Uncategorized - W.D. Edmiston

Conservatism vs. Liberalism?

Being an individual is often more powerful that joining a crowd

Conservatism

Bryan Mahlke

True conservatism, in the broad sense (not merely political) seeks to conserve the good, the true, and the beautiful as an inheritance to the succeeding generations. Conservatism has allowed the West to prosper in the excellence of morality, law, liberty, art, literature, science, philosophy, theology, and politics.

We had the correct starting point to build American civilization: the self-revelation of the one true, eternal, and self-existent God. An eternal God who desires a relationship with each of us as individuals and encourages independence and a good work ethic. No other culture has achieved as much prosperity.

Today, we are seeing the fast unraveling of the foundations of our civilization. This anti-conservative impulse began three or four generations ago but is advancing at a precipitous rate today. It is now even denying fundamental realities of human nature openly, such as human gender. The “leftist progressive” movement is actually regressive. Its end is not a utopia, but disorder and chaos. It would have us believe what is false rather than what is true. It is seeking to deny and destroy the ages of conserving what is true, good, and beautiful, which has been the foundation of our civilization. The very foundation that has allowed us to build to the greatest heights of excellence in every area of human flourishing. They seek to tear it down and lay a “better, newer” foundation.

That is a quite good definition of Marxist Communism since today’s tyrant has changed Marx’s original idea to one of destruction. Since his time, Soviet style, communism has destroyed entire countries like Tartar, Botswana, Mozambique, Chile, Cuba, Venezuela. It veils itself in foolish Marxist rhetoric, but eventually consumes and destroys.

But a foundation that denies truth, calls evil good and good evil, and displaces beauty with abomination, is not one that can attain even the heights we are now descending from. No, it will return us to the times of tribalism and human misery, while preserving the wealth of the select. The masses will not have the benefit of a good inheritance and become confused, even about the fundamentals of human nature. There will be no liberty, but instead tyranny. Civilization is at stake, no less.

Well said, Bryan WDE

Today’s blog is written by Bryan Mahlke, an engineer, veteran, and patriot. It is one of his first “point of view” articles. To me, what Mahlke says here is a call, not just on individual American’s but it outlines what our next run of elected officials must say to their opponents, and how our churches must encourage their members to speak out. Let me define terms:

Liberalism: in modern society is mostly misunderstood. It is the tradition that advocates free speech, a free market without government rules and regulations, and civil liberties of economic, politics, freedom of movement and speech. It is the rule, by the people, through elected officials as servants to the republic, and the general idea of “leave me alone” when it comes to government power.

That definition would fit loosely with the view of the founders of 1787-1788 and paraphrased from something longer by Wikipedia. (Full disclosure, I am a Wikipedia donor) If you look at classic conservatism; you see an entirely different style and type of definition. It is, by Wikipedia’s warning in the header, full of problems, which suggest it is not up to their standards, and may need to be rewritten. Yes, it should. It’s apparently been re-written by leftists, who abhor standards, rule and traditions that people choose to guide their lives. Leftists have parsed, redefined, and mis-characterized conservatives through their prism. It is at best, pseudo-profound nonsense.

Liberals and conservatives are not that far apart. Liberals want to be left alone, and see the offering of guides, rules, and paradigms as restrictive. Religions, some not all, and governments, have throughout history been just as guilty of moving toward the fascism that is often called liberalism. You can’t blame the liberal for not liking it. Using religion to hide behind has been a tool of tyrants, and is still being used.

That is where the fascist yrant hides—behind the name of good and well-meaning reforms. Conservatives like rules in the sense of a collective contract. We agree, metaphorically, to drive on our side of the white line, leave our neighbor’s things alone, and live together peacefully. If you want to dress differently, embrace art instead of commerce–we can live together. The only problem with that—is people. People are prone to adolescent whining and jealousy. That’s where our public leaders and pastors need to understand that leftist progressivism is not about fairness and equality. That is just what they hide behind. Leftist progressivism is no less than Soviet style aggression that destroys everything it touches until it controls everything that is left. Our leaders need to understand, explain, and fight that aggression. It’s not just modern liberals wanting edgy art and colorful murals on our buildings.

And the pastors, politicians and oldest among us should understand that the evil we face is neither liberal nor conservative. It is neo-Marxism, with is less neo and more the oldest evil in literature and scripture. Mahlke’s view is from a real conservative, and you will find none of the ideas the leftist tries to blame on them.

We are the government. We are here to help you.

Author, W.D. Edmiston

Posted in part – April 15, 2020 Tags

A recent magazine article suggests we should forgive ourselves for what what said while we were “in the dark” about the Chinese Origin Viral Infections Disease. Okay, go ahead. But there was no reason for anyone to be in the dark about the bug. News reports told us crazy things the World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control warned us government was on the wrong track. The first thing thwy said was it had a 98% mortality. Then Fauci said we didn’t need masks, and there was no need to get all shook up.

The government, those tax payer funded absent minded adult arrested adolescents decided it was the opportune time to have a crisis and they created one. I’m not at all sure it was not a plan in the works for a while before the first announcements. There will be more on that in a later post. But as a review, the article below, which I posted in April of 22 serves as a reminder of just how screwy it all got. I for one are not at all inclined to forgive tactical mistakes. Government was told, all of them, that their plan would be disastrous. Every last one of them should be voted out of office.

WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT, WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU

Government: “You are “ordered” to stay at home unless it is essential.

Citizens: But I can go out if it’s essential.

Government: But when you go out, stay back 6 feet.

Citizens: “So we are in lockdown?”

Government: “No, you can still go in and out of town, do your essential business, your essential travel and of course we essential people in government will be here to help you.”

Citizens: “Oh, so not much has changed.”

Government: “Yes, it’s a crisis, Trump messed up everything, stay home so you don’t spread the disease.

Citizens: “I’m not sick. I feel fine. If the Highway Patrol will let us go a few miles over the speed limit without busting all of us, what if I’m 5.5 feet away, do I get a ticket?”

Government: “Well no, our mathematical models tell us everyone will just follow the nice orders and do as they are told. We shouldn’t need to enforce anything, that’s not nice.”

Citizens: “How has that worked for you with “Gun-free zones” and “Safe Spaces” and “Drug-Free Zones?”

Government: “This is different? We used the right words and we offered you an enticement.”

Citizens: “How so?”

Government: “It just is.”

Citizens: “That is an unacceptable response from government. You only function at the will of the people.”

Government: “Just stay home and respect the safety of your fellow man, uh… person… oh, human being. It’s the kind thing to do. It’s nice.”

Citizens: “Is there a curfew? Are you going to arrest me? Who says my travel is not essential?”

Government: “We can fine you or put you in jail. But we might do a curfew. But we will try to guilt you into compliance; everyone else is wearing a mask. We think you should.”

Citizens: “Who is we.”

Government: “The government. We are experts remember?”

Citizens: “Where in the law does it define what is essential, and how in the world with government’s recent record of failure, can you be experts?”

Government: “We are worried about that right now, this is a crisis.”

Citizens: “Aren’t you enforcing a few rules that the Constitution says you don’t have the right to meddle in at all.”

Government: “This is a crisis.”

Citizens: “You keep saying that. So, if certain people have written books about the government you don’t like, will that be a crisis?”

Government: “That’s different.”

Citizens: “You said that before too, but it isn’t. You forced some companies to volunteer to set up labs in their business spaces, took up the time of their people and equipment to make things for the crisis. People are being fired for wearing a masks made with stars and stripes. How is that okay?”

Government: “Some companies have volunteered to do that to help with the crisis. They are woke, are you woke? Flags are signs of oppression.”

Citizens: “But, you made companies close, and made them supply materials even if they didn’t volunteer. That is oppression. Then you stuck sick old people in nursing homes with other not-sick old people. They died.”

Government: “Probably, but don’t go getting a group of people together to discuss this, just go home and do as you are told. Getting together violates the shutdown rules. Violation is considered a mental health matter.”

Citizens: “But isn’t that the same an ordering me to keep soldiers in our homes like the King of England did to the colonists. Didn’t they tell the colonists they could not get together to ask for grievances – they had a Revolution about that didn’t they?”

Government: “You wouldn’t do that to us, we are the government, we are here to help you. We know best.”

Citizen: “Some of the state Governors have gone bat-crap-crazy thinking this gives them Martial Law abilities and then some. What says you won’t do the same thing. It is a violation of the Constitution and you are supposed to defend the Constitution, it was in your oath of office. It seems like some big corporations are getting rich off if this.”

Government: Well, that’s the States, that’s not us. Besides, I was looking for a few good campaign photo’s out of that whole oath thing and they didn’t turn out well. I can’t speak for the others. The Constitution is such an old document, do you really think it is applicable today?

Citizens: “But it is the law of the land. You cannot ignore it because it is inconvenient. What you are doing it is a direct violation of how the country was founded. It is a First Amendment issue. You can’t order the public to do something you don’t have the power to order or enforce.”

Government: “But we are helping you, you are getting a check? Look at the nice distraction, please. I do this with my car keys and the grandbaby. Look at the nice checky-poo.”

Citizens: “Very subtle, but the DOJ is already asking for more Constitutional restrictions to be lifted to detain people for as long as necessary under the crisis without a hearing. It’s a violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of a speedy trial.”

Government: “Well that’s just one idea. Did you see the check we sent you?”

Citizens: “Haven’t some of the specialists in emergency management said a general shutdown is not a cure? One guy said the masks didn’t work. The next week he said we should wear them. Then another group said the masks could make it worse. You don’t sound like experts. ”

Government: “That’s different. This won’t last a long time.”

Citizen: “You are arguing over medicines that may help. How is that helping? Why are the prices of medicines going up, and why do only the expensive ones work?”

Government: “Well you don’t know as much as we do. We are helping you be safe. Got to close some businesses to keep people safe. Gotta stay apart, gotta have testing and tested medicines. Some businesses stay open, so we can… well nevermind.”

Citizens: “But you are setting precedent, all law is based in precedent. Besides, the more people go back to work, the better off the country will be when this all passes. There are processes to allow low risk and no risk people go back to work.”

Government: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Citizens: “That’s an entirely Marxist attitude toward the population. You seem hell bent on making businesses, especially small business suffer.”

Government: “You keep saying that kind of thing. Is there something wrong with you. We are the government, we are here to help you, we don’t do things wrong. Perhaps we should have the doctor take a look at you. You seem a little high strung, maybe you are coming down with something. Don’t worry, we are from the government, we follow the science, and we are here to help you. This all works out, the Chinese did the same thing. They are on the road to recovery.”

Citizens: “The Chinese lie to their people about their statistics, they have no respect for them or their lives. I should feel so much better because we are following the success of a totalitarian dictatorship?”

Government: “See, I told you the government was here to help you.”

Everything is Broken

The terms Build Back Better and The Great Reset, sound wonderful. But to question the inference, they also say, “everything you know, everything your parents taught you, that you found good, and you enjoyed in this society, is broken.”

By extension, that means you too. Does that sound logical to you? If we need a reset, or need to build back – doesn’t that say either “build from a different foundation” or “clear the screen and start over?” If you are part of the country, you need to forget all you know and start over, build back, reset, get with the program.

Your elected officials in government, along with their agency friends and appointees, think you are broken, dysfunctional, and thinking the wrong way. Most of those in the upper tier, think you were born unfit for anything past hourly wage work. Listen to them, they will tell you. How many times have they said, our schools must teach our children the skills they need to get a good job.

Not, to cure cancer, not to invent, help create new ways of developing individual talent, Individuality is the problem, you must be part of something. The manufacturers have control of things like new phones, new computers, and plans to introduce incrementally upgraded versions into the 22^nd century. They don’t want you to learn so much you invent something we never heard of to replace both. Maybe a ring you wear that opens a neural pathway, to the internet that displays in your head, with a display you can change by thinking. That would bankrupt them. Gone like the buggy whip and galvanized milk can.

It is a delightful irony that the people in our government too, with its record of waste, lost millions, overreach, and foolish human pride, thinks they can just dream up programs to save us. “If you just sit still a minute, we will sort this out.” They seem to say.

Sitting still is the road to poverty, the solution to anything is movement, creation, excellence. Politicians are supposed to arrive at the Congress, with a list of ideas from the people in the areas they serve, their constituents. Instead, they cozy up with the long-term office holders who tell them how things are done in Washington. The notepad with their list of constituents wishes is used to level a desk with a missing foot-pad, something practical.

We must stop treating these folks like movie stars. Those who have been there long enough to know “how things work” have overstayed their welcome. How things work is how the American voter, tells them to work. They are underperforming, self-indulgent public servants with a tendency toward opportunistic graft.

So much out of the ordinary has happened in the last few weeks that relate to TriA behavior, it seemed time to post a blog or two about them.

Too many Americans, taught in public schools, have the attitude, “What can I do about it?” But they do not vote saying, “My one vote does not count.” That’s faulty logic, and you learned it in school. How often were you offered a vote in public school, the ability to decide for yourself? Do remember learning to make decisions? Were you told to think for yourself, what deduction or reasoning were and how to use them? Probably not. It is seldom on the curriculum. Modern schooling is about discipline, passing state tests, and group promotion. All off it is an old, outdated system, forced on schools by big business-who want you and your children stamping parts and entering data eight hours a day.

This kind of logic is made for the adult arrested adolescent, or TriA, a person the union influenced public schools delivered on the easiest kind of education. Those who believe there is an ultimate authority on every issue, who do not think for themselves and believe mainstream media sources. There is a better way. See, The TriA Book on Amazon

There you go again. . .

Both Democrat candidates for the President and Vice President are spouting claims of hypocrisy while simultaneously playing hide-the-weenie with even those left-leaning media folk who always support them. The main-stream media cannot get a straight answer out of them any more than Trump could in the debate. The choice of candidates that will shoot straight with America is beginning to weed themselves out. Trump has so many claims about him that even if he was caught with a secretary in a DNA laden blue dress, you could not separate that out from the many claims that are transparently false. Meanwhile, Harris is hiding a lot of skeletons in her closet and Biden seems to be hiding in a closet taking a nape.

A recent Wall Street Journal commentary article by Johnathan James (below) asked,

“Is this the Democrats’ presidential version of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s infamous 2010 plea that lawmakers needed to first pass a behemoth health care reform bill so the country could find out what was in it?“

Read the article here: “Harris Takes After Biden, Dodges Question on Packing Court”

About the Police – Leadership

Part Three – We need our police because we know nothing about safety in America is going to change as a result of the recent social unrest. We are not foolish enough to think all this horror in American cities will have a positive outcome.

We have seen riots before, they do not really work well. Mr. Obama says these riots are not like those of the ’60s and ’70s. I was there in uniform then, and while what the protests are different, the lives that are being disadvantaged if not destroyed are exactly the same. What Obama offers to fix the problem are more agendized public officials and Union labor contracts based on fairness and equality. Those are what caused today’s problem. What the public knows is that protests and rioting, breaking things, and destroying lives cannot work. They do not achieve their goals. They are temporary social upheavals. You cannot create peace by harming a large part of the public – especially those who are offering jobs. What that period did was make society more open to things like abortion, sexual experimentation that led to the AIDS and Hepatitis epidemics, open drug use, and gang violence. That’s what the turmoil of the ’60s and ’70s brought to America; a coarsening of our public. Then the liberty we gave to our people to live below their promise has us holding our noses in many American cities. The police had nothing to do with that, it was the public and weak public officials that dumbed down the penal code and softened their stand on maintaining order.

Good police officers cannot be led by less-than-ideal supervisors with great vision, high personal standards, and advanced training. Even the best police agency is a blunt tool for establishing good public policy. And good public policy starts with making people feel they have opportunities, not that they need help and handouts. Even more important is for the executives of the community to have a real understanding of the police department’s role. It is to make people feel safe. New political candidates, in their naivete of the role of a city leader’s responsibility, cannot do well without training or experience. That role requires a high level of wisdom, maturity, and critical thinking skills. The short answer to what will work best is what we have done before, arresting bad people and sending them to court to be judged. But sometimes we stray into ideas and procedures that seemed good at the time, but now we wonder. Soft courts have made a huge impact on that problem.

Where this has been most obvious is in drug enforcement. Drugs are a difficult issue, but the methodology of ratcheting up the heavy-handedness of drug enforcement, while complicating the prosecution, evidence gathering and adding asset forfeiture processes are an overreach. The use of more and more military-style approaches to defeat drug suppliers scares the public. Officers are not perfect and when they play soldier the do what soldiers do, break things, and kill people. The public sees that as excessive. Especially while the culture, and adolescently minded media figures, including the newly elected city officials, either use or make jokes about drugs. The public sees that and they do not trust it.

The reaction young police officers have to that sort of training is to want to use it to go home at the end of shift. It frustrates police chiefs when officers often forget that they must do their regular jobs while remembering they represent all the public, not just their own goals of being super cops. But politicians love big drug busts. So frequently our people are on the news, sporting more pads than an NFL lineman and scary black weapons. Dealing with the public should not take several layers of bulletproof material. When people respected police officers, and the officers did not think every time they took a call their lives would be threatened, it didn’t. In part, the so-called War on Drugs has made us hyper-vigilant, worried, suspicious, and mildly deranged.

The drug wars have complicated enforcement. It tends to focus on big busts while ignoring the damage to the public trust that comes from military-style engagements. Meanwhile, the profit potential involved in drug supply has outstripped the economy of almost every other commodity on the planet.
Totally lost on those public servants and the public they serve is that any resistance to police authority is an affront to society; a resistance to civilization. It is not just some young person resisting the police they have been taught to disrespect. The kids are really resisting us. In other words, you and I, and the civility we expect from everyone around us. The weak politicians with, wink-wink attitudes toward monied people who they protect, and give special treatment do not make them popular with the working class either. The Rule of Law is just that, a rule, it is not the “best practices” of criminal reorientation.

Well trained police chiefs know that there are several lifetimes of development behind what they do. There are large and small improvements, safeguards, procedures, methods, and scientific approaches already in place that tell officers how to deal with the public on what may be the worst day of their lives.

So, there you have it. More than what the defund police reformers are asking for is already written into the structure of police agencies. Not only that, but it has also been improved over the last almost 200 years. There is a problem, the police have been dumbed down by the very same kind of Adult Arrested Adolescence that the protestors represent. We have been scolded by emotionally frail, agendized adults, who have regressed into childish behavior because of the false ideology of fairness and equality. Their goal amounts to making sure nobody gets their feelings hurt while being arrested. What has not changed is that the protestors have not had a similar improvement in their approach. They still want to break things and kill people. These are not primarily peaceful protests.

The early Dragnet radio and television shows featured Jack Webb in the role of Sergeant Joe Friday. Sgt. Friday, on the occasion an police officer was caught doing criminal things often said, “The only problem we have with getting good police officers is having to choose them from the human race.”
The police career has a cost. But people able to be good police officers recognize their job exposes them to that worst day of the lives of ordinary people. What people do to each other evokes a realness that only those who have done it can appreciate. When social reformers, union interests, and dilettantes try to make the job a neat and clean one, they attack the police, thereby disturbing the civil order you and I expected them to provide in the first case.

People are not animals, and they should not be subjected to social experimenting. Right now there are a lot of “experts” who think people can be behaviorally trained, by developing new types of reality. New types of living spaces, new relationships that depend on groups instead of individual effort. They think people can be controlled by tuning their brains to listen to music and be preoccupied while doing menial work. They can have exercise on bikes with televisions that take them riding in foreign countries, being heroes inside of video games. There is a problem with that. What you see in dozens of movies and television series like Total Recall, Fringe, Terminator, and Lucy are attempts to soften your resistance to living in an alternate reality. Think of how easy people will be to manage if they do not need to visit Italy or the Pyramids. We can show them pictures just like they are there. It is nothing more than what the Romans offered their citizens. Those people worked hard, had few things luxuries, and did not enjoy much freedom in a ridged society. But rather often, the Roman government offered up what they called, “bread and games” or what you may know as Gladiators fighting in arenas; Chariot Races; and Animal Spectaculars. All of these were brutal and uncivilized by modern standards. But they kept the citizens happy enough they would not riot or cause problems. Now our leaders are leaning toward giving us alternate realities to distract them from life’s drudgery. Not a way to improve yourself or incrementally improve your situation. They only want the population distracted and made compliant. It will only be a short step to using powerful, subliminal messages during the games to reinforce compliance in all things. If you think that is silly, ask yourself how many times you have lost track of time on a video game, or social media.

Now come the thinkers. These young skulls are full of new ideas that, because of their total lack of a good education, they think are new. Those kids assume because they have an idea it is better than those developed and polished over decades. They know this, how? Why from watching television and shows that tell them the engine that drives America, capitalism cannot be trusted. That all persons involved in corporations and those corporations are greedy, have no social consciousness, and do not mind trampling the little guy with their hob-nailed boots. They know this stuff because it has been spoon-fed them by the very people who plan to control them using those tropes.

People need police not because 99% are dangerous as the top tier elitists fear, but because for a thousand different reasons, 1 or 2% of the population does not work and play well with others. Those are the very people you see burning down cities across the nation. Do you really think that type of person gets a gold watch and retires to the suburbs after their goofy ideas about no police are met. No, they will decide something else is broken. They may decide everything in the suburbs should belong to them or be destroyed. In fact, they have already said that. They are the people who disobey rules simply because there are rules.

There is another fact that the genral public understands. We have seen it in recent polls. Some 80 of all social strata of people think the police need to stay right where they are – maybe made a little stronger. Why is that? Because we have long memories.

***

This is the last of the three-part series on the police. Something else will come up and when it does, look here for my take on it. Sign up for future announcements, new books and other offers.

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About the Police – High Standards

Part Two – A modern police agency must have certain things, a court to which arrested persons are referred to guarantee rights, like Miranda, bond, legal representation, and judgment. Usually, there is some sort of jail or holding cell, and then the offender is transferred to a county-level system. A police department cannot operate without a supportive court system and the will of the city/county elected officials to monitor them. They are, by one definition, the last resort for a community. When a family or some citizens cannot control themselves, the city uses the police. Most importantly, the police are there because the city’s streets, roads, and other delights cannot keep 100% of the people happy.

Why do we have a police agency anyway? Simply, because writing up a city charter with lofty goals and written do’s and don’ts is not sufficient to give the other 99% of the population of any given city protection from the 1% who will try to live by the ancient moral code of, “you are not the boss of me.”

That simple fact should throw cold water on the concept of “defunding” the police and sending in helpful social workers. At least a tiny percentage will act criminally if for no other reason because there is a rule that says they cannot. They will not react well to someone wagging a finger in their face or suggesting that they channel their aggressive tendencies into more socially acceptable behaviors. Experience has taught us that getting old is the only predictable reason for a criminal to stop their behavior. That is because it just gets too hard to deal with the jail, the fines, or family pressure as the mind and body grow older. No prison reform system has been created that successfully “rehabilitates” criminals. That is a sad, but simple fact.

Police agencies were created when the Night Watch system failed. Just leaving a lookout, roaming the city sounds fine, but the reality was that those chosen were drunks, thieves themselves, or tended to sleep all night. A true police agency was not founded until organizational and philosophical procedures were established. The revisionist history theorists want to lump what they call slave catchers in with the night watch. Their goal is disingenuous, it is not to correct history, but to attempt to tie slavery to the foundation of not only policing but America’s early history. That is a factual error. Slave catching was never involved, and should never be associated with Criminal Justice in any way. It does not have a connection to a court system, city charter, or organizational and procedural underpinnings. The “arrested” had no rights, no protection of an attorney, nothing. Typically, when slaves were caught, they got a beating. That too is not part of an organized, professional police agency.

What advocates of a watered-down police approach ask for is accountability and a system that allows the police and courts the discretion to give leniency to some offenders, with honesty on all levels. But accountability and a system that gives leniency to some and not others are self-contradictory. The police feel the same way about accountability – at least those who deserve to wear the uniform do. But this is one place where equality is not well-liked by nice people who see enforcement as something sad for the offender. Holding others accountable often results in sadness which the soft-hearted find troubling. That is a problem with maturity.

What they all miss due to their own inability to think critically, is that those are the organizational guidelines every police agency in America uses now. What confounds those practices are, liberal, contradictory policies; making police jobs a part of union bargaining, allowing political pressure to throttle police investigation of criminality and criminal organizations, and applying utopian thinking to a procedure that deals with imperfect and broken things.

Unions are inherently Marxist/utopian ideas, whereas police agencies are inherently conservative. Police respond when social order has broken down. At best they restore the status quo – they do not reach past status quo and create a perfect or utopian society. That is not in the job description nor is it practical. The only place where near-utopian standards are called for in police agencies is in hiring and in their executive management positions. Good backgrounds are indicators of good future conduct.

Unions always try to lower hiring standards in the name of fairness, equality, and lower salaries. Such liberal and leftist thinking always see police recruitment as a jobs program to either lower salaries or build a voting base. That type of hiring devolves into a low average group of persons in areas like skill, education, ability to communicate, and learn. I have called them “beige” police recruits for years. That practice skews the ability of the hiree to perform a higher level of police performance. Police agencies need education and higher relative intelligence to meet their organizational goals. Dumbing down their hiring policies is backward thinking. They have no vibrancy; they have no willingness to be exceptional or to be people of exemplary conduct. Liberal thinking about hiring in this way always works against the elevation of the overall performance of every public service. If all one thinks they are doing is hiring voters for their political party any upright hominid will do. That sort of hiring will have exactly the same type of effect on hiring social workers or whatever discipline of substitute for police officers is chosen, with the same outcome.

About the Police

Post 1 of 3 Human beings must be socialized inside of a family structure. Almost every culture on the planet would agree wholly or in large part to that statement. That is the training for being able to live with others. Animals are instinctual, they have DNA sequences that control what they will become – usually some kind of killer. Even a hungry baby chick can hunt a bug down and kill it, and eat it. To the bug, the chick is a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

An alligator lays eggs, watches them, and protects them until they get in the water on their own. Then in a flash, the male or female may eat half of them. The little alligators are killing machines themselves, chasing down smaller things until they grow. Neither has any boundary to cannibalistic murder. Humans left to themselves in small groups, will prey on other humans just as unapologetically.

Animal lovers like to remind us humans that we are part of the animal kingdom. Technically, that is true, but most animal lovers are nice people and they are trying to raise the importance of their animals by making them more human. The police know it is not always a move up the ladder. We have seen too many human miscreants and their ugliness.

The role of the police officer is not merely to protect property. It is primarily to protect human life. I never was forced to take a life, or even hurt someone during my many years as a police officer. But I saved several either by first aid or pulling them from wrecks, burning buildings or thirty feet of water. There seems no thought about what will happen when social welfare people are unable to deal with confirmed criminal who enjoys hurting people. It takes trained, dedicated people to remove that person from society.

When the miscreant – literally meaning the mistake in creation – shoots at a police officer or a random person they are in effect shooting at the entire society to which they belong. They are defying that thing called the social contract, that has literally supported him or herself since infancy. When they do this sort of thing, they have failed to be civil. They have descended into that of a predator animal – having grown large enough physically to hunt something down and kill it. There is a list of rules of lessening amounts of punishment for us to follow and there are other rules our families are supposed to teach us. The village has no responsibility to teach your or your children to follow the law, except through the publication of the rules and later the adjudication of those failures in a public court. If during their adolescent stage, they are not taught critical thinking skills, they will most likely not fit into society and one of my friends in law enforcement will encounter them early on. They will not make friends easily and will always seem needy, looking for someone to help them with life. When they do not learn to think critically, they flounder and will always want someone to guide them through life. When they join a radical movement, hoping to make a difference and do not see progress soon enough; they will become frustrated. Often, they reach the alligator stage and hunt down and kill someone; either an opponent or a leader they think has failed them e.g. Lincoln/Booth, Lenin/Trotsky, Yitzhak Rabin/uber-nationalists, Scalise/Hodgkinson.
We cannot continue to let non-American influences change how our very successful experiment with a government of, by, and for the people works. The police have a pivotal role in that government. The first form of government are our leaders. Hopefully, they will become our independent businessmen who offer their help with legislation after they have become successful. We must let our guaranteed freedoms of speech, religion, and God-given guarantees work without influences like political correctness. The only reason that anyone would want to remove the police is to allow those who do not like limitations on their activities to grow stronger.

They want to tell you that their new idea is to put more thinking and kind people into the position of resolving disputes. That is a stalking horse argument. Their goals are not altruistic. As soon as they are allowed to gain control politically, they wiil try to take control directly of lives of those who formerly favored police. Those promoting the defund movement will create their own, stronger, more ruthless police. They are tyrannical, seeking more control and absolute control. Their police would be beholding to a small group of officials. Today, despite some claims, the police are supervised by the City Councils and State and County officials. Those officials are elected by the public. When the old police are no longer there to stop it, they will change that part of the law. Then the new police will appear.

The only way I can tell you I am certain this will happen, is that it has happened in every instance similar to this one in History. We tend to think of the French Revolution to be similar to ours. It was not, it was a fascist movement, that resulted in a new, organized, and deadly group of rulers who used the guillotine to solve all their problems.

Critical Thinking: About Capitalism, Freedom, Education and the Tri-A

The book upon which this blog series is based, Looking Backward, Forward is about government control and pugnacious congressional behavior in the 21^st Century. That relates to the Adult Arrested Adolescent or TriA that has become a crisis for the future of the USA. The TriA is a behavioral disorder that describes how some people in the United States and other countries think. And they think poorly if at all because they have been taught to think with feelings or emotions. That is first-tier thinking, where first impressions, happy thoughts, and colorful images delight the senses. It is not a deeper second-tier analysis that helps us evaluate the worth of ideas, people, and their schemes.

These people went through adolescence without fully maturing, leaving the brain unprepared for adulthood and critical thinking. Their peers tell them this is new thinking, and they should distrust other points of view. They may actually have a bias toward vacuous but intelligent-sounding myths. There are reasons why that happens and I hope you will enjoy reading about them. I would be happier to be wrong. But that, I fear is not the case.

New thinking is biased toward old myths

Since I substitute teach in a high school in my retirement, I have sometimes discussed critical thinking in my classes. Being in Texas a non-union state, we have a very good school that turns out students that perform well in UIL competition. We have turned out a Gold Level FFA Program, a great award-winning band, and at least one very popular NFL star. Even so, every year, I get a freshman who puffs up and complains they do not want to think critically; because critical thinking is like hate speech. That is an example of what I mean – their thinking relates to political correctness ideas that float in the ignorance pool of our culture. Critical thinking is not hate-speech, it is instead the skill you need to evaluate a problem or opportunity and form a judgment or solution. It is the goal of education.

These first-tier thinkers so seldom use second-tier thinking in their adolescence, they have never developed their brains to do it well. In my experience, the young people who are involved in the technology trades, pharmacy, nursing, mechanics, welding/fabrication, engineering, veterinary and agricultural skills are deeper thinkers and understand their world much better than those who are steeped in literature, laboratory, and mathematics pursuits.

Remaining a TriA leaves the person with an emotional thinking process. Using primarily first-tier thinking skills they are unable to distinguish emotions from thought. The stronger the emotion the more they will stifle their ability to be realistic and distort their views of situations and relationships. It allows them to believe those vacuous slogans. They attach meaning to phrases that mean nothing like, “love is just a word” and “everything happens for a reason.” They are also able to combine multiple contradictory ideas that sound deep and meaningful. My favorite from my college days was the Zen question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Almost 20 years ago an odd thing happened with a romance novel. That began with the publication of the book, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy.* In the latter part of the 19^th century, the concept of a Utopian society that ran itself became popular. The coffee shop idealists found deep meaning in the book. The ideas were all based on socialist beliefs that try to make people into almost identical parts of a single government. It is remarkable that one single book,* appears to have become the supporting mythology of social programs like socialism, progressivism, liberalism, and Marxism in the twentieth century. It also played a role in creating the system responsible for the Arrested TriA.

Romantic Socialists or confused TriAs

Edward Bellamy, a new author looking to make a few bucks writing romance novels wrote Looking Backward. It was not intended to be more than that. The primary character was in love but experimented in many things including time travel. He put himself in a deep coma and was found in the year 2000 in a utopian society. His true love was now dead, but her granddaughter was just about the same age as when he went to sleep. That inter-generational love is the rest of the story. What the coffee house crowd saw was a book about their concept of utopia. They added their socialism and what were then new social project ideas into the story and formed Nationalist Clubs. They had Bellamy’s blessing because he used the term Nationalist in his books, including the national ownership of all means of production. He described its successes, but he did not also show how they achieved that success. His focus was on the romance. But the socialists thought they saw through it and the rest is history. Although there were no methods for how this society was to be put together, the Socialists needed none, Marx and Ingles were writing essays, broadsides, articles and trying to finish Das Kapital. Many others were bloviating on better ways to run the society, steering it toward a utopia of their own. These clubs were mostly college clubs for young, pampered, boys and girls whose brains had not completely finished growing. They were able to connect many contradictory ideas to support 200 Nationalist Clubs around Europe.

What we find today, is that many of these same types of shallow thinkers have been created, either in a huge case of unintended consequences or just as likely — by intent. Our schools have been teaching contradictory messages, using top-down centralized control of students to the point they do not think well for themselves. They have been taught to always defer to their teacher, then the principal, the coach, and the administration for questions of final authority. Students and their parents have gone to the same type of schools for the last 50 years. Neither of them received no real instruction about deeper thinking unless it came from their families. Many cannot think deeply and instead just follow the fashion and whim of their friends. They imagine themselves free when they are bound in chains to an ideology and have lost their freedom in the process.

Schools focus on discipline due to the deep fear of public embarrassment. Children getting into fights at school, pregnant in stairwells, or hurt by bullies bring about harsh criticism, complaints, and threats of lawsuits. The student body cannot get out of control. Therefore, discipline and rank order is the way schools are operated. What we have produced is a group of children, not all of them but many, who are perfect followers of mass movements tyrants. That is a much more complicated story, but the series of blogs will cover that topic and more.

The result of our children having their education dumbed down and their social responsibility made overly important is that we have tailor-made street fighters; fuzzy thinkers who not only are behaving that way in our streets, but in every type of business, government, and social service business. They are welcomed into movements like Black Lives Matter because they will drink the Koolaid, become true believers, and sacrifice themselves to make the world a better place. That promise is usually a lie.

***

In the next blog in this series, I will compare known adolescent characteristics with the Tri-A and explain further how that is harmful both to the person and the nation.

The blogs will cover the main topics of an almost 400-page book that was published in 2018. But do not buy one now. A second edition is coming. But the blogs are free, and I hope you will sign up to follow the blog regularly. I will post several to kick things off and then they will come slightly further apart until they arrive once or twice a week, mainly focused upon Pro-America themes.

W.D. Edmiston, Robert Starr, Arlington J North, Allen Spence, D. LaRue Mahlke

Swimming in the Ocean

Your potential of having a life full of accomplishment is your ability to be comfortable with uncertainty.

Arlington J. North

Why do we ignore the risks while blithely swimming in an ocean full of man-eating creatures? Those who are close to the seashore almost completely ignore that risk unless sightings are posted. There is some uncertainty in that – but not a lot — attacks are one in 11 million. But people do get attacked and killed.

Many more are afraid to fly although there is a one in five million chance of dying from it. Walking down the street is 1 in 400. We hop in our cars to just go for a drive when the chance is 1 in 103 of it killing us. But our fears and uncertainties paralyze some of us over the more mundane unfamiliarities.

The uncertainty of going to college in another town; taking a job in a state where you have never visited, much less lived; these are things many of us face. College in another state, hum? It is comfortable, and certainly cheaper, to go to a local community college. Where you live may have a very low cost of living, parents, friends and all sorts of things like that. Those things are real and sometimes limiting. You cope.

But It is a little sad to watch fear of risk stop talented people.

But human beings have a need for a sense of awe and it is important that we tap into it. We look at the stars and wonder what they mean; why do we find them fascinating? Nature constantly amazes us, and we wonder how it all works. What makes it do those things that give us awe. It is their uncertainty that causes awe in the stars and nature and in other people. Every human has a need to be awed and when we are, we are better for it.

Young people, strong and capable should try as many new things as possible. I don’t mean just teens; I mean young strong healthy people. One day you are going to be old and your biggest regret will be not taking a chance at being awe; of learning other things.

You don’t know what you don’t know. When you take that chance to be awed, to see the other side of the mountain, to plumb the depths of the ocrean; you will be awed by what you did not know. Take a chance don’t be reckless, but start small, get our adventure legs under you. Then GO!

Everything I know about the Current Political Climate I learned from Dr. Seuss

By W.D. Edmiston

There is a big divide over politics today. I have my opinion, you have yours. But those not as familiar with the commonality of political rancor over the ages – it can all be summed up well with what we learned from Dr. Seuss.

Everything stinks till it’s finished.

That true of politics. But the great thing about how our world has worked out for over 200 years is that when the people get their wish, not those of one extreme are the other, it smells relatively well in the end.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not. The more you read the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go.

So, since the founders left the power vested in the people who are all in the same pot, not the uber rich of the average politician, we make better choices for the public. That means all of us should read up, get up and do something about the things we really want to happen in our world.

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one Alive who is Youer than you.

This is encouraging to those of us who have never been involved in “campaigning” for something you want. You. Everyone in America is an individual, given a voice by those who founded the nation. The idea that some people try to shush you because they think their ideas are better than yours, or call you names just means they haven’t read enough and just don’t know.

Only you can control your future.

This could be either an encouragement to those in the above paragraph or a warning to those who want to control you. But it is also a warning of sorts to everyone. Both what you do and what you have done helps define who “you are Youer” than. Doing defines us much more than what we think or say. It indicates more than anything what you will do in the future.

Sometimes the questions are complicated, and the answers are simple. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.

This is also both an encouragement and warning. Some call it Kharma, some say “what goes around comes around” but the fact is what you put out is what you get back.

If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew. Just go right along and you’ll start happening too.

Those who encourage the division and the discord in their lives get division and discord. Eventually, we tend as humans to sweep the discord away and search for tranquility. Keeping positive as an individual is more powerful to your future than staying mired in the discord. Those who continue to trouble us tend to get their comeuppance one way or the other. Mr. Trump seems to take a little more direct response to what’s happening in his world. It is something that seems uncharacteristic of a President. Especially those who are unfamiliar with Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt.

I’ve heard there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see; now my trouble are going to have troubles with me.

Thank you Dr. Seuss.