Opus 2026-321: Cultural Appropriation

There are times when my guilt just sits on my shoulders.  I’m thinking here of wearing a cowboy hat.  I am appropriating the culture because I am not, nor ever have been, a cowboy.

My childhood was full of this atrocity.  I was in the French Foreign Legion.  I was a whole variety of sports stars.  I was the nemesis of Zorro when I wasn’t Zorro himself.  I was a Roman legionnaire.  Pick a culture and I am sure I insulted it somewhere along the line.  

I was a terrible person.

We used to call this creativity or imagination.  It was a sign of a well balanced, happy childhood.  Now it is a sign of evil.

I will not ask for your forgiveness.  It isn’t necessary.  You are the one who need mercy for your shriveled little world.  I will continue to enjoy Mexican food, Italian food and even Mediterranean cuisine.  I will however draw the line at pickled pigs feet.  I am not sure what culture claims them.  I tried them once at the behest of a pastor with a Mexican heritage.  Never again.  You can stick to your cultural background.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-043: Spin Check

Would MLK Celebrate?

This is a serious question.  Martin Luther King, Jr. became the poster child of the Civil Rights movement when he was murdered.  He is remembered as advocating the Ghandi principle of non-violence.  It did not work out well for him but I think, like Charlie Kirk, he may have expected it.  Part of non-violence is the reality of martyrdom.

Somehow I think he is spinning in his grave.  The acronym BLM would be enough for him to feel like his life had been lived in vain.  His speech about content of character instead of color of skin would be viewed as accommodating racism today.  

We need to keep quoting that speech.  We need to smile at the racists calling anyone who disagrees with them racists and maybe respond with, “You poor deluded child.”  We need to keep worshiping the God who has the standard that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile.

Forward.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-430: On the Street: Sign Me Up

As I was driving toward home a truck going the other direction caught my attention.  On the side it said, “A Native American Woman Owned Company”.  That is saying a mouth full.  I am not sure why I am supposed to care about that.  Does it mean you need a reservation?  Does it mean they are always late but well dressed?  I am not sure what the company did but they got my attention.

I was wondering if Bruce, aka Caitlyn, Jenner who was born in America and is thus a native American could join their board?  So many questions; so little information.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-094: Vocabulary Lesson

It’s called slavery.

Listening to different soundbites on YouTube I keep hearing mention of “human trafficking”.  No, it is not human trafficking.  It is the time honored slave trade.  I don’t know why we are so reluctant to come with that.  Getting rich selling the bodies of young women and children was what slavery was all about.  Until the sugar and cotton plantations began to demand a stronger work force, most men taken prisoner in Africa were killed.  It was the weaker women and children who could be moved, trafficked, more easily.  It was slavery then.  It is slavery now.

It could be that the media and their Marxist allies don’t want to clarify the fact that slavery is not an issue exclusive to American history.  Slavery is, was, a worldwide norm.  It has not gone away.  It is active in every Muslim country and we see it going on here under the guise of “human trafficking” which is expressed in sweat shops, prostitution, child pornography and child sex, underpaid workers and ways normal minds don’t think about.

Christian Europe did away with slavery.  The Vatican tried to stop it in the New World plantations but there was too much money to be made.  The main force that keeps condemning it is the underlying Biblical idea that human beings are created in the image of God and have worth.  

At least now that we have a new administration in Washington there are an increasing number of voices that are speaking out against it.  Their voices would be heard better if they would set aside the feel-good euphemisms and call a slave a slave.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-020: Book Review: Another Mixed Bag

I just finished reading a sci-fi novel called The Mercy of the Gods.  The story was interesting and if you like sci-fi that has mysterious aliens and obscure science this could be your thing.

My problem is that the writers handbook just can’t keep out of the way of the story.  Modern writers have so much woke nonsense demanded that it is hard to weave a good tale.  Corey does a decent job of keeping it on the sidelines.  Sure, we have the women who is overcome with sorrow and because the war leader.  You will find most ethnic groups involved.  Genuine Christianity is not mentioned.  Then you get to the nonsense.

On page 342 I came across this impossible grammar.

“He wanted to meet a stranger in the library and spend an hour flirting with them.”

The only way to write this way is to confuse the issue of whether this guy is a homosexual or not. He didn’t flirt with them. “Stranger” is singular.  “Them” is plural.  Either he flirted with her or he flirted with him.  This is why I find it so hard to read fiction today.  I reject the homosexual lifestyle as being normal but I know it exists.  Is it too much to have the author be clear in what he is trying to say?

I guess so.  

I finished the book.  The story hung together in spite of the politically correct demands of the editors.  It makes me wonder, though, if I will bother with the next book in the series.  What generally happens is they keep the wokeness in the background until you get involved with the characters and then they start the overwhelming doses.

This is why I am focusing on older non-fiction.

Corey, James S.A.  The Mercy of the Gods.  New York:  Orbit Books, 2024.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-184: Book Review: A Second Shoe

I finished the first book and went to the second in the series.  My concerns were justified.  As the second volume opened up, the woke attributes began to emerge more and more steadily.  The author is excellent to telling a good story, knowing what was expected by the publisher, knowing what was rejected by the readers, and slowly combining them to produce a book.

The best comparison I could think of was when I would make cream soup out of a can.  I would dump the contents into the pan and start the heat, low, and begin gently stirring what came out as a lump.  Once it’s consistency had been broken up and it was stirring smoothly, I would start introducing the water or milk that I was going to use to dilute it.  If I dumped it in all at one time, the soup became lumpy, and I would never get a smooth result.  In order to get what I wanted. I had to do small amounts, stir until it was smooth, and then add a little bit more.  I had to surprise the target.  

That is what was happening in the book and it reached the critical mass point quickly.  The joy fled.  The PC mantras overwhelmed.  The story disappeared in the woke tide.  Too bad, but I keep hoping there will be other books out there.

Read with discernment.

O’Keefe, Megan E.  The Fractured Dark.  New York:  Orbit, 2023.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-183: Book Review: One Shoe Writing

I don’t spend as much time reading fiction as I used to.  One reason is there is a shrinking pool of fiction that is worth reading, at least to me.  One of the first things I look for is a good action story.  I like action, not description.  Give me Louis L’Amour, you can have Zane Grey.  I’m not into emotional introspection.  I tend to skip over a lot of stuff like that.

That being said, it has to have good characters that I can identify with and care about.  The story needs to hold together and needs to be well written.  What makes it hard for stories like this is the wole formula all authors are forced to use nowadays.  Some are able to meet the minimum‘s of the politically correct progressives, and still write a good story, but most are not up to it.  I am currently exploring a new author who has promise.  I am assuming the author is a woman because she has one of those names that could be taken either way, and the main characters in the story tend to be evenly divided between men and women.

All the same, it is a woke story, but the wokeness is kept in the background, so far.  I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I see a few cases where pronouns come up.  There is a doctor who is continually referred to as “they”, but it is done in such a way that it is not clearly referring to one person.

Homosexuality is introduced in a passing way by a brief reference to the main character, who is a man, having his father tell him when he was 15 that it was not appropriate for him to approach this boy that he liked.  The reason he wasn’t to approach him was because the character is the son of an absolute monarch, and is not allowed to abuse his underlings by forcing them into relationships.  It had nothing to do with sexual impropriety or morals.

Then you run into the problem of women being written with the characters of men.  The female lead in the story is a Wonder Soldier.  She is a super fighter and is the bodyguard of the male lead in the story.  There is a romantic interest developing, which is forbidden by their social mores but I expect it to develop.  He is the son of one of the oligarches, she is a servant.  Their future happiness is not bright.

You also have the missing spiritual awareness.  In this culture people are “printed” and stored in a computer of some kind.  When they die, the old print is resurrected, a body is cloned, and the old person is inserted.  Somehow they have managed to transfer the memories of the person who dies violently or out on the trip back into the print out, and life starts over again.  Star Trek explored this idea.  One of the problems you have and this is the idea of making duplicate copies of the person.  Do you remember Captain Kirk coming back with a double?

There are two questions here.  The first is metaphysical, I guess, “Is it really the same person?”  Does it just think it’s the same person because memories have been copied into its brain?  Or is it just an artificial recreation?  The question is never even looked into, at least in this first book.

The second question would be the place of a machine as a storage for a human being.  If a machine can store a human being and a machine can re-create that human being, then it just follows that machines could make up a human being on its own, and then the question becomes, “Is it a human being?”

Another issue is where the main character gets his Christian cultural values in a society which seems to have rejected all forms of religion.  He is concerned that his father, who he knew was strong and had to do terrible things, might not be a decent person after all.  If not, he might not be doing things because they were necessary, but be committing atrocities because he enjoyed it.  Where would you come up with those kind of values in the world devoid of Christianity.

At this point, I can read the next book with anticipation.  I also will read it with a bit of dread, often these authors suck you in with a good story, keeping the dissonance in the background, and then, as they establish a relationship with you they start pushing their agenda.  There have been series of books, where I would follow to the third or fourth volume, and suddenly all kinds of weird and strange things become the norm.  I remember one where the admiral of a massive space fleet, who was totally the manly man, suddenly started talking about his husband at home.  I don’t know if I got much further than a few paragraphs after that.

I don’t know which way this author will go.  I know there’s a lot of pressure to follow the plan to fall into line, and to conform.  With modern progresses it really doesn’t matter.  If you are a great author tell me a good story.  The real concern for the publisher is, are you following the playbook?  Are you working to tear down the standard values of society?  Are you jumping through the woke hoops?

I will enjoy while I can and then move on.

O’Keefe, Megan E.  The Blighted Stars.  New York:  Orbit, 1923.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-255: The Misfit that Wasn’t

Something I was reading mentioned a book called The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Perez in a positive way.  One of the ways I find things to read is by following the suggestions of others that I find stimulating.  I could not find the book in print in any of the local libraries but I did find one that had it available on line.  

The library had a brief summary of the book.  Here it is for you enlightenment.

“The real Malo loves rock music, skateboarding, zines, and Soyrizo (hold the cilantro, please). And when she assembles a group of like-minded misfits at school and starts a band, Malo finally begins to feel at home. She'll do anything to preserve this, which includes standing up to an anti-punk school administration to fight for her right to express herself!’

After reading that I decided it was not something that could hold my interest.  There were too many stereotypes in the blurb.  This Malo has friends who are called “like-minded misfits”.  I am not sure what schools this author has ever been in but the description of the things this Malo likes are pretty mainline.  I had to look up Soyrizo.  It is a sausage made with soy instead of meat.  That is the only thing in the description which would not fit in any school I went to.

I am afraid that the story would be a bit too woke for me.  I can tell you without trying that the group she puts together is made up of a rainbow flag of victim categories.  It is a trend that makes it almost impossible to find a book worth reading any more.

I will keep looking.

homo unius libri

Opus 2023-126: New Terms: Woke?

I don’t read all the click bait so I am not sure what the official line is but I am hearing that people don’t know how to define “woke”.  Let me help.

In classical English “woke” means to stop being asleep.  My pre-redaction, dead tree fiber dictionary tells me it is the alternative past tense of “wake”.  I also notice that two pages back is “wing nut”.

In Proregressive English is means to be sedated to reality and is the present tense rather than the past.  It has the opposite meaning.

Being woke requires a lot of flexibility because the meanings of words and acceptable behavior are constantly changing, sometime daily.  This gives woke a timeless quality.

Woke means always looking over your shoulder to see what your minders want you to say or do.

As a general rule woke means that you can’t take care of yourself or provide for your own needs because that would require work, which may look similar to woke but has nothing in common.

The woke tend to be on the left of politics.  I don’t know if that is built into their DNA or if it is possible for someone on the right to be infected.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-177: Let’s Start a Rumor

I finally finished The Brothers Karamazov and found myself wondering if Dostoevsky was really a woman.  I see that happening a lot in current science fiction.  If you see an author with initials instead of a first and middle name then there is a good chance it is a female author.  But my question is based more on style than the handle.

While it is not politically correct to bring it up, women tend to be more in contact with their emotions than men.  When they write they tend to focus more on emotions and relationships.  Men will get into action and physical conflict.  Obviously there is overlap and there are exceptions.  I realized that one of the reasons I had such a hard time finishing The Brothers Karamazov was because of all the long, tedious scenes that focused on emotions and relationships.  If it had not been a classic I felt duty bound to read, I would not have finished it.  I fell into scan mode.  The reader is faced with page after page of sharing inner thoughts about love and hate and visions and temper tantrums and all kinds of things that would be at home in a mental hospital.  I found that by skimming through I missed nothing I needed to know.

About the time of this thought I came across a short clip by Andrew Klavan about women swordfighters.  In discussing a movie with a woman as protagonist he commented that women heroes were no problem as long as they were women.  He said the main character was excellent.  The conflict she was having as part of the story was well done and entertaining but then she was dropped into a spot where she had to pick up a sword.  She defeated two trained soldiers, presumably with no training herself.  At that point the movie lost him because she became a man.  The catalyst for this was a discussion of the fact that a woman could never defeat a man in a sword fight.  I will let you listen to him and see if you agree but the point was woman and men are stronger in different ways.

If I really wanted to write a doctoral dissertation on my speculation I would be forced to read all of Dostoevsky’s works to test my hypothesis.  I am getting too old to make it through such a task and I find I am not serious enough to be interested.  I will leave that to you.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-175: Monday Pulpit: A Request Fulfilled

I was asked by a friend to listen to a sermon preached at his church.  The preacher had reportedly told someone in the church that we did not believe in the infallibility of the Bible.  That came as news to me and my friend.  Normally I would never bother listening to someone who preached from a book he thought was inaccurate but this was the request of a friend.

I will only share a couple of things about the sermon.  It was Pentecost Sunday and the sermon had to do with Pentecost in theory.  That is the day we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples gathered in the upper room.  You can find it in Acts 2.  

What first got my attention was that the preacher repeated referred to the Holy Spirit as “it”.  I don’t believe I have heard that before from anyone who knows what they are talking about.  The Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity and in the Bible is referred to as “He.”  Pagans and heretics would say “it” because to them the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force if it exists at all.  I decided to try and check that out to see if it was just me.  I did some searches of the word Spirit in the New Testament in both the KJV and the NASB.  I never found the Holy Spirit referred to as “it” in the NASB.  I did find one place in the KJV but it usually said “he”.

The choice of a pronoun is a theological issue not a matter of translation.  It speaks of the presuppositions of the translator, not the text.  In the Greek the pronoun is included in the verb and although it has person it does not have gender.  Another difference from English is that nouns have a gender and everything referring to it shared the gender.  I remember in German that you have a pencil and a pen.  One is feminine and the other is masculine.  For the life of me I can’t remember to this day which is which.  Christian theology teaches that the Trinity is one God in three persons.  Thus the third person cannot be an it.

This is important because it strikes at the core of our faith and our doctrine of God.  I don’t think it was an accident.  This was reinforce at the end of the service when he prayed “O heavenly God” rather than “O heavenly Father”.

Pentecost Sunday was also being recognized as a day to take a stand against gun violence.  Everyone on the church’s e-mail list got a notice to wear orange and if they did not have anything orange then ribbons would be available.  This is what we call left wing political theater.  In the service we were told it was not anti gun but anti gun violence.  Sure.  If it was about violence why were they not dealing with the causes of more deaths than guns, such as fists, knives, drugs, drunk drivers and so many others.  Sorry.  It was about guns.  

Someone once said, “The Devil is in the details.”  I did a take off on that and said “The adversary is in the adjectives.”  Think of the way in which the adjective changes the meaning.  We have the term “social justice” being thrown around.  It has nothing to do with the concept of justice.  Justice is about equal treatment before the law.  Social justice is about special privileges for favored groups.  The same is with gun violence.

And the pastor shared how he had gone down and participated in the accompanying parade.  He praised all those people he marched with as noble and caring.  The problem, in addition to being one of those useful idiots that were praised by the Soviets, is that the pastor’s do not have a history of marching in other issues.  Every January we have Right to Life Sunday in protest of abortion.  They did not join any parades or wear ribbons on that day.  I am guessing that he would not have referred to pro-life people as noble and caring.  The usual adjectives are bigoted and harsh.  I went back and checked the video to see if they wore ribbons during the service.  

I could go on but I think this gives you a feel for why the church in America is dying.  It has become a tool of anti-Christian forces.  It has been infiltrated and seduced.  It has lost its first love.  Every day I pray for my country.  I also pray for the church because if the church does not have a revival there will be nothing to keep America from going on the list right under Sodom.  Actually we might have earned top slot by now.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-134: The Singular Their

Normally I would stop reading at this point but I am nearing the end of the third book in a series when the cultural brainwashing made its first appearance.  See if you can pick out what might irritate me in this quote,

“The slender person - who preferred to be neither called he nor she – started.  ‘Sorry, Captain,’ Tip said, and brushed their slightly-nonregulation red hair out of their eyes.” p. 284

My alarms went off at the third word.  I remember specifically noting before that the books did not seem to be pushing any of the current cultural perversions.  That held true for the first two books and 77.8 percent of the third one.  Then, wham!  It is almost like this was written by someone else.  It is awkward and stilted.  It is also politically correct.

The first book in the series was published in 2015.  This one is five years later.  Eric Flint is a successful science fiction author.  I would think he had the clout and courage to be his own man but I am afraid that the editors pushed this one through with their progressive style book.

It is getting harder and harder to find things to read that are not filled with nonsense like pronoun preference and other cultural manipulation.  I  have been moving to classics and non-fiction.  Much of what I am reading I get from Project Gutenberg.  I wonder how long it will be until the cultural algorithms start reworking all the old stuff that is preserved in electronic form.

Censorship has many forms and the most evil is changing the words of the past.  With the right coding you can change anything with little evidence.

As the meme poster said, Big Non-Gender Specific Person is watching you.

Flint, Eric and Spoor, Ryk E.  Castaway Resolution  New York:  Baen, 2020.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-087: Monetizing Wokeness

Perhaps we have the making of two new team mascots for the NFL.  I found the inspiration in my previous post.  Two unclaimed monikers are the Deplorables and the Abjects.  

What a headline that would be, Deplorables vs Abjects in the Victim Bowl.

Sponsors would fight for advertising privileges.  Think of all the CEO’s that would want to claim a place to take a stand against White Privilege.

homo unius libri

Opus 2021-285: Definition Day

I would like to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day (IPD) but the phrase is as meaningless as “Native American.”  I might as well celebrate Day of the Month Day.  All days are days of the month.  I guess it is kind of like Children’s Day.

In case you have not thought this through, let me repeat myself a bit.  If you have thought it through then take a deep breath.  Take the term, “Native American.”  Unless you want to define “native” as “person of an inferior and primitive culture” then you have to accept that it simply means “person who was born in an area.”  By that simple definition I am a Native American.  I was born here.  My guess is that you were too.  In this sense there are only two kinds of Americans, native and naturalized.

The same goes with “Indigenous”.  According to my computer dictionary the word means “originating or occurring naturally in a particular place.”  If I remember my seventh grade world history textbook correctly, the first human beings arrived in North America around 10,000 B.C.  That means that they were no more indigenous than the Pilgrims.  They just migrated earlier.  The only thing that you can claim is indigenous is mold and fungus.  

The purpose of IPD is to undermine and destroy the contributions of Europe and Christianity to the progress of the world.  It also it an anti-white thrust but that is really just a smoke screen for the true goals.  

So we need to remember something that was actually significant in influencing the progress and well being of the world.  Colombus opened up the New World to the energy of Europe.  The so called indigenous people had not even figured out that the wheels on the toys of their children could be used to get more corn to market without slave labor.  They had not even invented a shovel.  They sat on a world of wealth and were still acting like Proregressive* by trying to kill anyone who disagreed with them and steal anything that said “Shiny”.  

Happy Columbus Day.

*(Liberals, educators, the media, socialists, communists, crony capitalists, elites, Rinos, Democrats, leftists, Never Trumpers, Antifa, BLM, MSM, Deep State, etc.  Synonym for swamp dwellers)

homo unius libri

Opus 2021-152: United Challenges Natural Selection

United Airlines has committed themselves to diversity.  They plan on requiring at least half of the people in their pilot training program to be a protected and preferred group.  Any group as long as it isn’t white males.  If you have been following how these kind of programs are applied in higher education you know that it means a lowering of the standards to meet the goals.  It also means you must reject some highly qualified people because they don’t meet the right racist or sexist quota.

I am not going to worry about it until they change the graduation requirements to allow people to become pilots who have not taken their solo flights.  Think of it as the Olympics setting such a quota system for the ski jump competition.  Lets say that the finals will have 50 competitors.  Lets say that 25 of those slots are reserved for people of color and transgenders.  The transgender category is necessary because women already have their competition.  Lets say that you have a guy who is inserted in the finals with no experience in the sport.  You put him at the top of the slope and ring the bell.  He takes one look down the slope and has a moment to decide whether he wants to walk away and be laughed at or go for the memorial award.  The same is true of pilots.  Keep in mind that the pilot will be on the same airplane with you.  If he knows he can’t land this thing, do you think he is going to take off?  

Actually, from my experience with middle school kids and their illusions of grandeur, I think some of them might try it.  But the odds are against it.

So relax.  By the time these candidates make it through pilot school they will probably have AI to land the planes anyway.  If they can land rockets on Mars they should be able to land an airplane in Los Angeles.

But I don’t plan on flying unless it is absolutely necessary.

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-243: R.O.E.

In regard to latest terrorist shooting at Pensacola, I pick up that the guards were not armed.  In fact, like all military bases within the United States, firearms are not allowed.  This is why we had the tragedy at Fort Hood and other shootings on bases that have highly trained warriors in residence.  I am not sure what the logic is except for misplaced political correctness that has reached the level of the absurd.  Maybe it is from misplaced fear of a military coup or some such nonsense.  This is a recurring problem in our military.  You can’t protect yourself from a guy with a gun if you only have a smile.  We see the same type of thinking in our schools.

It comes down to a problem with ROE or rules of engagement.  Soldiers, marines and airmen have carefully worded rules and parameters that determine when they can respond with force and how much force is allowed.  Police have the same restraints.  Notice I said “carefully worded” not “carefully thought out”.  They are not carefully thought out.  Usually they are political statements of convenience. 

When I was in Vietnam, we were not allowed to load our rifles on guard duty.  If we were caught with rounds in the gun the best we could expect was what was called an Article 15.  This is the lowest level of court marshal.  Understand, we were in a war zone.  We were on guard duty.  We were not allowed to load our weapons.  In fact our ROE started off with calling the command bunker if we were being attacked and ask for permission to load and fire a few rounds into the air.  I remember toward the end of basic training I was assigned guard duty at an all night laundromat that had a machine that vended candy and snacks.  My orders were to keep anyone from using the machine after 10:00 at night.  That is 22:00 for you military types.  Really?  Really.  I dealt with this threat to national security by walking around the corner any time someone approached the candy machine.

Or take Iraq.  We hear a lot about the surge and how that changed everything.  It certainly helped but even more important was a change in the ROE.  Our soldiers were suddenly allowed to defend themselves.

Pensacola was a tragedy that did not need to happen.  It was terrorism by invitation.  It is the result of the forces of the progressive, anti-gun culture.  It will happen again as long as our military bases continue to be gun free zones.

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-211: Monday Pulpit: Lessons from Joseph, part 2 of 2, Slavery Sidetrack

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.  He was sold to Ishmaelite traders, distant relatives on their way to Egypt.  This is a good time for another aside.  The tangent is slavery which is a hot topic for us in the United States.  Reparations anyone?

Americans don’t know history.  Part of that is deliberate.  People who know history tend to vote different than people who are ignorant.  Take slavery.  The average American feels like slavery is an American problem, a blot on the soul of a nation.  It is the American Sin.  Such an attitude feeds into the manipulation of the elites but has nothing to do with reality.

Slavery has been a normal part of society throughout the history of mankind.  It was common in every culture on every continent except Antarctica.  It was considered normal.  The only people who were against slavery were the slaves and even most of them accepted it as normal.  Slavery still exists today in its standard form.  Even more people are enslaved in trappings that we don’t think of as slavery, such as prostitution and sweat shops.  Far from being an American problem the stand against slavery was an area that America took an early interest.  The eradication of slavery should bring pride not the guilt demanded by the left. 

Joseph’s experience is a good illustration of how slavery works.  His brothers were mad at him so they got together, imprisoned him and then sold him.  A good number of the slaves that ended up in the Western hemisphere got there start that way.  As a slave Joseph prospered.  He was given responsibility and power.  Of course he was still a slave but if you follow his story through you find that eventually he was second in power only to Pharaoh. 

Does that make slavery a good thing?  No, not in our modern way of thinking.  It just makes it something that was considered normal until modern times. 

Making slavery some kind of test of worthiness of guilt is nonsense.  Keep in mind that the slaves that came to America started their journey being enslaved by other black Africans.  They might have gone through several black slave traders before they ended up on a European ship.  Keep in mind that the slaves were going east into the Arab world for millennia before they went across the Atlantic.  Look up Kush and Axum.  One of their main trade goods was slaves.

In fact it was the Christian gospel that began a serious examination of slavery.  It is hard to hold someone as a slave when they are created in the image of God and are a brother in Christ.

We need to continue the discussion without phony guilt trips and political manipulation. 

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-184: Headlines: Colt Conforms

As I was looking through posts on various web sites I came across one that said Colt was going to get out of the civilian AR-15 market.

If it is a simple business proposition then well and good.  Free enterprise is a feature of liberty.

But notice they were only going to stop making rifles for the “civilian” market.  At first I thought that meant they would continue making them for the military but that is not what it said.  The military does not use the AR-15.

What they mean is that they will continue to make them for the police.  So the SWAT teams that will be breaking in your front door can get them but you can’t if you decide to defend yourself.

I read a couple of articles and there was a lot of boiler plate that they had copied from some source and a lot of virtue signaling about Sandy Hook.  They also said sales were low so they were cutting their losses.  I don’t own any Colt products so I can’t really stop buying from them.  We have some friends that named their newborn Colt.  Maybe they will go back and change his name.

Might I suggest this would be a good time to sell your stock in Colt?

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-179: Critical Mass: Do You Think You Are Funny

One of the strong indicators that liberals have lost their grip on life has to do with their sense of humor, or more accurately, their lack of a sense of humor.  It used to be that a liberal bastion like Saturday Night Live was actually funny even if you didn’t like their political slant.  I have not heard much from them lately but my source has always been others quoting them.  People with a feminine outlook on life have the same problem.  They don’t get male humor.  We used to have a female math teacher on our team of four and every once in awhile we would have to stop and say, “Joke, Irene, Joke.”  To which she would say, “Oh” and nod her head.  The closest to a female Don Rickles I can think of was Phyllis Diller but you would never call her feminine.  This lack of perspective is one of the reasons that President Trump is able to jerk their chains so well.

Even a middle school student knows the difference between bagging and insulting.  Liberals are horrified by both.  In case you did not live through those years, bagging is also called roasting, knocking, burning, etc.  It is a type of humor that mocks the other person with no intent to insult or hurt.  It is downright funny.  Public education tells kids it is inappropriate.  The kids know better but learned not to expect it.  They would say, “Are you trying to bag?”  To which I would answer, “No.  I am not trying.  I am succeeding.” 

Our society is being weakened by a lack of humor.  We are going to get so serious and careful that we will dry up and blow away.  I hope that people can lighten up again.  We need Polack jokes.  We need blond jokes.  We need all of those ways in which we learned to not take ourselves seriously.  So mock away.  It can be healthy.  Be sarcastic but be clever.  As you loosen up keep an eye out for liberals and give trigger warnings.  “Humor ahead.  Proceed at your own risk.”

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-161: Headlines: A Turning Point

Who knows when the balance tips or the pendulum starts its return?

If you are old enough you can remember when all telephone lines went to Bell.  How could that ever change?

You remember when IBM was computers.  They had it locked down.  How could that ever change?

You remember the days when a days shopping would involve Sears and Penny’s.  They were the giants.  They had the key spots down town.  How could it ever change?

Just a few weeks ago I would have said that Walmart had a corner on the retail sails in the country.  We are now going to watch how that changes.  It won’t happen overnight.  It will be hard for many of us to stop the automatic “run to Walmart”.  There are probably still many out there who don’t realize that they will not be able to stop in on their way to the range or the hills for some ammo until they get to the counter in the sporting goods department.  And there will be millions who will go on with life because cattle generally don’t pay attention to the slaughter house they can’t see.

In case you have been asleep, Walmart has announced that they are going to stop selling handgun ammunition and rifle ammunition that will fit in the most popular guns in America.  The leadership of what used to be a patriotic American company has crossed to the dark side.  I hope they say hello to Dick’s and Target while they are there.

But change will come.  I am already asking myself if there is anything I really need at Walmart any more.  I wonder who will emerge to fill the shopping gap.

homo unius libri