In jeopardy now?

Our legal tradition blends together several historical Laws. A highly developed Mediterranean society used the Roman law of 400 B.C. well into the 2nd and 3rd centuries. It was based upon unlimited imperial power. The Theodosian Code of 438 A.D, kept the old Roman law but now Christian influences were recognizable. When the Huns invaded Europe beginning in the 400's, they contributed nothing to cultured society. Theirs was a success of nihilism. Barbarian law their law; it was tribal. A man did not possess personal dignity; his success or failure was part of a group. Their early laws were in some poetic form that could be easily committed to memory . Agriculture was primitive. Their main interest was in some kind of warfare out of which came booty and slaves. They had no notion of the state, knew nothing of ‘public law’. Law was conceived as a private thing. Into the 500's, barbarian law persisted along with Roman law in the empire.

Then came Isidore of medieval Seville who in the early 600's said that law develops out of custom, nature anr Revelation. He said it must agree with reason, agree with revelation, be in harmony with all truth that leads to salvation. He said that it is an enactment of the people, but “Law must be just, fitting, possible, according to nature and custom, necessary, useful, clear, and for the advantage of all.” In the 800's the Norse invaded and destroyed culture again and the Huns took backstage. The ravages of these invaders provoked cries of agony in the literature of the time. But Western civilization eventually prevailed and in the 900's feudal law became the rage. Though theocratic, it had its pattern of order and disorder resulted from rebellion against customary law.

Today the United States, still in the Western tradition, blends the barbarian and the Christian, the reasoned and the customary. Or do we? The Islamic law, of much of the oriental world, has billions of believers, tends to be barbarian yet it flourishes and its goal is a global Caliphate. Many observers see Islamic law as infiltrating the West. Are we Roman, Theodosian or Medieval - or a blend of all three? Will we stave off the invasions of Muslims? Should we? The highest justice patterned on Divine law seems to me to be written into our Constitution but I believe it is in jeopardy NOW.

Hunger Holiday

At graduation time, the media would never depresses us with dropout statistics. But Halloween becomes a day for child safety concerns. Christmas exposes the plight of the homeless. And Thanksgiving, you guessed it - hunger and poverty run rampant. Even in Fayette county. Are we to be thankful for hunger and poverty as reported on the front pages of the Record-Herald? This is in stark contrast with the pound and a quarter of flyers included in my paper, surfeit with Christmas offerings from stores soliciting buyers for their goods. Why must our community’s news media buy into the national obsession with misleading, depressing and over-blown statistics on days of national celebration when you and I know what we have to be thankful for, what God has blessed us with in America today, and what are minor exceptions to the rules of responsible living? If passion and pity rightly belong to the realm of voluntary charity and if parenting ultimately determines a family’s lifestyle, why not admit there’s a need for more education? I refuse to be dragged down into a joyless, unreal world of hunger and poverty. Look around you and you will see that most Americans have more than they will ever need of both creature comforts and optimism.

Pity Not

“Those who chose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.” OR “Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery.” The former should never be the choice according to C.S. Lewis. He says, “Ye must distinguish.”

“The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of pity, the pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak the truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty - that will die. It was used a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.”

The other kind of Pity - the action, says Lewis, “It’s a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who inside on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.”

All humanity must choose the “great divorce,” according to Lewis, between Heaven and Hell. Joy is Heaven; misery is Hell. Bad men and women dwell in the deception of passion, where as, good people choose reality and truth, that this life is merely a foretaste and preparation for the perfected life in Heaven.

What is a red lizard (evil) compared to a white stallion (good)? These contrasting images are presented by Lewis in his short, fantasy work, “The Great Divorce.” “The tail (of the tiny lizard), still flickering, became a tail of hair that flickered between huge and glossy buttocks. Suddenly I started back , rubbing my eyes. What stood before me was the greatest stallion I have every seen, silvery white but with mane and tail of gold. It was smooth and shining, rippled with swells of flesh and muscle, whinneying and stamping with its hoofs. At each stamp the land shook and the trees dindled.”

Lizard or horse. Really was there a more obvious choice?

Tweet Yourself

Happy Thanksgiving! Tweet yourself to a few reality checks. I served seed to my welfare birds this morning so that they might tweet themselves this holiday. They have thanked me with their daily presence. Rush Limbaugh and Reason TV served up the historical facts of the pilgrims’ rejection of socialism shortly after landing in the new land at Plymouth, having learned that sharing the wealth did not pay for itself or feed a multitude. I thank God for Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh who read for us radio listeners, the documents presented to the American people by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln declaring and explaining the purpose of the feast of Thanksgiving. Did I say God? Yes, the hand of Diving Providence must be thanked; he served up the first feast of America to a new pilgrim people who quickly learned the meaning of the preservation of life, freedom and private property.

Eat your hearts out to your guts content today, liberals, reality is all!

FREE MARKETS NOT GOVERNMENT

How can we save Ohio Now, Mr. Kasich? As you may have noticed, Fayette County, Ohio and our Fayette County Tea Party gilded themselves with Republican and Conservative glory in the recent mid-term election. We will continue to monitor your progress in putting America back onto the ‘right’ track. Fiscal responsibility, limited government and a free market economy are our 3 core principles. Keep them in mind. My local business (from which I am now retired) never ran into the red because we wouldn’t ‘invest’ in what we couldn’t afford. Also, we might have been a powerhouse in our retail market, but we used our influence to infringe upon their our customers’ freedom of choices or imposed unreasonable restrictions upon their behavior. Thirdly, only the power of the people dictated the success or failure of our enterprise.

Keep these three principles in mind, Mr. Kasich, going forward into the battle against our liberal foes. Unreasonable spending must be quashed! Unreasonable rules and regulations must be quashed! Subsidies and preferences must be quashed! Quashed like the bed bugs of tyranny that they are, Mr. Kasich.

Thank you

Greed and Avarice

History always repeats itself. In 1891, John G. Bourke, a Captain of the 3rd Cavalry, U.S.A., took 500 pages to tell the American people about his hero, Gen. George Crook and the Indian uprisings out West. John expressed his considered opinion of the U.S. government’s Indian agents with these words: “a stench in the nostrils of decent people.” Furthermore, Bourke uses Crook’s own words to summarize the years of murder, corruption and lies that characterized these Indian wars. “Greed and avarice on the part of the whites - in other words the almighty dollar - is at the bottom of nine-tenths of all our Indian trouble.”

Fast forward to today when greed and avarice ARE a stench in the nostrils of decent people fed up with an overly intrusive government. Virtually all news involves murder, corruption or lies. Exaggeration and sensationalism are fed with almighty dollars. What else can explain a Charley Rangel, funded and elected for 20 terms in to U.S. Senate, corrupt as an old time Indian agent but rich as an old time Indian chief before his exile to the reservation.

Let’s hope this time around in Washington, we manage to put all liberal agents of change out to pasture.

Two Americas

In CA., 40 million dollars a day,
for people drawing unemployment pay.

Also, we remember our Veterans today
For service to country we can’t repay

With just thanks. Oh freedom! Is the way
Of the American dream, a dole laden dray?

Indian Summer

Gnats dancing on air
in the late afternoon sun.
Sere leaves drifting to earth
like intermittent rain.
Hallow’s eve gone;
Thanksgiving coming on.
Wasps, bees, ladybugs and flies.
Overhead a hood of cloudless blue.
An Indian summer respite,
rife with brighter, future days.

'Tis the Time for Thanks'

Mumbling aloud or under one’s breath might be construed as a Jack Nicholson shining madness moment, but for me it meant shock and awe. When I was in Wal-Mart recently, I observed an American Flag rimmed with red lights on the extreme West wall. Then I walked through the Christmas ‘section’ and down the center aisle. How sweet the eye candy! Thousands and thousands of wondrous offerings are on sale for this Christmas season. “Amazing! Unbelievable!” I muttered to myself. From $1.00 poinsettias to dozens of trees, multitudes of decorations and innumerable lights. Walking past a solid wall of perfume, the perfume (literally) reminded me of incense from angels hovering over a new born baby, the inspiration for all things equal to retail madness. All things, however, all gifts - red, green, gold, white, twinkling, caroling, feasting, unwrapped or stored as treasures, should remind us of one important thing. Here in America, “tis the time for thanks.”

POLITICAL ADS

Two and a half pounds of flesh! Have they been extracted from a tree to provide the paper for political flyers that I received in the mail? 80 ‘cards’ totaling 2 ½ pounds arrived in my mail. Shame on me, I’ve not read one of them in its entirety. Most of them came from the contest for State Representative of district 85 between Peterson and Pryor and the Governor’s race between Strickland and Kasich. None arrived from the U.S. Senate race. Two arrived for early voting but past the cut-off date. Other cards represented races for Attorney General, Ohio Supreme Court, U.S. House and State Senate. ( I think I’ve tallied them all.) Since everything in America has gotten bigger and better, so have my ‘cards.’ Baby bear ‘cards’ measure 5 ½ x 11 inches. 8 ½ x 11 are momma bears, and a sole pappa bear ‘card’ measures 8 ½ x 13 inches. A nighttime slip on my door handle completed the family with a miniature pet pooch ‘card’ measuring 3 ½ x 8 ½ inches. How cost effective are these solicitations since I already knew how and why I would vote before the 1st card arrived? And why would I read them when each politician’s promises mimic another’s, when each politician is fighting for me and no politician’s claims can be believed? 2 ½ pounds of waste should shame the environmentalist. The ‘cards’ were illustrated with pretty red, white and blue colors, though.

Who Dares

Who reserved an entire 570 Taj Mahal hotel for his trip to India with a total price tag of 2 million dollars? Who dared to take 3000 people at the cost of $200 million dollars a day to see the ‘Festival of Lights’ and the Gandhi museum before moving on to Indonesia? Who would shut down entire sections of cities for his visit? Who will commandeer 34 warships, 40 aircraft, 2 Air Force One’s, 40 armored cars including the Presidential limo? Who needs 30 sniffer dogs, 31 Marine choppers and 2 command posts, one in Delhi and one in Mumbai? Who indeed dares to set a precedent of using the Totus ( his Teleprompter) for the 1st time in the Indian Parliament for his speech? Who? He who flees his country the day after mid-term elections. He who has in 344 days in office, held 42 press conferences, given 158 interviews, held 23 town hall meetings and headlined 7 campaign rallies.

Who does he think he is? The golden idol? Midas? Ra? Zeus? The Sphinx? Alexander, Peter, Frederick, Catherine - the Greats? Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylonia, Cleopatra floating down the Nile, Caesar entering Rome, Saladin in Egypt, Napoleon in Paris, King Henry VIII at England’s court, the Sun King Louis XIV at Versailles, Hitler rallying at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, Kubla Khan, the Son of Heaven in China, Suleiman in his Turkish palace, a Pharoah on the throne in Egypt, Kim II Sung or Chairman Mao Tse-tung presiding over a May Day parade?

Who dares to sit astride the world? Why the big O, Maharajah, our President, Barack Hussein Obama!