Look back, Look ahead: Why did they die? (Memorial Day, 3 Recommended Reads).
Memorial Day — my point of view — is for my Two Daughters that I miss.
I want them to understand that what soldiers died for, what’s left of it,
they deserve to have — but will have to value and fight for.
This may require serious un-learning, definitely
informed choice of
priority,
principle & process
(Promptly)
[I love you]
INTRO: 3 Recommended Reads
I ask readers to consider two books and one article today — all relate to the family law system. They represent, what kind of world — and what kind of forcible religion — can you live with? Because all of these are at hand.
(1) The Family, by Jeff Sharlett. (“Jesus and nothing else”)
You may recognize these names from recent headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts. Stupak and Pitts have become familiar names through the media’s health care overhaul coverage; theirabortion funding amendment introduced an 11th-hour twist as the House of Representatives approached a vote on a landmark health care bill. Ensign was the focus of media attention over his affair with a campaign staffer. Just last night, a Nevada man disclosed that he found out about his wife’s affair with the state’s junior senator — his best friend — via a text message.
The common factor among these political players is their involvement with the Family, a secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians that centers on a Washington, D.C., townhouse. Investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet has written extensively about the influential group in his book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
(2) Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law
A series of three interviews FrontPageMagazine had with Nonie Darwish. She is the founder of ArabsForIsrael and co-founder of formermuslimsunited and grew up in Cairo and Gaza as a daughter of a high-ranking Egyptian army officer. She now lectures across the United States to civic organizations, universities, churches, and synagogues about (radical) Islam and has appeared on radio and television programs including CNN, Headline News, Fox, MSNBC, Al-Arabiya, National Public Radio and Israeli TV. Darwish has been published in the London Telegraph, Jerusalem Post, and New York Daily News. She is a frequent lecturer on college campuses including Harvard, Brown, Stanford, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, Boston University, and the University of Southern California. She is the author of the books, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror and Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.
FP: Nonie Darwish, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Tell us what inspired you to write this book.
Darwish: Every time I tried to find a solution to all the ills of Muslim society, such as jihad, oppression of women and minorities, I was confronted with an Islamic law that stood in the way of a solution. Having been born and raised as a Muslim who lived under Sharia for 30years of my life, I know first hand the destructive impact of sharia on the healthy functioning of society and its total disregard for basic human rights.
I decided to write this book in response to claims by some Muslim groups that Sharia is compatible with democracy and that it is simply a religious right. Canada allowed the practice of Sharia tribunals for 15 years and Great Britain is now allowing the practice of partial Sharia. Islamic propaganda for Sharia has reached such a high level of misinformation that I simply had to do something.
There was a recent article in Canada that said: “Canadian Muslims have a fondness for democracy, peace – and Sharia law.” Islamists are trying to fool the West into believing that Sharia is just as American as ‘apple pie’ and this could not be further from the truth.
US? Let’s see: In 2009, there was a 17 year old girl in Florida, who converted to Christianity from Islam, and is afraid of her life: “A Slow-Motion Honor Killing“)
“Rifqa is under threat both because of Islam’s apostasy law and because, as she herself explains, by converting to Christianity she has besmirched the family’s honor: “in 150 generations of my family no one has known Jesus. I am the first one. Imagine the honor in killing me. There is great honor in that.”
Rifqa appeared to be aware that many Westerners would be surprised to hear that she considers herself under the threat of death because of Islam’s stance toward those who leave the faith: “Islam,” she explained, “is very different than you guys think. They have to kill me. My blood is now halal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I’m from a Muslim background, it’s an honor. If they love God more than me, they have to do this. And I’m fighting for my life.”
[Nonie Darwish interview, cont’d.] To write the book I did not just rely only on my personal experience, but studied Sharia for eighteen months from mainstream Islamic legal books with the help of a Sharia Muslim expert, Mr. Hasan Mahmoud. The book is a warning to the West and hopefully it can also open the eyes of Muslims to the truth.
and
(3) –” Who Can Beat Obama?”
Posted By Phyllis Chesler On May 27, 2011 @ 12:04 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 79 Comments
President Obama’s election is due, in part, to the desire among many American liberals and leftists to be seen as “atoning” for the sin of racism and the crimes of slavery. The fact that Obama is bi-racial—his mother was white—matters little since he looks like an African-American. Indeed, the President’s own writing focuses on his African, Muslim roots, especially because his Kenyan father abandoned both him and his mother.
In an era of symbolic identity politics and affirmative action, only one kind of candidate could trump Obama’s credentials and that would be an African-American woman. Only such a candidate could symbolically address the sin and crime of sexism as well as that of racism. Ironically, the first woman who ever ran in a major party primary for the American Presidency did so in 1972. That was Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, whose parents immigrated from British Guiana and Barbados. In 2004, Senator Carol Moseley Braun, also an African-American woman, ran in a major party primary for the American Presidency. Both women failed in their bids.
Currently there are 31 African American men and 13 African-American women in Congress; there are no African-Americans in the Senate. In the past there have been only six such senators in American history. Currently, there are 18 women in the Senate. In all of American history a total of 39 women of all races, including the current 18, have served as Senators.
Given how many Americans confuse voting for the Presidency with voting for an American Idol; given how good so many Americans feel that we have “overcome” and have elected an African-American as our President; given how deep, high, and wide emotions are running in terms of racism (which trumps sexism as an issue even among establishment feminists), clearly, obviously, the next election is ripe for an African-American woman candidate. Obviously, she can be as inexperienced as President Obama was as long as she is charismatic, charming, eloquent, glamorous, and well connected to Hollywood, the media, and the academy. . . .
AND,
deally, my candidate would have to share my foreign policy views. She would have to cherish America and the West. She would have to understand that Islam has a long, long history of colonialism, imperialism, racism, and slavery and that America, while not perfect, is much more evolved in terms of an active anti-racist consciousness than is any Muslim country.
President Obama deeply dislikes, possibly even hates the Jewish state. His dislike is visceral and frightening.
My ideal African-American candidate would have to understand that the survival of Jewish Israel is paramount, that it is the world’s symbol of Western democracy and human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, etc. American ethics and laws, as embodied in our Constitution and legal concepts are derived from the Old Testament, not from the Koran.
(I’ll bring this up again, below). Mississisippi, the last state to ratify women’s right to vote, the 19th Amendment (the 14th Amendment set the pecking order — white men, black me, and lastly, women….) — did so only in 1984 )
So, Why did they Die? To preserve a lifestyle? Oil? Money? A set of values?
How about — to separate from tyranny?
“When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.”
-Declaration of Independence (1776)
I am going to take some time to study this site: LONANG.org. Most of us are so ignorant of law, and jurisprudence, that we can have senators, assemblypersons, presidents, and almost anyone else writing incoherence and punishing nonconformists to the latest theories of life.
LONANG is an acronym for the Laws of Nature and (of) Nature’s God, a phrase first used in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, 1776. The phrase is also a plural contraction; a somewhat shorthand way of saying “the law of nature and the law of nature’s God.”
Several authors of the foundational documents were “Deists” not traditional & rigid Christians. Their views were Enlightened for their time. They knew about religious domination, and didn’t want it. Contrast with religious “enablement” via a recent president’s “Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,” which views all the lower varieties of human beings as in need of rescue and instruction — rather than recognizes who and what had caused them to come into this state. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution exalt, rather than debase, the vision of mankind — and by setting limits, assert that we can indeed control ourselves, and as such, should be held responsible.
But the concepts embodied in the phrase didn’t originate with Jefferson. The law of nature was a common term used by historic legal writers such as Grotius, Burlamaqui, Blackstone and others. The law of nature’s God, a lesser used term, was more commonly called the divine law, or the revealed law, meaning the laws of God revealed in verbal form. So what are these laws, and what can be known about them? This is our task . . .
Here’s a basic outline of some principles — are these taught in schools, or demonstrated? (Seems to me we’re lucky if basic literacy is accomplished). There are issues with bullying, rape, shootings, or lockdowns if there are nearby domestic violence hostage situations in the neighborhoods. There have been strip searches of minors on allegations, and molestations of minors by school staff. The grandiose picture of elevating the nation’s children through the public school system has become something else entirely — a means of breeding a new population with certain malleable characteristics, not much independence, and very inefficiently. Parent support is wanted, parent input — not so much. As John Taylor Gatto characterized so long ago (NY State teacher of the year award), in an acceptance speech which later became “Dumbing Us Down” — he says as a public school teacher, he taught, really, 7 principles, which I’ll review below.
In 1990 the New York “Senate named Mr. Gatto New York City Teacher of the Year. The speech he gave at that occasion, “The Psychopathic School,” amounted to a devastating indictment of public education (reprinted in BEL, May 1991, under the title “Why Schools Don’t Educate”). In 1991 Mr. Gatto was named New York State Teacher of the Year, at which occasion he gave a speech, “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” so insightful of the wrong-headedness of public education that it will probably become a classic in educational literature
These two remarkable speeches, plus several others, including one entitled “We Need Less School, Not More,” were published in book form last year. And what a powerful book it is, only 104 pages long, readable in one or two sittings. With Outcome-Based Education being imposed on schools across America, we will get much more school, not less, and the content of that schooling will produce far more confusion than we already have.
Please contrast this with the endless trainings we are getting forced onto us and our kids, through family courts (and everywhere else).
THE SEVEN LESSONS WE HAVE MASTERED, in PUBLIC DISCOURSE:
- The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach dis-connections….
- The second lesson I teach is class position….The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class….My job is to make them like being locked together with children who bear numbers like their own.…If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else, because I’ve shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb .
- The third lesson I teach is indifference….When the bell rings I insist they drop whatever it is we have been doing and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch….Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.
- The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestinated chain of command.
- The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency….It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives….
- The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem….The lesson of report cards, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.
- Custody evaluations, much?
- The seventh lesson I teach is that one can’t hide. I teach students they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues….The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate.
These lessons have been learned and need to be UNlearned. I think this is a good set of ideas to comprehend (from LONANG.org)
9. Due Process
10. Articles IV, V & VI
And here is a section on “When Judges Run Amok: The Lie of Judicial Lawmaking” under section 4, above.
- As you know, I repeatedly bring up the group “Association of Family and Conciliation Courts” (AFCC) and protest it. The typical makeup is Judges, Mental Health Practitioners (guess who they intend to practice on?) and Attorneys. An “Hon.,” a “J.D.” and a Psy.D. or Ph.D. if you can get one. If not, an LMFT, or an LCSW etc. will do. The intent is to “transform the old language of criminal law” and the conferences are basically about how to coordinate what this cross-section of experts (see “Dumbing Us Down” Lessons 2 & 5, above) want the rest of us to believe — (or else).
- In fact, this City Attorney’s successor it seems, spent a lot of time investigating common overbilling practices, and the entire city was under investigation from FBI and others. (see link). Then, LGBT legislators push LGBT sensitivity on everyone while, responding to that, and from federal through local institutions, those who fear and distrust LGBT people push the opposite on the nation, on behalf of “God” country, Fatherhood, and I suppose apple pie.
- In the last few posts, I have shown how Legislators are making laws to funnel business towards judge & attorney-founded nonprofits (Kids’ Turn) and yesterday, to my amazement, I found an Alameda County District Attorney (duties — enforcing laws / Executive Branch…) pushing (not authoring, but pushing) legislation (SB 557) that specifically endorses a certain business “family justice center alliance” whose origins and founder, from San Diego, are not, er, respectable. What is “justice” — and why would UNdoing separation of powers and allowing executive and judicial branch officials to take public agencies and functions, and outsource them to a collaboration of themselves have to do with getting it?
- One of the books I am recommending today talks about the particular brand of American religiosity that Jeff Sharlett’s “The Family” actually represented, which tolerates dictatorships and genocides with an intention towards the theocracy of “Jesus and nothing else.” There is definitely a connection between the “Healthy Marriage / Responsible Fatherhood” movement and the characteristics (and intents) of GWBush (and family) as related in this book. This is not traditional, healthy-style religion, but closer to a criminal-cult-enterprise, without concern for due process or constitutions.
By contrast, this segment recalls: (Bear with me, please….the information is timely.)
(*Copyright © 1997, 2006 Gerald R. Thompson. Used by permission. [I am using under Fair Use policy here, and recommending others read])
…we should reconsider a primary tenet of contemporary jurisprudence, namely, that judges make law.
BIBLICAL MODEL
The Bible indicates what is the nature of judicial power. The first recorded instance of civil judgment involves Moses, who judged the people of Israel as recorded in Ex. 18:16: “When they have a dispute, it comes to me, and I judge between a man and his neighbor, and make known the statutes of God and His laws.”
Notice that Moses exercised his judgment consistent with the common law tradition. After all, Exodus 18 chronologically precedes the giving of the law in Exodus 20 and later scriptures. Since God had not yet verbally revealed His laws for Israel, how could Moses make known God’s statutes? Apparently, Moses was basing his judgments in a discernment of the laws of nature which God had impressed upon the creation.
Moses also waited for the disputes to come to him. He judged between individual parties in specific cases and controversies. He did not purport to make rules binding on non-parties.
(PRIOR VIEWS OF JUDGING INCORPORATED THIS:)
HISTORIC VIEW
This biblical view of judging was understood and endorsed by many of the historic legal scholars and commentators. In fact, the correlation between the historic understanding of judicial authority and the biblical pattern is quite remarkable. In the historic common law tradition, the role of the judge was to declare what law already existed. The standard legal maxim which guided judges for several hundred years was, Jus dicere, et non jus dare. That is, the province of a judge is to declare the law, not to make it.
This view of judging and judicial authority was embraced by William Blackstone, James Kent, Joseph Story and virtually all legal commentators in England and America prior to the U.S. Civil War. For example, The Federalist Papers (No. 78) declared:
“The judiciary . . . may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment . . .. The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.”
This view of judging was even acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court, once upon a time:
[The judicial] department has no will, in any case. . .. Judicial power, as contradistinguished from the power of the laws, has no existence. Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. . .. Judicial power is never exercised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law. [Osborn v. The Bank of the U.S. (1824).]
. . . .
The modern view of judicial power is perhaps best summarized by John Chipman Gray, a Harvard law professor who was a contemporary of Langdell and Holmes:
Law is made up of the rules for decision which the courts lay down: That all such rules are Law; that rules for conduct which the courts do not apply are not Law; that the fact that the courts apply rules is what makes them Law; that there is no mysterious entity “The Law” apart from these rules; and that the judges are rather the creators than the discoverers of the Law
.
That’s NOT a situation worth dying on foreign lands for:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America —
One Nation, Under God, with Liberty and Justice for All.”
And a place where the “we” is defined by truths we hold in common:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Once upon a time (: a certain lawyer sought to get Jesus to define how he might get eternal life — what was the program, what should he do?
Pointing to this law, Jesus replies, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” [Obviously an attorney was to know it…]
Proving he knew this, the attorney quoted it, but then perhaps had a specific application he was concerned about.
Answer: (Luke 10: 25ff):
25And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and made trial of him, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 26And he said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? 27And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. 28And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. 29But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
And hence we get the parable of the so-called Good Samaritan. Nothing like a good story to make the point:
Luke 10:30-37 Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’ Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?” He said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (web)
The challenge of our country is not whether its founding documents are good enough — but who is in the “all” — when it comes to “liberty and justice for all.”?
Who, in application, qualifies as “man” in “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator (notice it doesn’t say “my God….” or “THE God” but “their Creator”) with those unalienable rights?
This is where, in practice, an elevation and expansion of “WHO” was chosen to participate in this “we” is always necessary. In the first word in this document referring specifically to gender, female slaves were excluded from the right to vote. Even this description, from http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/15thamendment.html barely touches the omission of the women.
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.
Four amendments later:
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.
”
Nineteenth Amendment
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919.
Ratified August 18, 1920. Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Last state to ratify sufficient to passage: Tennessee Last state to ratify it after it had passed — Mississippi — in 1984!:
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson began to support the need for a constitutional amendment to which he had previously been opposed. When ratification by the states was begun on June 4, 1919 it only took six days for Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin to all ratify the amendment. Kansas, New York and Ohio followed on June 16, 1919. The last required 36th state to ratify was Tennessee, who barely ratified the amendment on August 18, 1920. The Tennessee vote to ratify hinged on one vote, the vote of a 24-year-old state legislator by the name of Harry Burn. He had originally voted against ratification. He changed his vote after his mother urged him to do so. Even after his vote, anti-suffrage rallies were held and anti-suffrage state legislators left the state so that a legislative quorum could not achieved. The Tennessee ratification was achieved and the required 36 states met the constitutional requirement.
The remaining twelve states of the Union took over sixty years to add their ratifications of the 19th amendment. Ten of these states originally had rejected ratifying the amendment. Mississippi was the last state of the 48 states to ratify the amendment when it did so on March 22, 1984.
Now — how surprising is it that (while the family law field had been meanwhile developing, starting in 1939, and in general introducing the psychopathic assessment of women who divorced) that after feminism was making some progress in alleging that women were people, too…. (or having in impact at least) in the 1970s, and 1984 Mississippi, belatedly, admits that women can vote — and laws against assault and battery of one’s wife were put into place — that by 1994, 1995, and 1996, 1998, & 1999 (that I’ve been able to identify so far) — FATHERHOOD propositions were running hot and heavy? (NFI, Clinton memo, Welfare Reform to accommodate fatherhood through access/visiation work, resolutions of both halves of Congress to validate and celebrate “fatherhood”) and so forth — are also in the works?
Human nature is always, it seems, to get out of applying even its own laws to real life situations. And, the challenge of what these Memorials are for — which is the concept of “Liberty and Justice for all” — will HAVE to look within to admit — theory aside, we were largely based on a slave economy, and basically still just about are….
All of us humans need to understand our common right to look at these institutions, question them, and CHANGE THEM (or declare independence, if necessary). However, without an understanding of how they have already changed, this will be difficult. And with a dumbed down populace, even harder.
In the last several days (and past few years), I”ve been again and again astonished at the level of corruption in “high” places (governmentally) and how little awareness of HOW this happens is available — or told — to the public. It is sickening, but necessary for someone to continue speaking.
Recently, I noticed many visitors (international) are so interested in my article “Women at war.” I wish they were as interested in the accounting trails, the organizational analyses. However, it’s MEMORIAL DAY — and I think it’s time to remember the ideals being fought for, and to insist that these are communicated and stood for. Later this week, I have more work to talk about: The Family Justice Alliance, Child Support (issues), and Parenting Coordination as a field.
TRUTH is simple once understood — because it’s based on principles; and then the question becomes application. Our school systems have taught too many to disconnect the dots, and to become intellectually and emotionally dependent, and to buy into the hierarchy (“class rank”) model — which leads towards subservience in citizenship (and back to slavery).
Financial, food, mobility (where you can live) and self-defense independence (let alone freedom of expression and freedom of religion) are PARAMOUNT. This is no tea party and those are not just Tea Party issues.
After another segment from what I deduce to be a Christian attorney sort (who is also struggling with the “Christanity” litigation, I bet), I’m going to post links to 3 books (actually, one is an article) I ask people to read (if they haven’t) and understand the option to understanding that unless we are all UNDER the same “law of nature and nature’s God” (meaning principles) — we are going to be subject forever to petty, self-defined gods and goddesses who insist on deliberating in private and closed-door sessions what to do with our earnings. If we don’t understand the chasm between the “Family/Unification Church” version of law (as practiced — what’s being on the books having become irrelevant), the reactionary “Shari’a law” and Islamic Jihad version of law, and how critical Israel is to what freedom we now have — well, things don’t look too good.
Other topics — the technology of Internet (enabling anyone to create a company that could easily be a front group, unless examined — and how the USA can pick favorites to help theirs look more professional and “real” (legitimate) because of simple technical support grants) and the worldwide technology of “money” (with the degraded US$$ set to no longer become the world’s reserve currency) — and how little time there is to waste with Dumbed down Passive Populations — well, these definitely concern me. Long ago, Jerry Mander wrote a book: “Four Arguments for the Elimination of TV.” Obviously, that’s not about to happen (til upgraded and replaced by things faster, more interactive and more audiovisual). Others wrote on the heavy influence of Foundations in government, and yet others on the character of Money (and IRS).
It’s necessary to understand some of these basic functions, AND “Jurisprudence” — and why “Therapeutic Jurisprudence” MUST be stopped as a bastard, a fraudulent upstart, in the legacy of sound ideas from the 1770s which need work in application — not in eradicating these ideas.
I look forward to reading more of John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) — I like this guy. Can you see why? Look at the times he lived in, and how this might have produced some real opposition to “authoritarianism” . . . and a platform to write about it. I realize it may be skimmed or skipped over, but here it is anyhow:
…For the individual, Locke wants each of us to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject to superstition. He wants us to proportion assent to propositions to the evidence for them. On the level of institutions it becomes important to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate functions of institutions and to make the corresponding distinction for the uses of force by these institutions. The positive side of Locke’s anti-authoritarianism is that he believes that using reason to try to grasp the truth, and determining the legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for the individual and society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare. This in turn, amounts to following natural law and the fulfillment of the divine purpose for humanity…
This acceptance of a higher law is far from a theocracy, and you can see why he might have been opposed to it. I believe I have blogged elsewhere about that as late as 1689, one could be executed in America for failure to hold a certain mainstream religious view which (to this day) is still mainstream — and others who don’t hold it within these groups are considered cults (and it seems many are), however anything based on superstition backed by force IS a cult, however large it may be.
1. Historical Background and Locke’s Life
John Locke (1632-1704) was one of the greatest philosophers in Europe at the end of the seventeenth century. Locke grew up and lived through one of the most extraordinary centuries of English political and intellectual history. It was a century in which conflicts between Crown and Parliament and the overlapping conflicts between Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics swirled into civil war in the 1640s. With the defeat and death of Charles I, there began a great experiment in governmental institutions including the abolishment of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican church, and the establishment of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate in the 1650s. The collapse of the Protectorate after the death of Cromwell was followed by the Restoration of Charles II — the return of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican Church. This period lasted from 1660 to 1688. It was marked by continued conflicts between King and Parliament and debates over religious toleration for Protestant dissenters and Catholics. This period ends with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which James II was driven from England and replaced by William of Orange and his wife Mary. The final period during which Locke lived involved the consolidation of power by William and Mary, and the beginning of William’s efforts to oppose the domination of Europe by the France of Louis XIV, which later culminated in the military victories of John Churchill — the Duke of Marlborough.
1.1 Locke’s Life up to His Meeting with Lord Ashley in 1666
Locke was born in Wrington to Puritan parents of modest means. His father was a country lawyer who served in a cavalry company on the Puritan side in the early stages of the English civil war. His father’s commander, Alexander Popham, became the local MP, and it was his patronage which allowed the young John Locke to gain an excellent education.
Well, most of us these days do not have an excellent education — and have to work for it, using all the faculties and time, even as we work. There is a real purpose behind attempting to structure one’s life so there is time to follow through this. And for that purpose, one should be learning to invest, sell, or own business — and obtain so financial literacy, versus ongoing “employment training” at public (government) expense. By at every turn, heading directly AWAY from all of the “7 Dumbing Down Lessons” (and hanging with people headed in that direction), who knows what is possible?
More from Mr. Thompson, I gather, under “Judicial Power Run Amok” segment:
A CALL TO ACTION
To the extent we have accepted conventional wisdom regarding judicial activism, we have become a part of the problem by encouraging its continuation. How often do we litigators make arguments, even in instances of ‘Christian litigation,’ that presuppose, and indeed invite, the court to make new law? Or openly rely on judicial precedents which are nothing more than a legislative act in the garb of a judicial opinion? How often do we as professors teach our students no other view of judicial power than the one propounded by the U.S. Supreme Court?
It’s no wonder the problem of judicial activism hasn’t gone away (and will not go away) merely by appointing new judges to the bench, whether Christian, conservative, or otherwise. The new judges think just like the old judges, and no one is training anyone to think differently – not any association of Christian lawyers, and not any so-called Christian law school. But, if Christian lawyers don’t advocate God’s law of judicial power, no one else will. For this, they must accept responsibility.
I suggest there is no long-term solution to the problem of judicial activism other than a concerted effort to advocate the laws of nature and nature’s God. No federal statute, no amendment of the Constitution, no replacement of judges on the bench, no limitation on court jurisdiction, no review of judicial decisions by political bodies, and no amount of civil disobedience will correct the foundational problem. Unless and until judges are willing to submit their own wills to the will of God and His law, the problem will only get worse. And unless we are willing to commit to the long-term process of raising up a generation of people who will do that, little will change
WE have to be the watchdogs at home. To understand the Containers of the Vocabulary
Which COntain the important Concepts of Liberty.
Then we also have to watch practice –
‘And who is my neighbor?” an attorney asked Jesus.
Both of them knew the law and what was right.
But only one was looking for an out in practice
The areas we can lose it fast in “practice” and have – includes FAMILY LAW SYSTEM & EDUCATION & OFFICE of FAITH_BASED
A slew of “helpers” and “educators” seeking global dominance — that’s all it is. Unlearn Gatto’s 7 schoolteacher lessons. Each one reach one.
Stop debating mental health. mental health may improve if one starts reading some of the founding documents, Locke, etc. Look back — Look head.
I can’t keep writing these posts — they are just GUIDE posts.
Walking one way or the other is up to you.
Robert Frost (1874 – 1963) recited and wrote a different poem in 1961, for JFKennedy’s inauguration.
The sun got in his 87 yr old eyes, so instead of what he’d written, Frost recited another. However, this is one of my favorites:
If only just a few more of us could take this road, and remember where we came from, and explore a different future —
not coached, trained, led by the nose and supervised — but independently, and able to reflect and observe along the way ….
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
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