Lux Lucet

Ah, March madness, AKA man cave season. I had a boss once who always took off starting the Thursday of the first tournament game and spent his whole weekend binge watching college basketball. I’m guessing he probably wasn’t alone.

I’m not quite that hardcore, but I do love me a little college hoops too, especially when my Cincy Bearcats are playing well. Nice win tonight over K-State!

Of course, watching basketball has also manages to interfere with writing, which is why I getting a late start with this week’s TWIR, which is why this won’t get posted until Saturday. But hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

On a more philosophical note, it seems to me that March Madness isn’t limited to the basketball court, but can be found in any number of places having nothing at all to do with Mr. Naismith’s invention. Take for example…

Monetary Madness

There are few, if any, examples of mass derangement to rival the hoopla surrounding a meeting of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC).

Eight times a year we’re treated to weeks of speculation about the FOMC’s upcoming decision, will they or will they not raise interest rates.

These meetings, as well as the Fed chairman’s semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony before Congress, are breathlessly reported on by the mainstream media.

To give you a sense of the absurdity of the coverage, back in the day when Alan Greenspan was in charge of the Fed, there were people who believed they could tell what would be done with interest rates based upon which hand “The Maestro” used to carry his briefcase.

We were treated to another such round of absurdity this past week as Janet Yellen, high priestess of the FOMC herself, sauntered forth from the bowels of Eccles Building to announce to the world her latest oracle: The economy’s awesome and we’re hiking interest rates.

All this was reported with the utmost seriousness by the mainstream financial press who dutifully played their roll as Fed echo chamber.

All, that is, except for one.

As Zero Hedge reports, Kathleen Hays of Bloomberg TV was perplexed at just how a supposedly data dependent Fed – the Fed is always talking about how their decisions on interest rates depend on economic data – could hike interest rates at a time when hard economic data is in a downward spiral.

The Bloomberg report’s pointed questions apparently both annoyed and frightened t he high priestess who never really answered the questions put to her.

And so it goes.

An even better question then why the Fed is choosing to raise interest rates into a deteriorating economy is why the Fed should have any say in interest rates at all.

Interest rates are the price of money, and as with the price of all other goods and services, interest rates ought to be set by the free market, not the monetary politburo called the FOMC.

There is no sound Biblical, constitutional, or economic argument for central banks, central bankers, or the fixing of interest rates by them.

But while sound reason based on Scripture leads to the rejection of central banking, the Marxists love it. In fact, the establishment of a central bank was one of the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto. There, Marx on Engels advocated for the, “Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

In the US, the central bank is called the Federal Reserve Bank, AKA “The Fed.”

That’s right. The button pushing boys and lever pulling girls in the Eccles building (that the Fed’s headquarters) are the dupes, slaves, and minions of one of history’s most destructive thinkers.

Actually, if you throw in the money printing madness inspired by one John Maynard Keynes, you can make that two of history’s most destructive thinkers.

Stop the monetary madness! End the Fed!

“Musical” Madness

I hesitate to honor anything associated with Snoop Dog with the term “music,” hence the quotes in the header.

For my part, I’ve never paid Calvin Broadus much heed, nevertheless many people seem to take the foul-mouthed rapper as a serious and profound artist. Which brings me to my next point about a certain recently released video of his.

You’ve probably already heard about it. It’s the one where Snoop Dog pulls out a .38 caliber revolver and mimics shooting a clown-faced Donald Trump in the head.

There’s really nothing clownish or funny about it. Snoop Dog is calling for the assassination of the president.

That’s bad enough. But perhaps the bigger story is that no one in the main stream media seems much to care. Apparently they’re fine with it. This too is madness.

It is also ironic.

You see, while the past year has seen Trump and his supporters constantly called deplorables, racists, fascists, homophobes, Islamophobes, everything-in-the-book-o-phobes, it is the oh-so-tolerant good-thinkers on the left who have intellectually approved of, and engaged in, violence, both real and imagined, directed at Trump himself and those back him.

These outbursts of spastic behavior on the left, coupled with their self-righteous denunciation of anything or anyone associated with the Donald, has become so prevalent that it’s even gotten itself the nickname “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

This video also highlights a long time disturbing trend in America: the double standard that is applied to the same action depending on who is the actor.

Imagine, if you will for a moment, that someone made a video in which a singer artist pulls a .38 revolver on a clown-faced image of Barak Obama an mimics shooting him in the head.

First of all, that video would never be made. But let’s just suppose somehow it were. We all know what would happen.

SJW snowflakes would melt right where they stand. Mass demonstrations, angry editorials, weeping and gnashing of teeth would be the rule of the day. There would be no end to the hue and cry.

But let some thug pretend to kill Donald Trump, and well, hey, it’s free speech dontcha know.

But here’s what I know. It’s one thing to disagree with Trump. I disagree with him on a number of things.

But shooting the president in the head, even if in a cartoonish way, even in a music video, that’s not entertainment.

It is a call for the assassination of the president.

It is madness.

And it needs to stop.

Military Madness – The Insanity of Preemptive War

Among the worst doctrines of the neo-conservatives is the idea of pre-emptive war, the basic idea of which is that the US shouldn’t wait to be attacked to take military action, but to attack first to preempt a first strike by an opponent.

But this policy, far from making Americans safer, actually puts them in greater danger. John Robbins noted in his essay The Religious Wars of the 21st Century that due to America’s “more recent policy of pre-emptive war, the United States has become the primary target of militant Muslims worldwide.”

Much of the anti-Western radicalism directed at the US and its allies can be traced to this dangerous policy.

But from comments made this week by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Trump administration seems to believe that what doesn’t work in t he the Middle East is great policy for dealing with North Korea.

According to a report in the New York Times, Tillerson indicated that the administration is considering pre-emptive action against North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un.

Even if successful, such a move would be a major mistake, as it would once embroil this nation in the business of “regime change,” an activity in which it has no moral authority to engage, one which has already done great damage to America and to the countries it has attacked, and one which risks the onset of WWIII.

With talk of pre-emptive war so soon from the Trump administration, it would appear that the neo-conservative theorists are once again large on in charge of the America’s foreign policy.

Conclusion

Well, I think that’s about enough madness for one week. I had planned to write about Medical Madness (Trumpcare) and Migrant Madness (the ongoing immigration saga in the US and Europe), but it’s too late and I’m too tired.

Until next week, I wish you all a blessed Lord’s Day.