The Confederacy Hadn't Much Chance of Winning the Civil War

Technical military and industrial comparisons aside, the Union had the inside lines for personnel, and that was a substantial advantage. Character matters; the best chance for the Confederate States would have been in a weak President of the United States who found appeasement or compromise better choices than war. Lincoln wasn’t so disposed to let the will of slave oligarchs prevail over federal laws and state’s rights.

States right’s to not comply with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was an issue that Wisconsin and Vermont tried to enact through state high court decisions that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned. Southern slave-owners felt they had a right to recapture escaped slaves anywhere in the United States. That law was effectively reversed in the eventful year of 1861, with passage of The Confiscation Act barring recapturing of escaped slaves. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 - Wikipedia

West Point was a federal education and training facility. The officers and graduates had of course to choose what side they would fight on. The Northern forces commanded the loyalists and best of the lot. The South got the decorous commandant of that young men’s school; an Army engineer named Robert E. Lee. The north knew the military ability of southern commanders. Lee and Grant each fought in the Mexican war. Lee was attached as an aide to Gen Scott. Grant personally fought in a battle against Mexicans. Later he set artillery to fire from a second story of a building in the attack on Mexico City with positive results.

Lee had married the daughter of George Washington’s (adopted) son. His father had been convicted of being a land swindler, and Lee saw the Army as a way to safely promote himself without gambling . He cut a good figure on a horse, and couldn’t resist the promotion to Supreme Commander of Confederate Forces. The Confederate leadership was flawed. Lincoln alternatively was able to experiment with his military leaders until finding the best.

Historians have written that Lee couldn’t control his boisterous, argumentative Generals. Lee wasn’t the kind of brawling tough guy to put down enmity and coordinate planning among his subordinates. Neither was he able to follow orders well enough. Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Lee not to go north of the Potomac River again. Lee disobeyed and the expedition to Maryland and beyond began with results that seriously weakened southern strength. Like perennial presidential candidates, Lee may not have been able to resist the prospect of capturing Washington D.C. for-himself.

The northern forces had better leadership and personnel than the south. They also had God on their side, insofar as egalitarianism- God is no respecter of persons, required that no human slavery exist, that oligarchy, plutonomy or royalty not occlude democracy. The Confederacy was doomed because it was evil.

American Civil War - Wikipedia

Idiot Muslim Bombers Bungle Sri Lanka Hit

Muslim suicide bombers that attacked churches in Sri Lanka recently were according to ISIS exacting revenge for the Christchurch New Zealand massacre of Muslims. Yet the perpetrator of the Mosque massacre wasn't acting as a Christian. Christians haven't got a theology for killing Muslims; that would be Islam for killing unbelievers).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/sri-lanka-bombings-latest-updates/2019/04/22/f2afe32a-6531-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html?utm_term=.f8d39da61816

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

https://www.foxnews.com/world/sri-lanka-mastermind-zahran-hashim-isis

The Muslim bombings of Christians Churches attacked the wrong people. Muslims in New Zealand were killed by a racist, for racial reasons, as well as culture. Muslims terrorism was a concern for  Brenton Tarrant, and he was a tit for tat king of killer.

One can make an analogy of the error of the Muslim bombers.

Say the Chicago Outfit is hit by a bomb by the Lavender Hill Mob. So they go out and get revenge on the North Side Gang, who are pissed and attack the Chicago Outfit. The Lavender Hill Mob giggles.

Muslim terrorists may not understand that a vast number of non Muslims aren't Christian. And that there are racists that actually are atheist and pagan that hate Muslims because they are believers in God as well as non-white and of a rival culture. Of course in Sri Lanka the Tamil Tigers blew up Muslim Mosques too, and they were neo Buddhist rather than Christian.

Blowing up Christians on the main Christian celebration (equal to Christmas) day just fuels the hate of more racists against Muslims racist expansionist global terrorists. It isn't Christians with the military equipment that would be too happy to napalm Muslim terrorists.

Muslims have a proclivity for state religion even to the level of theocracy. Christians eliminated theocracy long ago where it nearly existed. There are still state run Christian sects (sections) as in Lutheran Germany, and formerly in Tsarist Russia. Christians have generally sought to be free from state control, and it is no coincidence that a doctrine of the separation of church and state developed in Christian nations. Idiot Muslims interpret the world through jihad eyes and assume other Abrahamic religions seek to destroy them. That is idiocy.

About Honor-(another post from an online course I am taking)

The choice of Mattie in True Grit as an example of honor seems wrong.  She was a likable character and her motives were reasonable. Ned Pepper's killing of her father caused her to want revenge. Revenge can arise from other causes than honorable. Revenge may be caused by hate, rage, grief, a sense of loss and not from an insult to honor at all. Legal compensation for harm to oneself or one's properties is an ancient practice- even Tacitus wrote about Germanic legal values.

In some primitive societies where the economy and its tools are basic and common, honor may be in not being possessive about property. If someone admires your knife that is easily made from stone, you might give it to him. In an advanced society private property is required to allow private and differentiated personal interests to occur without disruptive interference. While Professor Bloom seemed to indicate that for some Yale or Connecticut people there might not be much moral reproof for intercourse with a cow, autonomy valuation does not determine by itself if Connecticuters allow such behavior, so do additional laws, customs and values. There is a practical and reasonable side to Kant's categorical imperative. H.I.V was distributed largely by leftists or those without a sense of spirit in preference for materialism.

Good character matters. It is regarded as honorable. Honor is not something found simply with duelists or southern Americans and viewed with disdain by Professor Bloom. It is inherent in not lying, cheating, stealing, corrupting and such does exist) wheresoever one might think a profit can be taken. Social failure to develop good character among citizens- the lack of civic virtue and honor, disrespect for intelligence, patience, long-suffering, sobriety and so forth; even disrespect for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ engenders social breakdown at a time in history when intelligent leaders of good character; honorable people, are requisite to lead society from mass destruction.

Nothing was said so far about an honor system, meaning in this case, honesty policed or enforced by each individual. That is an important value to have. A society without thievery is honorable when it is caused not through fear, but from pervasively good character.

Aretaic ethics are so basic to a good society that an omission of it from discussion of honor is rather laughable. Such a criterion is consistent with a selection of a tavern and hard alcohol users as a context where honor can be said to occur. Fundamentally, being mildly temporarily impaired with alcohol isn't honorable, especially amidst strangers.

Democrat Impeachment Efforts Should Continue Until 2024

With the failure of the Mueller Report to provide proof of Russian collusion with the Donald Trump to be elected to the office of President in 2016, Democrats are showing renewed interest in impeaching President Trump. Some media outlets have their own ideas of how that can happen;

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/22/impeach-trump-heres-how-when/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9b512f8b53ab

It is more likely though that any salacious material the Democrats have will not be released until after the 2020 Democrat National convention. Then talk of impeachment will fructify remaining Democratic holdouts. Talk and salacious material will appear in the media until after the election when a new round of Special Investigation can determine how the President hid new Russian collusion. If that fizzles out then Impeachment proceedings will commence and continue until 2024.

Nazi Corporatism had Similarities to American and Eurpean Corporatism (and China too)

The state of Germany after the armistice ending the First World War wasn’t settled, and wasn’t comparable to that of the United States very easily. There was not one uniform 1930s depression shared by Germany and the United States. Germany had an empire until 1918 when a populist revolution grew demanding an end to the war. The Wiemar Republic followed.

The chaotic post-war revolutionary state with large reparations due to be repaid and land taken by the allies didn’t rest easy in Germany. There was concern with the Bolshevik forces that had taken over in Russia to the east. The deposed German aristocracy sought for ways to recover their lost power and prevent the reds from conquering Germany. Reds and some Jews were blamed for leading the revolt.

Germany exploited Mussolini’s development of corporatist theory eventually that united government authority with corporate leadership. First though, a populist proxy leader was required to lead a populist movement that could draw in socialist and conservative support for the new form of government. Adolph Hitler was selected by German Army intelligence officials to take over the German national Socialist party with his charismatic speaking voice. With the support of the storm troopers that grew to be very large and were made up of approximately 70% former socialists, the street level popular political movement rose to power. Corporate and government leaders grew government with deficit spending. A war machine grew with autobahns to speed military equipment and personnel wherever it was needed.

The fascist government remained popular as it went to war with unified corporate and government leadership under Adolph Hitler. The United States and Europe today have a similar government-business relationship with support from the left that is generally happy so long as political shop stewards accommodate homosexual empowerment, legal dope, abortion and enough welfare cash spread to the middle class and rick through deficit financing paid for by the rich and foreign elites.
Germany had numerous brilliant scientists that were made to work for the interests of fascism and corporatism. The Nazi state took over church leadership with some ministers refusing to remain in the church under Nazi direction.

Fascism was a tool used by an aristocracy to lead socialist populism into reinforcing their return to power. War was anticipated to shore up accounts. What wasn’t accurately predicted was the incompetence of Adolph Hitler’s leadership in waging war.

It is possible to run governments for quite a while with deficit spending. Like capitalism that sometimes can profit from exploiting others, corporatism running deficits make require external sources of income to continue an economically unbalanced policy. That does not require war inevitably, as did that of fascist Germany. It does require the negation of American style democracy, actual security in free speech and stoppage of individual economic opportunity to develop antithetically to socialist class conformity.

Why Homosexual Expropriation of Marriage Was Wrong

Homosexuals don't marry. Technically marriage is the union of genes within continuing personal association. Homosexual marriage is a lie forced on the people by corrupt media and government.

Homosexual marriage is an urban phenomenon. In an urban social environment with people that are prosperous and lacking faith, using alcohol and drugs, a swinish lack of moral constraints supports homosexual activity. The 1% like that dopish swinishishness because it promotes consumerism.

Homosexual marriage is a sin; sin is behavior missing the mark of health and decency unto the plan of God for mankind. As an American with a constitution supporting individual rights and liberties a citizen should support the right of individuals to regulate their own behavior at home. That is, in my opinion there should be no legal penalties on sexual behavior not involving minors or force in privacy. Homosexual marriage was however a mindless corruption of the moral sensibilities of tens of millions of Americans, and an issue that was entirely avoidable, for homosexuals had the opportunity to create a new institution ensnaring themselves in legal encumbrances if they wanted, without expropriating a sane institution that had existed as long as human society. In some societies such as England the institution of marriage rights changed historically (not the homosexual lie) to give women and children better protections against harm.

Only in a spoilt society that has atheistically abandoned faith in God because of infatuation with evolution so far as to stop critical thinking about God, the Universe or Multiverse and what omnipotent and omniscient being means in relation to a quantum Universe, field phenomena and do forth, could homosexual marriage establishment equivocating heterosexual and homosexual relations occur. The rich and powerful desire to get rid of families in order to better convert people into unthinking consumer swine, and what better way in an overpopulated Earth that only the rich may survive in the impending ecospheric doom, is there than to allow opiod and illegal drugs of sundry kinds with as much liberty as needed in laws to allow corruption of individual character and responsibility.

It might have worked if homosexuals had left marriage alone and demanded something like a law establishing legal homo-coupling (or whatever nomenclature was selected) and not divided the electorate permanently as the 1% sought. It was not reasonable to pour new wine into old wine skins, nor to corrupt the body politic as deeply and lastingly as has occurred.

I will not soon forget the winter in Anchorage where I slept on the ground in a tent, broke, drinking ice-water kept from freezing by keeping it under sleeping bags on the ground, with ice crystals five inches thick on the ceiling, after Helium.com (since vanished) cut off my $200 monthly income as a writer peer rated in the top 5% on Christmas Eve (banned) for occasionally using terms unliked by homosexuals amidst hundreds of articles on a number of different topics. The insiders were cold-blooded in promoting homosexual marriage and letting others perish of pneumonia if they could (it takes maybe ten years to get over that completely).

The rich and their mouthpieces will of course blow smoke up the asses of young leftists in order to develop their acquiescence in corruption and degradation of traditional America. It's destruction is required in order that a new economic structure can be established- dopey, happy sardines in a can, virtually in reality.

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Sweder's Three Categories

Superficial thought about moral questions, or blind following, might lead to the Nazi socialist kind of conformity to group-think and harm to others. Sweder's three categories were less than convincing (in the introduction lecture). Differences between different cultures regarding human behavior in select situations were regarded as moral issues rather than economic adaptations empirically. I.M.O. what are regarded as behavioral questions in various cultures are actually the result of economic and environmental issues.

The idea that Americans aren't concerned with purity is incorrect. Americans are obsessed with purity. Watch the commercials on laundry and proper clothing, or the right body powder and deodorant spray. Never in history has a people been so obsessed with purity. I saw a movie where one terrorist encountered another, who had used cologne, and the other said in greeting him; my friend, you smell like a whore!  Americans being largely materialists, need the purity of material items, and the ineffable cleanness of a washed and waxed car, new shoes and hair grease or whatever it is they use. The purity of no wrinkles, of not being affected by age or poverty, those are important. There was a fast food restaurant where a cook had put excrement in with the burgers; it was torn down and a Walgreens erected in its place.

American women with their world-leading prosperity have the lowest childbirth rate and number of abortions. The gap between U.S. and other cultures of the second and third world are regarded as likely to decrease when economic conditions improve in second and third world nations to a level comparable to that of the U.S.A. People conform their behavior to what is possible rather than to an abstract concept of morality- except perhaps in a percentage of conservatives.

Formerly conservative churches (in a place in history on a scale from the year 33 a.d. to the present) have become liberal beyond recognition with the increase of prosperity. Morality and church participation change in various nation in regard to who administrates the church (it was the state in Germany for instance, and is in China today). Politics may determine religious structure as it certainly has in China and the former Soviet Union in the past two centuries.

The categories of what are regarded as moral Universals seem consistent with Kant's categorical imperative. Each creature experience a shared empirical experience in nature. The creature standing or swimming next to me is eaten by a predator; fear and empathy are responses. I.M.O. fairness and the rest are environmental responses for survival. The environment is planetary (like a Universe for primitives) and all experienced it. In a complex society different responses may arise, such as intentional apathy for survival.

Evolution, The Left Media and Moral Laxness

Atheism is in conflict with reason too. The left seem to require a godless social zeitgeist in order to lever lax moral preferences into law. Academic elites tend to be narrowly specialized in their fields and simply aren't philosophical enough or theologically well read to comprehend much. When they enter areas of philosophy and theology I am reminded of idiot-savants. Intellectual reduction of morality concepts to sound-bite sized nuggets of pure secular sensualist narrative make dismissal of areas of thought that require time and wisdom to learn about, effortless.

I believe that God evolved the Universe. Original sin is entropy. Adam and Eve may represent many things, yet Genesis is about several time lines running concurrently. Adamas means brown dirt. Most of Mesopotamia may have been covered by a post-Wisconsin Ice age flood. Saudi Arabia once was like a Garden of Eden. The tree of knowledge; i.e. cultivating apple trees to make apples grow larger, let human culture evolve, after it learned the difference between good and evil, realizing they were naked, unlike animals like chimpanzees. Cultivation-represented by Cain the Smithy, killed his brother Abel. Adam and Eve were test cases in a timeless state, or representative of human society of the day. They were cast out into a pre-existing human populated world. God said that if he let them stay in the timeless state while morally fallen they would have ate of the tree of eternal life. Humans are working on that technology to this day.

I will proceed with a regular critical evaluation of some trends, before writing a url for my free ebook on some of the issues about interpreting the Bible and science. Most people are wrong presently, unfortunately. In God, Cosmology and Nothingness I explain a few items on the topic I have made synthetically.

I appreciated Dr. Pizzaro's provisioning of experiments finding a correlation between pro-hygiene signs and subject responses of disgust to select collateral test items. That in part explains the left-leaning broadcast media's lax loose moral content and reduction of levels of disgust in a nation they have tried to corrupt with leftist standards.

The wish to define morality in a kind of assembler language founded on evolution is questionable. Morality may have been refounded on logic and intelligent selection of ideas of good and bad and not an elaborate continuation of primitive, base innate behavior. Morality may be more than behavioral responses common and mass produced.

Mass production of cloned social behaviors that are easily regulated with the skill of moving cattle through gates or consumers through McDonald's ques hasn't an antipathetic relation to moral paradigmata that are simplified and reduced to purification, harm etc. The interpretation of human behavior patterns or responses to common empirical or external challenges can vary quite much obviously, even so reduction to concrete causal criteria may be statistically determined, yet reliant on a definition of morality as what people actually do.

I am not sure at all that I would be willing to concede a point that morality is limited to what people actually do, and certainly not stipulate the point that politics are based on morality, or that politics are moral at all. If political platforms are irrelevant to human species survival, maybe they are predominately stupid.

It seems wrong to gratuitously reinforce moral paradigmata that benefit an advantaged social class. Human neo-infanticide; abortion, homosexuality, concentration of wealth too far, Human Economic Structure virus increase that attacks ecospheric health and vitality are part of historical liberalism. Human behaviors themselves may have deeper explanations that simian cultural origins or similarities to similar empirical challenges. Haplogroup X gene distribution and additional genetic factors may have embedded behavioral characteristics that today are individual specific rather than homo sapiens sapiens genus-wide universal behavioral traits. Mass society may repress individual traits with universalized mass behavioral conformity with liberal mass-distributed pressure. That communist destruction of individual free actualization of life is evil. 

Because people are so comfortable in prosperous classes of the United States, they will to jettison moral conservatism to indulge their wealthy desires more deeply. There is a belief that no harm can occur except through those opposed to moral laxness. yet like delayed gratification there may be delayed mass social harm for practices such as homosexuality and abortion that are evolutionarily wrong. In the modern world women with good security and sexual conservatism would have little need for abortion even to arise as a concern.

It is quite possible that the good advice of God on moral behavior were given to direct humanity not to miss the mark of life presentable for eternity. Human life is like a blade of grass that is here for a day and gone. God has the information that was a human soul, and that information is never lost. Information is conserved by God for eternity. Because he is omniscient it is never created or destroyed; simply foreknown. Thus people have two destination; with God in the Lord Jesus Christ whom God sees instead of human sin with the original sin of entropy, or two; eternity without God and the eternal suffering of the damned left only to their own devices.

I have made a book of some of my own ideas regarding eve’s revolution and theology (free to download) to reconcile evolution and theology with a little more calm reflection on serious topics. People so often deeply err.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/god-cosmology-and-nothingness-theory-and-theology-in-a-scientific-era/ebook/product-23976366.html

Ecosphere Defense and Cutting Federal Debt

President Trump can try to slow growth of Federal public debt and that’s about it. It was nearly 21 trillion when he took office. It’s passed 22 trillion now.

Because of supply side economics carried to a ludicrous extreme the Congress and politicians aren’t very serious about reducing the debt. They aren’t reformers either.
Discontinuing highly entropic economic structures deleterious to ecospheric health would provide macro-structural tax reform policies as well that could likely reduce the public debt.

I have some ideas about the Congress at least starting a Committee on finding remedies for HES virus (Human Economic Structure virus) that is causing the breakdown of the historical health of the ecosphere. There is a Ways and Means Committee and Intelligence etc, yet nothing about the ecospheric problems the evolved form of the human economy has inflicted on the world ecosphere. The new Congressional Committee should study the problem and find ways to accomplish reform of HES to a sustainable and non-ecospherically fatal form. It would look for anti-HES virus policies that could be legislated. It would be like Congress studying for a cure for cancer. Journey of thousand mile begin with single step.

With the need for wholesale economic policy reform evident and lacking from either party the prospects for reform and reduction of the Federal deficit are problematic and penultimate to addressing the larger question of human survival on Earth. Global warming is just a symptom (although potentially fatal) of the human economic structural attack on the health of the global ecosphere. It can be corrected yet a start need be made by Congress to address the entire problem a piece at a time.

Geoengineering Isn't the Better Way Way to Repair Economic Damage to Earth

It is remarkable how people avoid facing up to the fact that human economic and living zoning and operations infrastructure evolved in anti-ecospheric health paradigms are the problem, and the problem can't be fixed just with large scale geoengineering items that let unsustainable economic practices continue.

https://www.businessinsider.com/geoengineering-how-to-reverse-climate-change-2019-4

Business insider's article is a good example of off the mark big schemes that ignore the requisite transformation through redesign of human living and economic practices. Change would bother business.

Global warming is not the only problem. It is a symptom of the problem. Several fatal ecosphere illnesses are caused by the maladapted human economic structure  (HES) virus.

I suggest that the Congress create a permanent committee that studies and finds remedies to particular ecosphere problems that are a result of maladaptive HES. Solutions require more than just a single bill to reverse the tide like a King Canute order. Sustainable economics also known as the discipline of ecological economics requires changes in hundreds of areas from living to industry and business practices and zoning. The optimal ways to bring about even a few changes with the minimum of economic harm while economic transition is occurring should be a study and actions taken by Congress on a lasting basis. It is not a one-off fix-all bill.

Press Quality May Be Declining Globally

The quality of the free press may be declining globally. Globalism has transformed the broadcast media too. It seems more to have conformed into being a tool of the rich that hoodwink the poor and middle class.

The persecution of President Donald Trump confirmed in the no-meat Mueller Report was a dog and pony show to give Democrat Party greyhounds something to chase after. The Congress seems unable to reason well, and Democrats in particular seem treasonous in their preferences for foreign illegal aliens over secure American borders quite in keeping with globalist corporate CEO's that might enjoy downgrading uppity American individualists. The 1% owns the broadcast media.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/18/muellers-report-is-beginning-not-end/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.edbf0110ebcf

Throughout history ruling classes have employed the press and broadcast media more recently to socialize, brainwash and control the public. The press in a plurality of instances is an opiate for the masses. Americans have opioids, The Washington Post, CNN etc.

Academias in their rush to embrace godless atheist politics have sought after a grip on the wealthiest as well. The Democrat President Obama signed off on vast Bush II tax cuts to make the rich richer than their wildest dreams. He had only to allow the cuts to expire for a semblance of fairness to return. The Congress does nothing to reform free enterprise or bring about a more egalitarian national income allocation. They avoid legislating anything that would reduce patent exclusivity and allow anyone to manufacture a patented item after three years with 10% royalties due the inventor by users that manufacture the product. Democrats won't secure borders and instead seek divisive political times for years and years that distract from any questions concerning national income and the concentration of wealth. They have trained Americans to think that race, perversion and gender are more important than finance and income distribution for Americans based solely on economic class. 

The media has aided and abetted federal foisting of the corruption of onerous supply-side economic policy going on beyond the Reagan years with their distracting cult-of-personalities approach to governance. The press has become co-opted by the powers that own them. Ruling by cash or coercion the ruling powers have their way.

The media faces tough challenges these days with corporate repression of free speech by individual, independent writers apparently encouraged by the card-carrying journalist clan. They additional have tough questions regarding how to publish hostile content while seeming to be objective. In the case of ethics, media theological questions arise, for example, concerning the Mueller Report, such as the relation between active and passive collusion compared to the parameters of sin by omission and commission. They must spend time wondering if passive collusion by omission is as serious as active collusion by commission, from the point of view of third parties, morally speaking.

Universal Public Health Care and Universal Food Stamps are Wrong Ideas

Universal public health care is as wrong as would be food stamps for everyone. The poor and starving need food stamps, not the rich and middle class. Public health care is similar.

A V.A.-poor people's clinics network for veterans, the poor and uninsurable with direct public health care is reasonable and useful. Such a system for everyone would be superfluous, inefficient and would expand government far more than needed. Government works best if it performs necessary and cost-efficient services rather than becoming bloated.

A Universal food stamp program where food in the United States could only be purchased with food stamps and every citizen was required to have them is such a silly thought I had to bring it to this essay. Food production and sales might be rather gruelish, and the rich might need to forego caviar for lunch. Food probably would be smuggled in from Mexico.

The middle class and rich can afford health care or health insurance. The poor and uninsurable generally can't. Those are the people the government should provide medical service to, as well as veterans.

Public health care systems (government run) can hire educated medical professionals readily enough, and they can buy medical equipment from the private sector; if the private sector still exists. The problem with universal public health care is that it probably would greatly slow the rate of technical advance that exists compared with that of a nation with a robust private sector. 

A good point for a government run public health care system for the poor and veterans is that if poverty is eliminated as well as wars the system would require fewer tax dollars to exist.

Designing government services at the largest scale is a technical art. Intellectual work is largely technical knowledge. Ordinary tech skills are a closed set and simpler than more abstract technical work. Intellectual tech skills recombine synthetic knowledge. Tech intellectual skills in history of government and philosophy of government function in relation to citizens are requisite for redesigners of government function. Even so innumerable politicians seek to change government without competence in appropriate technical skill. The consequence is 21 trillion of public debt with numerous politicians seeking to add trillions and trillions more.

Virtue and wisdom are requisite for good government reform. Many simple ideas implemented have counter-cyclical effects. The desire to have a product in math of 10 for example, does not mean that 5 added to X=10.

General Thomas Was the Real Winner for the Army of the Cumberland (after Grant)

General Thomas was the deciding edge for the Army of the Cumberland. Thomas was a brilliant and modern field tactician who invented the mobile field command car (wagon). He had people survey the terrain of battle in detail, and out-prepped the opponents. Thomas held the line at Chicamagua when the rebel Army broke through a gap in Sherman's line. The union forces were thrown into panic and retreat, yet Thomas’ command held the line against vastly superior forces long enough to enable Sherman to retreat without a slaughter.

Battle of Chickamauga

Grant had ordered Sherman to replace General Thomas because he was impatient with Thomas’ strategy of letting the confederates come to him for the battle of Chattanooga. Thomas had good intel and knew the terrain very well and designed a kill zone. Grant arrived and ordered Thomas to hit the rebels in the center. That resulted in a Union victory. Sherman was busy fighting at Tunnel hill where the rebels stopped him. The confederate army engaged in battle wasn’t slaughtered and retreated toward Atlanta.

Battle of Chattanooga

Thomas knew that the Rebel army could be cut off at a critical spot on the way Sheridan dithered and let General Hood’s forces escape to Atlanta. Sherman surrounded Atlanta and had Thomas guard a sector of the northern front, and waited. The confederates choose to break out while Sherman was on the wrong side of Atlanta- the S.W. He had no notion when the battle started.

The rebels broke through in the N.E. where just General Thomas’s forces held yet could not contain. Rebel fugitives did manage to escape toward Savannah, and though out of touch during the initial fighting, General Sherman arrived to chase after the survivors. His cavalry rode all the way from Atlanta to Savannah where they encountered stiff resistance from 200 revel soldiers. I rode a bicycle along a country highway where Sheridan’s forces had gone, and found a small vestigial swamp with cypress trees- very scenic, the remainder was farmland.

There are experts on the war crimes of the civil war. Sheridan didn’t perp anything like Union soldiers experienced at Andersonville. Sheridan was probably in a hurry to get back for medals and ceremony in D.C. as the war was quickly over.


I am skeptical that General Sherman could have engaged in much looting and pillaging on his ride in hot pursuit of escaping, concluding Rebels soldiers on the road to Savannah. Again, between Chattanooga and Atlanta there wasn’t so much time that passed to seriously exploit the civilians.

General Thomas, a son of North Carolina, died of a heart attack a few years after the war in San Francisco. If had chosen to fight for the South, the Union might have had a worse time of it.

America's Biggest Historical Monopolies

Without too much research I would say, Standard Oil (there was a book named The Seven Sisters published maybe thirty years ago that described the oligopoly of seven major oil companies), Bell Telephone, Labor Unions, maybe U.S. Steel and what?

Some say Intel is monopolistic because it leads in creativity and production of computer chips. It does have rivals like AMD, Ryzan and Nvidia etc. The cost of getting started is so high that there are few small business competitors producing chips at home in the U.S.A. It is possible that another way of storing data besides miniaturized transistors will be invented such that it works (why aren’t cpu’s made on solar panels so they can act like home super-computers nailed to the walls of homes) better than tiny transistors? There must be some way to get faster internet speed and an edge on all those foreigners that beat one at blitz chess because of faster internet service providers. 

Some regard the New England Patriots as semi-monopolistic… equal to the 20th century Yankees in baseball. I wouldn’t agree with that. In my opinion the Saints should win after having the NFC Championship stolen from them by prejudiced referees from Los Angeles.


Oh yes, there is Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more to consider (Amazon). It isn’t a monopoly. It simply has a hyper-efficient, state-of-the-biz ness model below the surface. It and e-bay just push the mom and pop malls out of business. The retail apocalypse has claimed 6,000 US stores in 2019 so far, more than the number that shut down in all of 2018

El Salvador; Needs U.S. Troops to Secure and Develop Society?

Does El Salvador need U.S. military to establish martial law, eliminate MS-13 and build a just and verdant society? El Salvador's criminal enterprises and drug distribution infrastructure have established sufficient civil terror to drive civilians north to the United States creating more problems here. The U.S. provided military aid to El Salvador in the battle against communist guerrillas; it should help fill the civil vacuum of power and development that followed the civil war and return of gang members from Los Angeles.

A Marshall Plan for Europe helped rebuild that devastated sub-continent. Political leaders were wise enough to know that politics abhors a vacuum. Americans should not feel they can just ignore Central American problems and pursue their own prosperity without any consequences. Communist evil an authoritarian killers may envelop the Western Hemisphere trying to defeat the U.S.A. in detail.

Sending money to El Salvador that would filter out to the gangs eventually isn't a good idea. Some in California might wish to send money to beef up right-wing death squads whom could attack MS-13 as a rival organization to power. That doesn't seem like a good idea.

If the United States allows disorder and poverty to continue in El Salvador with a non-interventionist policy it is likely that droves of illegal aliens will continue to migrate to the U.S. along with gang members and illegal drug traffickers. China is investing in Venezuela and Panama seeking opportunities to build of communist and socialist infrastructure. Chinese agents may support or encourage criminal gangs in Central America eventually as a way to establish more power for-themselves as they seek to make South America the Chinese back yard.

After the end of the Cold War a policy of ignoring Central American politics to let chaos and crime flourish is backsliding, as were the importunate policies that helped develop enmity with Russia. While the Democrats are a party that seems anti-American and pro-socialist/communist irrationally these days, the Bonobo morality clan political drift will not encourage peaceful civil development in Central America. Non-intervention except for cash payments is irresponsible. Of course the President of El Salvador and the rest of the government should need to request U.S. troop presence; perhaps 20,000, with Army engineers and top economic advisers to attempt to build a sustainably green economic infrastructure for El Salvador.

On Innate Moral Psychology

Prof Bloom's lecture on finding about babies was amusing enough. Searching for some sort of innate morality in babies that could be taken as a cognitive characteristic such that people are hard-wired to certain behaviors that he can regard as moral seems sketchy.

Morality is an ability to differentiate between abstract values rather than natural behavior for-itself. The difference between defecating in public or in a toilet stall is a moral and legal question perhaps, yet a dog or a baby defecating on the floor isn't taken to be a moral question they have flunked.

Moral philosophy isn't about unavoidable deterministic behavior. Animals pursue with personal egoism perhaps, things that are good for them, or that they believe to be good. An example would be youthful alcoholism. maybe a child discovers that drinking gin and orange juice or whatever is good, or tastes good, so they continue even though it is bad for their health. If creme puffs were actually poisonous and bad, people would eat them anyway of they didn't know better. The pursuit of what is thought to be the immediate good is not a moral question.

Socrates wanted to show that human children may have innate knowledge in one part of The Meno in a famous passage of 1900 words where he interviews a slave boy. Cicero wrote a discourse On Natural Law. The babies interpreting fair distribution or unequal distribution were not perhaps showing a moral sense. They have have transferred their own worldview into the two characters and preferred a balanced rather than an unfair or unequal distribution for-themselves. The babies may have liked or disliked a triangle shape more than a square, or alternatively have required more time to understand a complex image in regard to a triangle and sphere vs a square and sphere in motion. A triangle has slope and a square has only angles.

While morality may be what people actual do. It is a culturally based social dialect and an evolutionary praxis of change. Its realm may be stretched and broken as a society expands or is broken, so chaos and moral breakdown occurs.

One should not overuse moral reductionism to posit that like a Universe expanding from a singularity, the moral state of mankind is a kernel within babies that grows into adulthood. While some adults are simplistic regarding moral behavior and world view, and some societies are simplistic in behavior and world view in some historical periods, in the modern world, given the possible ranges of freedom of motion and action of human beings as a physical being, moral values are chosen, accepted as true dogma, and so forth, intentionally rather than automatically.

Anyone can understand that putting a hand on a stove burns. Babies vicariously understand that about others. Adults often lack that capacity and willfully persecute others at a distance with modern tools of they can on the basis of rumor. The gang morality of organizations and collectives for pursuing people to victimize is an exaggeration of the profit motive or pursuit of the good narrowly that is expanded into mass organizational moral values.

Organizational morality can have good or bad values, and designate those values like algebraic literals wherein one drops in the meaning such that it supports organizational goals.

On Catholic (and other) Priestly Child Abuse Crimes- What Can Be Done?

Homosexual pedophiles may infiltrate churches intentionally. I believe that school instructors of kids have a percent that perpetrate pedophilia too with countless examples of statutory rape crimes globally. It is a human problem that Christians too should work to eliminate. 

Homosexuals have taken over some denominational doctrine. There are academics that teach morality these days with very loose ideas about sexuality. Some want to model morality on values that Bonobo-chimps have of less violence in comparison to chimpanzees. Broad is the road to destruction and many there are that take it while narrow is the gate to salvation. 

Christians are individuals and saved individually. The world is corrupt and there are corrupt people within any organization including ordained ministries. That is plain. Many are lost and confused by the advanced evolutionary doctrine that is pervasive in public schools. I learned evolution science and Christianity at the same time and so look at the Bible differently than either fundamentalists or scientific atheists. Entertainment media is basically anti-Christian and provides unChristian values.

I have felt that getting the gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ to the people has had various forms that harmonized with the technology and social reality of the era. While one might wish for Christian leadership to have better than normal behavioral characteristics, sometimes they don’t regarding moral behavior. In prior eras the sacerdotal priesthood (celibacy) was easier than today with pervasive temptation as common secular fact.

Human society has not always been developed along rational, orderly, egalitarian lines. Christian values tend to be counter-cyclical to worldly values, so Christians want their leaders to be good moral examples. Yet the teachings of Christ aren’t simple to follow.

Today there are many corrupt versions of Christianity. Homosexual clergy are permitted in some denominations. One may become an ordained minister from a Washington State order on-line shop free to perform marriage. American Marriage Ministries Marriage License Completion

Genuine Christianity, in short, is increasingly difficult to differentiate from that which is not.

I think it would help if a priesthood of believers order were formed where all Christians literally are priests and participate as confessing Christians in personal church services Sunday. Good theological and doctrinal dogma could still be produced by scholastic Christians that follow the Bible so ordinary Christians could share an orthodoxy in performing church offices Sunday liturgy. If Christianity is voluntary and non-profit, and if people participate freely as confessing members, then there should be little reason to lie in public every Sunday, and one should develop better Christian spiritual awareness during the week.

I believe that present church structures with upper class pro Christians and lower class ‘laity’ is out of step with the times of Universal literacy. Christians no longer require special clergy to read from the Bible in Latin as they sit in pews.

When churches seem oriented toward assuring support for career Christians and the ‘laity’ walk or drive away in cars to resume their secular lives. When they don’t share small groups speaking roles and know they are primary Christians, a lot of stuff can go on within and without a church. I have written about that elsewhere.

Christianity certainly is experiencing several contemporary crisis. I can’t fix it, nor can I fix several other secular problems. That leaves one dissatisfied. One hopes some time things can get better.

Reconstructing Notre Dame; Design Options Aplenty

The bright spot in the darkness of the Notre Dame cathedral fire is the opportunity to redesign the Paris skyline. Yes much of the remaining old stone structure should remain as a depositional layer of history. The remainder should be new, soaring into the sky like an Antonio Gaudi-Salvador Dali steel and glass sort of practical construct that captures solar and wind power.

 Should the New Notre Dame have green lasers in the spire, or make the spire a very modern radio or solar telescope? What about the camera obscura within a dome showing the sky outside? Should fiber optics bring natural light within? Instead of bell chimes maybe a vast Aeolian wind harp that can be dampened and played to not disturb Parisians too much would work. It is good when opportunity presents. 

Perhaps the Bible could run live through exterior l.e.d. and solar building panels in some areas of the new construction for people to see.

AOC Acknowledges That White House Bid Is No Country for OIld Joe

Maybe former V.P. Joe Biden is a tired old guy in a No Country for Old Men scenario regarding his desire to be President. There is something to be said for young, clueless leadership that F's it all up yet makes voters feel good about it.

Medicare for everyone including Warren Buffet and Bill gates could through a lot of cash for future generations to deal with. It would expand the base and amount of money going into the program to provide rich quality treatment for the aged. Turbo-Obamacare instead of rational direct provision of medical services directly to the poor and uninsurable through an expanded V.A. and homeless clinics network. There is no cheaper way, and if the public is paying for it, the best and most efficient coverage is what should be selected. Bernie and Biden have not got the public's best interests in mind- they want to through more business to Wall Street and the 1% with Obamacare continuing. Taxing the poor and middle class for Medicare forced on everyone-even those that are young, healthy and sometimes clueless when they are in political office might be necessary to pay for it. Lots of room for fraudulent Medicare charge scams.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-biden-2020-election

One would like a well-educated politicians from the Democrat side to at least provide intellectual competition. That won't happen though. The young and the restless democrats are mostly an identity party of women, homos and non-whites these days. Charisma matters more than good ideas. maybe Joe and Bernie don't have it. I could at least emulate Bernie cover-the-baldness hairstyle if he was elected. Comb it forward and have lots of Hollywood stars over to admire that.

U.S. Dental Labs Have Worse Chinese Competition Than the Steel Industry

 President Trump hasn't done much to keep the American dental lab industry in existence. Today most U.S. dental laboratories have moved to China, or been put out of work by capitalists moving business to China to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor that is sometimes socialized. In the United States there are only about 6000 dental labs most of which are small, remaining to produce crowns, bridges, implants, dentures and so forth for Americans.

What happened is that FedEx and other fast shippers enabled U.S. dentists to send impressions to China and get them back in nearly the same time frame as local American producers. With on-line digitalized data of digital implants the dentists can have the information in China the same day as he took the data from the patient, then have the Chinese make a crown or bridge and send it back with seven days. That dumped Chinese advantage is purely a consequence of cheap labor abroad and technology that makes American skilled craftsmen increasing obsolete, and that isn't right.

It's quite expensive to start a small dental lab business; the technology is costly and there is new equipment every year that speeds up production. Young people lack the skill and the capital to start their own business. Dentists themselves with lots of capital may band together and create dental labs in China to profit from the cheap Chinese labor. They don't pass on the savings to American crown consumers. The cheap Chinese labor and ease of foreign investment means the dental lab business is moving to China and will do so for a decade or so while some U.S.survivors keep modernizing to keep up. The advantage is Chinese though.

large Corporations like Dentsply have offices in more than 120 countries and manufacturing in 21. They were a leading player in starting the trend of outsourcing U.S. business for the advantage of the 1%. They make teeth for dentures that are just set-in pre-fabbed as it were. Customs crowns made individually still occurs in select U.S. dental labs, yet that too has largely moved abroad.

President Trump should at least put 50% tariffs on imported Chinese products from dental labs to create an American placeholder in the dental lab business until technological advance makes purely local production through automation viable. Without enough skilled technicians to work with the new technology, the new automation for tooth production will go to those with already existing dental technology. One day the Chinese communist party may own automated dental lab franchises across America to print on demand zircon crowns for U.S. dentists while American workers can compete through labor ready with illegal Mexican and Central American migrants for shovel ready jobs.