There is no way I can possibly count all the ways our property is being stolen from us by our so-called government “of the people, by the people, for the people”. But we are losing our property rights at breakneck speed and soon we will be property if we don’t put a stop to this iniquitous thievery.
Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Sanders sagely and succinctly wrote: “Property in a thing consists not merely in its ownership and possession, but in the unrestricted right of use, enjoyment, and disposal. Anything which destroys any of the elements of property, to that extent, destroys the property itself. The substantial value of property lies in its use. If the right of use be denied, the value of the property is annihilated and ownership is rendered a barren right.”
That should go without saying. Continue reading
Not so very long ago, school districts and education leaders told us that technology in the classroom was essential to the success of our students. “An iPad on every desk” became the new “chicken in every pot” slogan, as experts tried to convince us that technology could be a panacea for the nation’s test scores.
Early voting in the state of Texas primary is underway ahead of next week’s March 3 Election Day. Texas Scorecard reports that there are 10 propositions on the Republican ballot.
The more I see the more I remain convinced this nation is on an accelerated path to another civil war. The events that one might say started in 1833 to set the stage for civil war in 1860, steadily intensified and increased in number over that 27 year span over the issue of slavery.
In 1954, Frank Sinatra was on top of the world. He’d just won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in From Here to Eternity — a comeback role that rescued his career after years of decline and a voice hemorrhage that nearly ended it all.
All over the United States, the streets of our major cities are covered in poop. So exactly what does that say about us? It isn’t as if this is a new problem. As long as human societies have existed, human and animal waste has been a problem. Civilized societies have always found ways to deal with it, while uncivilized societies have always struggled to keep things clean.
The quality of the education that our children are receiving in America’s public schools just continues to go down. At one time, the concern was that not enough students were taking advanced courses. But now we have reached a point where a very large portion of our high school graduates cannot read effectively, cannot write effectively and cannot do basic math effectively.
Okay, parents, how many of you have gone to your local city hall, county commission meeting and petitioned that they work with you to get all schoolbooks removed until proven innocent of brainwashing your children?
It doesn’t happen until the halfway mark. You may remember the single most famous scene in Network, Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s take on television news, tabloid culture, corporate takeovers, and the shape of things to come, happening closer to the beginning of the movie. We don’t need to tell you which one we mean: A newscaster named Howard Beale, drunk on prophecy and clarity, rises from his anchor’s desk. Having run down everything that’s wrong with the world outside our windows — unemployment, crime, pollution, a failing economy — the gentleman now has a favor to ask of his viewers. He demands them to temporarily remove themselves from their state of perpetual isolation and become part of the collective chorus, to open their windows and scream into the void. Say it with us. “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!” 
In the dim glow of my easy chair, beneath the spell of classic rock anthems, jazz riffs, and soulful blues, my mind drifts through the labyrinth of a life forged in fire. Sixty-nine years on this spinning rock, and a profound sorrow grips me – not for myself, but for America, for humanity’s squandered promise. We enter this world as innocents, brimming with potential, yet too often we descend into baseness, immorality, and outright evil. What does it mean to be human in a world where the Golden Rule is trampled underfoot, where man’s eternal battle against his fellow man and the merciless forces of nature reveals our deepest flaws and rarest triumphs?
We live in a lowest common denominator society. For the last several decades, virtually every major institution in our society has become less civilized, and that is because our entire population has become less civilized. 20 years ago, a film entitled “Idiocracy” was released. It was about an average American that was selected for “a top-secret hibernation program but is forgotten and left to awaken to a future so incredibly moronic that he’s easily the most intelligent person alive”. It was an incredibly stupid movie, but the truth is that we are living it right now. Did you see the Super Bowl halftime show?
Transhumanist Yuval Noah Harari delivered a deeply unsettling speech at the World Economic Forum. While his remarks contained numerous points that warrant serious examination, for the sake of brevity I will focus on summarizing his overarching philosophy and then directly addressing the section of his speech where he advances a case for eventually granting personhood to