Dialogue 1: Marxist Estrangement

A short explanation before the post... There is an established history of public conversations. In the heyday of English literary work, authors would debate through newspaper editorials. Many correspondences are published posthumously. Now, my brother and I, living well after the newspaper, and not quite dead yet, would like to publish discussions. Not necessarily because we consider ourselves intelligent enough to listen to, but more likely because it is through discussion that two or more can come to a common understanding of the truth. Further, through discussion ideas are honed and sharpened, made more poignant and brought into better light. Meanings are clearer. And so, I present the first of, perhaps, many.

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Ambrose: You
I have a question that I wanted to discuss with you
Marxism

Sam Ignes: Umm...'kay.

Ambrose: Marx states that factory labor leads to four kinds of alienation in the worker: (1) alienation from the object, because he works on physical material which he doesn't own; (2) alienation from his human nature (or species being, as Marx terms it), because it is part of man's essential being to labor and shape the earth after his own image, while factory labor places man in service to his labor, working in order to subsist; (3) alienation from himself, because to separate him from physical belongings and his own nature is to separate him from himself, so that he loses what is human and lives to satisfy his animal functions; and (4) alienates him from other men, since this economic state of being places him in adversity (competition) with his fellow man, and especially his employer.
That was what we read - that's my condensation of an essay that Marx wrote
The question is, given that factory labor alienates man in the above way, describe an economic system which does not alienate the laborer.
Any thoughts?

Sam Ignes: ...capitalistic redistribution?

Ambrose: Flesh that out.
Define "capitalistic"

Sam Ignes: I'll do it using your bullet-points above, then, I guess.

Ambrose: Probably the best way.

Sam Ignes: Capitalism is an economic system fueled by the competitive nature of man, embodied in a constant rise in GDP and quality of service.
Redistribution is a means of eliminating homelessness and extreme poverty by providing welfare only to people who have no housing or job for a period of time until they can acquire aforementioned things.
Both are severely more complex than that, but those should satisfy as base definitions.

Ambrose: Ok

Sam Ignes: Okay, I'm gonna have to go out of order of your bullet-points for this to make sense.

Ambrose: That's fine
That's the order that Marx uses for his argument, but you can go out of order for yours.

Sam Ignes: 'Kay
(2) This system allows all men to work in a creative fashion because it creates constant need in every field of labor; the applied interest of men promotes their intuitive ability, thus shaping the world.
(3) The prevention of complete poverty and constant improvement of average quality of life allows man to be "in touch" the the physical and his belongings.
...I don't think you explained (1) in very full detail, since if whatever man works on causes him to be distanced from ALL objects, he's pretty much screwed.

Ambrose: it's not the fact that he's working on an object, it's that he's giving his labor, or his life - there are only so many hours in his life, and he's pouring those hours into an object which he cannot keep, control, or use. Monetary payment doesn't compensate, since he's missing his own life.
You can't buy back life.

Sam Ignes: Marx's first three points rely entirely upon Man's inability to acquire objects.
The fourth is brought about by man's good nature in prosperity.


Ambrose: Keep in mind, Sam, that Marx is talking about mid-1800's London, where there is no general prosperity. The working class lived in slums much worse than poor America. Every member of a household worked at least 12 hours a day in the most unsafe environment for pay which was barely enough to feed them.
Labor is still like this - sweat shops in Southeast Asia come to mind.

Sam Ignes: So?
I wasn't told to make Southeast Asia into a haven in a day.
I was told to describe an economic system.
Moral standards should be applied to personal experience, not vice-versa.

Ambrose: Well, keep in mind that in a capitalistic system, where by definition (as given by Adam Smith), the motivation for increasing the general wealth of society is personal gain, the most profit is made by paying the factory workers least; it will always be, if not standard policy, at least moral temptation to pay workers just enough to keep them alive.

Sam Ignes: Ingenuity promotes automation.

Ambrose: I know, it's a moral problem, but moral problems exist. We're not talking about an ideal society that exists on paper, we're talking about an actual society.
Do you mean that automation will eventually take the place of human workers?

Sam Ignes: On paper, yes.
...oh, wait, in real life, too.

Ambrose: ah
Are you saying that we have replaced manual labor with automation?

Sam Ignes: Yup.

Ambrose: Sam.
We live in a global economy.
Sweatshops in Asia and south America, which produce a large mass of our goods, are part of our economy.
Those sweatshops consist of people working for less than 10% of American minimum wage, in extremely unsafe conditions.
Automation has not replaced manual labor.

Sam Ignes: I didn't say it has.
I said it would.
Sorry, my communication failure. :P

Ambrose: Ok

Sam Ignes: Basically, Marx makes the case in a nutshell that "labor" reduces humanity in some way.
As a solution to the problem he himself creates, one must eliminate labor.
So, on paper, I did. :D
Shit just got reeeeeeeal.

Ambrose: No, he makes the case that working for a pitiful wage in bad conditions (which scenario is created by a capitalist economy) alienates man from those four things.
It doesn't completely take them away, it just alienates them.

Sam Ignes: Okay.
I didn't say the world IS the way I described.
I was painting an economic system that would solve the problem presented.
Mind you, I didn't provide a step-by-step on how any part of our global economy could get there; for that, I'd have to get more personal.

Ambrose: Right, I don't need a step-by-step plan, I just want a description of a system.

Sam Ignes: Yyyyyup.

Ambrose: But I think you're missing a bit of what Marx is saying, which is possibly due to my bad explanation
It's not the work itself which alienates man from himself, his nature, the object, and other men
It's the conditions under which man works in a capitalist, factory society.

Ambrose: Pivotal things about that condition which lead to that separation: he labors on that which is not his, he is living in abject poverty, and he is forced to work in order to sustain his physical existence.
So, instead of creating out of his own energy under his own directive, he is forced to use his creative faculty in a non-creative manner.
No match-stick factory worker takes pride in his work. "He's lighting that cigarette with one of my company's matches! I take pride in that!" No factory worker would ever think, say, or believe that.

Sam Ignes: And the way I boiled that down in order to change it was to say that the workers had to adapt the economy, and so I made the economy in such a way that it adapted to the workers.
Man can become interested in his work by creating a need for it and the means to achieve it.

Ambrose: Just because it fills an economic need in society does not mean that it fills a need in man's core being.

Sam Ignes: But Marx demands that man's core being is downtrodden by the economy because of the position it places men in.

Ambrose: right.
that is what Marx says.
Let me illustrate it with an example.
Picture your training and bike racing. It's work - you put in your hours intending to reap a benefit in your racing. When you win a race, you have a sense of fulfillment and joy, right? (along with the adrenaline rush)

Sam Ignes: And podium girls, yeah.

Ambrose: You don't get podium girls. You're not that good.
Alright. Suppose you took those same training hours, and instead of working toward your own end in your bike racing career, you powered a generator in a factory for minimum wage. No racing, no podium girls, just $7.45 an hour. Even if that filled a societal need, and you got paid enough to support yourself, it wouldn't be that same exhilarating feeling, would it?
That's the difference between alienating and non-alienating labor, which I think Marx is trying to point out.
It may not be the best example, but it shows what I mean.

Sam Ignes: So, man must be fulfilled by his work in order to not be alienated?

Ambrose: Basically.
That's what I posit, anyway.
It's kind of a mash between the Platonic idea that every man naturally wants to do a certain kind of work (the sword smith is born to be a sword smith, the farmer born to be a farmer, etc.) and a Chestertonian distributist idea, where each man is financially independent, and large corporations don't exist.

Sam Ignes: There's nothing wrong with large corporations.
There is something wrong with oppressive corporations.

Ambrose: Well, let me explain a bit here.

Sam Ignes: Please do! <3

Ambrose: Large corporations originate in the division of labor (division of labor = instead of one man making one thing, 10 men each make one part of that one thing in an assembly line). Dividing labor allows them to produce more quickly, and thus gain an excess - more than what society around them needs. They can thus sell for profit.
That's how capitalism originated back in the 1700s.
In order to have those 10 people (or 1000s of people, depending on the company), you need a large workforce of people whose only job is to do that one tiny piece of making the whole product.
This is only possible in a large corporation - a single-employee small business _by definition_ cannot divide labor, because he simply doesn't have enough men.

Sam Ignes: However, a single-person business cannot apply a service to a large population.
e.g. phone service.

Ambrose: Interesting argument.

Sam Ignes: Hold up a sec

Ambrose: But phone service is something that a government could - and possibly should - handle very well.

Sam Ignes: What I mean to put forth is that dividing labor (government is labor, too) is not necessarily bad; if research and development is labor, and labor shouldn't be divided, then there wouldn't be much R&D getting done.

Ambrose: Research (actually scientific work being done by scientists) is not necessarily unfulfilling, like Marx would posit that factory work is.
Sam Ignes: But you're using "labor" synonymously with "factory work."

Ambrose: Yeah. Research isn't "labor," it's qualitatively different than tightening the same screw on each product that rolls past on a conveyor belt for 12 hours.

Sam Ignes: Then how do you eliminate the need for jobs such as tightening the same nut and bolt 8 hours a day?

Ambrose: By denying that it's a need.
It's only a "need" in a society where the final end is material gain - you have to make a surplus, in order to sell enough to make a profit.

Sam Ignes: So, how do you change the "end" of society from material gain?

Ambrose: Remember, this isn't a step-by-step plan, it's a description of a society.
Suppose you had a society where people lived in groups or villages, not gigantic super-urban cities with millions of people.
Those people could support themselves materially - they could grown their own food, built their own tools, organize themselves in their own affairs...
Granted, they would not have material excess.
But you don't need to have material excess - that's why it's called excess or surplus.
The important thing is that each person could build and work on his own things, selling them or keeping them as he saw fit.

Poetry - A Question of Essence

Poetry is something which should be taken seriously, but not too seriously at the same time. Obviously, one cannot slap words into a meter and call it a poem. A lawyer cannot write his case in dactyls and outdo Homer; no, a poem is a conscious effort to describe beauty through language - to wed formal beauty (in the Platonic sense) with material form (in the linguistic sense). It combines left-brain meter, rhyme schemes, and vocabulary with right-brain wit, ingenuity, and wonder. The poet takes the subjective experience he has of beauty, and crafts it into an object, making the subjective objective. For a poem to be good, then, its form must accurately incarnate its content - the indescribable beauty of the subject must be realized within the definite confines of the object. This is not possible without a certain gravity - the poet must seriously apply himself to the rhythm of his words, and unite himself to their flow. However, he cannot even begin to describe the beauty he sees if he is incapable of seeing beauty, which requires enough levity and self-detachment to actually see something worth writing a poem about.

The subject in view is always beauty (or potentially the lack thereof). If a poem sought to describe truth, it would be philosophy; if it sought to convince, it would be rhetoric; and if it sought to simply describe, it would be physics. The point of a poem about a flower is not the flower itself, although the flower is a necessary component. The point of a floral poem is the irreplaceable beauty which the flower brings into material existence. The poem points to a glory and wonder which, without such flowers to incarnate it, would remain eternally unreachable in metaphysical reality, without reaching those of us bound to a physical plane. A poem which simply lists the material aspects of the flower, counting pollen and petals and seeds, would miss the point of both the flower and the poetry. At the same time, however, the poem is not a place to preach about essence, nature, God, or beauty. Words which talked about how beautiful a flower was, how important that beauty was for us humans, and how wonderful it is that we have flowers, would be more suitable to a pulpit than a poem. The poet conveys his experience of beauty to his reading audience dynamically by allowing them a glimpse of what he sees, physically and metaphysically.

Poetry, then, is less of a lump of words, a description, or a linguistic form for displaying emotion, but a delicate balance between the physical medium used and the metaphysical reality expressed. The poet has encountered a metaphysical reality through something physical, and, in order to communicate this experience, he sets it to words. The poem follows the same form as the experience - just as the poet encountered beauty through matter, he expresses beauty through words. The great poet is the one who most successfully allows his reader to see the wonder he himself witnessed; the one who can see the glory of the face of God, and share that vision, allowing others to see just as he sees. The great poet is the one who selflessly points beyond himself toward a radical encounter with beauty itself. The great poet is the one who, when asked why he writes poetry, can simply say, "look and see for yourself."

A Fundamental Flaw in Adam Smith's Conception of an Industrialized Capitalism

I wrote this as a school paper, but thought that the topic was relevant enough to post here.

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There is a fundamental flaw behind Adam Smith's great, wealthy, stable capitalist economy. Perhaps Smith, who wrote during the innocent beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Britain,1 could not foresee the consequences his theory would inevitably bring about, as industrialization progressed. Perhaps, as an academic, he simply could not sympathize with the plight of the worker. At any rate, the ungoverned capitalistic manufactories, which The Wealth of Nations describes, while enriching the whole nation, forces the individual worker into a position of dependence upon a large, impersonal corporation. Such a position is detrimental to the well being of the individual worker. This flaw, however, is not apparent. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate that this flaw is present in any capitalistic industrial economy.

Before showing the flaws inherent in the capitalist utopia which Adam Smith describes, it must first be examined. I will do this by looking to Smith's Wealth of Nations itself. Smith begins by pointing out that the wealth of a nation consists in its material goods and its monetary holdings.2 A country can increase its wealth substantially by means of the division of labor. As Smith states, “The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity and judgment with which it is anywhere directed or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor.”3 The division of labor consists in breaking down the process of manufacturing some item into its component tasks, and then assigning each of these individual tasks to a single person. This allows a group of people together to make significantly more of the product than the same amount of people could individually. Smith demonstrates this with the example of the pin-making industry,
One man draws out the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pin is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands...[they] could therefore make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day.4

Because the wealthiest nation is the one which has the most money and goods, and the division of labor thus produces the most goods for the least amount of money, the country which has most subjected its industry to the division of labor and industrialization is the richest. The factory, then, where workers perform one out of the multitude of tasks required to make a pin, is the centerpiece and cornerstone of Adam Smith's capitalist economy. This glorious factory will make the whole nation rich.

This economic theory which Smith proposes seems to make sense. The whole nation is enriched by factories. However, Smith does not take the individual's well being into account when he discusses the wealth of the whole nation. In fact, his factories are detrimental to the well being of the individual worker. To attempt to prove this, I will first point out that not every citizen of a rich nation is himself wealthy. Second I will show the worker is entirely dependent upon the large company who owns the factory for his livelihood. And third, I will show that the same company does not need to support the worker.

First, whether every citizen of a wealthy nation is wealthy. After all, if the whole nation becomes wealthier because of factories and the division of labor, and if the nation is made up of individuals, then the individuals should be made wealthy by industrialization. However, that hypothetical syllogism does not completely take into account how the wealth of a nation functions. Even if the total wealth of a nation is great, the wealth of individual people is not necessarily so. If the average national wealth is ten thousand dollars, then both individual A and B might have ten thousand dollars. However, it could also be the case that individual A has twenty thousand dollars, while individual B has none whatsoever. In that second case, the national average remains the same as the first, but individual B is living in poverty. Thus, I cannot conclude from the premise “the nation is wealthy” that “the individual citizens are wealthy.”

Second, the hired factory laborer is under the unfortunate circumstance of being unable to provide for himself without wages from the factory. The workman is unable to produce food except through wages in the living conditions demanded by factories. Because the factory needs quite a few workmen, the owners of the business construct large housing developments near the factories so that their workers can live close by. Dramatic numbers of people moved into these factory slums during the industrial revolution. In 1801, the population in British cities comprised twenty percent of the total population of Great Britain. This increased to forty percent by 1851, and to 75% by 1901.5 I have seen such slums myself in Middletown, Ohio. Near the old factories are rows and rows of small, identical houses on quarter-acre lots. Any laborer living in such housing developments cannot grow his own food on such small property or under such conditions. Hunting or raising livestock is completely out of the question, since there simply is not enough room, and wild animals are scared away by so many people. As a result, the only option a laborer has to acquire food is buying it. Since all of the money which he has comes from the factory wages, he is completely dependent upon those wages for his food.

Further, Adam Smith himself admits that the factory worker does not become a skilled worker,6 thus preventing him from using his “trade,” if it can be called that, independent of the factory. If the process of making a pin is split up into eighteen different parts, each individual worker only knows one of these. The worker, if fired, cannot go elsewhere, relying on his pin-making to support him. He only knows how to “draw out the wire,” “cut it,” or “grind it at the top to receive the head.”7 He could not make a single pin on his own, as Smith admits.8 Even another pin-making factory, if there is one, might have different machinery, which the laborer would have to learn to operate from scratch. The workman who depends upon his wage for food, then, is not a skilled workers, with a definite trade by which to make a living. He therefore depends entirely upon the factory for any money they might receive, and thus for his very livelihood.

Third, then, consider the factory. The factory would seem to depend upon its workers. After all, the factory's source of income is selling the goods which it produces. The workers are necessary to make those goods, and they also serve as possible consumers for those goods. However, the above argument, again, considers the workers as a group, and not individually. When examining the effect on the single workmen out of the many, the facts do not apply in the same way. The companies have great power over the individual. G. K. Chesterton, a political theorist who offers an opinion from the end of the Industrial Revolution, states that the big companies have “...the money, the machinery, the rather mechanical majority...”9 In the game of life and death between the individual worker and the factory, the factory holds all the cards.

Although the factory may depend on the workers as a group, it does not depend upon the individual worker. If one worker quits, is fired, falls sick, or requests better wages, there are plenty of other potential workers to replace him. The factory owner knows that there are plenty of people who are willing to work for whatever wage, under whatever conditions, if one man is unable or is not willing.

Further, the factory does not depend on any individual worker to consume the goods it produces. Again, there are plenty of other people who will purchase the goods to support the company, and perhaps even to make the company owner fairly wealthy. The individual worker's participation in the capitalist, manufactory system does not determine its success. There are enough members of the working class that one individual worker does not matter to the factory.

If the factory does not need any individual worker, then what guarantees his safety and well being? The factory wage he receives could easily be given to someone else. And yet the workman has dire need of that wage – without it he cannot feed himself. What assurance can the laborer have of receiving this money? Only the agreement he makes with the factory owner. This is no great comfort. If the only thing between the workman and starvation is his employment, and the factory has no real obligation to employ him, then the industrial manufactory system is certainly not sufficient to provide for the well being of its laborer. The factory owners may call the farmers and country folk to the factory slums with the lure of a wage, but the big businesses cannot support each and every man who answers the call. The factory system envisioned by Adam Smith, while it might enrich the nation, does not adequately protect the well being of the individual worker.

Spring cleaning and a short thought

At some point it occurred to me that the link I had on the side, to a blog by an old friend of mine, was no longer accurate. Somewhere along the flowing stream of time, Garden Variety Rainbows became Clearing the Sill. This change is now reflected in the hyperlink, and is also reflected in the blog's sidebar text. The quality of content, however, has not changed for the worse, and I still recommend you read.

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Recently, I read an article in the New York Post by a certain Michio Kaku describing what life would be like after 89 years of technological advancement. These articles are, often enough, not very scientifically accurate. Journalists seeking a story have an odd tendency to stretch the limits of science, and they expect to suspend the disbelief of their audience enough to sell a magazine. Nature and her laws are somewhat less forgiving. As a result, I am not entirely sure whether we will be able to "cruise at the age of 30 almost indefinitely...," even a century or two down the line.

Why not, though? The only apparent physical obstacle is the body's natural rate of decay. We can replace limbs, hearts, stomachs, livers, and possibly even brains without changing intrinsically who the person is - a person is still the same person after a kidney donor. Therefore, we should be able to indefinitely extend the physical life of a person, even if after 200 years they are on their third entirely new body. What is left unaccounted for?

Unfortunately, the answer is contained in the question above. If the same "person" is still in existence, even without any of the same physical substance, then that person must have a non-physical component. This concept will perhaps be more easily seen if we make a comparison to the computer. If you took a computer, retrieved the data, and then copied the data into an identical computer, the second computer would not be the same as the first one. It might act, look, and contain the same things, but it would not be the same essential being. Human beings are different. Our cells die and get recycled during the course of our lifetimes, even without artificial replacements. Dead skin, dead hair, and waste all fall aside as we age, replaced automatically by new cell growth. Thus, after x amount of time, our bodies are composed of entirely new material, even without replacements. And yet, that body is part of the same person it was beforehand. Similarly, even if our grandfather loses an arm and it is replaced by a prosthetic limb, even if he develops Alzheimer's and loses his memory, and even if every individual, physical part of his body is replaced, we still know Grandpa as Grandpa. As a result of this observation, we must conclude that something outside of the physical, or, to use an Aristotelian term, something metaphysical exists, which contributes something essential to our concept of, and nature as, a person.

This metaphysical part is the part of the person which grows world-weary, and desires to commit suicide after a tragedy. This is the part of the person which refuses human contact for a week after his fiancée dies. Neither of these two events can be explained through physical means, and thus a physical solution (or even genetic engineering) cannot solve a metaphysical problem. Suppose for a moment that, shaky science aside, we could live for hundreds of years on earth. The real question is this: who would want to? The inarguable numbers of divorces, alcoholics, suicides, homicides, and other indicators of human discontent with our current condition show that, perhaps, not very many people would.

This metaphysical understanding of man also extends to our use of the physical world around us. Because our being is metaphysical, we interpret other things metaphysically. Dolls and blankets treasured since childhood acquire a metaphysical significance: who can throw those old soccer trophies away, even though they clutter the shelves?

Further, we experience things metaphysically. Although Kaku states that "cars will be driver-less, using GPS to navigate...," I doubt that this will actually be the case. This scenario can be compared to simply using a bus system now. What's the difference between driving a car and being driven? Or, suppose a robot drove your car while you sat in the passenger seat. What's the difference between a human and a robot driver? The human can enjoy the driving experience. The exhilaration, the freedom, the speed, the power cannot be attributed merely to adrenaline. If it could be, the passenger would feel the same thrill. As any backseat driver can tell you, that is not always the case. Therefore, we must conclude that the reason we drive cars, like the reason we ride bikes, cook meals, play music, or take a walk through the woods, is not from some sort of mere physical necessity - not just because we have to, but would rather not. These actions have a metaphysical significance which is irreplaceable - we want to, whether we have to or not.

In short, where Michio Kaku fails in his study of future technology is here: it examines technological capacity, but not human volition and nature. Human beings want more than long life - they want a happy life, short or long. Human beings do not want to be driven around, human beings want to act and make their own decisions. We do not want life lived for us by scientists, we want to live, love, and laugh on our own. The scientific pseudo-life without a metaphysic, which Kaku offers us as a technological possibility, is worse than death. It would be like living in a prison all of our life, with no freedom to engage in the higher metaphysical realm of joy and pain. As a human being, I reject this future. Give me a car to drive myself - I will risk the crash to gain the freedom. Give me a 70-year life span - I will welcome death as a relief from the misery inherent in this world. Give me the liberty to freely choose those things which I enjoy - even if that means true death as a release from an ultimately unsatisfying world. But, for God's sake, do not chain me to a world I can no longer enjoy for an unbearable eternity.

Reflections on a Novelist

I don't have anything else to post, and I feel like posting something. I wrote this for English class.

Many negative book reviews in publications such as The National Catholic Register share the same error. The reviewers assume that a novelist cannot be Catholic because the morals he presents are too loose, the lives he portrays too pagan, or the universe he describes too full of despair. These reviewers mistake a novel for something else. Those who require a picture of perfection, ideals, or moral uprightness should not look to a writer, but to a preacher; to a homily, not to a novel. “The writer uses his eyes on what he happens to be facing,” states Flannery O'Conner in a discussion of the Catholic novelist, “... He does not decide what would be good for the Christian body and proceed to deliver it.” It is the preacher's job to deliver a wholesome meal to the faithful, whereas the writer merely attempts to portray human existence. An in-depth comparison of these two roles, preacher and writer, perhaps will help determine what a Catholic writer really is.

The confusion between preacher and novelist is understandable. After all, both men seek to put the truth into words. They must follow the limitations of their linguistic art form. Further, both the Catholic novelist and the priest are, in fact, Catholic. Their world views should be very similar, if not the same. To be truly Catholic means to start every action, especially writing and teaching, from Christ and His will. So the Catholic novelist and the Catholic homilist both start from the same place, and use the same tool – language – to accomplish their task.

However, the things they make are very different. A homily and a novel are two separate literary forms, with different purposes and rulebooks. The priest, before he pens his sermon, must first focus on what his flock needs to hear – the homily's basic purpose is to nourish. He then begins his role as an exegete, expanding upon and explaining Scripture to improve the spiritual health of his parishoners. He does not create, and he does not explore uncharted territory – he merely helps those who listen to understand what is already there. The priest is also responsible for the moral edification of the faithful. He needs to tell them what they should do. He deals with the ought – the moral right – not necessarily with the is.

The novelist, on the other hand, is supremely and fundamentally focused on what is in front of him. In his writing, he attempts to show nature accurately to those who read. The moral question of what ought to be done is not quite so relevant to him as to the pastor; what a specific character would do in a given situation is the novelist's focus, not what that character should do. The right and the wrong, as well as the good and the bad are laid open for observation, exploration, and internalization without any forced message. In a truly unique role, the novelist can almost create life for his readers to watch, marveling along with the author at its intricacy. In a novel, the utilitarian function of a homily – the need to nourish the faithful ear – fades as human experience, perhaps even life itself, becomes the focus. As proof, the novel is appreciable by any reader, independent of his circumstances, but the homily must be tailored to its audience.

A novelist, then, serves as a prophet of sorts. He stands in front of all of mankind, not with a convincing, heartbreaking moral, nor with a fabulous picture of eternity, but with a mirror. He shows humanity to itself in all of its sin, in all of its despair, in all of its pagan hedonism, and in all of its hidden jewels. The novelist who is truly Catholic, then, is not the one who produces a good, nourishing feeling, but the one who makes us think, for one moment, about who we really are.

Why is it that...

Why do we Americans demand money, cars, food, bonuses, health care, jobs, or whatever from our government? Why is it that a vast portion (41.71% source) of our national expenditure is devoted to taking money from some people and giving it to others, for whatever purpose (social security, medicare, medicaid...). The government has taken upon itself to take our money from us and distribute it wherever it sees fit - to national parks, to health care, to job security and promotion, to all of the things it spends on. Why exactly is that the government's job? Who decided that, if someone was going to give, it had to be the government? Why should the government be the solution? Besides violating the principle of subsidiarity (under which the smallest, most local authority possible handles the problem), it takes away from our free will. How? Let me show you.

First, I would like to make it clear that whatever money the government spends comes from one of two places. Either it is tax money, or it is interest on foreign loans (trade tariffs, for the sake of this argument, can be regarded as taxes, since the price of the tariff is tacked on top of the price we pay for the goods...). Now, since our nation is so far in debt, I don't think interest on foreign loans is going to get us much revenue. Therefore, any money that the government spends (really) comes out of our own pockets. Thus, any money that the government spends to benefit our lives is our own money! In other words, all of the social security, medicare, and projects that Uncle Sam funds is, by its nature, someone else deciding what is best to do with the profit you worked hard to earn. This clearly showcases one of the core principles of small-government philosophy: whenever a government acts, it necessarily performs this action instead of and at the expense of the people.

Let's elaborate on this idea. First, consider that first part - the government acts instead of the individual. Suppose, for the hypothetical sake of argument, that the government pays for medical care for the elderly (What's that? They already do?). If the government pays for their health care, then no one else can supply that portion of helping their elderly parents. If Grandma is in the hospital at the government's expense, you don't personally have the capacity to give her the gift of paying for it yourself. Health care, living expenses, and public property restoration are all a finite pie. If the government takes all the slices, the individual's opportunity for charity and generosity gets eaten up. And, if we can believe Plato and his Republic, and the purpose of a government is to help foster a virtuous public, then the less opportunity a citizen has to act charity the less the government fulfills its purpose. In terms of true, habituated virtue, "Let me do it for you" is completely opposed to personal growth.

Second, consider the fact that the government acts at the expense of the individual. The government is not some magical sorcerer who gives from an inexhaustible store of enchanted goodies. The government consists of the ruling body, in its laws, elected officials, and available capital. The government is only so rich as its people, and can give nothing of its own. Like I posited above, the government's only income is our tax. Whatever the government gives to the community, it first takes from the community. The government doesn't give, it necessarily, by its nature redistributes. Any government plan that puts money into development or care takes whatever funds it needs from the people. Why would you elect someone who would promise to pay for your education with government money? Government money is a contradiction in terms - that money is and always has been owned by the people. Why would you elect a candidate who promises to give more money to the schools? That money is coming from your pocket, anyway. And, since you know your own, personal needs better than the government does, why do you let them do it for you?

Having established this principle, lets return to our discussion. How does government spending take away from our free will? Let us, for the sake of this argument, assume that "free will" means the ability to say yes or no internally (as differentiated from "freedom," which, according to this discussion might have some qualifications). Now, as stated above, more government spending means less American citizen spending on two counts - one, the government already pays for stuff so we can't, and two, it uses our money to do it so we have less. One of those options clearly takes away from our freedom - if the government spends, then we can't do that spending. That option is no longer there. The way is shut. However, the second, taking our money, removes freedom in a subtler way. Whether for good or ill, we live in a capitalist society, where your abilities as an individual depend upon your affluence and wealth. I am not free to take my children to Disney World if I can't pay for it. This is just a fact. So, if the government takes a good chunk of my paycheck, it is not at my disposal, and my kids will have to hope I can come up with a low-budget vacation plan.

Most importantly, as the government takes our money, they also take the decisions we make with that money. If I decided to spend my money on the health care of my children, then I am virtuous. But if Big Brother decides that I, in my ignorance and lack of virtue, am not capable of making those decisions, and makes them himself, then we have a problem. The fact that the American who earns a modest $40,000 a year pays 15% of that to the government means that the government deigns to revoke that American's right to decide where his hard-earned $6,000 goes. What if he wants to support a local business and stimulate the economy by eating out? He can't with that $6,000. What if he wants to make a charitable donation to a soup kitchen or Boy Scout troop? He can't with that $6,000. What if he wants to pay for his mother's quadruple bypass in gratitude for his upbringing? He can't with that $6,000. And if a man can't do with his own work what he pleases, what can he do? Well, I guess he can scrape by on a tight budget and scrap the charity he would have done otherwise.

This is the crux of the matter: if the government steals from me my ability to do good, and to fail to do good is to lose part of my humanity, then the government is taking from me my humanity. Plain and simple. In days of old, man was constantly in danger of becoming bestial and giving in to his base desires. That is no longer the case. Under the government nanny-state, where no good OR ill action is possible, we become machines working for the cause of whichever president stands behind the control panel. If we are lucky, he will be benevolent in his rule, and seek to at least help us lead contented lives of drudgery. But why should he? He doesn't owe any responsibility to robots deprived of their free will and human dignity.

Guilty 'til proven innocent!

I come across a very common and rather instantaneous fallacy whenever someone asks me why I am concerned over one thing or another. Of course, some instances like homosexuality and abortion occur the most often (thank you, public school system!), but it's a common mistake in moral thinking.

Assumption: What I do/want/think/etc. is morally acceptable until proven otherwise.

I can hear the alarm bells going off in your head, already! But go ahead and think for a bit how you may have done this at any time in the recent past. At any given time you ever said, "can you prove me wrong?" or anything similar to that inquiry, you were likely committing this very logical flaw!

Going back to my original example, whenever someone asks me what my issue is with something, I'll normally give some broad, generality, such as, "throwing rotten tomatoes at prisoners is wrong because it wastes perfectly good rotten tomatoes." Irony far, far aside, in virtually any given case I will be immediately met with the response, "so? You still can't prove it wrong!" Now, understand, this is a rather weak example. There is no prerequisite such as presenting an original example on my part or even the institution of a valid topic. For total srs, someone could just approach me and say out of the blue, "what's wrong with giving food to old, starving men?"

So, I'll start at the bare basics of my rebuttal. For starters, moral acceptance can be rated on a scale of good vs. bad. I'll use the assumption that good is a positive existence and bad is the lack thereof. This means that in the original assumption, there is inherently good in whatever action/thought/etc. Now, even though this is not physics, it is quite fair for me to employ the law of conservation of energy: matter cannot be created or destroyed. No, I am not speaking on the constancy of the amount of matter in the observable universe, I am speaking in terms of the assumption of the existence of good in any given action/thought/etc.

What I mean to embellish is that you cannot assume the existence of good because it is not necessarily there. It is an unknown factor in the case of the assumption. Bring about the fact that a scale has "markers" on it. Just as your average metric ruler has centimeter notches in it, so does a moral "ruler" (giving me candy is on the top, fyi). When I introduce the moral acceptance of giving food to old, hungry men I am placing this act somewhere on that ruler when I truly have no knowledge of the scale itself.

Ultimately, my point is that you cannot assume the positive existence of good in an act/thought/etc. because we cannot immediately measure it. Allow me to assume that acts must be compared to one another based upon the known moral value of one.

Also, I have decided the unit of moral value shall be 2/3" washers.

Conclusion: actions/thoughts/etc. are not inherently morally acceptable and their moral acceptance must be proven.

Yes, my roundabout approach is rather sloppy, but I'm not here to connect syllogisms.

~Samuel

The Angelus - An Exegesis

I love that word. Exegesis. Makes me think of a superhero with a beard and a big "J" on his muscley chest. "ExeJESUS! AWAY!"

ANYWAY.

I figured today would be a good day to post this, considering it is the feast of the Anunciation.

The Angelus is a traditional prayer which focuses on a set of three responses, each followed by a Hail Mary. It reenacts the Annunciation, in which the archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, revealing to her God's plan (or economy) of salvation for the whole world - that she, Mary, daughter of Joachim and Anne, a virgin, would conceive in her womb, and give birth to, the divine Son of God. The responses are as follows: Latin (English Translation commonly recited at six, noon, and six)

V. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ. (The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary)
R. Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto. (And she conceived by the Holy Spirit)

V. Ecce Ancilla Domini. (Behold the handmaid of the Lord)
R. Fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum. (Let it be done to me according to thy word)

V. Et Verbum caro factum est. (And the Word was made flesh)
R. Et habitavit in nobis (And dwelt among us)

Now. To exegete.

This prayer is a Scripture passage, and all of Scripture can be understood four ways: literally(what is actually written), analogically (how it relates to the rest of Scripture), morally (how it relates to our lives), and anagogically (how it relates to the end times). Now, I like to focus on the moral, because it is most pertinent to my existence. So what can I, a male college student, who was never immaculately conceived, have not received any glorious messages from archangels, will never conceive a child within me, and will never be related by blood to the Son of God, learn from this?

Another translation of the first line is "The angel spoke God's message to Mary." All of us, through catechesis, through reading on our own, through prayer, and even through contact with nature around us, receive God's revelation. All of revelation is one Word - Christ, the divine Word (CCC p. 65). Therefore, all of us have received Christ. Furthermore, as baptized Christians, we "have put on Christ." In our relationship with God, we are receptive (or, in a sense, female). We have two options: we can receive this Word willingly and "bear fruit" (Jn 15:4), or we can reject this Word, rejecting also the divine life that Christ gives to all.

We then, with Mary, say "Behold the handmaid (= servant) of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to thy Word." To live in Christ is to serve Him - having created us, he knows what is good for us, and to follow his laws is our delight (Psalm 118:35). In serving God, Mary conceives. This is important - in the act of service God is made manifest in her. "The Word became flesh" in Mary's act of service. Similarly, "the Word becomes flesh" in us as He is manifested to others through our service. "They will know we are Christians by our love," right? To show Christianity to others (to catechize) is to reveal the person of Jesus Christ to others. We are His body - because He lives in us, and we make Him manifest to others through our service, can we say that we are the Word made flesh in our present day? It sounds almost heretical to equate ourselves with the Son of God, but let us not forget his mission - to make us partakers in His divine nature (CCC p. 460). When Christ came down from heaven to take on our humanity, He raised humanity up into His divinity. This is not something that happens only in heaven after we die - Christ redeems us now. We are Christ's body now, on earth, with the divine mission to bring Him to all people. The Word is made flesh, every day, in our efforts to bring the world to Him.

So, on the solemnity of the Annunciation, let us pray that the Word of God may be spoken to all by our actions and tongues, that we may truly be the body of Christ.

~Ambrose

Best part of running a blog:

Recanting. Guess what: I take it all back. Well, not all of it. Just THIS post. Aristotle has a way of convincing people, I guess... I suggest all of you read the Politics. Very worth while.

A man naturally finds a woman, and "the two become one flesh" (coughhackspluttercough) and kids come out. A family. Naturally. Therefore, it is at least natural to man that he exist in a family. Further, Little House on the Prairie families need to work almost twenty-four hours a day in order to subsist on the fruits (or vegetables) of their labor, leaving no time for leisure, which, as Joseph Pieper points out in Leisure, the Basis of Culture, is the thing which defines a man. Our job - our financial output - our productivity - is not the thing which defines us and gives us purpose as human beings. Big surprise. In fact, our true meaning for existence is union with God - also known as contemplation or prayer. Now, of course, productivity is necessary for life, but caring for half of us - just our bodies, not our souls - cannot fulfill us as human beings, body and soul. Therefore, families join together - again naturally - into communities in order to secure the good of the entire human being - body and soul. These communities require laws for their own good and the good of every individual, and therefore these laws are natural ("All things have a nature, and flourish only in accordance with that nature." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics). As a result, man is social (or, in other words, exists and participates in a political environment) naturally.

Aristotle FTW.

~Ambrose

Hey, this thing maybe ought to be updated

It's a pity that I don't have much time, and the time I do have I spend doing something else. This isn't exactly top of my mind. Maybe it should be. I have two philosophy courses, and spend two or three hours a day in socratic dialogue. Whatever.

Just a quick note then, today, about man and society. Again.

The human person (individual) necessarily comes before society and its laws, because the society itself would not exist without the individual person. Therefore, it is not just unjust for the societal order to wrong an individual, it is beyond the authority of the state and an intrinsic disorder. This is, perhaps, the basic principal of my political theory. The human person's rights always trump those of the state.

Another way to state this is to look at the end, or final cause of the state. It is ordered for the good of the individuals that live under its care. Not groups of people, but individuals. Not minorities, not lobbyists, not even majorities. The individual person. In fact, every individual, but not as a group - as individuals. You might call this individualism. I just call it common sense.

The logical implication of this is that any law which does wrong to the individual is unjust, and, as Thomas Aquinas would say, "no law at all." Therefore, there can be no enforcement behind it. The individual still should have the option as if the law did not exist. An example would be a person who has absolutely no money, no access to charity (say a traveling beggar in the middle of the country). It would be wrong for the state to punish him for taking food to prevent him from starving, because he has the natural right to do so. The government does have the right to punish larcenists, but each human being has the natural right to self preservation, which supercedes civil law. If the government seeks to punish him, it oversteps its bounds.

A small post. I'll see if I can dump my ideas here more often. This is a good philosophical outlet.

~Ambrose

A theological reason for contraception's immorality

THREE CHEERS FOR ACTIVITY!!!

Anyway.

This post is almost entirely inspired by a tape recording of a talk given by Christopher West. The title is "A weed in the garden of Eden: A hypothesis on Original Sin." I was unable to find a transcript of this talk, but you can find it as a bonus in his tape series "A Crash Course in Theology of the Body," which can be obtained HERE for $10. I highly recommend everything that Christopher West has produced.

This is a theological "proof" of why contraception is wrong. I'll start with some very basic principles and quotes, and move on toward my conclusion.

First, basic Baltimor Catechism principles.

God is Love, and Life. He's a bunch of other things too, but He is definitely these two.

The Trinity is the ultimate, highest, and most central mystery in Christianity.

Satan's creed can be summarized as "I will not serve."

God created us to know, love, and serve Him.

And maybe others, I'll bring them up as I go along. Those are the most important ones.

So first, it is important in this proof to understand Satan's motives, as much as we can. We know that Satan "would not serve", or that his sin was of pride. More specifically, Satan fell because he knew that God would divinize human beings, leading even angels to serve us, through the Incarnation. Because spiritual beings are higher than physical beings, and angels are certainly greater in power than we are, this pride can sort of be understood. Therefore, Satan wishes to cease us from being divinized - he wants to stop, hinder, and undo the Incarnation.

He does this by keeping us from fulfilling our purpose as human beings - to know, love, and serve God. Our purpose, however, can be stated many different ways. Genesis puts it clearly. "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply..." (Genesis 1:27-28). God made us in His image - we are His image, or we are (or are meant to be) symbols of Him. We are meant to actively symbolize our Creator. As Male and Female, we are built with the purpose of symbolizing the deepest mysteries of our Creator in our whole being - body and spirit. Pope John Paul II says that "The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery [of God]...and thus to be a sign of it." (A talk given February 20, 1980). Since God intended us to be a symbol of Himself, the devil wishes to keep us from being this symbol - or, to keep us from being "in the image and likeness of God."

Any sin is an anti-sign. Instead of using our bodies to signify God, we signify something else. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says "...every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil..." (CCC 2370). What this paragraph does not explain, however, is why this act is evil. I shall attempt to do so.

The central mystery of the Christian faith is the Trinity. From the Trinity we all proceed and toward the Trinity we are headed. Because our bodies "make visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine," our bodies symbolize the Trinity especially. However, we can look closer at Genesis to reveal that a certain part of our bodies, more than any other, symbolize the Trinity. Directly after saying in God's image, we have "Male and Female He created them." This leads me to believe that part of our image and likeness is our masculinity and femininity, and all the comes with it. In other words, our sexuality is both a symbol of the Most Holy Trinity and part of our being in the image and likeness of God. This is not a radical statement - Church fathers, theologians, and popes have been saying this for the whole 2,000 years the Church has been around. Allow me to give a very brief overview of how the nuptual union is a symbol of the Trinity.

• The Father and the Son exchange love between each other so strong and so perfect that this love is actually the third person of the Trinity - the Holy Spirit (Remember God is Love?) The Husband and Wife, in their love for each other, produce a third person - their child.


• The names Father and Son are not an accident. "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, eternally begotten of the Father" (Nicene Creed).¹ To beget means "(esp. of a male parent) to procreate or generate (offspring)." (dictionary.com). The human father certainly begets his child.

Because the mystery is infinite, and because the nuptial union is the sign of it, we can conclude that this is a sign of infinite depth. I cannot possibly convey all of the ways in which the nuptial union signifies the Trinity. Those two, however, are the most important in my argument now. Furthermore, because the Trinity is the centralmost mystery, the nuptiual union is (at least) a very important sign, or an extremely important way in which we fulfill our purpose as human beings.

Now, back to Satan. What does he want? He wants to change the symbol (Greek Symboline - bring together, unite) into an anti-symbol, the diabolical (Greek Diaboline - to seperate). He wants to turn the symbol on its head. Suppose the nuptial union is intentionally sterilized (an intended 0% chance of pregnancy). What happens? Translated into what it symbolizes, the "perfect" love of Father and Son is no longer fruitful, and there is no Trinity. The love is no longer perfect, and no longer a Person. In effect, contraception turns us into this anti-sign, this diabolical tool which goes against our very nature as human beings.

Furthermore, if the human father does not beget, then in the symbol, God the Father is sterile, and the Son is not "eternally begotten" - the Incarnation does not happen. That, if you remember, is Satan's ultimate goal. So not only does contraception go against our nature as human beings (and, consequently, against God's plan - the definition of an immoral act), it is exactly what Satan wants. Clearly contraception is a grave evil. Christopher West, in the talk referenced above, hypothesizes that an intentionally sterilized act of intercourse might even be what the original sin was.

So, there you have it. As concrete of a reason why contraception is immoral.

~Ambrose

Notes:
1. The Latin is even more clear, giving "natum" (birthed).

"Spread a little chaos..."

Perhaps one of the best quotes from The Dark Knight, this line also represents a fundamental flaw in modern thinking. The Joker may be able to rip people's lives apart, but he cannot help being modern, and he cannot help being wrong.

Chaos is, by definition, the antithesis of order. If something isn't ordered, it's chaotic, and to get rid of chaos, one must order. Or, conversely, if one wants to disrupt order, one must break up chaos. This would be the modern definition, no?

Well, then, it would seem that the Joker is right. Killing people and destroying the social order spreads chaos. In a social sense, he is right. But, human beings are defined by far more than society. We existed before it did, anyway. What order preceeds societal order, and even self-regulated mental order? Natural order, of course.

The natural tendency of all things is toward destruction. This is a scientific property called entropy. In chemistry, this means that if the end result of a reaction is more chaotic than the beginning, it will happen. We can see the effects of this around us - cracks in the sidewalk, chips in the paint, dirt on the floor. When we drop a glass bottle - in other words, cease ordering it, it naturally shatters and breaks into fragments. In other words, disorder is the natural state of things.

Before you think I'm heretical, notice I say natural state of things, not supernatural. Obviously, God, being order, is not naturally disorder. I'm talking about the natural right now. In the beginning, darkness covered the void. Then God said "let there be light," and light was made. God ordered everything in the beginning, and the fall caused it to start breaking down from there.

Anyway, back to the main point. Disorder is the natural tendency of all things. A History Channel show, "Life After People," exhibits this perfectly. The producers of the show break down exactly how, after people die out, our creations and our work will fall apart and be ruined. The natural tendency toward disorder will win out, despite our intentions.

Thus, we can conclude that, as Chesterton would say, order is really the thing to be wondered at, not disorder. A glass shattering is not nearly so beautiful as the glass itself. The fact that man can extract minerals from the billions which abound in nature and make himself a vessel for the drinks he brings out of nature with the sweat of his brow is far more beatiful than cruel nature reclaiming her own few pieces of shattered glass. The fact that man can take such a disordered mob and form out of it cities, and societies, and human relations is more than just putting things in their place - it's a miracle.

Thus, we come back to the Joker. If the natural tendency of things is chaos and disorder, isn't it far more chaotic for us to break this natural tendency and order things? Isn't one block set atop another far more revolutionary than toppling a building, given that the building will topple of its own accord in a few years? Isn't the giving of one penny to a poor boy far more revolutionary than shooting him, given that he'll be dead of his own accord in a few years? Isn't building a society that functions and thrives more revolutionary than breaking one down, given that we'll all be dead in a few years anyway? So spread a little chaos - love a little.

Change?

Given that Obama has been preaching the virtues of change, recently, along with any other buzzwords he's been using, I began to think about it. This is a sort of chain reaction logic that occurred last night, and was finalized today on paper.

Logic Chain I

Statement: Changed is defined as a difference between end result of an action and the state of things before the action.
Corollary: If the state of things before and after the action are the same, then there is no change.
Further: Because there is a difference between before an after, that difference is either positive or negative, i.e. the change is either for the better or for the worse.
Conclusion: All change is for the better or for the worse.

Logic Chain II

Statement: All change is an action (that's part of the definition given above).
Statement: A human being will not do anything for no reason whatsoever, i.e. all of his actions are ordered.
Reason: A human being will not do anything which is against his method of ordering.
For Example: A child will not rip his own "masterpiece" off of the refrigerator, and will be upset if someone does it for him.
Statement: This ordering can be called a "law".
Conclusion: All changes enacted by humans follow a law.

Logic Chain III

Statement: All change is for the better or for the worse. (conclusion of Logic Chain I)
Statement: What is better is more desirable than what is worse.
Query: What is better?
Answer: Better means that one has more good in some respect than the other.
Statement: God is most good in every respect (revelation! If you don't agree, just assume with me for the sake of this argument).
Corollary: God's mind is therefore also most good.
Statement: God's mind ordered all of creation (revelation again). This ordering is also called eternal law (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part II, question 91).
It follows: Eternal law is "better" than any other law.
Statement: All change is governed by Law (conclusion of Logic Chain II)
Conclusion: It is desirable that all change be ordered by eternal law.

So, if a person agrees with me that God exists and that God is good, then he must agree that all change ought to be ordered by eternal law. Now, Obama says that he believes in God. The huge majority of Christians in America say that they believe in God. If so, then they ought to begin ordering their lives by His Eternal Law.

English Class

Where we read ~*~LITERATURE~*~.

In this post I compiled the themes and modes of expression I have been diligently studying this semester for your enjoyment and edification. I feel good because I am reading and learning what the true masters of my art have to teach me, and my anthology informs me that this is the very best America has to offer me.


____________

“Ain't got cash on me,” Fitzgerald mumbled, the ends of two cigarettes lolling in his mouth as his hand twitched around the greasy pockets of his loose-hanging jeans. “Ain't got cash on me. But Simmons still has some. Ask Simmons.”
I remembered Simmons- a more unprintable young man I never met since running the last unprintable shipment of unprintable weed to the unprinting unprinted. I flipped the top of another can of beer and sat back in the bed of the pickup. Fitzgerald kept mumbling unprintably to himself. Didn't he remember Simmons was dead? Picked the unprintable unprintable out of a pool of his own blood that one morning back in June- tried to cut his own throat in the lavatory on a bus in Chicago, fainted, and drowned in the latrine. His hair'd been blue when they pulled him out- it was the last I remembered of him. Blue like the down on a bluebird's wings, and that struck me as unprintably funny- Simmons had never liked bluebirds, was always telling about one he shot down with a slingshot at his grandmother's house when he was five. He'd described the way it fluttered brokenly, and how that had made him laugh- I laughed at the memory of his light eyes with the pinpoint pupils, and the way he'd imitated that unprintable bird. Life is unprintable funny...


________


Eleanor threw herself in a chair by the window. Her husband was oppressive. It made her really sad. He'd never done anything unkind to her, but she didn't like him, anyway. He oppressed her. It made her really sad. If only there was a way to stop him from oppressing her- it made her sad. It took all her freedom away. Day after day she would stay here at home doing nothing, and night after night he would come home from work and she would have to smile at him and then the whole thing began again. It was so oppressing she couldn't believe it. For who can understand what it truly is to be a woman, to think deep thoughts, deeper than those of our oppressors? Eleanor also felt repressed. Everything repressed her- the feminine chair by the bedside, with the cat sitting on it. Wearing underclothing repressed her, too. Taking a deep breath, she tore it off herself and cast it out the window, the white things going like flags of truce into the puddles in the street nine stories below. No flag of truce for Eleanor- no more would she negotiate with men. Eleanor felt a joy welling up inside her, a joy and a freedom heretofore unimaginable. No longer would she be oppressed. No longer would she feel sad. A moment she balanced on the windowsill, and the last thing she knew was true freedom...


_______



The passion of love welled up in me as I saw Mrs. Barron's girlish form slipping toward me through the trees. “Hush,” she said, her face almost frightened. “George didn't hear me leave. We have three hours.” “If only it were eternity,” I murmured. “Darling-” She swooned in my arms and I *****************>>>>*<<<<*********************************************************************~~~~~****************and then she ********^^^^^***********************!*********************************!!***************************!!!****************and I************************and she*********************and we*************!!!!!!111!!!!!oneone11!!*******************************my zipper slowly and sighed....


_____



“Because this is a new generation,” he said firmly. “Because I can't live my whole life out here.”
“But son-” said the toothless old man, groping a blind hand toward the handsome, tall, determined boy.
“No one can stop me. I'm going forward into the future.”
The old man rocked arthritically in his rocking chair. “Do not forget the old ways of the past. Do not forget your heritage and the ways of your fathers! It is the only way you will ever be happy.”
“I have cast off the chains of my youth. Now I an adult and I am free! I must go and do what I think is the right thing, because therein lies freedom. This is my rite of passage. That means I don't have to think anymore if I don't want to, and Youth is mine which basically means whatever I do is admirable.”
“Oh, son,” said the senile old man with a twitching of his watery blue eyes. “Do not go into the future, for it will harm you! Progress is bad!”
“I will shake the dust of this house from my shoes,” he said firmly, with a flame of knowledge in his eye....


______



Her blue eyes looked at the man proudly. “You have no right to judge what I am doing. Would you prevent someone from following their conscience?”
“Lady, it ain't right.”
“What my conscience says is right.” She walked away. Her great-great-grandfather had been part Armenian, and now she was facing the overbearing racial prejudice of a cruel and uncaring nation.

__________

[POETRY]

I waited here, remembering the day I failed my Czech test
the day I left my last link to you lying
on the radiator in the abandoned apartment, with
cracks on the ceiling in the shape of a cyclops with three eyes
and a shattered beer bottle full of lost memories
Memories overcome me, as poignant as
the tang of a permanent marker left uncapped by an unsent package
in a room with marbles rolling over the floor,
a smell of yeast and bread and
Shakespeare's shoes
floating in a bowl of wonton soup pierced by a chopstick
outcrying against those who destroy the bamboo forests,
covered in rings of scallions like open green mouths protesting global warming
coming to a stop like the death of a dream,
poignantly
compellingly
like the woolly touch of yarn
and I know, with the assurance of thyme and peppermint growing in the moonlight
somewhere, nowhere, loneliness abounds
in an endlessly endless stream of unending sorrowfulness
like a trash can of wasted dreams
like my heart


~*~

Valkyrie

This movie received such bad reviews from many different places.

"“The film just isn’t a thriller at all” said one “Valkyrie” viewer. “It’s a bunch of white guys in Nazi uniforms. It’s too bad. And Tom doesn’t speak with a German accent — though they did add a voiceover of him speaking German to the beginning of the film. Still, it’s as if he could say ‘I complete you’ at any time. This is not his Oscar moment.” " [msnbc.com]

"McCarthy also has some kind words for Singer, but concludes: "Allowing for the need to compress and streamline events, the scribes have hewed pretty closely to the facts but haven't injected sufficient sizzle into the dialogue or individuality into the characters." He surmises that Valkyrie "looks destined for just so-so commercial returns." [FOXnews.com]

Today, I went and watched the movie myself. I'm somewhat of a history buff, and from what I could tell the movie was almost dead-on correct. On that front, I think the movie does an excellent job portraying the event that took place. When I watch a movie based on a historical event, that is one of the topmost things in my priority list of things to do right. You're telling the story of something that actually happened. Get it right.

This movie, despite the reviews, was one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. I am not a movie person, and I don't get out and watch every new picture, so perhaps I missed something. But from what I can see, this movie enters deeper levels of thought and reality than most I've seen in a while.

Perhaps the reason it's getting such bad reviews is because it was advertised as a thriller. I was thrilled. Even through there was only one scene in which guns were actually fired (very brief gun fight at the very end), I was in absolute suspense the whole movie. I even knew how it was going to end, yet I was captivated. The exposition and filmography were perfect. I enjoyed every minute of this film, just as much as other thrillers like Mission Impossible. However, it's not quite the same style. This movie does things that other thrillers don't, and perhaps can't, do. It messes with your mind. Maybe if the reviewers at Fox and MSNBC stopped thinking about actors and movies and payed attention to stories and people in them, then they would see the true beauty of this movie.

I am not the sort of person who cries at movies. To date, I've cried at three: Fellowship of the Ring, when Boromir died (honestly, the most heroic death scene ever); Return of the King, when Sam gives the famous "I can't carry it for you" line (more heroism); and at the end of Valkyrie, when the conspirators are being executed. If the last two movies were because of heroism, then it stands to reason this one would be also. I'm not moved by petty romantic moments staged between to actors, or when some long-lost friend is dying. I'm moved when something truly heroic takes place. In Valkyrie, the heroism is plain to see.

Col. Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators endure the utmost risk in order to do what they know is right. Even though themselves and their families will probably be killed, they attempt an unreasonably difficult attack on Hitler, and nearly succeed with ending the Nazi regime. Ending the Nazi regime is heroic enough, especially at such odds. However, the film's heroism does not end here.

Why they attempt this is shown in several small quotes. "We have to show the world that we are not all like [Hitler]." In todays world, the first words that pop into a person's mind when Germany is mentioned are "Hitler" and "Nazi". Germans are all Jew-hating Nazis who want to conquer the world. As a man of German descent, this has always bothered me. Whe exactly is the entire race of Germans branded with this evil stigma just because of one man and one regime? Isn't this racism? Not all Germans are like that.

"Long Live Sacred Germany!" shouts Col. Stauffenberg as he dies before the firing squad. Stauffenberg, unlike some others in the army, sees immediately that what Hitler is doing is horribly wrong and is injuring Germany. He knows that when the Allies come in a few, short months, and Hitler is killed, Germany will be branded with an eternal mark of shame. This is against his every principle. Stauffenberg is a true patriot. Chesterton says that a true patriot will love his country so much that he will be willing to do anything for it - even throw it into chaos. This is definitely Stauffenberg's love of country. He does not attach this love to the regime of Hitler, like some of the Germans did.

Movies are classics because they apply to our lives timelessly. Even though Hitler died in 1945, human nature has not changed. We still have difficulty with patriotism. America is in a similar position. We are not at all patriotic. Granted, not for the same reasons as the Germans who followed Hitler. We don't love our government, thinking we are loving our country. We have simply thrown patriotism out the window. What is America? What does it mean to be an American? The first words that come to the mind of most people are liberty or freedom. But as our freedoms are slowly slipping away, people don't seem to notice - unpatriotically so. If our nation is losing its identity - which should be the reason we love it - then we ought to be moved to action. Like Col. Stauffenberg says, "There have to be actions, and there have to be effects."

This movie is definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a while, not just because it entertained me, but because it caused me to think about what I'm doing for my country. Movies aren't great because of their acting and cinematography. Those things can make a movie good, and Valkyrie certainly had them. A movie is great when it takes what you know and shows it to you, so clearly that inaction is impossible. Along with Wall-e, this is my choice for Best Picture of 2008.

~Ambrose

Why.

The human person is essentially a question: why. I don't mean a human's physical body - humans are not in essence physical matter. A human's essence, their defining trait, that which seperates them from all other beings, is a question.

Aristotle states that man is the "rational animal". While man is an animal, and has physical matter, he is more than that. He is "rational". He is seperated from the animals in that he can think - he has self knowledge, and he can link things in his mind. He is rational. He can ask questions, and answer them on his own. Man is not different from the animals because he is "smarter"; he is different because man can function on a spiritual level - a rational level.

Man is also different from all the spiritual beings (angels, demons, God...) in more ways than just having a physical body. Man can ask a question. This may seem odd, but think of it this way. God is omniscient. He knows everything, and sees the full course of his actions and everybody else's actions before any of them acts. Thus, he cannot ask a question (intellectually - he can, of course, form words into a question). There is nothing that he doesn't know. Similarly, angels see the end result of their actions plainly - Satan knew that he would be thrust into hell even before he fell (thus he cannot repent). Humans, alone among the spiritual beings, does not know the end result; man does not know, and thus can and must ask questions. This is sort of a physical trait displaying itself on the spiritual level. Because of time and matter, out minds simply can't know beforehand, and we end up having to ask questions.

So if man is divided from the animals by rationalism, and from spiritual beings by physical matter, then the point of connection between these two (the question) is man's essence. His defining point, what makes him man, is questions.

However, not just any question. One question in particular is man's. Why. Animals, because they do not have self knowledge, cannot see motive (the answer to "why"). They can ask "where is the food?" or perhaps "where is the pain coming from?" but they cannot ask "why don't I have any food?" or "why am I being hurt?" They can recognize things - pain, hunger - but cannot see the reason. Man can. He can see that the man who tortures him and deprives him of food wants information out of him.

This also differentiates him from angels and God. Both of them see the whole matter through clearly, since they are out of time. Satan knew that his actions would lead directly to Hell. He saw that distancing himself from God intellecutally would lead him to be distanced from God by being thrown into Hell. Satan didn't ask why. Man, however, misses the connection and has to ask. His mind doesn't automatically do that, and thus he asks a question.

So, man's essential trait is "why". Men ask "why" since they are two years old. Any parents will back up this claim - most children ask questions like "why is the sky blue?" until they are blue in the face. However, man is also himself a question, waiting to be asked.

"Why?" very much describes the relationship between God and man. God created man "to know, love, and serve Him" (Baltimore Catechism #1). Now, man doesn't see his purpose straight from the beginning. He asks a question, an essential question: "Why am I here?" You can see this question written all over the media and explorative art. Man asks his creator what his purpose is, and the creator responds, "I AM." From this question-answer, man moves forward to the loving and serving, which can be described as the natural reaction to the question-answer. If God is, and we are because God is, the loving and serving make sense. Man loves his life; he ought to also love the source of his life. Man serves himself; he ought to also serve the source of himself.

So, if man's essential nature is the questions "why", why is "why" so absent in our culture? In our fast-paced, work-a-day week, there is no time for deep theological question-answer. We get up every morning, drink our coffee from our automatic coffee makers, drive to work in our automobiles, use our word-processors for eight or nine hours, and then drive back home, eat a meal, and go to bed. The question "why" is gone. Or at least, we only get shallow "why". The deepest essence of our human nature is gone.

Why is this? It is uncomfortable to ask "why", because after we know the answer, an action is required. After we know God, we must love Him and serve Him. There is no middle ground. "Take up your cross and follow Me" is not an easy command to follow - for death on a cross is a very unpleasant thought in any human mind. Thus, in order to keep these questions out of our minds, so that we can live in a world of shallow, material pleasures, we confine ourselves to the shallow "why" and ignore our true human nature. We don't want to be human.

The only reasonable move is to begin, as a culture, to ask "why?" If we simply asked "why?" and moved rationally to the answer, then the implications of the answer would be realized. We'd have to love; we'd have to serve. So, instead of losing twenty pounds or being nicer, why don't we try this new year to become more human - to ask why, and find the answer.

Some random quotations...

I went looking in the ol' dictionary of quotations in the back of the dictionary that used to belong to my mom's mom, wanting to add one I recalled from it to my list of quotations on the Aeviternity sidebar. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to find it because none of the key words were cross-referenced in the back of the d of q like they were supposed to be. As a result, I wound up stumbling across countless other quotes that I just had to either add to the sidebar there or post here. In both cases, they're not in much particular order.

In the end, I gave up looking, figuring that having read through well over half the d of q in random shots and not found it I would be as likely to find it elsewhere (actually, I started wondering whether I hadn't read it elsewhere) and that I was getting sick of deciding which quotes to copy (there are so many good ones) and which here and which to my sidebar to boot.

Anyway, here's some to mentally chew on, and I'll resist commenting on them myself as then I would really go on forever.

"Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it."
~Aubrey Eben

"The futility of riches is stated very plainly in two places: the Bible and the income-tax form."
~The Gilcrafter

"Russia has abolished God, but so far God has been more tolerant."
~John Cameron Swayze

"Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure."
~Fred Allen

"Pity the man who believes in communism--he believes in something that doesn't believe in him."
~Fred McAlister

"The Devil is easy to identify. He appears when you're tired and makes a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn't grant."
~Fiorello H. La Guardia

"A fanatic is a man who does what he thinks the Lord would do if only He knew the facts of the case."
~Finley Peter Dunne

"One of the first things a man notices in a backward country is that the children are still obeying their parents."
~Claude Callan

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
~Oscar Wilde

"In the little world in which children have their existence, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice."
~Charles Dickens

"We forget what gives money its value--that someone exchanged work for it."
~Quoted by Neal O'Hara

"It seems that everyone is smoking the pipe of peace, but nobody is inhaling."
~Cherryvale (Kans.) Republican

"A sure sign of bureaucracy is when the first person who answers the phone can't help you."
~Dr. Kenneth J. Fabian

"There's something alive about a kitchen, the way it smells and sounds and feels. Maybe sick people would all live longer if they sat in kitchens."
~Christopher Morley

"If a nation values anything more than its freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money [editor's note: or security, someone else pointed out] that it values more, it will lose that, too."
~Somerset Maugham

"The U.N. was set up not to get us to Heaven, but only to save us from Hell."
~Winston Churchill

"When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers."
~The Wall Street Journal

"It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming."
~Oscar Wilde

"Remember when it took only heaven to protect the working girl? Today it takes a union, wage-hour law, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and a pension plan."
~Bert Bacharach

"The true value of horse sense is shown by the fact that the horse was afraid of the auto during that period when the pedestrian laughed at it."
~Atlanta Times

"Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve."
~Clarence Darrow

"Few children fear water unless soap is added."
~William Franklin Gaines

"The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitue for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence."
~Lyman Bryson

"Classical music is the kind that we keep hoping will turn into a tune."
~Kin Hubbard

"Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a 'necessary evil,' it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil."
~Sydney J. Harris

"All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on."
~General George S. Patton, Jr.

"The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
~Herbert Spencer

"A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed."
~John Steinbeck

Conference:
"A meeting of the bored."
~Russell Newbold

"It is as absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to play his music."
~Balzac

"When the Tatar curses one, instead of exclaiming, 'Go to-----!' as we do, he says: 'May you stay in one place forever!'"
~Trips

"No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the twentieth century. Our ancestors knew their way from birth through eternity; we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow."
~Walter Lippmann

"I wonder where mothers learn all the things they tell their daughters not to do."
~Eddie Cantor

"The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else."
~Arnold Bennett

"I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough for a man and a woman to understand each other; and to understand is to love. The man who understands one woman is qualified to understand pretty well everything."
~J. B. Yeats

"The world started going to smash about the time it abandoned the hand-cranked ice-cream freezer, the finest device ever invented for teaching youth that work has its rewards."
~Cleveland News

Being Alive

As Scott said, I've been adjusting to life at a secular university, and as Ambrose said, sorry for not letting you know sooner.

Life here is certainly not boring, nor is it comfortable. An example of this is that at the moment, I'm learning to trust God with the fifth in a series of spiritual attacks and writing a paper on elbowed squid.

Some days it's just hard to keep going- everything can frighten me if I let it, and not letting it takes exorbitant amounts of energy.

I have a plethora of ponderings on the election, amorality, ego and evolution, the prevalence of profanity, intellectualism, nutritional deficiencies, the importance of classical music, nonconformity, and why not joining a crowd of streakers setting off fireworks makes a person racist. I'll try to write them down as I reconjure them.

For right now, here's a poem my guardian angel led me to a few weeks ago when I was feeling really depressed. I've since committed it to memory and think it to myself whenever I start losing my grip on reality. It also fits to any 8787 hymn tune, if you want a mental accompaniment while reciting it.

A PSALM OF LIFE
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!-
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined path and way,
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.


~Mari

A Healthy Dose of Anarchy

Anarchy? What? Ambrose, you've lost your marbles.

This is a follow up to THIS post.

Well, perhaps not anarchy per se, but certainly what we need is to stop following our government around like sheep. This simile goes further than you might think, actually. The sheep have no idea where they are going, how to take care of themselves, or what to do with their lives. The shepherd has to do all that for them. Similarly, the government dictates what education we receive, or rather what tools we have to work with in our lives; what food we can purchase and eat, and in some cases pays for the food; and sponsors minimum wage, job elligibility, and other things. Like sheep we are forced to follow the bidding of our shepherd.

This is for our own good, of course. For instance, a man became drunk at a bar and killed himself by chugging to much ketchup from the dispenser. Big Brother needed to come in, therefore, and protect us from those nasty ketchup dispensers, mandating design for them, all with the intent of furthering our safety. We, of course, are too unintelligent to discover that choking ourselves with ketchup is a bad idea. All for the common good!

The problem here is that the American people have the wrong idea about what the government should do. They believe that the government should protect the people from itself. We forget sometimes that ours is a government "for the people, by the people." This would mean that the government ought to protect us from itself, which it hardly seems willing to do. The focus must be different.

There are five levels of society in America: family, community, county, state, and federal. The family is the smallest and most fundamental unit of society. It ought to be fully capable of deciding what food to buy for its members, which hospitals to go to, which ketchup dispensers to choke on, etc. However, when two families have a quarrel over property or something, a higher (in the sense of broader sphere of influence) society has to decide. This is the community. The community can decide who owns what land, what roads there need to be in the city, etc. However, when two cities need to trade power or perhaps need to be linked by a road, a higher power is needed again. And thus, you can go up the list from community to county, from county to state, and from state to federal. Therefore, the federal government's power ought to be restricted to matters of state to state, and of outside government to outside government. This way, the people closest to the problem can solve it. Joe in Alabama doesn't have the same needs as Jack in Pennsylvania. The lowest level of society that can deal with it should, so that each person gets what he needs (See the post linked above for further explanation on why individuals have different needs).

However, in our nation today, the general idea is that we should go to the federal government for everything. This stems from a disordered desire for equality. We don't want anyone to have an unfair advantage, so we force everyone to follow the same rules. Again, not everyone has the same needs, so this is absurd. The American people merely want equality, and not what is best for them. "[The American people] call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot have that, they still call for equality in slavery." (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America) Thus, we give up individual freedoms so that the man next to us doesn't have more freedom than us. We gladly say "Just so long as Fred over there does not have a liberty I cannot, I will go without it." This is an absolutely foolish and selfish subjugation of ourselves to tyranny. The federal government does far too much to regulate us (see previous post for more examples of this).

So, if the federal government is doing far too much to regulate our lives, what do we do? Simple. Take the power of the federal government and give it back to the state, county, community, and family level. Let the families decide for themselves what kind of ketchup to buy. Let the cities decide for themselves what roads to build. Let the counties decide for themselves what kind of speed limit to set. Let the states themselves decide whether abortion is legal or not. Keep the power as far down the list as possible to prevent tyranny. Certainly, some may say that this is anarchy; that I am carelessly throwing our nation's security into the wind. If it is anarchy, anarchy is certainly better than security. The freedom to choose what kind of ketchup I may buy is more important than a false sense of security, where Americans are mindlessly led through a pasture by the federal shepherd. "Give me liberty, or give me death."

~Ambrose

The evils of centralization.

This debate goes back to the beginnings of our country, and our present course of action was not decided until the end of the Civil War. *history over*

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, "Complicated systems are repugnant to [the American people], and [the people's] favorite conception is that of a great nation composed of citizens all formed upon one pattern and all governed by a single power." And again, "The notion [the American people] all form of government is that of a sole, simple, providential, and creative power." In essence, de Tocqueville is saying that the American people naturally desire the government to have no limits in its centralization and power, or in other words, the people naturally think that all federal power ought to be wholly in the federal (as opposed to state or local) government, and that this power ought to be limitless. Although I disagree with him in that it is a natural desire, he is uncannily correct in the effect - the American government has gradually moved from a very distributed, freedom-oriented government, as opposed to the current centralized, authoritative machine we have today.

For example, before the Civil War, one would always write about the United States in plural. E.g., "The United States are very nice." Now, we would say "The United States is very nice." This is a subtle but meaningful shift. Before, in 1840 or so, the Supreme Court would nothave had the power to decalre abortion constitutionally acceptible - the state governments, not the federal governments, would have. Now, of course...

What does this mean? Isn't this just a simpler system that guarentees equality across the states, so that no one is greater than the others? Doesn't it take all the problems of state-border issues, and doesn't it give a greater unity to the nation? Well, certainly. But are those things necessarily good, and do the benefits outweigh the cost?

All men are not created with equal needs. Granted, all humans have equal rights and dignity before God, but each man in his individual situation has unique needs. Just like you wouldn't give a person needing a pain killer something more like an antacid, you shouldn't give a man in the country the same regulations as someone in a city. The city dweller may need more heavy police protection in his area, because the dangers are greater, but certainly the man living in the middle of nowhere does not need police patrolling at every minute. The principle is simple enough - every man needs something different to thrive.

The federal government, however, cannot treat each citizen according to his needs. Although, perhaps, it can see the problems with the country as a whole, it simply cannot know the complex set of circumstances which surround every American. Thus, it cannot possibly give every man what he needs. It can try to please most people, but there will be a group who are not taken care of, or perhaps even harmed by regulations. This is an absolute tragedy.

Moreover, the central government in our country is amassing more powers and rights over us. For instance, no food product can make it onto the market unless approved by the FDA. Maybe that's a good thing, since quacks cannot produce poison and sell it to the masses. However, I think that the government deciding what food you can buy is a particularly bad thing. Similarly, the government decides - how you can make additions to your house (Zoning boards...), what TV and radio you can listen to (FCC), what lawyers and doctors can treat you, and even where you can go in the world (Passports). In essence, you can't do much of anything without the federal government's permission. Am I the only one who thinks that there is a problem with this? Am I crazy to think that I should be able to buy whatever food I want? Is it evil for me to want to add a new room to my house? What happened to America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Clearly, something is wrong here. And, quite frankly, if we don't do something, we may end up in a dictatorship. And I'm quite sure that nobody wants that.