Category Archives: Keep it Metal!

The Parasites

Why is there no entry Parasites in the Ayn Rand Lexicon?! Nor Looters, nor Moochers??! (I almost clicked Entitlement, Age of but then realised I’d misread it.)

It ain’t right. ‘Parasite’ was one of Rand’s favourite words. A search for ‘parasites’ delivered the goods, though. Here are some excerpts from The Ayn Rand Letter, filed under Welfare State.

Morally and economically, the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull. Morally, the chance to satisfy demands by force spreads the demands wider and wider, with less and less pretense at justification. Economically, the forced demands of one group create hardships for all others, thus producing an inextricable mixture of actual victims and plain parasites. Since need, not achievement, is held as the criterion of rewards, the government necessarily keeps sacrificing the more productive groups to the less productive, gradually chaining the top level of the economy, then the next level, then the next. (How else are unachieved rewards to be provided?)

There are two kinds of need involved in this process: the need of the group making demands, which is openly proclaimed and serves as cover for another need, which is never mentioned—the need of the power-seekers, who require a group of dependent favor-recipients in order to rise to power. Altruism feeds the first need, statism feeds the second, Pragmatism blinds everyone—including victims and profiteers—not merely to the deadly nature of the process, but even to the fact that a process is going on.

[A] real turning point came when the welfare statists switched from economics to physiology: they began to seek a new power base in deliberately fostered racism, the racism of minority groups, then in the hatreds and inferiority complexes of women, of “the young,” etc. The significant aspect of this switch was the severing of economic rewards from productive work. Physiology replaced the conditions of employment as the basis of social claims. The demands were no longer for “just compensation,” but just for compensation, with no work required.

So long as the power-seekers clung to the basic premises of the welfare state, holding need as the criterion of rewards, logic forced them, step by step, to champion the interests of the less and less productive groups, until they reached the ultimate dead end of turning from the role of champions of “honest toil” to the role of champions of open parasitism, parasitism on principle, parasitism as a “right” (with their famous slogan turning into: “Who does not toil, shall eat those who do”).

Well, what’s there to say, except that Rand was right on the money? This stuff is razor sharp, and remarkably prescient, given that she wrote it in the early 1970s. And chilling. But I wonder if even Rand would have envisaged a President of the United States who, on the campaign trail just four decades later, would say to his audience

If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

The obvious implication being that if you didn’t build it, it’s not yours, and the government is entitled to take it and “redistribute” it to “somebody else”. The entitlement mentality is endemic and infects the highest levels of government in a country that was once a shining beacon of capitalism.

Death metal is the soundtrack to the End of the Age.

Here’s Brain Drill with The Parasites from their debut album Apocalyptic Feasting.

Hiroshima Day

Today is Hiroshima Day. I remember this because it was also my grandmother’s birthday. I remember the anniversary of her death, too. She died the day I got married.

My grandmother died a widow. And my grandfather effectively died a widower, because my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for the last decade of her life.

But enough of the autobiography.

The New Testament gives a quite detailed picture of what a Christian social welfare system would look like. There would be NO government involvement.

I’m no expert on social welfare, but I believe that the economic millstone that is today’s welfare state began in New Zealand with an old age pension introduced in 1898. A widow’s pension (today’s Widow’s Benefit) was introduced in 1911. As one of the country’s earliest social welfare benefits, it would probably be one of the last to go, were New Zealand ever to prosper under a Christian libertarian government.

Here is what the Apostle Paul has to say about the care of widows in the First Epistle to Timothy.

Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For some have already strayed after Satan. If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows. (ESV)

Widows are to be cared for by their children or grandchildren, by their second (or subsequent) husbands, by their wider family or, as a last resort, by the church. Sounds like solid, compassionate common sense to me.

In today’s world, of course, is there any general reason why widows who aren’t truly decrepit can’t get jobs and support themselves? I can’t think of one.

Hole in the head

Yesterday, I read some good news in the Dominion Post.

Colorado folk go for the gun in wake of Batman massacre

UNITED STATES: The massacre in Colorado has prompted a significant upsurge in the number of people attempting to buy guns in the state, it has emerged, confounding expectations the tragedy would see a backlash over perceived lax gun control in the US.

The number of firearm applications in the state increased by more than 40 per cent following the tragedy, the Denver Post reported, with many residents rushing to buy weapons just hours after the shootings.

But Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, continued his lone crusade against gun legislation in the USA.

Lone crusade? Good. Because more guns less crime. And, as an inset, some even better news.

Void in brain may have saved shooting victim

UNITED STATES: Petra Anderson, a promising young composer and violinist, was among the victims of the Colorado cinema massacre; a shotgun pellet passed through her brain but family members now say she is on course for a miraculous recovery.

The post-graduate student, 22, has undergone major brain surgery but in remarkable signs of progress she has already begun to respond to questions and form mostly one-syllable words.

“Mum,” she was heard to say in the Aurora hospital’s intensive care unit this week.

Her mother, Kim Anderson, said her daughter was expected to make a full recovery despite a shotgun pellet passing through her nasal cavity and making its way all the way through to the back of her skull. Doctors believe the pellet may have left the major centres of her brain unscathed.

“She could have lost all kinds of function if the bullet traversed her brain,” Mrs Anderson said. “I believe that she was not only protected by God, but that she was actually prepared for it.”

Surgeons discovered a void inside her brain and they said it was possible it was a pre-existing channel that may have allowed the pellet to pass by without damaging the tissue.

Brad Strait, a pastor who joined the vigil at Petra’s bedside, said he believed the existence of a void in her head saved her life. “[The pellet] turns slightly several times, and comes to rest at the rear of her brain. And in the process, the bullet misses all the vital areas of the brain,” he said.

Doctors said it was possible to survive gunshot wounds to the brain but victims rarely escape undamaged. For survivors, such as the Gabrielle Giffords, the former congresswoman who was shot last year, the recovery can take years and long-term complications are common.

And the best news of all? Petra lives, but you still get to have an Autopsy!

This is now.

(Suppose, for the sake of argument.) God created the heavens and the earth … the sun, the moon, the stars, the skies, the land, the seas … the plants, the animals … and mankind. All in the space of six days! (By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.)

How did he do it?

To some it may seem presumptuous even to ask how God went about the business of creation. But mankind is a curious creature. His inquiring mind wants to know. Humans (some of them) thirst for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. That’s why we have philosophy and science and why, today (thank God), we live in a technologically advanced age. The gains in scientific knowledge made since the Enlightenment are nothing short of stupendous.

And now we know.

We now know, for example, that the several references in the Old Testament to God “stretching out the heavens” refer to the metric expansion of space which is a key feature of Big Bang cosmology. We now know that the Universe had its origin in a moment of creation some 13.75 billion years ago.

Let it be said, however, that cosmology is a better example of human ignorance than human knowledge. We’re still in the dark about so many of the fundamentals. Dark matter and dark energy are aptly named. But in other branches of science we know a great deal more. We know so much, in fact, that we can, and do, “play God”. To illustrate this point, here is a recent news headline.

In First, Software Emulates Lifespan of Entire Organism

We’ve mapped the human genome. We’ve mapped the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium and run software simulations of the entire organism. We’ve even constructed artificial life (assuming, of course, that a virus can truly be called a living thing), building it from scratch in a laboratory, one RNA molecule at a time. And this is only the prelude to what is to come.

We know how animals (albeit, very small ones) are made. We know how they work. We can simulate them. We can even build them ourselves.

Where am I heading with this? Actually, this post is for my co-blogger, Tim. God made animals, but he also made the human mind. I anticipate that one day we will find out how the human mind is made. We’ll run a simulation of a human mind on the powerful computers of the not-too-distant future.

The time is short.

Expulsion

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

Play the hand you’re dealt

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines. (1 Corinthians 12:4-11)

… From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. (Luke 12:48)