In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that the American people are “united in the belief that our political system is broken, most politicians are corrupt, and neither major political party has the answers.” He adds that there is a “growing disdain for the unholy alliance between the largest corporations and our government… Some of us are ready to give up; some of us are ready to scream a little louder. But all of us believe we can do better.”

Click here to read on, my friend.

Tax time has come around again but, contrary to reports both published and whispered, the IRS is not after your soul.

This year, as every year, many young folk are faced with filing their income taxes for the very first time. Some will get no help from others in their family. This post is addressed to those individuals, but the rest of us could probably profit from reading it, too.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were nearly crushed in 1918 when the bulk of their Governing Body was arrested on false charges and sentenced to long terms in prison. Their spiritual Brothers were not yet well equipped to carry on the work without strong leadership and the barely-begun work faltered, stumbled and appeared to have been extinguished.

That was, in a sense, a good thing; as it made patently clear that this work was not going to be the work of man alone, but if it was to succeed at all, it would have to be the subject of heavenly direction. Click here to read on, my friend.

I suppose by now that you are hoping I will leave off the rants for a while … and in a while I intend to do so.

But not yet.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Everyone else, listen up.

I hate GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and their insidious sidekick, chemical farming, with the same passion I reserve for pedophiles, politicians, abortionists and big bankers.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Source unknown. If you can help me give proper credit, please do.

Is what the United States has done in the name of its citizens STILL justified? Was it EVER justified? The little solid evidence Americans have would lead them to believe that this is a trumped up war for the enrichment of the already rich at the expense of the already poor.

On November 12, 1938, Adolf Hitler ordered the given name of God (Jehovah / Yahweh) removed from the Bible.

This name appears at least 6,200 times in the original Hebrew texts. (Counting, apparently, all variants, some sources range as high as 6,828.) When my wife and I attended an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was our great good privilege to see this name on the ancient texts with our own eyes. It was, for us, a profoundly moving moment.

Up until the most recent revision, the KJV carried it at Ps 83:18. With the most recent incantation of that version, it is my understanding that Hitler finally got his way.

As the name would have appeared in ancient texts.

This is a ‘just gotta get it off my chest’ post. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. – H.L. Mencken

In an ideal world, perhaps, the function of schools would be to teach children not only a limited set of facts, but how to expand on those facts; to cause algebra and poetry to merge into history and from there to take a leap forward into the future and beautify it.

In an ideal world.

What happened to American education? The growth of that great nation was fueled as much by her engines of education as by her steam-powered vessels and deep fund of natural resources. And now look … mired in wars that cannot be won against ideologies that cannot be killed by anything humans can throw against them, draining the blood of her sturdy citizens to feather the beds of those who have never known any other sort.

Click here to read on, my friend.

The BBC posted this article about three recent violent events in the United States. Two appear to be the work of (so-called) right wing nut jobs and the other appears to have been comitted by a self-styled jihadist. As the BBC points out, the US allows its citizens the right to “keep and bear” arms in its constitution. That means, whether by accident or intent, there are about 30,000 gun injuries or deaths a year in the US. This is out of over 300 million citizens (according to Google, exactly 304,059,724 in July of 2008). You do the math.

The BBC, like American gun control lobbyists, points out that if guns in the US were controlled as they are in the UK, the US would have the same crime rate and level of civil liberties as in the UK. They are probably right. But that prospect is only appealing if you believe that Great Britain is a noticeably safer place to live than the US.

It is not. Click here to read on, my friend.

Let your voice be heard, whether or not it is to the taste of every
jack-in-office who may be obstructing the traffic. By all means, render unto
Caesar that which is Caesar's -- but this does not necessarily include
everything that he says is his.
      -- Denis Johnston, _The Brazen Horn_

At what point does submission to God and to the “superior authorities” part company?

Try to be specific in your comments. Give guidance, not shadow.