Opus 2026-433: WARNING: Unity Ahead

In discussing the beliefs of different denominations one of the rules of thumb that I’ve come up with is that if they have the word “united” in their denomination name, then they are most likely heretical.  One of the sad truths is that in order to unite with other people you generally have to give something up.  In the case of united churches, they often give up important theological truth.   Of course it’s also possible that they gave up those truths before they united but again that’s what makes it possible for them to hang together.

I submit to you the United Nations.  It is hailed as democracy in action but since the original founders understood the mindless nature of democracy they established The Security Counsel in which each member has a veto.  Picture the nature of a pure democratic organization that puts decapitating, wife beating, prepubescent raping countries on a committee to guarantee individual rights.  How would you like the General Assembly by a simple majority to put a special tax on the income of Americans?  

When I was a kid, I attended the Pasadena School District.  We called it PSD for short.  It was rated as one of the best in the country.  Somewhere along the line between the time that I graduated from high school and came back to teach there, they added the word united.  At that point they were in the bottom 25%.  Nowadays, you rarely see a school district that doesn’t have united in its name.  Now I’m not here to say that adding that word to their name ruined education, but it’s just another one of those many coincidences that happened at the same time. United school districts tend to do much worse than just school districts used to do.

Then I thought what about the United States of America?  I had to come up with some kind of modification or corollary.  I decided that what would mark united as a warning is if you change your name to include it.  If it was original then you might be good to go.

homo unius libri