Paradocracy

In all courses of life, debt is a curious yet dangerous instrument: it can serve a person well, but it can just as easily ruin him.  Whereas personal debt serves a vital function to meet needs in times of great exigency, the public debt is a scourge to be avoided everywhere and at all costs. Obscured by empty promises and delusions of grandeur, the public debt, as exercised historically and today, is little more than perpetual slavery: it is a debt-financed government powered exclusively by the exploits of theft, force and coercion.  Where its promises are plenty, the costs to the public liberty are indefinite.  Debt-financed government is insidious not only because it creates the illusion that the public can have something for nothing, but because it distorts the relationship between the public and their government; in this way, the government funded through debt is more disconnected from the public which it purports to represent, and it is thereby less sensitive to the limitations im

With bitcoin trading around the vaunted $50,000 level, speculators galore project the next moonshot to $100,000 and beyond. In the fanfare surrounding bitcoin, people have been animated about all things virtual, smugly mocking the physical world as they do their best Scrooge McDuck impersonations in virtual form. Regrettably for them, whereas Scrooge had a pool of gold that he enjoyed, they can merely stare at their virtual wallets wondering what they might one day be able to afford.  Ironically, while the bitcoin bandwagon is full of fanatics caught up in their virtual fantasies, they sense they're getting rich not by assessing their wealth in the form of bitcoin, a nebulous unit to be sure, but in the form of US dollars or other assets with actual utility. If not for the fact that the tangible world stands to speculate with them, contributing to their illusions with the assets that make us truly wealthy, the music would've stopped long before the bandwagon ever got going.  In

My dear wife has been admitted to the hospital, and I’m here as a visitor praying for her health and the health of our unborn baby. Suddenly, our calmness and our peace of mind are shattered by political developments from the California Department of Public Health .  Following the conveyance of an “order” which they have no constitutional authority to issue, the nurse informed us last night of this new development which will require visitors to show proof of vaccination or negative test result. According to the Public Health Officer of the State of California, hospitals are now required to "verify visitors are fully vaccinated, or for unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated visitors, verify documentation of a negative SARS-CoV-2 test." Personally I find it ironic that hospitals are reportedly full of COVID cases, yet they want to screen visitors to ensure that they don’t have COVID. Put another way, COVID is reportedly already in the hospitals, but they want to make sure that

Over the past year and a half, Americans and people worldwide have been encouraged to "trust the experts" and to "trust the science." Well, as we know all too well by now, while it often aids in getting there, "science" doesn't independently produce facts. It's a process that aims, like an asymptote approaching a limit, to get us as close to the truth as humanly possible.  In this way, the risk in depending on "science" to determine the facts is found in the public's unquestioning obedience to those who hold "the science" beyond reproach in order to advance their own selfish objectives. For this reason, it is imperative that the people wielding "the science" do so in good faith, and in such a way as to avoid discrediting it. As it turns out, people will trust in an institution so long as it preserves their faith; once it has betrayed them, it's difficult to regain their trust.  As much of the public has become

Let us all remember that, at the very outset of the reported COVID-19 outbreak, we purportedly had precious little to sacrifice for the “common good.” To be precise, “two weeks to flatten the curve.”  At this point, a year and a half later, we must confess that this projection was either a blatant lie or premised on the farfetched expectation of total participation. At this juncture, it’s self-evident that, while we responded with something approximating total participation, we were destined to never achieve absolute, 100-percent participation in mask-wearing.  Even if we had perfect participation in strict compliance with the ever-changing and uncertain guidance from the so-called experts and approved channels, there would have been no way of proving the public's innocence. What's more, there would have invariably been something imperfect about its execution: whether improper use, inadequate materials, or something else entirely.  Bearing this in mind, those seeking to encoura

People often mischaracterize money as the root of all evil, whereas the old adage truly states, per 1 Timothy 6:10 , that it is “the love of money” that is the root of all evil. Nevertheless, we live a money-driven world due to the inescapable need for resources, but money eventually comes to consume the lives of people who decide for themselves, or who've had others decide for them, that little to nothing else than material or monetary gain should ever come to define them.  Of course, people are rightly free to define their lives as they see fit; they’re free to define their lives by material and monetary gain, just as they’re free to define their lives by their memories, adventures and precious moments.  While I’d contend that the worthwhile life consists of some combination thereof, one necessarily paying for the other, some people are just as strong in their own convictions; still others have little conviction, even none at all, and have paid little mind to the subject altogeth