Why Cultures Are Not Equal

You know, the argument that genes don't produce IQ differences, rather, culture does, is an interesting argument for people who say all cultures are equally valuable.

There is absolutely no argument that different groups have different IQs. 

So, either genes lower IQ or inferior cultures lower IQ.

If we reject the gene hypothesis, then we have to work at getting rid of black, Arab, Hispanic and European cultures, as none of them are optimal for children..

Everyone should be embracing Asian culture.

For the children.

And we'll just have to ignore the high teen suicide rate in Asian cultures because.... well.

Crypto in Africa

Consider this article on the importance of private property rights for the building of personal wealth. It's from a German think tank in 2003: 

"This paper investigates the quality of property rights and long-term economic growth in an international cross-section of countries in 1975–1995. The empirical tests indicate that the impact of private property rights on growth is positive and simultaneously determined. Correcting for the simultaneity bias reveals a regression coefficient which is quite remarkable: A doubling in the index of the quality of property rights leads to a more than doubling in per capita incomes."

Now, read this article on how property rights (don't) work in Africa. The author starts by observing: 

"One of the biggest obstacles to wealth creation and greater economic prosperity in Africa has to do with land ownership. Overcoming this obstacle will require better data collection, aggregation, and transparency."

The author ends by proposing blockchain as a solution to documenting who owns which land parcels. The solution the author proposes isn't wrong. It will absolutely work. But the author is still thinking in 20th century terms. Cryptocurrency blockchains certainly do provide the ability to create a universally accessible, unhackable database of clear land titles. But crypto is actually superior to the land title problem. 

To see why, add in this article on why the Nigerian banking ban on crypto isn't working:

“A lot of people are taking advantage of the [decentralized finance] industry right now, it’s giving equal financial opportunities for all, irrespective of nationality or whatsoever,” Chung said. “A lot of people are jumping into different yield farming programs, I know quite a number of people who got DeFi loans to run their businesses,” he added. 

Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, a service that enables users to buy and sell bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion, believes the biggest factor of crypto’s popularity in Nigeria has been “the intense drive and business aptitude of the Nigerian youth.” 

“Entrepreneurship is baked into their DNA,” Youssef told CoinDesk via a spokesperson.

Cryptocurrency isn't just something that can track land ownership. Cryptocurrency is its own asset. By using cryptocurrency, the youth of Africa are taking control of VIRTUAL LAND. "Not your keys, not your crypto" is the crypto-verse motto. From an ownership perspective, there is no difference between owning crypto coins and owning virtual land in something like Pavia - both coins and Pavia plots have absolutely clear title that cannot be seized by anyone. Either asset gives the owner clear and perfect control of the asset. Cryptocurrency is providing clear property titles to crypto coins, which are, themselves, an asset class. Crypto can be bought, sold, traded and loaned against just like any other asset. It appreciates, just like any other asset. It is a fungible property asset that cannot be seized as long as it is held in a private wallet.   

Given how screwed up all other property rights assets are in African countries, crypto is the key to wealth accumulation. Wealth is going to explode in Africa because of crypto ownership. And Africa is more likely to make this happen than anywhere else because it has a higher percentage of youth than any other region and it therefore has the highest need for clear private property titles. Crypto in Africa isn't just about documenting land ownership, crypto *IS* land ownership.

Cholera and Catholic Faith

 In 1851, cholera was in Greene County, Indiana. Four doctors died during a period of four days. There were none left in the county. One fourth of the people in Old Point Comfort died. The rest fled.

In the 21st century, it is difficult for us to imagine the terror that cholera and similar intestinal diseases inflicted on American, or world, communities. As the quote above illustrates, these diseases could wipe out entire towns in literal days. Since the germ theory of disease was unknown, attempting to determine the cause of cholera outbreaks was difficult: 

Among the ideas about the cause of cholera was electrical disturbances in the atmosphere. This seemed confirmed in Randolph County, Indiana, near the village of Lynn. John Lister drove a wagon along a country road and observed a lightning strike, followed by a sulfurous odor. John and his son died of cholera the next day and 27 others in a few days.

Sound and Sewage

The connection was not wrong. After all, cholera is caused by the vibrio cholera bacterium, which is found in raw sewage. The major cause of outbreaks was having drinking water sourced too close to latrines. Heavy rains would cause flooding which contaminated drinking water, and heavy rains were generally accompanied by lightning. Thus, lightning and thunder were associated with cholera outbreaks. This is why it was not unusual for communities to authorize the firing of cannons to ward off cholera. If sound and bad, damp air caused the disease, then a simulation of thunder, such as that produced by cannons, might prevent it: 

Aurora, Indiana, is a river town about 25 miles downstream from Cincinnati. In 1832, 20–30 people died from a population of a few hundred. By 1849, the population was 2,000. On June 14, there were 14 deaths despite great efforts to purify the air by fires burning at street crossings and a canon fired every 25 minutes for 4–5 hours. Fifty-one more died over the next three weeks. Sixteen hundred of the 2,000 residents fled the town. 

Sadly, it wasn't the sound or the air that caused the outbreak, it was the rain and subsequent flooding. But, whether lightning, thunder or rain caused it, everyone knew the plague came from heaven:

On August 3, 1849, Joseph G. Wilson of the Presbyterian Church in Lafayette, Indiana, said: “Twenty million free men in the person of their elected representatives defile the judgment of Heaven by a protracted Sabbath morning session, an act of impiety and audacity against which the convention of public morals (and) the editors of the secular press have lisped scarcely a whisper. Now panicked, stricken, humbled and penitent, they are assembled at the call of the chief magistrate to pray for lifting the cholera plague. It came as a Divine Volition. The natural history of cholera shows that it is in modern times the appointed scourge of the human race. At the root are avarice, superstition and intemperance....

During the 1832 episode, John Palfrey of the Brattle Square Church in Boston had delivered a less strident sermon on a similar theme - “A merciful God using cholera to straighten the world out.”

This connection was not peculiar to Protestant theology. Cardinal Odescalchi reveals the 19th century Catholic mentality regarding the epidemic:

A fatal disease, which for the obscurity of its origin, for the extravagance of its progress, for the uncertainty of its attacks, appears for the believers, to have the features and signs of a scourge. Will Rome be immune from it (dispensed from it)? Oh! Romans, do not delude yourselves! Yes, Rome has failed its duty. The Holy Name of God is trampled on; feasts and solemnities are desecrated, and with what an insolence the vice roams the streets of the Holy City! So if Rome has failed its duty, it must again be scourged.

To emphasize this connection to sin, rather than sewage, all the taverns were closed by Catholic decree (ironic because alcoholic drinks were safer than the water) while all the coffee shops were allowed to stay open.

Sewage and Suffering

The sense that sin causes somatic suffering is Scriptural. St. Paul makes the same connection, asserting that consuming Eucharist without discerning the Real Presence is why "many among you are weak and sick, and some of you have died" (1 Cor 11:26-30). Similarly, Paul connects the sin of active homosexuality with "receiving due penalty in their flesh" (Romans 1:27).

Therein lies the problem. Christianity, by its nature, insists on an inherent link between the physical and the divine. Sins of the flesh send one to hell, conversely, God took on Flesh to save the world from sin. Both sin and salvation are incarnational. We expect to see physical connections between the two, even when those connections don't exist.

Search the Scriptures and see: the failure to separate drinking water and sewage is not a sin. Despite this, God's scourge is apparently set upon those who fail to separate the safe from the sewage. Notice, God does not visit deadly punishment on those who fail to separate the two kinds of cloth (Lev 19:19, Deut 22:11), or the ritually clean food from the ritually unclean (Acts 10:15). Instead, cholera's scourge is visited despite Scripture's silence on separating the waters. But it is worse than this. In the case of cholera, the failure to separate the two kinds of water is not the true cause of the scourge, rather, the poor nutrition that results from poverty is the actual cause of cholera:

DuPont, Houston: I just want to respond to the issue of cholera current in the United States. There has been a small focus of E1 Tor cholera [in oysters and seafood] along the gulf coast area since 1971, with a few cases every year. However, mind members of the Association, that cholera is really a disease of people with abnormal gastric physiology. It is very hard to produce cholera in a healthy person without absolutely paralyzing their parietal cells. I think that the reason why cholera is endemic in many parts of the world is because of undernutrition and achlorhydria and hypochlorhydria. It is a disease of the disadvantaged. It is a disease of the poorly nourished. One of the major reasons we don't see more cholera in this country is because of the state of nutrition. 

So, despite what the Scriptures say, according to the 19th century preacher, being poor actually is the primary cause of being scourged by God. If God loves the poor (and He does), and if God scourges the son that He loves (and He does), then God scourges the poor with cholera because He loves them more than others. Scripturally, it makes sense. 

Now, obviously, we know this is a false connection; God does not scourge us with cholera, nor does He scourge us because we are undernourished. But that is also the problem. What we know intellectually doesn't match what the Scriptures say. The Scriptures are quite, quite clear that plague and famine actually are scourges from God. The Book of Revelations (Rev 6:1-8) in the New Testament lists the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as conquest, war, famine and death, given power to kill by sword, famine, wild beasts and plague, while in the Old Testament’s Book of Ezekiel (14:21) the scourges of divine judgement are sword, famine, wild beasts and plague.

Suffering and Sanctity

Is Scripture wrong? Well... yes. It is. If we take these four apocalyptic signs literally, Scripture is absolutely wrong. After all, no one would say that 21st century civilization is less plagued with sin than 1st century civilization was, yet even though we have at least seven times the population, we also have far less war, famine or death than we have ever had in the history of the world. And the same data show, again contrary to Scripture's warning against kings (1 Sam 8), the establishment of states is a big part of what has reduced the suffering and violence.

Now, some might take the recent WuFlu pandemic as an example of God wreaking His vengeance on us for our sins. If so, He has gotten a lot milder in recent centuries. We don't see a quarter of a town's population wiped out  by the Chinese plague, with the remainder fleeing in terror, even though our sins today are arguably worse than any in recorded history. And our sins are unquestionably worse. 

For example, abortion may have always existed, but we did not know until very recently how completely it corresponded to cold-blooded murder. We do now. We kill children much more efficiently and with much less risk to the mother than ever before in history. Precisely because we know so much more about how the world works, our sins are much more flagrant, much more serious. Match these facts against Scripture, which tells us God lengthens the life of the righteous and shortens the life of the wicked. Life expectancy in pre-abortion, 1960 America was 68 years. In 2022, after 50 years of murdering children, it is 79.

How do we account for the fact that world-wide suffering has dramatically decreased while world-wide responsibility for sin has dramatically increased? This is not a new problem. When anesthesia was discovered in 1831, 19th century theologians were faced with the same problem. Why would God grant a sinful world surcease from suffering? How could the use of anesthesia be moral? The debate was serious. When Lisbon was struck by earthquake, fire and tidal wave (flood) on All Saint's Day, 1755, when this triple calamity destroyed all the Catholic churches but left the brothels standing, Protestants rejoiced at the sign of divine judgement, while Catholics wept. 

It has only gotten worse. Now that we have not only a huge raft of anesthetics, but also antibiotics, advanced surgical techniques, dental procedures, cancer treatments, HVAC systems, aseptic technique and made enormous advances in wiping out many of mankind's most ancient plague foes, the problem is even more pressing. No one suffers today anywhere near as much as everyone did just two centuries previously. Given our increased knowledge, our sin is much worse, but our suffering is largely gone. Even the percentage of martyrs is dropping. 

Apparently, despite the warnings of the Scriptures, the Doctors, the saints and the visionaries, over the last two centuries, both the incidence and the severity of God's physical vengeance upon sinful man has steadily declined.  During the Middle Ages, in times of plague, the bishops would organize more communal prayer and liturgy. Now that we understand germ theory, in times of plague the bishops disband communal prayer and liturgy. Because we are Christians, because our Faith is incarnational,  because our expectation of punishment is physical, many Catholics find the 21st century episcopal response difficult to handle. Why should Don Bosco's use of vinegar reduce the punishment for sin? Apart from baptism, cleaning supplies are not part of any of the sacraments.

This is a serious question. If the Scriptures, the Doctors, the saints, the seers and the Church were all essentially wrong about the connection between plague and punishment, then what is a believing Catholic, a Catholic who believes in the inerrancy of Scripture and of the Church, meant to do? The classic response is clear: we are to consider the four horsemen in spiritual terms, not physical terms. Now that we understand the physical world so much better ("the heavens are telling the glory of God"), we are most assuredly not meant to associate physical punishment with God's punishment.

Sanctity and Salvation

So, the blind man is not blind due to his sins or those of his father (John 9), he is blind so the power of God might be shown. Spiritualize what contradicts the revelation of the physical universe, and take literally the explanation Christ gives in the Gospel. Internalize one of the great paradoxes of the Faith: salvation from sin is absolutely a physical, historical event while the actual punishment for sin is... well... the punishment is not.  

But why isn't it? If Scripture was going to warn us about mixing two different fabrics or mixing ritually clean and unclean foods, why did it not also warn us about mixing sewage with drinking water? Again, the classic answer is that the prohibitions of the Old Testament were not about physical issues, rather, these signified spiritual issues. But if Christ is the Living Water, would it have been that hard to use two kinds of water as the example? Perhaps giving actually useful physical advice would have obscured the spiritual signification of Scripture's message. 

Perhaps. But God insists on muddying the waters, literally. At Lourdes, He set up a healing spring out of literal mud. For centuries, the Church has insisted that physical healing miracles are a sign of sanctity and God's presence. True, the one healed is not the saint, but the healings are associated with specific saints. Yet, if physical healings are divine grace channeled through men and women, then what are we to make of physical scourges like cholera or murder? And what are we to make of the fact that the healings at Lourdes have steadily declined each year, with no cure at all certified between 1976 and 2006?

Jesus can say "ye may be the children of your Father who is in Heaven. For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" and we are comforted that the evil which afflicts us is not due to our sins. But when Jesus curses the fig tree for not providing fruit, it withers. When the apostles notice, Jesus insists faith can literally move mountains. Faith, or lack of it, can heal your friends and cast out demons. We all love the story of the blind man in John 9, but we conveniently forget the story of the invalid in John 5, who had been waiting at the pool for thirty-eight years.  Similarly, Jesus blames the destruction of the Temple on the blindness of the Jews, who did not recognize God (Luke 19:41-44) Sin is both deeply correlated to physical malady, and not correlated at all, depending on... well... hmmm... we don't actually know when it is one versus the other. 

Salvation and Statistics

We are happy to argue that astronomical science supports God's actions in Biblical history. We write endless treatises about what astronomical conjunctions may have caused the Bethlehem star or which lunar eclipse most likely happened during the Crucifixion, but we deliberately refrain from essays linking deadly microbes with divine malediction. We refrain from connecting suffering with divine action because such connections raise  serious issues. We have already seen that, if we make this connection, we must assume God preferentially scourges the poor and undernourished. Similarly, 50% of America's murders and 50% of her murderers are young black men between the ages of 15 and 30. Black Americans are more likely to be Christian than any other demographic, yet they commit more sinfully violent crimes than any other demographic. On the other hand, Asians are the least likely to be Christian, yet are also the least likely to be involved in the sin of violent crime. Are pagan Asians closer to God and sanctity than young Christian black men? You see the problem.

The Book of Job specifically denies natural disasters are a sign of God's wrath, just as Jesus specifically denies the man born blind is suffering because of personal sin or the sins of his ancestors. Jesus also denies that Galileans killed by Pilate are less virtuous, He denies that the victims of the Siloam tower collapse are more evil than others. yet Jesus also affirms that earthquake, famine and plague are visited upon us as the kingdom of God approaches. Revelation specifically links plague to punishment for sin. Scripture cannot contradict Scripture, but what are we to say? Given that Florida is always hit by hurricanes, whereas the Midwest gets only a passing tornado, are Floridians more evil than Texans, or do both merely illustrate the Kingdom is approaching? 

So we are left with the paradox: we are physically saved from physical sins that turn out not to have actual physical punishment. Our Faith depends on accepting the literal fact of salvific physical suffering, rooted in time and flesh. This physical event saves us from a series of divine punishments that must be spiritualized away from their physical roots. War, famine, plague, earthquake, fire, flood, were all once considered divine scourges against unrighteousness, all were considered God's judgment wreaked upon a sinful world. Today, the Catholic Church does not even hint at this connection. 

Scripture describes both salvation and punishment as having deep roots in the physical world, but modern man now only accepts this physicality for salvation, not for punishment.  We insist all the good things are from God, but despite constant Scriptural admonitions which describe how God visits physical vengeance on the wicked and how He scourges those He loves (Heb 12:6), we cannot afford to insist painful things are likewise from God, for we cannot explain why neither the wicked nor the beloved are being scourged today as they once were.

UPDATE

Lourdes has finally had another documented miracle, number 70, in 2008, recognized in 2018. That's one miracle in the past fifty years. Dry spiritual times, indeed.  

Did Mary Get Buzzed at Her Wedding?

 It is a question I had never considered before. As the priest gave his homily on the wedding feast at Cana, noting that Christ's first miracle was meant to assist a wedding couple and their parents recover from what would otherwise be incredibly embarrassing, he mentioned that parents should not let their underage children drink.

Which poses a problem. 

What constitutes "under age"? Remember, the Code of Canon Law had, for centuries, established the minimum age of marriage for women at 12, for men at 14. The new 1983 Code raised each minimum age exactly two years (14 for women, 16 for men). These minimum ages were important because, among many centuries of pagan populations, the Catholic canon law standards actually RAISED the minimum age of marriage to twelve years of age. 

What we, in 21st-century America, would consider "pedophilia", all human cultures for most of human history considered "adult." This is true not just of marriage, but of alcohol consumption. The idea that twelve-year olds should not imbibe is relatively new, by historical standards.

We don't know how old Mary was when she was betrothed to Joseph and bore Jesus, but the apocryphal accounts put her somewhere between twelve and fourteen years of age. We don't know what betrothal gifts Joseph gave to Mary, or what betrothal gifts Joseph's own father gave to the new couple. We also don't know exactly when the two married, although it was presumably sometime between March and December. However, if their wedding was anything like the wedding feast at Cana, then Mary, Joseph and their families and friends all spent a week drinking wine and feasting.

As Aquinas points out, it is not a sin to drink alcohol "to the point of hilarity." That is, drinking until one is a bit buzzed, but not drunk, is perfectly fine. So, did the twelve-year old sinless virgin get buzzed at her own wedding? It is certainly possible. Indeed, this is certainly part of the point of having a wedding feast at all - to maximize and celebrate enjoyment without the loss of faculties, which is the very definition of "getting buzzed." It would not have been improper for her to celebrate her own wedding in a way that, without sin or loss of propriety, maximized the pleasure of the senses. Just as the BVM undoubtedly took deeper pleasure in a beautiful sunset than any of us can, so she would be more able to appreciate a good glass of wine than any of us. 

So, what would our priests say to the distinct possibility that Mary was a bit unsteady on her feet during her wedding celebration? How many theologians have speculated on the amount of wine a twelve-year old can safely consume during the course of a week's celebration of her own marriage? 

Now, one might argue that Mary, knowing herself to be pregnant, would not have consumed wine, which might have caused harm to the developing baby. But are the 21st century experts correct about the need for complete abstinence from alcohol during pregnancy?

University of Copenhagen researcher Janni Niclasen conducted a study on drinking during pregnancy and found improved behavioral and emotional development among 7-year-old children born to mothers who drank small amounts of alcohol. According to her findings, these children fared better in these areas than those born to mothers who did not drink at all while pregnant.

Researchers at the University College London also looked at the effects that drinking had on children born to mothers who drank while pregnant. Their findings showed that light drinking didn’t appear to have a negative impact on these 7 year olds’ development. However, the researchers did note that there is still no definitive amount of wine (or other types of alcohol) that is considered “safe” during pregnancy.

Mary, whose senses and rationality are not clouded by the consequences of sin, might well have been better able to judge this act than anyone alive today. If it is not a sin to get buzzed, and it is not, and, if small amounts of alcohol may actually be beneficial, and it may, then it is also not blasphemous to speculate about a twelve-year old woman's drinking habits. It simply isn't something the Christian Puritans of the 21st century willingly entertain as a conversation topic. Which is sad. For them. 

Why Conservatives Are Racists

Progressive Democrat: "Republicans, and conservatives in general, are racists."

Conservative: "Wait, what??!?"

Progressive Democrat: "It's obvious. Just look at the historical facts."

Conservative: "The historical facts are that the Democrats were the only ones to ever own slaves, the Democrats started the terrorist organization known as the KKK in order to subjugate blacks. The Democrats lynched anyone, white or black, who tried to help blacks escape Democrat subjugation, and the Democrats continue to this very day to support slavery and enforce segregation. 

It is the Democrats who refused to allow trade sanctions against countries that employ slave labor, the Democrats who refuse to denounce the Chinese for their slave labor camps, the Democrats who impose segregation under the name of 'safe spaces', the Democrats who wore, in the House rotunda, the kente cloth that was the mark of the African slave master and slave hunter. It was the Democrats who opposed civil rights legislation in both the 1870s and the 1960s. Progressive Democrats did all those things."

Progressive Democrat: "Yes, but that shows you Republicans and conservatives are the true racists, because you stood by and let us do all that. Only a racist would stand idly by while someone did those things."

Conservative: "But we didn't stand idly by. We fought culturally, legislatively, even fought an entire Civil War to try and stop you. We're fighting a cultural war right now, trying to stop you."

Progressive Democrat: "Yes, and you are failing miserably, which means you WANT to fail miserably, so you must be racists. You are purposefully allowing us to win. We take your medical care, your jobs, your freedom of movement. We break up your families, indoctrinate your children, burn your cities, especially the black neighborhoods and the black businesses in those cities. We mock the black men who try to protect black communities, especially the black men and women who put on police uniforms to do it. We call you insurrectionists and rebels, we throw you in jail without possibility of bail, parole or even trial, and yet, despite all of these advantages which we have freely gifted to you, you don't beat us and win. You must be failing on purpose, you fail to protect black people because you hate black people."

Conservative: "Wait, what about the fact that you, the Democrat Progressives, are the ones actually doing all of these terrible things?!"

Progressive Democrat: "Look, Mr. Conservative, I've had enough of your 'what-about-ism'. Don't try to shift the conversation away from your guilt. Your failure to stamp out racism shows that you are the true racist. 

We are the pure of heart, who have the courage to point out your sins. You are cowardly racists, so you aren't willing to face your sins. But we are. We speak truth to weaklings. We do this despite the accolades we will receive from each other. We don't want or need praise for our bravery, but we do demand it. If you don't praise us for having confronted you about your racism, that merely confirms how racist you truly are. 

Just consider the systemic racism evident in the use of violence. Our arson and murders are a sign of our good intentions, while your willingness to even clean up trash during your marches is a sign of your white patriarchal supremacist worldview. Admit your guilt!"

Conservative: "Alright, you have me. But society is to blame."

Progressive Democrat: "Agreed."

Quantum Computing and Encryption

 Quantum computing is able to short-circuit asymmetric encryption, aka public key infrastructure (PKI). This is paired-key two-way encryption. It is the digital certificate based infrastructure that secures HTTPS communications, so all of the secure communications on the internet (credit card transactions, SSH, IPSec, etc.) is secured this way. This technique is very new, it's only been around since the 1970s, all of it is ultimately based on the RSA algorithm for two-way encryption. For this algorithm, encryption keys come in pairs. What one key encrypts, only the other key can decrypt.

Quantum can theoretically defeat PKI thousands of times faster than normal computers can. PKI provides the "keys" that hodlers are always talking about. Every hodler owns his "private" key that is revealed to no one else. The "key" is proof of ownership of a datablock on the chain. Quantum can steal the ownership keys for blockchain elements.

Quantum computing has no special advantage over symmetric encryption. This is single-key two-way encryption. It is a centuries-old standard that has many variants, but uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypt. One-time pads remain an essentially unbreakable version of symmetric encryption. Quantum computing cannot do symmetric decryption any faster than a normal computer.

Hashing is one-way encryption. It creates a signature string from the original data, but the string cannot be converted back to the original text. However, if the original text is changed, the hash changes as well, so hashing algorithms are used to verify the integrity of a message. Blockchain "chains" its database blocks together using hashes. Quantum computing cannot do anything at all to hashing algorithms. SHA-256 is a hash algorithm. 

The New "Investing" Economy

Up until the Industrial Revolution, we were a farming economy. 80% of the population were farmers.

With the Industrial Revolution, the percentage of farmers dropped to under 2%, while the percentage of people working in manufacturing rose to about 35%. But, due to technology, both farming output AND manufacturing output actually increased as a result.

Then the US became a service economy. Percentage of manufacturing jobs also dropped into single digits, while service jobs increased. But, again due to technology, farming AND manufacturing output again increased, so even though we had far fewer people in manufacturing, we were actually still growing our manufacturing output.

Today, 55% of Americans are already invested in the stock market (a sharp rise from the 32% who owned stock in 1989). Their average stock holding is $40,000. We know thirteen percent of Americans traded cryptocurrency in the past year. By comparison, 24% of Americans invested in stocks over the same time period. The US is now the world headquarters for Bitcoin miners. The US is among the world's top 10 in crypto holding and trading on a per capita basis, and profited more off of the 2021 Bitcoin boom than any other nation on earth. 

Due to the fact that crypto is a world-wide database without a geographic base, the US could conceivably become an "investing" economy, where most US citizens hodl cryptocurrency. We have the third largest population, along with one of the wealthiest per capita populations in the world, so we have the resources to corner the crypto market and let the rest of the world work for a living while we accumulate the wealth generated as it slowly transfers over into crypto.  

It could happen. 

Addendum:
This analysis apparently agrees with me:

"Instead of restricting bitcoin in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable, federal policymakers would do well to embrace the role of bitcoin as a geopolitically neutral reserve asset; work to ensure that the United States continues to lead the world in accumulating bitcoin-based wealth, jobs, and innovations; and ensure that Americans can continue to use bitcoin to protect themselves against government-driven inflation."

America's Civil War: What a LARP!

This "woke" soldier appears to look forward to martial law being implemented in America, so she can shoot anyone who disobeys her orders. 

Of course, when posted on conservative websites, the linked vido provoked a flurry of fiery, virtue-signaling comments in which gun owners claimed they would kill anyone who dares infringe on their freedoms! 

All of this, both sides, whether we speak of the "woke" soldier or her armed conservative opposition, are simply LARPing (Live Action Role-Playing). Everyone wants to be a hero, everyone imagines themselves in the role, pointing their weapon and squeezing the trigger in righteousness while they mow down hecatombs of the degenerate enemy.

Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

There will be no replay of the Civil War, there will be no re-enactment of the American Revolution. The "woke" won't shoot anyone, neither will America's conservative gun owners. Events have already demonstrated, in spades, that neither side has any real interest in doing any of this. Both sides just like to roleplay and virtue-signal. That's all.

You may disagree. So, let's look at the facts. In 1787, America was a very young country by any measure. The average age of Revolutionary War soldiers in the Continental Army was 18 to 19. The life expectancy for the average American white male was 38 years of age. 

 Todd Andrlik goes so far as to characterize the Founding Fathers much more accurately as the “founding teenagers… or twenty somethings.” And he’s quite right to do so...

Things weren't much different 70 years later. By 1860, the year  the Civil War started, The average age of all officers and men in the 23rd Pennsylvania was nineteen. The largest single age group was eighteen, followed by soldiers twenty-one and nineteen. Life expectancy had risen to 39 years of age.  

Unknown numbers of children served in the [Civil War] armies. Edward Black was nine years old when he entered an Indiana regiment. Among the youngest Confederate soldiers was Charles C. Hay, who joined an Alabama regiment at the age of eleven. John Mather Sloan of Texas lost a leg in battle at the age of thirteen.

The most famous of the dozens of young drummer boys was Johnny Clem of Newark, Ohio. He went to war at the age of ten. 

In contrast, the average median age of Americans in 2021 is 38 years old. For white Americans (the cohort most likely to own guns), median age is 44, modal age (the most common age) is 58. Life expectancy for all Americans is now 78. The citizens bragging about their willingness to engage in war on various social media forums are, on average, twice as old as the average soldiers in either the Revolution or the Civil War. The citizens who own guns are nearly three times as old as those soldiers. These old men shoot their mouths a lot more often than they shoot their guns. That isn't going to change.

War is a young man's game. Most armed conflicts in the world today take place where the average age is at least ten or more years younger than the average American. Mexico's drug war takes place in a country where the average age is 29. Average age in Yemen, where civil war rages, is 20. The average age in Afghanistan is 18. Africa's many countries and many small wars are being waged within general populations that average 19 years of age. 

War requires lots of young men with lots of testosterone and limited skin in the social fabric game: no children, no property, no businesses, so no sense of risk. There is no sizeable subpopulation in the United States that fits this description. Even the young people who would otherwise fit in this category would risk their federal welfare benefits if they engaged in serious violence. Old people don't throw Molotov cocktails because they can't run away fast enough. Their walkers get hung up on street debris. Precisely because everyone is invested in the current order - everyone on BOTH sides is - there will be no shooting war. We don't have enough hormone-filled young people to make it work.

Thus, 2021 America sees a lot of barking, but everyone is very careful to refrain from actually biting. 

Consider: Guns are more widely available now than at any time in American history, including the Revolutionary and Civil War. But, a huge percentage of the population actively refuse to buy guns. Those that do own them clearly aren't interested in using them. The most violent segment of the population, the communist Antifa and BLM movements, have pointedly NOT been using guns.

The "trained communists" are LARPing. The people who headed up BLM bought mansions for themselves and their families, not RPGs for their followers. They're just capitalists hiding behind communist slogans to reap wealth. Apart from Ashli Babbitt, cops are not shooting civilians, civilians are not shooting cops. We don't even have four dead in Ohio. We've got one dead in the January 6th Tourists Gone Wild incident.

And January 6th was a nothing-burger. There aren't any violent insurrections. When the radical underground was active in the late '60s and early '70s, it's members murdered police officers and blew up an average of a building a day for years. Yet, despite America's average age being 28 in 1970, and despite the incredible level of armed provocation inflicted by 1960's provocateurs, there was no armed revolution. 

Today's BLM and Antifa are absurd children by comparison. 2021 has no armed equivalent of even the 1960's Weather Underground, much less the militia of the American Revolution or the Civil War. No one is blowing up buildings on a daily basis, no troops are being deployed to put down any civil insurrections, because there aren't any civil insurrections. It isn't just the conservatives who won't use their guns. The communist LARPs aren't carrying guns either. They use firecrackers and rocks. It is easier to find information on making bombs now than it has been in the entire recorded history of the human race, but these jokers can't even make and use the level of explosives the Weather Underground routinely used in the 1960s and 70s.

The Tourists Gone Wild Jan 6 holiday featured exactly zero guns on the part of the tourists, and in the months that have passed since the event, none of America's conservative gun owners have banded together to break their unarmed comrades out of federal prisons. This despite the fact that we KNOW these jailed Jan 6 tourists are being treated worse than the average prisoner.

As for America's gun owners being a feisty force that needs to be reckoned with, that is manifestly untrue. China Joe and his 'ho are in the White House, no armed citizens even tried to stop them. The National Guard troops who were showcased for six months as their Potemkin guard had neither bullets nor firing pins in their weapons. It was just a bunch of National Guard troops LARPing for the cameras and the tourists. 

The government doesn't fear armed Americans. Why should they? Name me an American who COULD lead an armed rebellion. There isn't one. Nobody wants the job. If anyone did want the job, no one else would follow him.

All the guns are paperweights. No one is going to use them. Not one of us will. We don't want our homes razed, we don't want to get shot or go to jail, so none of us will do this. If anyone does, the rest of us will repudiate him as a home-grown terrorist. The NRA will denounce him. No one will lift a finger. The guns we all own are useless. 

We will not see American cities carpet-bombed by B-52s, there will be no drone strikes by US drones on US soil against US citizens, there will be no martial law, there will be no civil insurrection. The populations on both sides of this dog's breakfast are simply too biologically old to do anything so stupid.

All Americans with guns will quietly do what the soldiers tell us to do, while bow and scrape and say "thank you for your service." Any gun owner who does anything else will be disowned by the rest of America's gun owners. If you do anything else, you will be called another Ted Kaczyinski by the NRA. EVERYONE will consider you a home-grown terrorist.

So, no, none of the civilians in America are going to start shooting soldiers, cops or politicians in the face. You just aren't. You LARP like you will, but when it comes right down to brass tacks, you won't. If America's gun owners sat idly by while the Office of the President was stolen - and they did - then they aren't going to do anything in the future either. That's just how it is.

Similarly, wannabe communist LARPs engage in a lot of arson... and.... that's it. They just burn down poor black neighborhoods, i.e., people who can't fight back. Communist BLM may loot corporate stores, but they are careful not to burn them down. If the stores get burned down, the stores won't be restocked, so no one burns them down. Everyone's in it for the loot, no one wants to kill the goose that lays the loot. In 2021, the Maoists act like power comes out of the barrel of a bottle rocket, not a gun. No one wants a shooting war.

Armed conservatives will never live out their action-hero dreams, but neither will America's communists. That's why this woke soldier is so hilarious. There won't be any martial law and she'll never get to live her LARP dream either. No one in this country is interested in that level of violence. So it won't happen.

China Joe and the Communists ALREADY defeated the most heavily armed civilian population in the world. How do you think China Joe and his 'ho got into the White House? They got in by intimidating the most heavily armed civilian population in the world into sitting still and accepting it. 

And then China Joe got beat by a bunch of goatherders. Which means the goatherders are more powerful than the most heavily armed civilian population in the world. The goatherders got US weapons because the goat herders actually USE the weapons. Americans don't use their weapons. We just LARP about how we'll use them Real Soon Now (tm). But we won't, and both sides know we won't. 

Now, when confronted with these facts, there are essentially four ways to respond:

1. "Kellmeyer is right. Gun owners are LARPing just like mask proponents."
2. "Kellmeyer is wrong because he got the history wrong (historical reasons listed)"
3. "Kellmeyer got the history correct, but the (non-)use of guns isn't the issue, the real social issue is actually (issue listed)."
4. "The history is irrelevant, Kellmeyer is trying to goad us into using our guns, so we must be sure not to use them."  

I have pointed these facts out on several forums now, and have been accused of (4), i.e., being an FBI plant, trying to foment an armed uprising. That reaction demonstrates my point in spades. American gun owners are simply not going to use their weapons. They can't do it. They consider the idea impossible in every realistic sense, they just fantasize about it, knowing full well they will never actually carry out the fantasy. Their communist counterparts do the same. 

Conclusion: The LARPing will continue until morale improves.

Traditionis custodes

 The Pope, and quite frankly, large swaths of the Church, have finally had enough of the schismatic attitudes generated by the Latin Mass. The disciples of the TLM have spent the last few decades channeling their inner schismatics, imitating the madness of Marcel Lefebvre, and they got the response that justice required.

To be completely clear, I was a member of an FSSP TLM parish for five years, attending every Sunday. When I began there, I had high hopes that I would encounter a group of Catholics who were better-educated, better-formed, just better at being Catholic, than the great mass of Catholics at the Novus Ordo Mass. It is easy to find my blog posts from that period extolling the virtues of the Latin Mass and its community. 

But, over the course of those five years, I slowly realized there was a level of hatred and anger within the community that could only be described as demonic. When priests spout denigrations of an ecumenical council, the Pope and the post-conciliar Church in pseudo-anonymous podcasts or, worse, from the ambo during Mass, there are serious problems with the movement that forms such priests. When the people attending to those podcasts or assisting at those Masses cheer the priests on, there is schism.

I have personally watched my brother-in-law, a good man and a good priest, driven to theological insanity by the TLM. I have seen him drag several members of his family, including his own mother, into the madness. It was and is a train-wreck, it turned him and his family into a theological train-wreck. 

Marcel Lefebvre was a schismatic and a heretic, the movement he founded shared his spirituality of schism, heresy, madness. The FSSP attempt to reform the TLM movement failed. Lay members of TLM communities, whether FSSP or SSPX, continue to revere Lefebvre as a visionary instead of condemning him as the nutcase that he unquestionably was. With shocking conformity, TLM members continued to ape Martin Luther's insistence that the Church would soon reverse itself and see the "wisdom" of the schism he fomented. 

Blessed Pope Pius IX famously proclaimed, "I am Tradition!" Pope Francis occupies the chair that is tradition. Denigrating Pope Francis, as so many TLM communities take delight in doing, logically and ineluctably leads to sedevacantism, which is itself simply an assertion that the gates of Hell prevailed against Christ. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict both gave the TLM communities decades to correct themselves, decades to demonstrate their love of Christ and His Church by showing fraternal charity towards the council and the post-conciliar Church. But the TLM'rs let both of these Popes down.

Instead, it squandered every opportunity, choosing to pour out venom on anyone who did not share their particular theological idiosyncracies. No group within the Church can lay claim to the entire spirituality of the Church. Franciscans cannot engage in combat with Dominicans about whose spirituality is "better". That's not a Catholic attitude. Lefebvre's attachment to the TLM drove him to schism and heresy. The people who followed him demonstrated they could not escape that error. They insisted that their way alone was superior, that the whole Church must reform to their understanding of Catholicism or be dragged down to the depths of hell. They set themselves up as Pope and denigrated the Pope for not following their vision.

But it is the Pope who leads and directs, not Lefebvre, not the TLM community. It is the Pope who is Tradition. The Pope leads the Church and forms her. If the Pope says a spiritual practice is not conducive to spiritual growth, then we surrender that practice to his ruling. Popes have suppressed liturgical traditions before. Most famously, Pope Pius V suppressed numerous liturgical traditions immediately following Trent. Now, following Vatican II, the Pope has suppressed an additional liturgy. It is his right to do so, not ours, nor have we any right to murmur against the decision.

"Traditionalists" like to insist that monarchy is the best form of government. Well, TLM'rs, you live in a monarchy. The king has decreed. Suck it up, buttercup, and walk the talk. Quit imitating the followers of Korah and Luther. You have been given another opportunity to embrace the Catholic Faith, to follow Tradition, to thank the Pope for his wisdom. Take advantage of it. 

Why the Church is Losing Relevance

The Church is dying because it doesn't have a coherent answer to industrialization. Due to technology, NO ONE alive today suffers as much as EVERYONE did prior to 1800. We are ALL richer, we all live longer, we all suffer from fewer diseases, which have shorter durations.

Some diseases are entirely wiped out. There is no more smallpox, no rinderpest in cattle, almost no polio (only 1 case of wild polio virus (WPV) in Afghanistan, and 1 in Pakistan this year so far, map for last 12 months here). Guinea Worm is just about eradicated, inroads are being made against at least one dozen other endemic diseases.

The entire world used to live in abject poverty, now less than 10% of the world does. Natural disasters kill and injure only one-tenth as many people today as were killed or injured just 20 years ago.

We have the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy, two sets, to deal with every kind of suffering there is. The spiritual works still apply, but the corporal works are increasingly irrelevant.

We are on the verge of totally wiping out famine. Same with concerns about potable water - I've seen at least four major pieces of tech in the last year (see here, here, here and here), that will literally dissolve that problem. We have so much clothing that we can't give it away. Shelter is next on the list of solutions, there aren't nearly as many sick and imprisoned to visit as there were, and we're cremating the dead. 

Literally half of the work of the Church is either already irrelevant or on the verge of being rendered irrelevant. Christ may have come to share our sufferings, but we don't share in that suffering nearly as much anymore. It's harder to identify with the crucified Christ now than it ever has been in history. 

For most of human history, mankind has been agricultural or hunter-gatherer. The man who wanted meat for supper had to kill the animal himself, watch the blood run out on the ground, see the suffering and death throes of the animal as it breathed its last. He would then skin, eviscerate, dismember and roast that recently living flesh. Everyone did this every week, week-in, week-out, for their whole life. 

They saw their friends and family members suffer and die in accidents, from illness, on deathbeds that were as common as the dirt the corpses were buried in.  But almost no one lives this way anymore. These experiences are almost entirely unknown to a plurality or perhaps even a majority of the global population. We preach Christ, and Him crucified, but most people simply have no way of connecting with that level of suffering because suffering, violence and death are no longer something we encounter every day.

Christianity was wildly successful in a subsistence-level, agricultural society, arguably better than any other philosophical or theological system the world has ever seen. As Julian the Apostate observed, the Church used the corporal works as a way to demonstrate charitable intent, and used the salving corporal works as a segue-way to the salvific spiritual works. But what happens when the corporal works of mercy are no longer necessary or relevant? 

For the last two centuries, the Church has tried and failed to adapt its message to a surplus-goods, industrial, high-technology society. So far, it has not developed  a compelling message for a world that is not suffering constant corporal want. Indeed, you would look in vain for a Church document that recognizes, in a detailed way, any of the successes listed above. 

The Pope and other Christian leaders continue to preach the necessary message that the poor must be cared for, without acknowledging that the number of poor has been steadily disappearing. Leaders speak of famine without acknowledging how uncommon it is. While we certainly still have poor to care for today, what happens in that near future when we... don't? What is the message then? The goalposts can only move so far before the message becomes a parody of itself. 

If you want to speak of a crisis in the Church, that is the crisis. 

The Unbearable Lightness of EVs

From Green Energy Reality Check: It's Not as Clean as You Think | Manhattan Institute (manhattan-institute.org):

 A lithium EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds.(a) While there are dozens of variations, such a battery typically contains about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper,(b) about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components.(c)

• Lithium brines typically contain less than 0.1% lithium, so that entails some 25,000 pounds of brines to get the 25 pounds of pure lithium.
• Cobalt ore grades average about 0.1%, thus nearly 30,000 pounds of ore.(e)
• Nickel ore grades average about 1%, thus about 6,000 pounds of ore.(f)
• Graphite ore is typically 10%, thus about 1,000 pounds per battery.(g)
• Copper at about 0.6% in the ore, thus about 25,000 pounds of ore per battery.(h)

 In total then, acquiring just these five elements to produce the 1,000-pound EV battery requires mining about 90,000 pounds of ore.

From Will the U.S. Mine for Rare Earth and Exotic Minerals? - American Thinker

• The U.S. has only one operating rare-earth mine – Mountain Pass – which lost over two years of production due to a 2016 bankruptcy. Mountain Pass sends their mined ore to China for processing due to high environmental compliance costs – including regulatory minefields and a byzantine quandary of local, state, and federal rules.

From Sustainable shipping: solutions for the future of shipping (solarimpulse.com)"

• Shipping materials will account for around 17% of global CO2 emissions in 2050.

It's almost like 'Environmentalism' was funded by the Chinese to encourage Western companies to ship production to China. Huh.... how odd....  So, how many strip mines does it take to make one Tesla? 

Define "Free Market"

For years, I have heard liberatarians, conservatives and liberals, people of every stripe, make various statements about "the free market." But none of them define what it is. Some of them seem to think various conditions make a market "un-free", but no one can seem to agree on what those conditions are, nor do any of the conditions they specify seem to make any sense.

For example, how is it NOT a "free market" when the government gets involved in the market? The government is just one more market player that can be duped, played, cajoled into taking or providing capital, just like any other market player. Every player in the market is free to do whatever they want to do. Every action has consequences - as long as you are willing to accept the possible consequences, then what's stopping your action? 

What people seem to want is not a "free market", but an "equitable market", where everyone has a good outcome. That's impossible. It cannot be done. As long as people vary in their abilities, there will be some people who are 3 or 4 standard deviations better at dealing with current market conditions than anyone else is. As those people apply their skills, they will inevitably create a monopoly in their industry simply because they are so much better at that industry than anyone else is. 

When the monopoly exists, players who are not as good at playing be current rules will try to change the rules, and they will use as their justification the idea that "the market is not free." If they successfully change the rules - shock! - the new rules favor their style of play instead of that of the old market leader. Then they become the monopolists and a new set of players try to change the rules to benefit themselves at the cost of the current leader. 

And that's the point. EVERY market is a free market. The USSR, Communist China, the US, corporate monopoly, oligarchy, mob rule, war, peace, chaos, quiet, pick-your-favorite environment, whoever is currently on top in that environment got there because they figured out how to turn the existing system to their advantage. Anyone is free to figure that out - it's just harder for some groups in some circumstances  to figure that out than it is for those same groups in other circumstances. Some circumstances favor one set of skills, some circumstances favor another set of skills. We go 'round and 'round in our perpetually, universally free market as everyone tries to game the rule set to their own advantage. 

But the economy is absolutely man-made, completely free, and all the actors in it can take whatever risks they want to amass whatever advantages they can. To say that one rule set is "free" while another rule set is "unfree" is simply to say that you personally find the first rule set advantageous while you don't find the second set advantageous. In that sense, "free market" is a phrase that has no meaning.

Payback is a Bitter Pill

China Joe Biden is a Chinese Communist Party shill, there's no question of that. The question is, has he opened the southern border in order to allow China to smuggle fentanyl into the States? Lots of people are now pointing out that this is at least a side effect, if not an intended outcome, of Biden's border policies. 

Now, I am not opposed to open borders because: 

1. our country was founded as an open borders country, 
2. Aquinas was fine with open borders, 
3. the Holy Father is fine with open borders,

But, even if none of that were true, the fact that China is importing a powerfully addicting illegal drug into the United States is unsurprising. If this were a movie, we would expect this to be the end of the reel, wherein after the protagonist suffers endless outrages, he wreaks havoc upon his tormentors. Given what we did to China, and in deference to America's favorite Hollywood ending, China owes us at least that courtesy. Sit back, grasshopper, and I will tell you the tale:

China had much to sell the West, but the West produced virtually nothing China needed or wanted. As British and American citizens consumed tea in great quantity but failed to produce anything the Chinese wanted, the threatening imbalance of trade between East and West became acute.

Both British and American companies solved the problem by illegally importing opium into the Chinese mainland. Chinese officials had long outlawed the drug because they recognized it as a poison. By the late 1700's, however, Britain had control of India’s poppy fields and her navy made it possible to smuggle tons of the stuff across the Chinese border and into Chinese harbors. American businessmen, having no access to Indian poppies, dealt themselves into the illegal drug trade by encouraging Turkish farmers to plant poppies so they, too, could grab part of the drug business.

China responded by confiscating and destroying the huge opium stocks in British warehouses on Chinese soil. Britain went to war to recover the cost of the lost opium, not once, but twice (1839-1842 and 1856-1860). The resulting British victories not only opened Chinese ports to the Western importation of opium, it also gave American citizen Warren Delano, FDR’s grandfather, the enormous wealth which FDR would use to such excellent effect in his own presidential election campaigns. In short, it is not too incorrect to say that FDR's presidency was made possible in part via drugged Chinese slaves.

That's correct: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather imported opium into China despite the fact that China had outlawed opium. This illegal opium trade led directly to the Opium Wars that destroyed China as the centuries-long Asian superpower. It led directly to the burning of the Old Summer Palace, which still angers the Chinese, and to the subjugation of China for centuries by the West. The grandson of one of the major Chinese drug runners became the President that lorded it over them during WW II. 

China never forgot that.

Now, China seems to be returning the favor.

And we are left to whine that payback is a bitter pill. 

Should the Alamo Be Legitimized?

What I can't understand about Republicans and conservatives is, why you insist on making heroes out of a bunch of Democrat Protestant pro-slavery asshats?

That's what the Alamo was about - it was about a bunch of Democrats, a bunch of illegal alien immigrants - fighting to keep slavery alive in Texas. Why? Because that's what Democrats always do, and that's what they were doing at the Alamo, that's what they were doing in the entire fight for Texas independence. They were fighting for the right to be Democrat slaveholders, and everyone at the time knew it.

The prime cause, and the real objects of this war [the Texas Revolution], are not distinctly understood by a large portion of the honest, disinterested, and well-meaning citizens of the United States…. They have been induced to believe that the inhabitants of Texas were engaged in a legitimate contest for the maintenance of the sacred principles of Liberty, and the natural, inalienable Rights of Man: --whereas, the motives of its instigators, and their chief incentives to action, have been, from the commencement, of a directly opposite character and tendency…to wrest the large and valuable territory of Texas from the Mexican Republic, in order to re-establish the SYSTEM OF SLAVERY; to open a vast and profitable SLAVE-MARKET therein; and, ultimately, to annex it to the United States…. The Slaveholding Interest is now paramount in the Executive branch of our national government…. Benjamin Lundy, 1836

John Quincy Adams testified in the House of Representatives (Dec 1835) that Lundy was absolutely correct:

And this is the nation with which, at the instigation of your Executive Government, you are now rushing into war, into a war of conquest; commenced by aggression on your part and for the re-establishment of slavery, where it has been abolished, throughout the Mexican Republic. For your war will be with Mexico---with a Republic of twenty four States, and a population of eight or nine millions of souls.... 

And again I ask, what will be your cause in such a war! Aggression, conquest, and the re-establishment of slavery where it has been abolished. In that war, sir, the banner of freedom will be the banners of Mexico; and your banners, I blush to speak the word, will be the banners of slavery. 

Every abolitionist of the age said the same thing:

"It is impossible for any honest man to wish success to Texas. All who sympathize with that pseudo republic hate liberty and would dethrone God."

—abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator

In early 1836, the largest Texas force in the field, commanded by Colonel James Walker Fannin, was composed of over ninety percent of United States citizens. Even many of the Northerners in the US saw the danger Catholic freedom posed for the Protestant slave-holders. They saw Santa Ana's insistence on freeing slaves as a direct threat to Southern and Western slave-holding states. The existence of a free Catholic Texas was an incitement to slave revolts throughout the South. The Texans at the Alamo were not freedom fighters, they were slavery fighters, as Democrats always are. When you put a halo around the Alamo, you defend illegal immigration, you defend slavers, you defend the use of violence in the name of, in the support of, illegal immigration and slavery.

When you look at all the details, really study what the American Protestant Democrats at the Alamo and in the larger fight for Texas independence were doing, you soon realize they were the early 19th century version of BLM and Antifa. Why would conservatives defend this nonsense?

Why would anyone from the party of Lincoln want to legitimize Democrat asininity?

Protestants Claim Scripture is Heretical

 There has been a recent kerfluffle over a comment by a pastor, in which Reverend Warnock, a pastor who oversees MLK's church, said:

The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves.

This comment has been condemned by Protestant commentators as heresy. Well, there's nothing heretical in Warnock's statement unless you're a Protestant, but Protestant theology has always been nonsense.

Take the first sentence, "The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Yes. Exactly right. The resurrection of Jesus is immanent, the meaning of the resurrection is transcendent. That is, the resurrection is a real thing that happened in the flesh, risen flesh that could be touched, it is closer to us than we are to ourselves, it is bound up within who we are, while the meaning of that resurrection is transcendent, it is higher than us, it draws us up beyond ourselves into the heart of the Trinity. Yes. Precisely correct.

Second sentence, "Whether you are a Christian or not," - yes, as Paul says in Romans 2 “They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)" . That is, we all know what the law says, even when we don’t know the law. And, we all prove it by doing what’s in God’s law without even knowing it. And this knowledge and acting on this knowledge will "even defend them" on the Day of Judgement.

And the last part? "Through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves." As Augustine of Hippo says "He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent." (St Augustine, Sermo 169, 13 (PL 38,923)). Paul pointed out that "We are God's co-workers" (1 Cor 3:9). God's work is our salvation, so our co-work is also our salvation. Paul talks about "working out my salvation in fear and trembling". (Phil 2:12) and even goes so far as to say "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church..." (Col 1:24). That is Paul asserts not only that Jesus' suffering actually LACKS something, he asserts that he, Paul, can make up what is lacking!

Jesus points out that we must do this through good works, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. The people who do this are the people who are gathered together and saved on the last day.

Grace affects the whole person. The mind responds with faith, the body with works, both happen simultaneously. We are NOT saved through faith alone, as the Letter of James points out. Even the demons have faith in the resurrection, but that does not save them.

The good reverend just echoed Scripture and Saint Augustine.

People who object to what he said know neither Scripture nor the power of God.