Apr 20 2016

My Response To The NFL Attacking Georgia

Because the NFL has interjected themselves into the debate on Religious liberty and furthermore has chosen to persecute and advocate against Christians who stand by their convictions of faith and conscience, no matter how unpopular or out-of-style those convictions are, which is their unalienable Constitutional right, I must exercise my own rights, those selfsame unalienable rights, my birthright as an American citizen, and stand beside my brothers and sisters, my fellow citizens in Georgia whom you, the NFL, through misguided arrogance believing the monumental wealth you have acquired from the marketing of the play of a child’s game, combating over a misshapen leather ball, somehow grants you license to trample the basic aforementioned unalienable rights of the very citizens whose monetary and popular support of your game, your product, has granted you the enormous wealth you enjoy and abuse.

 I will stand with those you persecute in Georgia and I will no longer watch, purchase, or any way support your product, your business. The NFL should be in the business of football, not trying to bully the citizens of the United States into changing the fundamental structure that has produced and supported the very free society that grants the platform on which a colossal entity such as the NFL can be built.
I have been a football fan since I was a little boy so it is with no small regret that I have severed any ties or support to the NFL. I have deleted all my fan accounts and put my memorabilia in a closet hoping my favorite sport will come to their senses and return to being just that, a sport. Until then, please delete my email account from your list.
 We live in a nation where not only are we afforded the right to be controversial and pursue agendas that might make others uncomfortable, but we are also afforded the right to disagree with those agendas and say “no”.  Your disdain for that basic unalienable right is more than troubling and in more plain speech, perhaps you should just stick to your business; that is, playing a game with a little leather ball.
With much regret and frustration,
Andy Torbett
Apr 9 2016

A Conduit Severed and A Pendulum Swung

Part Two-A Pendulum Swung

So similar is the dilemma of the battle of religious liberties against the cry for the equitable treatment of the humanities to the lack of knowledge transference that it begs the question of whether the severing of the conduit of knowledge is directly related to the need for those most tolerant of the humanities to facilitate and necessitate the trampling of the religious liberties of their fellow countrymen to achieve their end. But to what end? And could it be the knowledge of our forefathers, a knowledge not transferred, is the reason we can behave so abominably?

Certainly history bears out the truth of this premise. At the genesis of the revolutions of noted social engineers such as Marx and Lenin, of Democratic socialists and Communists, was the fabric of teachings that the old beliefs and morals of their forefathers were outdated, inhibiting, and not capable of embracing the new ways. Disciples were admonished the reject these old ways and embrace what was new. It was this severing, specifically of moral codes, that allowed these brutal uprisings that that typified social democratic revolutions leaving 100 million slaughtered in its wakes.

So now we see another rise of social engineering. Our moral codes once again are seen as the obstacle to its resurgence. Our religions, Our Constitution all paint a negative pall on what many consider progress.

So we have passed laws to protect the perceived rights of those believed aggrieved. Still, it is not enough to pass laws to protect those rights, citizens who do not agree must be forced to agree or face the wrath of government. It is necessary, again, to force acceptance, and the cries from the ghosts of perils pasts call to warn us.

But the Constitution calls a halt, reminding us that no law can be made that prohibits free speech and the free expression of religion. Still states have passed humanity laws assuring the populace that when the Constitution said “no Law” it didn’t mean this law. The need for tolerance outweighs the need for freedom.

Christianity is the culprit now. It’s tenets, the dos and don’ts, have inhibited the “safe places” of so many, so many who just want to be accepted. And Christians will accept them, even if we must use the bludgeon of government to enforce it. “Its time to swing the pendulum against those have oppressed us for so long,” rail the social engineers, the social democrats, again. “Away with the old ways of right and wrong.”

Ah, but the pendulum always swings back. So, what of that? Christianity is the easy target. With its gospel of dos and don’ts it is also the gospel of peace and love. There’s no fear of retribution. But what of those that do not worship God but worship government?

Our founding fathers wrote that no law should be written to prevent religious freedom because they knew that once one law was written to prevent religion, then another would come and another, all in retribution for the other. On and on the pendulum would swing, only settling after untold damage had been done.

Freedom is freedom whether in the home or the market. Freedom inhibited anywhere is not freedom. Its just that simple. Whether a persons beliefs disrupt your “safe zone” or your feelings is not a warrant that cancels their freedom to do so. You just need a stronger “safe zone” or as they said in “olden times”, thicker skin.

A pendulum swung is an energy time not easily recovers

Each energy rails against the swinging to balance the other

But woe is the battle inertia between them until the pendulum calms

Would to God that pendulum stayed settled and never swung at all

Apr 7 2016

A Conduit Severed and A Pendulum Swung

 

Part One

The hilarity that has ensued surrounding the defense of “safe places” in our colleges over the past weeks has been more a testament to the lack of spinal integrity revealed by these generations, these students, who are entrusted with providing the fundamental sustenance for the future survival of our civilization, rather than fodder for late night comedians. From Halloween costumes to chalk drawings on a sidewalk, with now the latest offense, a fellow student raising her hand to ask a question, no offense is too little in the eyes of cringing tyrants terrified at any hint of a ripple of contrarian emotion in their placid pool of placation causing the young despots to recoil from a repulsive horizon of personal responsibility and run wildly, arms outstretched, for the first entity that will nanny their crippled existence. The idea of secondary education as a preparatory rite, a precursor to adulthood, and necessary to a child’s choice of profession is now laughable at best.

These stagnant pools deemed “safe places” by our colleges and universities are the fruits of a tree long well rooted in our educational system. The tactics and concepts of confrontation, rebuttal, challenge, failure, success, repercussion, absolutes, and responsibility have all but disappeared from modern education leaving us with only affirmation, reward, malleability, and compliance. This list is assuredly incomplete given the many levels of education, but the ideas of handing children the latter list of positive affirmations without them first toiling through the more negative aspects of learning has left us as a nation with increasingly stunted professionals, citizens without knowledge. As a result, the title student and the process of learning has become a study in contradiction.

The caricature of the brutal headmaster, vicious school marm, and overbearing nun each wielding a paddle, switch, or a ruler is what some would like to stereotype as an archaic educational system better remembered than used. As usual, the caricature highlights the extreme to diminish the norm. An in-depth study of these “olden times” would reveal much of these quaint school houses, the headmasters , the marms, the nuns built the foundation of societal juggernaut, a civilization the world had never seen with citizens from factory laborers to Presidents, who were well thought, well spoken, well-mannered, and well prepared to build a society. A recently discovered eight grade final exam (circa. 1895  Salina, Kansas) would put more than a ripple into petulant college brats kiddie pool. I know I couldn’t pass it!

Why so much knowledge stuffed into eighth grade brains? Many children never stayed in school past the eight grade. The demands of family farms pulled some out. Some moved on to apprenticeships. Some moved on to help the family business. Teachers knew they had a limited time, but thankfully this time was the time when young minds were most fertile. So teachers taught, demanded, scolded, exhorted, primed, and pumped while students learned, failed, re-learned again, and learned, and learned at a furious rate because they knew time was “awastin’”.

All the mentors that I have had in my life have invariable at times been harsh. Demands were made, with challenges to meet standards set. The standards were not moved when I failed, instead I was simply informed, “That’s wrong.” Furthermore this small statement, a modern catalyst to dis-functionality, was followed up another equally harrowing statement, “Now try it again and do it the right way this time. The way I taught you.”

I cannot count the times, while learning the construction trade, that I’ve torn out a wall I had just built to re-frame it because the lead carpenter said, “That’s wrong.” Usually the admonishment to “fix it” was laced and purpled with many colorful metaphors. But what if someone just fixed it for me and smoothed my wounded pride? I would never learn the correct way to frame and what “not on my job site”, “not on my watch”, “not when my name’s on the sign” really meant.

The conduit of learning that we as society use to pass knowledge from generation to generation is only one piece of the educational apparatus. It connects the teacher to the student. We have so cluttered it with prerequisites to sanitize the educator that stream of knowledge is all but vanished. The final severing is students who have been so indoctrinated with the belief that knowledge must be presented with a complete affirmation of who they are and where they are that they reject any presentation that challenges their preconceptions.

And this is the severing of knowledge to learning,

When mentoring is pampering

Than all knowledge dies,

For lack of transference and stagnating lies

Mar 30 2016

The Helpless The Agony

 

As with so many others, I felt the helpless agony of watching, during the most sacred and holy week of Christendom, the martyrdom of so many of my brothers and sisters and little brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. While we of Christian faith understand through the warnings in the teachings of Christ that we will be hated of all nations, our humanity recoils when we see the depravity of that hatred so unleashed and so unchecked.

It has certainly has not been a good week to be a Christian anywhere in the world. Over and over again, the world has watched these debaucheries be vomited out before our eyes. We wonder and exclaim how mankind can be capable of all things heinous? Where is the strength of righteousness nations to stand against it all? In the depths of the hollow silence to the question, all we hear are the deepest agonies and travails of mothers weeping for their children who are no more.

For the righteous nations are no more

They recoil and shudder on their own shore

They excuse and they ponder

While filth rape and plunder

And children accept their death with grace

What leaders here cannot with courage face

Are the righteous nations righteous no more?

Who will stand if our courage is poor?

Mothers and Fathers whose arms ache to hold

Their children whose lifeless still bodies so cold

Their blood is now calling From the ground of their falling

While we stand debating Our leaders are waiting

To find who has courage in deed

Committees addressing the need

Death marches on Screeching its song

We wonder whats wrong? What’s taking so long?

To say what is right.

Stand up against the night

Rabid dogs howl they know that its true

There is no one standing and fighting for you

For the righteous nations are no more

They recoil and shudder on their own shore

It hasn’t really helping the courage of Christianity in our own land that we constantly face the betrayal of our leaders here, such as the Governor of Georgia, in the face of mounting persecution here in the United States. We must call for courage in our leaders and then remove them when they do not exude the leadership we demand.