In both Europe and the United States, issues of human migration are front and center.
My ancestors left the region that is now Denmark around two thousand years ago in search of a better life in a less harsh climate. They headed south. However, there was already an established culture in north-western Europe. The Celtic peoples populated most of the heart of Western Europe.
My ancestors were not there to assimilate or to work their way up in the established social system. They did not come prepared to pick crops and wash dishes. They came with ax and spear and shield to displace (kill) the locals. And they did. By the time the Romans arrived, the Celts were gone from northern Europe, they had been annihilated by my migrating ancestors.
The Romans held them up for several hundred years, but the southern march continued and did not stop till they had conquered nearly all of Western Europe from the Alps to Brittan to Rome and even parts of North Africa. Though they were not able to keep control of all that land and they grew into a number of distinct language and cultural groups, they never went “home”. Some of their descendants, the Angles and Saxons became the English and ruled the oceans for 200 years. Today, the richest country in Europe is named after one branch of these migrants (Germany); and, in the United States, the world’s super-power, the largest racial group is the descendants of those Nordic peoples. Whether they are called English, German, Dutch, Norwegian or Swedes, they are all children of those same migrants. Continue reading “Of Human Migration”
A couple of years ago I read an article that pretended to be advocating human rights, while in fact it was a story of moral cowardice passed off as courage.
The story was simple: a man who taught at a Catholic school came out as transgender. He did not resign, but rather waited to be fired and then promptly sued the Catholic school.
You might ask, why if I spend so much time writing about liberal values do I condemn rather than support this man and his cause. The answer is simple, this man, and CNN, have confused self-serving narcissism for moral courage, and that offends me.
Moral courage is the willingness to stand for right, without personal benefit but at a personal cost (think Gandhi). The case was not about being transgendered; it was about selfishness and self-absorption. This man taught at this school for decades, so he knew full well what the beliefs of the Catholic Church are in matters of sexuality. It is not a secret. He had been in the employ of a Catholic school and in his employment agreement, there were religious and moral expectations, as there were for all employees. There was no possible way he wasn’t informed of those expectations year after year. Continue reading “Of Narcissism Passed Off as Moral Courage”
TRUST IN MEDIA HITS ROCK BOTTOM screams the headline on Huffington Post. It goes on to say “Only 6 percent of people say they have a great deal of confidence in the press, about the same level of trust Americans have in Congress, according to a new survey released on Sunday.”
All I can do is wonder if the HuffPo editors have the slightest sense of self-awareness. After all their editorial position openly and aggressively presents its leftist bias.
The article goes on to say “Alongside the dire findings, the report found respondents valued accuracy above all else, with 85 percent of people saying it was extremely important to avoid errors in coverage. Timeliness and clarity followed closely, with 76 percent and 72 percent respectively saying those attributes were imperative among media sources.”
Yet at the same time they make no apologies about their own spin they put on each and every story. They don’t even try to be accurate or unbiased. Do you remember when they said they would only report Trump campaign news in the entertainment section?
So, HuffPo helps create a train wreck, then decry the carnage. How rich!
Gay North Carolina waitress receives bible verse instead of tip
From the article:
“Alexandra Judd was working at Zada Janes in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday, when she claims that two patrons left her a bible verse on the tip line of their bill instead of cash — followed by a note at the bottom that says “praying for you.”
The customer wrote “Leviticus 20:13,” which reads, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
From Me:
Perhaps it is good that neither the person who wrote the article, nor the woman herself, seems to get the point. This person who left the note actually believes that homosexuals should be put to death.
It is hard for those who are not fundamentalist to grasp how extreme those who claim to believe in the supremacy of the Bible’s moral laws can be.
Just a photo I took when I worked as an early intervention social worker. I was asked to do a photo essay on the children my program served.
It is important to remember that the goal of a liberal democracy is that every child starts life with a fair chance of success. Sadly, it is my experience that all too many children, never get that fair chance.
I recall hearing a news story a few years ago about the Chinese government’s ban on billboards that glorify royalty and lavish lifestyles. What got my attention was a comment about a wealthy young man regarding the huge divide between rich and poor in China today. The young man blithely said that the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor because they rich work hard and the poor do not.
I’m not sure you could find a wealthy American who would plainly and publicly say what the Chinese young man said; however, I suspect there is a fair percentage of Americans that believe in that basic sentiment; life is basically fair in its distribution of gifts.
I think that is nonsense. Life is not fair. I was born into the family of an up and coming engineer in the United States; did I somehow deserve that fate as opposed to being born to an impoverished family in Bangladesh? Of course not. That family of birth and the genetic gift of IQ has given me options that only a very few in this world enjoy. My mother and father were both born to poverty, but in the United States where their natural gifts of intelligence allowed them to rise into the middle class. Again, had they been born in another place or with less intelligence they would not have been afforded that opportunity. Any effort to rationalize the distribution of ability and opportunity is doomed to failure; there is no reason for it. Continue reading “Of Fairness and Equity”
The Cognitive Dissident 
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