The Return Of Scipio

I read that Congress has a 9 percent approval rating. I also read that this is the lowest approval rating since tracking such things began. We will no doubt use that number as yet another reason to throw derision, laughter and scorn at the vain and grotesque flotsam who parade and preen in Congress. They deserve far worse than low approval ratings, of course, up to and including the gibbet.

But are we not forgetting something rather important? Those creatures who rule over us did not just somehow accidentally stumble into power. They collected signatures, hired staff, mounted PR campaigns, put propaganda and pictures of themselves everywhere they could, and promoted themselves shamelessly. By the time elections rolled around, voters had had every opportunity to know them well. When we placed that little ‘X’ by their names on the ballot one would think that all that had to be known about them was known. And it was.

There is no escape from the sorry truth of the matter. We took the measure of those who pleaded with us to grant them power over our lives, and we willingly and freely granted it. Of what good is it to complain now? We have the congress we deserve. It is no more than a reflection of what we are—what we have become—as a people.

We practice adultery, and so we elect adulterers to rule over us. We ingest pornography, and so we elect pornographers to rule over us. We are sexually promiscuous, and so we elect the sexually promiscuous to rule over us. We act dishonorably, and so we elect the dishonorable to rule over us. We tolerate perversion, and so we elect the perverse to rule over us. We are full of pride, and so we elect the prideful to rule over us.

Really, this is not rocket science. We would do well to recall the words of C. S. Lewis.

We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

The greatest enemy of this nation is the man who stares back at you in the mirror.

If we want better rulers we had better get our own moral house in order. That, or go the way of Babylon.

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Happy birthday, my beloved country. I thank God that I am an American.

It is right to thank Him, for this nation belongs to Him. And so do I.

Tags: Culture // 7 Comments »

As usual, old Chesterton got it right.

Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.

America some time ago entered her post-Christian phase. Those Biblical principles that had so animated our founding documents and had formed the basis of much of our culture have fairly vanished from our public life. One need only compare America in 1958 to America today. Wherever one looks now, one sees much less of an obvious and confident Christian faith.

One might call this a good thing. One might call this a bad thing. It is certain that this decay of Christianity in America had had an effect.

Most noticeable is the dissolution of our moral guideposts, those dividing lines between that which was permissible and that which was abominable. It is not the case that we have moved them—that we have become more ‘tolerant’—but rather that we have discarded them altogether. Once a society pulls up her moral fences she has no idea where to put them. For the same reasons for moving them in the first place can now be used to move them again and again.

To give just one modern example, once one has allowed the possibility that a man may marry a man, there is simply no reason why he cannot marry a boy or a pre-pubescent girl or an animal. You may laugh, but those among us who were sentient beings 20 years ago probably laughed when some soapbox preacher on a street corner thumped his Bible and warned us of the results of tolerating homosexuality. All that fellow warned us about has come to pass.

And it is odd, yes? We first began to tolerate—there is that damned word again—homosexuals ‘coming out of the closet’ in the 1970s. The feeling then was some sort of gooey compassion—another wildly misused word. Whatever the Bible said about sodomy was ignored, and we Americans did what was right in our own eyes. Thirty years later we see that the homosexual movement and its accompanying agenda have been completely successful, perhaps the most successful movement in our history.

A charming and wholesome view of sodomy has overtaken our culture and legal system. While it is rare—so far—to see fornicating heterosexuals on public display, such a thing can be seen regularly wherever sodomites congregate. Whatever laws remain on the books concerning public lewdness are simply ignored when sodomites are involved. Indeed, an entire legal corpus has been drawn up just for sodomites, and all the hubbub over ‘hate crime’ legislation is only the beginning. Recall that a child in a public school may not say a public prayer, but that same child will be forced to participate in all sorts of activities during the year promoting the idea of the normalcy of sodomy.

To state the matter plainly, Jesus the Christ has been sent packing, and He has been replaced with anal sex. What was considered unspeakable a generation ago is now said to be absolutely normal.

What was black is now white.

Abortion has followed a similar pattern. It was first presented to us in 1973 after our culture had already succumbed to a host of moral weaknesses as nothing but a ‘choice.’ It was not fair—yet another damnable word—that a women who had been raped—the original legal reasoning behind much of Roe—should be forced to bring the child to term. And so just as sodomy was presented as ‘tolerance’ now abortion was presented as ‘compassion.’ Roe removed whatever legal strictures remained against abortion in the states, and just as sodomy was forced into the schoolhouse abortion was forced into every city in our nation, the views of the people in that city be damned.

And likewise, abortion and its accompanying legal rulings have allowed abortion to spread beyond the bounds of the most enthusiastic Roe supporter in 1973. Indeed, one reads Roe today as one reads the Magna Carta, so obsolete has it become. Roe spoke of restrictions, of trimesters and all that. But once remove those moral guideposts against abortion, and there can be no reason whatsoever to restrict abortion anytime, anywhere for whatever reason.

And so has it become today. Abortion is just another form of birth control. Judges even rule consistently that parents have no right to be notified when their children in public schools head to the school ‘health clinics’ to arrange an abortion. A child cannot get a piercing without parental approval, but that same child can engage in infanticide with no parent being the wiser. The parent, once the final arbiter in a child’s life, has been rendered powerless.

What was black is now white.

In fact wherever we look upon the moral landscape of our nation we see a world turned upside down in just a generation. Let us call it by the current mantra of ‘Change!’ There are many Americans who are elated by this. They see our nation as becoming more tolerant, more compassionate and so on. Of course, their definition of such things is not quite in line with what the Bible says, so naturally the Bible must go. It is after all the very essence of anti-change, for changed it has not. We see of course folks who use the Bible to justify sodomy and infanticide, but to do so the words written there must be ignored.

I wrote we were becoming ‘post-Christian’ but that is only partly true. It is obvious that even with the facts of the Atonement and Biblical truth before us we still in the empty vanity of our human wisdom have abandoned the deposit of 3000 years of teaching. But most of our new morality is not new at all. It has its roots in the gruesome practices of ancient paganism. Infanticide reaches back to the state sponsored child sacrifice of the Canaanites, and as well to Sparta, where all children were judged at birth and discarded if a blemish were found.

Our current faddish lust for all things environmental is likewise an ancient practice. The worship of the earth was common in pre-Colombian America and Babylon, and the Egyptians worshipped animals even more ferociously than we worship owls, whales and polar bears. The bizarre doings of our sodomites, though—eating feces, drinking urine—far exceeds even the homoerotic gyrations of the Greeks.

It needs be said that those who support sodomy rights and abortion rights and polar bear rights are members of the same club. These types agree on all essentials, and it is rare, for example, to find an environmentalist who is not also in favor of abortion and sodomite privilege. But we can go much further. In the same camp we also find a hatred of guns and the military, a belief in global warming, a love of global government, a despiser of orthodox Christianity and an admirer of foreign tyrants—Castro being only the current flavor.

We find likewise the same mindset in the movers and shakers of American culture and government. You might ask yourself how far sodomite privilege and abortion rights and environmentalism would get without the power of the state behind them. The obvious answer is that such absurdities would not get far at all. In every case their proponents grab the levers of state power to force their doctrines upon us all. In fact, whenever such things are presented to the public they are voted down, only to be—of course—overruled by some judge, who is in fact simply a minion of the state.

We the people, once so reliant upon God and His Word for moral guidelines, now rely upon the state to set the moral tone of our nation and her culture.

What we have experienced in America has been the gradual replacement of Christian faith with state worship. It is not just in the above mentioned moral issues where the state has facilitated—indeed, has encouraged—our moral decline, but the state has assumed all sorts of prerogatives formerly reserved to the individual, family, Church and community—things like retirement and medical care and education and housing. One can say without exaggeration that Americans, a people who once prided themselves upon their individuality and personal freedoms, have slowly yet steadily subsumed themelves into an reliance upon the state for basic needs.

You of course might think it well and good that things such as medical care and food and housing and education should be supplied by the state, but then I would remind you that such things have been supplied to every slave and to every prisoner since the beginning of time.

And so we are back to old Chesterton. The hollow at the center of our soul that was once filled by the Christian God is being filled by a worship of the state. Such blasphemy—an entirely correct word—is as ancient as Sumer. We may call it Moloch worship, though it has gone by many names.

Let us speak of things as they are: A man filled with Christ is a man whole and healthy. What animates him is the proper fuel. To gradually remove God from the man and replace it with state worship would be the same as slowly replacing the gasoline in your automobile with water. It would run very oddly, and would one day stop running altogether.

Christians like to believe that things can be turned around in time, that America can avoid a coming world of wars, rumors of wars and divine judgment. And in fact, Christians are under authority to believe just that. They have the example of Jonah and Nineveh before them, after all. But the eventual fate of Nineveh cannot be at all comforting to Americans. The citizens of Nineveh did once repent, and put on sackcloth and ashes. But such national remorse was fleeting, and they received the judgment due their crimes.

Look around in our culture, in our politics—and look in the mirror. Do you see sackcloth and ashes?

Tags: Culture, Theology // 3 Comments »

It has been cried from the rooftops: “The Democrats want to nationalize the oil industry!” And it is true. But why should anyone really be surprised? The Democrats have long stated their desire to nationalize entire sectors of the nation. Recall the recent ‘debates’ about the American health care industry. And what is ‘Social Security’ but a nationalized retirement account? Public education is simply nationalized schools. Academia long ago succumbed to government largesse, as did organized labor—and neither of these could survive as they are without massive government intervention.

Nationalization is simply taking something from a free people and turning that thing over to the state, whether that thing is an industry or investments or property. The official reason behind such a ‘taking’ is the idea that the state—the federal government—can manage the thing more effectively. The state, as a reflection of the General Will of the people, will eliminate capitalist greed and corruption and run the thing efficiently.

The actual reason for nationalization is something quite different.

In modern societies there are three sources of power and influence, the family, religion and the state. Society is healthy—it is rational—when none of these usurp the prerogatives of another. The state has no business preaching a religion. The family has no business collecting taxes. Religion has no business running the military. And the fact of the matter is that society has nothing to fear from the family and from religion. Associations among these are entirely voluntary.

The state is a different matter. Nothing about it is voluntary. The reason is that it has arrogated to itself all the coercive power of society. It has developed a huge apparatus of law and bureaucracy. It agents are everywhere, in every city and in all fifty states. One hundred years ago it was rare for an American to encounter an arm of the federal government outside of the Post Office. Who can possibly say this today?

And if you really, really want an up close and personal encounter with the state, do not pay your taxes. You can leave your family, you can avoid tithing at church, but refusing the dictates of the state will cause you to lose your property, your freedom and sometimes your life. That, dear reader, is power.

Of course, one expects the federal government to wield power. That is its point, its only point. It is to use its power keep the seas free and to protect the property of its citizens. Nothing more—and certainly nothing less. Trouble ensues when it moves into the territory reserved for the family or religion. When the state gets into the business of telling citizens what sort of foods they can eat and what sort of cars they can drive, of forcing their children into schools of indoctrination, of telling them that they have to accept a new morality that allows homosexual marriage, you have a problem.

The writers of our constitution were not fools. They well understood that because government possessed the sole coercive authority in the nation, that it would tend to encroach upon every aspect of society. One solution was to limit and divide its power and to give each branch countervailing power over the other two.

They provided another solution, and that was the 2nd Amendment. This was not written to prevent crime but to serve as a last resort against a voracious, confiscatory and lawless government.

And ‘lawless’ well describes any action of our government to seize—to nationalize—the oil industry. One searches the Constitution in vain for such authority. In fact, one can search the Constitution for much of the things that our government performs as a matter of course—welfare, social security, public education and the like. It matters not at all that some or most Americans find such things desirable. What matters is if the power to institute them can be found clearly stated in the Constitution. If not, then such things are illegal. And once one admits to one illegal function of the state, the next is an easy thing to do—and the entire meaning and usefulness of the Constitution has disappeared.

Consider: When was the last time you heard some journalist or congressman or bureaucrat question the constitutionality of something the state wished done? As a reminder, nationalization of industries is what happens in such places as Venezuela and Cuba. The fact that such a thing can be mentioned here in the US as within the purview of the state is more than a little disturbing.

It is that the American government is claiming those same privileges, prerogatives and powers as those claimed by socialist and communist regimes. And all of this with nary a peep of protest from the movers and shakers of our nation.

Tags: Culture, Politics // 9 Comments »

Who says there is ‘not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats’? On an entire host of issues there is enough disagreement that no compromise could ever be possible. One does not compromise with Evil. To do so is to become evil yourself.

Abortion is one such issue. Democrats love it, simply love it. They take the tax money of those who find abortion reprehensible and use it to finance the destruction of babies in the womb. This is a nice trick cleverly done.

And it needs be stated clearly and often that abortion is contrary to the teachings of Christianity. There is no getting around that. This does not change even if you believe that faith to be false. If you support abortion you are not a Christian. Certainly you might claim to be one, but such a claim would show you to be either a liar, an idiot or a member of Congress.

You see, that Christ Fellow is rather particular about moral issues, you know, those Ten Commandments and such. They are not suggestions.

And Christianity is rather outspoken about sodomy. In case you are confused about how Christians are to view homosexuality, here is a useful guide.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. . .If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them. (Lev. 18:22, 20:13)

Too Old Testament you say? Well then, here is some hints from the New.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9–10)

That line about ‘male prostitutes’ pretty much damns John Kerry. Anyway, just to clear things up a bit: God despises homosexuality. Those who support it or practice it will spend Eternity in Hell. If you disagree your arguments are not with me but with God. Take them there.

Of course, all that has been known for 3000 years. No surprises there. Yet, the Democrat Party has become not just the party of sticking scissors into a baby’s brain but also the booster party of anal sex. Indeed, one of its long term movers and shakers is Barney Frank (D-MA). He is an practicing sodomite who takes every opportunity to force his perversion upon all of America.

In 1998, he founded the National Stonewall Democrats, the national gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Democratic organization.

He also had a ‘roommate’—really a male prostitute that he had hired—-who ran a male prostitution ring—oh, pardon me, an ‘escort service’—from Frank’s apartment.

In 1990, the House voted to reprimand Frank when it was revealed that Steve Gobie, a male escort whom Frank had befriended after hiring him through a personal advertisement, claimed to have conducted an escort service from Frank’s apartment when he was not at home.

Of course Frank was not aware that young males were being rented and ‘serviced’ right under his roof. Heaven forfend!

Now let me ask you something. I am a middle school teacher. What if it were discovered that I had a male roommate who ran a male prostitution ring from my apartment? I would be fired, lose my teaching certification and be tossed in prison. But not the Honorable Barney Frank. He has been reelected 12 times by the good and true people of Massachusetts. You see, Frank and those like him are immune from the laws under which the rest of us must labor.

Nice work if you can get it.

Barney Frank and likeminded Democrats might escape the laws of our nation—they write them, after all—but they cannot escape the laws of God. They had better hope to Hell that Christianity is false.

Of course Barney Frank is not just busy, busy, busy with his ‘males escorts.’ He is absolutely ferocious about promoting homosexuality throughout the culture of this nation.

In a Capitol Hill press conference last week, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) announced the formation of the House of Representatives LGBT Equality Caucus. Baldwin introduced the bipartisan caucus and its founding members saying that they all shared “a common mission: to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality.”

Just so you know, Tammy Baldwin is a practicing lesbian—and of course she is a Democrat. Birds of a feather and so on. In fact, out of 52 members of that caucus, 50 are Democrats. And most of those—all but 4—are from the East and West coasts.

No difference between Democrats and Republicans? In fact, one can accurately state that whenever the question of promoting Christ or promoting the opposite comes up, the Democrats promote the opposite—removing prayer from schools, favoring homosexual marriage, forcing a pro-sodomy curriculum in our classrooms, passing hate crimes legislation, legalizing special sodomite privileges, allowing stem cell research, and compelling every state to open abortion mills. All of these are directly against the precepts of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you do not know that you do not know Him.

If one had to choose a party that was absolutely outspoken in its hatred of the Christian God, which party would that be?

Just a question.

Update: The candidate of change, the Democrat’s own messiah, has spoken up about the doctrines of Christ. He hates them.

Somewhere along the way faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart…

Wrong. Christ spoke many times about sheep and goats, about wheat and chaff, about the wide gate and the narrow gate. There is a difference between Christians and non-Christians. This will not and cannot disappear.

Faith got hijacked partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us.

There is no ‘Christian Right’ or ‘Christian Left’ or ‘Christian Center’. There is only Christianity. One believes it or not.

At every opportunity they’ve told Evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church…

The Democrats do indeed show no respect of Christ or His Church. They hate them and seek to remove them from every place they can.

Obama is no Christian, neither in word nor faith nor works. He might bring many with him through that wide gate, perhaps most of our nation.

“Do not be deceived,” said the Carpenter. This is not optional.

Tags: Culture, Politics, Theology // 8 Comments »

There seems to be no bottom to the abyss into which this nation—willfully, eagerly, delightedly—has plunged. Those activities that a mere generation ago were condemned by all classes as morally repugnant and not fit even for the barnyard animal are now proudly and confidently displayed in public. They receive government subsidies, accolades from all the right people, encomiums from the media and chairs in academia. They are the new normal, the old normal now tainted with that most horrifying of adjectives, ‘intolerant.’

And so we are instructed by our betters that the habits of sodomites are absolutely and positively cool, that one can select his own gender from a smorgasbord of choices, that a man who claims to be a woman inside a sodomite wrapped around a lesbian is certainly understandable and common, that movies showing the rape of a 12 year old girl and plays showing the lesbian rape of a 14 year old girl are examples of high art, that a male who dresses as a female has a constitutional right to enter those restrooms we ever-so-quaintly once reserved for women.

At no time did the movers and shakers of our culture shout, “Enough!” On the contrary, they leapt onto rooftops and yelped, “More! More! Give us more!” And so nothing was refused to them. They received the desires of their hearts.

And now from one of our nation’s centers of perversion, in fact from the very heart of American pornography, comes this latest cultural artifact. I ask all of you to open your minds to the new new, to a fad that soon will assume its rightful place among those with the most discerning of tastes. Soon and very soon it will receive its own government subsidies, be part of the public school curricula and its practitioners be seen as just normal folks.

This new thing is the eating of feces and the drinking of urine. Such activity is promoted by America’s answer to Leonardo, Ira Isaacs. He makes films, you see, and so as an artist he is beyond Good and Evil. But his films are not limited to mere coprophagia and urophagia.

Ira Isaacs readily admits he produced and sold movies depicting bestiality and sexual activity involving feces and urine.

Sex with animals. Rolling about in feces. Swilling urine. How positively cutting edge! Isaacs has made himself America’s Petronius, our own arbiter of excellence. Naturally there are those still limited by their depraved intolerance, blinded by obsolete cultural norms. Such types have the temerity to try to censor Isaacs, to actually toss him in prison.

The government obtained an indictment against Isaacs on a variety of obscenity charges, including importation or transportation of obscene material for sale.

‘Obscene’? Who says? The courts are little help except to those like Isaacs.

The test of obscenity still hinges on a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which held that a work is not legally obscene if it has “literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

The weight of the law lies with Isaacs. A society that does not prosecute men who practice anal sex in public scarcely can muster the moral fiber to do anything about him. University of Southern California law professor Jean Rosenbluth, a woman who has received the finest education this nation can provide, says that “The problem with obscenity is no one really knows what it is.”

No one, Professor Rosenbluth? There is no one in our nation who can tell you that promoting the eating of feces is obscene?

Isaacs sees himself as a hero for high culture.

“I’m fighting for art,” he said in an interview before his federal trial got under way. “Art is on trial.”

And he is no fool. Just as abortion was at first described as necessary for a woman’s health he describes his films as having ‘therapeutic value for people with the same fetishes depicted on screen.’ No doubt in our Brave New World such things as Isaacs champions will be, like abortion, included in government sponsored health plans.

The Egyptians would place food in the tombs of their pharaohs, believing that if they did not the soul of the pharaoh—his ka—would devour its own feces. This they knew as an abomination. We ourselves are on the verge of losing the very meaning of ‘abomination.’ Such a term is, after all, the height of intolerance.

So what is next in our cultural decline? The only thing remaining is necrophilia—but then, such a view might just reveal my own limited imagination.

Our next Ira Isaacs will surely show the way.

Tags: Culture // 8 Comments »

While waiting for the muse of prose to reappear, I found at last the reason why teenage girls do not do well in math.

More here. The artist’s competence at drawing the human body is apace with my own. His commentary, though, is the thing.

Hat tip: Right on the Left Coast

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I am having a bit of writer’s block as my teacher’s mind and body morph into the mind and body of a manager of 100 young interns at a tree farm. These interns are high school and college kids. It is my summer job, my second year at it. I am outside more or less all day. Very cool. And very exhausting.

Writing will resume tomorrow. Let us call that desire ‘the audacity of hope.’

Oh…and by the way…is Obama an anti-Christ? Just a question…just a question.

Tags: Writing // 12 Comments »

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.—Hamlet

By now all have read of a previously unknown tribe located near the region of Brazil and Peru. Let us not be surprised that such a thing is unique. It is not. It bedevils the modern mind to imagine that there are places on the earth where such things as ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’ have no meaning—none at all.

But first things first.

Much of the area between Peru and the Brazilian state of Acre knows little of such niceties as roads and electricity. It is a tough and inhospitable place. Almost all is Amazonian jungle. Acre borders the Ucayali Region of Peru, which, while not quite as savage as Acre still is a rough go. There is only one true border crossing, and that is far to the south near Bolivia.

Even during the dry season—such as it is—travel through this region is slow, difficult and at times impossible. Most of the region simply cannot be crossed, and most of it has never felt the trod of a boot. It is only known from aerial photos and satellite maps.

Such a thing, that there remain areas of our world unexplored, is hard for most to understand. We like to believe that with our machines we can go where we please, even to the moon and to Mars. Think again. We do not know what is out there. The last towns in eastern Peru in the Ucayali Region have dirt roads that lead to nowhere and simply disappear down into the vastness of the jungle. The Inca built roads as far as they could into the jungle, but even they could not go much further than their last redoubt of Vilcabamba. For the Inca as for us, the jungle represented the border between civilization and darkness.

So when you read the lament of some travel writer who complains that ‘there is no real adventure anymore’ he simply has not done his homework. For those Indiana Jones types so inclined you might organize an expedition into the region. Keep in mind that it has swallowed up many a man. I wish you many good lucks.

Naturally, the finding of a new tribe—we call such tribes ‘uncontacted’—leads environmentalist sorts into flights of ridiculous fancy. Here is one such idiot.

He described the threats to such tribes and their land as “a monumental crime against the natural world” and “further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilised’ ones, treat the world”.

If this fool thinks the tribe is part of the natural world, and that the civilization in which he lives is ‘irrational,’ then he can certainly remove himself from it and go join that tribe—or simply go off into the ‘rain forest’ to live. Of course, he will do no such thing. He sings the praises of human and natural savagery but would in no way put his money where his gaping mouth is. He will remain in the healthy, wealthy and air conditioned ‘irrational’ civilization.

Facts can be unpleasant things. But sooner or later they must be faced. Let us face them now.

The members of that tribe live in a violent state of nature scarcely above that of animals. They represent an almost complete devolution, an absolute regress, from the beginnings of civilization as presented to us by the Sumerians 6000 years ago. Their degraded existence is one no man would choose, not even the most addled and deluded Greenpeace type. They live out their abbreviated lives among the bat, the serpent, the scorpion, the puma, the crocodile, the spider, the hornet and the mosquito. Their bodies are home to a host of worms and diseases. For all we are concerned that tribe may as well be composed of aliens from another planet.

Rousseau, that great and misanthropic liar, was wrong. It is not civilization that enchains man, but nature red in tooth and claw. View the photos of the tribe and draw your own conclusions. Here is one such.

Read it and tell me again about the gentleness of natural man and of nature. Tell me again that such a life is one you would live. Tell me again that such a life is to be praised and admired. Tell me again that such a folk have much to teach our civilization. Tell me again that you would have your children live such a life.

Hobbes was right. Life in a state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.’ If you believe that such a life is worth living then go and try to live it.

Hat tip: Scribal Terror and Jungle Trader.

Further study: For those with an interest in what occurs when even rudimentary civilization—and Acre, Brazil is such a place—encounters jungle tribes, you might read Peter Matthiessen’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord. The movie is as well superb, as is the soundtrack.

You might also read John Hemming’s Red Gold and his other books about the Amazonian Indians.

Update: Here is more on that tribe, and what it means to call it ‘uncontacted.’ John Hemming himself weighs in.

Update: The story of an uncontacted tribe turned out to be somewhat of a hoax. But that changes nothing of these essentials: Much of the region between Brazil and Peru has not been trod by modern man. We do not know therefore what is out there. Many tribes remain uncontacted. South America off the beaten track—way off the beaten track—is still a hothouse of adventure for those so inclined. I spent 14 years of my life in the place, wandering alone through jungles and mountains. You need not desire to find an uncontacted tribe to find adventure. If you are patient one might find you—though you might not survive the encounter.

You could start researching some of the places mentioned here. I might be too old to head off once again into ‘wild, weird climes lying most sublime, out of space, out of time,’ but you might not be.

So get going.

Tags: Culture, Travel // 8 Comments »

No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks. Well, yes—vacation has begun. I will not have the entire summer off, alas, but I do have until Sunday. Then I will be ten weeks working on a tree farm.

But until then a friend and I will be in the forests of Arkansas. We are taking only the bare essentials: Bible, tents, guns and Merlot. We will be meandering a bit on the Ozark Highlands Trail.

Until then, be well.

Tags: Teaching, Travel // 4 Comments »