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Ignoring Deranged People Is Wrong-Headed And Dangerous

A few months ago, a mentally unhinged New York City woman pushed an Indian man she had never met onto the subway tracks as a train was approaching. He was killed. She claimed she did it because she hates Muslims and Hindus. It turned out that she had been treated at a New York psychiatric hospital and her mother had called police at least five times due to her violence at home. She had even assaulted a police officer. She was arrested at least nine times and either released outright or allowed to plead guilty to assault and other charges without jail time or remand to a mental facility for treatment.

A violence-prone schizophrenic who refused to take her medication, the woman was a danger to herself and to her community, a fact known to her mother, her doctor and the police.

Her case is not all that exceptional. It hit the papers when she murdered a man, just as the cases of the recent school and theater murderers became news when the time bombs inside the perpetrators’ heads went off and they ran amok. But in virtually every case there were signs that those around them should have noticed. In the case of the Aurora murderer, the only person who encountered him and refused to deal with him was a gun dealer who suspected that he was as crazy as he turned out to be.

Since the mid-1960s, the nra has been urging that government, at all levels, take steps to force the dangerously mentally ill to get treatment or to get them off the street, nra members have argued that information on those legally adjudicated as mentally ill and potentially dangerous be included in the federal databases checked when one purchases a firearm. More than 20 states still have failed to input this information—which means that some people who shouldn’t be allowed to purchase any firearm can do so.

Not everyone suffering mental distress, mild depression or dozens of other conditions that can, and perhaps should, be treated by mental health professionals is dangerous. But violent schizophrenics and others who often refuse to take the medications that allow them to function as part of a civilized society should be monitored and kept away from potentially dangerous weapons. In recent decades more and more people as dangerous as the Newtown murderer and the New York subway killer have been “deinstitutionalized.” Now, they are either in prison because they have already lost control of their emotions, or wandering our streets because they haven’t yet committed the sort of violent acts that will finally force lax law enforcement and mental health bureaucracies to take action.

Had we come to grips with this problem earlier, the man who died on the subway tracks in New York would be alive. So might the children killed in Newtown in December and too many others who have died at the hands of deranged killers over the last few decades.

It is impossible to predict who might turn into the next subway killer or school attacker. That’s why security is so important and why so many schools already protect their students by posting police or armed security guards within their schools. But people who notice the signs exhibited by the clearly disturbed should bring their concerns to the attention of school officials or police who, in turn, should act on those concerns.

In fact, predicting who might be mentally dangerous is complicated and fraught with dangers of its own of which we should be aware. Overreaction should be avoided. Civil and law enforcement authorities should never be given the power to willy-nilly categorize people as some sort of threat as an excuse to deprive them of their Second Amendment rights. But there are those who are clearly dangerous, and ignoring the threat they pose is just as dangerous.

The mothers of the Newtown and New York killers knew something had to be done and both tried to get the authorities to act. Both failed and as a result 27 innocents never saw the New Year.

“National Conversation” Is One-Sided

The new watchword for the firearm-confiscation movement in America is “national conversation”—a term that takes on ominous meaning for millions of peaceable, innocent gun owners, especially in light of President Barack Obama’s threat to institute new, draconian gun bans and universal gun-owner registration schemes.

With the mass murder of school children in Newtown, Conn., by a clearly deranged killer, the nature of this “conversation” has been penned by the key figures in the gun-ban movement—from the president, to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to U.S.. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to the Brady Campaign, to literally hundreds of editorial writers.

Much of the “conversation” in the media has been a new level of hatred against gun owners, the Second Amendment and those who defend the right to keep and bear arms, specifically the NRA.

A commentary by retired opinion writer Donald Kaul in the Des Moines Register provides a hint of the real meaning of this “conversation.” Here are Kaul’s demands:

“Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. …

“Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that prying the guns from their cold, dead hands’ thing works for me.”

If that last part of the “conversation” sounds unhinged, try this from the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who was the gun control majordomo in the Bill Clinton White House:

“Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option.”

Confiscation. There it is. Finally, the end game has been spelled out by someone in power. No one in the gun-ban crowd has denied it. Forcible government taking of constitutionally protected private property is now just part of the “conversation.”

“Conversation” means they dictate and gun owners obey.

Dan Gross of the Brady Campaign has bragged that “… the national conversation about common sense solutions to gun violence continues to gain unprecedented momentum.” (Emphasis added.)

Creating hatred for NRA members is a major part of Gross’ “national conversation.” He praised radical journalist Jason Whitlock, who wrote:

“I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don’t have our best interests [at heart].”

Here’s another example from the “gun-banner” blog, which quotes the Obama 2012 platform stating: “We believe in an honest, open national conversation about firearms.” Those words are followed with this:

“As a violence policy advocate I support having reasoned discourse about common sense gun laws that will register and eventually disarm the public. …”

How about this from Scott Blakeman, a left-wing Fox News contributor, as a “conversation” opener:

“The National Rifle Association essentially harbors terrorists, by resisting any attempt to apply sensible regulations on gun use.

“… The President must start the national conversation about gun violence right now.”

But this “conversation” isn’t just about semi-auto rifles. Consider the words of White House confidant, frequent Obama water-carrier and national commentator Bob Beckel:

“The culture of violence with handguns in this country is out of control. … If it was up to me, you’d ban all handguns, every one of them. Burn them. Get rid of them.”

Then there is CNN’s Piers Morgan who said flat-out on his Dec. 3 program, “I’d remove every gun in America. Boom.” That’s the essence of the “national conversation.”

Ask yourself, what is there to talk about? Power for them, and the total, ultimate loss of our liberty for us.

For gun owners—especially for NRA members—when it comes to the Second Amendment, the truth is there is nothing to talk about beyond what the Founding Fathers intended.

The word “conversation” in normal context means there’s a give and take. But in the context of “gun control,” it will always mean one thing: they take, and we are SUPPOSED TO GIVE.

For at least 50 years—beginning with the birth of the gun control movement in the United States— the gun-banners’ part of the “conversation” about the Second Amendment was universally the same: “The individual right never existed. There is nothing to discuss. It is a fact.”

In their “conversation,” only government had the “right.” That “conversation” from the gun-banners didn’t end when the U.S. Supreme Court twice upheld an individual right to keep and bear arms for all Americans; it just changed. They are now saying the right exists, but government can infringe the Second Amendment into oblivion.

The one-sided conversation will never end, but the facts are on our side. Our part of the conversation is to ask, “What don’t you anti-gun opportunists understand about ‘No’?”

After all, the facts, the law, and the Constitution are clearly on our side. When it comes to the principle of losing freedom, there is nothing to talk about. We must stand and fight.

John Locke, who was crucial to the Founders’ thinking, held that we are possessed of the inalienable right to own our bodies.  From this we get the “life, liberty and pursuit of property” construction that was subtly changed in the Declaration to make more explicit the personal nature of property.  And from the notion that one controls one’s body and may defend it, we get the attendant right to bear arms; you can’t defend yourself with parchment.  This progressive notion that the police and armed forces should hold a monopoly on the legal violence necessary to defend each individual thus betrays both foundational and fundamental principles and the traditionally auxiliary role of law enforcement in American society.  The police, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, are employees of the public and not the sole enforcers of public order.  Americans who would leave the means of violence in the hands of the state and, inevitably, the criminals, would remove the means of self-defense from the one group in American life for whom the social compact was constructed:  the People.  This will not do.

When Thomas Jefferson drafted his constitution for Virginia, the proposed qualification that “no free man shall be debarred the use of arms” was undoubtedly designed to explain that slaves were excluded from the right.  But in doing so, it betrayed something else.  To found a government on the principle that “We the People” are sovereign, but then to fail to entrust those for whom the state was constructed with the means by which, as a desperate last resort, that state might be forcibly dissolved, would have been to undermine the whole edifice.  “Governments” in Europe, wrote James Madison, “are afraid to trust the people with arms.”   Not so America.

These ideas had a profound effect on me, ushering in the startling realization that, far from merely being a larger England, the United States had become something quite different:  an incubator of lost or diluted British freedoms.  As the Liberty Bell was originally cast in England, but rang out in America, so those guarantees of the “rights, liberties and immunities of free and natural-born subjects have found their truest expression across the Atlantic.  “That rifle on the wall of the laborers’ cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy,” wrote George Orwell in 1941.  “It is our job to see that it stays there.”

In Britain and beyond, that rifle has long been taken away.  England’s bell has fallen silent.  Americans would do well to ensure that the crack in theirs grows no larger.

I foresee the economy not being the biggest problem citizens are going to face with Obama’s second term. Social issues dealing with personal freedoms and liberty are going to be a battle.

As a veteran, this is the worst slap in the face I have ever gotten.  It feels like it did walking past protesters when I got off the plane coming back from Vietnam.

It isn’t so much the derision I feel for uneducated voters who, without a doubt, felt inclined to follow the bankrupt ideology of redistributionist economics, and those unable to understand history as far as liberty is concerned. I fully believe the NRA article about the loss of our Second Amendment. After the ratification of the U.N. Treaty on Small Arms Trade, I wonder what right I will have to legally keep my firearms.  I further wonder about my freedoms in general at stake.

We simply cannot lose the ‘right’ to bear arms. This battle will be fought neighborhood by neighborhood.  We cannot go quietly, for if we do, we are absolutely doomed to repeat history, involving everything that was bad in bad governments and bad governing.

 

 

America’s 1^5T Freedom

 

February 2013

by WAYNE LAPlERRE

 Executive Vice President NRA

 

 

NRA Announces National School Shield Emergency Response Program

The following is the transcript of the speech Wayne LaPierre gave on December 21, 2012, to announce the NRA’s plans to institute a new model program that schools across the country may adopt to protect our most precious resource, our children.

The National Rifle Association’s 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the families of Newtown, Connecticut… who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime. Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the nra has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

 

Now, we must speak… for the safety of our nation’s children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one—nobody—has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them—it’s our right to protect them.

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk. How have our nation’s priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses—even sports stadiums—are all protected by armed security.

 

We care about the president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.

 

Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family—our children—we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

 

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters—people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day.  And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school he’s already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame—from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave—while provoking others to try to make their mark? A dozen more killers?  A hundred?  More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

 

And the fact is, that wouldn’t even begin to address the much larger and more lethal criminal class: Killers, robbers, rapists and drug-gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40 percent —to the lowest levels in a decade.

 

So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.

 

And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: its called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?

 

Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like “American Psycho” and “Natural Born Killers” that are aired like propaganda loops on “Splatterdays” and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it “entertainment.”

 

But is that what it really is? Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to .shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes—every minute of every day of every month of every year.

 

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18. And throughout it all, too many in our national media… their corporate owners … and their stockholders… act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators. Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away.

 

The media call semi-automatic firearms “machine guns”—they claim these civilian semi-automatic firearms ” are used by the military, and they tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers… when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don’t know what they’re talking about!

 

Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban—or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people — will protect us where 20,000 others have failed!

 

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing a& those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable—through no fault of their own—to stop it

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 9-1-1 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away… or one that is instantly right there?

 

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow morning: “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the nra’s answer to everything!”

 

Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word “gun” automatically become a bad word? A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn’t a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 9-1-1, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there, fast enough to protect you.

 

So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect our president or our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in their schools?

 

They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them–it’s our right to protect them.

 

You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we -should put armed security in every School, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy HookElementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

 

Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

 

Are the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the nra and America’s gun owners that you’re willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one—regardless of personal political prejudice—has the right to impose that sacrifice.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year’s budget, and scrapped “Secure Our Schools” policing grants in next years budget.

 

With all the foreign aid with all the money in the federal budget, we can’t afford to put a police officer in every school? Even if they did that, politicians have no business—and no authority—denying us the right, the ability, or the moral imperative to protect ourselves and our Loved ones from harm.

 

Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active; reserve and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make Americas schools safer—relying on the brave men and women of America’s police force.

The budgets of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now.

 

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school—and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

 

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work—and by that I mean armed security.

 

Right now, today, every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers and local authorities—and draw upon every resource available—to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now.

 

Every school will have a different solution based on its own unique situation.  Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now.  And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.

 

Our training programs are the most advanced in the world.  That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now.  We did it for the nation’s defense industries and military installations during World War II, and we’ll do it for our schools today.

 

The nra is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.

 

Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson will lead this effort as National Director of the National School Shield Program, with a budget provided by the nra of whatever scope the task requires. His experience as a U.S. Attorney, Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security will give him the knowledge and expertise to hire the most knowledgeable and credentialed experts available anywhere, to get this program up and running from the first day forward.

 

If we truly cherish our kids more than our money or our celebrities, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible and the security that is only available with a properly trained—armed—good guy.

 

Under Asa’s leadership, our team of security experts will make this the best program in the world for protecting our children at school, and we will make that program available to every school in America free of charge.

 

That’s a plan of action that can, and will, make a real, positive and indisputable difference in the safety of our children—starting right now.

 

There’ll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time and this is the day for decisive action.

We can’t wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act We can’t lose precious time debating legislation that won’t work We mustn’t allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us.

 

We must act now.

 

For the sake of the safety of every child in America, I call on every parent, every teacher, every school administrator and every law enforcement officer in this country to join us in the National School Shield Program and protect our children with the only line of positive defense that’s tested and proven to work

 

And now, to tell you more about the program, I’d like to introduce the head of that effort—a former U.S. congressman, former U.S.. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas and former administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Honorable Asa Hutchinson.

 

 

 

Mr. Hutchinson’s Response

    Thank you, Wayne.

 

One of the first responsibilities I learned at Homeland Security was the importance of protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure, and there is nothing more critical to our nation’s well being than our children’s safety. They are this country’s future and her most precious resource.

 

We all understand that our children should be safe in school, but it is also essential that the parents have confidence in that safety. As a result of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, that confidence has been shattered. Assurance of school safety must be restored with a sense of urgency.

 

That is why I am grateful that the nra has asked me to lead a team of security experts to assist our schools, parents and communities. I took this assignment on one condition: That my team of experts will be independent and will be guided solely by what are the best security solutions for the safety of our children while at school.

 

Even though we are just starting this process, I envision this initiative will have two key elements:

 

First, it would be based on a model security plan—a comprehensive strategy for school security based on the latest, most up-to-date technical information from the foremost experts in their fields.

 

This model security plan will serve as a template—a set of best practices, principles and guidelines that every school in America can tweak, if needed, and tailor to their own set of circumstances.

 

Every school and community is different, but this model security plan will allow every school to choose among its various components to develop a school safety strategy that fits their own unique situation, whether it’s a large urban school, a small rural school or anything in between.

Armed, trained, qualified school security personnel will be one element of that plan, but by no means the only element. If a school decides for whatever reason that it doesn’t want or need armed security personnel that, of course, is a decision to be made by parents at the local level.

 

The second point I want to make is that this will be a program that doesn’t depend on massive funding from local authorities or the federal government Instead; it’ll make use of local volunteers serving in their own communities.

 

In my home state of Arkansas, my son was a volunteer with a local group called “Watchdog Dads,” who volunteer their time at schools to patrol playgrounds and provide a measure of added security. Whether they’re retired police, retired military or rescue personnel, I think there are people in every community in this country that would be happy to serve, if only someone asked them and gave them the training and certification to do so.

 

The National Rifle Association is the natural, obvious choice to sponsor this program. Their gun safety, marksmanship and hunter education programs have set the standard for well over a century.  Over the past 25 years, their Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program has taught over 26 million kids that real guns aren’t toys and, today, child gun accidents are at the lowest levels ever recorded.

 

School safety is a complex issue with no simple, single solution.

 

But I believe trained, qualified, armed security is one key component among many that can provide the first line of deterrence as well as the last line of defense. And I welcome the opportunity to serve in this vital, potentially lifesaving effort.

 

Thank you very much. ©

 

 

 

 

We’re told that life is a gracious gift to us. ????????????

I’ve been told that our lives are learning experiences.

To learn from them and keep moving forward and upward.

I’m also told to appreciate the gifts we do have.

And not to concentrate on the negatives.

When I was a little kid and didn’t feel mortality, I thought I’d have the world by the balls by age 30. I looked in the mirror today and didn’t recognize the person standing in front of me, but rather saw only a 61 year old man who accomplished nothing in life, has left more with the fbi than his own soul and has nothing to offer it or others, while leaving no legacy behind.

To what end was it all for? To learn? To Grow?

I don’t understand what I’ve truly learned or how I’ve grown, other than that life is composed mostly of unhappiness, sadness and loneliness.

We’re born alone and I know we will be alone when we leave this life, but to base everything on faith? I’m just not learning from it or getting it here.

Faith? Learning experience? Immortality?

I find happiness when asleep and not dreaming. Just plain not self aware. The same as the state when we all never existed the first 19 billion years during the creation of the universe. Non existence. That’s where it’s really at. I think that’s the thing to long for. Stop over analyzing life and to simply leave things at that. It could make the little bit of life we have here so much easier to assimilate.

If God doesn’t exist, then life is ultimately meaningless.

Certainly we can try to create meaning for our lives by inventing certain projects and purposes to occupy ourselves until out deaths. This will supply a subjective sense of meaning. Ultimately however, those projects and purposes in and of themselves will make no differences in the end and so will not and cannot be a source of ultimate significance for us. When there is no objective purpose, it in due course then makes no difference whether our petty projects are fulfilled or not. It simply supplies us with the illusion of significance and meaning, but like the shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic, they are inconsequential in light of our fate.

If God does not exist, then we must ultimately live without hope.

If on the other hand, God does in fact exist, then not only does life have meaning and hope, but we can therefore come to know Him, know His Love personally, and all that is greatly given to us in this life. It is with this gift, my children, that I so very much want to believe in God, for I need my children’s love and to give that love back so desperately.

Dedicated to Petrina, Geo and Sal

Everyone has heard that life is not fair. We all have our own personal issues that can relate to that statement, lest I surely and sorely have mine.

The problem is that it could all for the most part be resolved if it were not for the self absorbing nature of the human species. Absolute truth gets walled and derailed by this.

If anything defines the modern age, it is surely the worship of reason. To be modern, we tell ourselves, is to be rational. Anything that doesn’t carry the imprimatur of reason is deemed to be no more than dogma and mumbo-jumbo belonging to the unenlightened past. It is this basis I speak of. Science is held accountable for as well as delivering a lethal blow to faith while giving rise to a supposedly secular culture, which will have no truck with claims to the existence of a Higher Power. They are simply dismissed as the superstitious beliefs of a bygone primitive age of myth, bigotry and all born out of fear.

Yet this central claim of the modern world is not borne out by its own behavior. Far from basking in an age of reason, society is characterized by a profound and widespread irrationality. Society has filled this gap with a range of bizarre, irrational, pre-modern beliefs and behavior steeped only in the sciences.

The post faith world is struggling to adjust to a profound loss of moral and philosophical moorings. There is an ever more tendency to live in a fantasy world filled with irrational beliefs in which myth is thought to restore order to our chaotic lives, and where psychological projection creates the comforting illusion of control.

Presented with this absurd display of hubris and narcissism, society has reacted by junking rationality altogether and elevating much nonsense, i.e. such as the starry eyed fascination with the rich, hollyrot personas, those in power, government officials and law, just for the sake that it is law and is considered indisputable.

This urge to impose some artificial order through myth and fantasy is not confined to just those precipices either. The climate of un-reason has also profoundly affected attitudes on the big issues of the day. Obviously, there will always be differences of opinion and interpretation on which side of an issue to favor, however, what is notable about some of this today is the extent to which it has become all but impossible for factual evidences to make any contribution without upsetting the status quo.

Too many times facts are ignored as if they didn’t exist, or they are denied on the premise that they are either evil. deranged or will upset the masses. What I wish to convey in following journal entries is an examination of evidence, reason and logic which I’ve found to have been exiled in favor of irrationality, ideology and prejudice. Issues which for the most part has much of the collective consciousness of society tightly closed shut.

 

God wants you to know… that you don’t go to find meaning in life.   You bring meaning to your life.  Meaning isn’t something out there waiting for you to discover.  The meaning of your life is what you infuse it with – beauty or ugliness, happiness or sadness.  It is totally your choice, and God wants it to be your choice, but the right choice, because God gave you free will.

To realize
The value of ten years:
Ask a newly
Divorced couple.

To realize
The value of four years:
Ask a graduate.

To realize
The value of one year:
Ask a student who
Has failed a final exam.

To realize
The value of nine months:
Ask a mother who gave birth to a still born.

To realize
The value of one month:
Ask a mother
who has given birth to
A premature baby.

To realize
The value of one week:
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize
The value of one hour:
Ask the lovers who are waiting to Meet.

To realize
The value of one minute:
Ask a person
Who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize
The value of one-second:
Ask a person
Who has survived an accident…

To realize
The value of one millisecond:
Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics

Time waits for no one.