The Chronicles of SwissCelt's Lodge

In the previous entry, pope_guilty asks:

Is this really appropriate for a dominionism mod?

For the record, my response:

( Read more... )

Presenting it all here in the spirit of openness.

Yes, I know this is a pretty cheap way to get a journal update in. But this is positively the most exciting moment to date in Cleveland TV news history, and I figured I'd share... if for no other reason than to keep it in my journal.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's been an interesting week. This week demonstrated to me, in dramatic fashion, that the Democrats are every bit as tone-deaf to the concerns of us Libertarians as the Republicans are. First we had hints coming from the Department of Homeland Security that the target of domestic espionage has shifted from enemies of the Dominionist state to enemies of the Socialist state. (And meanwhile, those of us who oppose both are left wondering just what has changed.) Then we had the tea parties, and the not-so-subtle comparisons from the various media of "tea-bagging" to oral fixations of male genitalia.

( Or, to be more blunt... )

I just unbanned three people today from this journal. Not because I've reconciled with them, but rather because I'm just too busy to care anymore. Undoubtedly, this will wind up biting me in the ass at some point.

( Read more... )

I have been waiting for a few months to write this post; since the "Reverend Doctor" Kendra Vaughn Hovey's revelation that she has converted to Christianity, and is apparently taking her "First Church of Wicca" with her. I anticipated writing a scathing rebuttal to Hovey's new writings about Christianity. And yes, I believed there might be more than a little snark involved.

( Haer be dragons... )

That's why I feel I must write about Hovey's new Christian endeavour. And that's why I'm doing so here, in my personal journal, behind a cut. You don't have to read it, of course, but by the same token I don't think I gain anything by not making this a public post.

( So here it is. )

My friends, this is not intended as a critique of Christianity, and I hope none read this as such. What the "Reverend Doctor" Kendra Vaughn Hovey preaches is not Christianity, but rather her latest attempt at megalomania. I'm actually saddened that Hovey has chosen to tarnish yet another religion with her destructive ways. Thanks for reading.

I used to enjoy reading slacktivist. It was absolutely wonderful reading someone who understands, intimately, the dangers Dominionism poses not only to this country, but to Christianity. Fred Clark, the journalist behind Slacktivist, has been a great compass for me: In a time when so many so-called "Christians"-- and even more than a few well-meaning ones-- were caught up in the politics of proselytization, Clark wandered the wilderness to tell us all that this was not right. Dominionism, he reminded us, is not Christianity.

Last November, after President Obama was elected, I suspected that Dominionism would be on the wane for a few years. I even hoped for that to happen, and thus far it seems to have come true. In that hope, though, was the fear that the tendency by some to mix Christian teachings with political power would take a new form. Maybe tendency isn't the right word here. Really, it's more of a temptation; a sin.

I've noticed a change on Slacktivist in the last few months. Gone are the admonitions on combining Christianity with politics. In its place, increasingly, are political screeds justifying policy with political teachings. It's almost like D James Kennedy came back from the dead to thump the other half of the Bible for a while.

( Wherein we are compared to workers in a vineyard, and your SwissCelt wonders when he'll be paid his denarius. )

In a sense, I've been waiting four years to make this post. No, not because I intend to gloat- being a conservative myself, there's not much about which I can gloat right now. But rather, the stunning hubris with which Dominionists treated the 2004 election would not go unanswered by Whatever Gods May Be. It was a good guess, then, that I would be writing something like this now, just a few short days before Barack Hussein Obama II officially becomes the 44th President of the United States.

First, though, some background. ( Read more... )

In the denouement of his piece, Pastore returns to preaching for freedom. "We still believe that liberty and justice is for all," he says, somehow forgetting (or perhaps being glaringly self-unaware) that he just called for the kind of winnowing process that would by nature deny liberty and justice to those who are not united on class, ethnic and religious lines. I'd like to give Pastore the benefit of doubt in presuming that he is simply too caught up in the compromised rhetoric of Dominionism that he fails to note the contradiction. Still, because he is a public figure-- he has hosted a talk show on KKLA in Los Angeles for several years-- it's his words that need to be countered along with those of such known Dominionists as Pat Robertson.

I've been wanting to write this post for a few weeks now, but just couldn't find the time. Right now, the weekend before the elections here in the US, is my last best chance to do so. I know I've been extremely lax in updating this journal this season, and probably the last thing most of you want to read right now is another political screed. But while I'm not so naive to think that all among my regular readers are even still lurking about this corner of cyberspace, much less eager to indulge me in a long-winded rant at this time, I do think the experience may be worth it for those of you who will kindly... ( look behind the cut )

Okay, John, time to take out your checkbook again. (That's Billman. B-I-L-L-M-A-N...) *grin* I'm going to have to use my voice to counter that of others who otherwise would presume to speak for me.

I've been reading gothelittle's journal lately. While frustrating, it has also been very enlightening seeing how the Religious Right views the rest of us. Ordinarily, I would respond in my normally bombastic way, openly scorning those whom I've come to call Dominionists and pouring on the rhetoric. But because many of my friends have been identifying with the Religious Right of late, I see an opportunity for some honest political dialogue... indeed a lost art in this country.

( Read more... )

I'll end there for today. Still, let's not also end the dialogue. Feel free to share your thoughts in comments.

Another one from my Greatest Hits collection. ;-) Hopefully this song scans better than the last... apologies to Jimmy Buffett.

( A little less dark this time... )

Community speaks for, against Mount Vernon teacher

Yes, they're still fighting the same old battles over there in Mount Vernon, Ohio. (And in an ironic coincidence, they're also re-enacting the Civil War. The South won, interestingly enough; "capturing the hearts of visitors". Gimme a friggin' break.)

One of the largest venues in tiny Knox County, Ohio was commissioned for the meeting of the Mount Vernon City School District. The primary topic of discussion, of course, was John Freshwater. "Fresh H2O", as he has become known, is a rallying point for Ohio Dominionists, who still believe the lie that he was fired for displaying the Ten Commandments and/or the Bible. (He displayed both in his science classroom, and was fired for insubordination in his repeated attempts to ignore the approved curriculum and use his position as a bully pulpit against MV schoolchildren.)

The turnout in support of "Fresh H2O" was sickening. I could not bear to watch most of even the first video, posted on YouTube. (I won't be linking it here. It's on the first Topix page linked above, if anyone is interested.) However, the demonstrators for John Freshwater did inspire me to write this song. In it, I personified (rightly or wrongly) the supporters as the "Mount Vernon PTA". Apologies to any actual parent-teacher partnership that may or may not be established in Mount Vernon, Ohio. ( Behind the cut... )

Recently, it was pointed out to me that John Freshwater, the Mount Vernon, Ohio science teacher who branded at least one of his students with a cross as part of his 12 year effort to turn his classroom into a proselytization center, was actually the only Mount Vernon science teacher whose students received satisfactory marks on Ohio's standardized test battery. This made me wonder: Should we be weeding out Dominionists early, thus giving us a true measure of the secular failures of public education? Perhaps that way, we can see just how bad the schools would be without Jesus in the classroom... or more likely, just how dumb Americans have become since the establishment of Dominionism as a major political force in this country. What follows, then, is a tongue-in-cheek standardized test that Dominionists are doomed to fail.

( Read more... )

"Imagine, if you will..." So began nearly every subsequent episode of "The Twilight Zone", with Rod Serling taking the role of narrator back from Desi Arnaz, seen above in the pilot introduction. The pilot was, of course, "The Time Element": A man by the name of Peter Jensen consults a psychiatrist believing that, upon falling asleep, he would travel through time back to 1941. "I wake up in a hotel room in Honolulu, and it's 1941, but I mean I really wake up and it's really 1941!"

I feel like Jensen frequently nowadays...

( Imagine, if you will... )

But that's how it is in the age of the eternal slumber; an age known as, "The Twilight Zone".

Well, not quite gratuitous. You see, Iran got caught with its hand in the image editing jar. Well, feeling the need to create a new user icon, simianlovedoc and fizzyland gave me an idea.

Feel free to swipe.

Are any of you on Facebook? Check that... I know some of you are. I've had an account there for awhile, but haven't done much with it yet. Today, though, I learn it would *ahem* probably be a good idea for me to be more active there. So... for those of you who want to connect to me, or add me as a friend, or whatever they call it, look for "Jeff Billman" on Facebook. (ETA Or just click here: http://profile.to/jeffbillman/)

---

In other news, there is someone on my friends list (not just "reading list", but a true friend) who urgently needs prayer right now. For those of you who make a habit of praying, please add "David" to your prayer list. Thank you.

All content, including posts, comments, and any other material appearing in the subdomain http://swisscelt.livejournal.com after this, the 6th day of April 2008, are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). By contributing content to this subdomain (most likely accomplished by commenting to this journal) you have created a derivative under the GFDL; therefore, your contributed content must therefore be licensed under the GFDL (see section 4, "Modifications", in the GFDL).

Simply put, this means that you may not force the removal of content from this subdomain under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or other provisions of U.S. Copyright Law, or the laws of any other signatory nation to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. By commenting to this journal, you release the owner of this journal, LiveJournal, Danga Interactive, SUP Fabrik, David Lieber, DLA Piper, LLP, and any and all persons or parties from indemnification arising from their failure or perceived failure to remove or modify any portion of your contributed and GFDL-licensed material. The GNU Free Documentation License does not allow for subsequent modifications of this document to be protected by stricter controls over copyright than this, the original document. Official copyright notice follows below:

Copyright (c) 2008 Jeffrey S. Billman.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".

( Why am I doing this? )

There's a movement in the works to ask LiveJournal to restore Kumi Monster's journal. You can see it here, or at kumicorps. Please take a moment to sign the petition to show your support. We're not "blackmailing" SUP to do anything in this instance, just asking them to reverse an unfortunate mistake.

Many thanks to nebris and shamangirl for turning me on to some very interesting links about the state of the US (and global) economy:

The Society of the Owned, by Terrance Heath

Why the US is collapsing, by Rick Falkvinge.

Money as Debt, by Paul Grignon

Each of these articles is very enlightening, and the authors have much more right than wrong. However, I must disagree with one part of Paul Grignon's otherwise excellent explanation of the history of banking and monetary policy. ( And I'm posting it here to spawn debate )

---

Addendum Further into the video, Grignon asks this poignant question:

Why do governments CHOOSE to borrow money from private banks at interest, when government could create all the interest-free money it needs, itself?

The answer is simple: It can't. Not and maintain any system of wealth indefinitely, that is.

I'm rather surprised by Grignon's question, actually. He seems to understand the disconnect that exists between money and wealth... but only while that money is created under the auspices of a capitalistic institution (i.e. banks). Grignon fails to apply that knowledge to other institutions. The simple fact is, government can no sooner create wealth through the creation of money than banks can.

At the risk of falling victim to Godwin's Law, let me just point out that one government in recent times did try to create money interest-free for its own needs. I won't tell you which government, except to say that the devaluation of the Deutschemark prior to the Marshall Plan is forever infamous as being symptomatic of the largest economic collapse in history. You simply cannot create money without ensuring that wealth will be created in equity with the monetary supply. It doesn't matter if the institution creating that money is capitalistic, socialistic, or something else.

(PS- Did I mention my dad's an economist? ;-) )

So what have we learned, ladies and gentlemen, now that the "strike" is over?

I haven't been behind this thing, as everyone on my reading list knows. But I haven't really been antagonistic towards it, either. I've been more or less ambivalent about the whole thing. Let's face it: This doesn't really rise to the occasion of, "First they came for the _____, and I didn't speak because I wasn't ______." Unless, of course, you want to fill that blank with "freeloader"... in which case, guilty as charged. I rather like my now-grandfathered basic account, thank you.

Anyway, that's not really why I'm posting this, and breaking a vow I'd made to myself to not mention this event again. (Nor am I posting this in order to put off the Maundy Thursday post I'd promised earlier in the week.) I'm posting this, because I don't understand why. What was the point of this exercise we call the Content Strike? To show our Russian friends among the "userbase" that it's okay to be antisemitic, so long as you're also anticapitalistic? To flaunt differences in language and culture in order to try to make SUP the enemy we missed having in 6Apart? I still wouldn't say I'm antagonistic towards this whole thing, but I'm less happy about it now that it's played out than I even was at first.

That's not to say anything negative about the American organizers of the strike. I still simply disagree with those here on this side of the Alps who decided to strike, no disrespect intended or taken. But I've been reading some disturbing things about how this played out in the land of Rus, and I'm left wondering-- a bit like how my compatriots wonder about Iraq-- why we got into this, and whether it was truly worth our involvement.

It's a similar kind of disconnect: We expected something to happen that, at this point anyway, is wildly different from what actually happened. We left lingering resentments in the power base, and uncovered ethnic unrest where before it had been well-hidden. Sounds quite a bit like Iraq, in fact.

So what have we learned? And is there a chance we can use those lessons to improve for next time? Because as unsatisfactory as the results appear at this time, I think we're looking at there being a next time.

No, this is NOT the message you've seen posted all over your reading list. Rather, I'd like to take a moment to say a few words about the upcoming LJ Content Strike proposed by my esteemed colleague beckyzoole. (By the way, even though I disagree with her on this issue, hers is a journal I highly recommend. It makes me wonder why I don't have her on my "friends list".)

First, about the reasons for the strike. We are being asked to strike in order to force SUP to satisfy the following conditions. I will take these in reverse order, as that seems to be the order for which I am decreasingly agreeable to the strike. (In other words, the first condition is the one with which I agree the least.)

( Read more... )

All of that, though, would be reason merely to be ambivalent about the Content Strike. As it is, there are two very big reasons for me to oppose the strike: Maundy Thursday, and the Vernal Equinox. These two holidays, both which I cherish very much, happen to coincide this year; moreover, they happen to coincide with the LJ Content Strike. If a wonderful moment occurs this year as last, frankly I don't want to miss chronicling it because I was pigheaded about making a political statement with which I don't fully agree in the first place.

Additionally, Maundy Thursday is a sacred holiday for me... perhaps the most sacred holiday on the Christian calendar, for reasons I will be exploring later this week. Asking me to sacrifice that day for this cause is akin to asking a Muslim to eat during daylight hours of Ramadan, or asking a Catholic to eat meat on a Lenten Friday. Were I to take personal offense at such a suggestion, I'd find plenty of reasons to do so. (Fortunately, there's no need to take personal offense at this, or little else.) That said, on this basis alone I cannot participate in the Content Strike, and I hope I've given a few other reasons to support my refusal. "Do as thou wilt", of course; it harms me not in the least if others are not here on Thursday and Friday. But for me, chances are good that I'll be here.

Matthew Murray, some of you may remember, was the boy who killed four people on 9 December 2007 in the Youth With A Mission and New Life Church shootings. He then killed himself after a security guard stopped him by wounding him with her firearm. Murray killed his victims because he was upset about the Christian religion as he understood it to be.

It is not my aim to glorify Murray. He is a murderer, and a sinner. However, I do grieve him. This boy died, and took the lives of four others, apparently before making peace with Christianity and its followers, some of whom-- let's agree-- can be less than charitable, less than loving, and less than the example of Christ.

Today, I happened to notice that Denver's KMGH released a letter Murray had written to God shortly before his murderous rampage. Behind the cut, I would like to reprint the letter. Please do NOT read if you may be psychologically triggered by such screeds. (It's pretty bad, folks.)( Read more... )