Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "Academy of Ideas" channel.

“When tyranny becomes law rebellion becomes duty.” ― Thomas Jefferson
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The points made here are valid, but there are other factors in play today that weren't as prevalent or in some instances non-existent in previous generations that have led to the increase in divorce and the rise in the number of people who don't marry at all. These include hookup culture, the availability of porn, quick and easy divorces, the emergence of the internet, and the collapse of the church. People have always been self-interested, it's just a whole lot easier and acceptable to act on it these days.
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“For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is sufficient.” — From the Movie: The Song of Bernadette
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Kinda makes me glad I have a face for radio and come from a humble background. I'm also glad I grew up in an age where climbing trees, playing football in the rain, and just running around was how we spent our free time. You were also 100% certain when it came to knowing if you were a boy or a girl, little communication devices you carried in your pocket only existed in Star Trek and the word selfie didn't exist. I feel for the kids growing up in a time where dual realities compete for your soul. Does that empathy eliminate me from the narcissistic club or does the fact I'm taking time to comment here mean I'm living in denial about my place in the Matrix? You know what, I'm not too old to get a new hobby. Maybe that's what's missing. Things that make you go hmmm...🤔
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“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude ― Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
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The point about parenting lying at the root of most neurosis is spot on. Sometimes the effect is benign, sometimes not so much. Lee Oswald slept in the same bed with his mother until he was 11. Does this mean that led to his becoming an assassin? No, but she certainly didn't help him form a healthy view of society. On the flipside, some people from dysfunctional homes achieve great things, perhaps because they had to fight so hard to overcome a crummy childhood. I know this much, no amount of medication can help people overcome their anxieties, yet that is the most common solution offered to people. Mothers little helper right?
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We live in a post-truth society. Lies have become institutionalized, usually under the guise of compassion. We were told to lave people be since their delusion didn't involve us, until it did. Now, not only are we expected to play along, we face punishment if we don't. This didn't happen overnight. People have been softened up for this moment for a while now. The question: "What's a woman?" would be absurd only a few years ago. Now? Now, if you know what's good for you, you won't ask it all. You'll just accept that a man can strip next to a little girl or be called a bigot for trying to defend that girl. Lies are evil. The father of all lies is evil. People who lie aren't necessarily evil, but they play an evil game. I still believe in the end the weight of all these lies will become too much and the contradictions they create will no longer be pacified by cognitive dissonance, a condition which can be sustained on an individual basis but cannot hold up at the group level for an extended period of time. Eventually, the little boy shows up who declares the emperor has no clothes and everyone realizes it's okay to admit the little boy is right. The problem is, not living the lie is the first step. Fixing the damage the lie has done is another thing entirely. It's going to be a big job, one we are not capable of handling on our own. In order to really deal with the problem you have to eliminate the source, and that is trickiest step of all.
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Orwell was influenced by the events of his time and his experience as a member of the left. Huxley had a better read of human nature beyond what was occurring around him. While we were on the look out for 1984 they slipped a Brave New World in on us. “We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment…The doors of Hell are locked from the inside.” ― C.S. Lewis
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For me anyway, the damage the powers-that-wanna-be did with the COVID scare is something I am having a very hard time forgiving. I live in a 55+ community and I witnessed the damage first-hand. Again, this is just my take on it, the whole fear epidemic is a byproduct of two things, the ascendency of the expert-class and the descendance of our faith in God. As this video points out, follow "The Science," is the mantra of the new spirit of the age. We have lost our way and allowed evil to take root, and evil thrives where fear abounds.
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Saying we the people somehow gives crooked politicians an out because we put too much blame on ourselves is ridiculous. Man has a fallen nature and no form of government, no matter how well intended or planned out will be truly just because of said nature. Locke understood that and accounted for it in the most practical way in his treatise on the Social Compact. As for our form of indirect democracy as it is called here, it only functions if people take their responsibility as citizens seriously. They used to, at least to a higher degree than they do today, but our system has devolved into reality-TV. Officials don't get removed from office, they get voted off the island, and they get voted off for a variety of reasons by a small portion of the electorate. Too many people are either too cynical, too lazy, or too comfortable to even get involved in the process. So no, I don't buy the argument that putting we the people on the hook somehow lets the crooks off it. The people are the problem, and when there is nowhere left to go, they'll shake their collective fist at their Creator and blame it all on Him. It can't be our fault. And that is when He'll call the game and sort the wheat from the chafe. Do with that what you will. If that offends your secular sensibilities, as the prophet Bob Dylan once said; "It's a hard rains a gonna fall." Ya'll make sure you have a raincoat now, ya hear.
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Nice advice, but life doesn't always deal you the hand that allows you pursue your dreams in that way. I remember seeing a show many years ago where they listed what they considered to be the worst jobs on Earth. The winner for worst job went to working in a sulfur pit. They spoke with a guy who worked in one (I think it was in Indonesia) and he looked to be about 70. Turns out he was 35. Life expectancy for people working there maxed out somewhere around 45. How much energy do you suppose he would have had to devote to higher pursuits? I'm sure if given a choice he would have preferred a job on Wall Street but he had a family to raise and that was where he was at. I'm not saying he should have just accepted his fate but they didn't go into his backstory so who knows what was really keeping him there. When I was raising a family I had other people depending on me so I did what I had to do. I always made the best of it and moved up as best I could. I was very goal driven. I had to have a goal. Pretty soon I became goal addicted. My first attempt at retirement was a complete disaster because of that addiction. I fought like hell to get back into the workforce and when I got where I wanted to be I came to the realization that it was an empty victory. I was right where I wanted to be, making more money than I had ever seen, and I hated every bit of it. Life isn't about what you achieve, it's about what you value. Who knows, maybe that guy in the sulfur pit had it right because when they asked him about his lot in life he said he was doing okay, better than some, worse than others. Goal setting is fine, admirable even, but watch out you don't become a slave to it. I did and I wasted a lot of time I can't get back. That's just my take on it though. Remember, life is 10% about what happens to you and 90% about how you respond to it. Just make sure you have your priorities straight. Sometimes you can want something so badly you will sacrifice just about anything to get it and when you get it you find out it really isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just sayin.
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How do you convince a group to stand up for their rights when so many of them aren't even sure where those rights come from? I wish I shared the optimism expressed here. I used to, but as time goes on my faith in people to fight for what is right and against what is wrong becomes weaker. How did George Carlin put it, within every cynic beats the heart of a disillusioned optimist? Again, I wish it wasn't so.
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I think a heroic life is one rooted in virtue and justice, not self-actualization. It's true that people who are unsure of themselves are least likely to act heroically but sometimes there is an internal flame that just needs the proper catalyst to ignite it. And I disagree with the notion of hero-worship. Hero-worship is a practice that will always leave you disillusioned and disappointed because people are flawed beings. Hero-admiration perhaps. Worship needs to be reserved to the one true God who will never leave you disillusioned or disappointed. Don't confuse that assertion with a guarantee that God will cure all your Earthly troubles. Bad things still happen because evil exists. But isn't that what heroes are all about? Combatting that evil by acting virtuously and being just? Heroes gain that status because we assign it to them. There are many heroes whose names remain obscure. But I agree with the premise, we need more people willing to perform acts of heroism.
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This infusion of large amounts of cash into the economy is being done by design. COVID showed the powers-that-be that people will do as they are told. Step two is to crash the economy so the experts can come in and save the day. That is the rationale behind the great reset is it not? For our betters to impose order over the unwashed masses? Hobbesian rule in its purest form? When the day comes and the government tells us that our paper money is worthless and we must convert to the new digital dollar or go hungry what then? When they say that $10,000 in old paper money is now worth $1,000 in digital form but the prices will take a while to adjust to the new reality will people say screw that or simply go along? And if enough people say screw that and start an underground parallel economy will that give the powers-that-be the green light to impose a new system to defeat such treasonous activity, maybe some kind of bio-marker on the head and hand? I dunno. Just asking if anyone has considered that as new measures are taken to deny our liberty, as talk of eliminating that dusty old constitution of ours that was written by white supremacists for white supremacists and replacing it with something more inclusive, more reflective of modern times, more in line with the new way of thinking. Maybe more in line with the goals of the great reset? Just askin is all.
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Calling for a return to tradition but basing it on the same secular values that created the mess we find ourselves in isn't a revival. It still places man at the center with no transcendent morality or purpose to act as a touchstone, just new bosses making new rules, and history has shown self-interest is a far more powerful drug than altruistic desires. We need a revival, that's for sure, but not one intended to be a better version of stuff that has shown it doesn't work.
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I think societies breakdown when they trade liberty for security and comfort. The Roman Republic gave way to Empire. Most say the Empire at its height was the zenith of Roman civilization but really, the day the republic caved and allowed Caesar to become a dictator marked the end of that society. Virtue and an altruistic sense of civic responsibility are the markers of a healthy society. When those give way, it's only a matter of time before some form of tyranny sets in. For the west, it will be globalism delivered in the form of corporatism. The unholy alliance between commerce and government is already in place. I'm not talking some form of exploitation via Marxism, it's really more of a Randian dystopia taking root, the kind she detailed in Atlas Shrugged. We have shown the globalists we can be easily sacred and led pretty much any place they want to take us. To borrow from Bernadette Peters in the movie The Jerk, you can have the money, just don't take the stuff. Anyway, that's how I see it. By the next decade we will have digital currencies and social credit scores on a global scale. Civilizations don't collapse, they evolve. They move from freedom to slavery and back again. The American Experiment had a nice run. Franklin said we had a republic if we could keep it and for a time we did. But now more and more people are saying they don't want it. We are becoming atomized and isolated even as we become more interdependent. The great paradox of the digital age. All hail the experts, our new overlords. To be honest, I'm glad I'm on the back end of the journey because the future on this rock is coming to an end. Get right with your Creator while you still can. That's my advice.
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@googleandsusansucks Okay
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"There is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.' Alas, all the evil of the Twentieth Century is possible everywhere on Earth:" ― Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “The modern age is built on the Myth of Progress…Believers in the Myth of Progress hold that progress is better than the past, and the future will inevitably be better than the present. This myth is a powerful tool in the hands of would-be totalitarians. It provides a transcendent source of legitimacy for their actions and frames opposition as backward and ignorant…Thus does the Myth of Progress become a justification for exercising dictatorial power” ― Rob Dreher: Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents
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Creating and profiting off fear is perhaps the hardest of all sins for me to forgive. I'm not saying I'm God. I'm saying on a personal level I have learned the value of forgiveness but some things are easier to forgive than others. I have seen more lives damaged by the fear and isolation imposed by the state, and the diminishment of dignity over the economic ruin on a level I never thought possible. It's not my place to say, but there is a Hell, and people who have sewn will reap.
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Or, to put it more succinctly: “There’s no right or wrong, there’s just popular opinion.” ― Brad Pitt as Jeffery Goines (12 Monkeys)
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"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security deserve neither." ― Benjamin Franklin Or, put another way: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done”, and those to whom God says, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell choose it." ― C.S. Lewis In the final analysis, we decide to surrender our integrity, and along with it our souls.
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I don't think what is described here is restricted to the hollow man as he puts it. Circumstances change and people who once had a purpose-driven life can find themselves suddenly cast adrift due to forces beyond their control. Every time a fundamental shift has occurred, whether it was the Reformation or the Industrial Revolution, there has always been a segment of the population who get left behind. Those who can adapt prosper but I think it is unfair to characterize those who do not as hollow. And the notion that spending time alone is a good thing is also somewhat fallacious. It's okay to spend some time alone as it allows you to gather your thoughts and think things through but we are social beings who were never intended to live a life of solitude. Too often when you are alone you are in lousy company. The problem is, as we shifted from an agrarian-based society to an industrial-based one the generational family became less important. Then, as we moved from an industrial-based society to a services-driven culture the nuclear family became more atomized. Now, the age of information has reduced the importance of the family unit even further. Online communities are replacing physical ones and as people connect digitally they become more isolated physically. The reason these digital communities leave us empty is because, in our hearts, we know the digital world is one we created. That is what is truly hollow. Loneliness has become a problem for a great part of society. Young people who typically weren't as prone to it's negative effects are becoming more and more detached, unmoored from the connections that separate us from the beasts of the earth and the code of the machine. The best way to combat loneliness is to build a relationship with the only one who will be with you for better or worse and will never desert you: "Be still...and know that I am God." ― Psalm 46:40
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"A tyrants power derives from the citizenry"? Where does that nonsense come from? Tyranny is by it's nature a condition where the will of the people is not a consideration. I tried to make it all the way through this video because past videos produced by this channel have made sense. This one is chock-full-of BS. This idea that decentralized power has been the norm throughout history is a load of crap. History is dominated and defined by periods of empire, not small city states singing kumbha as they battled back the Hun's. Believe me, I'm no fan of large overreaching government but that has been the end result as long as people have organized themselves into groups. Initially it was done for protection, then people figured out they liked power and dominating others so that became the driving force. The narrator says he's not pushing a utopia here but that's exactly what he's peddling. And this assertion that small city states and tribes have some sort of natural tendency to of band together to fight off a larger power trying to intrude upon them is ridiculous. Ask the Gaul's how that worked out for them against Rome, or the tribes of Asia against the Mongols. Want a more modern example? Ask the Czechs how things went for them in 1938. Like I say, I would love nothing more than for the world to operate the way this guy says it did in his imaginary past and I agree Federalism is the best hope for liberty in the United States but the truth of the matter is we are headed in the opposite direction. The world is more interconnected than at any time throughout the history of civilizations and guess what, tyrants love to grab the levers of power when the foundation is already set up for them. If you think we are somehow immune to that because we are more enlightened, I've got a nice piece of real estate to sell you just south of me. It's buried under 10 feet of water but that shouldn't be a problem, you can always get your neighbor's to help man the pump. I hate where we are going and while the solution being offered here is very appealing, it is as realistic as terraforming Mars and starting over on that planet. Dark days are on the horizon, I wish it wasn't so, but that's the world of the way things are and we better wake up to that and the nature of our true enemy pretty quick or there won't be anything left to save.
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God's not looking for slaves. He has given us the free will to accept or reject Him as we see fit. Some people pin the blame for what we do on God, asking how a just and loving God could allow injustice in this world. That's us, not God. Why does an innocent child come down with a fatal disease and die before reaching adulthood? I'm not going to pretend to have the answer for that. I know this much, God is a loving force in my life and He has welcomed me home after years of swimming on the devil's lake. I know the emptiness of living a life without God. Not everyone feels that way and that's fine. But a world where God is acknowledged is better than a world where He is not. I say this because I have seen both first hand. But God leaves it up to us. We have a relationship with God whether we want to acknowledge it's existence or not. CS Lewis put it best: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" ― Mere Christianity. "If it is displeasing to you to serve the Lord, choose today whom you will serve, the gods your ancestors served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are dwelling. As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” ― Joshua 24: 15. Peace be with all of you.
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Okay, so if I reject your premise, am I acting as a nonconformist? 🤔It's one thing to be true to oneself, quite another to be contrarian or an iconoclast for the sake of appearances, to be seen as marching to their own drum. Some people are just flat out combative. Bottom line, I hate labels.
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“The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast...they asked: “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?...“If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed." "Whoever has ears, let them hear." ― Revelation: 13
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People fail to realize that slavery was part of the natural order of things a lot longer than individual autonomy and social independence. The ideas of the Enlightenment are not ancient and government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has always been an experiment. The moment the clock on individual liberty started ticking new bosses began lining themselves up to take the place of the old. That is simple human nature. If anything will end the madness it will be the elite's desire to create AI along the same line of human engineering. People can be culled; machines? I'm thinking not so much. When Sky-Net becomes self-aware the hunters join the hunted. I happen to believe our Creator will step in as prophesized and save us from ourselves. Others are free to disagree. But if you do, then you better be ready to accept the Borg because those are our only two alternatives if you game the thing out to its logical conclusion.
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"As soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization, which of course is what this is all about, evolution." ― The Agent explaining the Matrix to Morpheus "Then I saw a beast come out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads; on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads blasphemous names...the whole world followed after the beast. They worshiped the dragon because it gave its authority to the beast; they also worshiped the beast. saying: 'Who can compare with the beast or who can wage war against it?' The beast was given a mouth uttering proud boasts and blasphemies...It was allowed to wage war against the holy ones and conquer them, and it was granted authority over every tribe, people, tongue, and nation. All the inhabitants of the earth will worship it" ― Revelation 13: 1-8 God explaining the future to us. Huxley tells us in Brave New World how our pursuit of comfort will do us in. We are warned time and time again, yet like Icarus, we just can't resist that flame. Mark Twain said: "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes." It's also linear and it does have an end, just not the one Hagel envisioned.
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Self-actualization is all fine and well provided you have a moral compass. Motives matter. I read somewhere that reaching a state of true self-actualization often leads to the creation of the perfect asshole. I chuckled at first since Maslow was part of the curriculum I taught at the time but the more I considered it and the more I observed human nature I started to see what the person who said it was driving at. The question that should be foremost in your mind is, to what end? Why do I want something and what will I do with it when I get it? Otherwise you can end up like a dog chasing its tail. Sometimes, you get where you wanted to go and you end up looking around and asking, is this all there is? Just something to consider.
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This kind of thing is why, if I was 30 years younger and in better health, I would grab Wilson and make for the island.
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In the U.S. politics has become reality-TV. People don't want solutions, they want to be entertained. People don't want to unite, they want to be in one camp or the other. People don't want to honor God, they want to worship idols. Huxley is spot-on in that regard. I have often commented that while we were keeping any eye out for 1984 the powers-that-be slipped a Brave New World in on us. COVID was a test run. People not only submitted, they clamored for more rules, punishments for people who failed to conform. and have adjusted to a new reality where working from home is quickly becoming the norm in a lot of industries. This isolation makes it easier to control people, and that is what it is always about, power and control. I can see where Huxley's vision slides into Orwell's in an almost seamless manner. If you were to poll the entire country, "I just want to be left alone" would be the chart topper of any list of desirable circumstances it appeared on. When you just want to be left alone you are in a perfect position for just the opposite to befall you. When the-powers-that-be can convince you that everything, including basic truths like male and female are up for grabs you are already violating Alexander Solzhenitsyn's first tenant of resisting totalitarianism: “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.” Orwell may have tried to warn the people of Britain that a Stalin-like leader could emerge anywhere but he and his fellow-travelers were the useful idiots Lenin declared essential to the ultimate success of communism. Well-intentioned liberals lent their name and prestige to the movement and even ignored the cognitive dissonance necessary to accept the obvious contradictions of most leftist positions. Some did it out of naivete, others did it out of self-interest, but the genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back in now. We are now producing a generation that believes obvious false-hoods and values collectivism over individual freedom. The term democratic socialism is just another lie put forth by a group who lie so much they now fail to see the distinction between what is true and what is false. In other words, like all pathological liars, they buy their own bullshit. Men are becoming weaker and more passive, women are given higher positions in a hierarchy that is becoming more matriarchal every day. I'm not a chauvinist, but such a system is not sustainable. Call me names but men have an instinct to lead and protect. Those instincts are now called toxic. Men aren't looking for wives, women aren't looking for husbands, but children are looking for parents. When the traditional family doesn't provide them, the state will. And when the state does, you have given your children over to demonic forces. Something's gonna give at some point. The center can't hold because there isn't much of it left. People are choosing sides, and where that leads is always unpleasant. Get right with God. That's the best advice this old coot can give anyone.
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@lottavuorinen That may have been the case in your marriage and that is sad. My wife and I both worked and I did most of the cooking because I was usually home first and I didn't mind. I also did the grocery shopping, lawn work, and we split cleaning up the house. But my marriage still ended up on the rocks. No two situations are alike and it's not always who is doing what around the house that determines happiness. Single women and men for that matter may be happy when they are young but that often changes when they get older. I wish you well, I truly do, but how you feel today may not be how you feel later on down the road. That's all I'm saying.
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@BearfootBob You're right. George got mean later in life. I see it with people I know as well. It's a path I am fighting hard to stay clear of but as I said in my post, it's a challenge.
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