First Blog

  The same allowances given by propaganda are as well the traditional method of justifying slavery.

What is the moral justification for slavery? A.     First, define your targets as ignorant and incapable of caring for themselves - alternately subhuman. B.      On this basis, take away their rights and "give" them what they need. C.      Your targets are now slaves to the state or plantation. D.     You have done the morally correct action. You feel good.   Does it work?  It has for millennia. 

  China's Consequence. · Most everyone believes the COVID-19 virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China. · Most everyone believes China deliberately developed this virus. · Most do not know if China intentionally released this virus - for whatever reasons. · Most everyone believes China is not giving full information on the nature of this problem. Thus, yet another black flag is associated with China in world memory. An earlier one concerns Huawei's spy communications chips. Need we mention China’s decades long use of prison labor in their factories and now Uyghur labor in their concentration camps. Who can forget Chairman Mao’s Great Cultural revolution, with 20 million deaths. Massive death is no stranger in China. Their latest abrogation of human rights is their absorption of Hong Kong. Fishing in the South China Sea is almost impossible these days if your ship doesn’t fly a Chinese flag. Therefore, in the future, China faces a horrific problem of trust – not to me

What’s good about the world?   We’re not looking for miracles or final results. We are looking for improvement.   Let’s not look at the world we don’t have now, but look more at the far and recent past where almost nothing was possible, available, accessible, and the like.  Our list does not include everyone everywhere.   Progress is not constant nor uniform.   In some places forward steps come in leaps while in others backward steps seem the rule.   With all we hear daily of riots here, wars there, violence in the streets, intrigue in the palace, assassinations,   subversions, perversions, and all others, we take a pause and consider what we have is far, far beyond the situations of almost all only a century or two ago.       We now live in a world where most people --- Have some civil rights. Have basic schooling. Have machines to make life easier. Have food produced by an agricultural bounty. Have some rights to practice a religion of choice. Are neither s

Many think that progress has been made.  After all, there is little old-style slavery these days.  This is not so; slavery has merely assumed another form.  We now have slaves with a cell phone, TV, iPad, and house.  But their functions are not much different than in millennia prior.  They work to live.  They have a little more mobility, true.  They can tell their boss to shove it, true.  But mostly, their next job is isomorphic to their previous one. They live in the service of others . Example: In education, we have slaves (teachers) leading new slaves (students) into the bondage of slavery (a job). Socialism merely changes just who are the "others."  Indeed, just about any "-ism" amounts to a similar redefinition.   The only difference is which class becomes the out-caste.

Hypocrisy is a minor flaw swamped in the wake of pure hate. ---------------------  Left-Right-Left … We all know “left” and “right” are not colors.   This does not stop some people from painting everything in their lives, beliefs, statues, religion, and friends as left or right. Tiring, boring, and simplistic, but there it is.  --------------------- We are all slaves – but to what? The only old form of slavery absent in the US anyway is human ownership.    Other than that, we have bunches of new ones, many being self-slavery, together with the retinue of all the old ones.   Topping today’s list for tots of all ages are cell phones and video games. Withdrawal is experienced if their device is removed even for a short period. Another new category is the blogger, through which the writer communicates with unknown readers.   Detached friendship?    Television slaves, junkies, or bingers, come in types such as news, shopping, sitcoms, old re-runs, and sports.

In the past weeks we've hear much about the morality of waterboarding.  Recently, the CIA’s Gina Haspel was pounded by members of the  morals-of-the-month  club.  By the great historian, Will Durant*, morality changes from generation to generation, depending on current conditions, greatest desires, and acceptable sins. He proved this with countless examples over all recorded history. Examples: a. Waterboarding - In the past there was no morality issues at all. It didn’t maim anyone, but it scared the victim into confessing revelations. Now its torture. b. Abortion - In the past it was abhorrent, not it's just plain ok, indeed encouraged. c. Spanking children - In the past considered a necessary tool of parental discipline, now questioned by sociologists on moral and many other grounds.  d. Homosexuality - Has flip-flopped in moral acceptance for millennia. e. Pedophilia – Remarkably it has the same history as the above, and by historical leaders, clergy, an