Human newborns, no matter what culture or geographical location, are very much like computers with empty hard drives. You can fill the hard drive with truths, (say a well-written program that can be an excellent tool) or you can dump garbage into it and have it produce gibberish. Babies are also like sponges and they absorb everything that their five senses ingest, either good or evil. Babies are not pre-programmed for good. They can be molded into any type of human their handlers want them to be. If babies are left to their own resources, should they survive to adulthood, they become the sum of all of their inherited characteristics and all of their experiences and how their mind processes those experiences. But babies are not responsible for who or what they become, their parents and their teachers are. That is a huge responsibility that way too many folk take lightly.
So we as parents and teachers have a choice. We can instill solid “principles” of right and wrong, self-reliance, discipline, compassion and responsibility in our charges, or we can instill incarnate evil and everything in between, or, we can allow them to be brainwashed, as is happening in our public schools today – but if we do nothing, the outcome of our children becomes unpredictable and are subject to random influences.
Under random influences, a child has the possibility of becoming a Hitler, a George Washington, or a derelict, depending upon the principles, or lack thereof, that have been recorded on their “hard drives”. But whatever we do, or don’t do, for or against our children, can have a profound effect on history and future generations.
A couple of thousand years ago, a set of moral “principles” were handed down to the peoples of the time. “Principles” that have stood the test of time and that have been the bedrock of at least two major religions whose heartbeat started in and near Jerusalem, Israel. Those principles have been the fabric and foundation that have kept these religions alive and going strong, for well over 2,000 years. Splinter religions that strayed from, or significantly altered the “principles”, fell by the wayside and disappeared from view, or become ineffectual fringe elements, or outcasts.
Countries and cultures are a great deal like the minds of young babies. They can either establish a set of strong principles to govern themselves, or allow themselves to be subject to random influences, or worse, in their apathy and indifference, allow their governors to usurp unlimited powers.
There is an inviolate law of nature that was set down by scientists of the 19th century as the second law of thermo-dynamics. It is called the law of entropy. In simple words the law states that any entity, any body, has only one path from present to future and that path is from order to disorder. A body with heat, loses that heat. A cell in an organism eventually wears out and dies. The orbits of planets and moons ultimately decay and they sometimes crash into their suns, or their host planets. Suns, like our own, use up their energy and in time, burn out and collapse into white dwarfs. Even our Universe may be headed for what scientists call heat death, where all heat is dissipated to nothingness and only deep cold is left.
But like many laws, there are some exceptions. It seems that there is another mysterious force at work in our Universe, wherein order emerges from chaos and instead we get the opposite of entropy. Massive supernova explosions of giant stars spew out elements, billions of miles into the surrounding void. Elements that are manufactured in the bowels of the dying star from nuclear fusion. Over time those elements coalesce into huge clouds of gas and the gas clouds then begin to collapse under gravity and form new stars that heat emerging planets, upon which some, life is born. Thus, from the death of a star, from order to disorder under the law of entropy, comes order in the form of new suns, planets and life, and in some cases intelligent life. All life and inanimate matter on earth is made up of the elements that were manufactured in massive star supernovas. And by some operation of principle, or law, those elements assemble themselves into objects with form and purpose, like stars, planets, rocks, water, plant and animal life.
On Earth, at least, a plant rises up out of the moist, rich soil from a tiny seed no bigger than a few grains of sand. Its journey through life is preordained. It cannot sway from the goal set for it by its genetics, chemistry and biology. Those limits are its “principles”. Somewhere along the way a bud forms on the end of a stalk or tendril of the plant and in but a few days, erupts into a splendor of color and a soft, enticing shape; each plant having its own unique form. Deep inside the flower, which it has now become, lies the makings for its offspring and with a little help from other creatures, the chemical means to allow it to reproduce. Soon it is visited by a host of flying insects and birds and from that embrace and the ultimate distribution of the contents of its interior, the seeds are sown for a new generation of the species.
In contrast, human beings of Earth are far different than the plant, even though they too come from a seed. Humans possess what all plants and most, if not all animals, do not possess. Humans have pre-programmed into them volition, free choice, an ego, an id, a will to determine their own direction, their own future. But humans, without adherence to sound principles, invite chaos and can wander aimlessly, without purpose. These hapless souls become easy pray for governments looking for votes.
It is written that eleven score and twelve years ago, ‘our founding fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty‘, in which the inalienable rights, granted to us by our creator, were codified into a set of “principles” under our constitution. ‘And to secure these inalienable rights, governments were instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’
‘Now we are engaged in a time‘ of contentious conflict, confusion, turmoil and division, amongst our own people, severely ‘testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.’ But without adherence to and the defense of the “principles” upon which this great nation was founded, the law of entropy will surely lead us from order into chaos and we shall crumble and decay into socialism, despotism, or a dictatorship, as have all past nations who toyed with freedom throughout the history of man and lost it. The future of freedom is in our hands, but only if we fiercely adhere to the principles handed down to us by the brave and courageous men and women who forged America, in a time of turmoil, conflict and confusion.
© 2019 Ron Ewart – All Rights Reserved
~ The Author ~
Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, “In Defense of Rural America“, is the President of the The National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO), a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State and dedicated to restoring, maintaining and defending property rights for urban and rural landowners. Mr. Ewart can be reached for comment at info@narlo.org.
Mr. Ewart has been a continuing contributor to the Kettle Moraine family of publications since May of 2007.