Teaching for Doctrines the Commandments of Men

D. Thomas Newman

Life's funny little episodes strike us deeper as they repeat.  In lieu of the first repetition's giggle, a more unpleasant or sobering conclusion can develop, say, as polite conversations about one's ears frequently conjur references to "Dumbo" the elephant, or when a nongravid woman is asked when the baby is due. 

Being that a recent gym visit makes for four separate occasions on which I have been apologized to for another's use of profanity, or other such vague obscenities, I can't help but draw certain conclusions of my own.  If that the apologies included shame-faced looks was not enough, surely their direct references to my Facebook page, on which I frequently post Bible passages, gave their innermost impressions of me away.

These people think I'm devout.  Me!  The fervor of their apologies could lead nearby observers to think I whip myself at night in penitence, or go around with a barb wire garter wrapped around my upper thigh. 

I am reminded of a speech the great Peter Hitchens delivered in his home country of Britain, in which he made the case that the fact that he is frequently called devout is fine evidence of Christianity's death knell in that land.  I plead that same case today regarding this one.  If I.. yes, I.. meet the standard of a "devout Christian," such that common everymen feel they must apologize for cursing in my distant proximity, I declare it case in point that true Christianity has indeed left the American building as well.  No I am not devout by any meaning of the word.  I am a ordinary backslider, who eats to much, drinks too much alcohol on rare occasion, and doesn't delve into the scriptures nearly as much as I know I should.  And yes, I drop four letter words daily.

But my little anecdote is hardly necessary to make this point.  The Supreme Court has now delivered power over the most important earthly Christian institution - namely, marriage, the immediate substitution for the relationship humans were supposed to have with God from the beginning - to government overlords, who promptly proceeded to do with it what they do with everything - change it as they see fit, despite what "we the people" want. 

There are few more clear examples of widely accepted, historical governmenteering hubris in the face of God I am aware of.  But conservatives and Christians must remember that leftists and pro-gay politicians are part of this nation as well, and are not some foreign invading force messing up our country, as we tend to hold them as in our minds.  Now, they have set this new policy in legal stone.  Frankly, it is now a part of what America is, and must be recognized as such, rather than as some temporary taint on the surface of a beautiful thing. 

But America's Christian-nation status shouldn't be evaluated only by the whims of a small group of oligarchic lawmakers or sexual revolutionaries. Examination of cultural norms is necessary as well, as they involve the whole of the people rather than just rulers and their decrees.  For example, in early American history, though a large part of the Founding Fathers were agnostic, atheists, deists, or worse, the countrymen remained overwhelmingly Christian, and therefore were probably correct to describe the new nation thusly in general.  

Unfortunately, in our modern age, decadence is accepted virtually uniformly, and to such a degree most people don't even recognize it as such, much less question its appropriateness anymore.  Pop culture entertainment is saturated in all the most base human interests, not merely the obvious sexual infatuations. Violence, explosions, and cheap punch-lines have replaced dialogue and character development.  Sexual references and shirtless people poorly compensate for scenes of true romance and lines like Humphrey Bogart's "Here's lookin' at you, kid." The lyrics of virtually every major pop song revolves around sexual innuendo, substance abuse, violence, or any combination of the three.  As I write this, Cosmopolitan magazine online features an article on how to lick the anus of another person.  

Americans are becoming less intellectual, less religious, more base, more animal-like, and more inhumane. 

Acceptance of abortion is so commonplace that we who remain against this clear violation of morality, property rights, and human rights actually entertain debates on the subject now, rather than scoff at the very idea one could work out an intellectual justification for ending innocent human lives, indeed those of the most vulnerable.  To any decent and civilized people this would register as absurd and morally abhorrent.  An average of over one million abortions take place in this country annually, with about half of the women who have one later having another.  Thank God the numbers are slightly dropping, even as support for the legality behind abortion enters practically permanent acceptance, with neither of the major political parties presenting anything even resembling a significant challenge to it.

Dr. Walter E. Williams, political commentator and Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, wrote recently on the moral state of this country, in which he has spent seventy-nine years, including the following statements:

A civilized society’s first line of defense is not the law, police and courts but customs, traditions, rules of etiquette and moral values... 

Behavior accepted as the norm today would have been seen as despicable yesteryear..  

Foul language is spoken by children in front of and sometimes to teachers and other adults... 

Nowadays baby showers are often held for unwed mothers. Yesteryear such an acceptance of illegitimacy would have been unthinkable.Today there is little or no social sanction or shame for illegitimate births. There are no “shotgun” weddings to make the man live up to his responsibilities... 

Our youths have been counseled that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what’s moral or immoral is a matter of personal opinion... 

If it were only the economic decline threatening our future, there might be hope. It’s the moral decline that spells our doom.

It may be most accurate to read these social opinions from an economist not as the diatribe of one overstepping his professional qualification boundaries, but rather as the opinions of a man with a highly exercised mind wanting to dispel his last wisdoms in the twilight of his life.  Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Milton Friedman was also known for extracting ethereal facts of life from observations in economics.  Facts with origins that aren't necessarily explained in numbers, but exist in the unknown depths of human nature.  Friedman many times attributed a large part of the American poor's problems to unquantifiable effects in their spirits from receiving government welfare.  Both Friedman and Williams' writings, along with countless other economists', frequently warn against decadence for its inevitably disastrous influence on a people and their wellbeing. 

Further, the Christian Church, formerly a bulwark against institutionalized sin and degradation, enjoys a passive acceptance, occasional participation, and sometimes voracious, fervent support for illicit activity today.  With the Supreme Court's recent ruling mentioned above, the Church currently seems to be experiencing a brief flash of strength in solidarity.  I surmise it is merely a knee-jerk response to a poignant dose of inflicted trauma - a response that will soon subside, if it hasn't begun to already, as Christians are lulled back to sleep by feel-good sermons and Sunday lunches.  The gays won't have some immediate, meteoric rise in their number, and the Church's lifestyle will not be infringed upon, at least for a while until the daddy-angry Gay Mafia Social Assassination Brigade targets them for legal action, possibly to challenge their tax-exempt status, or to force marriage performances.

Meanwhile, Christians themselves continue to aid their enemies in their own destruction.  Indeed, destruction of the worst and most permanent kind.  A wave of church bombings could even be a good thing in comparison if their enemies were to plan only that, and if the Church were aiding in only that.  Perhaps the resulting solidarity wave as mentioned earlier would even be a lasting thing in that event, and the Church would come off better than before.  But destruction of a building is nothing compared to destruction of the doctrine.  To the insertion of poison, so subtle it seems as if Christians rationally chosen it for themselves, yet so poignant as to spread the rot to the whole bushel in only a matter of decades.

Twice in the Bible God warns:

Matthew 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. (9) But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Isaiah 29:13 Wherefore the Lord said , Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: 14 Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish , and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.

The overwhelming support from American Christians for their government's war efforts, especially the bold-faced support actually institutionalized into church services, amounts to honoring God in vocal tradition but having a heart far from what His word teaches.  The unadulterated aggrandizement of soldiers and warring government leaders, and especially the incorporation of the supposed propriety of these things into doctrinal teachings, is, plainly, teaching "the commandments of men" as if they were God's doctrine. 

The Word is very clear on the pro-peace, anti-war spirit the church is to ceaselessly exude.  But the American Church has decisively forgotten this.  Propaganda and poor education - both the Christian sort and the government's secular excuse - are to blame.  The church has very effectively been brought to its knees by endless tales of a foreign terror threat.  In reality, this threat is virtually non-existent, conjuring to the informed mind references of the fake "Eurasian" and "Eastasian" enemies in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four." 

Any legitimacy this boogeyman holds seems entirely due to retaliatory blowback for the Washington's military devilry abroad - afflictions the American Christian refuses to believe take place.  However, fear, being the most potent and debasing emotion, has made Americans easy to control.  Despite a plethora of Biblical tutelage against it, the Church has readily fallen prey to this fear, and in response turned over the tenets of the Prince of Peace for those of this world's god. 

The endless cultural decay and degeneracy of morals in America so complained-of by Christians pales in comparison to the Church's unwitting, emphatic endorsement of mass-murder.  With such a massive "foot-in-the-door," acceptance of other sins as normalcy has arrived as a very natural next step.  God help us all.  I am reminded, as I so often am, of a Tolkien quote, so pertinent to modern life:

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it."

Freedom Lovers - Kafka's Consummate Men

by Dylan Thomas Newman

Franz Kafka was known for his peculiar novels.  Not for any particularly well written style, but for his intensely unique stories.  A term, "Kafka-esque", was coined to describe the parallel situations in our lives wherein we might experience the precise mixture of feelings Kafka captured so uniquely.  That mixture was one of extreme, existentialist isolation that one can experience despite being surrounded by his usual peers and locales, and sometimes while in a most public focus.  That may take some explaining.  I'll use Kafka's own characters as illustrations.

In "The Trial", Kafka's Josef K. is arrested by an unnamed law enforcement agency for an unspecified crime.  The rest of the book centers around his hearings, wherein he navigates an immense and robotic bureaucracy headed up by mysterious judges and other shady figures, all automatons of the vast trial system that no one seems to have any answers about.  Everything is secret, from the charge, to the rules of the court, to the authority behind the courts – even the identity of the judges at the higher levels.  

The characters and dialogues move quickly and without patience, like  Alice in Wonderland's "White Rabbit," only slightly more calmed.  They outpace the confused Josef K. in his quest for resolution, hasting him to and from, recommending this and that bureaucrat and office.  With even his attorney aloof and unhelpful, Josef K. is left to fend for himself against this leviathan organization, which ultimately he succumbs to.

In Kafka's most famous novel, "Metamorphosis" - considered one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century - protagonist Gregor Samsa wakes up one

morning to find he has been transformed into a large, monstrous, insect-like creature.  An ungeheures ungeziefer, or, literally, "monstrous vermin."  The remainder of the book focuses on his live-in family's dealings with him and his new burdensome, repulsive nature.  

Gradually their treatment of Gregor becomes less humane.  They no longer feel sorry for his condition and instead become annoyed that he can no longer provide income for the family.  Gregor becomes as an actual pest to them, often keeping under the family couch when other characters are nearby, lest he annoy them or disgust them with his appearance.  Eventually he retires to his bedroom away from the family and their various guests to die, which prompts no protests from the family.

In both "The Trial" and "Metamorphosis", the narratives are constructed as to induce a crushing, smothering self-injection of the reader into the protagonists' extreme isolation.  Fundamental building blocks of the stories' foundation are purposefully omitted for the reader to fill them in with the worst and most claustrophobic nuances of their own minds.  What does Gregor Samsa look like?  The reader must extract characteristics from uncomfortable parts of his own mind that would make him feel grotesque and repulsive.  What crime did Josef K. commit, who is the group charging him, and how will he get help as everyone and no one bear down on him?  As the reader more deeply commits to the book, he can only wonder what crime he committed, and how he would react.  The reader takes on Josef K.'s hopelessness.

Gregor Samsa and Josef K. are made wholly different, and are therefore unwillingly detached from society via their respective changes, omnipresent as they are.  Those changes redefine their very existences - social, mental, physical, even spiritual.  Anyone with disfigurements or reputational damage like these characters can probably relate.  One can only imagine the cold, uncaring, unfair spotlight ubiquitously present in the minds of AIDS patients, or wrongfully convicted rapists.  

But there is another group that can relate as well.  Perhaps even more so.  A group isolated not by physical ailment, the crushing thumb of an impartial organization, or indeed any such negative thing.  A group forsaken, rejected , and even excommunicated by society not for crimes or medical necessity, but because they carry a truth.  A simple truth, but world-changing nonetheless, that says morality is more important than ideology.  That every discipline - science, economics, politics, religion - is not allowed to bypass morality and the natural laws inherent in every man that interpret it.  

This seemingly common sense assumption is anything but.  Adherents of that very natural philosophy find themselves scorned by the Majority - a group that remains heavily dependent on immorality to retain its living standard.  Members of that class often use government force - violence, or the threat of it - to obtain the wealth of others.  American right-wingers will be quick to correctly identify such tactics as the modus operandi of welfare recipients.  Accurate as they are, those same right-wingers remain blissfully ignorant that they too employ such political scheming, every time they walk their children into a government school or enter a 'public' roadway, et cetera.  

It is then that they ironically shout the same rationales used so wantonly by

their left-wing counterparts - "What other choice do we have?  Do you want us to go without?  We came together as a society to form these institutions.  We will return to the stone ages without such programs."

The tiny minority who champion morality recognize the culminating theory behind these statements: "Without using the government's wealth redistribution services to fund the programs we like, we won't have what we want."

Almost invariably, they also find that clear, concise explanations to the contrary - that society indeed can have all its bedrock institutions without wealth redistribution - fall on the Majority's deaf ears, as do explanations that the original design of the American system was constructed specifically to avoid such socialism.

For these reasons, Mr. Lew Rockwell says:

What does this tell us?  It tells us that conservatism, as we once knew it, is

hopelessly corrupted.  You can tell it at cocktail parties, where self-identified conservatives sneer at the very idea of liberty... It is long past time for every right-thinking American to reject the term 'conservative' as a self-description... To those who have lingering attachments to conservatism, I will close with the words that Murray Rothbard address to the Young Americans for Freedom in 1960: 'Why don't you get out?  Breathe the clean air of freedom.  And then take your stand, proudly and squarely, not with the despotism of the power elite, and the government of the United States, but with the rising movement and opposition to that government.  Then you will be libertarians indeed - in act as well as in theory.  What hangover, what remnant of devotion to the monster state, holds you back?  Come join us.'   

The moral minority I write of has rejected that hangover, rejected any last remnant of devotion to that immoral monster state.  For this reason, the rest of society surrounds them as white blood cells attacking a foreign entity, for foreign they are indeed.

They walk through life not in a daze, or isolated as on desert island, but fully cognizant, isolated instead by the sea of sleepers moving all around them - those whose minds have been put to rest by the machinations of evil men to rob Peter, pay themselves, and sheer off crumbs to Paul.  People who've forgotten liberty. 

They stand in public places and visualize - nay, virtually see - the links their peers around them have to the machine.  The very machine that holds them down.  The machine that's purposefully blinds them to its horrors.  The machine that makes them think it's not only good, but "the apotheosis of society."  The machine that is fueled by debt and theft and death.

This minority persists onward through a lonely yet noble life unknown to the

legion of unawares bounding ignorantly through an existence made vastly lesser by that machine and the evil men who wind its gears.  For those who don't know of the machine's truest enemy, Jesus Christ, their only brief respites are meets with those of like mind, those who remind them there is light at the end of the tunnel.  For these reasons, this minority is the ultimate Kafka protagonist.  

The Trial, a Christian play in three acts, by Dylan Thomas Newman

The Trial

Act I

(Stage fully dark, gavel banging)

Judge: Order! Order!

(Lights come onstage, audience laughs at judge's nose/glasses, gavel bangs more)
Silence!  I'll have silence in my courtroom immediately or you'll all be held in contempt!  Let it be known, the Honorable Nicholas S. Luciano is now residing. O yea, o yea, o yea, this court is now in session.

Today's docket consists of a single case, whose issue has pressed whole peoples for millennia.  Wars have been waged over it, millions have been killed, entire nations created and lost in a day.  Our foremost scholars the world over have debated it without rest for thousands of years.  It's high time this great matter were decided on and promptly put to rest, and that's exactly what I intend to do.

Who was this man, this Jesus Christ, the supposed Son of God, and what was His worth here in this world?  It is undeniable His teachings had at least some influence, from His day to this very. His words are the most published writings in history. Twice a year people from every corner of this world, across the whole of the four winds, commemorate his birth and death.

But it seems their Christ may have caused more upheaval than good.  Consider the millions throughout history who lost their lives because they wouldn't simply let go of His tenets when commanded, and the countless people killed by Roman Catholic armies in His name. What of the Spanish Inquisition? 'Convert or die' was the mantra in that day.  What of the worldwide state of strife today?  Does He gaze down upon it from His cozy heaven with folded arms?

It becomes obvious that this world is coming to reject Jesus the Nazarene more each day. Church attendance is plummeting, young people are lost to hedonism, community and charity are dying.  The common man shrinks with embarrassment at even the mention of Jesus' name.  Europe has been called a 'sea of godlessness,' and this continent isn't far behind.

The Man said He came to make His followers the salt of the earth. Why not the sugar of it? Why all this suffering at His bequest? Why, in all His mythical goodness, does He allow sickness and disease? Cancer, paralysis, AIDS.  Does He scoff at the sick?

Let me then, your humble judge, step forward to issue Summary Judgment against the Lord. Let me, in keeping with Psalms 2 of His Holy Book, finally "break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us."

Let it be hereby decreed, the value of Jesus the Christ to this world is null and void. I order His teachings to be officially forgotten and His literature to be burned.  His assets, His churches, and His ministries are to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

(Gavel raised in dramatic finale)

From this day forth the name of Yahshua haMassiach will be no more—

('Woman' jumps up in crowd)

Woman: Wait!

Judge: Who are you, woman?

(Woman is nervous, humble)

Woman: My name is not important. I'm just a woman. Never amounted to much. But I met Him! I met Jesus, long ago. And he wasn't like you say. He was wonderful! He healed me...

I had spent my life savings, sold everything I had, to pay for treatment of my medical condition. And still, nothing. I was getting older every day. I was slowly, surely, wasting away. The sky wasn't blue anymore, the rain lost its soothing, and became as cold ice.  The joy of the laughter of my children faded from me. I was giving up, laying down to accept my fate. I was walking death. It was just a matter of time. Slow, uncaring, time.

Then I heard Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, was going to pass through town. I knew of Him, everyone did. The Pharisees had told us in the synagogues of His infamy, and blasphemy, and to avoid Him. But still, in whispers, others had told of His wonder, of His amazing love. I secretly believed them.

When He came, I struggled to the town center. The crowd had absolutely engulfed Him. Loud voices stifled even my thoughts. I struggled to breath.  Unable to force my way any further, I cast off my dignity and dropped to the ground to crawl.  If only I could touch Him - no! just his garment!  I would live.

And I made it! The garment's hem was rough on my fingers, but the shock waves it sent throughout my shriveled body were smooth, and full fire!  I can't explain it!  It was so wonderful!  There I was, on my hands and knees like an animal, prepared for death, and lo! I received life! The fire burned through me, it set my heart ablaze!  I was healed!  Before I even examined my body, I knew, oh I knew so well.

But what had I done!?  What if I offended Him, the Christ, this sure Son of God?  I hadn't asked his permission, I just grabbed him. What was I thinking! The very Creator, the Speaker of Worlds!

I cowered in fear as He silenced the crowd.  He wished to know who touched Him.  Ignorantly, I hoped he would confuse me with the many others surrounding Him, but He knew, oh He knew.

I looked fearfully into His eyes, those beautiful eyes. Eyes that knew me more than I knew myself. Eyes whose gaze didn't stop at the surface of mine. No, these eyes went deeper. They peered into the deepest, darkest parts of my soul.. and smiled.

"Daughter, be of good comfort," He said. "Thy faith hath made thee whole.."

(woman 'comes out of monologue, looks at judge)

Judge Luciano, that's what I'm talking about.  You see, Jesus was a healer.  He did care about the sick! He loved us very much! You can't say that-

Judge Luciano: Pennies, woman. Pennies on the dollar.

(raises gavel)

Let the ruling stand-

Leper: No, judge! He healed me too! I had leprosy.  He touched me.. He made me whole!

(slightly more forceful now, tension rising)

Roman Soldier: That's right, Judge! Jesus healed me too. I was with the platoon of soldiers in the gardens at Gethsemane who came to take Him to His death. We came brandishing swords, threatening Him and His disciples. The one they call Simon Peter cut off my ear, and with one hand the Christ resealed it again! This very ear!

Leper:  Let Luke speak!

Leper, Roman Soldier, Woman:  Luke will tell you! Give him a chance! Yes, let Luke speak!

(judge bangs gavel)

Judge: Order! Order! There will be order in my classroom or you'll all be held in contempt!

Who is this Luke you speak of? Where is he?

Luke: I'm here, Judge Luciano.

Judge: Who are you and what worth is your testimony here?

Luke: I am Luke, the first Christian historian and friend of Jesus' disciples. I was a medical doctor. I traveled with the apostle Paul until his very end. I can testify to the healing powers of the Lord Jesus Christ better than any other.

 God, His Father gave me perfect understanding of Jesus and His record, which surely contained no shortage of healing.  He made blind men see, the lame walk, the sick to be healed, even the dead to rise.  He did all these things whereas the many physicians like myself could not.

He was no sheister, no con man.  He didn't pull tricks in the dark, fooling others to believe he was some shaman medicine man. In His treks through Galilee, He healed hundreds if not thousands in single days!

There were no gimmicks, no slight of hand.  These were not rumors, Judge.  Jesus was famous.  Entire multitudes followed him in Judea.  He healed them all.  In the great temple in Jerusalem whole crowds wept openly as He healed the blind and the lame.

Jesus even healed this centurion, a man who came to lead Him to His very death.  From Jesus I learned true medicine.  I learned to drink living water.

Jesus didn't just heal those people, Judge.  He made them whole.

(gavel bangs, judge impatient)

Judge: Alright that's enough, thank you for your testimony.  Your honorable judge will now depart to his chambers for deliberations.

(gavel bangs)

(lights go off, judge exits, spotlight falls on reporter coming in from sidestage)

(choir song #1)



Act II

(reporter is comic relief, wears oversized trenchcoat, hat)

Reporter: Wow! This is shaping up to be the trial of the century!  OJ who? Am I right??

Cookie Swigglebottom, WWJD News Channel 13, here to bring you the inside scoop.  In this lively courtroom it seems one Mr. Jesus Christ has been placed on trial for crimes against humanity.  But some unexpected witnesses have come forth claiming this alleged perpetrator is more of a healer than a hoodlum.

I sure could use him to heal my marriage, am I right??

The judge has currently retired to his chambers for deliberation, but is expected to return shortly for presentation of his ruling.  To recap the trial thus far: the judge began all like "rawr rawr rawr Jesus was bad rawr" and the witnesses were all like "no way man" and then the judge was like "oh but rawr rawr" and then that guy Luke shut him down.  It was so crazy!

It looks like Judge Luciano is making his way back in the courtroom now.  Until next time, this is Cookie Swigglebottom for WWJD News.

(reporter exits)

(judge enters)

(gavel bangs)

Judge: O yea, o yea, o yea, this court is now in session.  The honorable judge Nicholas S. Luciano is residing.

After some deliberation I have reached my verdict in summary judgment of the Nazarene, Jesus Christ.  On the charge of failing to care about the sick of the world, compelling cases were made in favor of the accused.

But sin remains prevalent in all four corners of this earth.  It becomes even more dominant every year.  Attendance in Christ's churches is at record lows.  The entire culture has become highly sexualized.  Focus on the flesh dominates mankind.  The young would rather poison themselves with toxic drugs on the weekends than act as Jesus advocated, much less study His teachings.  Every year in this country alone, 1.2 million children are struck from the womb like common trash.

Therefore, on the charge of failing to leave a positive, lasting effect on the morality of mankind, I find your Christ... lacking in all regards!  Let the record reflect His value to this world as null and void. The verdict is guilty.

(raises gavel)

(woman ii, prostitute from Luke 7, stands in crowd)

Woman II:  Wait!

Judge:  Who goes there?  And what is your business in this courtroom?

(woman nervous)

Woman II:  I want to do a defense, or whatever it was that they did.

Judge:  Woman, my decision is final.  It is hereby decreed -

(raises gavel)

Woman II: Judge, Jesus did a lot for sinners, you must hear me out!

(softer voice, distance between words/sentences)

I was there, I met him.  He was kind and gentle.  Even to me, a prostitute.  I only saw him once, but those eyes, those loving eyes... I'd never forget them.

I had nothing.  I was nothing.  Always had been, and I thought I always would be.

(very soft and slow)

But for one minute, one precious minute, the God of all the universe looked at me... He looked at me ... and smiled.  The Creator of every star, raiser of every mountain, tiller of every bud and flower.  In His glance I knew, even without words, He was telling me I did matter.  I mattered to Him.

I cried so much.  From happiness, but also from shame.  My whole life was sin.  I had lived in the flesh.  I used those tears to wash Jesus feet.  I used my hair to dry them.

(comes out of her monologue, looks to judge again, strong here)

And afterward, Judge, Jesus told me I was forgiven of my sins.  And I never strayed.  See, He did fight sin in this world!

(judge, stern)

Judge: Ma'am you are but one person and one person does not a pattern make.

Woman II:  But judge- !

(gavel bangs)

Judge:  Sit down, woman!

(thief, strong)

Thief:  Judge, I can attest too.

Judge:  And just who are you?

Thief:  My name is not important.  But I was once with Jesus... I was there (raises hands up slowly, reveals holes like Jesus's)... two thousand years ago, on the cross next to His.

I was a thief.  I had lived the full life of one, starting at an early age.  I joined a band of thieves, marauders who robbed travelers in the forests and countrysides.  Like all the others throughout the land, we had heard of Jesus.  We heard of His healings and miracles.  He was a celebrity.  But to us, He was just another preacher.

Eventually, my gig was up.  Roman authorities nabbed my crew and I.  Some made it away, but I.. I was to be crucified.  Visions of my cross haunted my dreams.  In the end, wood from the same forests that had hidden me so well would now fully expose me, strung up outside the city for all to gawk at and spit on.  The irony bore into whatever remained of my spirit.  It broke me.  I didn't even fight as the nails were driven in.  I and the other thief, we deserved our fate.

But when I realized who it was on the cross next to me - Jesus, the celebrity - it woke something up inside.  I began to see in the crowd those who mourned for him.  How deeply they were affected.  How sorrowful they were.  These people truly believed the rumors, they really believed He was the Son of God.

Before that day was over, as we hung high for all to see, I would come to believe too.  I had no idea how to be saved, or even what "saved" was.  But when I asked Jesus to remember me when He went into His heavenly kingdom, He knew I believed He was the true Son of God, the Messiah.  When I told the other thief that he and I were being crucified justly, Jesus knew that I had acknowledged my sins, and was in repentance for them. 

He saved me, right then and there.  After a lifetime of horrible sinning, a life that earned me total rejection by society, a life that earned me a public execution.. Jesus forgave me anyway.  Had we not been on those crosses I would have followed Him the rest of my days.

(judge, annoyed)

Judge: Alright, thank you, sir.

Thief: Judge, I would've saved every man I could-

(gavel bangs)

Judge: Thank you, sir, that is quite enough! Two stories of redemption are hardly-

('rltg' = real life testimony giver, a person from the actual church performing the play)

RLTG:  No, Judge.  There's more than that.  My name is (first name, last name) and Jesus saved me from a life of sin too!  I (insert sin here) and the love of Jesus Christ fully rescued me and turned my life completely around!

RLTG2:  Yeah, Judge! My name is (first, last) and Jesus saved me from (insert sin) too!

(gavel bangs ferociously)

All 2nd Act Cast: Yeah, Judge!  You're not listening!  Come on, Judge, hear us out!

Judge: Order!  I will have order in this courtroom!

All 2nd Act Cast:  Let Isaiah speak, Judge!  Isaiah will tell you!  Let Isaiah speak!

(gavel still banging)

Judge: Order!  Order!  Who is this Isaiah?

Isaiah:  I am Isaiah.

Judge:  And why should I allow your statement?

(isaiah, dignified)

Isaiah:  Because God gave me perspective on the sinful nature of man imperative to today's defense of Jesus, who is indeed His Son, the foretold Christ.  It was recorded in the Book of Isaiah and canonized into the very Word of God.

That writing got me laughed at and mocked in the streets, even of Jerusalem and all the Promised Land.  Even there, where God's chosen children reside.  They had all become back-slidden. The great God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had come to me to warn that the destruction and slavery of the Assyrian Army was coming, and the only way we Jews could save ourselves was by returning to the Lord. 

In my vision, God told me a very sad thing.  He said most of my fellow Jews would fail to heed God's warning.  Most would be enslaved or even killed by those Assyrians.

God told me only a 'remnant' would listen.  Only a small remnant would turn away from sin and back to Him.  It is terribly, terribly sad, but that is the nature of man - to rebel against the Lord.  To enjoy that rebellion, to enjoy the sweet, poisoned fruits of the world.  But Jesus offers us a way out of this world.  He taught us of a sinless path, one that follows the moral code we'll so easily live by in Heaven.  Judge, His morality teachings inspired the social codes of entire nations-

Judge: Thank you, Mr. Isaiah, we've now heard your testimony.  I'll retire again now to my chambers for deliberation.

(gavel bangs, end act ii)

(choir sings)




Act III

 (lights come on, reporter already on stage, kooky smile on her face)

Cookie Swigglebottom:  Cookie Swigglebottom here again, at the very courtroom where the supposed Son of God has been placed on trial.  As always with WWJD News, we're bringing it to you live!  Eat your heart out, Nancy Grace!

 Folks, the latest developments have turned this case into a real nail-biter.  Judge Nicholas S. Luciano insists on rendering a verdict based on what's called 'summary judgement,' - that is, the judge decides it all himself without a jury.  However, it seems members of the courtroom audience here today just aren't letting that happen!

Judge Luciano seems to have conceded that Jesus did indeed care about the sick, now he's gone into recess to deliberate on whether Jesus properly fought sin or not.

Perhaps the Judge could learn a lesson or two from me and Mr. Swigglebottom, I fight the sin of murdering him every night!

 Oh!  It looks like the judge is returning from his chambers as we speak!  Until next time, Cookie Swigglebottom, WWJD News!

(reporter exits, judge enters)

Judge: O yea, o yea, o yea, this court is now in session.  The honorable judge Nicholas S. Luciano is residing.

After some deliberation I have reached my verdict in summary judgment of the Nazarene, Jesus Christ.  On the charge of failing to properly fight sin in this world, compelling cases were made in His favor. 

 However, upon further review, I have decided that this issue is wholly irrelevant and does not negate the crimes of Jesus the Christ.  Because He was supposedly an all-powerful being, and yet allowed mass suffering throughout the world, He can only be properly held among the cruelest tyrants in history.

Samaritan:  But Judge, that's not true!

Judge:  Oh not another one.

(gavel bangs)

Sit down ma'am!

(samaritan vocally angry, tension level rising throughout act iii)

Samaritan:  No, Judge!  You can't say He didn't care about the world's suffering.  He did!  He came to me, a woman of Samaria, at the well in my city.  Jews did not talk to Samaritans, you see.  But He did!  He asked of me water from the well, then He offered me Living Water.  He saved me, a Samaritan! And many others in our town!  See, He wanted to save everyone!

Judge:  Ma'am, please!  I will no longer be interrupted in my own courtroom, I am the authority here!  And nonetheless, the things you mention hardly make up for the evils committed en masse in His name!  The Catholic church killings, the Spanish Inquisition - His Church was barely off the ground before it began murdering people!

(a mysterious man answers him from the crowd)

Paul:  Don't you dare attribute that to Him, Nicholas Luciano!  He had no part in that!

(gavel bangs)

Judge:  You dare challenge me!?  Who goes there, that I might know who I'll convict next!?

Paul: I'm Paul the Apostle, lover of Christ and relentless preacher of His Word.  I brought Christianity to the pagan Europe and I will not have you blaspheme Jesus' good name!

I was on the way north to Damascus with legal rite to hunt and imprison His followers.  I  used to yearn for their slaughter!  But the Risen Christ appeared to me on the road in light as bright as the sun!  He showed me the truth, and I repaid Him with my life.

I made trips practically all over the known world delivering His Word, even to vile land of Rome and the rest of Europe!-

(tension rising more)

Judge:  Where they promptly used His teachings to maim and torture and burn countless people at the stake!

I taught those people Jesus' true ways!  The ways of the Bible!  Ways of pure peace!  Ways that span every nation's boundaries!

Roman Soldier:  Paul's right!  Jesus put my ear back on even though I was part of an invading army out to crucify him! 

 Judge:  And oh how peaceful things have been!

Woman:  Jesus was peaceful!  And a healer!

Luke and Leper:  Yeah! He was!

RLTG III:  I'm (first name, last name), and He healed me of (insert sickness here)!

RLTG:  He saved us!  He forgave our sins!

RLTG II and Isaiah:  Yeah!  He died for us!  He rose again!

Paul:  Any corruption carried out in Jesus' name was done by evil men for their own gain!  Men who rope others into mischief using their soft hearts for the Lord!  Men like you!

(gavel bangs)

Judge: Order!-

(all the witnesses begin to angrily approach judge at stage-front)

Paul:  Oh there's been no order here!  You've seen to that!

All Witnesses:  You want Jesus to be guilty!  This is no fair trial!  What's your bias here?!  Who are  you!? 

(judge stands behind his bench, moves nervously on stage)

Judge:  Back!  Get back!  Back I say!  I'll hold all of you in contempt!  Back!  All of you!  Ugghhhgrrr!

(judge rips off disguise, revealed to be satan, lights on the stage turn to dark red, sound effects)

Judge/Satan:  Well now you know!

(un-mic'ed witnesses constantly yelling at him now - "we're not afraid of you! you're done! you're finished!" etc)

I was there!  I was there when He healed, I was there when He forgave, and I was there when He was crucified!  And your people?  They did nothing!

They were presented with your Jesus before Pilate, when he pulled my man Barabbas from the dungeon.  A murderer, a vagrant!  Between that rat and your Jesus, Pilate looked at not just the present Jews, but at mankind, and he said "choose"... and they rejected your Lord!  They picked Barabbas! 

And they'll choose my man again one day!  They'll choose my christ, you'll see!  They'll choose me!

(witnesses begin approaching satan onstage)

Witnesses:  We'll save them first!  We'll never choose you!  We'll save the remnant!  Our Jesus will be back for you!

Judge/Satan:  Back, I say!  Back!  Get back!

(satan runs offstage in fear)

Paul:  (strong, after a dramatic pause) You're days are numbered.

(lights go off, audience claps, false ending)

(lights come back on, witnesses still standing at front, now facing crowd, reporter enters)

(reporter humbled now, cautiously enters)

Cookie Swigglebottom:  Hi everyone, Cookie Swigglebottom here.  WWJD New-

(bursts out funny crying, woman, woman ii, and samaritan approach)

Woman:  Ms. Swigglebottom, whatever is the matter?

Cookie:  I'm sorry.  It's just... this trial has really opened my eyes to the problems in my marriage.

(samaritan dries her eyes)

Woman II:  Oh, honey.  Well, do you know what's good for fixing those?  A little bit of our Lord and Savior.

Cookie:  That's the thing.  My husband.. he's been telling me about Jesus and asking me to go to church for years, and I've ignored him.  Now I know what our problem might be... me.

Samaritan:  Well we can fix that right now.

Cookie:  It's just all so much, though.  The problems of the world.  I report on them all the time.  I see all kinds of bad things.  I guess I just need more details on this Jesus story.

(from the audience, eve's voice can be heard as she stands up)

Eve:  I can help with that.

(witnesses are all astonished and in reverence that it's eve)

Witnesses:  (shushed whispers) It's Eve!  Look, it's Eve!  She walked with God!

Adam:  And so can I.

Witnesses:  It's Adam and Eve!

(adam and eve begin walking toward reporter and the witnesses)

Eve:  You see, Cookie.  Before sin entered this world, there was no suffering.  No war, no disease, no famine, indeed not even death.

Adam:  Sin brought those things in.  Sin that mankind chose.

God gave us free will.  To make us truly free, He had to give us the option to reject Him.  When that was done, in His ultimate justice, He let us keep our choice.  Otherwise, we were never really free.

Eve:  Jesus came to redeem us, to save us from that bad choice.  And he can save you.  Will you let him now?

Cookie:  (becoming positive) Yes, I think I will do that.

Eve:  Okay, pray with me.

(rest of the cast begins quietly exiting during prayer)

(short saving prayer is said)

Cookie:  Thank you.

(even and cookie hug and begin slowly walking offstage arm in arm while still talking)

Cookie:  So, Jesus is coming back again one day, right?

Eve:  Oh yes.

Cookie:  He's coming back soon, right?

Eve:  Very soon.

Cookie:  Do you think He'd give me an interview?

(the end)

(choir)

D. Newman - Like It or Not, Movies are the New Books

The earliest cultures recorded their histories on rocks and cave walls, then pottery.  We can assume the practice next moved to an oral tradition.  Homer's 'Odyssey' and 'Iliad' were memorized and vocally passed down for centuries.  They had over ten thousand lines each.

Eventually the spoken word was chiseled and made beautiful.  Written alphabets were developed to record it.  Man's foremost technology was born.

For the next several thousand years, mediums for cultural preservation remained limited to books and art, until, of course, the electric current was harnessed.  This changed everything.

The Zoopraxiscope, circa 1885.  Considered
the first 'movie' camera.

Surpassing Gutenberg's printing press, this new sorcery made the bequeathing of history and tradition infinitely easier.  Film and radio entered the historical sphere.  Eventually the two were combined when audio was introduced to the local Nickelodeon.  From there, visual and audio recordings evolved together substantially, and have long sinced reached a point of common triviality.  We now take them vastly for granted, whereas upon their conceptions these new media were probably regarded like the great dinosaurs of Writing and Art - that is, as technologies to be used primarily for preservation of culture and knowledge, rather than entertainment.

Of course, the opposite is true today.  For the Homers and Sistine Chapels of yesteryear, we now have Ke$ha and cat videos, WorldstarHipHop, and something called Conchita Wurst.

But this is not to say there's no preservation of refined culture today, and in fact, I'm here to say the opposite.  I admit to being a harsh critic of modern celebrities.  But I don't think pop culture has replaced the more meaningful elements of our times.  It's only distracted from them.  So no, I wouldn't say the abundance of recording media available to the masses has ended the preservation of life's more important and pleasing traditions.

However, I do worry it's stolen the masses' attention from these precious, fragile things.

This newfound triviality of modern recording mediums, coupled with pop-culture-obsessed buffoons, have given video recordings an undeserved, black sheep reputation in the world of higher learning.  Movies and modern music supposedly do not carry as much weight as their literary and visual-art counterparts when referenced for pearls of wisdom or cultural markers, and this is very unfortunate.  Moving pictures and recorded audio are simply the advanced versions of the paintings and scribblings of antiquity.  Again, I blame the masses.

Who is to tell me Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" didn't properly teach of the spiritual disintegration of a man when he puts success and wealth before relationships, yet Milton can be referenced when attempting the monumental task to "justify the ways of God to man"?  Dickens conjured on the value of holidays?  Who dares challenge Bob Dylan's grasp of the changes of 1960s, with lyrics the likes of

"Come mothers and fathers throughout the land / and don't criticize what you can't understand / your sons and your daughters ate beyond your command / your old road is rapidly agin'."

Who says Cobain or Vedder weren't the epitomic faces of 1990s youth, alienated by old mens' politics and the music industry's heartless establishment?  Who will say only Shakespeare's sonnets can be referenced for musical wisdom?  Who will say they weren't Tyler Durden incarnate when that character declared

"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

It's for these reasons I feel no shame claiming certain modern movies and music in my limited academic settings as valid and valuable reference points for describing life and the social sciences.  My worth to college professors and other such academics is no issue to me.  They're merely priests of cultural Marxism and the murderous Washington regime anyway.  America should've long since dismissed them as worthwhile sources of wisdom or accurate perspective.  It may be the case that not only academia, but we lowly commoners too should begin referencing trends in those mediums in order to better predict our nation's future course - events, feelings, and spiritual state.

Trends in film and song are indicators of the feelings of a population's collective consciousness.  A single film or song can be seen as a thought, blasted forth into a nation's invisible, shared brain through its synapses - the wires of a nation's electric grid.  And of course, evil men can grab hold of collective thought-producing mechanisms, like film, television, media, and more, introducing propaganda en masse that fools citizens on an individual level into accepting these men's pre-packaged, poisoned 'thoughts' as their own.

A film reference I am particularly fond of making is in Steven Spielberg's "Hook."  The following exchange reflects perfectly the experience I had, against all odds, at coming to realize the truths of the Bible.  Peter's initial disbelief and uncomfortableness at Granny Wendy's revelations perfectly mirror the feelings of any Christian newcomer:

Granny Wendy: Hand me my book [the original Peter Pan novel], please. It's time to tell you, at last.
Peter: Tell me what?
Granny Wendy: How far back can you remember, Peter?
Peter: I remember the hospital on Great Ormond Street. You worked with orphans. You arranged for the adoption by my American parents.
Granny Wendy: You were 12, nearly 13. I mean before that.
Peter: There's nothing before that.
Granny Wendy: Try, Peter. Do try.
Peter: ..nothing..
Granny Wendy: (looking away in memory)You know, when I was young, no other girl held your favor the way I did. I expected you to alight on the church and forbid my vows on my wedding day. I wore a pink satin sash. But you didn't come.
Peter: (confused) Grandma...
Granny Wendy: Yes, I was an old lady when I wrapped you in blankets. A grandmother. With my 13-year-old granddaughter asleep in the bed. Moira. And when you saw her, that was when you decided... not to go back to Never Land.
Peter: (stunned) Where?
Granny Wendy: To Never Never Land.
Peter: (panicking) I'll get Moira.
Granny Wendy: I've tried to tell you!
Peter: (nervous) Maybe the tea's ready.
Granny Wendy: I knew you'd forgotten!
Peter: (trying to walk away) I'm not ready to deal with this now.
Granny Wendy: (waving the book) The stories are true, I swear to you! I swear on everything I adore. And now he's come back to seek his revenge. The fight isn't over for Captain James Hook. He wants you back. He knows you'll follow. Maggie and Jack to the ends of the earth. And, by heaven, you must find a way. Only you can save your children. Somehow, you must go back. You must make yourself remember!
Peter: Remember what?
Granny Wendy: Peter, don't you know who you are?

Yes, the stories are true, aren't they. And 'Hook' is indeed on his way back. We must remember who we are.

D.T. Newman - "Evil Men Control Your Mind"

In his famous essay, “Isaiah’s Job”, Albert J. Nock made an important distinction. He told us a nation’s “masses” are not some homogenous bunch comprised of the poor, or uneducated. They are those citizens of any demographic who have neither the intellectual will to learn civilized decencies, nor the values to adhere to them.

After first reading Nock's jolting definition, I naturally did what any Christian gentleman would do: panicked and frantically analyzed myself for characteristics of masses-hood.  No symptoms here, currently.  Though I'm sure it will be a lifelong battle to stave off that disease.

And in the way it spreads, being a member of Nock's masses certainly is a just that - a disease.  Much the same way the rot of an apple extends to the bunch, apathy toward the most important subjects of life - social, political, and religious - extends stupidity over large swaths of any population.

Without doubt, we know a majority of the modern American citizenry is miseducated at best regarding these subjects, and fully ignorant of them at worst.  Why?  How did the Land of the Free - so politically literate at one point that it staved off tyranny better than any other nation in human history - lose that knowledge, as well as the will to obtain it?  How did a nation of fierce individualists spawn so many of Nock's masses?

If we can liken that trend of degeneration to the disease of AIDS, then clearly "Cultural Marxism" was its HIV precursor...

Born in a German city of the same name, "the Frankfurt School" housed no little boys or girls for decent education.  No teachers inspired future greatness there.  No professors, doctors, or students solved the mysteries of existence, made important discoveries, or added any value to life.  Indeed, it was no such "school" of any education at all.  Its aim was to provide quite the opposite.

The early 20th century Marxist Revolution in communist Russia failed to garner military and governmental control over Europe and America as its creators had hoped.  Realizing the futility of openly vying for such control, they then turned to a more covert method.  Tyranny would now be achieved via slow and steady subversion of European and American values, not through government force as before, but with a secret manipulation of culture.  Through that poison the West would be made to bow, desensitized so thoroughly to the nature of their slavery they wouldn't even realize once they wore its shackles.

One of several original conspirators, Georg Lukacs, said:

“I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution to the cultural contradictions of the epoch.... Such a worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.”

It was through such wordy intellectualizing that the Frankfurt School dressed its brainwash in presentable terms.  By labeling its' deviant machinations the  academic-sounding "Critical Theory" and employing other such highbrow jargon, the less educated public didn't realize the emporer had no clothes, nor that his aim was to strip them as well.  The "new" values which Lukacs schemed for would be those directly necessary for the implementation of communism/socialism - in short, full government control.

Another quite telling line to come from the school (its originator is currently disputed) regards the destructive plan for Marxism's "long march through the institutions" - institutions like the family, education, and Christianity.  One "student" of the school described its body of academic work as the

"destructive criticism of all the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity, ethnocentrism, convention, and conservatism."

The Frankfurt School moved from its European base to New York City in 1935.  It was welcomed with open arms by the politically left-leaning Ivey League college system and stationed at Columbia University.  As that cluster of universities still remains today, its place at the top of American education ensured that the Frankfurt School's plans for subversion of family, religion, and traditional values would reach a level of influence only dreampt of previously.  Other universities of lesser standing would emulate its new "approach" to culture, while its own studentry - the nation's most powerful and influential future citizens - would be awash in the Frankfurt School's hidden Marxism.


Today, "Critical Theory" has seeped into the veins of the entire American educational establishment.  It "plays a major role in ideological reproduction, and in enculturating individuals into the dominant system of needs, thought, and behavior," as told from the horse's mouth in the form of Prof. Douglas Kellner, Frankfurt School adherent and UCLA's chair "in the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies."


Kellner reiterates:

"The critical theorists have deeply influenced contemporary social theory, philosophy, communications theory and research, cultural theory, and other disciplines for six decades. The dream of a interdisciplinary social theory continues to animate the sociological imagination. In recent decades there have been many different attempts to articulate the connections between the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of contemporary society in the spirit of critical theory."

The degree to which Kellner says the Frankfurt School influences American thought is staggering.  I surmise that the Frankfurt School ignited latent fires awaiting in the darkest desires of America's political and industrial Establishment.  They now had the Critical Theory's camouflage of false intellectual, academic justification with which they could gouge the power-restraining, freedom-conducive institutions from the mind of the West - primarily, traditional, familial, and Christian values.

The plethora of cultural upheavals in the 1960s presented a prime opportunity for Frankfurt School theorists.  Anger at the Vietnam war draft turned many young people against older groups keen on military action.  They opened their minds in rebellion to many varieties of new and foreign ideas.  Frankfurt-influenced universities, as well as Frankfurt-influenced individuals in prominent positions and the arts and entertainment industry, went to work tearing down time-tested, proven traditions.

The federal government, likely under the influence of its many Ivey-Leaguers, certainly acted in the spirit of the Frankfurt School by beginning its program of expanding single parenthood with  tempting welfare offers for such families, despite the almost nonexistent need.  By the end of the next decade, the black family unit was all but decimated.

The demonizing of the traditional American way of life, coupled with the simultaneous promotion of fringe groups - women, black militants, gays, Marxist college graduates, immigrants - seemed an obviously calculated attempt to create a new political class - the "alienated" and similar "victims" - to replace the old Soviet "proletariat" in the coming Communist/Socialist/Marxist revolution.  Antonio Gramsci, who is perhaps the father of this entire movement, began to see his idea for "cultural hegemony" come to life - that is, the concept that a diverse society in continuous cultural disruption is most conducive to rule by an elite class.

We see this same plan still holding strong in the modern day "Democratic Party."  Fringe groups are herded together every four years to form the Democratic voting block.  All of society's outskirts are gleaned for any potential voters.  Propaganda reigns supreme as it is blasted from the rooftops in effort to unite the victims "rejected" or "hurt" by traditional American value-holders.  Any effort to disprove their "oppression" is quickly demonized as the flawed product
of traditionalist, racist, misogynist, or homophobic thought, currently known as "privilege."

Reverberations of this effect cruise through the culture of its adherents and their minds.  Lewd music lyrics become defended as "art".  Displays of once-private or even detested behaviors become publicized.  Critics become "oppressors."  Desensitization to all explicities grows exponentially.  Those who are taken in by this scheme become distracted, dumbed down, and, for all political purposes enslaved by their most base, animalistic desires.  Hence the need for explicit sex scenes and explosions in movies, drugs and alcohol at social functions, violent and sexual lyrics in music, "twerking" in dance clubs and entertainment videos, and of course, nonchalance toward and distraction from the use of violence at home and abroad by the government.

There are reasons why your grandparents' generation largely didn't partake in such things, but you and yours do, and it wasn't because they were less free.  It was because they were more free.

Although the most fitting name for this most unfortunate phenomena is "Cultural Marxism", today it is commonly known as "political correctness."

William S. Lind, head of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Cultural Conservatism, tells us:

"Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious."

Lind argues that political correctness has resulted in Americans becoming "afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic" and that that fear can be attributed to cultural Marxism as peddled by the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory influences.

DiscoveringTheNetworks.org says the following regarding political correctness/cultural Marxism:

"When addressing the general public, contemporary advocates of Political Correctness – or Cultural Marxism, as it might just as easily be called – present their beliefs with appealing simplicity as merely a commitment to being “sensitive” to other people and embracing values such as “tolerance” and “diversity"...  The reality is different. Political Correctness is the use of culture as a sharp weapon to enforce new norms and to stigmatize those who dissent from the new dispensation; to stigmatize those who insist on values that will impede the new "PC" regime: free speech and free and objective intellectual inquiry."

Today, culturally marxist, left wing influence is a threat to Christendom's very existence. Government-driven mass immigration dilutes the influence of freedom-minded people by replacing them with socialists, communists, and theocratic third worlders. Public education is producing children unable to evaluate and execute successful life choices. The welfare state has devastated the poor. Politically correct speech imperatives prevent scientific inquiry into key population demographics. Feminism, gender fluidity, and abortion continue to injure the prominence of the family unit, which has always been the cornerstone of a free society.  Wild and frenzied accusations of racism threaten to reduce race relations greater than ever before, with current race relations at a twenty year low.

The nation's young people, in particular the elites and Ivy-League types, exhibit religious and maniacal adherence to the above mentioned problems, championing them not only as good, but as deserving expansion.  They will eventually leave their coddling universities and become senators, presidents, governors, congressmen and industrial leaders. They will take their idiocies with them.

The promotion of their destructive behavior as virtuous is ceaselessly promoted by Big Government through law, speech, and Hollywood film subsidies.  When leftists assert claims of “racism”, “sexism”, or “homophobia”, they are aiding in the growth of government.  It matters very little whether they explicitly request for government to repsond. They are spreading State "anti-discrimination" propaganda, the hidden aim of which being to drum up the fear and discontent necessary to outlaw virtually all criticism, which has long served as a natural deterrent to degenerate behavior and societal decline.

They promote rampant hedonism, irresponsibility, and reality detachment, because this destabilizes a society and encourages it to readily acquiesce to new laws, even beg for them. If a woman can become a man, or if a caucasian like Shaun King can deem himself black, then the idea that reality and nature are concrete becomes disempowered. Silly politically correct beliefs and federal diktats can take the place of obvious truths, and once a people may no longer declare plain truths without persecution, a New Tyranny becomes ripe.  And of course, if reality is fluid, then so are economic laws, which can then be decided by the almighty Marxist State.

Albert Nock's definition of the "masses", was, again, those people of any demographic who are unwilling to learn civilized decencies and do not have the values to adhere to them anyway. After that group the rest, Nock said, can be likened to the faithful “remnant” that our dear Yehovah commanded Isaiah to save from destruction.  Let us pray that God would show us how to see through the machinations of Marxism in this troubled time, that we may survive it as well as rescue our friends and countrymen.

Long live the remnant!

D. Newman - Celebrities and "The Nothing"

Celebrities are a fairly stupid bunch, and fairly vocal about it to boot.  A life on the big screen is usually preceded by one on a small stage.  The career begins

early on and doesn't allow for much educational development.  Those

exceptionally informative early years devoid of structured education are instead filled with perpetual attention and praise.  It seems stars are socialized from that young age to see fame not as an excessive state of reality, but a state of normalcy.  If ever that 'normalcy' begins to wane, no cost is spared in resuscitating it, self-respect or mental health be damned.

Stories of actors requiring therapy after an intense role are particularly curious.  Ridding themselves of the character they've mentally constructed proves too intense without professional assistance.  I surmise this is because they have very little naturally developed personality infrastructure of their own.  The years crucial to cultivation of the 'self' have passed, replaced by a blur of costumes in lieu of play clothes, makeup rather than mud pies, and classes to learn how to be someone else.  Too much acting, not enough being.

Perhaps this leaves them as hollow shells to be filled by the next character role, which of course is subsequently dumped yet again after the tapes are made.  Mr. Johnny Depp may provide a good case study of this phenomenon, as he seems quite unable to exude any unique personality characteristics in his private life.  His recent drunken appearance at the latest awards show seemed to me very unnatural, and full of subtle acting techniques.  As someone who's met enough drunks to supplant a mid-sized Asian nation, I know the difference between a faker and someone who's truly done-zo.

To the point: Celebrities, who often have oversized needs for eternal praise and approval, as well as potentially underdeveloped cognitive and logic skills, are hardly in a position to act as purveyors of public wisdom, despite their frequent attempts to.  This becomes all the more unfortunate since what seem to be their favorite subjects - socioeconomics, religion, politics - are society's most

important.  When they do weigh in, the two traits above may (and, I surmise, do) lead them to simply blurt out whatever platitudes will garner the most positive feedback.  Of course, this would mean the most politically correct party lines and buzzword trivialities of the week, no matter how easily disprovable or borderline retarded they may be.  Surely, then, with the lamentable amount of influence that crowd wields, the stupidity of celebrities is in large part directly responsible for the perpetuation of government sponsored cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness - the strangulation of thought.

Despite this, celebrities of all sorts remain a permanent subset of the movers and shakers of thought-engineering.  Those at the height of that group, the Ruling Elite - a very factual label - will continue to use them and other such powerful means of influence to stifle individual thought, lest you get out of line.  The prevailing system of taxation, corporatism, socialism, and warfare-wealth redistribution must be kept unquestioned, didn't you know?

From this, I am reminded of that telling scene from "The Neverending Story."  Young warrior Atreyu is worried.  Something evil is approaching Fantasia.  It is "the Nothing."

As the land crumbles around him, the evil G'morck explains:

Atreyu: What is the Nothing?
G'mork: It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.
Atreyu: But why?
G'mork: Because people who have no hopes are easy to control. And whoever has control, has the Power.

There is a Nothing approaching us, too.  It is the emptiness of mind.  It is resulting from the ongoing death of our previously prized institutions.  The wearing away of the family unit, individual rights, and the moral compass of Judeo-Christian values are destroying the western world.  It is our despair.  Make sure you are not trying to help it.