we the fringe

Letter to the Editor

Daily Press

Re: “History repeats itself”, Alex Varga; “Second coming”, Tom Freeman. Letters to the editor,Daily Press, Monday, February 28, 2011.

Steve Williams, this reader is mad at you too. Where do you find these people? The only positive thing to say about these folk is that they have the courage to crawl out of their progressive cocoons and speak up. And what do we see and hear? Politically progressive octopuses whose arms are most adept at picking the pockets of the American taxpayer to further their big government agenda. Wikipedia informs us that the octopus is a very intelligent creature but two thirds of it’s neurons are located in their eight arms instead of their brains. The shoe seems to fit.

When a progressive talks about protecting jobs it is about union jobs not jobs for the unemployed. Our California experience is that the teacher, police, firefighter and correctional unions have been defrauding the taxpayers for the last thirty years. The theft has been dishonest because the unions give money to support the campaigns of the politicians sitting across the bargaining table. How can that be called bargaining? Would not the term “conflict of interest” be more appropriate?

Not only is the dollar their primary focus but they negatively intrude into the management of the very organizations they claim to serve. Intrusions that prevent the success of these organization. The failure of the California public school system with it’s monopolistic teacher tenure priority seem to be obvious. Full blown collective bargaining as defined by the Wisconsin and California unions is not an American right nor is it an American norm.

Thankfully, right to work states that include the public sector in their legislation are doing better in this depressed economy. Their more business friendly climates work for the American worker. The painful truth that the progressive will not acknowledge is that if you are unemployed, cross the state line and live in a right to work state. Our families have been forced to separate because our young have to work. And if a government job is not their thing, they have to go to a business friendly state, which is not California.

That brings us to that “fringe conservative”, Californian, Ronald Reagan. Maybe his fringe status is the reason why so may of us relate and honor this man. Ronald Regan was not intimidated by anyone, least of all the name calling of politicians. Calling a spade a spade whether Republican or Democratic, was his most admirable character trait. That is not to say that the second best president in our American history was a perfect president. Mr. Freeman correctly points that out for us. However, as a political philosopher and communicator, he was so very close to perfection.

If Ronald Reagan were president in our America, what would he say to the full blown public sector unions?

"Fire them all!" And we the fringe agree.

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca

Government Unions

Letter to the Editor

Daily Press

It’s about time. Thank you Wisconsin and Governor Walker for finally taking action against the greed of your public employee unions. Collective bargaining has helped to get we taxpayers into the current financial disaster. The demonstrators are advertising their selfishness and now are asking us to be sympathetic. This makes no sense. Keep on demonstrating teachers, police, firefighters, prison guards, and judges, for the longer you fight the more you are alienating those of us who pay your salary and pensions. Tell your AWOL senators that this isn’t America when they cowardly run to Illinois.

This reader is beyond tax paying years but where it is possible I refuse to pay taxes. We private sector employees should band together for a Tax Boycott until this injustice is fixed nationwide. Down with the governmental Madoff Ponzi scheme when the taxpayer has to make the investment for you. The rest of the country is suffering and now it’s your turn. The public sector will never get the workers of America working so you are of diminished value to us!

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca

Killing

Letter to the Editor

Daily Press

Victorville, Ca

Re: Recent letters concerning Muslims, Sharon Murguia. (February 18, 2011)

Before getting to righteous about the Judeo-Christian God, let us not forget from whence we have come and where we have yet to go. Forgetting can be so very convenient. In our own American history, we Christians have exterminated the savages in the name of our God. We have exterminated life opportunities for a variety of minorities, both through the evil of slavery and the more modern ghetto. Our failed public education system kills life opportunities for half of our children. Some of us would rather the children suffer for the rest of their lives than see any change in administrative control, pay and benefits (Wisconsin).

Ignoring injustice to further personal circumstances is killing. We Christians may not pull the trigger but the killing goes on, dead is dead. The Muslim vision of God may justify pulling the trigger but both religious traditions have some growing to do. The choice is not between Gods. The choice is ours.

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca

An Adult Conversation

The Bible is not a “Buddha” on the mantle to be worshipped. The Old Testament, particularly, is a history writing that recounts the experiences of a people for at least 1500 years. The lives of these obscure nomadic tribal peoples became influenced by what appeared to them as God. As the years passed, the vision of this God became clearer and less remote. However, God is not the main character in the story. The changing faith of the people of Israel in behest of this vision of God is the story.

About now you are protesting that such an understanding of Scripture does not prove the power and existence of God. This is true. What is also true is that if God could be proven there would be no need for faith. If we believers must accept at face value the description of God as painted by many differing generations under differing circumstances, we become confused, irrational, and dishonest. A blind faith that can be proved by “the Book” on the mantle is no faith at all.

O.K. it’s your turn.

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca

The Face Book Church

The computer revolution has downloaded the power and money to be made in exploiting human nature in the information age. As you know, it is called Face Book. The world and we Americas have stampeded to this tool to expand our social connections. The human need to belong to a group will find attachment somewhere, be it a street gang or Sunday morning worship. How many friends do you have? The answer to that question is what seemingly quantifies one’s value in our culture. Friendship is the American social ethic.

Grouping together has been a survival tactic from time immemorial and is not to be cast aside. Our list of friends brings security as we humans face a multitude of threats as a group rather than alone. The question for we thinking adults is to what extent? When does being a part of a group block our individual potential? When does our mutual admiration society shield us from the harsh realities of life instead of positively confronting them? Sadly most of us don’t go there or even ask the question.

The Church has a similar choice to make. If we are not there already, will we be the Face Book church? If so, what is the possible downside resulting from such an emphasis? The social Face Book ethic says, as do all human religions, “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck”. This conclusion is thought to be truth and tends to be the priority of the Face Book church. Is it? Should not Christianity cling to the primacy of faith in Jesus Christ? A faith that can not be seen or heard and surely does not walk.

Denominationalism has increasingly fractured the Church ever since the Reformation. The American Church has become a compound fracture. We already gather together with differing doctrinal, ethical, geographical, social, worship, racial and economic priorities. Will the addition of the Face Book church turn worship into a multitude of Christian cliques? Will not the Face Book priority make it impossible for the church to speak to this American culture with any semblance of unity and credibility? At what point do we cease to be Christian?

These are desperate times for the American church. The Danish people faced just such a crisis 200 years ago when the Lutheran Church was the state church. Christianity was the national, normal, expected life long gathering of family and friends of all Danes around a system of doctrine and worship. If you were a Dane, you were also a Christian. The gathering of believers was primarily a Protestant social order of friends and family who could think and live like what appeared to be Christian. The duck definition was enough to warrant the label of Christian.

Into this context arrives Soren Kierkegaard (1813 to 1855). In his person and thought he documented in his many writings, what it meant to be a Christian. He insisted that faith is more than a viable thinking system of believable doctrinal statements. Faith is more than an agreed upon ethical and social standard that fosters the warm and fuzzies for the duck flock. According to S.K., faith is an individual, desperate, called out “leap” into the stratosphere of “no matter what”. A leap of faith beyond any human description or justification.

Based on the biblical account of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his “son of promise”, S. K. named this faith the “teleological suspension of the ethical”. Ultimate things will stretch us beyond everything else upon the earth, even our agreed upon rules for life. This was such a radical understanding of faith that it won him no friends. Educated in the university to be a minister, he pastured no church, never married but instead chose to dive into the exposition in writing of an authentic faith that we believers avoid. And for most of us S.K.'s definition of faith is so very demanding and scary.

Soren Kierkegaard is regarded as the father of existentialism (Wikipedia). In just a few short years he explored God by exploring our human condition, our fears, pain, guilt, desperation, beliefs, etc., etc. The man and his situation in life is the beginning of all truth about God. Most of the philosophers who followed S. K. reduced existentialism to a mere anthropology (Becker, The Denial of Death). This is like constructing a math problem and then abandoning the problem and leaving it answerless. The answer for Kierkegaard was the Religious Man as that believer who has taken “the leap”.

“The leap” was not for the faint of heart. It was and is a commitment to doing not just being. The most scary part of the agreement is that the individual must commit before really knowing what he is committing too. The faith of the truly Religious Man is blind obedience that is beyond human explanations. And it will not be a pleasant experience. Pain and suffering is the reward for this commitment. In 1976, Elmer H. Duncan wrote an introduction to the thought of Soren Kierkegaard in one of a series called, “Makers of the Modern Theological Mind”. Please let me quote from page 92.


Why did Kierkegaard paint such a picture of Christian faith--- paradoxical, a life of suffering,shame, etc.? Of course, he was replying to Hegel and Feuerbach and the Danish Lutherans. But he also meant to be honest, to “tell it like it is”. And I find that young people respect his honesty; they find S.K.’s difficult faith-- and the challenge it involves-- more appealing than some popular alternatives that I shall not mention by name. But we might just whisper , “Are our churches so different from those Kierkegaard criticized?”


The author was asking this question of the Church of 1976, thirty five years ago, before the computer revolution and the threat of the Face Book spirituality of the Church. The popular alternatives then and through these intervening years have been and are pure foolishness. We have reaped a self involved laity and clergy who have downgraded spirituality to the level of being satisfied with mere earthly relationships. We have lost our distinctive. Being a true believer is not fun and certainly not popular. N0netheless, let us flee with due haste from the mere suggestion of a Face Book church (1Cor. 6:18, 1Timothy 6:11).

G.Goslaw
Victorville, Ca

Politicians, Preachers and Parrots

Larry King this Sunday morning, December 26, 2010, was discussing the ending of his twenty fine year career as the CNN “Live” show host. King said that he would miss the show but he had no regrets for the years invested. A factor in the decision to move on was the slumping rating polls over the last few years. The competitions in his time slot, Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow, are admittedly more popular but King would not conform to the popular expectations of a cable show. “They are preachers not learners”, says King, who sees himself as a listening learner looking for a few life applications.

Preaching seems to be increasingly in vogue. There will always be a few of us arrogant enough to claim that they have the answers to life’s many challenges. Preachers of a multitude of denominational strips, cable personalities, as well as our politicians want their opinions heard but have little patience for listening. Career and financial concerns seem to occupy the same space in these quarters. The arrogant parrot with an increasingly popular lip-sync is squawking to gain an audience. Once established with a malleable audience, these birds become marketers of themselves in books, theologies, coffee cups, philosophies, politics, T shirts and paraphernalia.

Every preacher responding to the call of God is both a learner and a parrot. Every preacher needs a bit of both gifts and graces but the call to pontification seems to be the road more traveled. The parrots will protest that their motivations are saintly and are meant to advance a better faith, a better people and a better America. They claim that so many institutional demands are dumped upon the clergyman there is little opportunity to “own” a theology or a philosophy of life. Parroting the thinking of others allows focusing of available energies upon the immediate. The rational is understandable but shortsighted.

This is the long history of Christianity. Our time is different for no longer can we distort the Glory of God by dividing the people with sectarian hostility. The internet has transformed our human reality. While stumbling through a computer magazine in the doctor’s office, the truth of this new world was illustrated by an article entitled, “8 Things Killed by the Internet”. For the sake of a truth and a little humor they are: (8) Encyclopedia Salesmen, (7) Newspapers, (6) Bulletin Boards, (5) Video Rentals, (4) Faxing, (3) Yellow Pages, (2) Checks, and (1) Stamps. The steamroller of change doesn’t stop with these truths.

We are being forced by the internet to discuss life’s challenges in the broadest possible context. For the first time, all of us have the tool to be a part of any world wide discussion. This liberty does have an evil downside which is impossible to avoid. But even evil should be allowed to speak for all evil is in the eye of the beholder and there are no adequate filters. The parrots of every strip will also use the internet. The point is that the individual opinion of every person has an opportunity to be heard. No longer is “legal standing”, an appropriate degree or career path a prerequisite to speak. Free speech is finally here.

About now you are asking, what makes free speech good speech? When is speech worth listening to? It would seem the individual will have to answer that question. Politicians and preachers are not scientist’s and philosophers. Looking from the outside, the professional politician and the professional preachers commit themselves to parroting a narrow ideology or theology. This is not to demean their thinking for it has been layered by exposure to a professional mental assent. Very few politicians ever change parties let alone change to conservative from liberal or visa versa. People’s thinking stays fairly consistent.

Thinking speech is most able to engage our hearts and minds to focus on listening. Any attempt to communicate a universal truth based solely on dogma, the thinking of others, will squawk of parrot speech. As thinking amateurs we know of few voices that have blazed this trail. If we are looking for them, they have been with us and are here now but their voices are so very rare. Ronald Reagan was such a politician who broke the professional mold. As has been noted previously, C. S. Lewis did the same for theology.

What is unique about these thinkers is that they had a rational ideology or theology little influenced by parrot speech. One was an actor compelled to voice a common sense conservatism and the other was a writer and university literary professor compelled to voice a common sense theology. We amateur thinkers owe them a great debt. We are trying to think like you. Thanks.

G.Goslaw
Victorville, Ca

Union Arrogance

latimes.com/opinion

February 4, 2011

Thank you L.A. Times for your expose’ telling the truth about our prison guards union. The article in today‘s paper, “Workers Blamed for Rise in Prison Phones” by Jack Dolan, is a bit of a welcome surprise. This reader enjoys reading your paper to remain aware of how liberal California is not thinking. However, this article is an accurate and truthful description of this union and offers California some hope for meaningful change.

The Prison Guard’s union is a glaring example of the few arrogantly spitting in the face of we taxpayers. They are one of the primary reasons that California has become such a dump. The teacher’s union is cheering them on. Their educational system failure, all in the name of concern for kids, is a ridiculous and obvious lie. Instead of more money, they deserve less and must support independent charter school and home schooling directives. Reform would then be possible. Don’t hold your breath.

California is dying and the unions continue to keep the plug pulled. There is a filthy nasty ring forming around the taxpayer tub and when it is empty, our state will finally have to confront the greedy villains. At that time it will be too late.

G.Goslaw
Victorville, Ca.

A Work of Art

C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer, Harcourt, 1963.

I will not believe in the Managerial God and his general laws. If there is Providence at all, everything is providential and every providence is a special providence. It is an old and pious saying that Christ died not only for Man but for each man, just as much as if each had been the only man there was. Can I not believe the same of this creative act-- which, as spread out in time, we call destiny or history? It is for the sake of each human soul. Each is an end. Perhaps for each beast. Perhaps even each particle of matter-- the night sky suggests that the inanimate also has for God some value we cannot imagine. His ways are not like ours. p. 55

If you ask why I believe all this, I can only reply that we are taught, both by precept and example, to pray, and that prayer would be meaningless in the sort of universe (managed universe) some picture. One of the purposes for which God instituted prayer may have been to bear witness that the course of events is not governed like a state but created like a work of art to which every being makes its contribution and (in prayer) a conscious contribution, and in which every being is both and end and a means. P..55 & 56.

St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, Chapter 8 : 38 & 39,(Today’s New International Version).

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Who is the “us”? An exclusive sect of believers singled out by the Will of God to be special? Yes and No, the immediate context is about the choice to be known as Christian even in the face of persecution but St. Paul’s thinking about the love of God is much broader and all encompassing. What is the ultimate end of all creation? C. S. Lewis and St. Paul leave us “hints” that God is creating a work of art, at present an unfinished Masterpiece, to be shaped by the Love of God, often delayed and sometimes accelerated by the free will of men, but finally culminating in a reunification of all things and all persons in the Love of God, home at last!

This is the Christian faith to be believed. There is no scripted God of human description, rather an indescribable eternal artist!

G.Goslaw
Victorville, Ca.