Observe & Retort

In the aftermath of yet another mass-shooting in Florida the debate resumes about how to prevent such events. While Washington will once again debate more gun controls, the merits, etc. another school is shot up. Who now can still claim they feel that their children are safe in our public schools? I have two high school-aged children, I cannot say that I feel they are safe at their high school. But will a ban on semi-automatic firearms, or the capacity of their magazines help? If the 19-year-old man whom was responsible for the attack of Feb 14th 2018 was not allowed to purchase the AR-15 that he used do we think that he would not have tried to procure it illegally? Do we think that he would have not tried using a different firearm? They found evidence of bomb-making in his home, he had many items other than the firearm and victims of the Boston Marathon bombing will testify that it does not take a firearm to maim and murder. He had intent and with intent people like him will get it do...

The video linked below has addressed a nagging, itching question that has been in the back of my mind for some time. I won't say that I'm convinced, but some interesting points have been made in it that I believe are worthy of discussion. Watch the clip, then read on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFyIzoBwXVk There has always been, for me, great  parallels between the American and Roman Empires. Similar social movements arose in Rome in the first few centuries AD. Some of which can be observed by reading The Apostle Paul's letters to various churches, including the one in Rome. Instead of leading to a demise though, perhaps a reaction to this and the perceived degradation of moral fabric was to swing in opposition. Constantine united Rome under Christianity which is not only as a unifying ideology but one that also supported masculine rule and feminine subversion. In the years to follow the Roman Empire (Holy Roman Empire) would become increasingly conservative...

In his article, The Sexual Revolution Turns Ugly  Stephen Baskerville links recent scandals of sexual misconduct with, consequentially, the Sexual Revolution. Please read this article here .  Here is my take. I see the logic in Baskerville's assertion that sexual liberation has given us an over-sexualized world, sex sells, and instead of viewing sex as something beautiful between two consenting adults it is instead too often regarded as a commodity, an outlet, a release, a mechanism of power, and yes even abuse or violence. But like the author of this article points out such behaviors now categorized as misconduct always existed, it was just called sin. The revolution was to liberate society from the Christian conventions that allegedly oppressed them, now a few decades later we look to put functionally similar though secular conventions. It makes me wonder, how many other traditional Judaeo-Christian conventions will society vilify as oppressive constructs only to later rep...

"It's okay to be white" This phrase recently trolled many college campuses across America in the last week, sparking outrage from some leftist, identity-political czars. A youtuber, Sargon of Akkad effectively covers it here , so I don't want to re-hash the details here. What I would like to point out is that historically speaking white people have gotten a bad wrap, and that the mere fact that some felt the need to post this phrase on their campuses AND the subsequent outrage is indicative of a campaign (perhaps crusade) against the current ethnic majority in America. If all you had to go by was the mainstream narrative of history you would think that white Americans were the 'people' that invented slavery instead of being the people that abolished it. It was not African, Middle-Eastern, or Asian nations that first abolished slavery in all its forms. It was western peoples that pushed such ideas to the forefront of their respective cultures. Certainly there ...

First of all, to illustrate how one-sided our society has become, the word Masculinism is not even recognized as a word by most spell-checkers (MSFT, Google, etc.), meaning that it is not a word. In binary world of gender we have either the masculine or the feminine. Those that are activists for the rights of the feminine (i.e. biological women, do we really need to preface that with "biological"?) are called feminists and their movement is called feminism. Those that advocate for the rights of the masculine side of this binary are not called masculinists... yep not even a word, nor is masculinism. Do you know what are words? Misogynist, patriarchal, chauvinist, and of course bigot. Anyone who tries to represent the interests of men in general are insulted, attacked, smeared and even called 'racists', like that makes any god-damned sense. Doesn't matter if it makes sense so long as said persons are effectively silenced. Yep. And they call anyone politically right ...

September was a black-out month for blogging. Apologies. Now that October is here, let's get started... A bit more than a decade ago my family started attending a Christian Church on a regular basis. We had previously looked at a couple different churches but the fit was poor. What we found all too often that the message was to simply take things on faith and not to try and understand the deeper meaning if there didn't obviously appear to be one. That's just not how I roll. If all the evidence, logic, and reason point in the opposite direction of what I'm being told I'm going to question it. This new church embraced this thinking and exposed me to a 'higher' theology that lacked the dogmatic assertions of most Christian institutions (though still had some). This thinking is also how I approach just about everything else, including politics. When I look at conservative versus liberal stances on the variety of subjects that separate the two wings I apply l...

Listing to a news report this morning a journalist asserted something about the "Far Right" that struck me as odd. The assertion was that the racists groups we know as Neo-Nazi's and the KKK were part of the political right, specifically those on the far right end of the political spectrum, the extreme conservatives. After thinking about it for a moment I began to wonder how 'left' or 'right' such fringe groups actually are. Is Antifa actually left or liberal? Is the Alt-Right actually conservative? There is also the statement or idea that can be paraphrased as; the far-right is not racist but most racists are far right. Is that accurate? I think that we can say with some degree of confidence that people that tend to hold some measure of ethnic bigotry associate with conservative principles when it comes to things like marriage equality and illegal immigration, as do the extreme people (KKK, etc.) that want to do something about it, but the political righ...