Let Me Put You on Hold

There’s a moment in The Avengers, when we first meet the Black Widow. She is tied to a chair, leaning out over a pit, being tortured by bad guys, when a phonecall comes in—on the bad guy’s phone—and she's annoyed by the interruption—because she had them right where she wanted them and “this moron is giving me everything.” But she is told of the important mission, so she says, “Let me put you on hold.”

Then of course she miraculously breaks free, because she has such amazing skills. And then casually picks up her shoes and the phone and walks away.

We, the good citizens of the United States, seem to be tied to a chair, leaning out over a pit, being tortured, figuratively speaking. Under the circumstances it might take a shift in perspective to believe we have the bad guys right where we want them—information coming out, takedown about to happen.

The bad guys only think they’re in control.

I am not one who believes that some version of a SHIELD team has a long, elaborate plan that they are allowing to play out. I am, however, one who believes that, particularly for our day, we have our God in Heaven who has a plan to take down the bad guys. And His skills are way better than the fictional Black Widow’s. I don’t know which moment it will be when He answers our prayers by saying, “Let me put you on hold,” and then destroys the wicked. But He has told His prophets through the centuries that such a moment is coming.

So I have hope. Even when the loss of our freedoms is more apparent with every news cycle.

In the meantime, I am trying to understand the enemy, and what the enemy is doing.

This past week someone on that side, not one I had thought of as an enemy, said the quiet part out loud. This was Sam Harris, noted mainly for being an atheist, but an atheist with morals. He was on the TRIGGERnometry podcast. We learned from him that he doesn’t care about morals. As he put it, “Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.” Whatever is on that laptop—including Joe Biden’s corruption, “and understand they’re getting kickbacks from Biden’s deals in Ukraine and wherever else, right? Or China.” Doesn’t matter. “It is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in. It’s like, it’s like a firefly to the sun.”

Sam Harris, on TRIGGERnometry podcast
screenshot from here

What does he enumerate of Trump’s sun hot sins? Trump University, for one. Worse than everything on that laptop? Trump University was a class action case, brought in 2013, settled for $25 million, fully compensating all claimants plus $1 million in punitive damages. It likely would have gone to trial and been fought and appealed on the merits of the law, but for the timing, which put it right after the 2016 presidential election, during the busy inaugural season. So they settled for convenience. That is apparently gazillions of times worse than Biden kickbacks in exchange for access to the VP, for multiple millions of dollars, putting our nation at risk. Not to mention the drugs and sex and possible sex trafficking on the Biden laptop, which was withheld from the public for a year by the FBI, and then quashed in media just prior to the 2020 election.

Does Harris mention anything else? Yes, Trump said mean things on Twitter. He actually claimed Trump doxed people “again and again and again.” I’m unaware of any accusations of Trump ever doxing anyone. Trump followers, however, have been doxed, and persecuted, and targeted by the IRS, taken down from not only Twitter but Facebook, YouTube, and wherever else.

But self-proclaimed moralist Sam Harris thinks an outright conspiracy to prevent Trump from regaining the White House was absolutely justified. Who cares about democracy when an asteroid that is hurtling toward earth in the form of a seventy-something businessman could be stopped by any means necessary?

We have to wonder, why really does Sam Harris fear another Trump presidency? A long-past settled lawsuit and nonexistent doxing claims can’t be it. Is it because Trump moved us to the verge of a Hitlerian nightmare in his first term? No. In fact, he deregulated, freed us up, moved the economy out of the Obama malaise and into full recovery, particularly lowering unemployment for blacks. He stopped the majority of the border crisis with a “remain in Mexico” policy. He practically achieved lasting peace in the Middle East. He was, refreshingly, not authoritarian.

What are we supposed to be scared of? White supremacy—a miniscule issue without any connection to Trump. Racism—a dwindling issue without any connection to Trump. COVID—not caused by Trump and would have been nearly immediately solved with low-cost medicines given as early treatment, which Trump touted—if that normal action hadn’t been halted by Deep State actors here and across the world.

So what is there to fear?

Maybe loss of power to the ruling class. Trump, despite the money, despite the education at an Ivy League institution, is not considered elite. He is too much like the working class people the elites need to rule over.

And, let’s be clear, Sam Harris the intellectual is an elite. Apparently nothing emotionally upturns him more than someone in power who is not an elite—democracy be damned; that must be stopped!

People who believe they have the right to rule over others will always be the enemy of the people.

Will Cain discussed the Sam Harris clip with Gad Saad, a one-time friend of Sam Harris, who called him out for this immoral and unreasonable assertion. Cain summed up Harris’s viewpoint, I think accurately, as, “He said it’s perfectly fine to lie, steal, and cheat in order to accomplish ‘victory.’” In other words, Sam Harris has no principle, beyond winning, that he’s willing to stand on.

Will Cain (left) and Gad Saad discuss Sam Harris's moral relativism
screenshot from here

As Cain and Saad continued the conversation, Cain commented that, while “Sam’s not a Nobody, Sam’s not that big a deal; the problem is, Sam said out loud what many others believe.” He then reminds us that former CIA Director Michael Hayden said something similar recently, painting with an even broader brush, that there is nothing in his life more threatening that the modern-day Republican Party. Cain continues, “Worse than Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda and Isis. If that is their belief, they will break any rule. They will break any principle. Because the existence of humanity is at stake.” That’s what they seem to have convinced themselves to believe—because the supremacy of elitism doesn’t sell well among the masses.

Wednesday, Viva & Barnes did a Sidebar discussion with Michael Millerman, political philosopher and Aleksandr Dugin expert (he translated some of Dugin’s writings). Dugin is an anti-West and anti-modernity philosopher who has Putin’s ear; his daughter was assassinated this week, and there is speculation that the car bomb was meant for him. That’s all a discussion for some other day. But Dugin has been called a Neo-Nazi. And Viva Frei, who is ethnically Jewish, got called a Nazi this week as well. So they asked Millerman about the use of this term. Millerman answers:

I think everybody knows who’s watching this, on one level, everybody gets called a fascist today. Everybody gets called a Nazi today, if you veer a millimeter to the right, probably, of the ideological consensus.

He mentions an article in IM1776.com, by the online magazine's editor Daniel Miller about the history of that anti-fascist accusation of the left. Within that article the author makes this connection that might be relevant to our discussion today:

For the same reason the 2016 election victory of President Trump and populist dissident movements in Europe are repeatedly connected to Putin. The objective is to refuse democratic legitimacy to what would otherwise register as democratic movements, operating in nominally democratic societies, to suppress them as issues of national security.

Millerman continues about the Nazi epithet:

This is just automatically to discredit your enemies. And by the way, if you can legitimate calling all of your enemies fascists, and you can legitimate, you know, fascists are so much the scum of the earth that they should be cancelled—or killed—well, you’re not very far from legitimating the killing of your political enemies.

We’ve seen that you can cancel your political enemies. That happens all the time now. But, you know, we’re not too many steps away from car bombing your political enemies, in the West, I think, if you follow out the logic of delegitimating with this title.

Robert Barnes (top left) and Viva Frei (below) talk with Michael Millerman
screenshot from here

All this sounds like things are getting more dire. I don’t dispute that.

But there’s also something else going on. Truth is more powerful than raw assertion of power. The enemies of freedom are revealing everything they’re doing, and people are starting to see what was hidden:

§      There is no way they had the right to raid former President Trump’s residence with a general warrant—illegal for criminal investigations. They have tried to frame him, and have tried to cover up their crimes. The truth is going to be seen.

§      When the DOJ let it slip that they were targeting parents who spoke up at school board meetings, and investigating them as domestic terrorists, the truth got out, and perfectly normal and peaceful parents woke up. They now see the enemy.

§      Fauci has announced he is stepping down by the end of the year—which ought to have happened a decade or more ago for the octogenarian who has called himself “the science.” No matter how many times lately he’s tried to push for mask wearing and vaccination for children, people aren’t heeding him anymore. And there are threats of investigation into his corruption related to COVID origins, vaccine kickbacks, medicine kickbacks, and a whole lot of other crimes he’s committed. Personally, I think he should be prosecuted for every COVID-19 death that resulted from prevention of early treatment and by vaccine or Remdesivir adverse reactions.

§      More truth continues to come out about election fraud.

§      This week Biden announced he is forgiving student loan debt for vast swaths of that demographic—to be paid for by people saved, scrimped, paid off their debts, or had to forego the education for lack of money. And his answer to whether that’s fair is to mumble something unintelligible. It appears to be a brazen attempt to buy votes. And even Nancy Pelosi has pointed out that he doesn’t have the power to do it.

If history and recent primaries are an indicator, this November election could mean a switch of power in the legislature. And that could lead to some good things, like clearing out some of the swamp, even without Trump in office.

I can’t say whether November 8^th is going to be the “Let me put you on hold” moment, when the enemy suddenly and decisively gets taken down. I’d like that moment to be soon—for everyone’s sake. But if not then, the tension is mounting, and it will be coming.

And we know the outcome. Truth wins.

Good Is Real

In the last post, “Evil Is Real,” I linked to a video about Operation Underground Railroad, the organization founded by Tim Ballard that rescues children from human trafficking. If you followed that link, you found that there are several additional connected documentaries. In the second one, "Finding Light in the Darkness," Ballard recounts the story of finding two young children in Haiti, a brother and sister, and his story of adopting them.

Tim Ballard, of Operation Underground Railroad
screen shot from "Finding Light in the Darkness"

I heard him tell this story in person a couple of years ago, in a setting where he was fully able to express his religious beliefs, and how that is key to the story. Much of that also comes through in this documentary.

He met the two children, and they were on his mind the following night, when he was coming down from the adrenaline rush, after the arrests of the perpetrators were made and the children were safe. Usually when he would feel these strong emotions, he would pray to have relief from them, so that he would be able to carry on with the work. If you get too emotionally attached to every child in every raid, you can’t move on and focus on the job that needs to be done. This time, however, the prayers didn’t bring relief. The feelings intensified. He ended up calling his wife in the middle of the night, and telling her what he was going through.

She said, “You want to adopt those children!” which was beyond any thought he had formed. They had six kids of their own already. Adopting children was a crazy idea. No, he just wanted relief, but he couldn’t get it. Would she come and help him? She said, no, she didn’t need to come. She also felt like they should adopt the children, and he just needed to start the paperwork.

It took four years to accomplish that task. Most of the first year was spent trying to locate them. Because he was a foreigner, not from Haiti, he was not allowed to know where they had been sent; he was just assured that they were safe.

There were many trips back to Haiti, preparing for and performing other missions. Each time he continued his search for these children, but he couldn’t find them. There was one person in the government who could override the rule preventing him from getting the information he needed, and he had tried unsuccessfully several times to meet with her. There was one last day. He asked his wife to gather the children to be on their knees praying for him at an exact hour, when he would enter the government building hoping to get the information he needed.

The part of the Ballard family that went to Haiti to pick up
the adopted brother and sister are about to introduce them
to the rest of the family.
screen shot from "Finding Light in Darkness"

He and a friend arrived slightly early. Tim waited before entering, because he wanted to be sure his timing coincided with the family’s prayer. Then he went through the gate and bumped into a woman on her way out. Because of the timing, he said, “Who are you?” It turned out she was one of the rare English speakers he could have bumped into. When he told her what he was trying to do, she asked the name of the children. He told her, and she started jumping up and down and saying, “Praise Jesus!” over and over. So he joined her in that. And then he asked what she was praising Jesus for.

She ran an orphanage; it was one of several that the children from the raid so many months before had been sent to. The brother and sister had been sent to her orphanage; she had them. It was well across town. She was only in this government building to handle some paperwork that day. And if he had come in a minute earlier or later, they would not have run into each other.

To Tim Ballard, this was a direct and obvious answer to prayer. That’s a much more reasonable explanation than that it was just an odd coincidence.

I’m telling this story, because I’ve been listening to the debate between Jordan Peterson and atheist Sam Harris, from this past June. Jordan Peterson’s view of religion comes at it from an evolutionary psychologist’s point of view. It’s interesting, but it’s cerebral in its approach to what is transcendent of the intellect and reason. Sam Harris’s view is that religion is actually harmful, and the better approach to finding the best way to live a life would be to use pure reason.

Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris debate, Bret Weinstein moderates
screen shot from here

Peterson is often reticent to give a direct answer to whether he believes in God, because he doesn’t like all the attachments to the answer that other people make. But he does say he lives his life as though there is a God, and that he has evidences that lead him to believe that is the right way. But as a scientist, more so in this discussion than in some others I’ve heard, he talks about religion as the metaphorical stories making up religion that lead us to lead better lives.

What Harris takes from that is that metaphors, or stories, are just fiction, even if sometimes they are useful; you can’t trust a fiction for guidance to truth, because you know it's fiction. Also, he believes the dogma that surround religions are harmful and evil.

Harris’s view negates the religious point of view because of an a priori premise that religion is about belief in something pretend, an invisible being who doesn’t exist.

But he fails utterly to grasp the experiential evidence such as Tim Ballard’s story. Ballard’s story is dramatic, and clearly shows God’s hand. And he has a number of other stories—many involving his wife and her uncanny ability to follow promptings that she knows are from God, and that lead to important good outcomes for the children and the family and others. My personal stories may be less dramatic or convincing for others, but they are no less real for me.

I’m also not satisfied with Peterson’s explanation. It starts with an assumption about evolutionary science that I don’t totally buy into. In fact, I start with my belief in God, which is a truth that I believe I have received enough evidence for. And while I do not know how God went about creating us as the fully formed intelligent, self-aware beings that we are, I use the evolutionary science more as a metaphor to describe that some things, and some creatures, are simple and others complex—rather than as a map of how one thing progressed from another, which we don’t actually know.

I do think there’s something to the idea that archetypal stories are metaphors we use to understand things that are true. But my religious experience leads me to believe that God often uses metaphor and symbolism in stories that are also factually true. It would have been a stronger response to Harris’s arguments to say that God is not only metaphorically factual, but actually factual, and Harris' personal lack of evidence does not negate the personal evidence of billions of other humans.

Harris uses the most heinous elements of some religions to claim that religions in general are bad: human sacrifice, genocide of infidels, execution of apostates. My hypothesis is that these are corruptions of religion. They do not honor a God who created us and loves and cares for us. Nor do they honor life, family, truth, or property. Such religions lack the necessities of civilization.

So what Harris is referring to isn’t religious truth; it’s a distortion, a corruption—which implies that there was something whole that they are distortions and corruptions from.

Moreover, he looks at reason as the source for truth and goodness. This fails to notice a couple of things. For one thing, reasoning, or logic, only works if you start with the right assumption. One example provided in the PragerU video "Where Do Good and Evil Come From?" (included below) is that criminals plan a heist using reason. Reason helps them carry out a successful theft without it causing them to realize the wrongness of the theft. So, in order for reason to lead to moral truth, it needs to start with a moral assumption.

From the PragerU video
"Where Do Good and Evil Come From?"
presented by Peter Kreet,
Professor of Philosophy at Boston College

Where can reason get that? It gets it from a milieu of morality. It’s logical to see that dealing honestly and truthfully with others is morally good, if you live in a society where that is normal. If you live in a society where master have their slaves serve them, and that is all you’ve known, it is logically reasonable to see that as the right way, and perfectly moral—which most of the societies on earth have done. That reasoning doesn’t make it morally true. But true religion—which tells us humans are created by God and have a divine nature—tells us that enslaving a human being is morally wrong.

In other words, Harris believes he gets to moral truth through reason, when he’s really benefiting from living in a civilization with a religious moral legacy.

Peter Kreet lists and refutes the various sources for
moral truth proposed by atheists,

There’s a hypothetical question Peterson and Harris consider: If you were to do an experiment in which you take a religious people to settle one isolated frontier, and reasoning atheists to settle another completely separate isolated frontier, which society would more likely become a thriving civilization? Harris believes it’s obvious the reasoning one will do better.

But it isn’t obvious. And history tells us that atheistic societies (which all the socialist/communist ones are) are much more likely to savagely massacre huge portions of the population. What he’s assuming is that he’ll take the reasoning of people who already benefit from the experience of living in civilized societies—which are based on moral principles—and carry on with everyone being moral simply because the good outcomes are rational.

Good doesn’t come from nothing. In fact, good itself is a moral judgment. If that judgment is based on current reasoning, it can change, depending on how individuals or groups think at a given time. There’s no moral absolute there, because there’s no source of absolute moral good, or moral truth.

You only get that if there is a transcendent source. As Professor Kreet says in the video:

Just as a design suggests a designer, moral commands suggest a moral commander. Moral Laws must come from a moral lawgiver.

Well, that sounds pretty much like what we know as God.

The consequence of this argument is that whenever you appeal to morality you are appealing to God whether you know it or not; you’re talking about something religious, even if you think you’re an atheist.

That’s similar to what I’ve heard Jordan Peterson say elsewhere, in a Q&A after a lecture:

Everything you act out is predicated on your implicit axioms. The system of implicit axioms that you hold as primary is your religious belief system. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an atheist or not. That’s just surface noise….

It doesn’t necessarily have to do with your voluntarily articulated statements about whether or not you believe in something like a transcendent deity. So, what you act out is much more what you are than what you say about yourself. And what the hell do you know about what you believe, anyways?

We know that evil is real, because we experience it. We also know that good exists, because we experience it. We know these things and act on them, even before we know how to identify and articulate our beliefs.

So good is real. And that means God is real—the source and definer of ultimate good. If that is so, then we are better off living our lives in search of God’s truth, gaining experience with Him, and from Him. You don’t get that by experimenting with living a life that excludes God; you get that by seeking Him, through study, faith, and practice at choosing good even when bad is easier and possibly appears more rational.

God has a better view. And civilizations thrive when enough people within them live God’s guiding principles, as articulated in the Ten Commandments: honor God, life, family, truth, and property.