Right and Wrong.

Vic Biorseth, Friday, April 29, 2011
http://www.Thinking-Catholic-Strategic-Center.com

The inspired Word of God, and many wise men throughout history, have always held that proper fear of God is just the bare beginning point of wisdom. Judaism and Christianity teach that the proper direction of man is to seek to align his will with the will of God, and everything else becomes easier. The most important thing in the proper formation of a young child is in learning to be able to tell right from wrong. It sounds so simple, and indeed it is simple; knowing right from wrong is the basis for everything that could possibly follow in the proper raising and education of the child. God is directly involved in this teaching; I submit that it is not possible to properly teach a child right from wrong when God is divorced from the teaching.

And what is right from wrong, and how do we tell right from wrong, in our Judao-Christian Ethos? Well, it can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it, but the beginning point is the Ten Commandments. The first few Commandments deal with man’s relationship with God, and they form the nucleus of Theological Law, which varies somewhat in different denominations and confessions. The last several Commandments deal with man’s relationship with his fellow man, or his morality, and they form, or the should form, the nucleus of Civil Law. These include the imperative to honor your father and mother, prohibitions against murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness and coveting.

All of this is simplified by summarization into the Two Great Commandments. The first few Commandments addressing man’s relationship with God are summarized into the First Great Commandment:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is ONE LORD; and you shall love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Now much of this huge volume of rules is interpreted variously by different confessions or denominations or variants of Judaism and Christianity. However, what we all hold most in common, even in our wild religious diversity, is those last several Commandments that define our relationship with each other, which is to say, our morality. This is the foundation of our moral norm, and the basis of our American Civil Law. It is at the root of how Americans tell right from wrong. It is our standard; our moral norm.

Because we all interpret the First Few Commandments, addressing our relationship with God, in such diverse denominational ways, in broad civil discourse, it is best to deal with what we all hold in common, which is that we all believe that there is one and only one God, and that we all seek to learn, know and do His will. And, as a beginning point to doing that, we all have before us His Commandments.

We talked about the radical changes to Western morality in the Enlightenment and Scientism treatment. All of that helped to bring on the further radical changes to Western morality via the The Modernist Heresy. Now we are seeing more radical changes to Western morality, led by our supposedly sophisticated, increasingly atheistic elites, and sprouting in our youth from Marxist seeds planted long ago in public (government) education.

The imperative for the believing Jew and the believing Christian to do what is right and renounce what is wrong comes from alignment with Divine Will, in theological hope. When that belief is gone, what is left to impel us to do only what is right, other than physical punishment? The unbeliever must be told how to behave, and to have force applied as necessary. The believer acts on his own to live within the law, so long as the law is representative law. And that lays out the current problem in America.

We are told by the atheist-leaning elites – sometimes from even from a pulpit – to not be judgmental regarding the behavior of others. This is an incredibly stupid idea. I submit that the difference between the responsible adult and the child, or the incompetent person, is, in a word, judgment. That means, exactly, the attainment and exercise of good judgment, and being judgmental. When no one exercises judgment any more, we all descend into incompetence.

Biologists call man, the species, homo sapiens, meaning, thinking man. When we no longer think, we are no longer man. Thinking is a useless and wasted effort in the absence of exercising good judgment. Judgment is the most important part of thinking.

But our elites, in their infinite wisdom, are enlightened, and they have a new-found social awareness, or a new-found ecological-awareness, or a new-found economic-awareness, and this new awareness is above the understanding of us unsophisticated, lowly hoi polloi. It is a new standard for telling right from wrong, and religion has nothing to do with it. It is earth-based, or fairness-based, or whatever-based. Whatever it is, it is man-centered, coming as it does from the mind(s) of man, and thus is just as infinitely variable, over time, as is the whim and whimsy of man.

There is nothing in this new morality that is fixed and permanent. It is infinitely variable. You can see this manifested in a thousand ways today. As you look around at current entertainment, at current literature, even at current news, can you tell the difference between us, as a people, and any other people? How do we compare today to, say, Sodom and Gomorrah? Are we still a distinct people, different in any way from any others? Or are we descending into a hodge-podge of indistinguishable individuals, all out for ourselves alone, all jealously guarding our “rights,” which are seen by us to be virtually unlimited?

I submit that the worst and greatest contribution to wrong thinking in America involves the revolutionary ideology of Karl Marx, and his contribution to the advance of Secularism and opposition to authority in America. In Marxism, the Commandments are replaced by the operating dictums leading to the fall of nations, which are:

1. The Ends Justify The Means;
2. You Cannot Make An Omelet Without Breaking Eggs;
   and the increasing, dreamed-of ability to one day say to someone,
3. Shut Up And Get On The Cattle Car.

Today’s so-called intellectual elite, in its majority, doesn’t know that.

Point: The elite of our current society, the people who deal in ideas and control the public dialogue, are overwhelmingly Marxist-Redistributionist in ideology and thus trending atheistic in their spirituality. They think themselves wise in this, and “enlightened.” This has radically affected their ability to tell right from wrong.

Almost the whole field of journalism, as exemplified by the SLIMC, like the fields of education, academia and the current elites among intellectualism are guided by something other than the Judao-Christian Ethos of America’s founders and the current American population. They cannot describe it, but it is not the ethos of the rest of us. They cannot even identify it or give it a name. They have a completely different sense of telling right from wrong, and it stands at odds with the moral standard that guided the founders and that still guides the overwhelming majority of ordinary American citizens today.

In this warped, Godless, man-at-the-center morality, anyone who opposes and speaks against abortion, for instance, is seen to be immoral, and those who support abortion are seen to be highly moral. Opposing homosexuality is immoral; homosexuality is perfectly moral, and publicly professing to be homosexual is even held to be heroic. Opposition, on the other hand, is bigoted, even homophobic, implying mental illness. It doesn’t get much crazier than this. What used to be wrong is now right; what used to be right is now wrong.

So these brilliant people, we may suppose, raise their children, if they don’t abort them, to embrace such things as abortion, homosexuality, other perversions, licentiousness, artificial contraception, shacking up, redistribution, and on and on.

You and I have no difficulty identifying and explaining our guiding ethos, but these people cannot do the same, because they cannot even name it, let alone explain it. I have named it for them. I call it the ethos of BMDFP and Marxists.

There is and can be no Critical Thinking among Marxists. They don’t know how to do it.

Point: Notice this when you watch TV news during these troubled days. When you look at the black-masked anarchists who are always involved in major civil disruptions these days, the ones breaking glass and trying to really incite something more serious, you are looking at people who are incredibly, unbelievably, monumentally and even suicidally stupid. It just doesn’t get any dumber than this.

What these anarchists are about is destroying and replacing the existing system, but they don’t have the first clue of what will replace it. They cannot describe it. They not only don’t know what it is, or what they hope it to be, but they haven’t even given it a thought. All they want to do is destroy what exists. That’s it. They are incapable of recognizing how they might be dooming themselves.

They have been indoctrinated – excuse me, I meant to say educated – into believing that the existing system is corrupt from top to bottom, and they are out to bring it down, and they believe that they are doing something good. They have been steeped in broad-brush Marxism without recognizing the influence of Hegel or Machiavelli on Marx. If they had ever read The Prince they might know that when the new ruler came heroically riding in with his forces to restore order and assume ruler-ship, he killed everyone who was causing disorder, including his own agent provocateurs. He killed his own Advance-Guard, which is to say, he killed his own anarchists, along with all resistance, thereby becoming a heroic savior in the eyes of the masses.

And so it was with Robespierre, and with Lenin, and with Stalin, and with Hitler, and with Mao, and with Castro, and with Ho, and with every new ruler under the banner of any variety of “Social Science” or Marxism. The end result was one-man rule, with a false façade of some sort of legitimate government by giant over-reaching bureaucracy. One man who can kill or enslave or punish or reward anyone he chooses, while pretending to be decent in the public eye, and at the head of a decent government. The black-masked anarchists don’t know that. They are just as dumb as any animal.

The mind that has been indoctrinated through the formative years in what to think, rather than having been educated in how to think, is animal like, and not even aware of the fact that it is – so easily – being manipulated by others. The best temporary tool is the one that doesn’t even know that it is a tool.

There is and can be no Critical Thinking among anarchists. They don’t know how to do it.

Point: Whenever anyone in the public eye (currently Donald Trump) highlights the remote possibility that an opponent, or anyone at all, might have advanced in life or in education, or acquired any special access or favor because of being black, or any other minority status, it is automatically assumed that that person is and must be a racist.

What is not assumed, or even considered, is that existing gigantic social programs whose sole purpose for being is to advance people in life or in education, or in acquisition of any special access or favor because of being black, or any other minority, might actually be racist by design.

For example, the social programs operating under the grand titles of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action very specifically grant advancement in life or in education, or acquisition of special access or favor solely and exclusively because of the person’s race or minority status. Under these programs people favored by the programs are granted higher SAT scores, higher test scores, higher grades, easier access, easier employment, easier advancement, greater security in employment, and more, despite lower actual scores, experience, references, qualification, etc., etc., etc.

I submit that it is quite impossible to grant someone any special positive treatment solely because of race without simultaneously giving someone else special negative treatment solely because of race. Detrimental or negative treatment of someone solely because of race is, almost definitively, racist.

Yet, those who even openly discuss these programs as examples of racial favoritism are themselves labeled racist for even bringing the subject up. Trump asks about Obama’s scholastic record and how he got himself into Harvard, and he (Trump) is loudly labeled a racist by every single gorgeous talking head on TV and in the MSM.

I am no fan of Donald Trump, but nothing he has ever said in public indicates that he is a racist. Those who level the charge, especially those who are super-sensitive guilt-ridden white Liberals, are probably projecting onto Trump their own dark inner feelings of racism, which they seem to be certain, certain, are widespread and common among all non minority Americans. That's what they learned in public school.

There is and can be no Critical Thinking among Lefties. They don’t know how to do it.

How about you: do you still know right from wrong? Can you define it, and is the source of it from somewhere other than you?

Or do you think what's right or wrong for you might not be right or wrong for someone else?

Heavy sigh.

Infinitely variable morality.

”If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now. But if anything in thy own disposition gives thee pain, who hinders thee from correcting thy opinion? And even if thou art pained because thou art not doing some particular thing which seems to thee to be right, why dost thou not rather act than complain?”
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47
Source: George Long (tr.). The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In vol. 2 of the Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001.

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