the right wing competition by making their views seem evil and uncaring. “The Republican health plan is for old people to die.” “The Right hates the poor. “ “Christians just want to stone gays.” You don’t want old people to die, hate the poor, or want to stone homosexuals; so, the left seems like the way to go. However, none of those arguments are based in reality are really meant to shame you into buying into their propaganda.

This absolutist avenue of creating a guilty collective consciousness has worked so well for the Left that they have been organized against us with almost one central voice. One of the greatest blessings of the Right, free thought, can also prove to be its curse if we let it. All people situated within this spectrum tend to exhibit many different opinions which can divide as much as unite. We need to unite now more than ever because as Benjamin Franklin said, “We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately." 

Biddle, C. (2012). Individualism vs. collectivism: our future, our choice. The Objective Standard, 7(1). Retrieved from http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2012-spring/individualism-collectivism.asp.

McClelland, E. (2014).  Communism saved the American worker. Salon. Retrieved from http://www.salon.com/2014/04/01/communism_saved_the_american_worker_how_soviet_competition_raised_our_living_standards/.

Revkin, A.C. (2010, August 2). All’s not fair when it comes to energy subsidies. New York Times. Retrieved from http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/alls-not-fair-when-it-comes-to-energy-subsidies/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.

 

 

        

Corporatist Agendas: The End Game of the Left.

I wouldn’t blame you if you are a little confused about the title of this article. How can corporatism ever be associated with left leaning policies? Films from Hollywood portray corporate dystopias as a product of Right Wing extremist governments punctuated with this moveon.org ad featuring Olivia Wilde blatantly associating the Republican Party with big corporate interests. Interestingly enough, Ms. Wilde is one of the faces of Revlon and Avon, both huge cosmetic companies. The media regularly pits Corporate Right Wing dystopias in movies like Aliens against the equal and fair utopias of series like Star Trek where Jean-Luc Picard says, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” 

I have been called a corporatist on many occasions for my points of view which demonstrates the accuser’s total misunderstanding of what the term corporatist actually means. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines corporatism as the act of organizing society into “corporations” who are then ruled by the state. Corporatism found its heyday in pre-war Italy underneath the despotic rule of the fascist Mussolini. It sounds like corporatism has more to do with political theory rather than big business. However, let’s address the accusation that supporting free-market policies and Right Wing politics lead to a person becoming a shill for the largest corporations.

Have you ever just sat around and thought about what policies would lead to an unhealthily powerful corporate presence? Let me give you a hint, those policies aren’t found in free market Capitalism. Take the recent fast food worker strikes occurring in 100 American cities for instance. What do you suppose the end game would be if their request for a $15.00 minimum wage is granted? The fast food companies would have to charge more for food to compensate for the higher salary; the smaller chains would have to close down due to loss of consumers from the price increases; and only the strongest and largest fast food corporations would survive. This definitely sounds like the beginning to any fictional corporate dystopias we’ve read about or seen in a movie. 

In fact, leftist policies all have a tendency to destroy smaller businesses through regulation and government handouts while propping up the big nasty corporations. To help you understand what I mean by leftist policies, I will define the term Left Wing and why it is opposed to the Right Wing. I tend to agree with Biddle (2012) in his article Political “Left” and “Right” Properly Defined that the Right and Left are opposed to each other in the amount of freedom the public is afforded by the government. The far Left wing supports totalitarianism whether the avenue is Communism, Fascism, or Socialism. The far Right is in support of personal liberty and freedom from government.  I do disagree with Biddle somewhat in that I think the farthest Right one can go is Anarchy which in its purest definition is the absence of government. This might seem controversial due to popular association of Conservatism with Fascism, but in reality there is not much of a fundamental difference in the despotic rules of Stalin, Hitler, or the Taliban. The only difference lies in motivation. Thus, the religious can be just as left wing as the atheistic if both believe in authoritarian government.  

So, using my definition of Right and Left, the leftist policies I am referring to that are destroying small business are the policies which involve strong government intervention. The sad part of all this is that many of the people who push for assistance programs have good intentions but understand little about how the market and the country work. Take farm subsidies for instance. Billions of dollars are pumped into the farming industry every year to assist farmers but the poorest farms receive very little compared to the big corporations who receive most of the funds. This has forced many small farmers out of business. These subsidies are the opposite of how the free market is supposed to work. In a free market, the consumer determines the stability of a company based on supply and demand. Simply put, the question becomes, “Is the company providing the goods that the customer wants to buy?”

The problem presented by farm subsidies sheds light on a problem exhibited by leftists. This problem involves the shaky relationship of reality with the Left. I used to say the same thing everybody seems to state about Socialism, “It looks good on paper, but it is horrible in practice.” However, in recent years, I have come to realize that Socialism does not even look good on paper. Socialism and Communism can never work because the government always needs to rely on someone else’s money to provide security for the public. This reliance will soon become the weakness of the Socialist regime as the people stop compensating for receipt of subsidy with production. We have seen this all throughout Europe with Greece being the prime example. Simply put, in a Leftist society the takers outweigh the producers. 

Unfortunately, this simple fact is the exact reason why Socialist ideology will always trump Capitalistic endeavor because humanity is inherently lazy. Socialists like to promote the idea that everyone is equal and promise that the less qualified and lazier people should get the same as those who produce and work hard for their money. Leftists live in a world far from reality where nobody is poor and everyone lives in a utopia where “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives.” This is a pipe dream. The Capitalist looks at society and sees the reality that there has always been poor and there has always been rich. In the free market, the rich get richer through increasing capital and providing for consumers while making the poor richer by providing jobs and trickling down wealth.

Laziness and Public Ignorance Would Go Hand in Hand If the Slothful Did Not Hide It

For all of us Americans it’s that time again, election season, and one can definitely deduce this fact just by listening to or watching the myriad political advertisements on the radio or television. Many questions are stirred up each and every election season. How will my choice in nominee affect the future? Can anybody fix this economy? Why is everybody so ignorant? This last question seems to confound many a pundit. Nobody seems to be able figure out the exact reason the public is so ignorant. Sure, these people blame the schools, television, video games, and whatever the fad of the day is, but none of these can attest to the sheer number of misinformed people. How can any of these aforementioned culprits really be blamed when it seems that many informed individuals come from the same backgrounds as those who are ignorant? In addition, ignorance knows no socioeconomic class or educational level. People with doctorates have the capacity to be just as ignorant as poverty stricken individuals living in the inner city. Just look at the history department of almost any state run university and you will see professors’ doors posted with peace symbols superimposed with Che “Fidel’s butcher” Guevara’s infamous mug.


If the cause of ignorance is not proportional to education or societal factors, then why are people oblivious to the world around them? I’ll admit, I had been perplexed by this very issue myself until I found the answer in one of the most unlikely of places. I was reading an article on Cracked named 5 Famous Songs Everyone Thinks Are by the Wrong Artist by Gladstone. In this article, Gladstone mentions that many people think Cat’s In the Cradle by Harry Chapin is actually performed by Cat Stevens. He posts a comment from Youtube that essentially says that it doesn’t matter who wrote the song because all that matters is the music. Gladstone, then, follows it up with this awesome rant:

Yeah, what does it matter? Music is music. Who cares? I’ll tell you who cares. People who do not suck. People who know things. People who care about knowing things. I have to believe we are not so far gone as a people that it’s become somehow uncool to care about knowing things. I always thought that was the very definition of intelligence — not actually knowing, but caring to know. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s a bad definition, but I’m pretty sure being hostile to knowledge is a perfect recipe for stupidity.

This rant got me thinking about why people just refuse to know things and learn and I found my answer: Laziness. This might seem like too simple an answer for a seemingly complex issue, but bear with me. Proverbs 15:19, “The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns: but the way of the righteous is made plain.” Whenever we see slothful in the Word, it is talking about laziness. This passage in Proverbs 15:19, brings out a great mind picture. A hedge of thrones blocks the way and makes it hard to see through to the other side. This is exactly how one who is ignorant can be seen as viewing the world, not understanding much.

While public ignorance might seem like a recent problem because everything always seems to be better in yours or my day, I believe laziness is one of the basest problems mankind has always had. Have you ever wondered, why do people have to be ruled by government? This is one of the great questions of history and the ruling class is as old as time itself it seems. Well, let’s take a look back at Proverbs in verse 19:24, “A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again.” In this passage we see that the lazy person is afraid to think and do for himself or herself.

Fear and laziness go hand in hand as we see the “slothful man hides his hand” meaning the lazy person wants no accountability. Fear of accountability has led to the less lazy among men to rule the others and people seem just fine with it.

Fear of accountability is not the only reason laziness has caused people to rule over others. The vast majority of people don’t really want to think for themselves because it requires a lot of work and thus they are perfectly happy for others to think for them. Why is television so popular? It’s popular because television feeds thoughts into human minds and, thus, no work is required to watch a favorite show. This is also the same concept of why Socialism is so attractive to a large part of the population. Why worry about the little stresses of life when the state will deal with it for you?

When realizing the role of laziness in history, it becomes clear how a country like Germany could have blindly followed Hitler or how the Soviets could follow Stalin. Hitler and Stalin did not require people to output anymore thought or work then what was basic. Not only that, but they took the resources of the least lazy people and gave it to the laziest.

First World Mentality Cannot Deal With Third World Reality

Three true realities exist in the current world we live in. The first reality is the spiritual world. This is the plane of existence where God and the devil reside constantly in spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of men and women. Christians through the gift of God in Christ in them have the ability to tap into this world. The second reality is that of the third world where brutality reigns and wars are fought daily. It is this reality in which organizations such as the CIA, MI6, and Mossad fight to ensure Western society survives day to day. This is also the reality in which our brave military men and women have descended to fight terror. The third reality is the realm of the first world where the citizens such as Americans and Western Europeans reside. This reality affords strong individualistic endeavors and an ability to fret over material matters instead of, as in the third world, actual survival. It is in this third reality that a leftist academic delusional parallel “reality” is manifested. This worldview is one in which world peace and social fairness is within reach with the only obstacle being the capitalistic free thinking ideals of nations like the United States of America and Israel.

This naïve worldview has been perpetuated in the public consciousness for quite some time now. I remember when I was a child thinking about a world in peace as my teachers showed us pictures of children in all colors of the rainbow holding hands around the earth. This was inspiring to say the least, but something happened. I grew up and realized the earth is a very brutal place run by the adversary. Most people come to this conclusion, but there are some people, mainly in academia, which just can’t let go of the notion of world peace. However innocent the cause may seem, this world view is extremely dangerous with the issue more pressing than usual as the executive branch of the US government holds to it.

It is no secret that a number of leftist groups were in Egypt in the years leading up to the Egyptian revolution. Why were they in Egypt? You might ask. Well, remember these naive leftists believe the capitalistic United States, who fought fascism in the 40s and competed in a Cold War with Communist murderous dictators, and its closest ally, Israel, are the evil of the world. Working with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow Egyptian tyranny and other Muslim military dictators is just a means to an end. Unlike the Communists who stirred up African anti-Colonial sentiments in 1960s and 1970s, these groups such as Code Pink are primarily made up of Americans and live in the first world reality. These people have no idea of the brutality of third world life found in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.

Truth be told, these ignorant Americans opened up a can of worms which they are wholly unprepared to handle. This fact came to a boiling point on September 11, 2012 as we saw the Obama Administration scrambling to deal with 4 dead Americans in the streets of Benghazi, Libya and the storming of a number of consulates all over the Muslim world. It is sad because I am convinced the officials at the top thought apologizing and negotiating would win the Muslim world over. The current administration is probably shocked something like this would even happen because they can’t shake their first world mentality. The academics running the country believe everybody thinks the way Americans do. Well, welcome to reality (pun intended).

It is agonizingly weak to hear our Secretary of State try to stick up for the Libyan murderers who gave the American Ambassador over to the mobs. Her speech sounds extremely stupid congratulating those same Libyan officials for trying to carry the Ambassador to the hospital while the picture shows them dragging him dead on their shoulders. Ignorance is spewing from the statement by the US embassy in Cairo condemning those who would hurt Muslim feelings while the Egyptian mob raises an Al Qaeda sanctioned flag over the premises. I don’t know where this will all eventually lead, only God knows; however, negotiating and apologizing with people who know only brutality is not the way things should be done.