Lost on the Yellow Brick Road

Rabbi Louis Benstock said, “Very often we are our own worst enemy as we foolishly build stumbling blocks on the path that lead to success and happiness.”  Benstock’s quote is an accurate assessment of the pitfalls that are bound to come to those who travel the road of success considering that nothing in this life is easy, especially success.  Success comes especially hard to those who act foolishly. But the enemy of America is an enemy of a different kind; it is not America tripping over a stumbling block; the enemy is an America that is no longer on  the road to success. You might say; very often we are our own worst enemy when we leave the path that leads to success and happiness.

The measurement of success for America has always been the freedom to pursue happiness. Our founders never intended to guarantee freedom or happiness; they knew that freedom is something that you have to cherish to the extent that you will sacrifice yourself for it, and happiness is something that you must pursue, i.e. everyone get out of my way, I am chasing after happiness and while I am running after it I won’t interfere with your personal pursuit of your own happiness. That has been the path to success and happiness for America, often called the American dream. Make no mistake it is a path, a certain path, the only path that has had the clarity of opportunity for those who stay on it. The junkyards of history are filled with societies who started down that path but got lost on the way. Unfortunately for the lost of history there is only one path; the fork in the road that leads to destruction, it is not another path; there is not another way to success and happiness. If you remove man’s willingness to sacrifice himself for freedom and his desire to chase after happiness he is lost, he is on the wrong path and the lost in history makes the point that they were never able to find their way back.

America has been its own worst enemy, we have left the path and lost our way. Can we fight the tide of history and reverse our course, find our way back? No! Before you hang up your mouse and move on to another blog let me explain why I say no.

First of all since 2008 we have more people working for government, in one form or another, then we have working in the private sector. Not only are there more, they also are paid more than their private sector counterpart. This is the perverbial tail leading the horse; this is the master waiting on the servant. Do you see any of these people voting out of office the golden goose? I don’t. This prevents effect change in bad government. This is a people with their hand out and a politician willing to fill it.

Secondly, common sense has been replaced with political correctness. Anyone who debates the problems of government is immediately labeled as politically incorrect. What this does is stifle debate and limits our ability to work on issue of importance to better the outcome.  A good example of this is Arizona’s immigration law; the governor was labeled as a racist because she wanted to enforce legal immigration. Extrapolate this throughout government and we become a society that is impotent to fix problematic issues.

Third, the balance of power in our government has dramatically shifted from the congress to the judiciary and the executive branches of government. This is particularly disconcerting because the congress is the closest branch of government to the people. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi failed the people, not by their agenda, but because they failed to see that the president is usurping their mandate to legislate the law. They pass laws and the president changes the meaning through regulations without the scrutiny of the legislative branch of government. This may work for Reid and Pelosi when the president’s agenda fits their agenda; but what happens when president’s agenda  is to increase the power of executive branch and diminish the constitutional authority of congress? This path can only lead to socialism headed up by a dictator.

Fourth, the baby boomers are retiring and the kids of the 60’s are becoming the power brokers. Generations come and generations go; but the cultural differences between the pre-WWII, the baby boomers, and the generation X’ers is huge. Not only is there a discrepancy in values, the X’ers are almost completely without virtue. Ideals such as love your neighbor and patriotism are all but forgotten if not totally anathema. Relationships are no longer physical; rather they are virtually electronic. Reach out and touch someone is now a “beep-beep” over a cell phone. The ability to sympathize with the needs of others is lost. This is proven out in the decline in charitable giving. Liberals typically give less than 1/3 to charity that there conservative counterparts do; for  liberals government is to stand in the gap to protect the less fortunate. This puts unreasonable financial demands on government, increases the size of government, and keeps the individual out of the loop in humanitarian service to others. A society where the individual fails in the service of others is a society in decline.

Lastly is the fact that the above is true and most reasonable people will agree that it is true. The problem is that the vast majority don’t see the above as a country on the wrong path; rather most see these as stumbling blocks that can and will be kicked aside at some point in time. It will never happen; the issues outlined above feed on themselves and have grown at an alarming rate. They have become so big that they now require to be nourish our they will destroy what little remains as sensible government. This is the process that has destroyed every republic throughout history, and has been the demise of every attempt at people friendly socialism and communism.
The problem is human nature, a nature that demands a freedom not to do good; rather a freedom to do only evil. We are born crying out to be feed and cared for and we feed the monster of irresponsibility three times a day for the rest of lives. The goal of mankind is food, clothing, shelter, and sex; and we don’t care who pays for it as long as it is not number one.

Truth or Consequences

When someone tells you a lie and you know they are lying and you believe it anyway; is it still a lie? Now before you roll back your eyes and think that that is a stupid question consider all the lies that you hear on a daily basis, from the news media, your friends, politicians, your boss, your kids and the secrete little lies that you tell yourself knowing that they are not true even when you try to convince yourself to believe them; if not completely true at least true to the point that you repeat it to others. After all, if you repeat a lie without identifying it as a lie and you passed it on as truth, and if you replicate it often enough, will you not begin to judge that it is the truth. There is an old saying, “to be a good liar you need to have a good memory.”

Lies differ from opinion; e.g. you can believe that abortion is ok and it benefits society; I can believe that it is not ok and that it destroys a life. Those are opinions; where the lie comes in is from what information you believe that helps you formulate your opinion. Taking our example of abortion; to believe that it is ok you have to believe that the human fetus is not a human being, that it is just a tissue mass. You want to believe that because you think that it is wrong to murder a person, but it is ok to remove a tissue mass. The flip side is that to believe that abortion is killing a human being you have to believe that the fetus is life and that if left to grow it will become a viable independent person. Which fact is based on truth, and which is a lie based on false information and deceptive agendas? You can say you believe one or the other and that your belief is just as valid as the opposite belief; but that is not true; two opposing set of facts cannot both be true.  If one plus one is two, then one plus one cannot be three; only one set of facts is true and the other is a lie. You cannot have an opinion about one plus one, the truth is that it is always two and never anything else. Back to our example of abortion, the fetus cannot be both a non-human tissue mass and a possible human being at the same time; the truth is that it is one or the other; both cannot be true.

Going back to our original question, when someone tells you a lie and you know that it is a lie; but you believe it anyway does it become the truth for you? Absolutely not; believing or not believing does not decide if something is true. Otherwise, believing a lie does not validate it no matter how sincere your belief is. Looking back six hundred years men were executed for believing the world was round. The flat earther’s were sincere in their belief that the earth was flat; but we now know that it is round. No matter how sincere they were in their belief it was not factual, their belief was based on bogus evidence and the conclusion was not true.  After the first ship sailed around the world there were still many who believed the world was flat because they wanted to believe it; but that did not make it true, even for the non-believers it was round, they were believing a lie.  What conclusions can we draw from this?

First, before we formulate opinions we need to be sure of the facts. With the advent of radio and television we have become a lazy culture in that we rely too much on what hear from others and not on our own research. If you really want to know the true you have to work at finding it, you have to be willing to spend the time and resources to assimilate the correct facts. Be careful; there is a whole segment of our population that wants to keep you lazy, ignorant and believing their lie.

Secondly you have to learn to be able to distinguish  between truth and opinion and that the so called truth is not based on what you want to believe. Our society has become one that thinks it is entitled, that we have the right to demand that our needs and desires be met; as a result we are willing to believe opinions as truth when we are promised a chicken in every pot.

Next, we believe things we know that are not true because of our fear of the truth. For example we live in a drug abuse culture and when a love one becomes addicted we reject the truth because we don’t want a pot-head for a kid. We don’t want to deal with the issues of rehabilitation, the legal problems and pain of a destroyed loved one. More often than not in situations like this we reject the truth until it becomes so obvious that we can no longer deny it. The rule of the day should be, “the truth will set you free.”

Thirdly, if we are to be a people of truth, a people who puts supreme value on truth, a people who sees a lie for what it is; a perversion of the truth, and a feeble attempt to elevate one’s self; then we have to understand that a lie is about self. The most prominent letter in the word lie is “I.” lying is all about self, making “I” self important, making self supreme in the eyes of other men. Lying is about presenting ourselves as a step above all others. Lying is the endeavor to makes ourselves what we perceive as greatness; as “somebody,” as someone that we are not.  How can we ever become a people of truth if we continually lie about ourselves? If we cannot trust our opinion of self then how can we discern the truth of the rhetoric that others espouse?

Lastly, we are no longer a people who can think critically. Thinking critically is the ability to weigh the desire to believe against the consequence of miss-belief. We must not let desire rule our ability to collect and discern the facts. Desire is a powerful motivator and if not careful it will lead us to self-deception; i.e. wanting something to be true so greatly that we will believe the lie thinking that a lie will make it happen. The consequence of a lie is that we become the victim of our self-deception. We lie and we lose relationships, we lose virtue and thus we lose value as a person. We are no longer respected and trusted by those we use to call friends. Is the cost; i.e. consequences of lying worth the benefit of achieving a desire?

There was a national survey taken some years ago that asked if you were a liar and how often you lied. The results revealed that about 70% of the American people lie on a regular basis. The irony in this is that 100% said that they did not want to be known as a liar. There is an old saying that the easiest mark for a salesman is another salesman; could it be said that a liar is the easiest person to lie to?

What’s the point? The next time you listen to a politician think critically about what he/she is saying. Evaluate the words based on truth and not on what you want to hear. Think critically about what a politician tells you no matter how much you desire what he/she is selling. Below is a list of top ten issues that politicians are selling; behind each issue is a promise that you will be better off if only this or that happens. As you read through the list and the promises, ask yourself, is this true, are there facts to support this, if this is made into law will the world really be a better place or will there ultimately be consequences.

10. Global warming is the result of carbon and if we can reduce our carbon footprint we can save the earth. We need to sign on to the Kyoto treaty and pass cap and trade. Green energy is the answer and will ultimately reduce the cost of living for everyone and will elevate the societies in third world countries.

9. Our freedom of speech is being put into jeopardy by certain elements on talk radio, TV 24 hour news, and the internet. We need more regulation to control what is being said by these elements. Truth is relative to the situation and sometimes truth is more destructive than it is helpful.  We can get more done for the good of the people if we control the truth.

8. Abortion is freedom of choice and a women’s right to chose. Families are stronger when women are allowed to make this choice. We need laws prohibiting protest by those who disagree.

7. Homosexuality hurts no one and should be legalize allowing homosexuals to marry and to be openly gay in the military. This is important in a free society in that we should be tolerant of all sexual orientations. Homosexuality has greatly benefited other societies in the past.

6. A truly compassionate society would want government health care for everyone. We need to keep the healthcare law because it will ultimately make healthcare less expensive and will insure better health outcomes. Doctors and insurance companies are driven by profit, and a good healthcare law will control this.

5. Euthanasia is a compassionate way for a person’s life to close. Euthanasia would reduce pain and suffering and the cost of caring for the terminally ill. We need laws that will demand that doctors perform mercy killings when deemed appropriate.

4. Social justice is taking from the rich and giving to the poor through higher taxes. We need to tax the rich and corporations at a significantly higher rate. When we do this our economy will grow and people will be better off economically.

3. Guns kill people and the constitution clearly says that only a well regulated militia should have weapons. We could greatly reduce crime and murder if guns were made illegal. We need laws that will remove all guns from population at large.

2. Socialism, communism, and Marxism are just other ways of looking at government and in no way jeopardize our rights and privileges as citizens of a constitutional republic. The fact is that history tells us that the average person would be better off in one of these forms of government. It would be wrong to make laws that would deemed this views as illegitimate.

1.  Our constitution guarantees the freedom from religion; therefore religion should be taken out of the secular work place and government. The principles of religion are hurtful and should not be allowed as a view in a tolerant society. However, all people should be allowed to worship as they chose, even if their religion demands destruction of a constitutionally free society. We need to allow this so that the world will see the United States as a just society; then they will love us.

 A free society is nourished and grows from people demanding the truth. The next time you hear a politician pontificate get off your lazy butt and do your own research, thinking critically about what he/she is saying. Don’t buy into it just because you like what they are selling. More often than not the consequences of their lie is much more damaging then the promise is beneficial.