DARPA did not invent the Internet, Xerox did. While DARPA did have a bunch of universities and contractors examining things, implementation would have taken decades. Xerox needed it right away, and made it happen inside their offices. That they did not develop it further shows only their lack of interest beyond their immediate need. Bureaucratic controls would have prevented the Internet from ever happening, had it been left up to the government.
(Edit: The above link to WSJ takes you to an editorial which isn’t accurate. Actually, no single agency can claim to have invented. It was officially an accident arising from a series of choices. However, the underlying issue is the government couldn’t have done it without contracting it out to people who knew and understood. And until someone found a non-government use for it, the thing was just a wild speculative project. Yes, the research was government funded, but the implementation was a collection of geniuses who surely would have done it in their own time with whatever they could get their hands on, whether private, public or whatever.)
There would not be very much armed violence in Syria had not the US and some allies spent millions of dollars arming and training the “resistance.” There would not even be much political resistance had the US and allies not funded massive education programs designed to propagandize and radicalize the people involved. What they taught those people is the very thing which would get you shot here in the US.
The Bible doesn’t make much of what we call freedom and liberty. That’s because those are concepts tied to a fallen world, and the real thing is something which can exist only inside of a person. In this fallen world, you will never have, nor should you desire, what most people think of as political liberty. A free land is simply one which is ripe for conquest. Were it not for a lying oppressive government determined to hold its resources as a means to exerting power and getting more resources, we would all be dead. While you can have a government that pleases God, one which He is willing to perform miracles to protect, no one is willing to try it, so don’t expect to ever see it.
In any given population, no matter what you teach them, someone else will teach them something different. You cannot create a nation willing to fight for their freedom. It’s been tried and we never got more than a tiny minority willing to play soldier. The greedy merchants pushing for war didn’t want a genuine country of citizen-soldiers they couldn’t control and manipulate. Were it not for the very politically biased support of stronger allies who bankrupted their own country in the process, there would not have been an independent America.
Oppression is the native state of humanity. Government never creates anything, but steals from others and claims the glory. Get used to it, folks. God specifically denied any interest in making this world a better place. He did offer a path to sanity, but it has been consistently rejected, starting with those who understood it best. The only hope you have is implementing as much of it as you can in your own life, and letting God take care of all the rest. You’ll be amazed at how much He’ll do with only a modicum of obedience to His plans. If you aren’t interested in His plans, you should expect no assistance from Him beyond the mere accidents of random political fashion.
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It’s easy enough to get a nation willing to fight for what they think will be turn out to be freedom.
One problem is, once people start ‘fighting for’ anything, what they get is going to be violence and — at best — rule by restrained, mitigated forms of violence. It’s like taking the merry-go-round to New York.
God can certainly work through people’s mistakes — even through their fighting. The story of Joan of Arc, for example, seems to suggest that God had some purpose in maintaining an independent France. And so long as people were fighting about that, God could influence the results. But as a Quaker, I’m pretty sure that is not God’s method of choice.
So… (reading your ‘Readers Note’… Noting your ‘Readers Note’?): What do you mean, in calling yourself ‘a prophet’? Something you are? — or something you do?
Thanks for dropping by, Forrest. We have no dispute, just a different approach to the same problem. There’s no telling what God leads people to do, some His, some who don’t believe in Him. Our default, as you suggest, is staying out of politics and war.
I make the statement “I’m a prophet” as colloquial speech, not so much as a definitive statement. I don’t do anything else except stay alive on my pension and help people. I spend almost all my waking hours, and probably some of my sleep, keeping track of God’s call to reveal the burden on my soul. I contend the separation between being and doing is artificial, a result of pagan influences in our cultural heritage. I’m committed to the task of asserting what I understand of God’s Laws, viewed through the teaching of Christ. That reaches out in a lot of different directions, but here on this blog it means pointing out how things we do are in accord or in conflict with those Laws. My calling is rather restricted to the American people and government.
“No dispute”? Does that mean we’ve got nothing to talk about? [You’re mistook on climate matters, by the way, but I’m not the one to teach the subject. I read more ‘real’ science than your average science fan, and could suggest a link or two, but no reason you should take my word for it.]
I haven’t had much to say to the American government lately; harrassing the San Diego City government taught me more than I wanted to know about how these people & institutions operate… [I still vote, for no reason I can see.]
Something like this, then? —
Signs of These Times
Make your signs beautiful, for God to see.
They are prayers, not to be wasted
on that gang of lying brats who swindle us of power;
they’re for that starved angel they keep
chained in the national basement.
Make your signs bright, for the blind to read
and don’t expect victory, just miracles.
Don’t demand peace or call loudly for justice.
Beg mercy. Our nation’s trial
is now in the sentencing phase.
Witness. We live here
and we don’t need
vacant assets; we need neighbors.
Not insurance plans, just doctors;
nor more school buildings, only people
teaching with love and understanding.
We don’t need masters, just the right
to do what’s needed and to not
be made to fear.
I first saw you in the 60’s;
now we’re back again five decades later
and the lies we face haven’t changed
enough to matter.
Victory
is never ours, but miracles
keep rising up from our ashes.
It’s been a long death, but we’re still here.
Forrest Curo
Oct 2, 2011
Good poetry, Forrest. I like it.
We probably do have some dispute in climate; I taught climate and there are three or four different camps on every issue. That’s because projecting more than 24 hours is always guess work, and no model ever pans out.
The only reason I talk to government officials at all is because I can’t shut up. It’s nothing personal; they are in flagrant violation of God’s Laws. Whether they would ever care is not my concern, in the sense I can do nothing but say what I know in my soul. God’s wrath is upon America, and they need to have some idea why.
Projecting weather more than 24 hours ahead blows up your error terms to larger than your prediction. Climate, though, is about the overall flavor of the weather.
If I simulate the motion of the solar system, I can get serious divergence from where a particular planet happens to be, but the way the system behaves, whether moons drift away etc, will keep pretty close to how the real one operates unless something (quite rarely) gets extremely close to another object. I couldn’t predict the location of a planet closely over 1,000,000 years, but the orbits should probably stay reasonable.
Weather next July 29 — iffy. What the weather will probably look like on a typical July 29 over the next 100 years, given that we go on as we have, probably good enough to make predicted trends correct. (On a large enough scale — local stuff, & short-term effects are as you know likely to get even more volatile.)
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Yeah. Like the late 1st Century ‘Jesus’ Josephus talks about, wandering around Jerusalem shouting predictions of disaster until an incoming rock from a Roman catapult kills him. (‘Jesus’ being a common enough name, at the time.)
Any interest in a Quaker-initiated online group Bible study?
You and I know the distinction and relationship between climate and weather, but it seems most activists do not. However, in my mind the errors of modeling loom larger than in yours, I take it. Such is our human variation. What I pointed at in my original post is the oppression surely arising from pushing policy based on the work of paid liars. I find NASA has been dishonest too often on too many things, and no longer worthy of trust (if they ever were). There is always room for debate, but current policy arising from it has nothing to do with setting things right. It wasn’t a question of whether we have problems with climate and weather.
I have sampled Quaker teaching enough to know I cannot go where they go on a very wide range of things. Thanks for the offer.