See below Shellenberger’s latest on the doubling down of European elites on censorship, and Hannan’s presentation of the basic principles of liberal democracy that we need to reassert. See also below the recent Megyn Kelly interview of Walter Kirn that offers bits like this- “Hilary Clinton (the Russians had intelligence on this) had already planned in the Spring of 2016, before Trump was the Republican nominee, to smear him with the Russian asset/collusion hoax, just in case he won the primary.” And more…
This moving story of Amanda Knox as she tells it to Bari Weiss of Free Press…
“Why Amanda Knox Forgave the Man Who Sent Her to Prison”, Bari Weiss, The Free Press, Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZviOmiGGUc
This kept hitting me with surprises at the humanity of it as I walked in the early morning dark up the road behind our place on the mountainside. I found myself repeating, “Holy fuckoli”. Such powerful insights into life and human experience, profoundly life-altering experiences of the worst and best kind for any human person to suffer through in one life. She speaks of the sadness of life (“becoming an adult is sad”), the absolute hell that some can create others, all while viewing themselves as heroes in their story as they bring down some demonized, dehumanized monster that they have constructed. The unfairness of so much in life and how some have to endure the worst of that unfairness. Yet she learned to love compassionately in response to the hell that she endured.
This is an incredibly moving story of not being broken but finding meaning/purpose in whatever life throws at us, especially in situations of horrific unfairness where we are subjected to lying, distortion, and the ruin of our lives. But we have to learn to push through to find meaning/purpose in the hellishness that life can unexpectedly become. Some people break completely (fellow prisoners of hers), others find an inner strength to push through to create meaning and purpose for themselves.
She was just 20 years old in 2007 when charged with the crime and imprisoned. That almost destroyed her, but she found a way through to become the person that she is now, living the new life that she is creating for herself. This is an amazing story of resilience, courage/strength, and the breakthrough to compassionate understanding and helping others, including her persecutors. She illustrates the best of her generation, and it compares well with any previous generation. If she, and young others like her, are the future, then there is great hope for humanity.
I appreciate that she takes a non-religious approach to understanding and explaining her discovery of what it means to be fully and maturely human. She did it her way.
Knox’s story sparked personal reflection re my project on this site to find ideas/beliefs/themes, ways of viewing reality, life, and our stories that can help fortify our spirits to persist through the worst in life knowing that beyond or behind the ugly things that life brings us, there is a greater love. I offer that as a most basic reality/belief to hold onto when all else fails, that there is Something much greater than us influencing our lives. As Joseph Campbell recounted, looking back on his life and all that happened to him, it was as if a novel had been written with all the parts fitting together as they should.
Taking insight cues from Historical Jesus and the NDE movement, I view that Something behind life as stunningly inexpressible love that (or who) is shaping our life story and experiences. And that leads to the conclusion that there is something profoundly meaningful in all the things that happen to us, both good or bad, and that something ultimately good will come out of it all. People in the NDE movement tell us that we experience the things that we do in life in order to learn and to progress to our full potential, in order for us to achieve the personal development (in empathy, etc.) that enables us to make better contributions to improving life for ourselves and others.
Knox says regarding her experience (falsely charged for murder), that her story is not romanticizing “rock bottom” experience. And I would add that it’s not about whistling in the dark against hope.
The experiences of our lives push each one of us to explore and discover the meaning of it for ourselves.
She urges listeners to discover purpose in the space or situations that we are thrown into and can’t avoid, especially the unfair ones. The details of how she was demonized publicly as a murderous monster, are shocking to rehear for the intensity of the harsh condemnation that was levelled against her, based on prosecutorial and media lies. The distortion, lies, deformity of what actually happened. She was forced to instantaneously realize that becoming an adult was “so sad”. The sadness of her push into adult reality- i.e. growing up- shook her out of her previous youthful naivete because of what she had to then endure.
During her early months in prison, she faced the question of was her life worth continuing. She was put on suicide watch in isolation. A Catholic priest proved invaluable in counselling her through the worst of her early years in prison. Responding to his advice, Knox states that she has never been a religious person. It’s more about being thoughtful and philosophical not religious, even though the priest helped her work through what had happened to her. He helped her make sense of life when it was so profoundly unfair, to have faith that it would make sense after this life, that there was something to it all and we have to trust that.
She does not hold such faith or belief but makes or creates her own approach to reassure herself that “the adults are present in the room” and will take charge when things fall apart. She finds that “mature taking charge” in herself and no one else. She had to grow up suddenly and take charge and make sense of her horrifically unfair life and the public lies and distortion that had defined her.
Listening to her tell her own story in her own unique terms is profoundly moving. She expresses herself so well, not fitting conventional boxes/categories, but creatively probing for fresh ways to describe her search for meaning and purpose and how after the horrific trauma that happened to her, she had to find her own way back from the lies that had defined her to the public to regain some kind of truthful life.
Such incredible experience for a young woman to have endured, to discover how harshly people judge and vilify others they don’t even know, and how media lie and propagandize. She comments on her struggle to rejoin the wider human family and, as she states, make some contribution to where we are all going. To try to regain some input on her life, redefining that life truthfully, a life that was taken away from her and defined by others.
It is then fascinating to hear her efforts to get in touch with the prosecutor who lied about her, falsely charged and imprisoned her, ruining her young life before the entire world as this case consumed much media across the world for years. She wanted to not judge or condemn him for his treatment of her but to understand him, to know him. She had to meet him to answer questions like- Does this person who hurt me, know that he hurt me?
I will basically transcribe the rest of her interview with Weiss (paraphrasing, quoting) as she powerfully illustrates her struggle with the ideal of unconditional love toward her prosecutor, a love from her family that was critical to her surviving the ordeal that the prosecutor put her through. She illustrates someone recognizing the transforming, affirming power of such love, yet balanced with holding offenders responsible for the harm that they caused, not dismissing or ignoring offenses and the ongoing harm that it has caused her.
She chose to let go of the urge to get him to admit that he had been wrong. She realized that she had an inner drive, not to get something from the man, but to give something to him, something that others had given to her in her darkest moments of despair. It was not excusing what he had done wrong but understanding what shaped him that left him with the delusion that he was the hero of his own story.
The Italian prosecutor now admits that Knox is not the person that he had initially imagined that she was. The monster he had created and coerced into admitting the crime under extreme duress by police (53 hours of repetitious questioning, haranguing, mental abuse, etc., even physical beating).
The prosecutor, she says, is now facing his own crisis as he sees that he got caught up in his own falsely constructed story and now he is questioning his own story and his role in the world, where before he saw himself as the hero. Now, his questioning of all that is a “huge psychological cost for him”.
She wants him to see that he can start again and be what he always wanted to be, to be more mature and less biased. She says that he is like all of us, “in process”, and she is willing to accept his process while also not excusing his errors. She wants him to know that she does not think he is an evil person. She told him that his mistake, that caused such harm to so many (her and her family), is not the only thing that defines him.
She also told him that even though she still hurts today, she is grateful for that experience in which he played an important role because she learned things about herself that she would otherwise have not known. How weak and vulnerable she was but also how strong. She discovered she was a strong person largely because of him. Her experience crystallized her core values of curiosity for truth (not just truth that serves her), compassion for those who have made mistakes, and courage to overcome her own fears and pain in order to remain curious and compassionate toward others, especially those who have harmed her.
She said to the prosecutor, “We cannot change the past, but we can change the future and the mistakes of our past are the opportunities of our future. It’s never too late to live up to our values and I believe you are a person of value. I do not wish you ill. I wish you peace”.
Bari Weiss, listening to her, then says, I know you are not religious but there is something powerfully meaningful coursing through your forgiveness of your persecutor, something spiritually transcendent. She asks Amanda, “What do you call that?”
Knox replies, “Yes, there is a spirituality to it.” But not in a religious sense of spirituality.
Knox adds, her position has moved from philosophical to spiritual as in a deep sense of interconnectedness, that we are all interconnected and that as her prosecutor was a profound influence on her, so she is a deep influence on him. And she recognizes her own power in that. She says that the day she was to meet her prosecutor she was terrified and unsure of what she would say but she woke up and “knew”… and felt unstoppable, that she was “flowing in sync with the Universe”.
She wishes other people to feel such moments because she says that she has never felt more free than when she was able to relinquish so much that was holding her back- i.e. the hurt, pain, anger, and hatred for that prosecutor and to instead embrace the broader self that he was, and also “the smallness of him”. He seemed like a baby bird and the power between them shifted as she realized these things.
She felt then that she was no longer defined by the crime that she had not committed. It was more than just surviving. The prosecutor responded that he felt that her talk with him was “an act of grace toward him”.
She saw that in what he did to her, he believed at the time that he was doing the right thing while doing the wrong thing. He still holds some defensiveness toward what he did. She did not accuse him of intentional malice and he appreciated that she gave him the benefit of the doubt even though he had denied her that same benefit of the doubt. Her doing that led him to recognize that she was not the person he thought he was originally prosecuting, a vicious murderer.
But she admits that he did not leave their meeting “suddenly fully enlightened”. He is still processing it all. He is still processing their relationship and what it means to him now, causing him to think about the case, his legacy, his role in the world and that he wants to leave a legacy that is healing instead of hurtful. He wants to be, she says, “The one who pulls the thorn out of my foot”. He needs to know the truth of what happened, and he is still trying to figure that out.
Weiss then asks Knox, “Do you forgive him?” Knox replies that was not her goal but once we see a person “in all their naked flaws you would have to be cruel and unusual to not feel compassion for them”. And she feels an immense amount of compassion for this man. She said that she cares and worries about him. She feels a kind of unconditional compassion for him as a flawed human living in this difficult world.
She can hold all these different feelings, along with her struggles with anger, disappointment, and frustration because she has not yet gotten the apology that she feels she deserves. And she still feels some entrapment in the narrative falsely created about her and that she will still spend the rest of her life proving her innocence. But she no longer feels limited by that accusation of guilt. Now she feels that her values and life are rooted in something more profound because of all that she experienced. She feels more deeply informed and more confident in her values.
Weiss comments on the chaos and unfairness that life presents at times and asks Knox if she still feels “the sadness of becoming suddenly adult” under such circumstances, under such cold shock into reality that life gives her the feeling of cold despair. Knox replies that the abyss never goes away once exposed to you. She said it always feel like she is walking on a tight rope above the abyss.
She responds that now when she experiences joy its not just joy but grief alongside the joy because she is intensely aware now of how fragile and impermanent everything is. She talked of being Ok with the knowledge that all you love will ultimately be taken away from you. That all you are “will ultimately crumble”. And that is OK, even good, because it means that having it now means so much. That the moments we have now, say with children, we won’t have forever. There is no guarantee to any of it. And while it is good now, “a trauma-informed part of her is a bit afraid that all the bad things will come swooping in to take away all she loves”. She advises us to just live in the now of “Its good and whatever happens next is also good”. She said she will be OK. So just sit and be aware of the interconnectedness of everything and take peace from that with knowledge the abyss can never go away.
In relation to her centering on “interconnectedness”, I would offer again the knowledge of a stunning love behind all life, despite the horror it is at times.
Knox says that love from her family was critical to her surviving the hell she endured. And her own experience of motherhood and the knowledge of family love that is always there- the unconditional nature of that love. That is real and deeply comforting to her, she said. It is also deeply empowering that she can give that love to someone else. She says, “What an incredible gift that all of us are capable of giving to each other all the time”. She adds that she is lucky to never have that love questioned. She met many other women in prison who did not have that love and “Were super fucked up by that not having that. They were irrevocably damaged by that”. She ponders, “Is that the difference of my surviving and getting out of what I experienced versus being broken by it.” Referring to the deep knowledge of being unconditionally loved.
Her explanations present such a refreshing approach to suffering the worst of life. Her explanations are not religious but more a form of personal philosophizing that shifted to a somewhat spiritual-like understanding (in a general manner). And her struggle with forgiveness and understanding of her prosecutor is so refreshing when you consider how drenched we are with public narratives that endlessly center on retaliatory vengeance as justice, with people engaged in endless cycles of hurt for hurt, humiliation for humiliation, vilification for vilification, etc. So much Hollywood story-telling feeds the lust for hate and hurt and destroy some offending other. Then along comes a rare story like this that knocks you back and makes you cry over the beauty and strength of a human spirit struggling through to discover something far more humane than the usual responses many make to the unfair hellishness that life can present at times.
She has written several books. Here are some of the latest…
“Free: My Search for Meaning”, Amanda Knox, March 25, 2025
Amazon blurb:
“Amanda Knox reflects on her world-famous confinement in an Italian prison and her return to an “ordinary” life—revealing hard-won truths about purpose and fulfillment.
“Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit—and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it’s taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free.
“Free recounts how Knox survived prison, the mistakes she made, the misadventures she had reintegrating into society, and culminates in the untold story of her return to Italy— and the extraordinary relationship she’s built with the man who sent her to prison. It is the gripping saga of what happens when you become the definition of notorious, but have quietly returned to the matters of a normal life— seeking a life partner, finding a job, or even just going out in public.
“In harrowing (and sometimes hilarious) detail, Amanda tells the story of her personal growth and hard-fought wisdom, recasting her public reckoning as a private reflection on the search for meaning and purpose that will speak to everyone persevering through hardship.”
“Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir”, Amanda Knox, June 9, 2015
Amazon blurb:
“As seen in the Nextflix documentary Amanda Knox, in March 2015, the Supreme Court of Italy exonerated Amanda Knox, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Waiting To Be Heard. In an afterward to this newly issued paperback edition, Amanda updates readers on her life since 2011, introduces the individuals who helped her persevere as her case continued through the Italian courts, and shares her plans for helping others who have also been wrongfully convicted.
“In November 2007, 20 year-old Amanda Knox had only been studying in Perugia, Italy, for a few weeks when her friend and roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, was murdered. The investigation made headlines around the world, and Amanda’s arrest placed her at the center of a media firestorm. After an extremely controversial trial, she was convicted of murder in 2009. She spent four years in an Italian prison until a new court, which appointed independent experts to review the prosecution’s DNA evidence, affirmatively found her innocent in 2011. She returned home to Seattle, Washington.
“But just when Amanda thought her legal nightmare had ended, it began all over again. In March 2013, Italy’s highest court annulled the acquittal and sent the case to the lower courts for further proceedings. Even though no new evidence was introduced against her, Amanda was found guilty and sentenced to 28½ years in prison in January, 2014. This decision was overturned by the Italian Supreme Court, which exonerated her of the murder charge.
“In Waiting to Be Heard, Amanda speaks about what it was like to find herself imprisoned in a foreign country for a crime she did not commit, and how much she relied on the unwavering support of her family and friends, many of whom made extraordinary sacrifices on her behalf. Waiting to Be Heard is an unflinching, heartfelt coming-of-age narrative like no other— now with a new afterword, in which Amanda describes the heart-stopping final twists in her fight for freedom, and her hopes for the future.”
See also:
And more on the climate file:
“Activists Run to Federal Court to Try to Ban Official US Government Report that Blows Holes in ‘Settled’ Climate Science Claims”, Chris Morrison, Daily Sceptic, Aug. 18, 2025
Morrison opens, stating,
“Science denying cry-babies in the US have toddled over to the Federal court in Massachusetts to seek an injunction against the recent Department of Energy (DoE) working party report about greenhouse gas emissions. The report’s main finding, produced after examining much of the literature from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that computer models offered “little guidance” on how much of the climate responds to warming gases such as carbon dioxide.”
He adds that this inevitable fact from the evidence is ignored by mainstream media that pushes the “political nonsense claims of ‘settled’ science” that has long been part of the desperate alarmist crusade “to keep the Net Zero fantasy alive using science scares that are increasingly being debunked.”
He notes further that highly credentialled scientists wrote the DOE report that cast reasonable doubt on the climate computer models and also added that extensive data “revealed most extreme weather events were not increasing, and sea level rises in North America showed no increasing trend. Attribution claims of human involvement in individual weather events are widely used to spread climate fear, but these were said to be challenged by natural climate variation along with an admission that they were originally designed with ‘lawfare’ in mind.”
The authors added evidence on “the recent massive ‘greening’ of the planet due to higher levels of CO2.”
Morrison says that normal discussion and debate is critical to policy outcomes and should not be banned by a lawsuit. That is absurd and childish, he says.
See full report at link above.
“Theology”, as in some version of “Ultimate Reality” that functions as the cohering center of human narratives, as the supreme embodiment of human ideals and authority (whether religious or “secular/ideological”), Wendell Krossa
A friend takes fun pokes at me about my “obsession” with this topic of the unconditional ideal. Yes, I’ve latched on to it because it presents the potential for a complete transformation of human narratives, overturning of primitive subconscious archetypes, and then the beneficial outcome of reverberating all throughout life, in mind, emotions, motivations, and responses behavior- humanizing everything for the better. An unconditional ideal helps us navigate the worst of life by doing the least harm and the most good to others. It helps guide us to maintain our humanity in the face of offense and evil. As Joseph Campbell said:
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Add the potential that unconditional ultimate reality offers for liberation from the worst of primitive mythical archetypes, bad religious ideas, and the “secularization” of such bad themes in contemporary “secular/ideological” crusades like Marxism/socialism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. This is about liberation from the threat theology behind apocalyptic alarmism and the consequent human enslavement to salvation schemes that demand sacrifice/payment and obligation to engage the purging of some threatening enemy as another requirement to salvation (“salvation through murder/destruction”).
The unconditional feature, Wendell Krossa
Critical to the “stunning new” element of Jesus’ theology is the unconditional feature. This is absolutely fundamental to understanding the central message and core themes of the man. It gives thematic coherence to the message and life of the man, his central theme that was buried by Paul’s highly conditional Christ myth in the New Testament.
Unconditional takes us to the freest of the “free” element in love. Freeness at its best. As in “no demands”. Absolutely none. No conditions to be met. No expectation or obligation to pay. No required payback for some initial good done or shown to us, no required sacrifice, etc. None of that. The absolute freeness of unconditional is his point. And how liberating that is to both lover and “lovee” (i.e. the one shown love). Unconditional is not love for some selfish reason. It is love without pressure of any sort.
It’s a form of love that inspires receivers of such love to freely return the same authentic love toward the givers.
The freeness of authentic love is the point being made in Jesus’ list of ethical precepts posted below. He repeatedly illustrates the point that authentic love, unconditional love, does not hold any expectation of returns from the people who are loved. Unconditional holds no expectation of responses “in kind” to the love shown.
(“Response in kind”- i.e. “If you respond in kind, you react to something that someone has done to you by doing the same thing to them.”)
Unconditional love dismisses/eliminates the obligation element that is often felt by receivers of love and its generosity. Unconditional rejects the creation of any sense of indebtedness/obligation, which then communicates a sense of enslavement to expected similar or “in kind” response. Unconditional just loves freely. It is the expression of a love that creates no sense of obligation in receivers.
Unconditional takes us to the ultimate height of love, to the highest reach of love in the realm of real heroism. It points us to responses/behaviors that define what it means to “tower in stature as maturely human”. Unconditional inspires people to courageously enter situations willing to suffer cost to themselves, to experience the humbling of being the initiator in backing away from anger at some offense and to let go of any right to entitled vengeance in kind.
Unconditional inspires a heroic willing to embrace self-sacrifice, denial, misunderstanding, etc., to make the necessary sacrifice in order to break a developing cycle of “eye for eye” retaliation and instead initiate movement in a relationship that will take things toward some better, improving direction, away from hatred, vengeance, and petty payback responses that end in harm for all parties involved, and too often even end in violence.
Again, think of Nelson Mandela who had to fight his own colleagues to defuse hatred and demands for vengeance against former oppressors. That is true courage governed by a clear-headed understanding of the potent healing power that unconditional love brings to problem-solving in what appear to be hopeless situations. Mandela explained his motivations for engaging the no conditions approaches that he brought to the mess in post-apartheid South Africa- i.e. it brought out the best in others (not always, but in many cases), and it turned former enemies into friends (not always, but in many situations).
After reading the Jesus precepts of Luke 6 and his point that these responses to offense reveal what God is like, what God does, you cannot then still argue for a deity who demands sacrifice/payment for sin before offering forgiveness or salvation. If “God is love” that is unconditional, as in the precepts of Jesus, then such a God will not require payment, payback, response in kind. God’s love is indeed free as these precepts illustrate. Add here the Prodigal Father’s example of how he treated his scoundrel son with no conditions.
The guiding ideals and behavioral principles/precepts of Historical Jesus: Wendell Krossa
The wisdom sage Jesus was a non-religious person who presented a non-religious message. His precepts are not dependent for their validity on any religious tradition. His precepts are oriented to responses of common decency in relationships. They are behaviors that are about authentic humanity in daily mundane life and interactions. Behaviors that can be practiced by religious people or atheists with no need for religious validation as behaviors that are especially indebted for their creation and existence to some religious belief system. No, they are non-religious, common human behaviors equally available to religious or non-religious alike.
And if you get the theology that he presents at the end of this list below, then that unconditional theology spells the end of all religious conditions, conditions which constitute the essential nature of all religion. Jesus argued that God was non-religious.
The takeaway insight from his message is that religion, as an essentially conditional institution across history (conditions to appease and please angry, threatening deity), such institutions cannot present the true unconditional, non-religious nature of deity.
Here is the list that speaks to the common human spirit in all of us, to the common human nature of love:
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”. Be just like God.
Prime example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.
The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.
The above statement and illustration by Jesus overturns entirely the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin in his supreme condition of a blood sacrifice of atonement by a special godman before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone. Paul rejected the Prodigal Father example and, contradicting Jesus’ new theology, stated his theology in Romans 12:17-20- “’Vengeance is mine, I will retaliate’, says the Lord”).
(End of Jesus’ precepts list)
No conditions love is for those moved to engage the spirit of heroism, who want to experience the best of being human, reaching for the highest levels of mature humanity, to experience what the real hero’s quest is about. It is for courageous human spirits who know, with Solzhenitsyn, that the real monster and enemy in life that we have to conquer is not out there. Its inside each of us- i.e. the inherited animal impulses to the “evil triad” of tribalism, domination, and vengeful, punitive destruction of opponents.
Living an unconditional life, especially during the brutal Roman era that Jesus lived through where public protest resulted in the barbarity of crucifixion, is not about the weak, mushy, or fuzzy response of pacifism in the face of violence. Pacifism is a distortion of love. Unconditional treatment of offenders still protects the innocent first and foremost and holds all fully responsible for their behavior. Look at the heroic courage it took for Mandela to break the cycles of hatred and violence in South Africa, first setting aside his own rightful feelings of hatred to then go out to work for an inclusive future for his country.
The list of ethical precepts is how Jesus defines his stunning new theology. He lists the best of human responses and states at the end that if you do this you will be just like God. This is what God is like and how God acts so “Be merciful in this manner just as God is merciful in this manner”. That is how we get theology correct. We start with the best of being human, the best of acting humanely. These responses/behaviors are not dependent on some holy book where writers claim divine inspiration.
When you look closely at the content of holy books that claim divine inspiration but the content is barbaric, inhumane, the worst of human behavior- i.e. promoting eye for eye vengeance, the tribalism of true believers saved unbelievers damned, people tormented in hells for eternity, domination of opponents/enemies, with violent destruction in apocalypses, Armageddon battles, etc. There is nothing of authentic love in such “divinely inspired” monstrosity.
Rejection of the old. Presenting the stunningly new, the “death/rebirth”, “disintegration/reintegration” transformation, Wendell Krossa
Jesus’ temple protest against sacrifice, and his rejection of the theology that undergirds and demands sacrifice, was about his project to overturn the deeply embedded belief in “salvation through violent murder (human sacrifice of innocent).” He rejected the feature of retaliation in God, a divine retaliation to be fulfilled in the apocalyptic destruction of the world (as portrayed in Revelation).
Jesus rejected the theological basis of the primitive beliefs behind the sacrifice industry and apocalyptic mythology. He taught that there was no angry God demanding apocalyptic purging of the “evil, corrupted” world that exists, in order to prepare the way to install the pure kingdom of God.
That very mythology- “salvation through violent destruction”- fueled Marxist revolutionary violence (i.e. purge, violently overthrow the evil and corrupt capitalist civilization) and Nazi mass-death (i.e. purge Jewish Bolshevik-ism). Now the same mythology fuels environmental alarmism that has merged with socialism in demanding that we purge evil industrial society from the world, to clear the way for the restoration of the lost paradise of a more wilderness world with far fewer humans living a restored communal existence with equity outcomes for all.
These three 20th Century crusades (two continuing) were all versions of the same old “salvation through destruction” as epitomized in the book of Revelation. John’s Revelation tops off the Christology of the New Testament as it presents Paul’s Christ at his enraged worst, trampling out “the fury of the wrath of God” at the unbelievers who did not join the madness of salvation by destruction. They did not embrace Paul’s Christ myth, hence, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord”, (2 Thessalonians).
Jesus went beyond reformism that tinkers at the periphery of religion and went right to the core of religion- to the God at the core, the wrathful deity demanding the conditions of violent sacrifice and destructive purging of unbelievers/enemies as necessary for salvation. That angry, sacrifice-demanding deity undergirds the entire mythology of the Christian tradition. Historical Jesus rejected that God and presented a stunning new one.
What theological breakthrough insight did he offer in place of the old religious God?
He stated that God did not demand sacrifice/payment before loving all, both good and bad (the two critical natural elements to agrarian survival- “sun and rain are given to both good and bad people”). Look at how he illustrated this universally inclusive generosity in the Prodigal Father story.
And then he highlights his freely offered unconditional love in the list of ethical statements in Luke 6. No demand for payment in return for love shown. Authentic unconditional love just loves freely, not expecting response or prerequisite payment/sacrifice. And that behavior illustrates just what God is like. Theology based on the best of being human in normal human relationships, and not religiously oriented.
He ends the “sermon”- his list of humane precepts- stating that if you do these things then you will be just like God. “Be merciful in the manner listed above, just as God is merciful in that manner.”
My summary of this message in Luke 6, also stated in Matthew 5:38-48, “Do not respond with eye for eye retaliation/vengeance. Instead, love your enemy because God does. How so? God gives sun and rain (the two critical gifts for survival in agrarian society of that time) to both good and bad people. Unconditional, universally inclusive, non-discriminatory, generous love for all.”
He placed his stunning new theology of God as unconditional love (not just “God is love” but God is no conditions love, the highest form of love), he put this new theology at the core of his teaching and as the central point of his short stories/parables, as the ultimate ideal. Note again that the Prodigal father exhibits this unconditional love toward the offending son. He makes no demands for apology, restitution, or sacrifice.
(Insert: However, to counter the drift of minds toward pacifist approaches on hearing the term “unconditional”, I emphasize that practical common sense in life requires the restraint of violent people and holding all responsible for the consequences of their behavior as in restitution, etc.)
So also, the vineyard owner did not demand a full-day’s work to get the same generosity as others. Just freely offered generosity. This is about “the freedom of choice” in how we respond to others. As the vineyard owner stated to the pissed “all-day” workers- My assets are mine to freely give as I choose.
(Another insert on the freedom of choice in response to offense: I think here of the mother of a murdered son who at the trial of the murderer, argued against the death penalty for that man. He was already sentenced to imprisonment for life. She reasoned with the judge that she did not want his mother to suffer the agony of loss that she had suffered. That is not about sympathy for the murderer but about the amazing ability to see past one’s own pain to argue for alleviating the suffering of another. The individual freedom of choice thing.)
Added notes:
An unconditional God at the center of belief systems challenges us with the potential for profound transformation of everything. I mean everything and profoundly so.
It pushes us to wrestle with what it means to be truly human/humane. It challenges our punitive forms of justice for more restorative alternatives. Not pacifist mushiness or fuzzy “Kumbayah” stuff in the face of offense/evil. Something more robust that holds offenders fully responsible for behavior and consequences.
It challenges us regarding the nature of our relationships with others. It challenges the tribalism mind with recognition of the oneness of humanity and how to maintain our humanity in a world of offenders. As we negotiate this life, an unconditional ideal urges us to reject the long history of ‘eye for eye’ retaliation as “righteously deserved justice” against offenders and to seek more restorative approaches while still robustly protecting against the violent among us. Unconditional pushes us to find ways to stop endless wars and other eruptions of violence fueled by eye for eye cycles as “justice”.
And further, unconditional as a central ideal undermines the conditional systems built on threat theology and religion (apocalypse, hell) with versions of “justice” that demand conditions of sacrifice/payment that sidetrack and drain people’s time and resources in religious salvation systems.
Note on features of the hero’s quest…
Unconditional pushes us to see God as a radically humane reality and that new framing of humanity’s Ultimate Reality/Ideal points to true heroism, authentic humanity.
As always, I also encourage awareness of the “secularization” of bad religious ideas where people continue using them as ideals to incite and validate the worst in us, as we have seen in Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism.
The impulse to heroism arises from our more basic impulse to meaning and purpose in life, to achieve something heroic and extraordinary in life. But that heroism gets deformed by tribal dualism and divisions- i.e. good vs bad, righteous vs evil, versions of the “Hero’s quest” framed within extremes of opposition between people. That is a result of the continuing influence of the myth of Zoroastrian “cosmic dualism” where a righteous God/religion is posited in opposition to a satanic opposite. People then view themselves as heroically on the righteous side versus differing others on the evil side who need to be exterminated. That is required in order for the righteous ones to gain salvation (i.e. they must exterminate the differing others/unbelievers to their tradition, who are viewed as existential threats to their survival.). These themes are central to the “salvation through destruction” psychopathology or mythology portrayed in Revelation.
It is better, and safer, to frame our heroism within Joseph Campbell’s warning to remember our oneness. The real hero’s quest must be primarily against the enemy inside each of us, the “evil triad” of inherited animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. That is the real battle of “good versus evil” in life (Solzhenitsyn). The real hero’s quest.
Campbell’s statement again:
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Another note:
Offering the freeness of love to others, as Knox illustrated, doesn’t mean we don’t hold offenders accountable responsible for their offenses because any form of love will want to encourage the proper development of the offender toward mature humanity. And proper development to mature humanity involves taking full responsibility for behavior and the outcomes of behavior, the impacts on others. That will involve making full restitution. This is the common-sense element to love.
What the unconditional element involves is the “intention” to treat all humanely, no matter their failure to live as human. The intention, and related treating offenders humanely even after incarceration. Failure to do this results in embittered prisoners and higher recidivism post-incarceration, and that means further victims.
As an angry prisoner at Attica snarled to the camera, “The guards here treat us like animals and we are going to get out some day”. As in saying, “Look out people”. We are pissed at how we have been treated.
Restorative justice programs for incarcerated people are not so much about just the prisoner but about the obligation of criminal justice systems to protect the public first of all by lowering recidivism rates. And we buttress the intention to treat even the worst among us humanely because, as Campbell said, they are still human family. That points to the oneness or interconnectedness that Knox spoke about.
So my obsession with unconditional? Yes, because of its potential to function as the best of beacons/ideals to draw us forward toward the best of being human, to what it means to act authentically humane toward others, especially toward offenders. There is nothing else out there that offers the same potential to humanize everything, to produce such transformative outcomes that bring out the best in humanity.
Another good one from Shellenberger– “In most Western countries, the principles are already in place. We don’t have to invent them. We just have to reassert them.”
“It’s starting again: Behind the renewed push for censorship and digital IDs”, Michael Shellenberger, Aug. 17, 2025
https://www.public.news/p/its-starting-again
Shellenberger says that with the 2024 election of Donald Trump many thought that would be the end of lawfare and censorship. But in Europe these have intensified “with European governments… poised to disqualify candidates and expand speech restrictions.”
He says that Germany and France have already banned opposition politicians from running for office just as Romania has done. And the European Union has begun implementing the Digital Services Act (DSA) giving governments powers to “compel online platforms to remove content deemed harmful, even when that content is legal… (the DSA) imposes ‘duties of care’ on platforms to protect users from undefined psychological ‘harm’.”
With ill-defined limits and “concept creep” these online harm acts have enabled administrations in power to censor and ban the free speech of opponents, even go after comedy.
There has been populist pushback against this censorship but “Intelligence agencies, NGOs, and legacy media began working to reassert narrative influence. They coordinated with tech companies to suppress stories, deplatform voices, and restrict the flow of information. The goal wasn’t to restore trust—it was to regain control.”
Shellenberger says the good news is that elites pushing these totalitarian acts of repression have lost legitimacy.
“In the United States, trust in the Democrats and the news media has collapsed. Across the West, the political class is trying to govern through coercion because it has lost the ability to persuade.”
He concludes that democracy must allow disagreement, open discussion and debate, and tolerate dissent if it hopes to maintain freedom. He adds, “In most Western countries, the principles are already in place. We don’t have to invent them. We just have to reassert them.”
“The principles already in place” that Shellenberger says “we just have to reassert”?
A reposting of the basic principles of a humane society: Wendell Krossa
What do I mean when I refer to “Classic Liberalism”?
And as people talk about creating a “safe AI”, why not ensure that safety by programing AI with Classic Liberal principles?
Basic principles, systems, institutions of Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, or Western liberalism.
Daniel Hannan in his Introduction to “Inventing Freedom” provides the following lists and descriptions of the basic features/principles of a truly liberal society or civilization:
“A belief in property rights, personal liberty, and representative government…
“Three irreducible elements. First, the rule of law…Those rules exist on a higher plane and are interpreted by independent magistrates…
“Second, personal liberty: freedom to say what you like, to assemble in any configuration you choose with your fellow citizens, to buy and sell without hindrance, to dispose as you wish with your assets, to work for whom you please, and conversely, to hire and fire as you will…
“Third, representative government. Laws should not be passed, nor taxes levied, except by elected legislators who are answerable to the rest of us… the rule of law, democratic government, and individual liberty…
“The idea that the individual should be as free as possible from state coercion… elevate the individual over the state…
“Elected parliaments, habeas corpus (see below), free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials…
“The idea that the government ought to be subject to the law, not the other way around. The rule of law created security of property and contract…
“Individualism, the rule of law, honoring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values…
And this full summary by Hannan:
“Lawmakers should be directly accountable through the ballot box; the executive should be controlled by the legislature; taxes should not be levied nor laws passed without popular consent; the individual should be free from arbitrary punishment or confiscation; decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affected; power should be dispersed; no one, not even the head of state, should be above the law; property rights should be secure; disputes should be arbitrated by independent magistrates; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly should be guaranteed”.
Hannan’s book is invaluable for tracing the historical emergence and development of Western freedom down through the English tradition, from pre-Magna Carta to the present.
Definition of habeas corpus (varied online definitions):
“A habeas corpus application is used by persons who feel they are being wrongfully detained. Upon application, the individual is brought before a judge who will determine whether the detainment is lawful.”
“A writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.”
“The literal meaning of habeas corpus is “you should have the body”—that is, the judge or court should (and must) have any person who is being detained brought forward so that the legality of that person’s detention can be assessed. In United States law, ‘habeas corpus ad subjiciendum’ (the full name of what habeas corpus typically refers to) is also called “the Great Writ,” and it is not about a person’s guilt or innocence, but about whether custody of that person is lawful under the U.S. Constitution. Common grounds for relief under habeas corpus— “relief” in this case being a release from custody—include a conviction based on illegally obtained evidence; a denial of effective assistance of counsel; or a conviction by a jury that was improperly selected and impaneled.” (Miriam Webster)
One of the best at defining and articulating Classic Liberal ideals and principles, notably in the US version- Full interview of Vivek Ramaswamy on Lex Fridman podcast. Vivek for president. Note how Vivek frankly acknowledges and responds to deformities of Classic Liberalism on the right side of US society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Qk_3a3lUw
A whole lotta probing, exposure, and analysis going on
“’Zelensky back to DC, Fake Media narratives, and Comey’s weird Taylor Swift video’, with Walter Kirn”, Megyn Kelly news podcast, Aug. 18, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rAUKr_o44A
Interesting comment in this episode by Kelly and Kirn that the Russiagate accusations against Trump stopped him from meeting with the Russians during his first term. It handicapped him throughout his first presidency from improving relations with the Russians. Even his call to Ukraine was turned into an impeachment as there was such hatred incited by the Democrats and media against the Russians. That “Russia, Russia, Russia” mania was very much a revived episode of McCarthyism, this time from the Democrats claiming that any contact or effort at rapprochement with Russia was treasonous.
The Democratic-fueled hysteria over Russian contact of any kind led to a dangerous situation between both countries. Kirn wonders who was manipulating this stuff behind the scenes as it predates Trump, though a particularly venomous strain of hatred was directed at him for trying to “throw a wrench” into plans of elites, who were preparing for confrontation and possible conflict with Russia, where Trump would seek to improve relations with Russia. In response to Kirn’s musing over who were the behind-the-scenes actors, Kelly suggests the “Military Industrial Complex” that Eisenhower had long before warned about.
(Insert: See Joe Rogan Experience episodes 2237 and 2272 with Bike Benz who has probed the behind the scenes infrastructure created by controlling elites to shape public narratives, censor opponents, indoctrinate through media, etc.)
Kirn notes that the Democratic prevention of better relations with Russia under Trump produced the eventual Ukraine situation. It led to the Ukraine invasion during Biden’s time in office. And that almost became nuclear, with Biden, even up to the later stages of his presidency, approving sending missiles to bomb inside Russia, something never done before. Biden also refused any contact with Russians during his time in office, almost taking the West into nuclear confrontation. The madness of all this has been stunning.
Kelly’s point on the Military Industrial Complex is that these people control most of the society from behind the scenes, along with their propagandizing media. That media continues to demonize all that Trump does to make peace, vilifying his efforts as kowtowing to Russia, as treasonous. Recently, Eric Swalwell suggested to the US military that Trump was still a Russian asset. As Kirn notes, Swalwell appeared to be suggesting to the US military that they might want to consider a revolt or coup against Trump.
The people behind the scenes who want war, endless wars, have repeatedly lied to deceive the public into supporting their wars, as Glen Greenwald noted in relation to the lies used to promote war with Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin incident), Iraq (WMD lies), and now Ukraine.
These two offer some of the better insights into what feeds the hatred and vilification of Trump.
Yes, his repeated eruptions of “petty vindictiveness” continue to stain his administration and distract from his otherwise good policies supporting generally agreed on common sense solutions that benefit all citizens- i.e. reducing taxes, eliminating regulations, downsizing bloated government, fighting crime and protecting citizens, and so much more.
Kirn offers interesting points such as that Hilary Clinton (the Russians had intelligence on this) had already planned in the Spring of 2016, before Trump was the Republican nominee, to smear him with the Russian asset/collusion hoax just in case he won the primary.
Kirn concludes, hoping that grand juries are now investigating this corruption and preparing charges against the main actors. He says there is a lot more that is going to be exposed in coming weeks.