Week in Review: February 14-20, 2010
22/February/2010 12:30 Filed in: Week in
Review
We will comment on three events from the last week
that have ties to a continuing angst, not reported
currently in either the blogosphere or more
traditional media outlets. This anxiety relates to
how the individual handles, or hoped to handle,
events that test the individual’s moral compass.
“Moral compass? I don’t need no stinkin’ moral compass, I make my own way in this world and I am proud of it.”
This was evident in the Austin, Texas happening on Thursday where Joe Stack, a disgruntled former software engineer, crashed his small plane into the local IRS building, leaving behind his house he set on fire, and a reported 3000 word manifesto on the Internet.
What makes a person do such a thing?
It is easy to say that he was a crazy man and crazy men do stupid things, but that is just simplistic spin to cover a more complex causality. Joe may have been angry with the IRS, but he was still wealthy enough to have a house to set on fire, and a small plane he could fly into the building. So until he flew that plane into that building, our world really didn’t care one little bit about Joe’s problems, Joe’s house, or Joe’s plane. So Joe set out to end his miserable life, suicide by airplane, sort of similar to suicide by cop, so prevalent in many firearm disputes. By his plane’s compass, now dead Joe could find the Austin building, but Joe’s moral compass could not save his life.
On Friday Tiger Woods, the world’s once greatest golfer, gave his remorse speech in Florida. I had no intension of watching the well-staged event, but I literally had some time to kill here on the left coast, until the library opened, so I gave it a shot. What I found interesting was Wood’s reasons for fooling around, was basically the same hindsight explanation used by Bill Clinton to explain his fooling around with Monica – “Because he could.”
Again both Tiger’s and Bill’s moral compasses, pointed to their own center, for life’s direction, because there was no external reference by which they could find their position in an external real world, and thereby set a course that would not lead to self destruction.
The final event on this week’s review was the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington DC. Here most of the nation’s conservative political types bashed President Obama for the mess he is trying to establish in the United States. What was missing in all of this was the fact the there would not have been a President Obama, just a junior Senator Obama from Illinois, if CPAC had not been so arrogantly condescending to the American people in CPAC’s previous marriage to Washington centered, politics, money, and power.
Glenn Beck for his part in the keynote address, put it quite bluntly to the conservatives there gathered, but also to his progressive adversaries; redemption is not possible until you reach the bottom.
So far this Monday in the good old USA we see no repentance from either the political left or right in this country. They are still addicted to their lot in life, because they can. That means for the rest of us, we still must cope with a future in which our moral compass will be tested also, probably because we to, have for so long coasted along on auto pilot, believing that evolutionary myth; forever onward and upward through random chance, that we hope to manipulate to our own benefit.
Just like Beck, I am slowly beginning to understand that a century of evolutionary progressivism has got us to a point where we must face the fact that this country is rapidly becoming totally dysfunctional. However, so far the alternative outlined by Beck and others is another dysfunctional alternative, essentially lower taxes, lower spending and a libertarian view of doing your own thing (as long as it does not hurt anyone else).
For those who might be interested, this is just a bloviated version of philosopher Emmanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which states essentially, “Act in such a way that what you do shall become a universal law.”
That makes perfect sense to me, and you readers also, where it breaks down is when we get beyond this small circle into the big bad world of scumbags out there. Those people wouldn’t know a universal law until it hit them in the face. Such as: Flying an airplane into a building will eliminate you from the gene pool. Sometimes my definition of is, is wrong. When used in excess, my definitions are many times wrong.
Glenn in his speech mentioned the power of law to point us in the right direction. He also correctly pointed out that moral laws come from God. Those moral laws are to keep us from doing crazy things, stupid things, self-destructive things. The moral law teaches that if we would like the blessings of God’s inalienable rights we need to obey natural law.
Glenn learned these lessons when in an effort to turn his life around he found Mormonism. Similarly most evangelical Christians find these laws in their churches on Sunday also. Jews find these laws in synagogue and Muslims find these laws in their Mosque. Tiger Woods says he hopes to find direction in Buddhism, and that is a more difficult path, but it still is an external path.
What underlies the foundation of the American republic however is not the common or the specific application of God’s laws, or common law, but rather the common application of God’s grace. Wonder springs not from law, but from grace. Collectively, “I wonder why?” changes the world.
Probably the most universal hymn in the world is “Amazing Grace,” written by redeemed slave trader and English clergyman John Newton in 1779. Just by unforeseen coincidence the American Revolutionary War, against a divine right king in England, occurred from 1775 – 1783.
The parable that we either learn through history or are destined to repeat those mistakes especially rings true in a country that has become more and more progressively progressive over the past century. We have lost our way, and progressive lite, or progressive heavy, nor will some new spin on libertarian dis-civilization bring change we can live and prosper within.
Those solutions will only come through a greater emphasis on grace that “saved a wretch like me.” In a world populated by only the self-righteous there is no faith, no hope, or no charity, that can bring renewal, repentance, revival, or other “re’ word you may choose.
By amazing grace a song was written and an amazing country was founded. It is only by amazing grace that this chaotic mess will become order. It is not by luck or chance, but solely by God’s grace alone, a lesson we still seem determined to learn the hard way.
“Moral compass? I don’t need no stinkin’ moral compass, I make my own way in this world and I am proud of it.”
This was evident in the Austin, Texas happening on Thursday where Joe Stack, a disgruntled former software engineer, crashed his small plane into the local IRS building, leaving behind his house he set on fire, and a reported 3000 word manifesto on the Internet.
What makes a person do such a thing?
It is easy to say that he was a crazy man and crazy men do stupid things, but that is just simplistic spin to cover a more complex causality. Joe may have been angry with the IRS, but he was still wealthy enough to have a house to set on fire, and a small plane he could fly into the building. So until he flew that plane into that building, our world really didn’t care one little bit about Joe’s problems, Joe’s house, or Joe’s plane. So Joe set out to end his miserable life, suicide by airplane, sort of similar to suicide by cop, so prevalent in many firearm disputes. By his plane’s compass, now dead Joe could find the Austin building, but Joe’s moral compass could not save his life.
On Friday Tiger Woods, the world’s once greatest golfer, gave his remorse speech in Florida. I had no intension of watching the well-staged event, but I literally had some time to kill here on the left coast, until the library opened, so I gave it a shot. What I found interesting was Wood’s reasons for fooling around, was basically the same hindsight explanation used by Bill Clinton to explain his fooling around with Monica – “Because he could.”
Again both Tiger’s and Bill’s moral compasses, pointed to their own center, for life’s direction, because there was no external reference by which they could find their position in an external real world, and thereby set a course that would not lead to self destruction.
The final event on this week’s review was the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington DC. Here most of the nation’s conservative political types bashed President Obama for the mess he is trying to establish in the United States. What was missing in all of this was the fact the there would not have been a President Obama, just a junior Senator Obama from Illinois, if CPAC had not been so arrogantly condescending to the American people in CPAC’s previous marriage to Washington centered, politics, money, and power.
Glenn Beck for his part in the keynote address, put it quite bluntly to the conservatives there gathered, but also to his progressive adversaries; redemption is not possible until you reach the bottom.
So far this Monday in the good old USA we see no repentance from either the political left or right in this country. They are still addicted to their lot in life, because they can. That means for the rest of us, we still must cope with a future in which our moral compass will be tested also, probably because we to, have for so long coasted along on auto pilot, believing that evolutionary myth; forever onward and upward through random chance, that we hope to manipulate to our own benefit.
Just like Beck, I am slowly beginning to understand that a century of evolutionary progressivism has got us to a point where we must face the fact that this country is rapidly becoming totally dysfunctional. However, so far the alternative outlined by Beck and others is another dysfunctional alternative, essentially lower taxes, lower spending and a libertarian view of doing your own thing (as long as it does not hurt anyone else).
For those who might be interested, this is just a bloviated version of philosopher Emmanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which states essentially, “Act in such a way that what you do shall become a universal law.”
That makes perfect sense to me, and you readers also, where it breaks down is when we get beyond this small circle into the big bad world of scumbags out there. Those people wouldn’t know a universal law until it hit them in the face. Such as: Flying an airplane into a building will eliminate you from the gene pool. Sometimes my definition of is, is wrong. When used in excess, my definitions are many times wrong.
Glenn in his speech mentioned the power of law to point us in the right direction. He also correctly pointed out that moral laws come from God. Those moral laws are to keep us from doing crazy things, stupid things, self-destructive things. The moral law teaches that if we would like the blessings of God’s inalienable rights we need to obey natural law.
Glenn learned these lessons when in an effort to turn his life around he found Mormonism. Similarly most evangelical Christians find these laws in their churches on Sunday also. Jews find these laws in synagogue and Muslims find these laws in their Mosque. Tiger Woods says he hopes to find direction in Buddhism, and that is a more difficult path, but it still is an external path.
What underlies the foundation of the American republic however is not the common or the specific application of God’s laws, or common law, but rather the common application of God’s grace. Wonder springs not from law, but from grace. Collectively, “I wonder why?” changes the world.
Probably the most universal hymn in the world is “Amazing Grace,” written by redeemed slave trader and English clergyman John Newton in 1779. Just by unforeseen coincidence the American Revolutionary War, against a divine right king in England, occurred from 1775 – 1783.
The parable that we either learn through history or are destined to repeat those mistakes especially rings true in a country that has become more and more progressively progressive over the past century. We have lost our way, and progressive lite, or progressive heavy, nor will some new spin on libertarian dis-civilization bring change we can live and prosper within.
Those solutions will only come through a greater emphasis on grace that “saved a wretch like me.” In a world populated by only the self-righteous there is no faith, no hope, or no charity, that can bring renewal, repentance, revival, or other “re’ word you may choose.
By amazing grace a song was written and an amazing country was founded. It is only by amazing grace that this chaotic mess will become order. It is not by luck or chance, but solely by God’s grace alone, a lesson we still seem determined to learn the hard way.