Johnny Tremain

While this is in our Netflix Queue, should I tell Stacy about the evils of watching the movie instead of reading the book? You may remember the book, Johnny Tremain. I read it in the 4th grade, you probably did too. Stacy is reading it in the 3rd so it is a little hard for her. I decided to read it to her. Reading it reminded me how much I enjoyed it when I was Stacy's age. (Stacy is also reading Meet George Washington. She just read to me the story about Washington and the cherry tree I mentioned last week. At least the book said that it was a story and probably not true. This is an improvement over what I was taught.) 

Johnny was an apprentice who hurt his hand. This made his job very difficult. He became acquainted with the Sons of Liberty—the heart of New England's Revolution. He also participated in the Boston Tea Party. 

What is interesting is Ester Forbes’ description of the Sons. She makes it very clear that they were not interested in compromise. She described a scene where the Sons beat up a Tory shopkeeper. She also describes their private meetings where they planned their revolt. The Sons understand that the people must be manipulated to achieve the goal of revolution. This got me to thinking. It is always true that most people are manipulated to achieve the desired ends of a small elite. The question is, will you be manipulated?  

While Johnny Tremain is a novel, it contains a lot of what one needs to know about this period in terms of the actions and motivations of the Sons of Liberty. They worked the mob and public opinion to achieve their elitist goals. I worded this last sentence in order to shock you. Yes they were elitists. The fact that you might agree with their goals does not change that. 

Will you be played like the people of Boston who were conned into becoming a mob during the Boston Tea Party? Or will you look at all the facts and come to your own conclusions? This is a theme I have been developing in the series on war. Will you think for yourself, or will you let Faux News, or for that matter MSNBC con you? 

While I hope you will agree with me on everything I write, as I resemble what  my mother often said of my father, "He may not always be right, but he is never wrong," my purpose here is to remind us all to think. Maybe you will give different weight to the various facts and come to a different conclusion than I do. Fox News, or MSNBC for that matter, have their place. Unless we all look behind the rhetoric we will be conned.  

Financial Definitions Made Easy

I wish I had been this clever. This is Tim Price on the Sovereign Man site. 

“Investors back historic Greek debt swap” -    FT headline 9.3.2012.

BANK, n. Bottomless cavity in the ground that sucks in money and the unwary.
I had quite a bit of money but then I put it in the bank.

BOND, n. A profitless contrivance used for catching the gullible or feeble-minded.
That pension fund is 100% in bonds now.

BROKER, adj. A comparative descriptive state for a client of a Wall Street bank.
He didn’t exactly have a lot of money before he started dealing with Goldman Sachs. Now he’s even
broker.

BUBBLE, n. Fundamental prerequisite for a functioning Anglo-Saxon economy.
We need a new bubble to replace the ones we had in dotcom and property.

CENTRAL BANK, n. Lobbyist for commercial banks well versed in alchemy.

CURRENCY, n. Largely intangible substance with an inherent property that tends to instantaneous evaporation, the destruction of life and the permanent impairment of wealth.
I had money once but then I exchanged it for currency in a moment of madness.

DEFAULT, n. Semi-mythical celestial occurrence that passes by Earth every 76 years.
I was worried for a second about that Greek default, but I realise there’s nothing to see now and all is well.

FEDERAL RESERVE, n. A wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.
The Federal Reserve voted to give a few more billion dollars to Wall Street.

GREECE, n. An undesirable or unfortunate happening that occurs unintentionally but results in harm, injury, damage and colossal loss of wealth. And profits for Goldman Sachs.
Did you see Greece ? Sheesh.

HORLICK, n. Progressive and insufficiently appreciated investment visionary.

HOUSE, n. In most countries, simply a place to live. In Britain, a theoretically infinite source of perpetual tax revenue for deluded Lib Dems. (This is tautological. – Ed.)

INVESTOR, n. Plucky protagonist admired for brave deeds and quixotic struggling who is about to get shafted by Wall Street interests.
I was an investor in euro zone sovereign bonds but then everything went Greek.

JAPAN, n. Where hopes of profit go to die.

KEYNES, n. Slang: Vulgar. Disparaging and offensive.
That joker Posen is a complete Keynes.

POLITICIAN, n. Someone better informed than you about how to spend your money.

RATINGS AGENCY, n. A professional entertainer who amuses by relating absurd and fantastical tales.
That ratings agency’s credit assessment was so funny, I had to change my trousers.

RESTRUCTURING, n. Statutory rape.
Those bondholders are undergoing a voluntary restructuring – you might even call it a ‘credit event’.

ROGUE TRADER, n. Unprofitable proprietary trader. (Hat-tip to Killian Connolly.)

SOCIETY, n. The process whereby wealth is diverted from taxpayers to banks.

TAXPAYER, n. Simple-minded dolt too foolish to be working for the government.

US GOVERNMENT, n. Another wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.
We seem to be running out of Goldman Sachs alumni here in the Treasury. No, wait, we’ve still got hundreds of ‘em.

The Basic principles of economics are explained here. 

Are You Perplexed?

I think that the reason many misinterpret the Bible is that they are too literal in the way they read it. I thought this was a modern problem, but that famous 11th century Rabbi, Maimonides, in his Guide to the Perplexed put it this way:

Ignorant and superficial readers take them in a literal, not in a figurative sense. Even well-informed persons are bewildered if they understand these passages in their literal signification, but they are entirely relieved of their perplexity when we explain the figure, or merely suggest that the terms are figurative. For this reason I have called this book Guide for the Perplexed.

I remember one ad I read when I was still living in Branson. The ad was for a “Bible Believing” church. They said that they took the Bible literally, except where it was symbolic. Well, isn’t that what everyone does? 

I do not remember High School English. I wish I did, as that is where most of us learn these things. For me it was EGO—Eyes Glazed Over. I only learned these things in graduate school—things like similes, analogies, metaphor, or poetry. If I had paid more attention in High School, I would have understood the Bible better earlier. 

Maybe you have heard the phrase, or seen the bumper sticker, “The Bible says what it means, and means what it says.” This is true of course, but sometimes the Bible says what it says in poetry, or in proverbs, or in symbols. If you take poetry as literal you have things like the book of Isaiah where trees clap their hands, or stars falling from heaven as referencing the fall of political leaders being viewed as literal heavenly objects falling. (Oh wait—people do make that particular mistake all the time … never mind.) 

Let me give you one example of the words of Jesus being taken in a way he did not intend. Luke 10 tells us Jesus said this. Yes, it is in red in some Bibles. 

18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” 

The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it. 

What is then done with this scripture in certain circles is to develop an elaborate theology of angels and demons, mostly apart from the Bible. 

My friend and ProphecyPodcast.com editor, Pam Dewey, has a site where she documents this.  

What they do is take this scripture literally and out of context, and combine it with other scriptures taken literally and out of context, and voila, a new doctrine is born. 

Is This What Jesus saw? You can go to Pam’s site to delve deeply into this if you wish, but let me give you the full context of  “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” 

Luke 10

Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two

1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

   5 “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ 6If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

   8 “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. 9 Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11’Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

   13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades.[b]

   16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

 17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

 18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

So what Jesus says is in response to the success of the missionary journeys of the 72 “elders” he sent out to Israel on a missionary trip. It has nothing to do with a supposed primordial fall of Satan. Satan was defeated on the earth and was symbolically bought down from heaven. (This is a common motif in prophecy, the fall of “heavenly” things is caused by a defeat here on the earth.) 

So when one examines a scripture some questions need to be asked—the kind of questions we were supposed to learn to ask in High School English. Is the scripture a metaphor? Is it symbolic? Is it poetry? What is the context? Asking these simple questions will keep us out of trouble when we interpret the Bible. 

Libya & Journalism

I remember all the hype about the evils of Gaddafi. I have no real disagreement with Gaddafi being evil. However, I wondered at the time if what I was hearing about events in Libya was true. What makes this video interesting is that one NGO official (NonGovernment Official) says that there were mercenaries hired by Ghadafi, and then 5 months later she says that there were no mercenaries. 

You can not trust what you read or even see. You can be conned if you are not careful. To answer a question that was posed on Facebook, no you can't trust me either. I might have been conned as well. 

Surely this is not happening in Syria. 

Yes the video is obviously a pro-Syrian video. I heard another video on a podcast, where "Danny" admits that the video is fake. "Syria Danny," where do they get these names, in this other video says that everything he said was true, but the video was faked. This may be true. This happens all the time in televison. But think about what I just said, fake video is common in television-remember this. 

Demon Host

Haunting and eerie. I am not really sure what this song is about. Of course that means we can have multiple interpretations. Here is mine. This song is about a man who has rejected religion but has come face to face with evil, much of it in his own life. He comtemplates death and wonders. Does the existence of Evil imply Good?