just like you daddy.....

i never thought i'd live to see the day when a son could look up at his father and say, "when i grow up i want to have a husband just like yours, daddy!"

my liberal friends call me an extremist or alarmist when i confront the logic and morality of homosexual marriage. they say that there is no fear of raising a child with certain preconceptions. "what are you afraid of? you think they're going to raise a host of little homosexuals?" they go on to ask me, "did you ever 'choose' to be heterosexual?" "do you think homosexuals, 'choose' to be that way?" my answer is yes. at some point in any person's life, they are bound to make a determined choice of how they will act in the world. now, whether or not there is a "gay gene" is not what i'm concerned with. i am concerned with learned behavior. and there is no more influential place of learning than the home.

i was born into a lower middle class, christian household. we had a traditional american family: dad, mom, sisters & brother. it was the norm. i admired my parents and the life we had. especially when exposed to the households of others. my mom loved to cook, clean & care for her family. my dad loved to work. my sisters loved to pick at one another and i loved to pick on them. we all picked on my youngest brother! i was raised knowing what a family should look like.

now, let's take a look at a new definition of family; two dads & a son. this young boy's norm is two fathers. he is only exposed to this norm and knows no other - except for television families. if this boy is anything like i was, he loves his family and most likely will be influenced by the structure of it. no matter what his own personal desires may be, they could very easily be outweighed by the influence of his own love for the structure of his household. this child is raised knowing what a family should look like.

so, can a child be influenced to live a certain lifestyle merely by years of social interaction? YES, a child can be molded, trained and conditioned to lead a lifestyle that they would not have, had they not been raised in a particular type of household. (i.e. parents with drug addictions, alcoholism, domestic violence or an organized, caring peaceful household.) children learn to present themselves in the world by what they see at home. it is a perfect example of learned behavior. using such an example, it could be very easy to imagine a son looking up at his father and saying, "when i grow up i want to have a husband like yours, daddy!"

i never thought i'd live to see the day.

lessons from bolshevism

i am an avowed member of the petit bourgeois. i am not, however, as many who use this name in a derogatory manner, a bourgeois wannabe. i don't want to be rich, richer, poor or poorer. i love my life; my wife, sons, grandkids, home, church, job, car, hobbies & leisure time. and yes, although i have may issues with the direction it is currently going, i love my country! i do not usually occupy myself with political things. i find it inane and, frankly, a whole lot of useless waste of time. something that takes me away from my learning, leisure & family. of late, however, i have had a drive unlike any other i've experienced in my life. the occupy wall street protests have awakened in me a sense of duty and urgency that has long been missing.

as most post modern americans i am a frequent visiter of facebook. i discovered the OWS protests not through any media outlets, but from a single post from one of my "friends". immediately i knew that it was not what it seemed. the crowds of wrinkle-free, long-haired, disheveled nouveau hippies were not just out there because they didn't want to pay their college loans - although, that is most certainly part of it - they want a revolution. they are outspoken opponents of capitalism. they lay the blame for our current situation clearly at the feet of wall street, big banks & evil corporations. the words of the protesters looked eerily familiar, as if i'd read them before.

my curiousity was aroused. i went to the official site and read a small blurb explaining the aim of the movement.

"Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants."

huh, arab spring, eh? wonder what they're all about?

"The Arab Spring (Arabic: الربيع العربي‎; also known as the Arabic Rebellions or the Arab Revolutions) is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world. Since 18 December 2010 there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt; a civil war in Libya resulting in the fall of its regime; civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen; major protests in Israel, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman, and minor protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara. Clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011 have also been inspired by the regional Arab Spring.

The protests have shared techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches and rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness..."

i just read the wiki page, i figured the official arab spring site was only in arabic. still curious, i looked up "technics of civil resistance".

"The term civil resistance, alongside the term nonviolent resistance, is used to describe political action that relies on the use of non-violent methods by civil groups to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine the adversary's sources of power. Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, and the creation of parallel institutions of government. Civil resistance movements' motivations for avoiding violence are generally related to context, including a society's values and its experience of war and violence, rather than to any absolute ethical principle. Cases of civil resistance can be found throughout history and in many modern struggles, against both tyrannical rulers and democratically elected governments. The phenomenon of civil resistance is often associated with the advancement of democracy."

non-violent force, protests & revolution. these are reoccurring descriptive terms that are a common thread so far. by the way, isn't non-violent force a oxymoron?

i continued to study this movement. the OWS site had a link to "a call to action."

A Modest Call to Action on this September 17th
Posted Sept. 17, 2011, 9:46 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

"This statement is ours, and for anyone who will get behind it. Representing ourselves (not the movement as a whole), we bring this call for revolution.

We want freedom for all, without regards for identity, because we are all people, and because no other reason should be needed. However, this freedom has been largely taken from the people, and slowly made to trickle down, whenever we get angry.

Money, it has been said, has taken over politics. In truth, we say, money has always been part of the capitalist political system. A system based on the existence of have and have nots, where inequality is inherent to the system, will inevitably lead to a situation where the haves find a way to rule, whether by the sword or by the dollar.

We agree that we need to see election reform. However, the election reform proposed ignores the causes which allowed such a system to happen. Some will readily blame the federal reserve, but the political system has been beholden to political machinations of the wealthy well before its founding.

We need to address the core facts: these corporations, even if they were unable to compete in the electoral arena, would still remain control of society. They would retain economic control, which would allow them to retain political control. Term limits would, again, not solve this, as many in the political class already leave politics to find themselves as part of the corporate elites.

We need to retake the freedom that has been stolen from the people, altogether.

If you agree that freedom is the right to communicate, to live, to be, to go, to love, to do what you will without the impositions of others, then you might be one of us.

If you agree that a person is entitled to the sweat of their brows, that being talented at management should not entitle others to act like overseers and overlords, that all workers should have the right to engage in decisions, democratically, then you might be one of us.

If you agree that freedom for some is not the same as freedom for all, and that freedom for all is the only true freedom, then you might be one of us.

If you agree that power is not right, that life trumps property, then you might be one of us.

If you agree that state and corporation are merely two sides of the same oppressive power structure, if you realize how media distorts things to preserve it, how it pits the people against the people to remain in power, then you might be one of us.

And so we call on people to act

We call for protests to remain active in the cities. Those already there, to grow, to organize, to raise consciousnesses, for those cities where there are no protests, for protests to organize and disrupt the system.

We call for workers to not only strike, but seize their workplaces collectively, and to organize them democratically. We call for students and teachers to act together, to teach democracy, not merely the teachers to the students, but the students to the teachers. To seize the classrooms and free minds together.

We call for the unemployed to volunteer, to learn, to teach, to use what skills they have to support themselves as part of the revolting people as a community.

We call for the organization of people's assemblies in every city, every public square, every township.

We call for the seizure and use of abandoned buildings, of abandoned land, of every property seized and abandoned by speculators, for the people, for every group that will organize them.

We call for a revolution of the mind as well as the body politic."

the picture was beginning to get clearer: take, seize, control, protest, act, power. this movement has a clear agenda and it is revolution. as a christian, i wondered why, if these people have access to enough contributors to maintain an ongoing protest for over a month, why didn't they begin raising money through charity & good will, to give to those who they say are the 99%? why was their time occupied with protest? the answer is, power. political power is the aim of this movement.

so intrigued was i at this point that i ran to my bookshelf and pulled down a few books. books that i thought might contain similar calls to action. i quoted the original marxist call to action in my last post. but, it bears repeating, this time the whole final chapter: Chapter IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

"Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat (this is what right wing rhetoric calls advancing cultural warfare), in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

i have to ask again, does this sound familiar?

in just a quick glance through one of my favourite books from one of my favourite writers; modern times by paul johnson, i came across a description of lenin in the years of the bolshevik revolution.

"certainly politics now obsessed him, then and for ever, and his approach was always cerebral rather than emotional...aged twenty two he dissuaded friends from collecting money for victims of a famine, on the grounds that hunger 'performs a progressive function' and would 'cause the peasants to reflect on the fundamental facts of capitalist society'."

so, instead of contributing money, food, clothes & time toward helping to meet the needs of those who are - in the words of our current revolutionaries - the 99%, it was politically expedient to allow them to hunger. why? because, to a revolutionary, the revolution is more important than the humans for which it claims to be concerned.

returning now to my original motivation for writing today, the target of today's, OWS protest: the homes of the bank owners. this will fail as it always has. the ultra-rich have enough money to insulate themselves from these kinds of attacks. the thing about it is, the protesters know this. if not, the organizers of the protest know it. that is why they will eventually turn on the petit bourgeois, those wannabes who consort with the enemy in hopes of eating the scraps from the table. i call, BULLSHIT.

as i said when i first started this post, i LOVE my life. there is nothing that would make me screw up what i have, ESPECIALLY, some misguided revolutionary wannabes fresh out of college who don't have enough peach fuzz to cover a small shriveled grape!

i truly hope the time never comes that i have to defend myself against a group of unorganized neo-revolitionaries. but, if they decide to continue on this quixotic quest, i can envision bad things happening.

occupying wall street

"In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

does any of the previous quote look familiar? take a moment to look around. think about the middle east and the famous "student uprising" that was started on facebook. take a moment to compare the current facebook uprising occurring in america: occupy wall street. apparently this movement is gaining some steam and moving out of manhattan into flyover country.

now that you have this picture in your mind, take a trip back to the early 20th century. try to imagine the rush of being involved in the communist movements that swept asia & eastern europe. i'm sure that everyone of those people imagined the egalitarian utopia that would soon encompass the globe. in russia, china & most of eastern europe "the people" ascended to power and ran the tyrants out of the country. (or, in the case of the czar, executed them) it was a true victory and an obvious sign that the historical determinism of marx was spot on! no longer would people be oppressed by unjust, greedy, tyrannous thugs. the world was now on the proper footing. it's path marked out by all those fellow travelers that paved the way.

by the end of the 20th century millions upon millions had died in the largest social experiment ever attempted in human history. formerly rich and prosperous countries were brought to ruin. a handful of party elites had become the very thing they had purported to hate, tyrants. this was the ultimate outcome of the socialist movement. (china, being the one hold out, realized that communism could be propped up by offering cheap labor to the rest of the world & creating a trade imbalance that would drain capitalist countries of their capital.) it was basically, "de ja vu, all over again!" nothing had changed.

toggle forward and find yourself at a bar discussing current events with the chic urban hipster. he/she/it, believes that the cold war was just a manifestation of the military industrial complex. it had nothing to do with the fact that the communists from the USSR had spent a large portion of their national budget supporting the popular front, fellow travelers & leftist sympathizers in america in an attempt to infiltrate the US and turn it's people against the government. it had nothing to do with trying to destroy western civilization. not to mention the their verbal threats (if you think it was just saber rattling, ask any eastern european country.) , political rhetoric, stockpiling of weapons & nuclear warheads. it was merely a fable concocted & taught to school children to make them more patriotic. unfortunately, history does not confirm this bit of liberal fiction.

a question that usually evades these young, eager, revolutionaries is: what happened to the people with money? what happened to the money? did the revolutionaries simply take it when the revolution was over? In part, yes. however, the only thing they actually got was the stuff. the factories, equipment, offices, land and homes were abandoned. but, as the people with money began to see the writing on the wall, they moved their money somewhere safe. somewhere the revolution couldn’t touch it.

the truth about marxist revolutionaries is the same today as it was in 1848 when marx penned the opening words of the communist manifesto:

"A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of communism."

remember the closing words of the manifesto & opening words of this post: "communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things." and further into the document he writes: "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie." how, you ask, will this be accomplished?

"They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions."

ALL EXISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS. that is all encompassing. another translation says that "all existing social structures" will be overthrown. the person, the family, the home, the church, finance, business, government, all structures and conditions will & must be overthrown.

and what does marx describe as the "leading question"? property. this is what emboldens the jobless, homeless malcontents that now occupy a small park in manhattan, near wall street. they don't want people to have the right to own things. yet, our founding fathers believed the right to ownership of private property to be the very nail upon which liberty hung! (there are some in this current movement, I’m sure, who merely want people to be limited in how much they can own. either way, it is a shot across the bow of the good ship liberty!) in fact, to take it to it's ultimate conclusion, they honestly believe that the money being handled by the financial establishment is theirs. that's why they believe they have the right to hassle private citizens. it is a misconstrued & misappropriated sense of justice. it is the culmination of years & years of indoctrination in marxist ideology - doled out by the public schools & university professors.

one thing I’ll say about the american marxist, he is patient. he waited out the whole of the 20th century like that fish that takes small bites of it’s prey and scurries away to hide (...usually in some cluttered university office or artist commune.) patiently eating small portions until the united states looks like a turkey carcass after thanksgiving dinner. to a man, every supporter of marxist ideology explains that, regardless of it’s history of complete and catastrophic failure, marxism works. It just hasn’t been done correctly yet!

one of my favourite movies also contains one of my favourite quotes. it is both poignant and instructive.

"the greatest trick the devil every pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

another classic truism is: those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it.

the old lies of the left have become post-modern truths, precisely because no one has stood up like the little boy in the story and pointed out that the emperor is buck-assed-naked! consider this post my accusing finger. the specter lies at the door and is dressed in a coat of progressivism.

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

J'accuse!

signed: ben c huggins, petit bourgeois

postscript:

out of morbid curiosity, i watched a youtube video shot at the “occupy wall street” protest. a well dressed young black man was tearfully pointing toward a tall building and screaming, “that’s the bank that took my parent’s home!” immediately I was drawn in by the scene. In all sincerity the young man pleaded with the inanimate edifice of stone, steel and glass. he continued, “they played by the rules. they obeyed the law. they went to school. they got their phds. and you took their home!!!” right about there I began to become less sympathetic. playing by the rules and obeying the law means paying your mortgage. the only way a bank will take your home is if you stop paying your mortgage. trust me, banks do not want or need another foreclosed home on their ledgers. post modern americans don’t understand contracts because they haven’t been taught personal responsibility. (a country where you can easily get a divorce because you “changed your mind”) in place of responsibility, integrity & ethics, children have been spoon-fed marxist doctrine that fills them with a sense of entitlement.

when you sign your name to any legal document, you are legally, morally, ethically & financially bound to keep up your end of the deal. (hey protesters, the same rule applies to student loans!) if you do not keep your end of the deal, i.e. pay your bills, there are legal ramifications - your things will be returned to those who loaned you the money to make the purchase in the first place - that is what is right.

criticize and die

while doing my daily facebook scan today, i came across a link called, Dan Savage's New Threat to Rick Santorum on funnyordie.com. i have always been a huge fan of saturday night live , and most of what comes out of it, except for a short time in the '80s, is good comedy. i would go so far as to say that they have moments of comic genius. some skits are not necessarily my taste, but i haven't been so turned off that i stopped tuning in. my first exposure to funny or die was a skit that, SNL alum, will farrell did with his daughter. there were some people outraged because his daughter was playing the role of will's landlady & he was calling her all sorts of names. i thought it was hilarious! later, of course, the classic bat fight came around and i was hooked. one of my funny or die faves is, between two ferns with zach galifianakis.

with this background in mind, i clicked the link to watch the video. dan savage, a chiseled, well spoken gay man is sitting with a hand full of notes in a nondescript office setting. he begins to describe an episode in which he turned rick santorum's name into a top google search response. with whatever backing he had (big gay money?) he moved a vile "redefined" description of the name santorum to the top google listing. now, this is probably funny if you are gay, non-christian, or a radical marxist, but it is the type of base behavior that is uncalled for in civilized society. especially when the left has been pleading for civil discourse! after describing this event, mr. savage moved straight into threat mode. if, he said, mr. santorum said anything against the gay community he would redefine the name rick. he then sat down with several people named rick and began to read the newly redefined description, which upon hearing they showed open revulsion. thankfully almost every other word was bleeped out. at the end of the video several semi famous ricks pleaded with rick santorum to leave the gay community alone. if not for his own sake, for the sake of the other ricks.

maybe i don't get it because i'm not gay. maybe i don't get it because i'm not liberal. maybe i don't get it because i'm not a marxist radical who is intent on redefining language to suit my agenda. but, one thing is sure, it's not because i don't have a sense of humor. that video doesn't belong on funnyordie.com. because, if it was true to it's name, that video would be dead.

what is really going on with this video, as was proven by mr. savage's prior actions, is threats of character assassination. mr. savage plans on maligning a man and, if need be, ruining his reputation, all to keep negative attention away from his community. mr. savage wants to live a life free from criticism. there is no lifestyle or community that is, or should be free from scrutiny. what mr. savage wants is to live in a protective shell that keeps all opposition at bay, all the while knowing that he has a digital bully pulpit from which he can assure his perceived enemies are properly and publicly bludgeoned.

mr. savage is not funny. mr. savage is a bully and an elitist who can not support himself without the help of threats and slander. redefining has been part of the radical movement for years. they have used it to change the meanings of formerly useful words like progressive, gay, rainbow, family, liberate, marriage, phobia, and so many more. if mr. savage enjoys redefining so much, maybe he should redefine the word funny.

the economy

without going on & on about why i haven't posted since november of 2010 - lazy - same as it ever was, i'll begin by noting that i was right and all my liberal friends were wrong. that's not arrogance, just truth. everything that i said would happen if barack obama was elected president has come true. he is true to his radical roots, i'll give him that. he has destroyed our economy and returned us to, and this is what i told all my liberal friends, the carter era! that's right, high unemployment, inflated currency, recession, high prices, and a dismal looking future. good job! (feel free to sense sarcasm here.)

there is only so much that can be blamed on bush. i know he wasn't the greatest president! but, he didn't do this!

now, i can also admit that much damage was done long before mr. obama ever stepped foot into the white house. that particular narrative begins way back in the FDR era when everyone was enamored with keynes. and they still haven't realized that his theories were flawed. the economic elites of the world are depending on the words of an egotistical hack to save them. print, lend, borrow, spend. these are the words of a keynesian. here's a little piece of current events that i'd like to shove in the face of the FED, it doesn't work!!!!! when you inflate a currency, you make it worthless!

mr. obama isn't really interested with the outcome of the 2012 election. if he was he would look at the state of this country in 2011. the state of this country had it's economic beginnings in the 1930s, but obama took it to a place, from which he knew - we could never return.

i am hopeful for an economic turn around for the sake of my children and grandchildren. but, i have my doubts that anyone in washington has the stones to take the steps necessary to reverse the downward economic spiral in which we find ourselves.

job one: get away from keynesian economics! that guy was an impostor and a charlatan who sold us on his economic theory like bill gates sold us on DOS. but, as all windows users found out, a system built on another faulty system will fail and fail, and fail....and fail......blue screen. how did they fix this? hello????? a BETTER SYSTEM - unix/linux! (as a mac user i have to say, we made the move to a unix based system first.) move to a better system, have a better product, a better future.

blah

oh, this old thing......

what is killing us

democrats will not destroy this country. republicans will not destroy this country. the president, the liberal or conservative media, the supreme court or islamic terrorism will not destroy this country - the loss of civility in public discourse will.