We are witnessing planned, violent, Pro-Hamas protests. Their excuse is that they want to end war. Their real purpose is to promote Hamas. They may appeal to the “feed-the-poor” Christians who are easily distracted.
A brief scanning of the Bible gives countless events where
God chose “deliverers” to go to war. The same Bible contains the 10
commandments that include “Thou shalt not kill”. The story of Adam and Eve
presents several contradictions. In this story, God created them with “free
will” that prompted them to disobey God and eat the fruit from the “tree of
knowledge”. For that “original sin”, they were banished from the Garden of Eden
and work and forced to provide food and shelter for themselves. Archeologists have
found human bones dated to 23,000BC. The 7 days it took God to create the earth
are now viewed as “periods of time”. The Bible has been subject of
interpretation for centuries.
It’s easy to see how ancient humans invented their own gods
as mirrors of themselves and selected gods to be the sun, sea, war, love and
volcanos and offer human sacrifices to ensure that it will rain and the crops
will come in.
Humans have long since abandoned these practices as they
discovered that the dangers on earth are embedded in systems that include
weather, plate tectonics, a hot core, gravity and electromagnetics to protect
our oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Several of our Founders were so unimpressed with the
Protestant denominations in the Colonies that they declared themselves
“Deists”. They believed in God, but rejected the practices imposed on the
church members. Deists believe in a higher power/supreme being. - Believe in an
afterlife. - Reject revelations as a source of religious evidence. Deists are oriented
toward scientific fact and natural observation, rather than scripture. Deists
resort to having a personal relationship with God. The Founders did appreciate
the Protestant Preachers who lobbied against British Rule in the 1700s.
The Founders adopted Judeo-Christian principles as the
foundation of US Law, but allowed freedom of religion. They knew that a common
culture would help with assimilation. They opposed religious extremism, citing
the Salem Witch Trials as its poster-child. The Puritan religion didn’t survive,
because the population agreed.
Our current drop in church attendance may include converts
to Deism. We have seen the relevance of our churches diminish due to a lack of
helpfulness or embracing inclusion. Many Europeans abandoned their churches
after World War I and World War II. In the US, Catholicism peaked in the 1950s
and began to decline after Vatican II in 1962.
In the US, Liberals have always included the “feed the
poor” Christians and Jews. This led to government-controlled welfare and our
$35 trillion debt. We are dangerously close to losing our economy and need to
remember that we are totally responsible for ourselves. We are also
tangentially responsible for our families. We are not responsible for
everybody, they are. Our job has always been to provide ourselves with food and
shelter and that is why we work. The family has always been the basic unit of
our economy since we joined clans of families. Families have always
instinctively taken care of each other, but government welfare broke the mold.
This resulted in single-mom households to proliferate and maintained their
poverty without fathers.
Before Vatican II in 1962, the Catholic Church dominated US
education and owned the Hospitals. The Nuns were trained to be teachers and
nurses and worked for $50/mo, plus room, board, transportation and medical
care. When Vatican II suggested that they should become ‘community helpers’,
they eventually sold the hospitals to the Accountants in the 1970s. Most quit
their Nun jobs and became nurses in “for-profit” hospitals and many remained as
teachers. In the 1980s, Catholic Schools began charging tuition and enrollment
dwindled.
We watched hospital costs quadruple each year. In 1970
hospital costs for room and lab tests were $24 per day. The average per-day
hospital cost in the U.S. is $2,883 in 2024. The US government took over
retiree healthcare insurance in 1965, because companies didn’t want to pay it.
Medicare now costs the federal budget $851 billion per year. Medicare costs are
3 times higher than the premium paid by recipients. As of January 2024, there
were approximately 62 million adults in the United States who were 65 and
older, which is 18% of the population.
Since 1980, there has been a revolution in all medical
treatments. Baby Boomers 1946-1964 should be in the pipeline for another 20
years. They have been the major recipients of Medicare coverage, but were also
the major contributors to the Social Security System. An effective program
aimed at eliminating Medicare Fraud should be initiated, but the revolution in
all medical treatments should continue.
We are each responsible for our own health and need to
provide funding for our own retirement. Bringing down the cost of healthcare and
improving our knowledge of nutrition and organ function is required.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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