Again. This Is Socialized Medicine

Listen carefully to this report -- they have done / are doing just the *opposite* counting these medical murders than they did counting "deaths 'with' Covid-19[84]"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTvaglqROCw

The Race of Fishmongers

 There are two pious myths about 'race' which I detest for their falseness:

1) "One's race is the most important fact about one's self".
2) "There are no such things as races";

Leftists promulgate both myths, sometimes even simultaneously, depending on what seems advantageous at the moment.  Rightists, and especially Christian rightists, tend toward promulgating the second myth.

There two myths are pernicious not because they are mutually exclusive (for, after all, one might be correct), and only not because both are false, but also because both may have terrible real-world consequences:

1) IF it is true that "One's race is the most important fact about one's self", THEN racism is not only morally justified, but inevitable and inescapable; and perhaps not merely morally justified, but morally requisite.  This is where the leftists, in general, and the Democratic Party, in particular, have settled.  Though, in their defense, the Democrats have *always* been racists.

2) IF it is true that "There are no such things as races", THEN one is compelled to ignore what one's own lying eyes clearly see.  For instance, in medical care it is not infrequently the case that persons of some races are more susceptible to some specific diseases than to others. And thus, when one pretends that the patient's race does not exist, one may well waste time and effort -- and the patient's health, or even life -- by studiously overlooking conditions known to be more prevalent to persons of the patient's particular race. 

======= 

To quote myself from a recent post --

Firstly, the English word 'race' isn't *about* skin-color or ancestry or even about biology; it is about different ways of categorizing things or animals or people. That for about the past 150 years (i.e. since Darwinism took over the minds of the "progressives") we most commonly use the word to denote the broad continental origins of various ethnic groups doesn't change the fact that the word is not so narrow in its designations. [See below for an historical example of 'race' used in this broader, "non-racist", meaning]

Secondly, if you're distinguishing an Englishman from a Welshman, or an Igbo (called 'Ibo' in my youth) man from a Yoruba man, you are distinguishing these men based on their ethnicities -- for which distinctions the word 'race' has historically been used [despite that in presently common usage, an Englishman and a Welshman are of a common 'race', while an Igbo man and a Yoruba man are of a common 'race' different to the former].

But, what does ethnicity mean in a country like America? In the South Bend Indiana of my mother's youth (i.e. nearly a century ago), it mattered immensely whether one was "Polish" or "Hungarian". Or, it mattered not at all, if like her people, one was simply what is now disdained as "WASP". In my own youth in South Bend Indiana, some people just had difficult-to-pronounce family names.

The ethnicity of a black American and the ethnicity of a white America are singularly 'American'. Yet, sometimes, we do need to recognize the broadly continental origins of a person's ancestry.

While 'English' or 'Yoruba' are ethnicities, 'white' is not an ethnicity and 'black' is not an ethnicity. 'European' is not an ethnicity; 'African' is not an ethnicity; 'East Asian' is not an ethnicity; 'American Indian' is not an ethnicity. And so on [Nonetheless, the 'white/European' race is a real thing; and the 'black/(Sub-Saharan) African' race is a real thing; and the 'yellow/East Asian' race is a real thing; and the 'red/American Indian' race is a real thing; and the 'Australian Aborigine' race is a real thing. And so on.].

And yet, there are recognizable differences -- generally unimportant, but sometimes critical -- between a person of primarily European ancestry and a person of primarily (sub-Saharan) African ancestry. To blind ourselves with the one leftist lie that "There is no such thing as race" is as foolish and potentially harmful as to blind ourselves with the other leftist lie that "All there is is race".

=======

At the following link are English translations -- made in the 19th Century, when English-speakers more generally were not so simple-minded as in the present day -- of two ancient Greek references to "the race of fishmongers" --

"I used to think the race of fishmongers Was only insolent in Attica; But now I see that like wild beasts they are Savage by nature, everywhere the same. ..."

"But as to fishmongers, They're an inventive race, and yield to none In shameless conduct. ..."

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2013.01.0003%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D6

Have you fixed the Lisbon Problem?

 Douglas Wilson: "Have you fixed the Lisbon Problem?"

These pretend atheists (*) like to pretend that "The Problem Of Evil" refutes the Christian understanding of the nature of God. It does not; and they studiously avoid and ignore any and all Christian responses to said problem. MOREOVER, their atheistic "solution" to "The Problem Of Evil" is to deny that there are such things as Good or Evil in the first place.

Can you not see the absurdity of this? The God-haters want to point to the reality of "senseless" evils (**), whether of a moral or of a "natural" nature, WHEN IT SUITS THEM to use such evils as a cudgel with which to attack Christianity and as an excuse to deny the reality of God. Having done so, they shrug their shoulders at the truth that one must at least implicitly acknowledge the reality of God – and one must acknowledge that the Christian understanding of the nature of God is broadly correct, even if incomplete (as, of course, *any* human understanding of the nature of God must be incomplete) -- before one can even point to the reality of such evils.

Stripped to its core, the atheistic “Argument From Evil” is this – “God is.  Ergo, God is not!”

(*) They are not truly atheists, because they refuse to follow the logic of their premises to the inescapable logical conclusions. Rather, they are God-haters.

(**) Christianity says that God will rectify all the evils of history, that God will make sense of all evils, that not one of the evils in all of history is ultimately meaningless.

Atheism says that the very concept of 'evil' is meaningless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n16mPd60j1w

On the Democrats' New Boogeyman -- "Christian Nationalism"

 Seen on the internet --

=====
NYT reported, “Mr. Johnson declined an interview request and did not respond to a request for comment about whether he considers himself a Christian nationalist. But the little-known speaker of the House has made clear that his faith is the most important thing to know about him, and in previous interviews, he has said he believes ‘the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.’”

I hadn’t thought of it that way but yes, that is true. The Constitution is a document of restraints on the government, not the people.

The IUPUI professor’s definition of Christian nationalism is shockingly Christian: “Christian nationalism strongly favors traditionalist social relationships and hierarchies. This ideal society revolves around patriarchy, heterosexual marriage, and pronatalism.”

By pronatalism he means women birthing babies.

Professor IUPUI just described the 1950s. We have devolved into a nation populated by purple haired people, people with tattooed faces, bearded ladies, and 500-pound men. Face it. America is a circus now where you dare not slut-shame the neighborhood whore.

If we must go through this, at least bring back some calliope music.

=====

My response --

Contrary to what we all have been taught ... since the secularists/atheists took over the government and the schools ... the US Constitution does not establish a secular state. Rather, it establishes a non-sectarian, but decidedly Protestant flavored, state.

A secular state is hostile to "religion", which is to say, to Christianity. A non-sectarian state is supportive of Christianity, but takes no sides regarding any Christian sect.

Furthermore, there is no such thing as "Separation of Church and State" in the self-serving manner in which the secularists/atheists used that phrase as a bait-and-switch to covertly overthrow the prior American regime of "civic religion" or Christianity Lite. There is *always* a "god of the system", and there are always laws against blasphemy; in Current Year, it is blasphemy to say such things as:
1) homosexuality is *not* a Good Thing ... Hell! They have recently starting asserting that saying the word 'homosexual' is itself a "hate crime";
2) human beings come in only two sexes, and no genders at all;
3) men cannot be/become women;
4) women cannot be/become men;
5) women have no business in the military, nor in the police or fire-fighting forces.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-maga-mike

A Prodigious Feat

A couple of days ago, I had four more spruce trees cut down (2 living and 2 dead -- and that will be $2000 plus tax). The tree service company got to them two weeks earlier than expected.

For the past two days, I've been working at getting the debris out of the yard. Today, I finished cutting up and rolling into the woods the largest log (@18" in diameter and perhaps 20' long), which was blocking getting the lawn tractor into the side yard, where two of the others are located.

I should have taken a picture before I started cutting up the big guy, as a memento of what a prodigious feat that was. Prodigious feat though it was, it might easily have been worse, as the log was lying on a slope.

One of the dead trees might well have taken out the power line when it fell, so it had to go. Due to its lean, the other dead tree would almost certainly have hit the house when it fell.

The two live trees might also have hit the house had they fallen (the big one was less than 10' away, the other simply that tall). It turns out that the live trees weren't diseased, but I'm glad they are down. A few years ago, a buddy of the farther one just fell over one day -- it's base was riddled with fungus mycelium.

It's too bad that I don't know anyone who could have used the wood of the big spruce. It was such a nice length of perfectly straight wood.

======
The Emerald Ash Borer is killing ash trees all across the US. Naturally, a lot of the trees on my property are ash -- and the woods are full of dead fallen trees.

Last year, I had some ash trees along the property line dropped. A couple of them were close to 24" diameter. This spring, a couple of large (and very dead) ash on a neighboring rental property fell over, fortunately not hitting the building. Recently, the owner had a crew in to clean up the fallen trees (they were at it for at least a week). The crew cut up and hauled away not only the recently fallen trees, but also some of the ones I had had cut down. Now, I didn't mind that too much -- less work for me -- BUT, they also carted off the wood I had already cut and split and which was clearly on my property.

======

A groundhog has made a way into the garden.  So, come spring, I'll have to figure out a way to groundhog-proof the fence.  That will be fun, I'm sure.  So far, the only idea I have is to dig out the soil all around the perimeter so I can staple a width of hardware cloth (i..e wire mesh) to the garden's wooden skirting, having the mesh projecting below ground level.  Then fill it back in, of course.

Any ideas will be appreciated.

I *hate* animals.

When Is Speech "Free Speech"?

 On the other hand, fomenting violence -- which is what the French State is trying to prevent -- is not free speech, any more than Drag Queen Story Hour is.

The Founders were not "free speech absolutists", and they very much approved of censorship; for contrary to "free speech absolutistism", not all censorship is the same.

The "free speech absolutists" are as much our enemies as are the leftists who are currently using federal government violence to silence and persecute us. In fact, "free speech absolutistism" was the bait-and-switch tool which was used to get our society to the present state in which actions sexualizing children are called "free speech", but speech opposing the sexualizing of children is called "violence" and "killing the marginalized".

Our civilization is destroying itself because our fathers and grandfathers allowed our enemies to distort the meanings of those constitutionally enumerated rights, and especially of the "Free Speech Clause" of the 1st Amendment, and in fact gleefully joined in that distortion ... because they wanted easier access to porn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGvqv4NsQCs

Atheists Trusted Sam Harris, Until . . .

In the linked video, David Wood discusses the general intellectual dishonesty of Sam Harris. In this post, I zero in on a specific and long-standing example of the intellectual dishonesty of Harris and of 'atheists' in general.

@3:35 Sam Harris: "If there were good reasons to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin ... that would be part of our rational world-view. It's only when people lose their purchase on evidence and argument, when they have bad reasons, that they talk about faith."

As is traditional with God-deniers, Sam Harris is asserting selective hyper-skepticism. It is not true that 'atheists' rationally deny the possibility of events which "break the laws of nature". Rather, they assert those possibilities as proven fact ... until some event which "breaks the laws of nature" is believed to have been deliberately and purposefully caused by God. Evangelical Atheists assert that you must believe in the possibility of events which "break the laws of nature", events which they also say no one has ever witnessed and no one is ever likely to witness, and which events are accidental and meaningless. And they assert that you are a fool, or at best an ignoramus, if you do not also assent to the possibility of these accidental and meaningless hypothetical events. Simultaneously, they assert that you are a fool, or at best an ignoramus, if you do believe the reports of people who claim to have witnessed and recorded certain events which "break the laws of nature" ... when those events are recorded in the Bible and are attributed to intentional and purposeful intervention in the regular working of the "laws of nature" by the Creator of the "laws of nature". ============ Consider this quote is from "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan "Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe. *The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow." ============ My response is: And, sometimes, iron axeheads which have flown off their handles and fallen into a pond or river float to the surface. [This is a reference to a miracle of the prophet Elisha, as recorded in II Kings 6:1-7] And, sometimes, the dead bodies of persons who really and truly are dead, rise back to life. [This is a reference to a number of resurrections recorded in both Old and New Testaments, including that of Jesus the Christ.] So, given what 'scientistes' (*) believe and assert about the nature of reality, how can their denial of, and refusal to believe, any of the miracles recorded in the Bible be anything other than selective hyper-skepticism, which is to say, intellectual dishonesty?

(*) 'scientistes' is my mocking term, a la Miss Piggy, the Artiste, for those who assert scientism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EbsZ10wqnA

An Atheist Grapples With The Source of Morality

While as an 'atheist' he cannot yet see it, what Carl Benjamin (aka "Sargon of Akkad") is reaching for in the intro is the realization that morality is grounded in the nature of the Triune God: true morality is transcendent, inter-personal, and relational.

When Carl says @0:10, "[According to leftism, morality] has to be essentially rationally calculable. But actually, if you think about it, a lot of what we actually do that is moral, is actually very sentimental and habitual, right? We didn't think about it, we just do it, because it's the right thing to do. So, if you are actually taking principles like 'freedom' and 'equality', well actually you can destroy the family with those principles. You don't 'owe' anything to your parents, and you can't say that your father is 'superior' to you, because that's not 'equality'. And so you're bound by being ... you didn't choose your parents, and so by the principles of 'freedom' and 'equality', you can be un-bound from your own family. And children can have no responsibility not only to their own parents, but their own country" ... what he is grasping at is the understanding that moral hierarchies, such as father and son, nation and man, loyalty, duty, and so on, are grounded in the transcendent inter-personal relationships of God-the-Father and God-the Son and God-the-Holy-Spirit. While everyone likes to poo-poo "Divine Command Moral Theory" (i.e. "An act is moral/immoral because God says it is moral/immoral") as obviously false, it is not actually false, but rather is incomplete. For example, so long as he is not violating the true morality to which he himself is also subject, if a father commands his son to do or not to do, then that thing is moral or immoral for the son, irrespective of whether the son understands why his father has so commanded. Similarly, if God -- who is Morality Itself -- commands us to do or not to do, then that thing is moral or immoral for us to do, even when we do not understand why he has commanded it so. Now, a fuller, more complete, understanding of morality is that morality is grounded in the nature and character and relationships of the Persons of the Godhead: that is, in the truth that "God is Love". And thus our moral obligations one to another and moral expectation one from another are grounded in relationship and love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92JuNDOx9sU

The False Promises of Environmentalism ... "With or Without Us"

"Mayor Pete" Buttyjudge (born 1982): "Look, I come from South Bend, Indiana. That's the home of UAW Local 5 and UAW Local 9. And I saw how the past generation of union auto jobs helped build the middle class and helped build communities like the one that I grew up in. And I also saw what happened when those factories closed. What the UAW is trying to do, right now, is to make sure that this next chapter of the auto industry .. which, let's be very clear, these cars are going electric with or without us."

======

Troy Hailey / Ilíon (born 1957): I *also* am from South Bend, Indiana. And I have seen 25 years more of history than Pete Buttigieg has; moreover, I didn't start "at the top", as Pete Buttigieg did, but from very near the bottom. I have *seen* what he and his ilk have done to South Bend, and to America.

According to some stats I found, South Bend's population peaked in 1960, at 132,445, and was 103,353 as of 2021 -- keeping in mind that the city, like most US cities, has been chasing tax-payers -- madly annexing as much land as possible -- since the 1960s "urban renewal" craze.

In case Gentle Reader is unaware, South Bend, Indiana, is where these wonderful Studebaker cars used to spawn until the mid-1960s. I *recall* the devastation to the city when Studebaker closed its plants in South Bend in 1963 -- laid off vast swaths of its workforce -- relocating the corporation to Canada, and then totally ceased production in 1966. I *recall* driving past miles of the corpses of empty, shuttered factories well past 1980.

And I *recall* that it was the UAW honchos, in conspiracy with New Deal hold-outs deep within the bowls of the federal bureaucracy, carrying out FDR's New Deal socialist objective to consolidate all auto manufacturing into Detroit, who put Studebaker out of business.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that the US is nowhere near to generating enough electricity to charge the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that even if the US were anywhere near to generating enough electricity to charge the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles, the power-grid could not sustain such a load.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that a road trip of more than about 200 miles is out of the question with a battery-powered vehicle.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that getting snow-bound in a battery-powered vehicle will likely leave you dead.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that "renewable energy" schemes are nothing more than vehicles to hoover money from your pocket and into the pockets of rich politically-connected persons.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that "green energy" cannot meet our current energy needs, much less adding the charging of the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that there are only two options to *meaningfully* increase electrical production in the US: build more a lot more coal-fueled and/or natural gas-fueled power plants OR build a few nuclear power plants.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that the Democrats and other leftists and their "environmentalist" friends adamantly oppose both options, and that they *especially* oppose and demonize the only option which has the capacity to reduce their Great Boogey-Man of "carbon emissions".

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that the strip-mining that would be necessary to mine enough "rare earths" to build the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles would make the toxic environments of the late USSR or of today's Communist China look like a pleasant suburban park.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that *nothing* the Democrats and their leftist puppet-masters advocate is ever aimed at the good of you or of your nation, but *always* has the goal of enslaving you in socialism, with them as your owners.

EDIT: Amusing to me, the Studebaker corporation started out as a buggy-whip manufacturer in Mansfield, Ohio, where I have lived since 1982.

@28:10 Pete Buttigieg asserting that we *must* accept being forced into battery-operated cars -- https://youtu.be/l-skV89tmFQ?t=1689

This, Too, is Socialized Medicine

 Do listen to Neil Oliver discussing what few facts are publicly known about the British NHS "doctors" forcing a British girl to "accept" death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goQD0HE9UfY

EDIT --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x6-VC-WJA0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuX6cXJg3p8

How can people see this sort of casual and contemptuous evil and then accuse God of being an immoral monster for "sending people to Hell" (as people incorrectly phrase it)?

EDIT (2023/11/10) --

Michael Knowles discussing a current case of the British NHS and courts refusing to allow a sick child to leave Britain for live-saving medical treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z98SKhS6kso

This is Socialized Medicine

 Headline: Ontario woman asked to donate husband’s organs after he was denied transplant for being unvaccinated 

35-year-old Garnet Harper died after hospitals refused to perform a life-saving kidney transplant on him because he did not take the experimental COVID-19 shots.

====

Monday, July 31, 2023 --

SUDBURY, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian health officials asked an Ontario woman to donate organs of her husband who died after being denied an organ transplant because he did not receive the COVID-19 shots.

In May, Trillium Gift of Life Network (TGLN), the Ontario organ donation agency, called Meghan Harper to harvest her husband Garnet’s organs as he lay dying because the hospital refused to provide organ transplants to unvaccinated Canadians.  

“They call you while you’re sitting next to your dying loved one and they ask you if they can have his organs,” Megan told independent journalist Monique Leal. 

Healthcare professionals contact TGLN if they believe a dying patient would be a suitable donation candidate. As Garnet spent his last moments on earth, Meghan was advised by nurses to expect a call from TGLN.   

====

So, the very "healthcare professionals" who would not provide this man the vital organ transplant (*) necessary to keep him alive *also* volunteered his name as a potential "donor" to the ghouls who run the chop-shops which strip-mine sometimes-still-living "corpses" of their vital organs.

(*) My views on the morality of vital organ transplants are given in older posts.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ontario-woman-asked-to-donate-husbands-organs-after-he-was-denied-transplant-for-being-unvaccinated/

The Nexus of Language and Politics

 I'm posting this mostly as an example of most people's proud ignorance and dedication to sticking with a lie by which they were hoodwinked even in the face of proof that it is a lie.  As the saying attributed to Mark Twain has it: "It is easier to fool a man than it is to convince him that he has been fooled."

If you were to Google "first use of gender to mean sex", at the very top of the page, it says --
=====
In 1955, the controversial and innovative sexologist John Money first used the term “gender” in a way that we all now take for granted: to describe a human characteristic. ...
=====

And, despite that, almost everyone will assert that the word 'gender' means 'sex' and has always meant 'sex' and some of them even assert that 'gender' has a centuries-old history of meaning 'sex'.

Now, if you want to know *why* people think that 'gender' means 'sex', even though before 1955 'gender' was strictly a term of linguistics (and the word had almost no relevance to the English language), it goes like this --

By the 1950s at the latest, people had started to mis-use the word 'sex' as a euphemism for a certain foul four-letter word. Thus, it became embarrassing to say 'sex' in polite company.

By the way, the "prudish" Victorians were not at all embarrassed to say 'sex' in polite company ... because they were not mis-using it as a euphemism for that certain word, of which they were as well aware as you and I.

I doubt that the Victorians would easily have understood the joke --
Nurse: Sex?
Patient: Yes, please!

After 1955, the MSM -- which has been leftist, and full of sexual perverts, for a very long time -- began to popularize the newly coined 'gender' as a replacement for 'sex'. Before 1963 (I know that because I have a dictionary printed in that year), 'gender' was commonly being used in place of 'sex'.

But, 'gender' does not mean 'sex', and 'sex' does not mean '****'.

'Gender' is a word invented by a sexually perverted leftist as a means to create confusion in society about sex and human sexuality. That it has taken nearly 65 years for the plan to unfold to the current stage does not change the truth of the matter.

If you wish to be free of leftism, then free your mind of leftist language and of leftist lies.

Getting the Message

 A man is telling a friend about his day.

My daughter came home from college today and said 'Dad, cancel my allowance immediately, spend my college fund, change my bedroom into that gym you've always wanted, burn all of my clothes, take my TV, my laptop and all of my jewelry. Sell my car, change the locks to the front door and throw me out. Then visit your lawyer to remove me from your will and find a way to legally disown me."

The friend says; "Wow, she really said that to you?"

The man replies; "Well, her exact words were 'Dad, I've decided to change my major and get a gender studies degree'. But, I got the message."

An 'Epidemic' of 'Gun Violence'

 Concerning the Democratic Party's perennial excuse to disarm law-abiding citizens --

=====

Quoting from the link below:

“The worst 1% of counties (the worst 31 counties) have 21% of the population and 42% of the murders. The worst 2% of counties (62 counties) contain 31% of the population and 56% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 73% of murders. But even within those counties, the murders are very heavily concentrated in small areas,” he [John Lott] wrote of the 2020 numbers.

=====

Those "worst counties" are almost invariably counties with large cities which are populated by Democratic Party voters and run by Democratic Party bureaucrats and politicians, and frequently with draconian "gun control" laws.

If it were not for just a handful of Democratic-run cities. the US would have one of the lowest "Gun Violence" rates in the world ... despite being far and away the most heavily armed society history has ever known.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/murders-up-in-urban-areas-not-gun-friendly-counties

Usury and The One True Bureaucracy

@17:46 in the video linked below: M.Knowles has mis-stated what usury is -- apparently the mis-statement is intentional.

@18:17 in the video linked below: T.Aquinas (in the quote) is outright wrong about what what lending money at interest is.

@18:55 in the video linked below: M.Knowles: "So that's [Aquinas' argument] a little bit confusing ..."

Aquinas' argument against lending money at interest is "a little bit confusing" because Aquinas is tying himself into a logical pretzel to attempt to defend and justify a specific immoral and self-serving practice of The One True Bureaucracy of his day.

To lend money at interest is not "to sell what does not exist", it is to sell the use of that money for a specific time and at a specific cost. The use of money certainly does exist, and it exists apart from the money itself. The use of a sum of money is a wholly different thing from the use of a measure of wine or wheat -- the using of a measure of wine or wheat *just is* the consumption of it; but the use of a sum of money does not consume nor destroy the money.

There is a world of difference between the judicious lending of money at interest for some specific and defined purpose with a reasonable expectation of success and the modern orgy of debt-fueled consumerism.

Also, the real reason that The One True Bureaucracy created canon law outlawing "usury" was so that wealthy organs of that same One True Bureaucracy could further enrich themselves by usurious lending practices which would make a mafia don blush, all the while pretending that it wasn't usury.

This is how the "It's Not Really Usury" scam worked -- Petty Aristocrat A believes it will benefit his soul to go on Crusade. He doesn't have enough money to outfit himself and his retainers as needs be. He goes to The One True Bureaucracy (Division: Wealthy Organ B) to borrow the necessary monies. Wealthy Organ B lends him the money -- on condition of a mortgage (i.e. "death-grip") on his estate; that is, all income from the estate is to be turned over to Wealthy Organ B until the debt is repaid by income derived by other means, and if the debt is not repaid in some time period, the estate is forfeit to Wealthy Organ B.

I leave to Gentle Reader's imagination the contemplation of the fate of the widow and children of Petty Aristocrat A should he die of any cause while on Crusade.

Now, while actual usury is indeed bad and is indeed sinful and should indeed be prohibited by law, The One True Bureaucracy are not the people to be defining "usury" for anyone.

In the OT Law, God does not forbid the lending of money, and (contrary to the doctrines of The One True Bureaucracy) he does not forbid the lending of money at interest. What God does forbid is the enslavement of one's fellow Israelites (which, in Christianity, is universalized to all human beings) by means of debt. In almost every instance in the OT which is translated as a prohibition on 'usury', that prohibition is linked with the rationale for the prohibition -- that you not enslave you fellow Israelite by means of the debt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fgd8jBo1Sg

"I was looking back to see ..."

Recently, I was reminded of a ditty my father sometimes half-sang when I was a young child, by which I mean as far back as can remember. I especially recall always being amused both by the structure of the lyrics and by the story they told.  

This is how I recall it (which is not exactly as the Internet has the lyrics) --

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[Oh] I was looking back to see if [she was] looking back to see

If I was looking back to see if [she was] looking back at me;

[She was] cute as [she] could be [there] looking back at me
And it was [very] plain to see that I'd enjoy [her] company.

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I had always assumed, I guess, that this was a ditty from his youth, perhaps in the manner of a folk song.  It never occurred to me that it might have been a commercially recorded song.  Recall, I was a child ... and anything Daddy did was amazing and unique.

Anyway, I googled the first line.  As best I could at first make out from the results, it was recorded by Buck Owens in 1972.  What!  I turned 15 in 1972, and I recalled it from much earlier in my life than that, nor would the lyrics have seemed so witty if first encountered at that age.

But, then, I happened to click a link which implied that it was recorded at least as early as 1954. Another site said it was *popularized* by Buck Owens in 1955. That makes more sense in the "story of my life".  My father was single and about 27 in 1954, 28 in 1955.

EDIT: When my father would sing his little ditties. he'd "keep time" by lightly clapping. He had terrible timing.

Don Surber on Our Would-be Rulers

 "Keeping us confused"

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/keeping-us-confused

Kristor on "Jubilee"

"Jubilee Incoming, Ready or Not; Why Not Make Ready, & Indeed Regular?"

https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2023/04/29/jubilee-incoming-ready-or-not-why-not-make-ready-indeed-regular/

KT Cat on "The Value Of Christian Study"

 https://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-value-of-christian-study.html

It's a good read ... even if KT is squishy on the scientism issue.

Re: "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old"

 from the 52:58 mark --

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But what about light? What did this [Special Relativity] mean for light's experience of space and time? Travelling at the fastest speed possible in the universe, the effects of relativity become extreme.  Very Extreme.  All distances shrink to zero.  As does the time taken to cover these zero distances.  And so, for photons, no matter how far they travel across the universe, not a single instant of time will tick by.  Even though this light may have existed in time and space for many years [i.e. in time] or light years [i.e. in space], even though it would have been clearly formed by one electron in one location and vanished when absorbed by another electron in another location, the space-time distance between these two events would be exactly zero.  To the photon, it is born and dies at precisely the same moment. To the photon, it is as it it had never existed at all. [I'm not convinced that this last statement stands up.]

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Another way to say the above is that from a photon's "point of view" or "frame of reference" it exists *simultaneously* at all times and at all points in space on the particular path which it takes from its creation to its destruction.

I had grasped this point about light with respect to Special Relativity, all on my own, years ago.  This is why I have never been impressed with, nor intimidated by, the "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old" assertion.

EDIT: What I mean is that it seems to me that the "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old" assertion is based upon disregarding physics following Einstein and instead treating the now-considered-erroneous Newtonian physics as the measure by which to understand the universe.

https://youtu.be/bAedYtUredI?t=3179

Kin, Skin, & Sin (Doug Wilson)

 Wilson is wrong on his current position that "There is no such thing as race / There is only the human race", but otherwise and overall this is a good take on all this.

Firstly, the English word 'race' isn't *about* skin-color or ancestry or even about biology; it is about different ways of categorizing things or animals or people. That for about the past 150 years (i.e. since Darwinism took over the minds of the "progressives") we most commonly use the word to denote the broad continental origins of various ethnic groups doesn't change the fact that the word is not so narrow in its designations.

Secondly, if you're distinguishing an Englishman from a Welshman, or an Igbo (called 'Ibo' in my youth) man from a Yoruba man, you are distinguishing these men based on their ethnicities -- for which distinctions the word 'race' has historically been used.

But, what does ethnicity mean in a country like America? In the South Bend Indiana of my mother's youth (i.e. nearly a century ago), it mattered immensely whether one was "Polish" or "Hungarian". Or, it mattered not at all, if like her people, one was simply what is now disdained as "WASP". In my own youth in South Bend Indiana, some people just had difficult-to-pronounce family names.

The ethnicity of a black American and the ethnicity of a white America are singularly 'American'. Yet, sometimes, we do need to recognize the broadly continental origins of a person's ancestry.

While 'English' or 'Yoruba' are ethnicities, 'white' is not an ethnicity and 'black' is not an ethnicity. 'European' is not an ethnicity; 'African' is not an ethnicity; 'East Asian' is not an ethnicity; 'American Indian' is not an ethnicity. And so on.

And yet, there are recognizable differences -- generally unimportant, but sometimes critical -- between a person of primarily European ancestry and a person of primarily (sub-Saharan) African ancestry. To blind ourselves with the one leftist lie that "There is no such thing as race" is as foolish and potentially harmful as to blind ourselves with the other leftist lie that "All there is is race".

Kin, Skin, & Sin | Doug Wilson