Topics in this section (below Brinsmead post):
New comments below on the “social contagion” of childhood “climate anxiety”. The prominent outbreak of child abuse today as adults panic and traumatize children with the apocalyptic crusade of irrational and unscientific climate change hysteria.
Viktor Frankl on the search for meaning. “The primary motivation for living is to find meaning.”
Ken Hapaala on “The Week That Was: The Science and Environmental Policy Project.” “The common assumption that carbon dioxide is “the main driver of climate change” is no longer true and is scientifically false.”
Hapaala on “A Strong Historical Case for Nullification.” “The ‘peoples of the states’ are the sovereigns.”
This from Bob Brinsmead. See also https://bobbrinsmead.com/
For those who may have missed this below and want to know who the “Historical Jesus” really was and what he actually taught, Brinsmead is among the best at explaining these things. Bob has long exhibited the finely tuned ability to see core issues in relation to anything that he is looking at. And he does so without resorting to “ad hominem attack” against any who disagree with him, sticking to the core issues at play. A great human spirit.
Here is a recent post from Bob that presents his research on this subject of how the man Jesus was transformed by Paul into the Christ of the New Testament. In that process of “developing Christology for early Christianity” the Historical Jesus was deformed utterly to represent something entirely opposite to who he actually was and what he actually taught.
Both Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy have made brutally blunt conclusions about what happened with Paul’s Christology as burying the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus in (pardon my quoting of their actual terms) “dung, slime and muck, garbage”, the “product of lesser minds”.
“(The early Christian development of Christology- Jesus as the Christ, deification of an ordinary human person) meant taking the focus away from the teachings of the messenger and putting all the focus on to the person of the messenger”, Bob Brinsmead.
The outcome of the multiple-century process of Christology was a hideous deformity of the person.
As Bob has said elsewhere- Turning Jesus into Christ shifted the focus “From the message of the man to a message about the man.”
So instead of “Jesus-ianity” we got “Christ-ianity”.
Prelude: The Hellenist faction of the Jesus movement forged an amazing myth to unite Jew and Greek that was more appealing to the Greek than the Jew. In the end the myth became the religion of the Greco-Roman world- Christianity.
The main body of Bob’s post:
“I am currently writing (based on the research of scholars) how the Jesus movement developed post-Easter by forming two groups. The first group were the original Aramaic-speaking Jews (James, the apostles, etc.) in the Jerusalem church. These were known as the Hebrews – quite conservative Jews. The other group were the Jewish Hellenists or Greek-speaking Jewish converts. (See Acts 6:1) It is a fascinating history.
“There was friction between the two groups from the start. For a background on this, one needs to understand the impact of Hellenism in Jewish history. The Hellenist Jews were influenced by Greek language, philosophy, culture and religion. This was a force within Judaism for two to three hundred years just as there was a Persian influence on Judaism before that- bringing Aramaic and Zoroastrian ideas into Judaism to create the astonishing era of Jewish apocalyptic (books of Daniel, Enoch, Maccabees, etc.).
“So with Hellenism there were even greater influences with Greek philosophy, Greek culture, Greek ideas, all impacting within Judaism. The conservative Jews, including the conservative Jerusalem church or synagogue of the Nazarenes, were not comfortable with the Hellenists and were not comfortable with the more radical evangelism of Stephen the Hellenist. And so the Jerusalem group kept their distance from Stephen, kept clear of the persecution which followed, and were not personally impacted by the persecution crusade of Saul of Tarsus which was directed at the Hellenists to whom he was finally reconciled. But in one respect Paul was already a Hellenist by birth, education and background as well as a Pharisee- a conflicted kind of person in that respect.
“Oh yes, with Hellenism came the Septuagint version of the OT, which Paul used exclusively. Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenist Jewish philosopher, the most prominent Jewish writer in Paul’s age. The Hellenist converts of the Jesus movement fled to Antioch to escape persecution, and there acquired the label of Christians because of their distinctive and original focus on the beginnings of a Christology, which was all Greek (excuse the pun) to James and Co. at Jerusalem. The bottom line is that Antioch and not Jerusalem was the cradle of the Christian Church. Antioch only managed to overtake or hijack the Jesus movement that began in Jerusalem under the leadership of James after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans which ended the dominant role of the Jerusalem church in 70 CE.
“The Christ movement which began at Antioch never really blossomed until after the death of both James and Paul in the 60’s. When they both died around the same time, James was a towering figure in the Jesus movement and Paul was almost down and out. “All in Asia have deserted me…”, he wailed just before his death. The truth is that Paul and James, or Jerusalem and Antioch, really did put on a very serious Punch and Judy show- and the author of the book of Acts and others tried to write this conflict out of the story despite leaving traces of blood all over the floor, so to speak.
“What I have done in my journey since I wrote my three-part farewell to Adventism 40-plus years ago (i.e. ‘1844 Re-examined”, “Judged by the Gospel”, “Sabbatarianism Re-examined”) is to do what I did in respect to Adventism. I delved into the early history of how the 1844 sausage was made from 1833 to 1857, or from William Miller to James White, ending with his “Investigative Judgment” and “Sabbatarian-Mark of the Beast” eschatology. When I understood every step of how this Adventist sausage was made, I did not want to eat it anymore. I finally got to do this same process with Christology. I have looked into the whole process of how the sausage was made over a period of 400 years, from Antioch to Chalcedon in 451 CE, seeing how, with a certain amount of Greek or Hellenist influence, the theologians of the church built the edifice, how each Creed developed from the Apostles Creed, to the Nicene Creed and then on to the anti- Arian Creed of Athanasius plus Chalcedon in 451 CE.
“At Nicene, with the Emperor Constantine presiding, (that was even before the edifice was complete), the church was ready to support the Emperor’s edict to kill anyone who questioned a single point of the Nicene Creed. The faith worth dying for had become the faith worth killing for, in many centuries to come.
“When one sees how the sausage is made, one loses an appetite for it.
“What am I left with? I am left with what the apostolic church at Jerusalem was left with- no Christology at all, no doctrine of a blood atonement, no virgin birth, no divinity of Jesus… just his teachings! In the words of Burton Mack, it is neither possible or even necessary to know anything very much about the person called Jesus except what he taught. He was, on this account, a great Messenger from God because, like any good messenger, he did not make himself the message or centre of attention. But he did have a new doctrine of God and what it meant to live in his kingdom in the here and now. He taught that God is not in some other place more than the Abba Father is in this place, and that the Father will not be more present in some future apocalyptic time more than the Father is present in this present time.
“There is no Apocalyptic event to look for. There is no sacrifice needed to bring to the compassionate Father (Jesus died as a prophet, not as a sacrifice). The messenger did not teach people to put their faith in him or to laud him. There is no “good master” stuff or Lord, Lord stuff with this messenger of the Father. God forbid. There is no worshiping the messenger who simply wanted people to do what he said instead of making some big deal out of who he was supposed to be. That pissed him off big time. No good ambassador will do otherwise.
“Human beings, however, can become too smart by half. But at least the Hellenists were smart enough to see that if you wanted to conquer the Greco-Roman world with a new religion, you would have to have something more exciting than the wisdom sayings of a Jew about whom so little was known. There was as much antisemitism then as now. It would be far easier to turn this Jewish prophet into a Gentile god with all the bells and whistles (titles and status) of a Greek god. And at least one born of a woman whom you could say was impregnated after the manner of any Greek legend.
“So it was that the Hellenists at Antioch reached out to speculate on something that seemed more potent than the mere teachings of Jesus and to give him a title, a status and a CV of enough impressive Greek-like miracles to transcend a mere Jewish messiah. And they gave him the more illustrious Greek word “Christ” as a title. This meant taking one small step for the Hellenists at Antioch but one giant step for human history. It meant taking the focus away from the teachings of the messenger and putting all the focus on to the person of the messenger. It was and is simply a human tendency to do that. Mack dares to call this as forming “the cult of Christ”.
“The so-called Hebrews in the apostolic church in Jerusalem led by James, the brother of Jesus, never had a Christology and never went down that 400-year road of developing one. The question is now starting to be asked all over the Christian world, whether this 400-year road of developing a Christology has turned out to be a 2,000-year detour away from the real vision of Jesus. This cloud has a very bright side. In our present global village, it has become embarrassing to suggest to all and sundry that our Christ is bigger and better than any of your avatars. And it is beginning to dawn on Christians that the historical Jesus would not have liked any of this chest-thumping- “I am the greatest” antics.
“After all, he did utter some very contrary and revolutionary things about what greatness really means. And on the other hand, we are left with a Jesus who was never a Christian anyway but whose words can reach the heart of people from any religious background and become an enormous human uniting force that is not driven by any institutional church.” (End of essay)
The Jesus/Paul contradiction in the New Testament (a ‘post-lude’ to Bob’s comments), Wendell Krossa
There has been nothing nearly as dominant in shaping our Western narratives and consciousness as the differing views of these two religious icons (see James Tabor quotes in sections below on the dominant influence of Paul on Western civilization).
These two embody and illustrate two entirely opposite worldviews and complexes of ideas/ideals.
This summary list covers a few of the more prominent of the contrasting themes. These contrasting features have been attributed to deity, by both Jesus and Paul, as humanity’s highest embodiment of ideals and authority:
(1) The nonretaliation of Jesus in his central statement of his theology- “No more eye for eye retaliation but instead love your enemy because God does” (Matthew 5, Luke 6). Versus Paul’s opposite theology of ultimate retaliation- “’Vengeance is mine, I will retaliate’, says the Lord” (Romans 12).
(2) Jesus’ unconditional theology expressed in this- “God sends the most important gifts of life- sun and rain (critical to agrarian society)- to both good and bad people” (Matthew 5). Versus the supreme condition/demand of Paul’s God for an ultimate atonement by a cosmic god-man, the Christ (Romans 3-5).
(3) Nondomination in Jesus (as the representative of what God was like, exhibiting what the “greatness” of God was)- “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave,” (Matthew 20).
Versus the domination by Paul’s Christ who is presented as the ultimate dominating reality ever imagined by human minds, the One destined to rule the entire cosmos and all in it, for eternity. There is no more extreme expression of the highest idealization of domination than in Paul’s Christ.
Here is a reposting of some of the New Testament statements by Paul and others on the domination by “Lord Jesus Christ”:
Ephesians 1: “That… seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion… not only in the present age but also in the one to come… God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything.”
Philippians: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
“And we eagerly await… the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control”.
1 Timothy 6: “Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ… the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords… To him be honor and might forever”.
1 Peter: “Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand-with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him”.
John then takes the divine ideal of domination to ultimate reach in his “Revelation”: “He shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are shattered… On his robe and on his thigh, he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” And so on.
(4) Nontribal inclusivity- Again, evident in the Jesus statements on the divine generosity that grants the most critical gifts of life- sun and rain- to all alike. Inclusive love that invites “sinners” into meals, that unconditionally and nontribally cares for traditional “enemies” (i.e. the Good Samaritan).
Versus the tribal discrimination and exclusion that differentiates between who receives divine love and generosity- i.e. the cosmic dualism manifested in the differing treatment of true believers versus unbelievers (i.e. true believers saved, unbelievers excluded and ultimately damned to hell). See Revelation 20-21 for expressions of the ultimate exhibition of tribal division, separation, and exclusion.
And so on.
The above are profoundly contradictory pairs of ideas presenting entirely opposite ideals to shape human consciousness and life. These two well-known religious icons represent two sets of opposing ideas/ideals that have contested to shape human consciousness, narratives, and life for two millennia.
My conclusion: You cannot merge and mix things entirely opposite to one another. The more humane ideals in these religious mergers are then deformed and buried by their opposites. That was the point of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy- The diamonds are buried by the dung.
This speaks to the failure of reformism that tinkers around the periphery of religious systems and leaves inhumane narrative features intact, fearful of causing too much disruption to a system of belief.
And that is why the stunning ideals of Historical Jesus have never been properly presented to work their liberating transformation on human minds, spirits and life. His central themes and message have been deformed and buried “by lesser minds” for two millennia.
So we ask- What kind of future do we want? What set of features should define the human future? What body of ideals should shape and inspire a truly human future?
Traditional posing of the mental problem of a “perfectly loving God” and the presence of evil in life (i.e. “Theodicy” as basically the defense of ultimate good, ultimate love, ultimate perfection)- Symes/Rogan discussion, Wendell Krossa
Joe Rogan just interviewed philosopher Jack Symes, episode 2193 of JRE on Spotify and YouTube.
Symes noted that the dogmatic atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Lawrence Krause, and others is now dying. They never offered anything reasonable to explain what brought this universe into being and the amazing fine-tuning that enabled carbon-based life to exist (note Symes’ comments on Roger Penrose’s calculations re fine-tuning).
He then moved on to state that a perfectly good God was a reasonable conclusion to make about deity. Then he referred to his recent interview with Jordan Peterson where he asked Peterson about the existence of evil. Why would a perfectly good God use natural selection to develop life, with its horrific brutality?
He said that Peterson responded to his question with a weak (in his opinion) “We have to keep working on the problem of evil”. But Symes countered that we have already been working on it forever and have gotten nowhere.
Symes might profit from considering a few more things regarding a perfectly loving God and the presence of evil in life. For example, consider that we do not know or experience good except in contrast with its opposite- evil. If all reality were perfect, as in an Eden that was never corrupted, what would that have brought forth?
As some have suggested, there can be no authentic good except as the free uncoerced, unthreatened response against evil (i.e. people not choosing to do good out of fear of judgment, punishment, hell, etc.).
And then add to the mix of alternatives, that if “God is love” then an authentically loving God will not intervene to influence and force good choice (overwhelm human freedom) or to prevent choice for evil. Where there is no such freedom there is no authentic love. Love and freedom are inseparable realities.
And then one more to bring into such discussion- Joseph Campbell’s comment that in this realm of dualism “we are all actors on God’s stage playing out our roles”, in a temporary life experience.
I would add to Campbell that after playing our roles here, we all return to the perfect love in the ultimate Oneness that is the realm and life beyond. The dualism of good and evil only exists here in this material realm. We come from our home in oneness to experience good and evil, to learn, gain insights, make choices in freedom, and thereby grow and develop as human. But this dualism of good and evil is not eternal reality. It’s just a “learning arena”.
Just some additional suggestions to flesh out the discussion. We need to be cautious about locking our minds within over-simplified arguments that only pose limited assumptions and choices. Such as the limiting triad of “God is good, God is omnipotent, evil exists”. I counter- “Let a thousand flowers bloom”. There are 8 billion of us, for Christ sakes. Why limit discussion to simplistic dualisms- i.e. either dogmatic atheism/materialism or dogmatic versions of religion?
Note:
At the individual level of human suffering, the horror and hell that life can bring overwhelms any attempt at explanation. None of these arguments/explanations will make any sense and may even evoke anger from those who suffer the worst in life. Philosophical explanations may appear to be just mental gimmickry, nonsensical gibberish. But while theodicy projects may not assuage individual suffering, they may help in terms of the big overall picture and the long-term project to understand and explain our existence in this imperfect world and affirm hope in something better, somewhere. These are critical issues to human meaning, to understanding what this reality is all about and, hence, why people keep asking such questions and wrestling with these issues.
Here is an excellent summary of Viktor Frankl’s “Search for Meaning”
Some responses from people I recently shared this article with:
“Worth reading over and over”, GV
“He just taught me a thing or two. Wow, I love this man!”, TW
“Thanks for sharing this”, AS
“Viktor Frankl’s ‘Search for Meaning’ in 5 enduring quotes”, Dave Roos, June 7, 2024
https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/viktor-frankl.htm
“The primary motivation for living is to find meaning”, Viktor Frankl
Disclaimer- Frankl’s use of “man/him” simply speaks to the time that he wrote in.
Roos begins, noting Frankl’s descent into hell on earth when he was sent to the Nazi concentration camps in 1942, along with his pregnant wife and the rest of his extended family. He suffered years of humiliation and violence. Throughout that time, he held to his “meaning therapy” which centered on the belief “that humans can overcome the inherent suffering and disappointments of life by finding meaning and a sense of purpose in every moment.”
Frankl’s entire family was murdered by the Nazis. He later published his “logotherapy” or “meaning therapy” theory in his well-known “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
Roos then shares his interview of Alex Batthyany who directs the Fankl Institute. They discussed five quotes from Frankl’s book on the search for meaning.
1. ”What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.”
This first principle embodies Frankl’s disillusionment with psychological approaches that were obsessed with libido or inferiority complex (i.e. Freud, etc.).
“Frankl said that these theories describe man as an island solely interested in ‘How do I feel?’ and ignoring the most important questions: ‘Why am I here and what am I good for?'” says Batthyány. “If we know the answer to these, many of the other problems are solved.”
Batthyany explains that Frankl was not denying a place for the search for happiness (i.e. a “tensionless existence”) but was arguing that it was not the primary motivation for living. Frankl was arguing that human life was about giving purpose and meaning to life by “serving or sacrificing your own desires for the benefit of others.”
Batthyany adds a “bonus quote” from Frankl: “The more one forgets himself- by giving himself to a cause to serve or love another person- the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself”.
2. “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice”.
Here Batthyany describes “logotherapy” as when “the psychologist tries to help his or her patients identify their own sense of purpose, even in the midst of significant suffering or sadness”.
He offers the example of an elderly doctor who had just lost his wife and was crushed by her death. Frankl helped the doctor see that if he had died first then his wife would have been the one to have suffered. So the doctor’s suffering took that pain away from her. That is suffering out of love. The doctor was able to find his reason for living in seeing Frankl’s reasoning.
3. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.
Batthyany recounts Frankl’s greatest trial when, after leaving the concentration camps, he discovered that his wife had been murdered. When stripped of that last hope, Frankl learned how to choose his response, like the many fellow camp prisoners who gave their last bits of bread so others could survive, and they died as a result of their love. That gave them meaning.
Frankl, in response to his wife’s murder, choose to use his freedom to help others by finishing his work on logotherapy and publishing his book. He gave his life meaning.
4. “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation, he might not have done the same”.
Here Batthyany talks about Frankl’s rejection of collective guilt to focus on personal freedom and responsibility- that only those who participated in crimes were guilty and responsible.
Bonus quote: “It is a prerogative of being human… to be capable of shaping and reshaping oneself… a privilege of man to become guilty, and his responsibility to overcome guilt”.
5. “No one can become fully aware of the essence of another human being unless he loves him”.
Frankl’s logotherapy recognized there was a “unique nature and untapped potential” in every person and we should help others “actualize their full potential”.
As Roos says, “The key to that actualization, for Frankl, is love”.
He quotes Batthyany here, “To love somebody means seeing him or her as God intended them to be… Love means connecting on such a level that you see the personhood of the other. You don’t just see the group that he or she belongs to— their religion, nationality or political affiliation— what you see is something far beyond any of these conditions… (and) anyone could change.”
Bonus quote: “The truth- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire- The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
Read the full article at link above.
This from “The Week That Was: The Science and Environmental Policy Project”, Ken Hapaala, Aug. 17, 2024
Hapaala quotes two of the best atmospheric physicists on the planet, Richard Lindzen and William Happer and shares a letter they sent to the Kentucky state legislature:
“The United States and countries worldwide are vigorously pursuing regulations and subsidies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to Net Zero by 2050 on the assumption, best stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climax Change (IPCC), that the “evidence is clear that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main driver of climate change,” and is “responsible for more than 50% of the change”
“We are career physicists with a special expertise in radiation physics, which describes how CO2 affects heat flow in Earth’s atmosphere. The physics of carbon dioxide is that CO2’s ability to warm the planet is determined by its ability to absorb heat, which decreases rapidly as CO2’s concentration in the atmosphere increases. This scientific fact about CO2 changes everything about CO2 and climate change.
“Carbon Dioxide is Now a Weak Greenhouse Gas.
“At today’s CO2 concentration in the atmosphere of approximately 420 parts per million, CO2 has little ability to absorb [additional] heat and therefore is now a weak greenhouse gas. Its ability to warm the planet and at higher levels of CO2 is very small. This also means that the common assumption that carbon dioxide is “the main drive of climate change” is no longer true and is scientifically false.
“More carbon dioxide cannot cause catastrophic global warming or more extreme weather. Neither can methane or nitrous oxide, the levels of which are so small that they are irrelevant to climate.
“In reality, CO2’s role has fundamentally flipped. Now more CO2 does two beneficial things for humanity: (1) it provides a slight increase in warming, and (2) it creates more food for people worldwide, covered further below.”
Their conclusions:
“First. Net Zero Efforts Will have a Trivial Effect on Temperature.
“Second. Disastrous Net Zero Effects for People Worldwide.
“Third. More Carbon Dioxide Means More Food.
“Fourth. Fossil Fuels Must Not Be Eliminated.
“Fifth. All Net Zero Actions Worldwide Should Be Stopped Immediately.”
Hapaala adds, “It is amazing that nations run by intelligent, rational people are willing to destroy their industrial economic foundations based on the fallacious exaggerations of the IPCC and its twisted science.”
Hapaala adds some good information on climate change over long paleoclimate time frames, referencing material from an article published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and written by Thomas Westerhold:
Interesting data:
The article notes that “Deep-sea benthic foraminifera preserve an essential record of Earth’s past climate in their oxygen- and carbon-isotope compositions”. The foraminifera present the climate record if the past 66 million years in their carbon and oxygen isotopes
When these tiny marine creatures die (1-2 millimeters, some several centimeters), their shells sink to the ocean bottom to become limestone and chalk as seen along the British coastline.
The Westerhold article continues, noting that past climate is largely understood from measuring the oxygen and carbon isotope variation in the remains of the foraminifera. The article detects four climate states- Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, Icehouse- that were fairly “stable in terms of temperature but had wide variations in CO2 concentrations”. During the Coolhouse state of 34-14 million years ago CO2 levels were as high as 800 ppm but temperatures were fairly constant around 6 degrees C above today’s temperatures.
The analysis of the data leads researchers to conclude that temperature variations of up to 18 degrees C during the paleoclimate past are thus explained by continental drift that influences ocean currents in addition to a complex of other natural factors- i.e. sun as primary energy source for climate, ocean storage of energy, ocean transport of energy, etc.
Similar to the research of Javier Vinos (The Sun-climate effect: Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis, posted on Wattupwiththat.com), the above article notes that “Now the dominant surface currents such as the North Atlantic Gyre transport heat from the tropics to the higher latitudes, where the heat is lost to space, cooling Earth.”
They note that the warming of the last 100 years may largely be explained as due to urban heat island effect, etc. But other notable changes in climate are mainly driven by the natural factors of solar cycles, ocean currents and oscillations, etc.
They add that “Water (in either liquid or vapor form) is the dominant energy storage and transport mechanism” and climate models do not take this into account, hence the consequent discrediting of the models that have “run too hot” in predicting significant warming that has not been observed in the real-world climate.
The conclusion:
“In considering climate change internal to Earth’s systems, the IPCC and its collaborators do not use the most important mechanism for Earth and focus on a bit role in a complex, evolving play…. It is important to remember that we live during a brief warm period in Icehouse Earth where the conditions are: “Wet, Warm, Non-glacial Times when Vegetation and Civilization thrive.””
Interesting discussion of government power versus the natural sovereignty rights of “the people”, in the context of US state’s nullification rights…
This from…
“Life, Liberty, Property #73: The Harris Plan, Such As It Is”, S. T. Karnick (Heartland), Aug. 18, 2024
A good article from this edition of Life, Liberty, Property 73- “A Strong Historical Case for Nullification.”
“Nullification” refers to the authority of states to nullify federal laws that they deem unconstitutional. There has been subsequent debate whether the federal government (nationalist theory) is sovereign, or do the states have sovereignty.
As Karnick notes: “In the American system no government is sovereign, not the federal government and not the states. The ‘peoples of the states’ are the sovereigns and their ratification conventions are the expression of their highest sovereign voice. It is they who apportion powers between themselves, their state governments and the federal government.” They add that the Constitution affirms this sovereignty of the people.
This is a blow to the “leftist centralizers” who hold the nationalist theory of federal sovereignty.
Karnick includes this closing point:
“The enemies of civilization have grown accustomed to seeing us occupy the role of feckless losers, who dutifully play by rules laid down by people who hate us. Nullification is a Jeffersonian tool, and it has deep roots in American history. Without it, we end up with a regime like the one governing us now. So we can play the role of tame, domesticated losers, or we can open that Overton Window nice and wide, and let some fresh Jeffersonian air blow right on in.
“The government of the United States is out of control, spending on an unsustainable trajectory while ruining the nation’s economy, crushing individual enterprise, and undermining the character of the people. Further progress down that way will lead to collapse within a matter of a few years. Far from being a threat to the constitutional authority of the federal government, nullification is one of the few courses of action that can help save it from self-destruction.”
Irresponsible adults engaging one of the worst forms of child abuse (adults promoting the irrational hysteria of an apocalypse crusade), Wendell Krossa
The climate alarmism narrative dominates public consciousness today and no doubt contributes to the world’s number one illnesses- depression and anxiety. The widespread “social contagion” influence of climate alarmism is evident in the fact that a majority of the world population believe that “the world is becoming worse” (see, for example, YouGov survey in “Ten Global Trends” Introduction, also Lancet report on climate anxiety).
The belief in life declining toward something worse is an entirely false view of reality.
Julian Simon cured his self-admitted “clinical depression” when he researched the evidence on the major elements of life and found that, while there are still problems everywhere, we are doing well in solving problems, taking care of nature, and consequently life is improving across the long term.
This article: “Media narratives on climate change driving ‘climate anxiety’ and harming young people, experts say”, Kevin Killough, Aug. 21, 2024
Quote:
“Deaths from climate-related natural disasters are at historic lows, but a 2021 Lancet survey of people aged 16-25 years, found 59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried.”on price gouging
Killough notes that due to widespread panic-mongering over climate change “an entire new field of psychotherapy has sprung up to treat what is being called “climate anxiety.””
This eruption of widespread anxiety has happened despite the fact that deaths from climate-related natural disasters have declined by 99% over the past century.
Killough then quotes a Heartland climate writer, Linnea Lueken, “It’s certainly abusive to be telling kids they don’t have a future.”
He refers also to a geological professor, Matt Wielicki, who noted the distress his students were facing over what they believed about climate change, “I think this is the first generation where they’ve been told their whole lives that the planet is on its way to ending at some point in their lifetime, civilization is going to collapse and the food supply will be destroyed.”
Killough further quotes Lueken as suggesting there are two prongs to climate alarmism. One is the tsunami of information available from today’s communications technology and media, daily pumped into people’s homes. Notably, information on every disaster that happens everywhere on earth and that gives the impression “that weather is out of control and becoming more extreme by the day”.
“The other prong is the intentional effort on the part of activists groups to spread climate fears throughout the media,” (Lueken). She notes that groups like “Covering Climate Now” push reporters to “insert climate change into every story in the most sensational ways possible” and discourage them from presenting counter information on climate. The result is the “paralyzing” fear among young people fearful of growing up and having children in a world that is soon to end.
In another article Linnea Lueken argues again that climate change itself is not causing anxiety.
“No, Evie Magazine, Climate Change is Not Causing Anxiety,” Aug. 19, 2024.
Climate change is not producing anxiety so much as false and misleading alarmist media coverage is. She refers to an alarmist article by Carolyn Ferguson who claimed that “last year was the hottest year on record for the world.” The writer claimed this “hottest on record” was especially true of the United States. Lueken then references the record of high temperatures which shows there has been no increase in high temperature events since such record keeping began in 2005. She also references the longer-term data which shows that US heatwaves were more frequent and severe in the 1030s. See the link above for the data graphs.
Lueken says: “Even looking at proxy data globally, which give an idea of ancient temperatures, (such data) do not indicate we are in a period that can be described as “the hottest on record.” Today’s temperatures, according to some sources, appear similar to that of the Medieval or Roman warm periods, roughly 1000 to 2500 years ago, respectively. Media claims to the contrary are just propaganda.”
Lueken concludes:
“Something like “climate anxiety” does exist – but it is a media-driven phenomenon because of the constant drumbeat of impending doom, not from actual lived experience of warming. Constant media coverage telling people that we are hurtling towards “global boiling,” that every weather extreme is because of you and your neighbor’s use of gasoline, including from typically conservative publications like Evie Magazine, is what is causing anxiety in people.”
A post to a discussion group: “Anyone still think leftist progressivism is not the real ‘threat to democracy’”? Not able to gain public acceptance, climate extremists try other approaches to force their apocalyptic crusade on the public.
This from Paul Driessen, “Leftist judges shouldn’t touch climate policy”, from CFACT, Aug. 25, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/25/leftist-judges-shouldnt-touch-climate-policy/
Driessen begins: “The Supreme Court may soon decide whether far-left cities or states can circumvent legislative processes and instead use our courts to impose radical environmental agendas.
“Having failed to garner enough political support to minimize or eliminate carbon-based fuels, nearly three dozen progressive jurisdictions have resorted to having friendly state judges circumvent the Constitution on national issues. They want no debate, no public referendums, no legislative process.”
He then notes that climate activists have blamed fossil fuels for heat waves, cold spells, hurricanes, wildfires, floods and droughts, and much more, such as abusive husbands. As a former Sierra Club activist, Driessen says that he once believed the alarmist claims till he realized they were using junk science to advance the extremist crusade to eliminate fossil fuels.
As he says, “Renewable” energy is not clean, green, renewable, or sustainable.”
He states that the lawsuits of the alarmist activists are asserting that fossil fuel companies are responsible for unprecedented and existentially catastrophic climate change. They ignore the evidence that Earth has undergone “multiple ice ages, the Medieval Warm Period (950-1300), the Little Ice Age (1303-1850), and other warm, cold, wet, and dry intervals that lasted tens, hundreds, or even thousands or millions of years.
“Scientists still debate what combinations of powerful natural forces caused these climate changes. And yet lawyers representing the cities and states essentially and absurdly claim fossil-fuel emissions have somehow replaced those natural forces.”