This is great News.
Yet still I hang my head in shame.
I meant to send Dak some $$$ when he was inside, but never did.
Please Forgive me Dak.
Your an Inspiration. A Legend.
Tim Wikiriwhi.
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God…”
(Psalm 14vs1)
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”
(Rom 1vs20)
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” St Paul. (Gal5vs1)
Once upon a time… before I became a Christian , I was a Teenage Nihilistic Atheist who worshipped Jim Morison.
Its dangerous for young men to idolise such lost souls… By the age of 28 Jim was Dead!
I was Lawless, yet not free. I was a slave to ignorance.
Thankfully I was saved by Jesus Christ!
Now that I have the bible as my guide I am wiser, and in a better position to understand all the delusions, all the anger, all the carnality such Dark idols are expressing.
I have been saved from being carried away into oblivion by the Riptide that such pop cultural perspectives exert upon the Lost masses.
Though I now acknowledge Moral reality… I have been set free.
Some people believe Christianity is morally oppressive and hypocritical, and that to become a Christian requires a person to become a fraud…’to pretend to be something they are not …and then they begin to site all the heinous examples of so-called pious Christians whom are found guilty of committing vile crimes…as if these sorts of examples are definitive of Christianity.
I must sympathize with them, not that their definition of Christianity is actually true. Its not. Nonetheless their acusations still hold true for a great majority of hypocrites and bigots whom claim to be Christians.
Still if that was the whole truth, and Christianity really was as these critics describe it…I would never have become a Christian as I despise phony’s, hypocrites, and Bigotry.
^Fake!^ Yet whats a Real Christian supposed to look like?
In reality Christianity is about being honest, both to yourself, and to others…for truths sake, yet to appreciate this one must firstly be of pure heart…ie be able to be objective in your judgments about your self and the world around you.
To investigate the truth, and be able to apprehend Christianity is trustworthy is to overcome the great deception which is at the heart of the mass delusions of our age.
Under Gods grace I can live honestly as myself, not as a phony card board cut out of a fanatic. I can be Libertarian in political outlook. I can admit that I really like the metal band Tool. If ever asked if I think a calendar girl is ‘hot stuff’, I don’t have to pretend otherwise.
This is how I describe the true Christian pilgrimage.
Christianity is about living under grace in honesty and not faking a bogus self righteousness. I can do this because I’m saved by grace, not by my own righteousness or works.
I am secure in Christ whom hath made me free.
I now know who/what I am, and what is really going on in the world, and why.
I now swim against the flow… being guided by my newly awakened Conscience…as a self reliant individual.
Sadly this is not a popular thing to do… but it is the right and wise thing to do.
Tool’s Maynard James Keenan.
My knowledge of the gospel truth hath made me free from enslavement to delusion which those whom don’t know Christ are susceptible. From my Christian vantage point I can appreciate the genius of many Nihilistic artists of our day and understand how they came to perceive the world as they do, yet I do not blindly and trance like Idolize such Masters of carnal reality as Maynard James Keenan, or Jim Morrison as I once was prone to do. I can objectively consider them, I clap at their cunning and performance, yet choose rather to follow the values of Paul (the Apostle of the Gospel of grace), rather than those of these crooner peacock sons of fallen Adam.
Maynard may be a musical genius…yet he is utterly depraved. He revels in depravity, and he intentionally encourages others to join with him in rebellion to Christian values. He does it with such Diabolical art and cunning. Its impossible for me not to appreciate his artistic genius, but beware his hedonistic worldview.
Because of the godless philosophies of our age it is easy to see why so many are beguiled by Him, not having the light of the word of God to keep them from going astray. Fools choose to hide themselves from moral reality.
False gospels that base salvation upon self righteousness, keeping the Law, and Good works, always lead to pretentious hypocrisy. Christians whom have been deluded into thinking Christianity is about legalistic obedience fall into this evil habit to hide their own true selves and keep up the facade of piety. They often cry out in displays of moral indignation…seeking to impose their Moral legalism upon others via the law. This is the sort of religion Maynard and Jim rebelled against. I rebel against that too! I’m keeping it real under Gods grace.
^^^^My rendition of a 21st century Christian.
My Testimony is a refutation of the Stereotypical notion of what Christianity is supposed to represent.
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John8vs32)
The following is today’s op-ed by my friend (when I haven’t been doing my level best to sorely piss him off) and political ally, Lindsay Perigo. Perigo is still New Zealand’s #1 libertarian. Partly because the competition is unhealthy, but mostly because … well, the gem of an op-ed below speaks for itself. Cheers, Linz!
In the Declaration of Independence, ratified in 1776, America’s Founding Fathers affirmed that the role of government was to secure the inalienable rights of all citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In 2012, the Mayor of New York affirms that the role of government is to forbid the sale of super-sized sodas.
Michael Bloomberg has announced a ban, not yet ratified, on the sale of sugary drinks in containers holding more than 16 ounces.
It is an illuminating snapshot of how far the United States has been dragged from its founding principles by obnoxious wowsers like Bloomberg that he can indulge his odious urges with such impunity.
“Big Brother Bloomberg,” as Fox News’s The Five have dubbed him, has already succeeded in banning the smoking of tobacco in public and the use of trans-fats in restaurants.
Bloomberg is now a one-man obesity nazi, on a mission to force fatties to shrink. He has bought into the latest dietary theology that sugar is the main cause of flab, and thinks it’s government’s job forcibly to limit how much of it citizens may ingest.
The last time a politician took such an invasive interest in his subjects’ health his name was Adolf Hitler. He too campaigned against tobacco, along with white-bread and meat-eating.
If New York’s citizens had any understanding of what the original Tea Party was all about, they’d eject Mayor Bloomberg from his office forthwith, before he bans smoking in their homes, criminalizes caffeine and reintroduces alcohol prohibition.
Instead, many are treating his proposed ban respectfully, as though he indeed has a right to institute such a thing. And disastrously, opponents are not staking out a position based on principle—that government under the American system has no business dictating how much sugar people may consume—but on quibbles as to whether sugar actually is the culprit (tacitly conceding that if it were, the move to restrict it would be valid). They also point out that the ban could be easily circumvented by the sale of two 16-oz sodas instead of one 32-oz one. These “arguments” remind me of the hypothetical group of folk, conjured up by Leonard Peikoff in his lecture on why people don’t think in principles, who idly muse on whether it might be a good idea to rob a bank. “Which bank?” one of them asks.
Many of Bloomberg’s opponents are of the “which bank?” ilk, toying with the proposition that robbing a bank might be OK but fretting over which one has the laxest security, the easiest escape route, etc. They forget what they were raised, rightly, to believe—that it’s flat-out wrong to rob banks, period. Bossyboots Busybody Bloomberg is radically, fundamentally, treasonously out of line with the Declaration of Independence in his relentless Nanny Statism … and this is what his critics should be hanging him in effigy for.
Here in New Zealand, the National Socialist Government has announced that the excise tax on tobacco will be raised 10% a year over the next four years, meaning a pack of 20 cigarettes will end up costing over $20 a pack. It has also set aside $20 million of taxpayer money to facilitate the path to a “smoke-free New Zealand” (no smoking in private homes?) by 2025. A freedom-conscious citizenry, smokers and non-smokers alike, would storm Parliament over intolerable outrages such as this. Alas, we do not have a freedom-conscious citizenry, just a flock of sheeple.
America once had, but no longer has, a freedom-conscious citizenry. “Don’t tread on me” has become “please tread on me.”
“The natural order of things,” lamented Thomas Jefferson, “is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
In which case, paraphrasing Diderot, liberty will be safe only when the last pathological power-luster has been strangled with the guts of the last congenital control-freak.
And when its champions are able to defend it on principle.
If ‘property rights’ is the answer, what’s the question?
The question is, how do we allocate scarce resources in a free society?
Here are two common examples of scarce resources.
(1) Tangible, “value added,” goods.
(2) Land.
The answer in each case is the same: privatisation. The institution of private property—which is a societal convention—accords people property rights in tangible goods and land.
Tangible goods to which value has been added are the products of someone’s effort. Other things being equal, we give ownership of the goods to the person who produced them. According to our property conventions, you get to keep the fruits of your labours.
Land is already there. It’s not the fruit of anyone’s labours. So, as a very general rule, we give ownership of land on a “first come, first served” basis. If you’re the first to stake a claim (by planting a flag, perhaps), then it’s yours. (There may be qualifications, for example, it may be deemed necessary to “improve” the land, or to “occupy” it “continuously” for a period of time.)
What about so-called “intellectual property”? Should a free society give ownership of ideas? There’s no disputing the fact that good ideas are (almost) always products of someone’s intellectual effort. And there’s no disputing that good ideas are (almost) never thought of simultaneously. Take any good idea, and there’s (almost) always someone who thought of it first. And, what’s more, it’s (almost) always the case that the person who thought of the good idea first is someone who put in the intellectual effort required to come up with the idea. So, other things being equal, why not give ownership of the good idea to that person, perhaps by way of copyright or patent?
Why not? Because, in the case of ideas, ‘property rights’ is the answer to a question we don’t need to ask. In a free society, ideas are not scarce resources. Tell me what your good idea is, and I have it too. Ideas can be copied. They can be copied ad infinitum. Ideas aren’t scarce.
The notion of “intellectual property” is bogus. The correct account of the nature of property is the scarcity theory of property. The production theory of property is flawed.
Here’s a counter-example to the production theory of property, a third, less common, example of a scarce resource.
(3) Radio frequency transmission bands.
If you and I broadcast our radio shows on the same radio frequency band in the same geographical area, our transmissions interfere with one another. The solution to the problem is, again, privatisation. There’s actually a legitimate role of government here—to endorse, and to enforce the rulings of, an independent body that grants exclusive use, in a given geographical area, of scarce radio frequency transmission bands. On the basis of … what? Fairness? Not on the basis of first come, first served. And certainly not on the basis of the production theory of property. You can’t produce a mathematical range. And you can’t be first to use a set of numbers.
Who ever believed John Key when he promised to deliver a budget surplus by 2015?
Only Chumps!
Via spin in the media we are told John Key now says that the global meltdown in Europe threatens to ‘delay’ his promises of a Budget surplus … Yet I say *This is Bullshit* fit only to be swallowed by dung beetles!
Why?
Because we all knew there was a major meltdown in progress at the very moment he made his Bullshit claims!
This Crisis is not a new Crisis… it’s the same crisis!
*Key and the National party are a bunch of dirty Politic-ing LIARS!*
Who voted for these vermin?
While I think a Key/ English zero-increase in expenditure is much better than a Labour/Shearer Big spend up ‘stimulus’… The truth is debt will still be increasing at the current criminal rate! (400 million per week).
Wail o ye Pitiful souls!
What? You say that you were forced to choose between The greater or lesser evils?
*YE FOOLS!*
The truth is you have had Honest Libertarians on your Ballots for over a decade!
Yes! I refer to those Pesky Seers of ‘Economic Hellfire and Socialist damnation’ you spurned as ‘Nut bars’… the Fringe dwellers the Media ignored… they were right… they are still right!
The Global meltdown is a Giant testimony to the Failure of socialism and the Regulated Economy!
That Millions sit with baited breath awaiting ‘the Budget’… as if awaiting a proclamation from Almighty God Just goes to show how politically enslaved….How deceived …. How un-self reliant the entire country has become!
In reality… if we were a healthy nation of free and self reliant people, The Government Budget ought to be of minor significance… Not as it is today… a matter of life and death!
This is a testimony to the tyranny and Nannyism We have accepted.
It is a testimony to our slavish / childish / pathetic worship of Little Gods Like Key and Shearer… at whose feet we grovel!
What a shameful pathetic people we have become!
Will you continue to swallow their filthy lies rather than face the truth?
We Must stop borrowing Money to feed the Beast!
We Must slit Nannys scaly throat and Liberate Lady Liberty from her Gulag!
We must Man up!
We must Slay the Beast for our children’s sake…and Face the world as freemen!
Lest you sell your children to Satan!
How can Freedom be any worse than this?… You are slaves of fear!
When will you realise that Big Government is millstone shackled around our necks?
When will you grasp the truth that the font of prosperity is not centralised political power… but the industry of a free and enterprising self-reliant people?
Tim Wikiriwhi.
When the Bible says “Charity never faileth…” its talking about the virtue of always being charitible, not that there wont ever be derths of Charity. History is filled with deeds and ages of inhumanity.
It ought to be obvious that true charity and compusory taxation are not the same thing.
One gives in liberty from a heart felt love of humanity and a self imposed moral obligation to help his neigbour when they are in need, while the other is obliged to give ‘welfare’ via Government coersion… and not from the heart at all.
Social welfare is not Christian charity. Welfare via coersion is actually an alternitive Anti-Christian system of ‘false alms’. Many Christians foolishly mistake Lefty communism for true Christian charity.
“The process of converting social power into State power may perhaps be seen at its simplest in cases where the State’s intervention is directly competitive.” A Nock.
A Face book conversation I am currently having reminded me of a great political thinker… Albert J. Nock
The conversation was started when a fellow face booker posted an article that The Super City Council was considering making Auckland Ratepayers fork out for the building of a dry dock for the benefit of the super Rich mega yachts.
He lamented this expense…
Quote:
“Instead of the city propping up unprofitable business adventures, there are plenty of other projects crying out for funds that have no appeal to private enterprise but will be of direct benefit to all – or groups – of ratepayers. Just the other day came a story that Auckland’s 777 community sports fields are closed more than 20 per cent of the time – more in winter when most needed – because of poor drainage.”
He believes that would be misguided values and a gross injustice to use Ratepays money to build a dry dock for the wealthy and Better spent by government upon Drainage for a community sports ground.
This may sound like a good proposition to many yet I think he is making a serious mistake, which is to assume it is a good thing for the Government to be involved in things ‘which Free enterprise has interest yet will be a direct benefit to all”. He is assuming that unless the Government steps up… things like the poor drainage of a sports field would never be resolved.
Concuring with this mans first point that it would indeed be a travesty for the state to build dry docks for the wealthy… and then moved strait to the point he made in respect to …’other beneficial projects that have no appeal to free enterprise’
“May I suggest it is neither just or necessary to use political coercion to make these ‘Non attractive yet socially benificial projects’ a reality either.”
I offered up my Libertarian alternative…
“There is the mechanism of the voluntary association/ society by which the spirit of charity and social wellbeing is voluntarily organized in non-profit organizations. It is via these mechanisms that people may show their Humanitarianism without recourse to Political coercion or using the ‘filthy lucre’ of money Politicians have extorted from the people via Rates and taxes. B y leaving all such ‘projects’ to the voluntary sector and forbidding the Councils or Government from getting involved in such things we can rope in Government Medaling and better control their expenditure. This way we restrict their powers and spheres of operations to their proper duties, and set up the dynamics of society by which Non-political solutions to problems and needs are both understood and may prosper.
Albert J Nock wrote on this important subject and showed that The more social responsibilities the state takes control of, the more the Self-reliant Social spirit of the community atrophies , and so becomes less able to fend for itself, and more dependent upon the state.
This is the Process by which the people are rendered irresponsible and gullible worshippers of Nanny State because they assume all life’s problems have political solutions.
We Libertarians seek to reverse this process and thereby increase society’s ability to look after itself in freedom, and reduce dependence and the costs, and spheres of operation of the state.
It is a society in which voluntary associations flourish, and Government expenses bureaucracy are kept to a minimum.
The Christian fellowship is a voluntary association.
It ought never to be used as an excuse for political impostions of private ‘values’
It preaches voluntary embraced values, voluntary action, voluntary charity, thus functions propery without political coersion.
Christian virtue, self reliance, and Liberty are in harmony.
“Thus the State “turns every contingency into a resource” for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the people. New generations appear, each temperamentally adjusted – or as I believe our American glossary now has it, “conditioned” – to new increments of State power, and they tend to take the process of continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the State’s institutional voices unite in confirming this tendency; they unite in exhibiting the progressive conversion of social power into State power as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
A Nock. Our Enemy, the State
The State, always instinctively “turning every contingency into a resource” for accelerating the conversion of social power into State power, was quick to take advantage of this state of mind. All that was needed to organize these unfortunates into an invaluable political property was to declare the doctrine that the State owes all its citizens a living; and this was accordingly done. It immediately precipitated an enormous mass of subsidized voting-power, an enormous resource for strengthening the State at the expense of society…”
A Nock. Our Enemy, the State
A couple of days ago, columnist Joe Bennett concluded his column in The Press by telling us
I’m going to spend the afternoon finding out how I’ve chosen to enjoy myself.
You’re about to find out that you’ve chosen to read on to see what on earth Joe Bennett was talking about. Here’s the start of his column.
But first an apology. A month or so back a gentleman emailed me about something I’d said on the radio. He wrote, and I quote, “free will is a childish delusion”.
“Scoff,” I wrote back. “Pooh pooh. I have free will. My free will is writing this email. Without free will we are automata.”
Since then, however, I have been on a wee journey and I would like to retract my scoff and pooh pooh. But I have forgotten the gentleman’s name and deleted his email.
So if you’re reading this, sir, sorry. You were right. I was wrong.
The change of mind followed last week’s column about the mutiny of the body.
In response I got several emails directing me to some neuroscientific research. It seems that neuroscientists have been nibbling at the idea of free will for years without telling me.
For example they attached electrodes to people’s skulls and then asked the people to click a computer mouse at a moment of their choosing. The boffins found that when people decided to click the mouse, their brain had already begun the physical process of clicking. In other words, the decision to click had been made before the people realised they’d made it. The click was already going to happen.
There were numerous similar experiments. They all suggested that when we think we decide to do something of our own free will, our consciousness is merely catching up with a decision that we have already made. We are rationalising after the fact.
We are deluding ourselves into thinking we are in conscious control of our actions. It’s a nice, consoling delusion, but a delusion none the less.
Problem? Well, yes! If we have no free will, we have no moral responsibility for our actions.
No free will means that Christianity is a nonsense.
No free will means that “not my problem” doesn’t cut it.
I’ve known of the experimental results to which Bennett refers for the past 15 years or so, ever since I read Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. 15 years later, I still have no rejoinder.
Dennett takes us to a very high mountain and shows us all the sciences of naturalism and their splendour. “Everything you want … you can have,” says Dennett.
