ClydeStyle

Tag: Politics

  • We need another labor movement

    So Labor Day is coming and many will be off work, probably barbecuing and just simply relax. We deserve a day. We work hard. There was a time in our history where people worked 12-hour days for very low wages and even kids were working dangerous jobs for even lower wages. They worked on farms, mines and in factories.

    Labor day began as a huge protest for better wages and an 8-hour work day. They wanted restrictions on child labor and wanted to be able we to work hard and take part in the American dream.

    During an election year in the 1800s, then President Grover Cleveland made Labor Day a national holiday for fear of losing the election due to alienating the working class. More regulations followed and conditions got better over time.

    Remember this was the reason slavery was ended. Not so much because it was inhumane but because that free labor kept many without work because if you can get free labor, why would you want to pay a fair wage if you didn’t have to.

    Fast forward to the 21st century and we are still fighting for fair wages. There is still a huge gap in wealth and one percent still has waaaaaay more money and assests than the 99 percent. As a result, American went from being the No. 1 country to live in (1950s) to No. 17 today. Can you believe that there are 16 countries that live better than we do in America? We are delusional.

    The countries that are in front of us are all in the top 5 in multiple categories like wages, science, math, lifestyle, better climate, technology and mortality. We lead the world in 3 categories: Prison population, weapons of war and belief in Angels.

    Our problem is that we are not trying to be the best. We are not even trying to be fair. We are trying to maintain our current status where the rich get richer and the poor, stay poor.

    We are no where near the top 10 in wages, working conditions, lifestyle or income equality. We don’t even have the best social programs to help change generational curses and poverty among the poor. Sweden holds that title. Australia and Canada seem to alternate from No. 1 or No. 2 in many categories with Switzerland, Germany and New Zealand rounding out the top 5.

    We can do much better than we are doing. If you googled the best places to live you would shocked at what other places offer that we don’t. And it’s not that we can’t. We have a government that is self serving and won’t.

    This is why we need a new Labor Day protest to finish the job where the first left off. Labor Day started as a massive protest where everyone stopped working for a day. What if we stopped working a pay period? It would shutdown the country and Congress would respond immediately. Definitely something to think about while your working the grill this holiday.

  • Absolute Truth

    I remember in the 70s and 80s watching the “In Search of …” series on TV.

    I recall thinking to myself how these people had chosen an impossible task. They were looking for things like “Big Foot”, “The Loch Ness Monster” and “Noah’s Ark”.

    It wasn’t going to happen.

    They were not going to find those things – and I knew that at age 10.

    And I wondered how long it would take them before they got tired of searching and began to manufacture truth to prove a point.

    You know what I mean – coming up with evidence that may not point toward whatever they were looking for, but could be used for such.

    They would use it to justify what they were doing and – as long as we watched – they could keep going with their creation of truth.

    It seems today that too many people believe that truth is just that – manufactured.

    I wonder how many of us, in whatever we are searching for, are really searching for absolute truth?

    Not absolute truth according to me, TV or this scholar or that scholar – I mean good old-fashioned universal undisputed Truth with a capital ‘T’.

    Today, Webster’s dictionary defines truth as: “a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true … actuality.”

    About 50 years ago, Webster’s dictionary defined truth as “agreement with reality; external principle of right or law of order.”

    It seems in these two changing definitions we have clearly lost some things over the last 50 years.

    Two things in particular:
    1. Truth now has to be accepted as such – whether it’s real truth or not. If enough people believe it, then it will be accepted as truth
    2. Truth no longer has to agree with reality or what is – as the latter definition states. We have made reality relative to us. Is that legal?

    Have you ever put your trust in something (or someone) only later to find out that it was all a lie? The truth you thought you had then was eventually trumped by reality.

    It hurt like hell, didn’t it?

    You are not alone.

    There have been many who were presented with information that was bogus – from pyramid marketing scams to information about your partner – we somehow found out the real truth – and discovered we had been had!

    To add insult to injury, some of us even try and keep the lie going once we discover the error for fear of looking like a fool – or because we’ve invested too much in the situation.

    This happened to us with the war in Iraq.

    Whether the Bush administration or Congress knew prior or not, we went to war because we were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

    That lie got us over there and then we needed another lie to keep us there.

    Our government gave us three:
    1. Saddam was a bad person and a threat to us.
    2. The Iraqi people needed to be liberated.
    3. Being in Iraq would make us safer because we would then be fighting the war on Terrorism on the terrorists’ turf.

    But the question remains: What about the WMD?

    The problem is that no one will discuss is how we were lied to and how our sacred trust in our government was violated.

    Even with a new administration, we are still fighting under these same false pretenses. We don’t need to be saved from terrorists – we need to be saved from ourselves.

    Absolute truth is just that.

    It doesn’t need to be rationalized or require a lot of explanation.

    It’s truth.

    God created it that way so we wouldn’t struggle to find the source – which is God Himself.

    This is why Proverbs 4:7 says: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”

    I encourage you in whatever the field of study, whatever the circumstance, keep searching for absolute truth.

    It’s there. You have to first desire it.