day no. 17,189: one man's Hell and a mosquito's Heaven

“A heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for humans can be accommodated by one place.” — C.S. Lewis

Some philosophical fussbudgets feel that the new earth will not be large enough to accommodate all the saints saved by grace through faith throughout the ages. These same neurological gnat stranglers find it hard to believe that all the matter that God has ever made matters somehow. Lewis here balances the books for them by suggesting that a Heaven for good mosquitoes and a Hell for bad people could fashioned out of one place. They could be roommates. 

day no. 17,188: loving our enemies

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

Sometimes the way to best love our enemies is to let them sleep in the beds that they have made. If they lose sleep because it's lumpy, so be it. If they complain about the conditions, we can explain to them how the bed got that way and what to do about it, but if they insist that their way of making the bed is superior to ours, we can leave them to twist and turn all night while we sleep like saints in our faith made beds.

If you want to heap coals on the heads of your enemies and you catch him dumping coals over his own head, you can simply sit back and enjoy the show. Sometimes it is best to just let sleeping dogs lie in the beds that they have made.

day no. 17,187: when the joke isn't half bad

“To say that the moderns are half-educated may seem to be too complimentary by half.” — G. K. Chesterton

And to punctuate the point, most moderns won't get that joke. All they heard was, "oh man, I have to do fractions!"

“Now the public school system may not work satisfactorily, but it works; the public schools may not achieve what we want, but they achieve what they want.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World

Feducation is not meant to produce free people, it is meant to churn out wage slaves.

"Public education has not produced an educated public." — G.K. Chesterton

Nor has intended to. To repeat Chesterton's previous point, public education has not failed, it has succeeded. It has done the thing it set out to do. It both tricked most people into thinking it was doing something else and did the thing it was trying to do

“Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.” — G.K. Chesterton

A feducation will never give a man the tools he needs to question his government. The state will never supply its citizenry with the ability to live without it. The state is not teaching you who our forefathers were, let alone what they were taught. If you forget that men like that existed in addition to ignoring what they knew, the state can reign supreme and run on unopposed.

day no. 17,186: reality bites back and pipe dreams burst

“Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.” — G.K. Chesterton

When you forget that 2 + 2 = 4, your walls begin to fall apart. When you pretend that men can get pregnant, your repopulation rates tanks. When you act like you can force a store to sell bread for $1 when it costs $2 to harvest, produce, and ship it to the store, your economy is about to collapse. When you believe that the state in omnipotent, you are powerless.

Boys are not girls.

Rights from God.

Money does not grow on trees.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." — Philip K. Dick

You can kick and scream against the world God made, but you have to use the legs and lungs He gave you and the air He provided.

Isaiah 5:20-21

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; 

that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; 

that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, 

and prudent in their own sight!

Reality always bites back and pipe dreams always burst.

day no. 17,185: first and last rights

“The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his ‘basic rights.’” — Thomas Sowell

A positive right requires someone to do something. If you say, for example, that everyone is owed the right to a fish sandwich with some tartar sauce and a side of fries, you have just obligated a fisherman, a farmer, and a delivery man, to name only a few. They are now required to work so that others might receive their rightful inheritance. In other words, positive rights require slavery.

A negative right does not require anyone to do anything. If you say, for example, that everyone is owed the right to free speech, no one has to do anything. They don't have to listen. No one has the right to be heard, only the right to speak. They don't have to like it. No one has the right to be liked, only the right to say what they like. They don't have to give you a platform from which to speak, they only have to allow you to stand on your own platform.

"Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." — Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Positive rights are created by man, who lacks the power to enforce them by sheer will power. 

Negative rights are created by God, who is omnipotent and fulfills them according to His will.

day no. 17,184: do not quarrel about arguing, argue about quarreling

“We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.” — G.K. Chesterton

No one can agree on everything. That may be the one thing we all can agree on. Or not. In which case, the point still stands. God does not command us to agree with each other about everything per se, but He does command us in our conduct as we discuss our disagreements.

“People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. And it is extraordinary to notice how few people in the modern world can argue. This is why there are so many quarrels, breaking out again and again, and never coming to any natural end.” — G.K. Chesterton

The Bible speaks to the adverbs. Argue politely and in an orderly fashion. Argue humanely as with an image bearer, not inhumanely as with an orc. Argue beneficially inasmuch as it can benefit everyone in the conversation: those participating and those observing.

"I never discuss anything else except politics and religion. There is nothing else to discuss." — G.K. Chesterton

You can avoid disagreements by steering conversations away from disagreeable topics, but you cannot avoid disagreeable topics in general. So, the question is will be talk about them or not? And if so, how will we have these conversations?

"If we are not all trying to convince the world of the truth of our convictions, what in the world are we doing; or why in the world do we call them our convictions at all?" ― G.K. Chesterton

If you really believe something, why wouldn't you want to convince others of it? It would weirder if you didn't. How can you claim something as a core value that you never fully discuss other than at surface value, and even then not very often or with many others?

“The modern habit of saying 'This is my opinion, but I may be wrong' is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying 'Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me' – the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.” ― G.K. Chesterton

If your philosophy only suits you, it is not a philosophy, it is a hobby horse or a delusion. If, however, it ought to suit others, then why would you keep it to yourself?

day no. 17,183: the beep buttons

“You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

According to Solzhenitsyn, the Bolshevik revolution is still alive and well. It was not a one time event as evidenced by the fact that the scale of its atrocity is largely unknown. In fact, the historicity of it is largely unknown. If it is, as Solzhenitsyn says, one of the greatest human slaughters of all time, and a mere stone's throw of centuries old to boot, how is it that so few know so little about it and that so many know nothing about it? Well, as Solzhenitsyn posits, perhaps that is because the perpetrators of that atrocity now control the flow of information.

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, 1984

In other words, the revolution seems to have been more successful than first imagined.

“We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.” — G.K. Chesterton

And one only need consider which direction the censorship is being applied to understand who controls the beep buttons.