2Sa15v4 Best Headline 2014

2Sa 15:4 KJV  Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!

Avoidance of the principle of subsidiarity [ http://j.mp/4Subsidiarity also http://j.mp/0Subsidiarity ] leads to much folly. Including the Headline of the Year:

Barack and Michelle Obama Victims of Racism??? Ha ha http://j.mp/0BestHeadline14 or http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1214/colon123014.php3  By Alicia Colon Published Dec. 30, 2014

If People magazine had featured this week merely a conversation with the President and the First Lady, Michelle Obama's comments would have been unremarkable. But she made one as an example of the First Couple's racist experiences and one that occurred after she became First Lady:

"I tell this story — I mean, even as the first lady — during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn't see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn't anything new."

Of course, it's nothing new to have someone short ask a taller person to reach up and grab something in the supermarket but Michelle viewed this incident as somewhat racist. If the woman who had approached her had been black would she have found that request so memorable? Don't you know how hard she wanted to say to that woman, "Don't you know who I am?" Let's face the truth, shall we. Michelle Obama does not like white people and I strongly suspect she's not a big fan of America. Who can forget what she said in 2008 "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Nothing to be proud of a country like ours unless she and her husband are glorified as saviors?

As another example of the dreadful racist experience suffered by the Obamas, Michelle recalled this about her husband: "He was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner, and somebody asked him to get coffee." The fact that Valerie Jarrett, Obama's consigliore, once mistook a four-star general in uniform for a waiter must have slipped her mind as she searched high and low for other examples of how they suffered the indignities of all American blacks. What a joke. Barack Hussein Obama and Michelle Obama are the two luckiest people on earth, black or white. They have about as much in common with the poor blacks in the ghetto on Uncle Sam's plantation as I have with the Queen of England.

It has been noted that technically Barack Obama is not the first black president as he is actually the first mulatto president. He was raised by his leftist white mother and her parents and after she remarried his Indonesian Muslim stepfather. He has never wanted for any material goods and went to Ivy League institutions. How Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown is that?

About the only connection Barack Obama has with them is a fondness for smoking marijuana. Yet he continually tries to connect with a ghetto base for the sole purpose of political opportunism.

Michelle Obama's background is similarly middle class and unlike her husband her ancestry does have slave roots.

Consequently perhaps that is why Michelle Obama was very involved in minority politics and in her Princeton thesis, her alienation from whites is clear:

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my "Blackness" than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second," she wrote.

One has to wonder whose idea it was to foster the idea that the Obamas have suffered the indignity of racist experience of the average black American. Was the mainstream media running so low playing its unsuccessful race card that it had to submit fantasy scenarios? Conservative blacks like Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Allen West, Thomas Sowell, and many more have been the victims of real racism yet have not exploited their experiences the way that the Obamas have.

There are numerous photographs of Michelle scowling and just not looking very happy. She has called the White House a very nice prison. It certainly is-one that most Americans would love to be imprisoned in. One that allows her to be waited on hand and foot 24/7 and when not at home allows her to take multi million dollar endless vacations on the taxpayer dole. Where is she now? In glorious Hawaii. I'm sure the Obama Kool-aid drinkers who ushered in the Obama reign are rationalizing that it's about time that people of color are getting theirs. But the president should be a president to all Americans not just those who match his skin color and Barack and Michelle Obama are probably the most divisive and polarizing of all White House occupants. Would that they be as level-headed as Raven-Symone, who played the youngest Huxtable on the NBC hit Cosby show.

While appearing on Oprah and being asked about her sexuality, Ms. Symone asserted her disdain of all labeling. Surprising Oprah who expected a liberal response, the spunky actress said: ""I'm tired of being labeled. I'm an American. I'm not an African American; I'm an American." "What I really mean by that is I'm an American. That's what I really mean," Raven replied. "I have darker skin. I have a nice, interesting grade of hair. I connect with Caucasian. I connect with Asian. I connect with black. I connect with Indian. I connect with each culture," Raven said. "You are a melting pot in one body," Oprah said. "Isn't that what America is supposed to be?" Raven declared.

Yes, Raven. Exactly. America is a melting pot not a multi-cultural oasis. We have our own culture and it is one of freedom and one of the best. Next time I hope we elect a president who believes that as well. [My emphasis.]

Related Notes

He Never Learns: Obama stands alone, alas By Fred Barnes Published Nov. 28, 2014 Recent Alicia Colon: Jewish self-loathing Dmitriy Shapiro: Rand repents? Kelsey Dallas: OMG: Is profanity losing its pu...

Dueling Hispanics By Alicia Colon Published Nov. 10, 2014 Recent Alicia Colon: Jewish self-loathing Dmitriy Shapiro: Rand repents? Kelsey Dallas: OMG: Is profanity losing its punch? Eric Schulzke: Day...

The Truth IS out There --- but it's only Online By Alicia Colon Published Dec. 15, 2014 Recent Alicia Colon: Jewish self-loathing Dmitriy Shapiro: Rand repents? Kelsey Dallas: OMG: Is profanity losin...

I2C 141230ba 2Sa15v4 Best Headline 2014 | I2C | 141230 1443 | 2Sa15v4 Best Headline 2014

Pro28v1 Fainting 2014

Pro 28:1 KJV  The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, / But names will never hurt me." - Early 20th century common knowledge.

2014: Year of the fainting couch http://j.mp/0Vapors14 or http://nypost.com/2014/12/29/2014-year-of-the-fainting-couch/ December 29, 2014 | 7:08pm Modal Trigger

Will 2014 be remembered as the year the public got riled up over a garish shirt (as opposed to the accomplishments of the physicist wearing it)? Photo: AP

The fainting couch doesn’t have the same cachet it did in the 19th century, which is a shame, because it should be more in demand than at any time since the age of corsets and delicate sensibilities.

To put it in Victorian terms, 2014 had a case of the vapors. It was all aflutter. It needed smelling salts and a fan, and a good rest on a fainting couch to restore its bearings.

It was a year when the national pastime of taking offense and of fearing that someone might be offended reached such parodic levels that Kim Jong-un got in the act.

It used to be that, of all the groups and nations that one had to worry about offending, for politically correct or commercial reasons, the North Koreans simply didn’t rate.

The “Red Dawn” remake a couple of years ago featured cruel North Korean invaders. In last year’s “Olympus Has Fallen,” the White House is attacked and occupied by dastardly North Koreans.

But 2014 was the year, thanks to the hack of Sony Pictures in retaliation for the spoof movie “The Interview,” that even the North Koreans made the “do not offend” list.

It was the year that a scientist made an abject apology for wearing a shirt that offended feminists in a TV broadcast; that Amazon Prime put a label warning of racist content on “Tom and Jerry” cartoons; and that various news outlets refused to say the name of the NFL team from Washington on grounds that even uttering it made them complicit in rank offensiveness.

It was a year when the nation’s colleges and law schools cemented their reputations as places where easily offended children go for a few years to become slightly older easily offended children.

Colleges canceled appearances by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Condi Rice (who technically pulled out of her scheduled Rutgers commencement) and George Will for fear students might hear something they disagree with from a figure they object to.

The University of California at Irvine offered grief counseling (“in a constructive space”) for students upset at the grand-jury decision in the Ferguson case, and Occidental College brought in a religious counselor to comfort students who had volunteered for losing Democratic Senate campaigns.

An open letter from law students at Harvard upset at the nonindictments in the Ferguson and Eric Garner cases captured the spirit of the year, and deserves an honored place in the history of the rhetoric of plaint.

Its opening included the stirring declaration “We are in pain. And we are tired.” It went on to speak of how “traumatized” the students are (multiple times), and of their “distress” (multiple times).

It charged that the school’s indifference to “the mental health” of its students violates the Harvard Law School Handbook of Academic Policies.

The upshot was that the aggrieved students wanted the administration to offer them a collective pacifier. “We call,” the letter thundered, “for faculty to hold special office hours and for the administration to make culturally competent grief and trauma counselors available in the final weeks of the semester.”

It demanded more conversations about injustice “in safe spaces created by the administration.” And it expected students to be permitted to delay their exams — because what are the exertions of studying compared with satisfactions of wallowing in a precious self-pity?

The response to these students and their brethren at other elite law schools who made similar appeals should have been “Please, get a grip. If nothing else will buck you up, at least show a little self-respect.”

If this had been the mettle of the civil-rights movement, it would have collapsed in a puddle of helplessness not long after Rosa Parks was asked to give up her seat.

But that, for all its tragic failings, was a different era. It was before so much time and energy were invested in taking offense and coddling the offended. It was before the nation needed a fainting couch.

Related Notes

Social Injustice Ate My Homework | National Review Online If there were a First Rule of our present penchant for victimhood, it would presumably be that everything unpleasant that happens in the world must, in some way, eventu...

Daniel Henninger: Obama Unleashes the Left - WSJ.com In the U.S., the politics of the left versus the right rolls on with the predictability of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge. It's a lot of honkin...

Steve Hayes on Condi Speech Controversy: "The Idiots Are In Charge" | Video | RealClearPolitics STEPHEN F. HAYES: It's weak leadership. This is what happens when you have the morons in charge. I think we shouldn't sort of be pol...

I2C 141230aa Pro28v1 Fainting 2014 | I2C | 141230 1108 | Pro28v1 Fainting 2014

Day Four Xmas 14

Four Intimate Interviews

One. HRH Princess Michael of Kent - http://j.mp/0KentPrincess or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItMx_m4zmwQ

Two. The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire - http://j.mp/0Family6Sisters or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25IO32AxGq4

Three Princess Diana: Panorama Interview 1995 (BBC) - http://j.mp/0Diana or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjYU7Q7hqEI

Four. Nixon interview with David Frost (Playlist) - http://j.mp/0FrostNixon or

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6E37C8E19B4820C7

I2C 141228Xa Day Four Xmas 14 | I2C | 141228 2026 | Day Four Xmas 14

Day Three Xmas 14

Three Pertinent Posts

One. Rom3v1to2 Inspiration of Bible  - http://j.mp/2TrustBible or

http://intwocities.blogspot.com/2014/10/rom3v1to2-inspiration-of-bible.html

Two. Thoughts on Listening to Peter Schiff - http://j.mp/0FedFolly or

http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2014/10/thoughts-on-listening-to-peter-schiff.html

Three. Ian Paisley – the Last Great Protestant – is dead - http://j.mp/0IanPaisley or

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2014/09/ian-paisley-last-great-protestant-is.html

I2C 141227Xa Day Three Xmas 14 | I2C | 141227 1637 | Day Three Xmas 14

Luk2v29to42 X14 Francis Urbi

Luke 2:29-32 KJV  Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:  (30)  For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,  (31)  Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;  (32)  A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

Official Vatican text of Pope Francis' Christmas 'Urbi et Orbi' message

http://j.mp/0X14UrbiText or http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/12/25/official-vatican-text-f-pope-francis-christmas-urbi-et-orbi-message/

VATICAN CITY –  Here is the official Vatican English-language translation of Pope Francis' "Urbi et Orbi' Christmas Day message, which he delivered in Italian from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on Thursday:

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Happy Christmas!

Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, is born for us, born in Bethlehem of a Virgin, fulfilling the ancient prophecies. The Virgin's name is Mary, the wife of Joseph.

Humble people, full of hope in the goodness of God, are those who welcome Jesus and recognize him. And so the Holy Spirit enlightened the shepherds of Bethlehem, who hastened to the grotto and adored the Child. Then the Spirit led the elderly and humble couple Simeon and Anna into the temple of Jerusalem, and they recognized in Jesus the Messiah. "My eyes have seen your salvation", Simeon exclaimed, "the salvation prepared by God in the sight of all peoples" (Lk 2:30).

Yes, brothers and sisters, Jesus is the salvation for every person and for every people! Today I ask him, the Savior of the world, to look upon our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria, who for too long now have suffered the effects of ongoing conflict, and who, together with those belonging to other ethnic and religious groups, are suffering a brutal persecution. May Christmas bring them hope, as indeed also to the many displaced persons, exiles and refugees, children, adults and elderly, from this region and from the whole world. May indifference be changed into closeness and rejection into hospitality, so that all who now are suffering may receive the necessary humanitarian help to overcome the rigors of winter, return to their countries and live with dignity.

May the Lord open hearts to trust, and may he bestow his peace upon the whole Middle East, beginning with the land blessed by his birth, thereby sustaining the efforts of those committed effectively to dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

May Jesus, Savior of the world, protect all who suffer in Ukraine, and grant that their beloved land may overcome tensions, conquer hatred and violence, and set out on a new journey of fraternity and reconciliation.

May Christ the Savior give peace to Nigeria, where (even in these hours) more blood is being shed and too many people are unjustly deprived of their possessions, held as hostages or killed. I invoke peace also on the other parts of the African continent, thinking especially of Libya, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and various regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I beseech all who have political responsibility to commit themselves through dialogue to overcoming differences and to building a lasting, fraternal coexistence.

May Jesus save the vast numbers of children who are victims of violence, made objects of trade and trafficking, or forced to become soldiers; children, so many abused children. May he give comfort to the families of the children killed in Pakistan last week. May he be close to all who suffer from illness, especially the victims of the Ebola epidemic, above all in Liberia, in Sierra Leone and in Guinea. As I thank all who are courageously dedicated to assisting the sick and their family members, I once more make an urgent appeal that the necessary assistance and treatment be provided.

The Child Jesus. My thoughts turn to all those children today who are killed and ill-treated, be they infants killed in the womb, deprived of that generous love of their parents and then buried in the egoism of a culture that does not love life; be they children displaced due to war and persecution, abused and taken advantage of before our very eyes and our complicit silence.

I think also of those infants massacred in bomb attacks, also those where the Son of God was born. Even today, their impotent silence cries out under the sword of so many Herods. On their blood stands the shadow of contemporary Herods.

Truly there are so many tears this Christmas, together with the tears of the Infant Jesus.

Dear brothers and sisters, may the Holy Spirit today enlighten our hearts, that we may recognize in the Infant Jesus, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary, the salvation given by God to each one of us, to each man and woman and to all the peoples of the earth.

May the power of Christ, which brings freedom and service, be felt in so many hearts afflicted by war, persecution and slavery. May this divine power, by its meekness, take away the hardness of heart of so many men and women immersed in worldliness and indifference, the globalization of indifference. May his redeeming strength transform arms into ploughshares, destruction into creativity, hatred into love and tenderness.

Then we will be able to cry out with joy: "Our eyes have seen your salvation".

With these thoughts I wish you all a Happy Christmas!

Related Notes

News from The Associated Press Dec 24, 5:01 PM EST Text of Pope Francis' homily during Christmas Eve Mass VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican's official English-language translation of Pope Francis' pr...

Pope Francis Installation Mass Homily Text | NBC Bay Area Pope Francis urged the world to defend the poor and protect the environment during his inauguration mass.The Pontiff also said that in order to protect other...

BBC News - Pope Francis to wash offenders' feet on Maundy Thursday Pope Francis celebrated Mass in St Peter's Basilica on Thursday morning Pope Francis will wash the feet of prisoners in a youth detention centr...

I2C 141226aa Luk2v29to42 X14 Francis Urbi | I2C | 1412 | Luk2v29to42 X14 Francis Urbi

Day Two Xmas 14

Two Precious Poems

One. This Little Child - Robert Southwell

This little Babe so few days old,

Is come to rifle Satan's fold;

All hell doth at his presence quake,

Though he himself for cold do shake;

For in this weak, unarmed wise,

The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field,

His naked breast stands for a shield;

His battering shot are babish cries,

His arrows made of weeping eyes,

His martial ensigns cold and need,

And feeble flesh his warrior's steed.

His camp is pitched in a stall,

His bulwark but a broken wall;

The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,

Of shepherds he his muster makes;

And thus as sure his foe to wound,

The Angels' trumps alarum sound.

My soul with Christ join thou in fight,

Stick to the tents that he hath dight;

Within his crib is surest ward,

This little Babe will be thy guard;

If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,

Then flit not from the heavenly boy.

Robert Southwell (c. 1561 – 21 February 1595), also Saint Robert Southwell, was an English Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order. He was also a poet and clandestine missionary in post-Reformation England.

After being arrested and tortured by Sir Richard Topcliffe, Southwell was tried and convicted of high treason for his links to the Holy See. On 21 February 1595, Southwell was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. In 1970, he was canonised by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. || From Wikipedia: http://j.mp/0SouthwellWiki or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Southwell_(Jesuit)

More Southwell poems at: http://j.mp/2SouthwellPoems or http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/southw01.html

Two: An explanation of the disappearance of a ghost:

It faded on the crowing of the cock. 180

Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, 185

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

-   Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 180-187

http://j.mp/0Hamlet1S1 or http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=1&Scene=1&Scope=scene

I2C 141226Xa Day Two Xmas 14 | I2C | 141226 1054 | Day Two Xmas 14

Isaiah 9v2 Christmas 2014 Francis Mass

[Special note: More notable messages and video clips for Christmas 2014 will be linked and / or posted by the evening of the 26th, Lord willing. http://j.mp/2Xmas14Msgs or 

http://intwocities.blogspot.com/2014/12/john-114-notable-messages-christmas-2014.html ] 

Isa 9:2 KJV  The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. [My emphasis.]

Please do not be overly annoyed by what many may consider the normal and common Roman imperfection in the last sentence of Francis' message.

Text of Pope Francis' homily during Christmas Eve Mass

News from The Associated Press Dec 24, 5:01 PM EST http://j.mp/0X14MassMsg or http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_REL_VATICAN_CHRISTMAS_EVE_TEXT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-12-24-17-01-47

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican's official English-language translation of Pope Francis' prepared homily, to be delivered in Italian, during Christmas Eve Mass on Wednesday in St. Peter's Basilica. Spelling and style are the Vatican's.

[- - - - - - - - - - - - -]

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined" (Is 9:2). "An angel of the Lord appeared to (the shepherds) and the glory of the Lord shone around them" (Lk 2:9). This is how the liturgy of this holy Christmas night presents to us the birth of the Saviour: as the light which pierces and dispels the deepest darkness. The presence of the Lord in the midst of his people cancels the sorrow of defeat and the misery of slavery, and ushers in joy and happiness.

We, too, in this blessed night, have come to the house of God. We have passed through the darkness which envelops the earth, guided by the flame of faith which illuminates our steps, and enlivened by the hope of finding the "great light". By opening our hearts, we also can contemplate the miracle of that child-sun who, arising from on high, illuminates the horizon.

The origin of the darkness which envelops the world is lost in the night of the ages. Let us think back to that dark moment when the first crime of humanity was committed, when the hand of Cain, blinded by envy, killed his brother Abel (cf. Gen 4:8). As a result, the unfolding of the centuries has been marked by violence, wars, hatred and oppression.

But God, who placed a sense of expectation within man made in his image and likeness, was waiting. He waited for so long that perhaps at a certain point it seemed he should have given up. But he could not give up because he could not deny himself (cf. 2 Tim 2:13). Therefore he continued to wait patiently in the face of the corruption of man and peoples.

Through the course of history, the light that shatters the darkness reveals to us that God is Father and that his patient fidelity is stronger than darkness and corruption. This is the message of Christmas night. God does not know outbursts of anger or impatience; he is always there, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, waiting to catch from afar a glimpse of the lost son as he returns.

Isaiah's prophecy announces the rising of a great light which breaks through the night. This light is born in Bethlehem and is welcomed by the loving arms of Mary, by the love of Joseph, by the wonder of the shepherds. When the angels announced the birth of the Redeemer to the shepherds, they did so with these words: "This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger" (Lk 2:12).

The "sign" is the humility of God taken to the extreme; it is the love with which, that night, he assumed our frailty, our suffering, our anxieties, our desires and our limitations. The message that everyone was expecting, that everyone was searching for in the depths of their souls, was none other than the tenderness of God: God who looks upon us with eyes full of love, who accepts our poverty, God who is in love with our smallness.

On this holy night, while we contemplate the Infant Jesus just born and placed in the manger, we are invited to reflect. How do we welcome the tenderness of God? Do I allow myself to be taken up by God, to be embraced by him, or do I prevent him from drawing close? "But I am searching for the Lord" - we could respond. Nevertheless, what is most important is not seeking him, but rather allowing him to find me and caress me with tenderness. The question put to us simply by the Infant's presence is: do I allow God to love me?

More so, do we have the courage to welcome with tenderness the difficulties and problems of those who are near to us, or do we prefer impersonal solutions, perhaps effective but devoid of the warmth of the Gospel? How much the world needs tenderness today!

The Christian response cannot be different from God's response to our smallness. Life must be met with goodness, with meekness. When we realize that God is in love with our smallness, that he made himself small in order to better encounter us, we cannot help but open our hearts to him, and beseech him: "Lord, help me to be like you, give me the grace of tenderness in the most difficult circumstances of life, give me the grace of closeness in the face of every need, of meekness in every conflict".

Dear brothers and sisters, on this holy night we contemplate the Nativity scene: there "the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light" (Is 9:1). People who were unassuming, open to receiving the gift of God, were the ones who saw this light. This light was not seen, however, by the arrogant, the proud, by those who made laws according to their own personal measures, who were closed off to others. Let us look to the crib and pray, asking the Blessed Mother: "O Mary, show us Jesus!'"

Related Notes

Pope Francis Installation Mass Homily Text Pope Francis urged the world to defend the poor and protect the environment during his inauguration mass.The Pontiff also said that in order to protect other...

BBC News - Pope Francis celebrated Mass in St Peter's Basilica on Thursday morning Pope Francis will wash the feet of prisoners in a youth detention centr...

I2C 141225ba Isa9v2 Xmas14 Mass msg | I2C | 141225 1256 | Isaiah 9v2 Christmas 2014 Francis Mass

John 1:14 Notable Messages Christmas 2014

John 1:14 KJV  And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Pope Francis' Christmas Eve Mass Homily

http://j.mp/2X14MassMsg

http://intwocities.blogspot.com/2014/12/isaiah-9v2-christmas-2014-francis-mass.html

Pope Francis' Christmas Urbi et Orbi Message

http://j.mp/2X14FrancisUrbi or

http://intwocities.blogspot.com/2014/12/luk2v29to42-x14-francis-urbi.html

Work in progress.  Plan to have lots of content by evening of the 26th, Lord willing.

141226 2006 Running late. Slight illness. Have to cut back. Let me know if you are interested in more messages and what sort.

I2C 141225aa Joh1v14 Notable msgs Xmas 2014 | I2C | 1412 | John 1:14 Notable Messages Christmas 2014

Mat5v45 Robots replace doctors

Mat 5:45 KJV  That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

In temporal things, God loves all men.  Even in an era of rapid and accelerating technological change.

How computers will replace your doctor - The Week http://j.mp/0DrPC or http://theweek.com/article/index/273612/how-computers-will-replace-your-doctor

You've probably read some widespread sillinesses about how technology is moving us toward a world split between "high-skill" and "low-skill" jobs. Worriers claim that people with high-skill jobs will gobble up all of the economic pie, and those with low-skill jobs will be left with mere crumbs. This notion was perhaps best exemplified by economist Tyler Cowen's book Average is Over. http://www.amazon.com/Average-Is-Over-Powering-Stagnation/dp/0525953736

This is nonsense. Because high-skill jobs are in peril, too. And sometimes, their death will make way for a raft of new "low-skill" jobs.

For example, look at the future of the general practitioner of medicine. This is considered the epitome of the high-skilled, secure, remunerative job. Four years of college! Four years of medical school! Internship! Residency! Government-protected cartel membership! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIGBVjr3Et8

And yet, this profession is going the way of the dodo bird.

To understand why, the first thing you need to understand is that multiple studies have shown that software is better able to diagnose illnesses, with fewer misdiagnoses http://io9.com/5983991/computers-are-better-at-diagnosing-and-treating-patients-than-doctors . Health wonks love this trend, known as evidence-based diagnosis, and medical doctors loathe it, because who cares about saving lives when you can avoid the humiliation of having a computer tell you what to do.

Then you need to look at companies like Theranos http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler , which allow you to get a blood test cheaply and easily at Walgreens, and get more information about your health than you'd get in a typical doctor's visit.

Then look at a company like Sherpaa https://sherpaa.com/ , whose mobile app provides you diagnoses, helps you get your prescriptions filled, refers you to specialists, and so on. Right now, Sherpaa works with doctors. But there's no reason to think it couldn't eventually work with software (and in the meantime, work with cheaper Indian doctors rather than morbidly expensive American doctors).

But, you say, we won't be able to get rid of the human general practitioner absolutely. People will still need human judgment, and the human touch.

You are right — absolutely right. But the human we need is someone with training closer to a nurse's than a doctor's, and augmented by the right software, would be both cheaper and more effective than a doctor. You might pay a monthly subscription to be able to treat this person as your family "doctor" — although most of your interaction would be with software via an app. They'd be better than a doctor, too — trained in general wellness and prevention, and being able to refer you to specialists if need be.

What room is there left for generalist doctors in that scenario? None. They're the ones who the internet will replace; and it is nurses and other "low-skilled" health workers who will do best out of this shift. And most importantly, it will be great for patients.

Related Notes

Obamacare deals blow to one-doctor medicine | UTSanDiego.com Dr. Doug Moir fills out a patient’s medical history on the computer after her visit. Moir has less time for patients since electronic health record software...

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I2C 141216aa Mat5v45 Robots replace doctors | I2C | 141216 1039 | Mat5v45 Robots replace doctors

Pro22v15 Law homework eaten

Pro 22:15 KJV  Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

_ As Sean O’Casey’s “Captain” Boyle says: “The whole world is in a terrible state of chasis!”

_As my friend and Division Officer, LTJG Herb Wik, Dartmouth MBA, used to sat, “It’s all pretty wonderful!”

Social Injustice Ate My Homework | National Review Online http://j.mp/0DogEatsLaw or http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394297/social-injustice-ate-my-homework-charles-c-w-cooke

If there were a First Rule of our present penchant for victimhood, it would presumably be that everything unpleasant that happens in the world must, in some way, eventually be about you. Today, the National Law Journal reports that:

“The push to delay law school final examinations in light of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases has spread to Harvard Law School, as administrators at Georgetown University Law Center said students could seek delays on a case-by-case basis. Columbia Law School was the first to allow students to ask to postpone their exams.” [Links in copied article. Click either of above article links.]

Those Harvard students have produced an open letter, in which they demand that their examinations be delayed. “Like many across the country,” its authors claim, students “are traumatized” and “visibly distressed” — to the extent that there is now a “palpable anguish looming over campus.” The “national crisis” that has been provoked by the cases of Garner and Brown, they argue, has left them with no choice but to “stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams.” And, like their brethren at Columbia, they contend that their “being asked to prepare for and take our exams in this moment” amounts to their “being asked to perform incredible acts of disassociation” — requests, which taken together, have led them “to question our place in this school community and the legal community at large.” The bottom line? That students must be given “the opportunity to reschedule their exams in good faith and at their own discretion.”

Ugly as the Brown and Garner cases were, one can’t help but feel that what constitutes a “National Emergency” or a “personal crisis” is being rather dramatically defined down here — possibly to the vanishing point. In the course of their missive, the vexed students claim that “because this national tragedy implicates the legal system to which we have chosen to dedicate our lives, it presents us with a fundamental crisis of conscience and demands our immediate attention.” This, I’d venture, is an effectively irrefutable claim — and not in the good sense. Rather, it is the Interstate Commerce Clause of dog-ate-my-homework pretexts: an unlimited, self-serving, and infinitely malleable rationale that can be used at any time and for any reason. If our law students are to insist upon special dispensation each and every time the justice system fails to live up to its promise, our exam halls will be empty in perpetuity.

That a new batch of Ivy League lawyers is willingly handicapping itself will presumably inspire few tears in the United States. Nevertheless, we should all be alarmed to learn just how seriously our ostensible proto-elites seem to be taking themselves. Somewhat theatrically, the signatories contend that they have thus far “spent countless hours leveraging our legal educations, and utilizing our platform and privilege as students of this institution.” Really? Because it looks from the outside as if they’re claiming that they’re just too upset to turn up to class today. At best, this seems to be a case of ambitious students using any leverage they have to improve their grades; at worst, it is laziness sold as social justice. Either way, coming from self-acknowledged beneficiaries of “platform and privilege” it must look grotesque to those among us who have jobs.

Worse, perhaps, is the eager embrace of the victim’s pose. From start to finish, the letter’s tone shuttles between that of the vicarious masochist and that of the woe-is-me martyr. Harvard’s student body, we learn, is “traumatized” and “distressed,” and it is sad and disappointed that the college faculty has not agreed to engage in a day of general catharsis. What, one has to wonder, does this say about the sort of elite we are creating? We are talking here, remember, about would-be lawyers, many of whom will go on to work under substantial pressure in essential, delicate, influential areas. Even if we were to presume that the entire class of Harvard Law intends to end up representing corporations or arguing abstract constitutional principle, the news that so many felt unable to take their exams because they were upset by the news should be cause for concern. (Who would want to hire a delicate flower to be his lawyer in a time of crisis?) But, of course, they will not all restrict themselves to matters of high principle. Instead, many of those who are currently wallowing in abject self-indulgence will go on to be defenders, prosecutors, and advocates of reform — people, that is, who will be exposed daily to exactly the sort of cases that they are so vexed by today. Are we to welcome a generation of lawyers that takes a time-out each and every time the world’s blemishes are permitted to intrude upon their feelings?

All in all, the letter suggests that a significant portion of today’s students have noticed that, if they wish to get their own way, they need only to report that they are upset or outraged or traumatized, and then to sit back and wait. Ultimately, the fault here lies with the academy, which has spent the last few decades permitting “I’m offended” to become a reliable means by which debate might be summarily and forcefully shut down. Of course a good number of Harvard’s students expect that the mere mention of their “trauma” will serve as sufficient warrant for indulgence. Of course the letter’s signatories anticipate that any mention of “distress” will be met not with broad, harsh, and profound push-back but with acquiescence. As have so many people of my age, they have become thoroughly accustomed to having their sensibilities treated as if they were valuable in and of themselves. As have so many at the West’s top universities, they have realized that their feelings and opinions are received almost uncritically. To update an old maxim, we might say that to spare the skepticism is to spoil the child. Bluntly? These children are spoiled as hell.

One can only imagine how derisively previous generations would have snorted at today’s. During the Civil War — one of the bloodiest, nastiest, and most disruptive conflicts in the history of the world — a good number of American colleges not only stayed open but kept a regular schedule, too. In almost all cases, perbellum classes were filled with people whose fathers, brothers, friends, and former classmates were being killed, maimed, and, in a few cases, completely disappeared — and in astonishing and unprecedented numbers. The arguments that underpinned and motivated the physical conflict, moreover, were extraordinarily contentious and wildly distracting. How easy do we imagine it was for students to focus when their country was embroiled in a brawl whose outcome would settle the practical meaning of the Declaration of Independence, the future of the American experiment, and the fate of human slavery on the continent?

And yet, despite these hardships, the only thing that proved consistently capable of closing the colleges was the war itself — the vast majority of institutions shuttering their doors because too many of their students had enrolled in the military, because their facilities stood in the line of fire, or because the government had requisitioned their buildings. The same stoic attitude was on display in England during the Blitz, which unpredictable abomination was unable to close Oxford, Cambridge, or any of the other schools that were deemed unlikely to be blown to pieces. (Most of London’s colleges closed, but not all of them. Birkbeck College stayed open even after a German bomber scored a direct hit on the library!)

While at Harvard in 1945, the satirist Tom Lehrer issued a semi-parodic anthem of encouragement for the student body. Having noticed that the university’s existing refrains “had a tendency to be somewhat uncouth, and even violent,” Lehrer thought that it might “be refreshing, to say the least, to find one that was a bit more genteel.” And so, being an enterprising sort, he wrote one himself, offering up a ditty that combined the more traditional enjoinders to “Fight fiercely, Harvard! Fight! Fight! Fight!” with salutary reminders to “invite the whole team up for tea” and to “try not to injure” one’s opponents. A modern Lehrer might take a look at the school’s current crop of self-pitying students and conclude, alas, that the opposite correction was in order.

— Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review. [My emphasis.]

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I2C 141210aa Pro22v15 Law homework eaten | I2C | 141210 1037 | Pro22v15 Law homework eaten

Rom1v9 Bishop extraordinaire

Rom 1:9 NKJV  For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers,

A favorite blogger exhibits extraordinary correctness:

Confessions of a Carioca: Not-a-statement on Ferguson http://j.mp/0BishopA1 or http://cariocaconfessions.blogspot.com/2014/11/as-bishop-i-am-quasi-public-figure.html

As a bishop, I am a quasi-public figure, occupying a place on the long arc that eventually bends in the direction of celebrity. Within the constricted world of the Diocese of Springfield, and the slightly less constricted world of the Episcopal Church, and in some bits of Anglicanism beyond TEC, there are lots of people whom I do not know, but who know of me and a good bit about me.

Public figures from time to time make public pronouncements on matters that are either presumed to affect them peculiarly, or about which one might expect them to hold specialized information or unique knowledge, or about which their views might be considered generally significant. A few of my colleague bishops in the Episcopal Church, including the Presiding Bishop, have already “issued a statement” on the situation emanating from Ferguson, MO. It is entirely likely that more such statements will follow.

Mine will not be among them.

It’s not that I don’t have thoughts, feelings, and convictions regarding the tragic death of Michael Brown and the decision of the grand jury not to charge anyone with a crime in connection with his death. I have rather passionate opinions, as a matter of fact.

But that’s just the point: They’re my opinions. The opinions of Dan Martins, private citizen. Not the opinions of the Bishop of Springfield. The Bishop of Springfield has a teaching office, but–and I say this with utter respect and affection for my colleagues who have chosen to weigh in publicly on the situation as it emerges–while my teaching office has a great deal to say about the love of God made known to us in Christ, about the redemption of suffering through the mystery of the cross, about the dignity of every human being, about the reconciliation of those who are at variance and enmity, and about the eventual final triumph of justice and peace, it has nothing to say about whether the grand jury made a correct or incorrect decision, or about the conduct of the St Louis County prosecutor, or about the behavior of law enforcement authorities since Mr Brown’s death last August.

Dan Martins might have some things to say about all these matters, but the Bishop of Springfield does not–and, I will go so far as to say, ought not. Neither Dan Martins nor the Bishop of Springfield has any specialized knowledge about what really happened on that fateful afternoon last August. Fortunately, virtually no one cares what Dan Martins thinks, and that is as it should be, because, while he’s a reasonably smart guy, there’s a lot more that he doesn’t and never will know than he actually does know. A few more might care what the Bishop of Springfield thinks, because he is, after all, a quasi-public figure, a microcosmic celebrity. But pretty much all the Bishop of Springfield is either qualified or authorized to say about this or any other matter of public consequence is, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.”

There’s nothing new in that, and even less that is original. Some might consider it a cop-out. I look on it as my job. Christians of goodwill and an informed conscience can and do hold an astonishingly diverse range of views on matters of public policy and concern. The views of Dan Martins lie within that range. The view of the Bishop of Springfield is more singularly focused, and that is to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus the Christ from the dead, because any aspect of human experience not seen in that light is not really seen at all. The private opinions of Dan Martins pale in significance next to it.

Anyway, that’s my story, and I sticking to it. No statement to follow.

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I2C 141209aa Rom1v9 Bishop extraordinaire | I2C | 141209 1711 | Rom1v9 Bishop extraordinaire

Exo23v1 Lefties are hoaxers

Exo 23:1 NKJV  "You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.

Liberalism Is a Hoax [/] Column: Public relations in the service of the left [/] Matthew Continetti [/] December 5, 2014 5:00 am [/] Washington Free Beacon http://j.mp/0LibsAreHoaxers or http://freebeacon.com/columns/liberalism-is-a-hoax/

Talk about a dramatic entrance. When the St. Louis Rams took the field last Sunday, several teammates raised their hands, palms out. It was an act of solidarity with Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager killed last August in a struggle with a white police officer. Moments before his demise, it is said, Brown raised his hands and pleaded: “Don’t shoot.”

Since then “hands up, don’t shoot” has become the rallying cry of protesters and rioters furious that the officer, Darren Wilson, was not indicted by a grand jury. There is just one problem: It is not clear that Brown put his hands up. Nor is it certain that he said, “Don’t shoot.” On the contrary, the evidence released by the grand jury suggests that the fatal incident began when Brown assaulted Wilson.

Indeed, the foundations of the Brown story have been eroding from the moment a St. Louis television station broadcast security video from the convenience store where Michael Brown, prior to his fatal encounter, stole merchandise and assaulted a clerk. It was for example claimed that Brown was shot in the back. The evidence before the grand jury showed that he was not.

Is the movement to “de-militarize” the police that was sparked by Brown’s death therefore based on lies? “Those questions may never be answered,” says The New York Times, which campaigned for the indictment of Officer Wilson and sympathized with the violence and looting that has plagued Ferguson, Missouri, after the grand jury announced its decision.

Well, maybe those questions won’t be answered. What I do know is that the Times would be much more definitive and much more emphatic if the empirical data conformed even in the slightest to its preferred narrative, to its politicized storyline of pacific young black men gunned down needlessly by racist cops. What I do know is that the sensational and electric assertions made by liberals to further their agenda, especially on issues of race and sex, have a habit of being untrue. And it is the recurrence of such factually suspect accounts that raises troubling questions about the relation of liberal myth to human reality. (The case of Eric Garner, in which there is video of the deadly engagement, is different and should not be conflated with the fable of Ferguson.)

Liberal myths propagated to generate outrage and activism, to organize and coordinate and mobilize disparate grievances and conflicting agendas, so often have the same relation to truth, accuracy, and legitimacy as a Bud Light commercial. Marketing is not limited to business. Inside the office buildings of Washington, D.C., are thousands upon thousands of professionals whose livelihoods depend on the fact that there is no better way than a well-run public relations campaign to get you to do what they want. What recent weeks have done is provide several lessons in the suspect nature of such campaigns.

The 2006 Duke Lacrosse case is the paradigmatic example of a liberal rush to judgment when the perceived victim is a minority (in that case, a black woman) and the alleged perpetrator a straight white male. But it is not the sole example.

In 2007, an instructor at Columbia’s Teachers College specializing in racial “micro-aggressions” and under investigation for plagiarism discovered a noose hanging from her office door; when she was fired the following year for academic malfeasance it was widely suspected that she had put the noose there herself. The racist graffiti and Klan sightings that rocked the Oberlin campus in 2013 and served as the basis of an antiracism campaign were later revealed to be a left-wing “joke.” And of course the leader of the Michael Brown protest movement, tax cheat Al Sharpton, was involved in the Tawana Brawley hoax of 1987.

Recently critics have noted serious flaws in the reporting and writing of a Rolling Stone article that purports to describe a violent gang rape in a University of Virginia fraternity house. The article was the basis for the university’s decision to suspend Greek life on campus for the duration of 2014. What if the piece turns out to be largely or wholly false?

Would it even matter? Some liberals are upfront that the factuality of these cases is secondary to their political import. “Actually, in both the case of the UVA rape and in the case of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,” says a writer for the New Republic digital media company, “the major takeaway of recent weeks should be that our systems do not work” (emphasis in the original).

What the New Republic means by “our systems” is our systems of power: the institutions through which a free society allocates resources and decision making, chooses priorities, delegates responsibilities and authority. It is the goal of contemporary liberalism to command these institutions—in particular institutions resistant to the left such as police and fire departments, fraternal societies and private clubs, the military and extractive industry—and to alter them according to fashionable theories of equality and justice. The details are unimportant so long as the “takeaway” is communicated, the desired policy achieved.

It is sometimes difficult to understand that, for the left, racism and sexism and prejudice are not ethical categories but political ones. We are not merely talking about bad manners when the subject turns to Michael Brown or UVA or Thomas Piketty. We are talking about power.

“The new elite that seeks to supercede the old one, or merely share its power and honors, does not admit to such intention frankly and openly,” writes Vilfredo Pareto. “Instead it assumes the leadership of all the oppressed, declares that it will pursue not its own good but the good of the many; and it goes to battle, not for the rights of a restricted class but for the rights of almost the entire citizenry.”

Such is the conduct of our new elite, the archons and tribunes of the “coalition of the ascendant,” which proclaims itself the advocate of minority rights, of the poor, of the sick, as it entrenches its power and furthers its self-interest.

For an example of that rising and fabulist elite, look no further than Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who in a 2013 speech confided that the passage of Obamacare was due to a “lack of transparency” and “the stupidity of the American people or whatever.” Here is a highly compensated professional, who has received close to $6 million in consulting fees from state and federal government, admitting to like-minded audiences that the Obama administration rigged the process at the Congressional Budget Office, and that the law was written so if states did not establish health exchanges they would not receive Medicaid subsidies (the government is now arguing the opposite before the Supreme Court).

The response? More lies: Nancy Pelosi says she’s never heard of Gruber, and the president and his former secretary of Health and Human Services minimize his role in creating their signature legislation. (Gruber visited the White House, including the Oval Office, more than 20 times.) Gruber hasn’t been delivering speeches over the last few years. He’s been delivering confessions. And his words only embitter the recollection of other Obamacare promises that have been exposed as false: that the law would cut the deficit, that it would lower health care premiums by $2,500, that if you like your plan you can keep your plan.

What are the apocalyptic predictions of climate alarmists but Sorelian myths intended to shape legislation, regulation, and the culture in the radicals’ favor? To merely profess agnosticism on the subject of global warming is to elicit calls for one’s removal from the Washington Post. Yet the “pause” in warming has lasted for more than 15 years, leaving puzzled climate scientists, whose jobs depend on the imminence of crisis, speculating that the heat is hiding somewhere in the ocean. The “Climategate” emails revealed an insular and opaque scientific community sensitive to the political and financial ramifications of contradictory data. The sharknado-like hurricanes that environmentalists predicted as a consequence of global warming have yet to appear. Indeed, no hurricane has made landfall on Florida in nine years.

I gave up predicting the weather the first time I didn’t do my homework in expectation of a snow day and was proven wrong. Nevertheless I recognize the political appeal of climate change, the rhetorical power of a threat to correlate forces, to direct their activity. Not to mention the aromatic whiff of potential economic rewards. Retrofitting an economy for a post-fossil fuel world is a business opportunity for well-connected entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk or the coal baron, radical environmentalist, billionaire, and Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer, who is on record that the government-subsidized green energy bonanza is above all an opportunity “to make a lot of money.”

So much of contemporary liberalism reeks of a scheme by which already affluent and influential people increase their margins and extend their sway. Liberalism, mind you, in both parties: the Republican elite seems as devoted as their Democratic cousins to the shibboleths of diversity and immigration even as they bemoan the fate of the middle class and seek desperately the votes of white working families.

Just-so stories, extravagant assertions, heated denunciations, empty gestures, moral posturing that increases in intensity the further removed it is from the truth: If the mainstream narration of our ethnic, social, and cultural life is susceptible to error, it is because liberalism is the prevailing disposition of our institutions of higher education, of our media, of our nonprofit and public sectors, and it is therefore cocooned from skepticism and incredulity and independent thought. Sometimes the truth punctures the bubble. And when that happens—and lately it seems to be happening with increasing frequency—liberalism itself goes on trial.

Has the jury reached a verdict? Yes, your honor, it has. We find the defendant guilty. Liberalism is a hoax.

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I2C 141205ba Exo23v1 Lefties are hoaxers | I2C | 1412 | Exo23v1 Lefties are hoaxers

Luk22v36 War Clouds VDH

Luke 22:36 NKJV  Then He said to them, "But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.

War Clouds on the Horizon? | National Review Online Victor Davis-Hansen  http://j.mp/0WarCloudsVDH or http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393896/war-clouds-horizon-victor-davis-hanson December 4, 2014 12:00 AM

War Clouds on the Horizon? A large war is looming absent preventive American vigilance.

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors (Photo: Senior Master Sergeant Thomas Meneguin)

The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous — in a way we’ve seen before.

In the decade before World War I, the near-hundred-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon — and were ignored.

The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power shifted, decline for some nations seemed like opportunity for others.

The same was true in 1939. The tragedy of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was not that it had been too harsh. In fact, it was far milder than the terms Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in 1918 or the requirements it had planned for France in 1914.

Instead, Versailles combined the worst of both worlds: harsh language without any means of enforcement.

The subsequent appeasement of Britain and France, the isolationism of the United States, and the collaboration of the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany green-lighted Hitler’s aggression — and another world war.

We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.

Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State feel that conventional military power has no effect on their agendas. The West is seen as a tired culture of Black Friday shoppers and maxed-out credit-card holders.

NATO is underfunded and without strong American leadership. It can only hope that Vladimir Putin does not invade a NATO country such as Estonia, rather than prepare for the likelihood that he will, and soon.

The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences.

The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran.

Page 2

No one has any idea of how to convince a rising China that its turn toward military aggression will only end in disaster, in much the same fashion that a confident westernizing Imperial Japan overreached in World War II. Lecturing loudly and self-righteously while carrying a tiny stick did not work with Japanese warlords of the1930s. It won’t work with the Communist Chinese either.

Radical Islam is spreading in the same sort of way that postwar Communism once swamped post-colonial Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But this time there are only weak responses from the democratic, free-market West. Westerners despair over which is worse — theocratic Iran, the Islamic State, or Bashar Assad’s Syria — and seem paralyzed over where exactly the violence will spread next and when it will reach them.

There once was a time when the United States encouraged the Latin American transition to free-market constitutional government, away from right-wing dictatorships. Now, America seems uninterested in making a similar case that left-wing dictatorships are just as threatening to the idea of freedom and human rights.

In the late 1930s, it was pathetic that countries with strong militaries such as France and Britain appeased Fascist leader Benito Mussolini and allowed his far weaker Italian forces to do as they pleased by invading Ethiopia. Similarly, Iranian negotiators are attempting to dictate terms of a weak Iran to a strong United States in talks about Iran’s supposedly inherent right to produce weapons-grade uranium — a process that Iran had earlier bragged would lead to the production of a bomb.

The ancient ingredients of war are all on the horizon. An old postwar order crumbles amid American indifference. Hopes for true democracy in post-Soviet Russia, newly capitalist China, or ascendant Turkey long ago were dashed. Tribalism, fundamentalism, and terrorism are the norms in the Middle East as the nation-state disappears.

Under such conditions, history’s wars usually start when some opportunistic — but often relatively weaker — power does something unwise on the gamble that the perceived benefits outweigh the risks. That belligerence is only prevented when more powerful countries collectively make it clear to the aggressor that it would be suicidal to start a war that would end in the aggressor’s sure defeat.

What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change.

A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventive vigilance that might have stopped it.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. You can reach him by e-mailing [email protected]. © 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

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I2C 141204aa Luk22v36 War Clouds VDH | I2C | 141204 1509 | Luk22v36 War Clouds VDH