The R A N T of G L E N N glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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War and the Holy Word
Letter to the editor;
Why do the Holy Scriptures contain so many chapters about war?
Is it because religious people need to know how to fight wars? No, a book cannot help anyone there, because every war is different from every previous war.
Is it because religious people need to know how to keep their countries out of wars? Maybe. Wars happen. But there remains a thread of hope that people can insist that their governments not stir up wars. (I don’t know of any instance of this.)
Possibly the Scriptures go on and on about war because wars are going to happen and our nations are going to be involved in them and people of faith need to survive mentally-whole as well as physically. The scant word of comfort is that this is not the first nor only time that millions of men (and women) have practiced with deadly weapons and deliberately organized to slaughter one another with them.
Nearly everyone agrees that every people be prepared to defend their nations and their nationalities. The problem comes when politicians tell them that the best defense is a good offense – the “pre-emptive attack”. (“They’re going to attack us sometime anyway. We’d better attack them first, before they can get ready.”)
For their own nefarious and unknown reasons, many American politicians practically salivated over the prospects of getting the US into World War One.
They flaunted the passenger ship Lusitania in the German face, shipping ammunition to England in open defiance of our declared neutrality. The Germans put a full-page ad in the New York Times pleading with people not to go for a ride on the Lusitania.
That ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean with destroyer escorts, zig-zagging and laying smoke screens. However, when they got to the area of maximum submarine activity, the Lusitania was sent alone, in a straight line. The Germans sank it to keep their enemies from receiving untold tons of ammunition.
You can check this out. It was a deliberate provocation to get us into that war. (The politicians liked it so much they actually called it “The Great War”.)
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Your papers please
The R A N T of G L E N N glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Federal ID
Letter to the editor;
Congress shouldn’t try to fix the REAL ID Act. They should just repeal it.
Here is my prediction of the horrible future to be inflicted on us by this Act.
Year One: Real-ID goes into effect. It is very easy to acquire the card, and 99% of those who apply get it the first or second time. You can still do anything without it.
Year Two: It is harder to get the card. Still, over half of those who apply receive one. Those who don't have a card are not allowed on airplanes. That’s all.
Year Three: It is practically impossible for adults to get the card. If they didn't get one already, there is a presumption that they must not be who they say. Those who don't have the card are not allowed to board a plane, a train or an inter-city bus. They are not allowed to start a bank account nor to apply for a job.
Year Four: It is finally, totally, absolutely impossible for about one in a thousand Americans to get the card. This is to say, about three hundred thousand Americans become “unpersons” -- reduced to scrounging out of dumpsters for food and clothing, and to sleeping in cardboard boxes.
Real-ID is not a problem to be fixed. It is an abomination to be repealed.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Federal ID
Letter to the editor;
Congress shouldn’t try to fix the REAL ID Act. They should just repeal it.
Here is my prediction of the horrible future to be inflicted on us by this Act.
Year One: Real-ID goes into effect. It is very easy to acquire the card, and 99% of those who apply get it the first or second time. You can still do anything without it.
Year Two: It is harder to get the card. Still, over half of those who apply receive one. Those who don't have a card are not allowed on airplanes. That’s all.
Year Three: It is practically impossible for adults to get the card. If they didn't get one already, there is a presumption that they must not be who they say. Those who don't have the card are not allowed to board a plane, a train or an inter-city bus. They are not allowed to start a bank account nor to apply for a job.
Year Four: It is finally, totally, absolutely impossible for about one in a thousand Americans to get the card. This is to say, about three hundred thousand Americans become “unpersons” -- reduced to scrounging out of dumpsters for food and clothing, and to sleeping in cardboard boxes.
Real-ID is not a problem to be fixed. It is an abomination to be repealed.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Good intentions. Abysmal results.
The law of opposite results
Letter to the editor;
Sometimes a government action ends up giving the opposite of the intended results.
Just to make up a silly example, let’s say Town Hall wants to encourage children to fly kites. So they write a regulation mandating that only genuine blue spruce may be used for kite sticks, that only parachute nylon may be used for the air-foil, and that only three-ply cord may be used for the string.
What they have done, according to the law of opposite results, is to make it so expensive to fly kites that children cannot afford to do so without adult sponsors.
Here’s a real one. Congress wanted to do something for disabled people, so it voted for an extreme number of pages that someone else wrote detailing wheelchair access to public places. Well, they were done with good intentions – but according to the law of opposite results, it made it exceedingly expensive to be disabled – and fantastically expensive to allow wheelchair-bound persons onto the premises.
A really terrible example of this is when the Maine sank in Havana Harbor, Congress was stampeded into a war that nobody has ever been able to justify. Worse: When the Maine was raised, it was obvious that the explosion had been on the inside.
Notice that this is not to say that everything any government does will end up with the opposite results. It just tends to happen that way when Congress, the Legislature, or City Hall lets itself be stampeded into voting for some pre-fabricated bill that they did not think of themselves, write themselves, or discuss among themselves.
The moral to this story is that legislative bodies ought to write their own bills, limit them to one subject and not let “Chicken Little” tell them “the sky is falling”.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
Sometimes a government action ends up giving the opposite of the intended results.
Just to make up a silly example, let’s say Town Hall wants to encourage children to fly kites. So they write a regulation mandating that only genuine blue spruce may be used for kite sticks, that only parachute nylon may be used for the air-foil, and that only three-ply cord may be used for the string.
What they have done, according to the law of opposite results, is to make it so expensive to fly kites that children cannot afford to do so without adult sponsors.
Here’s a real one. Congress wanted to do something for disabled people, so it voted for an extreme number of pages that someone else wrote detailing wheelchair access to public places. Well, they were done with good intentions – but according to the law of opposite results, it made it exceedingly expensive to be disabled – and fantastically expensive to allow wheelchair-bound persons onto the premises.
A really terrible example of this is when the Maine sank in Havana Harbor, Congress was stampeded into a war that nobody has ever been able to justify. Worse: When the Maine was raised, it was obvious that the explosion had been on the inside.
Notice that this is not to say that everything any government does will end up with the opposite results. It just tends to happen that way when Congress, the Legislature, or City Hall lets itself be stampeded into voting for some pre-fabricated bill that they did not think of themselves, write themselves, or discuss among themselves.
The moral to this story is that legislative bodies ought to write their own bills, limit them to one subject and not let “Chicken Little” tell them “the sky is falling”.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Sunday, July 27, 2008
How nations ruin themselves
National suicide
Letter to the editor;
Looking at the history of the world, some historians have concluded that all great nations die by suicide.
How do nations commit suicide?
They borrow more than they can possibly pay back. Then they borrow yet more.
They engage in wars that do not directly concern them.
They pour tremendous sums into trying to buy foreign friends – and end up supporting the treasuries of rabid enemies.
They try to police the world.
They let in more immigrants than they can assimilate.
They let people immigrate who have no intention of becoming loyal citizens.
They make treaties undermining the nation and tying it to foreign governments.
Worse than all the idiocies by the government, the people lose their faith, their virtue and their sense of being one united people. This is what permits the rest.
(No. No. I’m not talking about our own country here. Um, ah, this is about all those OTHER ruined hulks of former nations in the dust-bin of history.)
We should only learn something from their example already.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
Looking at the history of the world, some historians have concluded that all great nations die by suicide.
How do nations commit suicide?
They borrow more than they can possibly pay back. Then they borrow yet more.
They engage in wars that do not directly concern them.
They pour tremendous sums into trying to buy foreign friends – and end up supporting the treasuries of rabid enemies.
They try to police the world.
They let in more immigrants than they can assimilate.
They let people immigrate who have no intention of becoming loyal citizens.
They make treaties undermining the nation and tying it to foreign governments.
Worse than all the idiocies by the government, the people lose their faith, their virtue and their sense of being one united people. This is what permits the rest.
(No. No. I’m not talking about our own country here. Um, ah, this is about all those OTHER ruined hulks of former nations in the dust-bin of history.)
We should only learn something from their example already.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
The world was assembled ON PURPOSE
Testimony
Letter to the editor;
I prayed before I started to write this. I felt impressed to pour forth a blazing testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Then the Yetzer Hara (“the evil inclination”) made me afraid that would offend my Jewish readers.
So I decided on an impassioned discourse attributing all the glories of Creation to Hashem (“The Name”) – who created it all. After all, I reasoned, They are one and the same.
The Yetzer Hara came on strong with reasonings that many of my readers are atheists, agnostics, evolutionists, “politically-correct,” scientific, post-modern sophisticated men and women, who would stop reading the second I mentioned a Creator along with the Creation.
So, taking a big step backward, I remembered the Star Wars series, and “The Force”. Ah! The Force organized all this pre-existing matter, in the pre-existing expanse of space, over the self-existing expanse of time. That gets us closer to the elusive “common denominator”. The impersonal Force brought all of this to pass.
But, no. Atheists and other sophisticated folk will say that is too close to a concept of a G-d. All right, let’s see how this goes: Random motion of self-existing sub-atomic particles brought about a very large number of random subassemblies, which fell together at random to make stars and planets – and living beings.
Forget THAT! Random motions get random results. Purposeful motions get purposeful results. When you see an aircraft or a watch or an automobile, you know someone made it on purpose. The physical Creation is much more complex. It is obvious on the face of it that Someone organized it on purpose. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
Furthermore, knowledge of G-d has to come from G-d. If you want to know about G-d, you have to pray for understanding. (My testimony comes from the Holy Spirit, and not out of a laboratory.) If you don’t know by what Name to address Him, don’t let that stop you. He answers to any of His many, many Names.
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
I prayed before I started to write this. I felt impressed to pour forth a blazing testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Then the Yetzer Hara (“the evil inclination”) made me afraid that would offend my Jewish readers.
So I decided on an impassioned discourse attributing all the glories of Creation to Hashem (“The Name”) – who created it all. After all, I reasoned, They are one and the same.
The Yetzer Hara came on strong with reasonings that many of my readers are atheists, agnostics, evolutionists, “politically-correct,” scientific, post-modern sophisticated men and women, who would stop reading the second I mentioned a Creator along with the Creation.
So, taking a big step backward, I remembered the Star Wars series, and “The Force”. Ah! The Force organized all this pre-existing matter, in the pre-existing expanse of space, over the self-existing expanse of time. That gets us closer to the elusive “common denominator”. The impersonal Force brought all of this to pass.
But, no. Atheists and other sophisticated folk will say that is too close to a concept of a G-d. All right, let’s see how this goes: Random motion of self-existing sub-atomic particles brought about a very large number of random subassemblies, which fell together at random to make stars and planets – and living beings.
Forget THAT! Random motions get random results. Purposeful motions get purposeful results. When you see an aircraft or a watch or an automobile, you know someone made it on purpose. The physical Creation is much more complex. It is obvious on the face of it that Someone organized it on purpose. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
Furthermore, knowledge of G-d has to come from G-d. If you want to know about G-d, you have to pray for understanding. (My testimony comes from the Holy Spirit, and not out of a laboratory.) If you don’t know by what Name to address Him, don’t let that stop you. He answers to any of His many, many Names.
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Plural wives
The R A N T of G L E N N glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Polygamy
Letter to the editor;
I am a Mormon. Not one of those Texas Ranch “Mormons”. A REAL Mormon. You know; with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. (We don’t do polygamy – now that it’s against the law.)
Let us talk a little about some aspects of a man having more than one wife. (Two or more women married to one husband.)
When we are born, there are about 105 boys for every hundred girls, I think.
Boys are wilder and more reckless. They fight more and take more chances. The bad ones are more likely to join criminal gangs. The good men are more likely to join the Army, the police or to become firefighters. As a result, men get killed and crippled in large numbers.
Men go into crime more than women. Many go to prison. Several criminals a day are killed or crippled by their intended victims.
Millions of boys just never become men. They get to be twenty or thirty or forty, they are still not men. They can be “fathers” but they refuse to be “daddies”. They won't work. They mooch their way thru life. Some might be “good guys,” but they are not good FOR anything. They never become real men.
Most women, on the other hand, want to be wives and mothers, and most women would be good at it – if they could only get a good husband. But there are not enough good ones to go around. “Monogamy” sticks the rest of the women with two choices: No husband at all, or a husband who is a worthless, lazy, drunken, addicted lout, and maybe mean into the bargain. That’s a bad pair of choices.
Polygamy, on the other hand gives every woman a chance to be a wife and mother, to be loved and cared for, to live in a stable family relationship and raise children.
A modern, liberated, educated, mature woman, after thinking things over, might well decide that she would have a better life sharing a good man -- than with total ownership of a worthless one.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Polygamy
Letter to the editor;
I am a Mormon. Not one of those Texas Ranch “Mormons”. A REAL Mormon. You know; with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. (We don’t do polygamy – now that it’s against the law.)
Let us talk a little about some aspects of a man having more than one wife. (Two or more women married to one husband.)
When we are born, there are about 105 boys for every hundred girls, I think.
Boys are wilder and more reckless. They fight more and take more chances. The bad ones are more likely to join criminal gangs. The good men are more likely to join the Army, the police or to become firefighters. As a result, men get killed and crippled in large numbers.
Men go into crime more than women. Many go to prison. Several criminals a day are killed or crippled by their intended victims.
Millions of boys just never become men. They get to be twenty or thirty or forty, they are still not men. They can be “fathers” but they refuse to be “daddies”. They won't work. They mooch their way thru life. Some might be “good guys,” but they are not good FOR anything. They never become real men.
Most women, on the other hand, want to be wives and mothers, and most women would be good at it – if they could only get a good husband. But there are not enough good ones to go around. “Monogamy” sticks the rest of the women with two choices: No husband at all, or a husband who is a worthless, lazy, drunken, addicted lout, and maybe mean into the bargain. That’s a bad pair of choices.
Polygamy, on the other hand gives every woman a chance to be a wife and mother, to be loved and cared for, to live in a stable family relationship and raise children.
A modern, liberated, educated, mature woman, after thinking things over, might well decide that she would have a better life sharing a good man -- than with total ownership of a worthless one.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Central Casting sends a candidate
The R A N T of G L E N N glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Why do they run such bad candidates?
Letter to the editor;
Major Party A and Major Party B choose candidates for President. They each start with a whole roomful and disqualify the good ones, one by one, until they each end up with the single most putrid, awful, stinking, liability of a candidate available.
“Central Casting? We need a worse candidate.”
“Worse than what we sent you? Who do you want? Dracula? Stalin? Satan?”
“Well, um, yeah. If they’re available.”
“Sorry. They’re all taken.”
“We want one as bad as the man you sent to the other party.”
“You wait til the other party bad-mouths the guy you got. He’ll look bad enough.”
“You sure about that?”
“That’s one sure bet. Look: Why do you want such horrid candidates? I’d think you’d want a combination of George Washington and Mother Teresa.”
“Third Party!”
“What about Third Party?”
“We Major Parties have to have such bad candidates that we can warn everyone not to waste their votes on Third Party candidates or they’ll throw the election to, um, You-Know-Who.”
“Let me see if I have this straight: Both you Major Parties choose bad candidates so you can scare the voters into choosing the lesser of two evils rather than to throw away their votes on a Third Party candidate?”
“You got it. And we can’t afford to put up good candidates, because one would win and that would be the end of the graft and wars and waste we depend on so much.”
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Why do they run such bad candidates?
Letter to the editor;
Major Party A and Major Party B choose candidates for President. They each start with a whole roomful and disqualify the good ones, one by one, until they each end up with the single most putrid, awful, stinking, liability of a candidate available.
“Central Casting? We need a worse candidate.”
“Worse than what we sent you? Who do you want? Dracula? Stalin? Satan?”
“Well, um, yeah. If they’re available.”
“Sorry. They’re all taken.”
“We want one as bad as the man you sent to the other party.”
“You wait til the other party bad-mouths the guy you got. He’ll look bad enough.”
“You sure about that?”
“That’s one sure bet. Look: Why do you want such horrid candidates? I’d think you’d want a combination of George Washington and Mother Teresa.”
“Third Party!”
“What about Third Party?”
“We Major Parties have to have such bad candidates that we can warn everyone not to waste their votes on Third Party candidates or they’ll throw the election to, um, You-Know-Who.”
“Let me see if I have this straight: Both you Major Parties choose bad candidates so you can scare the voters into choosing the lesser of two evils rather than to throw away their votes on a Third Party candidate?”
“You got it. And we can’t afford to put up good candidates, because one would win and that would be the end of the graft and wars and waste we depend on so much.”
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
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