Grow Up Before Supporting Sanders

I'm addressing this one to Sanders supporters, and I'm about to make a lot of you very angry with me.

You like to tell me that Sanders isn't in favor of "socialism", he's just a "social Democrat", which is completely different. You point to a bunch of European countries (which are currently moving away from socialism - oh, sorry, 'social democracy' - because it doesn't work), and tell me how much better life is in those places. The tip of the top always seems to be the same claim... "They're happier in these countries." The people are more content. You seem to believe that the reason that these people are more content is because they are getting exactly what you expect Sanders to provide to you: Government-streamlined resources, quick, easy, and 'free', with a stream of gold emanating from the rich and being distributed 'fairly' to you. (But remember, that isn't socialism! It's Social Democracy!)

You are young. I am not just trying to insult you by saying that. Statistics show a lot of younger people in favor of Sanders. You haven't learned history and culture in the way the older folk did. You haven't had much chance to get out and about in it for yourself. When you look at Europe, you don't understand what it is, what its people are, what its people have been for thousands of years before the word "Social Democrat" existed. You've been doubly encouraged, in the school system, to not learn about the European-descent men who created this country. How could you possibly know what Europe is like, what Europeans are, and what makes them content?

I'll give you a hint. It isn't Sanders' stance on the issues.

Europeans are slow. This isn't an insult either. They are slow, calm, and patient. They plod through each day. They don't mind that it takes a while to travel somewhere. They don't mind that the lines are long. They will stop and 'shoot the breeze' while you're waiting behind them in line, freaking out over your own tight schedule. This may be slightly less true in some cities, in some countries, but it is markedly true in the rural areas. An old European farmer won't mind that it takes him four hours to plow his field the old way. He doesn't see much reason to buy the newfangled equipment, because the old one works fine for him.

Europeans do for themselves. They will bicycle distances that you find obscenely long, in a daily commute. Increasingly, as hospitals have longer wait times and less equipment, Europeans will take care of the 'smaller' things themselves. An American will head to the emergency room with a cut that needs stitches; the European will get a friend or family member to stitch it up themselves. Here's the kicker, the part that you guys do not and possibly cannot understand: They are content to do so. They don't expect much from others. They don't expect much from their government. They don't expect much from life. And yet they carve out little lives for themselves and they are content.

Their housing units are much smaller. Their conveniences are fewer. Their possessions are less. And yet they are content.

This is why these countries are full of happier people than in the U.S. It isn't because of 'Social Democracy' or 'Democratic Socialism' or whatever you hope to call it. It's in spite of the government, in spite of the policies that leave them with less and take them much longer to get what little they can receive. Their inner contentedness helps them weather the delays, the bureaucracy, the stupid crazy hoops they have to jump through for everything. They are willing to lose an entire day to one single government program, to business that we expect to be able to complete in less than an hour.

Now I'm not insulting Europeans, and I'm not praising them either. We are young, quick, impatient, and creative. This is a good thing! This is the reason why so many improvements, so many inventions come out of this country. We see the farmer plowing for four hours and say, "If you did this, you could have it done in two." We demand instant food, instant medical care, instant government response, instant withdrawals, instant gratification... we don't want to wait. This is true of Americans in general, but it is even more true of the demographic that tends to make up Sanders supporters.

You aren't interested in giving up your car when you live eight miles away from your workplace and ten miles from the grocery store. You want a 2,500sqft house for your family. You want a four-year education for your kids. You want free healthcare. Did you know that your contented European counterpart has a bicycle, a 1200sqft domicile (probably an apartment or what we would call a 'condo', but with smaller yards and no amenities), and even the poorest among them have to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket before they can access healthcare through the system? You want your son to get a bachelor's in English Literature. If he's in Holland, however, and he doesn't score highly enough in his 10th grade (by U.S. standards) exams, the government will not give him more than a two-year (highschool diploma) or possibly four-year (associate's degree) education.

Oh yeah, and your counterpart has no bathtub, and his kitchen looks like it hasn't been renovated since the 1970's.

Would you be content with that?

Alright, so maybe you've read all of this and say, "I still am a Sanders supporter! I still think that I can be content with all of this!" Alright, then, prove it. I'm being honest here. No matter who gets into office, this will benefit you. Take command of your own healthcare. Do not expect anybody else to do it for you. Forget the gym membership. You can't afford it. Bicycle to work. Eat foods that are not pre-prepared. Learn how to cook rice, lentils, beans, 'boiled dinner', and other such meals. Take an apple as a snack instead of a candy bar. Slow down. Take tea every afternoon. Formal tea, or, at least, as formal as you can bear it. You cannot be looking at any of your electronic devices while you're doing it. Be content with 10-year-old televisions. When you buy online, never, ever pay more for second-day or same-day shipping.

Downsize your life. Downsize your expectations. Take longer. Care less. Don't think you'll be the one who gets famous, the one who gets rich, the one who even gets what he wishes out of life.

Learn to be content without government aid.

Then you'll be ready to live happy under a Social Democrat.

Of course, even then, you'll be happier to live under a conservative government; you won't get less, but you'll pay less for it.

But that's up to you.

Corporatism, Communism, and Christianity

I have to say it - we're in a bad place right now, as a country.

With a stagnant economy and hurting families on every side, the Democrats are heading towards nominating a socialist/fascist for the Presidency, and the Republicans have nominated a corporatist. With the Libertarians nominating a classless fellow, basically a liberal who wants to legalize pot, we haven't got a conservative running in the race.

So I think it's time to take a look and ask ourselves how this race and its result might impact those of us who are Christians.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that socialists are unhappy with Christianity. A socialist, at his or her root, believes that we can replace God with Government and do a much better job of taking care of everybody 'equally well'. Of course, we all know that it will fail, and we know why. A socialist government can't do God's job because they lack intricate knowledge of each and every person and the ability to tailor each person's life experience to his or her personality, ability, and greater benefit. A socialist government can't do God's job because they are as sin-stained as the rest of us... they have a sin-flawed notion of what is good, what is healthy, what is pure, and what is beneficial for us. Of course, in every socialist country, the government has been openly hostile towards Christians. This is true even in the "softer" countries dealing in "democratic socialism", in which Christians may be permitted to live in peace as long as they don't make any sort of decisions outside of their own homes regarding their faith when such a decision would conflict with the Absolute Power of the government. To a socialist, God is a competitor, and one that must be squashed (or, at least, the attempt made) by any means necessary.

In the history of corporatism, however, Christianity is tortured into a different role. Historically speaking, the greatest Christian-committed atrocities have occurred when a corporatist government cherry-picks and uses Christian principles in order to serve the government first, rather than the corporation. While the socialist tries to kill God, the corporatist merely tries to enslave Him and make Him do the government's bidding. The socialist insists that Christians abandon their religion, while the corporatist goes back to the age-old tribal method of trying to convince us that he bears the will of the gods (or, in this case, God) and we must obey him as we obey our Lord. The corporatist will pretend to be doing the will of God, usually by cherry-picking the parts of God's laws that he thinks will give him greater control over the people, and forcing them upon everybody by law.

Which is a greater threat to us? Robber barons are generally safer than moral busybodies, as C.S. Lewis pointed out in one of his most famous quotes. A robber baron (the corporatist) merely wants your wealth, while the moral busybody (the socialist) wants your heart, mind, and soul. We would think that it is better for us, certainly safer for us, to have someone who might use the government to persecute our enemies rather than a government keen on persecuting us. And yet... one of the strongest complaints that atheists have against us is derived from every instance in which a government tried to use the surface appearance of Christianity in order to implement its own goals, especially goals which are actually counter to the actual teachings of Christ. Caught in the quandary of socialism vs. corporatism, I have to ask... is it actually better for us to face open persecution, under which Christians have often been purified and Christianity has spread strongly (nothing exposes fakery and uncovers reality like difficulty), than a twisted form of 'Christianity', which might lead millions of people to Hell even as they are sure that they are headed for eternal paradise?

I do not have a good answer to this question at this time.

The real civil war in America

Democrats like to taunt Republicans by claiming that there are all these "racist old white men" in the party. Their claim is based in part in truth, in that there was an influx of old Southerners back in the 1960's who fled the Democrat Party over the civil rights movement. However, this is only the very surface of the story, and held at an angle that gives people a very misleading impression of what actually happened.

This is what actually happened.

McCarthy, previously vilified by history as having started the "Red Scare" and "being wrong", is increasingly being justified in retrospect. Though many of the people he targeted in his investigations were not specifically planning open treason against the government, they were card-carrying Communists who were bent on a much longer game plan. Communism did spread from its birthplace into America and lay dormant through the World Wars. In the 1960's, it finally did make itself visible.

History books talk about the "Civil Rights Era" and the "Civil Rights Laws". There were actually two Civil Rights Eras, each pushed by radically different people, for radically different purposes, with radically different results.

The first was the work of the Republicans. Old South Democrat racists, seeing their power slipping further and further as businesses saw no reason to refuse blacks (their money was as green as everyone else's, after all) and blacks themselves were rising quickly through the economic ranks, set out to make state laws prohibiting the free market from treating people of all races equally. This, like the American Civil War itself, was a desperate holding action against the natural, corrective power of our country the way it was created by our Founders. Blacks were on their way up. Within another generation, they would be indistinguishable from the rest of the country, from the Germans and Irish and all those other cultures which had started out on the bottom of the heap. The Republicans in the Federal Government correctly sought to strike down the artificial barriers being placed against blacks by the state governments.

The second was the work of the newly-infiltrated Democrat Party, and it was not actually about race at all. Like Modern Feminism, which came out of the same era and the same birthplace as Socialism (which is meant to be the transitional stage to Communism), this new Democrat Party was merely seizing upon the grievances of a minority in hopes of imposing government control on the majority. Their goal was not to remove artificial barriers that were oppressing a people, but to change the function of the government from one that keeps the playing field level to one that rewards 'winners' and 'losers' according to government policy. (If you want to know who sets the policy and how, I strongly recommend the entire Francis Schaeffer "How Should We Then Live?" series, made up of ten half-hour episodes.)

They sought, not to remove government barriers to one race, but to impose government barriers upon another race. The Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action (once more correctly called Reverse Discrimination) came from two different sources; from two different sides of this new civil war.

What is this new civil war about? It isn't about gay wedding cakes and transgender bathrooms. It isn't about birth control and 'Equal Pay'. It's about what President Obama so neatly explained as "negative rights" versus "positive rights". Is it more important that the government be allowed to pick winners and losers according to government judgment? Or is it more important that the government be restrained by the people? Some mistakenly believe (I have addressed this before and may do so again) that the fight is Corporatism vs. Fascism. It doesn't have to be. A government focused on "negative rights" does not have the power to support either path. As I've said before:

Capitalism - the system in which the government is empowered to prevent companies from using lawlessness to stifle competition, and the government is constitutionally fettered to prevent companies from using laws to stifle competition.

The Republican Civil Rights provided a shining example of "negative rights": the government shall not be permitted to force one race below another. The Democrat Civil Rights provided a shining example of "positive rights": the government shall have the power to elevate one race above the other.

What prompted all of this? The North Carolina Bathroom Bill, actually. Talk about going far afield, right? The Charlotte ordinance that the bill is meant to strike down is an artificial barrier set up by the government in order to have the government choose 'winners' and 'losers'. It embodies the "positive rights" that Obama loves: the government has the right to tell you what it can/must do for/to you. What it states, in short, is that no private business or organization has the right to bar anybody of either gender from a gender-separated space. In short, by the law, a battered woman's shelter must permit a man to enter the ladies' shower room, sit down, and watch them shower naked, if that's what he wants to do. He cannot be told to leave just because he is fully and unapologetically male.

The much-derided "bathroom bill", on the other hand, embodies "negative rights". It says that the government does not have the right to force a private business to let somebody into a gender-separated changing/showering/bathroom/etc. space, unless said person can show, if challenged, documentation that he or she is of the declared gender. (Your gender is on your driver's license and your birth certificate, and post-op transgender/transsexual people can have it officially changed.) Now this is not a requirement upon the business; nobody has to ask, nobody has to check, and nobody has to try to bar anybody from entering a bathroom. The choice is theirs. If they choose to tell a given person, "You look like a man, so you can't go in there," the person who is challenged can display that document and must be permitted to enter.

Under the "bathroom bill", the battered woman's shelter can bar anyone with  functional male genitalia from entering the shower. However, the Walmart can set up a DADT policy in which people who are obviously transgender and "passing" are allowed in, and any liberal fruitcake hippie shop can choose to let men and women freely intermix in one big, 'happy' locker room. And people can choose to frequent the places of which they approve and avoid the places which make them uncomfortable.

Along with the freedom to choose comes the ability to react quickly and fluidly to unexpected situations. The most religiously gender-separated facility can choose to let a desperate pregnant woman into the men's room, or to let an elderly man assisting his disabled wife into the ladies' room. When the government makes the decision, however, the leering middle-aged man cannot be removed even if a sexual abuse survivor needs to use the facility... because such reasonable decisions made by private people in the course of day-to-day business are now against the law.

The real two sides of this civil war are no longer to be found between the Democrats and the Republicans, because there are people who are only Republican because they disagree with the decisions coming from up high, not with the notion of centralized power. If the Democrats decided to set government policy throwing homosexuals in jail for engaging privately in government-forbidden sex acts, or to mandate that all public meetings must start with a prayer led by a confirmed member of their favorite Christian sub-denomination, there are "Republicans" who would quite happily jump ship again. The real civil war is between them and those who say, simply, "The government cannot have this power," and hold to it even when people are not forbidden from doing things that they personally find abhorrent.

Lateral movement is not progress

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. At some point in any abortion debate, someone is on the "pro-choice" side is going to retort with the question of how many babies the people on the pro-life side have adopted. Whether they realize it or not, this is their premise: "You are not allowed to desire that a person does not murder another person unless you are willing to take on full, cradle-to-grave responsibility for the would-be murderer's potential victim."

That's the surface premise, anyways. The deeper premise is even more ostentatious and cruel than they realize, because they lack the full picture.

Once upon a time, an unwed pregnancy resulted in either a shotgun wedding or a woman struggling to raise her bastard child alone. The lucky single mother raised hers among her own extended family. Famous men could usually get away with fathering children they had no intention of supporting; in other cases, the woman's family, the male members in particular, acted to make sure that he paid in one way or another.

At one point, society decided that the government needed to be involved in this situation. First unwed mothers were required to live in group homes. Then welfare was extended to their families. Then welfare (originally meant only for widows) was restructured so that unwed mothers received more goods and services than other family types. Finally, abortion was both legalized and encouraged, with highschools enabling it secretly, receptionists glancing the other way, and advisers of all sorts telling young women that, if they carried their pregnancies to term, their entire lives, hopes, and dreams would be over. The fact that society's willingness to glance the other way has enabled many predators and outright rapists to hide the evidence of their crimes is another sordid story entirely.

What happened was this: At first, the unwed pregnancy was the responsibility of the father and then, should he manage to escape it, the mother, with an expectation that her family would step in. Then, the unwed pregnancy became the responsibility of all of us. Now, "we" are trying to escape "our" unearned responsibility by coaxing, pressuring, or outright coercing the mother into an abortion.

"So how many have YOU adopted?" means, in a deeper context, "She shouldn't be allowed to keep her baby. If she won't kill it, it should be taken away from her for her own good." Oh, it isn't a matter of legality, not yet, but the clear majority of women in even the most "pro-choice"-friendly polls and studies say that they wanted to keep their babies, but that they felt pressured or forced into getting an abortion instead. "So how dare YOU vote to lower these social programs?" means, in a deeper context, "This baby is your responsibility. If you don't pressure her to kill it, it falls to you to support the child." Have you noticed yet what is missing from this equation?

My grandmother is strongly in favor of requiring an unwed mother to give the father's name before she is allowed to receive government services, so that the State can seek him out for recompense. She was born in the mid-'30's, and is appalled at the current state of affairs, where men are 'free' to have sex with as many women as they like, without consequences, and the men (and women) who buckle down, work hard, and wear themselves out providing for their own families must now return for several more hours of work to deal with the freeloaders. When she says "freeloaders", she is not speaking of the unwed mother and her children. She is speaking of their absent fathers.

What she sees, and what I see, is a new form of patriarchal oppression. Modern Feminism loves to talk about 'patriarchal oppression', and for the most part, they are blowing smoke. That doesn't mean that there were never forms of patriarchal oppression in society from time to time. This was one of them: Men of certain stature were allowed, during certain areas of society, to avoid responsibility for impregnating women. We saw it among royalty and nobility in the feudal systems. We also saw it among slaveowners in the Deep South. Everyone else would shuffle about and cover it up, and those few men 'at the top' would know that they could do as they liked without repercussions or responsibility. In modern times, aided and abetted by Modern Feminism, we have the same situation again: Men are allowed to avoid responsibility for impregnating women.

The 'adoption/welfare' argument assumes as a beginning premise that, when a man is a cad, we are the ones personally responsible for the result. The 'pro-choice' argument itself concludes that the only way for us to absolve ourselves of his responsibility is to encourage or urge her to have the abortion.

Judge not.... what?

I saw a lovely post up yesterday talking about how homeschooling is growing sharply in popularity. Of course, I, like many homeschooling parents, cheered at the news. We firmly believe in what we're doing, and it's good to see more people swelling our ranks; if nothing else, there is safety in numbers, and there are still people who want to prohibit us from making this choice.

This morning, however, I saw a comment on that post, something that I suppose I could have seen coming, because it seems to happen at least once in every single conversation about homeschooling that is thrown out where the public can see it.

"Well, homeschooling isn't the best for everybody. Some kids do better in public school, and some kids do better in private school."

Of course.

If you take the absolute worst that homeschooling has to offer and compare it to the absolute best public school ever, no doubt the public school education will be superior.

I am getting so tired of lifestyle/moral equivalency. You can't say that homeschool is simply better than public school. If you do, you're judging, on a personal level, every single person who has ever been public schooled as 'inferior'. If you truly aren't, they will all believe that you are, and treat you as if you are. People are so quick to judge other people. We are all sinners. We all have inferiority complexes. Those of us who can't accept that have to try to make ourselves out to be 'righteous' by proving ourselves to be more 'righteous' than other people. Then comes the attempt to make yourself better than others by proving that you are "less judgmental" than others. It's hard, though, to not be judgmental, when you aren't allowed to view yourself as a sinner who is not really any better than anybody else.

So instead you take the easy way out. If all choices are equally good, then you don't have to try to view someone whom you think is making worse choices as if they are, nevertheless, no less perfect than you are. Or perhaps you think that, if they judge your choices and you "don't judge theirs", that makes you better than them. I'm not 100% sure what's going through these people's heads. All I know is that they have decided that the only way for them to show moral superiority is to show moral equivalency, because it never occurred to them (or they simply could not accept it) to view themselves and everyone else as sinners in need of a Savior. Their righteousness is not in Christ, so they need to find it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, this hurts every single person who is honestly, humbly, willingly trying to learn the best way forward. Young men and women beg for sexual advice, only to be told, "Well, ya know, maybe it's wrong to sleep with him, but maybe it's not. It's up to you, I guess. Do what'll make you happy." And if the young person points out in exasperation that he or she doesn't know what will make him or her happy, the best these people can do is to kind of vaguely repeat their useless advice.

So let me be the one to tell it straight.

Homeschool is better than public school.

Also, a home-prepared lunch is healthier than McDonalds, breastfeeding is better than bottlefeeding, your clothing will fit better and last longer if you make it yourself (or, at least, don't buy it from a cheapy place like Walmart), a small sedan will put out less pollution than a minivan, and you really ought to use those wipes on your hands and the handle of the shopping cart before you go in.

Guess what.

I will pull on an old t-shirt and pair of jeans from Walmart, herd my kids into the minivan, head off to a homeschool field trip without once using wipes, and pick up McDonalds on the road.

What we need to do is to focus, not on pretending that all options are 'equal', but on not judging each other. After all, life isn't about doing everything 'right'. We can't, even if we want to. It isn't about doing everything 'the best way'. If you make that your goal, you will be so stressed out that your health will fail far faster than if you eat a McDouble once every few weeks, or even *gasp* carry about twenty pounds more after having your children than you did when you got married.

Life is about growing, about loving and taking care of each other, about learning to change our priorities, about understanding that "superiority" and "inferiority" mean nothing next to Christ's sacrifice and love for us. I know that's hard for non-Christians to take in, but I hope for your sake that your worldview can come up with something close enough to follow my example here. She who is without sin can throw the first stone. By all means, stand there and state clearly that homeschooling is better than public school. But don't stand there in Walmart jeans with your kid eating a Happy Meal in your minivan (or even eating whole wheat sandwiches in your minivan) and say that the public schooling parent is not as good a parent as you are.

And if someone asks you which is better, breast or bottle, you can say 'breast' without going crazy trying to prop up the ego of every single woman who didn't take that path. But if you know a woman with an infant who is bottle-feeding, you go over there with a good meal, send her to bed, clean up her kitchen, and prepare that bottle so that she can actually rest for more than two hours.

It's much harder to learn how to not judge a person when you are willing to accept that not all choices are equally good.

But it's much, much more rewarding.

The 2016 Election Season and Asimov's Caliban

From time to time, I focus on one of the books I've read as a good way to describe and understand the political climate. Lately, I have been reminded most strongly of the Caliban trilogy, sometimes called the "Second Robot Series", written by Roger McBride Allen, but set in Isaac Asimov's 'universe' from which came the well-known Three Laws of Robotics.

While Asimov spent a lot of time delving into discussion of what would happen when the Three Laws go wrong, Allen built his trilogy based on what might happen if the Three Laws worked just as they were meant to. He envisions worlds in which the people have cocooned themselves, living in large houses by themselves, every need and whim provided by the robots. The household robots, in addition to seeking their master's physical safety, also seek to meet his emotional needs. Understanding only that change is scary, they try to keep their masters soothed by 'protecting' them from any alteration in schedule. Overuse of robots has become combined with the belief that such overuse is necessary; people may have one robot driver for each day of the week, despite the fact that just one robot comes equipped with the ability to drive the vehicle, clean the house, cook the food, and manage the master's schedule.

In the course of the trilogy, the government needs to use robot labor to fix the terraforming job on the planet of Inferno, so the number of robots permitted in each household is limited to ten. Of course, there is widespread outrage, but this occurs at the same time that a leading roboticist begins to question the role of robots and humanity's perceived need for them. Many people begin to realize that they prefer having some human agency restored to them. They find that they like choosing their own clothing, standing at a balcony without five robots fretting over whether they might suddenly fall. and basically interacting with each other and their own lives in a way they have not done for decades.

The ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare, is unquestionably an unmitigated disaster. Even in the states where it was perfectly implemented, costs have become ridiculously high. Millions of people have lost their insurance plans. The HMO/PPO plan, once considered the standard of care, is now treated like a bauble for the wealthy. Before Obamacare, 1 in 10 people refused medical care at some point during a year because they could not afford it; last year, 1 in 3 people had the same problem. Just two years previous to that, the number was 1 in 4, so the problem is worsening.

At the same time, though, Obamacare did us a service that was likely unintended by its creators. Those of us who lost our insurance and could not afford another policy are discovering what health care actually costs, and how we can save for it ourselves. Even those who have a policy are forced by higher deductibles and lower coverage percentages to think about the care we are purchasing and how we can lower our costs. Unfortunately, due to the structure of Obamacare, we cannot lower costs sufficiently to please the government without foregoing care that we need, and monthly premiums are often so high that care cannot be obtained once they have been paid. People are starting to understand that they have to choose between having insurance and affording health care.

In short, I am not praising Obamacare.

However, many conservative and libertarian proposals which seemed terrifying in the days of the HMO/PPO are now looking more and more reasonable. People have been forced off the teat and crushed under a heavy burden, and they are more amenable to changes that would lift that burden than they were when they thought that they could not survive without the teat. They are beginning to understand that a single bout of strep throat will not bankrupt them. They are beginning to realize the reality of the study done pre-Obamacare, in which the uninsured reported the same level of satisfaction, availability, and affordability of care as the average Canadian citizen.

These people, who would have panicked had they been offered a market in which the high deductible plan would likely be king when they thought that the HMO/PPO was necessary for life and health, are now far more amenable to a deregulated market. They, like the people of Inferno as they were bereft of many of their robot coddlers, are beginning to enjoy their human agency in this new situation, and many may be unwilling to return from crushing government regulation to heavy government regulation when they have much more to gain from lightening the load far more than they would have dared in the 1990's.

The opposite argument against women in combat

Recently, I saw a redux of a claim that I've seen made many times, on the subject of women in combat. "There are women who can be just as bloodthirsty as men," she proclaimed. "And they are just as fit to fight as men are!"

It occurs to me that many people seem to think this, and it is quite wrong.

Now in come the feminists screeching out what they appear to believe: "You Christians just don't believe that women can be rough and tough! You don't believe that women can fight! You believe that they have to be gentle and meek all the time and never stand up for themselves!" What they don't realize is that this is like telling someone who is taking high blood pressure pills that his real problem is that the doctors persist in thinking that his blood pressure is too low.

Yes, you are going to find plenty of Bible verses exhorting women to be gentle and sweet. Why do you think God keeps saying this? Do you think that God exhorts honest people to not lie? Do you think that God exhorts the naturally chaste to avoid sexual temptation? Jesus said it Himself: "I have come for the sick. People who are healthy have no need of a doctor." When we are reminded to not cheat, it is because we are tempted to cheat. When we are reminded that even looking at a woman with lust is tantamount to mental adultery, it is because we think that it's okay as long as we don't do anything physical. When God tells us to remember to give to the poor, it is not because we never think, "But then I won't be able to afford my new this-or-that." Women aren't continually exhorted to be gentle because God thinks we're nothing but gentle. It's because women need to be reminded to be gentle!

Anyone who works in public highschools, juvenile centers, women's prisons, and similar places will laugh in your face if you tell them that women are meeker and gentler than men. Women, they know, unrestrained by gentleness, will fight all the time. They won't just fight, however. They will try to do permanent injury. They will fight to disfigure. They will wage their battles on multiple fronts: physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. People who will think nothing of breaking up a fight between two men will hesitate to enter a war between two women.

When men fight, they fight for dominance, and they learn that a loser can maintain social standing by losing well. The truth of this can be seen over and over again in stories based on studies and tons of widespread personal experience. When a boy has to deal with a bully, he has to strike a blow sufficient to show his worth. Either he has to defeat the bully once so that they can become friends, or he has to at least put up a good enough fight that his worth is proven within the group and he can join it as an equal member. When a girl has to deal with a bully, however, the only way to resolve the problem in most cases is that she must not knock her opponent down, but must humiliate her opponent to the point where said opponent cannot show her face in public again. Men can fight, lose (or win), brush themselves off, and become friends. Women, if driven to fight, fight to destroy utterly, so that their opponent can never rise again.

Consider an analogy in which women are like cats and men are like dogs. Uneducated folk might come to the conclusion that a 'good kitty' does not have claws at all. Nobody could make that mistake with a dog. The dog's claws tap on the floor. They show when he runs. If a dog launches himself on top of you, you will feel the claws. Now, though the claws can be used in fighting, they don't have to hurt you. You will feel the claws every single time, but they will not shred you. A cat, on the other hand, has retractable claws. If her claws are out, you will feel them. They will do damage. Furthermore, if a dog's claws are always out, you think that he is just a dog; if a cat's claws are always out, you know that there is something wrong with the cat. Just like cats, women are more than capable of fighting, but they need to remember to keep their claws sheathed - to practice gentleness - because with claws as sharp as these, it is all too easy to wound when you do not intend to do so.

Women are not sweet. Women are dangerous.

Now, just as countries are larger forms of tribal groups, just as a mountain is a larger form of the stone you pick up on the road, wars are simply larger forms of individual fighting. The reason why conservative Christians encourage fighting, when necessary, to be done between men rather than women is not because "women can't be bloodthirsty". It's because most fighting men are not bloodthirsty, and bloodthirstiness in battle leads to trouble. When men fight, they are more likely to regard women and children as non-combatants. Those who do not are treated with contempt by other groups of men, and may find themselves ganged up upon. Men can go into battle, fight, win (or lose), and then make friends with the warring countries. When men fight, enemies can become allies. They have a sense of mutual honor. We see this in World War I, on Christmas Day, when fighting stopped utterly in many areas and both sides shared meals and played games before returning to their trenches to try to kill each other the next day. Most women find this very hard to understand, and to most men it is obvious! Men always have their claws out, but their claws do not need to do damage; women do not unsheathe until they mean business.

I had to tell the woman who made the 'bloodthirsty' argument in her comment that, rather than being the best argument in favor of women in combat, it is actually the best argument against. God keeps reminding women to be gentle, not because we are in some way inherently meek, mild, and helpless, but because we need to be reminded to be gentle. In this day and age even more than most, when too many secular women glory in stalking about all the time with their claws unsheathed, causing casual wounding everywhere they go and stressing out bodies that were not meant to be 'on the bounce' all the time, we need to remember that the Bible calls for women to sheathe those claws and, inasmuch as we are able, to be at rest.

God as an Economic Ruler

On Easter Sunday, I was reminded of the Jewish holiday which was fully fulfilled by Jesus's death on the cross. On Passover, the people spread the blood of a lamb on the lintel and posts of their door, to show that they were set apart by blood sacrifice, and the angel of death passed over them. That got me thinking, of all things, about economics and the upcoming election.

See, it's an oft-mentioned Christian (and Old Testament Jewish) notion that we are to give God everything we own and everything we are. We're afraid to do that, usually because we get this image of God acting as an earthly king, using up what He feels like having, and returning little or nothing to us. When a king demands your gold, he wants it so that he can decorate his throne. When he demands your daughter, he is looking for a maid and a concubine. When he demands your son, he is looking for a guard or a soldier, someone to die for his safety or even his comfort or convenience.

When people give things to God, though, God has a long-standing habit of giving the things back, as a sacred duty and stewardship rather than simple, selfish ownership. You offer your computer to God, and you find yourself typing out resumes and formatting flyers, or maintaining websites, for churches and other ministries while still being quite able to entertain yourself with a video game in the evening. You offer your house to God, and it becomes a quiet, refreshing place that offers shelter periodically to people in need. Instead of you keeping a house of your own, you are now steward of a shelter of God, and you are, of course, expected to enjoy it while you are keeping it.

We see this in the Passover story with Moses, who was born during a time when the Egyptian Pharaoh's men were killing baby boys, but letting the baby girls live. Moses' mother hid him for as long as she could, keeping him by her own power, but then she knew that all she could do was to give him to God. Of course, we know the end of the story. The Pharaoh's daughter found his basket in the water and decided to keep him. The detail we often miss is that the baby still needed to be fed, and his 'new mother' needed to find a wet-nurse for him. His sister, who had been watching the basket, stepped forward and bravely told the Pharaoh's daughter that she knew a woman who could do the job. And so Moses' mother, who had given her baby away to God, had her baby back in her arms by evening, with orders from royalty preventing him from death!

Where does this become political? Right here.

I see this election season as being a choice in direction, in which economic system we will take one more step towards in the coming years. Our choices are capitalism, corporatism, fascism, and communism.

Bernie Sanders embodies communism - the system in which the government collects and redistributes goods and services directly. Though the stated purpose is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," in practice this becomes "from each according to the government's need, to each according to the government's preference."

The economy in this system is controlled directly by the government as an oligarchy (rule of the few).

Hillary Clinton embodies fascism - the system in which the government controls the private companies, deciding what they are permitted to produce and fixing their wages/prices, but allowing them to act otherwise as 'private' organizations. People make the mistake sometimes of thinking that fascism is 'capitalist' because it involves 'nationalism'. The nationalism of fascism is not flag-waving and setting off illicit fireworks in vacant lots, but the action of permitting the government to take away rights, responsibilities, and freedoms for the (perceived) good of the nation. What decides what is good for the nation? The government, of course.

The economy in this system is controlled indirectly by the government as an oligarchy. There can be some crossover with corporatism, as members of government-favored companies may have a hand in setting policy.

Donald Trump embodies corporatism, previously called mercantilism - the system by which the corporations have the power to influence (or downright set) government policy. Through government taxation and regulation applied unevenly throughout the private world, the larger companies raise artificial barriers against their competition. With lack of competition, the pressure to provide a high-quality product at a lower price and the pressure to raise wages while improving working conditions are both greatly reduced.

The economy in this system is controlled (usually) indirectly by a few corporations as an oligarchy. There can be some crossover with fascism, as members of the government garner corporate support by promising increased corporate power in return.

Ted Cruz embodies capitalism - the system in which the government is empowered to prevent companies from using lawlessness to stifle competition, and the government is constitutionally fettered to prevent companies from using laws to stifle competition. In this system, neither the government nor the corporations are allowed to enact a "command economy".

The economy in this system is not controlled by any centralized authority.

The economist Adam Smith described a capitalist economy as being controlled by an "invisible hand". In short, he argued, even though you don't have an authority in charge of ensuring that prices are low, wages are high, and the poor are fed, it happens naturally through the process of capitalism. Though secular capitalists may have any of a number of explanations for this, including 'game theory' and belief in the power of 'nature', Christian capitalists (including those who first set up the system in this country) view that "invisible hand" as being God.

In this way, capitalism is a rather scary system. We basically give the economy to God, and trust Him to give it back to us as stewards. Just as Moses' mother only gave him up when she saw no other way for his survival, people who are otherwise comfortable may be afraid to give up their economy to this "invisible Hand", unless they believe that they will lose too much otherwise. In this day and age, capitalism means reducing some government social programs and ending others. Cruz has said that he will end the Department of Education. That means that the Federal Government will no longer have ultimate control over what public schools teach children. For someone who sees no authority above that of an authoritarian oligarchy, this is a frightening thought. They don't want to trust God with these things. Those who don't believe in God, of course, don't want to trust "chance", "fate", "luck", or whatever they call it, even though capitalist systems tend to work very well as long as the people aren't panicking and giving their freedoms away in hopes of being able to point to specific people and claim that they, at least, are in 'control'.

The National Enquirer and Ted Cruz

Now, here are my thoughts on the National Enquirer story.

My greatest concern is that people are taking it as being automatically true. They justify this by pointing out a few times when the Enquirer broke a story about someone having an affair and, though the details were more or less wrong, the basic idea (a particular person having had an affair) turned out to be true.

(The National Enquirer also says that Michelle Obama is a lesbian, that Barack Obama has had multiple secret affairs because of this (redux: they used to say that the reason why Bill Clinton had all those affairs was because Hillary Clinton is also a lesbian), that Hillary Clinton has brain cancer, and, back in 2009, they claimed that Oprah had three years left to live.)

C'mon, guys, be smarter than that.

It's like fortune-telling.

Do you know how fortune-telling works? The fortune teller concentrates on you, but not on some spiritual aspect of your presence. She looks at your expression and your body language. Then she starts throwing out a few things that are extremely common among human beings. "You want to find someone to love." Or perhaps, "You feel the need to be acknowledged for the work you do." In the body language of your response and the words you say, you give her some extra information. "Yeah, my boss never appreciates me!" Now she knows that you work outside the home for a boss whom you believe does not appreciate you. People in that situation are often hoping for a promotion. So she says, "That promotion you are hoping for is not long off." Now, if you get a promotion any time in the next five years, you will think it is an answer to the prediction.

(Newspaper horoscopes work the same way. When my eldest asked about horoscopes, I mentioned his birthdate, found his astrological sign, and read a prediction out from a random site. When he said that it fit, I read another one. Then another. Then another. Each one, he said, fit his situation. Then I revealed to him that I had read to him every astrological sign prediction except for his own.)

Multiple studies and surveys claim that the adultery rate among men is roughly around 20% That means that, statistically speaking, if you accuse five men of adultery, you'll probably be right once. If you have six headlines on your page and three of them accuse someone new of adultery, you're probably going to get a hit about once every two or three months, unless you're really unlucky. If you're concentrating on politicians and Hollywood, your rate is going to go up.

Does that mean that you actually know what's going on? Does that mean that everyone you accuse should be automatically considered guilty?

No. It just means that you know how to guess well enough to make money off the fools who want to believe what you have to say.

Just like fortune tellers.

Does this mean that I absolutely do not believe that Cruz has ever had an affair? No. As noted, at least 20% of the male population has. This percentage climbs when you hit Hollywood and the political scene. Maybe he has. Maybe he hasn't. He says he hasn't. At least two of the women contacted so far have also said that they did not have an affair with him. From what I hear through the grapevine (about as useful a source as the National Enquirer itself), the high-price prostitute is suggesting that she might have a story and dickering for a price. I'll take that with about as much seriousness as it is worth.

But for all I know, maybe it is true.

All I'm saying is this: If you believe it because the National Enquirer says so, you're a fool. And if you believe it because the National Enquirer says so and you want to believe them because you hope it's true, you are worse than a fool.

Liberal cage match: Trump vs. Cruz

So what exactly happened over the past couple of weeks?

In summary, this is exactly what happened.

Anti-Trump liberals sent violent protesters to attack Trump's followers at a couple of events, one of which Trump canceled for the safety of the attendees. They then claimed that Trump's followers were violent. Cruz (among others) fell for it and told Trump that he ought to make it clear that he does not condone violence. Trump supporters responded by basically saying, "Stupid Cruz, don't you see it was the Democrats who did it?"

Then an Anti-Trump group put out an ad showing an old picture of Trump's (current) wife mostly-undressed as an attack ad. Despite the fact that both the group and Cruz clearly explained that liberals were behind this, Trump showed himself to be at least no smarter than Cruz, blaming Cruz and Cruz alone for the ad, and making veiled threats about Cruz's wife. Then Trump's buddy at the National Enquirer, the same one who ran a story about Carson's supposed barbaric maiming of children ("wields the scalpel like a machete", among other claims) when Carson was doing well in the polls and ran a story about Fiorina's supposed secret druggy daughter (she has never made a secret of her step-daughter's struggle; said step-daughter was in her mother's custody) when she was doing well in the polls, suddenly decided to claim that Cruz had a whole bunch of affairs with various staffers, associates, and a high-price prostitute (because if you're going to throw a bunch of charges at the wall, you might as well make them interesting).

Now I have my own things to say about condemning Cruz based on nothing more than the National Enquirer, but that's not my current concern, so I'll leave that part until the end. The short, short version of what happened was this:

Liberals managed to turn the GOP race from a discussion of the issues into a cage match, stopping all this uncomfortable talk about lower taxes and stronger military that resonates with the people whom the liberals hope will vote for Hillary or Sanders, and get people's attention on "more important" (to their candidate's victory) issues, such as whether Melania Trump is hotter than Heidi Cruz.

This is, frankly, the kind of thing that rich people can afford to worry about. If we wind up with Hillary or especially Sanders as our next president, we will no longer be rich. In the midst of making sure that we don't say the 'wrong thing' in public and bring the Federal Government down on our heads in a nation governed by people who staunchly oppose a simple law preventing gay couples from suing pastors who do not wish to conduct their 'marriage' ceremonies, while trying desperately to find enough post-tax cash to buy on the black market the health care that the government refuses to allow us to receive, we will laugh bitterly at our naive selves who worried so much about the issues that the liberals want us to worry about - some woman's partly-clothed body or some man's alleged affairs. Do you think that celebrity worship happens in countries where the people are scavenging for their basic needs after getting government-paid for their government jobs and being given what little shelter and food that the government can manage to provide for them?

Remember the real issues.

Discuss the real problems.

Never mind all this 'sex and violence'.

Trump and the Liberal Conspiracy Theory

I don't make decisions like this lightly, but I do hold them lightly. I will not pledge right here and now that I will unquestionably not vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee. I will, however, state that, as the election currently stands, my decision is that I will not vote for him, even against Hillary.

Nobody is going to guess the real reason.

Oh, there are plenty of reasons that liberals like to talk badly about Trump. They accuse him of being racist because he has an immigration policy that legally-residing Hispanics love. They send people to his rallies to violently attack his supporters and then call his supporters violent when they defend themselves. They take half of what he says so badly out of context that it doesn't even resemble what he actually says. They seem determined to attack him in all the ways that will make his supporters dig in their heels and promise to stay with him forever.

I'm not even all that concerned about many of the attacks on the Right. This whole kerfuffle about his wife... I can take that in a candidate. I can even take a certain level of moderate politics in a candidate. After all, I voted for McCain over Obama, and then I voted for Romney over Obama, and I encouraged my friends and family to do the same.

So what has changed?

I believe that the leadership in the Democrat Party has, for decades now, desired to establish full-out government control along socialist principles, whether by Fascism or straight-out Communism. They want command. They want to be in charge. This isn't really the condemnation that it may seem like. Throughout history, the majority of higher-ups have desired control over larger groups of people. Everyone wants to be the king, the general, the emperor, the supreme leader. The unusual thing in human society has been a free society, a system in which the people are, as individuals, in control of their own lives. It is no accident that these societies have invariably been Jewish or Christian. You have to feel as if someone is in control and, if that someone is God, then it is wrong for you to subjugate your fellow man. (Even in areas where they have failed in this, the precepts of Christianity have been a correcting action that have caused Christians, not outsiders, to correct it.)

But I digress.

Socialism doesn't just happen. It takes sacrifice. Even on the face of it, it takes sacrifice that the people believe will yield benefits down the line. In implementation, of course, the sacrifice continues to strengthen and the benefits do not appear. The important thing is, people don't just take to socialism "because". They start by believing that it is a better system than what they have. Either they lose faith in that "invisible hand" in a free market (whether you believe in God or in the laws of nature), or they live in a system that is not a free market, or both. Socialism took hold in Germany under a war-torn country forced to make heavy reparations from a destroyed economy. Socialism took hold in Russia as a replacement for the iron hand of Imperialism; early Party members were fighting, not for a command economy, but merely for the allowance of sick days for workers. When socialists started trying to find ways to implement their system in the U.S., they ran into a problem... they could not easily convince anybody that socialism was better than what they had, because what they had was freedom, prosperity, and even the poorest considered themselves to be "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

To peddle their system, they would have to change the one we already had.

Do I have proof that this is a conspiracy theory led by the leadership of the party? No, not really. I know this; though the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism went too far and was misused for witch hunts, history has vindicated McCarthy himself. Though most of the people he investigated were not foreign agents seeking to betray America to her enemies, they were dedicated socialists seeking to transform America into a socialist country over time. We've seen their efforts in the school systems (where they've been pretty brazen about their goals and plans) and in other areas of society. There's one in particular that I want to focus on today, and that is the effort to spread corporatism (what in the 18th century would have been called 'mercantilism') while redefining capitalism such that people believe that capitalism is really corporatism, and socialism is the other choice in the false dichotomy that they are working to set up.

We've seen this whenever Democrats have derided Republicans for being "pro-big business" for wanting to lower taxes or regulations on all businesses (because, of course, a big business makes more profits from it than a small business, even if the small business benefits at a much higher percentage). Then those Democrats tighten regulation and taxes, but they define loopholes for big businesses that support them, and declare this to be "their willingness to enable capitalism". They present the worst parts of corporatism to us, call it 'capitalism', and say that 'capitalism doesn't work'. I have been confused when I've watched movies like Robocop after being told that it's about the evils of capitalism, because it isn't about capitalism at all. It's about corporatism. (I've given you a few sketches here. I could probably write a book on this process and the harm it's doing.) And now we come to the crux of the reason why I don't think I can vote for Trump.

Trump is a corporatist running as a capitalist.

If Hillary wins because I vote for a third party, it's going to be bad. It's going to be tough. Short-term, it's going to be awful. But if Trump wins because I vote for him, then I have colluded in the Democrat effort to rebrand corporatism as 'capitalism'. In the short term, he will not be as bad as Hillary in most respects. In the long term, however, if he provides that last big push, if his reign in office brings us to the point where we truly believe the false dichotomy, the long-term ramifications will be far, far worse.

We will be choosing between Corporatism and Socialism.

And whichever wins, we will lose.

"Feeling the Bern" - The Middle Class Experience on Social Programs

Is my family middle-class? I persist in believing that we are. The term "class" is not as easy as the term "income". It carries with it a sense of lifestyle, of priorities, of emotion and atmosphere. The "working class" has one set of jobs, lifestyles, and priorities. The "middle class" has another.

Our family income alone would mark us as a member of the working class. That said, the way I usually try to describe us is by typing "working/lower-middle class" or simply using the term "lower middle class". The job is white-collar educated, my husband has his college degree (so do I), and we own our own home in a quiet rural area with a large yard. We really do not have much in common with the blue-collar lifestyle. We actually don't have much in common with other lifestyles either, to be honest.

Our food budget is less than that of the average family on welfare, yet we eat well, with my cooking and careful pantry choices. We have the lack of processed foods usually associated with the wealthy. Our furniture may be used, but it is kept in good repair. We get our clothing for free (a church giveaway room, to which we contribute as children outgrow clothing), and I can sew the type of well-fitted outfits for myself that one might associate with the upper-class, even if I have to take trashcan-bound XXXL clothing and cut them down to get the cloth. We take pride in appearing as well as we can with what we have. We take no vacations, and we buy our vehicles used, quite old (both are currently over 10yrs), and with cash on hand. We actually have several thousand dollars in the bank, in a time when the vast majority of this country, even people twice as rich as we are, live paycheck-to-paycheck.

I feel strange whenever I find myself asking for need-based scholarships for my children to go to summer camp or engage in similar opportunities (my daughter did a year of high-class preschool on a half-tuition need-based scholarship, and my grandmother helped us cover the other half), yet when I sit down with Social Services to deal with bureaucracy, the person helping me is always perplexed at our family size and income and has no clue how we manage to make our ends meet at all.

So what happens when a family like mine encounters Sanders'-style economics? (Also known, by me, as 'social programs creep') There are three stages that I've been able to identify over the past about seven and a half years, as liberal economics have caused the process to begin already.

Stage 1: Self-Sufficiency
This is the very best stage, and the reason why families in situations like mine tend to be "surprisingly" conservative rather than wanting to "feel the Bern", as they say. In this situation, the family has low taxes and a high percentage of disposable income. The family uses this income, setting its own priorities, choosing its own lifestyle. Alternative lifestyles or uncommon needs (such as rare medical conditions) are accommodated quickly and easily, as the point of decision-making rests with the family. Money is tight, yes. We don't have the new television. We don't take the vacation. We don't buy the boat. We simply don't have the money, we say to ourselves, because we have already chosen to spend it.. on a curriculum that fits a child's special learning needs, or a doctor who specializes in a parent's medical condition. We are, indeed, by historical standards, wealthy.

Stage 2: The Transition
Anyone would expect this to be the hardest part, a temporary difficulty that results in a family like ours being better off than it was before. It is, in fact, not. As taxes rise, we begin losing our ability to afford that curriculum or that specialist. Income never rises when taxes rise, and so our budget narrows. We wind up giving up things we want, and then things we need, in order to allow the government to give things we already could not afford to people who are poorer than us. As the process continues, we start going into our savings, cutting to the bone, and praying for relief. Unfortunately, we already know from experience that this relief will never come.

Stage 3: Social Programs
Now the government has finally seen fit to "help" us, not by allowing us to meet our own needs again, but by 'graciously' deciding to meet them for us. We are now eligible for the social program. We do the paperwork. We wait for months, since we are one of a large influx of people joining the program, and the staffing for the program has not increased. Finally, we receive our shiny new cards and vouchers, stamped with our identities... our entire lives, experiences, hopes, and dreams, everything that makes us people, collated down into a number and entered into a government file somewhere. We have now been stamped, filed, and categorized. At least now we can access education and medical care again, right?

No. This is the point where we find out that we can't.

The specialist is not covered by the government program. The educational curriculum is not on the government list. They've run out of the bread that's on the WIC list, and the cheaper, healthier store-brand loaf is not on the WIC list, so it won't be covered. If you want bread this week, you'll have to pay for it yourself... out of what's left when the higher taxes have been taken from your paycheck. This is the point at which you learn that the government apparently doesn't think you're supposed to have that medical condition, or need that curriculum.
In the end, you are transformed from a family that does not have what the wealthier families have, but meets its own individual needs with its own money, to a family that still does not have what the wealthier families have, and is now bereft of the means by which to meet its own individual needs on top of it.

People try to claim that conservatives just plain don't want to help the poor. That's unquestionably a lie, provable, if by nothing else, by the statistics that show how much more generous conservatives are to the poor with their own personal money. Even conservatives on the libertarian side do not oppose government programs as well, programs meant to aid those who simply cannot get what they need by any other means, programs that pay for surgeries and food for the destitute and the disabled. I think I can best explain my opinion on the matter by simply saying this:

The government should not be giving social programs to anybody who is paying taxes; in reverse, the government should not tax anyone who is receiving social programs.

Before a family is aided by the government, they should be permitted the full body of their resources in order to minimize or meet their needs.

We should never, ever be in the position we are in now, a position that Sanders seeks to worsen, in which the government takes money from us and gives us the goods or services we desire (or those that the government thinks we ought to desire, which does manage to coincide on occasion).

Feeling the "Bern"

What exactly do people mean by "Feel the Bern"? I was startled to see this phrase begin to pop up, especially when used by supporters to encourage other supporters! Apparently, in the world of bodybuilding, "feel the burn" describes the sensation you achieve by working your muscles to the point where you know that they are going to start building themselves higher and stronger. I find that to be a rather bizarre coupling with the cries for taxpayer-funded swag, but perhaps the statement is only meant to indicate the 'good pain' that comes only with hard work and personal sacrifice for personal gain.

I am not a body builder. Though I will exercise to the point of "feeling burn", I am not exercise-inclined, and won't do it for the sake of doing it. I usually exercise for enjoyment and in hopes of weight loss. I do, however, engage in quite a bit of Internet debate, in which the phrase means something very different. Commenters will say "Burn!" or "Feel the burn!" when one member of a debate manages to put down the other in a very satisfyingly thorough and often demeaning way. For many people, the more demeaning the put-down, the more satisfying, and they crow "Feel the burn!" as the other debate opponent reels back, half-blinded by impotent fury.

Given that, when I first saw the phrase appear, I thought it meant, "We are going to vote for someone who is going to take things away from your already-embattled finances and crow about it as you struggle to make your ends once again meet!"

I have never really been able to rid myself of the utter distaste I hold for the term. As I see more and more of Sanders' policy stances, I doubt I ever will.

The End of a Worldview

The title of this post may be a little misleading. I am not talking about a particular worldview coming to an end. Instead, I would like to take a moment and talk about the results when a worldview is followed to its logical end. More specifically, I would like to talk about the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie, and why atheists probably ought to be bent out of shape about it.

Ultron was created when an AI was repurposed from Loki's staff and successfully interfaced by Jarvis. Multiple times during the movie, one Avenger or another pointed out that Ultron had picked up a lot of his view on the world from Tony Stark. Presumably, the AI was listening when Tony told Banner about his vision for 'world peace'. As a result, Ultron took in all the information it could, set it against Tony's stated objective, and came to the interesting conclusion that the best way he could benefit the human race was to initiate an extinction-level event and see what survives and evolves from it.

Ultron was strongly written and played as a madman, and yet his plan was not utterly nonsensical. It was the logical end of secular environmentalism, unchecked by the basic humanity that defies even the atheists who prefer to believe that it does not exist. According to atheistic evolution, humanity is continuously improving through evolving. According to the history proposed by the theory of evolution, this planet has gone through a number of extinction-level events - catastrophies that wiped out all or nearly all life - and risen from each one better than the one before. In defiance of entropy, this worldview (when not seasoned by any other) insists that order comes from chaos.

Tony was interrupted in his plan to attack one AI with another. Ultron had uploaded part of his broken self into the new body. Parts of Jarvis had been uploaded as well. The body was created around one of multiple key stones which appear to represent elements; in this case, the Mind Stone. However, this time, Vision's earliest-heard words were words of caution from Steve Rogers (Captain America), and he was turbocharged into existence by Thor, with whom he apparently had some sort of special bond. (Thor was the first one convinced of Vision's benevolence, the one who enacted his plan with him, and the one who spoke to him at the end.) Now, if you are going to draw a line from "Most religious" to "Least Religious" and plot the Avengers along it, Tony Stark would sit at one end, and Thor and Captain America would sit at the other. Vision was very clearly influenced by the thoughts produced by taking the religious (particularly Christian) worldview to its natural end.

Though I have been comparing Vision and Ultron, this theme moves through the rest of the Avengers as well. Ultron is willing to sacrifice a few (the residents of the city) in order to sacrifice the many, in hopes of improving the whole. At first, the more atheistic members of the team (like Tony!) insist that the few may rightly be sacrificed in order to save the many. The more religious ones overrule them, and help them understand... each individual person is important. You cannot save 'humanity' by sacrificing the unwilling in a numbers game. As Rico correctly pointed out in the book Starship Troopers, in a question of the logistics in risking multiple people to rescue a fallen comrade, "Men are not potatoes."

When Ultron and Vision face off at the end of the movie, Vision says, "There is grace in [humanity's] failings. I think you missed that."