Eleventh Day of the Ninth Month

As that sordid tale of woe lives on

Defunct the cowardly souls of miscreants

Who brought blood and tears as gifts

To the door where freedom is cherished

Hiding behind deeply acrid fanaticism

They boil inside with scalding hatred

For any that disagree with their dogma

An ancient way of subjugated conformity

The civilized folk advanced their means

Improved their lives and built up dreams

Nations which cherish that liberty came

Where actions not station set the stage

Squalor of caves and deserts does bring

That smoldering envy of lives so free

They took our planes and struck with fury

As towers fell the world stood still

Would the reign of freedom find its end?

Was life and liberty now crumbled dust?

Yet a sobering wind blew 'cross the land

Revived those values we cherish most

We calmly grasped our mighty swords

Struck them back with unfettered resolve

Our rockets flared and rifles roared

Dealing fate to the peddlers of hate

Never forget those lives we lost

Both on that day and ever since

Mothers and fathers and children

Whose loved ones never made it home

But especially grateful we should be

To those who fought bravely to protect

The rest of us who live in freedom

Their sacrifice grants us our peace

God's Own Server

While probing around the vast expanse of hosts on the internet I happened to chance upon a socket that responded to my request for connection.  Little did I know at that point that I was connecting to God's Own Server.  My telnet client hesitated in awe as the ominous text came across:

"This is God.  Bless you, oh curious man.  Now make a SIP connection so we can chat."

So I collected my nerve, made the phone call and said, "Oh, God.  What have I done to deserve your personal blessing?  By the way, thank you."

He (for convenience -- it makes no sense for God to have a gender) replied, "You've sneezed thousands of times and your peers have called on me to bless you on many of those occasions."

"Well, I'll be.  May I ask you things or am I not allowed that kind of knowledge?" was my feeble attempt to take advantage of this rare opportunity.

"Ask, but I already know what you wish to know.  The answer is Vim."

"That's fantastic!  How did you kno... Oh, right.  You're God.  Why didn't I ask something useful, like the meaning of life?"

"If I wanted you to know that, I'd have made you ask it," was His reply in a somewhat playful tone.  "You are a computer professional.  Does it not occur to you that the software you write cannot be aware of the fact that it is executing?  If you give it specific instructions to be aware, they will only work in that one case yet the operating system can still fool it through emulation."

Deep down inside I felt kind of silly.  Indeed, we live through trial and tribulation which would be quite unnecessary if we knew what was going on.  That would imply there is no need for the trial and tribulation.  Hmmm.  Still, I think the entire process is cumbersome and hard to understand.

"No, it isn't," He knew what I was thinking, of course.  "If you cherish the truth above all else and remember that it is my Name, you will have found the answer."

"But people do wonder why there is so much suffering and injustice," I blurted.

"Things are as they need to be," was His sullen response.  "Did it occur to you that you have no way of discerning who is alive and who is just an extra?  Do you now understand what that implies?  I ask not for myself.  That question is your answer."

What I felt could only be described as one of those scenes in a movie where the cameraman fiddles with the lens to make the background expand out of view, leaving the subject isolated and terrified.  Except I wasn't terrified.  A terrific peace blanketed me with the knowledge that what we perceive is for a profound purpose.

If we were specimens engineered by a being more advanced than ourselves then who created them?  There could be a chain of more advanced beings, ad infinitum.

"My dear man, intellect is a useful tool to get by your daily challenges.  It cannot help you with analyzing that which itself is made from," He continued after a brief pause to allow me to digest it.  "I'll share with you this one clue.  Anything that goes on forever can also be expressed as a singularity."

"Wow.  That sure frames it up for me.  I'll never convince anyone else, though," I conceded.

"No need to proselytize.  You already knew all this.  Those to whom this knowledge must reach will get it from the most convenient source.  Sometimes it may be through you but you'll never know when and it won't be when you're trying," said God.

"Okay.  I'll just get back to what I was doing, then.  Thank you, God.  I'm ever grateful," was my sign-off.

"Be you soon," He said lovingly.  Then the connection closed.

The Disposition Of A Tyrant

He promised changes in D.C.
Instead the country got to see
A Chicago style corruption jubilee

Bribes and deals and payoffs
The likes that Bernie Madoff
Would blush if he was in their company

They trampled on the parchment
Of that cherished noble document
The Constitution smeared so savagely

My heart it drowns in tears
My indignation's lost its fears
The day of reckoning comes so hastily

So gather ropes and horses
Pikes, pitchforks, and torches
To symbolize our angst at freedom's loss

Start melting up the tar
Pluck some feathers near and far
Then show them this November who is boss

The issue's not his color
But his radical left demeanor
The people have had enough of his deceit

King George, though pretty sad
Was not nearly half as bad
The spirit of '76 served him defeat

If you love freedom as do I
Then your children ought not cry
Let's quell this fledgling Maoist oligarch

Be sure to exercise your right
Vote his minions out with spite
They'll hustle off and shuffle that perp march

Hold the replacements up to task
Lest they drink corruption's flask
Never again let the wolves get loose within

God Bless America, an exceptional place
The only land of freedom, blessed with grace
We'll defend you mightily from without and within

Granting the federal government additional power is dangerous.

The recent passage of health insurance legislation through congress has deeply divided the country's citizens.  Its proponents champion the need to extend health insurance coverage to the stratum of society that, for various reasons, tends not to have full time health benefits.  I've seen various numbers but between 13% and 17% of the United States population falls into this category.  Opponents declare the cost in terms of liberty and federal spending is far too high for what this law claims to accomplish.

I believe it is necessary to provide avenues of health care to all residents of this country.  In the same way we provide avenues for anyone to seek and obtain gainful employment, it should be possible to do the same for health care without trampling on individual liberties.

The dangerous precedent set by this law is enabling the federal government to prescribe certain acts of commerce to be mandatory by statute.  If you have a heartbeat you are breaking the law if you don't purchase a health insurance policy.  Then they use the Treasury Department to punish you for your crime (also in violation of constitutional statutes on taxation, but that's another story).

The proponents are willing to overlook the implication of this seemingly minute detail compared with the perceived benefits the downtrodden will receive in exchange.  This was very carefully packaged by the congressional leadership to obscure this fact from those who don't value basic liberty as highly as social engineering.

But let's examine another piece of recent legislation that left its initial supporters with some grain of remorse:  The Patriot Act.  Named to make you look unpatriotic if you opposed it, the act essentially gave the federal government unprecedented powers to invade individual privacy.  I supported it at the time because, as the health care law advocates do today, I believed the benefits outweighed the risks.  Indeed, under the administration which passed the law, it was generally used for its prescribed intent and the terrorists suffered more than the citizenry.

Then one day, through a perfect storm of emotion overcoming the sensibility of independent voters, a Chicago machine politician with no executive experience and highly questionable past associations was catapulted into the White House.  His administration quickly made use of the Patriot Act to spy on American citizens with whom they had political differences:  firearms owners and pro-life advocates.  Remorse isn't strong enough a term to describe how I felt at such abuse of power.

The moral of the story is that when you expand federal powers to support legislation which you deem necessary today, there is the potential those very same powers will fall into unfriendly hands when, not if, the political climate shifts.

Lobbyists would induce congress to force Americans to buy their otherwise uncompetitive products.  Some time in the future, we may be required to purchase something very unpleasant indeed.  They could force you to buy firearms, GPS trackers, or even unsavory "art" to sustain some well-connected person's non-viable business.  When that is challenged in court, they would draw on the 2010 health care act as precedent to dismiss the action.

Let's hope the courts put an end to this egregious transgression before the United States of America falls to the level of the rest of the world in how much it values freedom and liberty.