Four books have influenced me in profound ways over many years.

1. C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (many editions)

Considered one of Lewis’s more difficult and less read works (at least in comparison to his fiction or Mere Christianity), Abolition has been indispensible to my intellectual development. I first read it in my sophomore or junior year in college as a philosophy major. It gave me very solid support for the existence of moral values beyond the contingencies of culture. Technically, it is a work of meta-ethics — or the metaphysics of ethics. He argues for “the Tao,” by which he means the objective basis for moral values that transcends culture and preference.

Lewis warned that abandoning this objective standpoint would lead to a culture where people attempt to invent new values and then condition others to accept them through force and propaganda.

It is no wonder that I liberally quoted this work in my book against postmodernism, Truth Decay (2000). While not an apologetic for the biblical God as the basis for eternal values, The Abolition of Man lays that foundation. Its argument for objective moral value should be combined with the moral argument for God found in Book One of Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I have read this book at least six times and always benefit from it. In that sense, it is much like Francis Schaffer’s work, The God Who is There, which I have read about the same number of times.

2. Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, 30th anniversary ed. (InterVarsity Press, 1998; originally published, 1968).

Originally published in 1968. 30th anniversary edition published in 1998. I first read The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer in the fall of 1976, my sophomore year in college—just a few months after my conversion to Christ. It is not an overstatement to say that it revolutionized my view of Christian faith and endeavor. I had spent the first few troubled months of the Christian life not knowing how to think about the great intellectual issues I had been introduced to in my first year of college. This caused considerable distress of soul. But Schaeffer, the savvy evangelist and apologist, wasn¹t afraid of the great ideas. In fact, he argued that the Christian world view is objectively true, rational, and that it offers unique hope and meaning to a post-Christian culture awash in despair and confusion.

Schaeffer did not answer all my questions, and I have come to question a few of his judgments (particularly his reading of a few philosophers), but The God Who is There helped spark a grand view of ministry that has never dimmed. We must love the lost, take culture seriously, and outthink the world for Christ!

3. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (various editions).

I have been reading Pascal’s profound reflections for forty-five years, and I don’t plan on stopping. I wrote a book called On Pascal (Wadsworth, 2003). I find myself quoting him in my writing and speaking frequently. I first picked this volume out of my mother’s collection of The Great Books in the summer of 1977. The volume consists of over 900 fragments of a book Pascal never completed, which would have been an apologetic for the Christian faith. Nevertheless, many of the fragments—some more developed and refined than others—were so brilliant that Pascal’s family published them after his death in 1662. He was only 39.

Pascal, a celebrated scientist and mathematician, understood that the gospel was the only key that could unlock the meaning of the human condition. His reflections on the greatness and misery of humanity are unparalleled in their wisdom and apologetic power. We are great because made in God’s image and likeness; but we are miserable because we are fallen. We are deposed royalty in need of the Mediator, Jesus Christ.

4. Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (various editions).

Although I cannot agree with much of Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy (particularly his fideism), this devotional book was pivotal in my sense of divine calling. Kierkegaard (1813-55) aimed to reform the dry and dead Lutheran orthodoxy of his day by stimulating his readers to rediscover the Christianity of the New Testament and to stand naked as individuals before God himself. This book summons the reader to consider their lives before the “audit of eternity” and to order all their affairs so as to “will the good in the truth,” without excuse and without wavering and against the crowd, if need be.

Through reading it, I discovered that God was calling me to engage the life of the mind as a lifelong pursuit. At the time (1977 or 1978), I did not know what shape this commitment would take, but the Lord’s will was made known to me through this remarkable and penetrating book.

This is what Woke is! OPPRESSION. Democrats need to just say no to woke.

First flight of my new Polar H10 Heart Rate Monitor.

I stopped in the park to break open a diet root beer. The voice prompter interrupted my audio book every couple of minutes to tell me I was improving fitness. It is tempting to talk back to the robot. Dont need it’s opinion. I will have to listen to the book again, and search under rocks for wherever my zen skittered away to hide.

Every time I drive 35W this is what I get.

From Earth Day to Purple Hair Day.

Having some purple-haired loser in a nose ring convince your six-year-old to get a sex change is not why most people send their children to school,

However, apparently its just another normal day in the White House, and protesting it is seen as some sort of horrible threat to democracy by the ruling junta of the NWO, (the new world order).

Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now.^[7]

by Anthony Trollope.

I dont run ubuntu linux but some of these features sound interesting. There is nothing more boring than Windows. To me having windows is like having a root canal.

https://www.debugpoint.com/2022/04/10-things-to-do-ubuntu-22-04-after-install/

I as a Black person do not want to hear this demeaning message about how I need help from you, and how I need help from the rich and how we need to invest in Black business. What is Netflix doing for Black people or for lower income communities? Virtually nothing. When this whole Black Lives Matter scandal broke out and people were taking to the streets – what did Netflix do? They opened up a category on their streaming service for Black creators and Black content, not only segregating their consumers and creating a divisive climate, but doing nothing for Black people in their efforts. It makes no sense. It’s all virtue-signaling and it’s all propaganda. That’s all that they want. 

Hmmm. Interesting.

I had been thinking of cancelling Netflix because it is a wasteland of sleaze.

Star Trek Picard and Star Trek Discovery (on Paramount) are almost unwatchable. Cringe worthy. The current western culture is a toxic waste dump that ruined future centuries. I am searching for just one program to make the fee worth paying.

Just finished Beholder’s Eye. Downloaded the sequel already.

The narrator has the perfect voice for Esen, and her range of diction is exceptional. I am at risk of addiction. Just like R.C. Bray is addicting.

Listen to Beholder’s Eye by Julie E. Czerneda on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/B008ESCZFS?source_code=ASSOR1500219210011

Democrats join Disney in opposing parental rights, BOO parents advocates.

On Thursday, the Florida state legislature passed a bill seeking to dissolve a special district that allows the Walt Disney Company to act as its own government within the outer limits of Orange and Osceola counties. The bill passed the state Senate on Wednesday with a vote of 23-16 and sailed through the state’s House of Representatives by a vote of 70-38.

The proposal was first introduced Tuesday by Republican state Sen. Jennifer Bradley, but opponents say it’s really driven by DeSantis. Widely seen as a contender for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, DeSantis is locked in a bitter and public feud with the entertainment giant over the company’s denouncement of Florida’s HB 1557 law last month. HB 1557, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, limits early education teachings on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Until recently, there had been no major public discussion about dissolving Disney’s long-established special district, which it’s occupied for 55 years, leading opposing senators and other critics of the bill to question its timing and the speed at which it’s being pushed through.

State Rep. Randy Fine told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday that the bill isn’t retaliatory but said “when Disney kicked the hornet’s nest, we looked at special districts.”

“People wanted to deal with the special district for decades,” he said. “Disney had the political power to prevent it for decades. What changed is bringing California values to Florida. Floridians said, ‘You are a guest. Maybe you don’t deserve the special privileges anymore.’”

Fine said the bill was introduced to even the playing field in Florida for theme park operators. He noted that Disney’s competition, Universal, SeaWorld and Legoland, do not have special districts to operate in.

Democrats in the state Senate, though outnumbered, came to the theme park’s defense on Wednesday during a special session of the body

In Part I, Wokeness was described in terms of it’s practical outcomes and policies.
Part II has to do with fundamentals.

Forgiveness and redemption do not exist in the world of wokeness. They are not allowed.
Wokeness is a moral world view that seeks to divide people into two classes: Oppressor and Oppressed.

Why is this?

Marxist Queer Theory

Wokeness is a marxist queer theory. This theory isn’t about sex; instead it is about everything. NORMAL is not allowed as a concept in marxism. Anything that is deemed normal creates oppression. The woke believe that in a world where normal exists those who are normal enjoy privilege as a class and those outside normal are oppressed because they lack privilege. The non-normal are an oppressed class. And this must be stopped.

There is only one moral belief in marxism: All oppressed classes must be eliminated. Normal must be opposed and eliminated.

Consequently, everything in human society must be made into an issue of contention. Existing traditions, conventions, and power structures must be torn down and transformed. Why? Those who believe in normal are oppressors.

As I said, forgiveness and redemption are not allowed in the world of the woke. These ideas have to do with good and bad. They handle a case where someone has gone from good to bad but now seeks to be restored to goodness and be forgiven. And to be restored to a condition of peace. What’s wrong with this? It is based on the idea that good is normal. And normality is not allowed in the moral system of the woke. Good oppresses bad.

The woke are at war with the concept of normal at all levels. The issue isn’t really race, or sex, or gender, or group identity. These are mere tools the marxists use to disrupt, transform, and destroy.

Democrats, the real democrats, believe in peace, and goodness, and normality. And fairness too. They also believe in doing no harm. But when you eliminate normal the result is harm. Harm to everyone. This isn’t what democrats wanted. They have been deceived by the woke.

Random thoughts on sci fi authoring.

We finished The Naked Sun (1957) tonight. Second in a sequence the Caves of Steel (1954) / The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov.

He had already written Foundation (1951) before Caves of Steel. It is fascinating to have read these books but years later to go back and think about how Asimov developed his ideas and stitched these stories together. What I had never realized was that Robots were intended to explain Foundation. This was affected in part by Asimov having been criticized for writing stories about superior aliens. So he decided not to ever write about aliens. and he wanted to explain why the universe was void of alien life. This was why he never produced Star Trek or Star Wars type universes. I always wondered about that. it was planned, but planned after an evolution. Fascinating is what Spock would say.

Surprise Ending

I noticed the Naked Sun story ends in a major Story Pivot Point in the “I, Robot” saga. I believe Asimov wrote this pivot point first when planning these two Elijah Bailey books, then designed the detective story of Elijah Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw to produce the pivot point.

Story Arcs A’Plenty

There are many other story arcs involved in the I,Robot saga. Some stories in Asimov’s universe have no robots at all.

I have been ruined.

Unfortunately I have been ruined by Clifford Simak. He too writes about robots, but in a totally different fashion. My thoughts run far ahead into a Simak future.

Wokeness is a moral vacuum.

Prager is talking today about the moral vacuum of leftness and wokeness exhibited by the democrats. Oh, the woke will tell you they are the moral ones, they are morally superior to you. So you should do what they say.

For example, one woke lady wrote a book In Defense of Looting. She says “it’s economic”. “It’s evening the score”. So they follow you home, beat you up, and steal your stuff.

Why? The left teaches anger and rage at anyone who has more than others. “It’s not fair,” the left insists. “Fairness is a moral issue”. “Fairness is a economic issue.” “EQUITY IS DEMANDED”. “Equity, equity, equity” is their battle cry. But it is the left’s own peculiar definition of equity. Normal people call it brazen criminal behavior. The left calls it equity. This demonstrates their moral vacuum. They raise a banner of “fairness” but refuse to understand that criminal behavior is not fair. It is actually evil. When you are in a moral vacuum you cannot recognize good and evil from each other.

This is the woke revolution that has taken over the democratic party and become the new American values claimed by Biden and Pelosi and other woke leaders talk so much about. It’s all based on a morality rooted in the godlessness of Marxism. They call anything from God evil, and anything anti-God is called good. That creates a moral vacuum. The nihilism, the meaninglessness of life grates at them. So they create chaos and fake morality just to bury the pain of their despair. It doesn’t really matter who it hurts, just so they have company in a crowd that moves with them.

The left destroys everything it touches.

84. A Bill for Punishing Disturbers of Religious Worship and Sabbath Breakers, 18 June 1779

84. A Bill for Punishing Disturbers of Religious Worship and Sabbath Breakers

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no officer, for any civil cause, shall arrest any minister of the gospel,1 licensed according to the rules of his sect, and who shall have taken the oath of fidelity to the commonwealth, while such minister shall be publicly preaching or performing religious worship in any church, chapel, or meeting-house,2 on pain of imprisonment and amercement, at the discretion of a jury, and of making satisfaction to the party so arrested.

And if any person shall of purpose, maliciously, or contemptuously, disquiet or disturb any congregation assembled in any church, chapel, or meeting-house,2 or misuse any such minister being there, he may be put under restraint during religious worship, by any Justice present, which Justice, if present, or if none be present, then any Justice before whom proof of the offence shall be made, may cause the offender to find two sureties3 to be bound by recognizance in a sufficient penalty for his good behavior, and in default thereof shall commit him to prison, there to remain till the next court to be held for the same county; and upon conviction of the said offence before the said court, he shall be further punished by imprisonment and amercement at the discretion of a jury.

If any person on Sunday shall himself be found labouring at his own or any other trade or calling, or shall employ his apprentices, servants or slaves in labour, or other business, except it be in the ordinary houshold offices of daily necessity, or other work of necessity or charity, he shall forfeit the sum of ten shillings for every such offence, deeming every apprentice, servant, or slave so employed, and every day he shall be so employed as constituting a distinct offence.

86. A Bill Annulling Marriages Prohibited by the Levitical Law, and Appointing the Mode of Solemnizing Lawful Marriage, 18 June 1779

86. A Bill Annulling Marriages Prohibited by the Levitical Law, and Appointing the Mode of Solemnizing Lawful Marriage

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that marriages prohibited by the Levitical law shall be null; and persons marrying contrary to that prohibition, and cohabiting as man and wife, convicted thereof in the General Court, shall be amerced, from time to time, until they separate. A marriage between a person of free condition and a slave, or between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a mulatto, shall be null. Where a person, by inquisition taken by virtue of a commission issuing out of the High Court of Chancery, shall be found a lunatic, if, before such person shall be declared of sane mind by the Judges of the said court, or two of them, he or she shall marry, such marriage shall be null. And a marriage between any persons whatsoever, unless it be with such license, and, moreover if both or either of the parties not having been married before, be under the age of twenty one years, with such consent, as herein after directed, shall be null. The marriage license shall be issued by the clerk of the court of that county, in which the woman shall have resided for the last preceeding four weeks, at the least, in this form or to this effect. A B, of the hundred of in the county of and C D, of the hundred of in the county of are hereby licensed to be joined together in matrimony; and shall be signed by the first acting Justice of the Peace, of the same county, who shall then be therein; but the clerk shall not issue the license, until the father or guardian of any party who, not having been lawfully married before, shall be under the age of twenty one years, shall have personally declared, or by writing under his hand and seal, attested by two witnesses, shall have signified, his consent to the marriage to the clerk, which consent the clerk shall certify at the foot or on the back of the license, and shall certify in a separate paper to the Justice of the Peace. Any clerk, required to issue a license without such declaration or signification of a father’s or guardian’s consent, and doubting whether a party be of full age, or not, may suspend issuing the license until the then next court day of his county, unless he shall be sooner satisfied, when the fact shall be enquired of by a jury, and according to their verdict he shall govern himself in issuing or refusing the license. Any clerk who shall issue a marriage license, when the parties, or either of them, shall be under the age of twenty one years, without such consent, declared or signified as aforesaid, shall be liable to the action of the father or guardian of the infant, or of each infant mentioned in the license, for damages; which damages, in case of a suit brought by the guardian, shall be to the use of the ward; and the clerk shall moreover be deprived of his office. Persons who having obtained such license, as before is directed, shall, in presence of witnesses, declare or yeild their consent to be married together, shall, without further ceremony, be deemed man and wife, as effectually as if the contract had been solemnized, and the espousals celebrated, in the manner prescribed by the ritual of any church, or according to the custom of any religious society, whereof they are members. The clerk issuing licenses shall keep a correct register of them, and the Justices signing them shall report such signature, within six months thereafter, to the court of his county, which report shall be entered by the clerk in such register; and whosoever shall neglect his duty in these particulars, or any of them, shall be amerced.

85. A Bill for Appointing Days of Public Fasting and Thanksgiving, 18 June 1779

85. A Bill for Appointing Days of Public Fasting and Thanksgiving

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that the power of appointing days of public fasting and humiliation, or thanksgiving, throughout this commonwealth, may in the recess of the General Assembly, be exercised by the Governor, or Chief Magistrate, with the advice of the Council;1 and such appointment shall be notified to the public, by a proclamation,2 in which the occasion of the fasting or thanksgiving shall be particularly set forth. Every minister of the gospel3 shall on each day so to be appointed, attend and perform divine service and preach a sermon, or discourse, suited to the occasion, in his church, on pain of forfeiting fifty pounds4 for every failure, not having a reasonable excuse.5

Report, p. 59–60. MS (Vi-U); clerk’s copy. MS (DLC) in clerk’s hand, endorsed by TJ: “A Bill Concerning Public Fasts.” On verso is a series of notes in TJ’s hand on the proceedings of the House of Commons on controverted elections. MS (DLC) is referred to below as MS Bill.

Bill was presented by Madison on 31 Oct. 1785 and on 14 Dec. was postponed to the next session; it was brought up at the Oct. 1786 session and was committed to the committee of the whole, but apparently no further action was taken on it (JHD, Oct. 1785, 1828 edn., p. 12–15, 92; same, Oct. 1786, p. 16–17).

1. Instead of the words “throughout this commonwealth … of the Council” the MS Bill reads: “throughout this State, shall be in the General Assembly during their Sessions, and in their recess, in the Governor or Chief Magistrate for the time being with the advice of the Council.”

2. The MS Bill reads: “Resolution of the Assembly or by a Proclamation of the Governor respectively.”

3. The MS Bill reads: “Every Episcopal Minister prefer’d to any Parish in one of his Churches and every other Licenced Minister of the Gospel, at one of the meeting Houses at which he is appointed or accustomed to perform divine Service shall‥‥”

4. The MS Bill has a blank space at this point.

5. The MS Bill adds the following: “one half to the use of the Commonwealth and the other to the Informer, to be recovered with costs by action of debt or information in any Court of Record.”

82. A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 18 June 1779

82. A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that1 Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint;2 that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion,3 who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone;4 that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors,4 is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary5 rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than6 our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also7 to corrupt the principles of that very8 religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;9 that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact10 that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

And though we well know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act11 irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

For rumble video click here: Snowing on Easter