Once upon a time there were just a few destinations, hotels, and restaurants readily identified as iconic. These descriptions usually flowed from their unique atmospherics, their commitments to superior service, and consistently delivering culinary delights that earned them a truly enviable reputation. In essence as well as substance, iconic enterprises are characterized by fidelity. Faithful patrons have learned the quest for authenticity is only rewarded along a critical pathway that leads to full satisfaction. As if by contrast, the experience gained by not paying attention to the road ahead or where we’re going, typically yields a fleeting gratification at best, , , if at all.

The entrepreneurs of yesteryear usually identified a need within the community and then worked diligently; rising to meet that need. Today, the business plan often starts with a cool looking icon drawn on a cocktail napkin. In true style over substance fashion, identifying and delivering on promises made to the ultimate consumer can be an afterthought. The brainstorming sessions focus on the aspirational while the essential functions are relegated to an oft neglected category as backfill. Such an approach to entrepreneurship often gives short shrift to even the most foundational considerations.

Consider the promise of personalized medicine and, specifically, the recent Theranos experience. The marketplace is crowded and delivering on the promise of personalized medicine can be lucrative. Even disciplined business professionals usually have to compete with the ruffles and flourishes of forward looking statements contained in their rival’s fundraising prospectus. The idealistic goals put forth are probably yet to be realized. However, the legal consequences for damages, when others rely on such statements, are mitigated through disclaimers.

We have become acclimated to the current reality dynamics. Rightly or wrongly, we’ve come to accept a simple fact: When competitive pressures are on the rise, the line between potentials and actuals can become blurred. As more and more attention is devoted to the next raisin’, less and less mind-share is made available to focus on the fundamentals.

Theranos was not a lemonade stand. It was a highly complex startup with many moving parts. The idea that the skill-set required to be a tech industry entrepreneur, are somehow comparable to that of a custodial CEO riding a mature legacy business, puts the value proposition and the global competitiveness for our country on a plane of unreality. The future focused visionary is an essential component, as is the custodian. And, complementary relationships, with compatible talent, do not just occur independent of time. They are carefully and methodically forged.

In the mid 1980s, I served as one crazy-assed visionary for a Fortune 500 company that manufactured computer, television, broadband network, and cable television products. My job was to do product development in a way that leveraged such a unique product complement during a time when computer based imaging was considered to be too specialized an application to have any real market potential. While there were others in the company that shared my team’s enthusiasm for such an intrepreneurial effort, I was not an engineer. The company assigned an electronics engineer, who just happened to be a vice president, to my case. His job was to remind me of the laws of physics while also insuring that I was properly provisioned.

As a product development guy, foremost in my mind was what the customer wanted. It was way too easy to step in sumthin’ when your main customer was the Federal Government. So I was grateful that I was teamed up with a VP that was also a double E. In federal contracting that line, between actuals and potentials, was extremely important if you wanted to avoid jail time. And so, maintaining a timeline that accurately reflected the likelihood of product availability was key to survival. To this end I also made sure the government agencies I worked with had, in their possession, prototypes of my products so they could see the true functionality at any given time within the product lifecycle.

There are always things you can do to protect your enterprise from any claims of misrepresentation. The discipline required to actually do them, in the face of unrelenting commercial and political pressures, requires focus and persistence. For most entrepreneurial efforts the leading edge in the marketplace is seen as the bleeding edge because you are typically hemorrhaging money at the outset. Tesla was an exception. By selling the first Roadsters to the wealthiest individuals among us for $109,000, the company was able to recoup most of the development cost for its early prototypes. By early 2021, you could buy a standard range Model 3 for under $42,000.

Clearly Theranos could have and should have done things differently. Somewhere between the vision and the implementation, investors were misled. And while there is always a cost associated with full disclosure, that company might have survived after working out the kinks in their production chain in a more forthright manner. Unfortunately, we’ll never know. But one thing is certain. Personalized medicine will become real just as surely as I’m able to watch a movie on my computer-based handheld imaging device.

The most appreciative stargazers and prophets have made their observations, have been appropriately awed, and have said: “You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them. By the Sons of God were the universes made. The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment and stretches out the heavens as a curtain.”

The enlightened minds of a great humanity have all recognized and worshiped the Universal Father. For he is the eternal maker and the infinite upholder of all creation. God has given us a supreme mandate, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.” To fulfill this mandate, we must have some idea of what constitutes perfection. Understanding the attributes of God is essential if we are to intentionally engage with him; as he conditions, nurtures, and perfects us. As God-knowing persons, we have one supreme ambition. We are to become, within our limited spheres of influence, just as perfect as God is within and throughout his infinite universe of universes.

The tender affection, and parental devotion of God is unmatched in the infinite sense. Although he has given us all we need to express these same qualities with those he has brought into our presence. While God alone is omnipresent, we can also be there for those in our midst, those with whom we fellowship, and those for whom we have been given some amount of responsibility.

In addition to the Divine attribute of omnipresence, the Father is also omniscient and omnipotent. While we are far from all knowing and all powerful, we do have a certain amount of knowledge and power that Our Father can put to benevolent use, subject to our intelligent cooperation. And, he has made provision for us to acquire more, once he has made the determination we are likely to wield it responsibly.

We serve and reside on a strife-torn, confused, and disordered planet. Because of this, it is easy to be misled. But, we also know that among the Divine attributes are the qualities of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. When our actions are in alignment with our highest conception of these guiding starlike qualities, as informed by the exemplary life and teachings of Jesus, it is unlikely that we will run afoul of the Father’s will.

Jesus said: “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Our mission statements should flow directly from this admonition, as articulated by Our Mission Commander. Just about every monotheistic religion that existed, when Jesus walked the planet, had some version of the Golden Rule. With his exemplary life and the command he gave when he said “love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus became, in essence, the Gold Standard for that Golden rule.

Some churches have no apparent aversion to the kind of moral relativism and revisionist history that seemingly supports, in the minds of some, a departure from the Jesusonian Command. Such self-identified Christians should be asked to explain just why Jesus is not taken at his word. When Jesus said ”He who has seen me has seen The Father,” he was leading by clear example. The Way, the Truth, and the Life is simply not compatible with any reckless indifference to this essential Truth.

The superficial prettiness of the well coiffed is not comparable to that beauty emanating from the God within. The beautiful souls that advance a fidelity to supreme values are unrivaled in the material world. That may be lost on some. But the gift of discernment makes the truly faithful unerringly responsive to authentic beauty in all its forms.

When a wise friend said that God wants to be our partner,” I realized the process of perfecting depends upon our wholehearted cooperation, working with our friend and senior partner to become useful in the grand scheme of things. We cannot achieve our highest and best destiny without God. And, he cannot create perfection within us, without our consent.

We may have read in the US Declaration of Independence that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Is this, to some extent, true for the Trinity Government of All Creation? On our tiny planet, as we circle a sun on the back road to Infinity, the ‘consent of the governed,’ has been held in high regard even as Scotus gave his lectures as a bachelor theologian at Oxford in the 1290s. His Ordinatio was transcribed as the Lectura. John Wycliffe, in the preface to his 14th Century bible translation to Middle English, also made it clear that the bible advances “government of, by, and for the people.”

Our Heavenly Father always intended for us to be the true arbiters of our own destiny. This is what all good parents want for their children. Our greatest joy is to watch them reach for their highest and best destiny. Achieving that in life temporal is just the beginning.

When members of the Supreme Court attempt to diminish what they describe as their “perception problem,” it may just be because the public’s perception of the court is accurate. Edward Rumely, editor-in-chief and publisher of, the New York Evening Mail, coined the phrase “court-packing plan” way back when Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to add more justices to the Court. Today, those who have a tenuous relationship with words still use the term “packing” to decry any effort to increase the number of seats on the High Court.

Those who hold a firm position, or even no position, on the abortion debate must acknowledge that cases heard in the final days of 2021 were brought precisely because the makeup of the court had changed. Much of the argument in December centered on the question of predictability and that is the question that should have been, first and foremost, before the Presidential Commission on the Courts. Of course any commission that is headed by co-chairs that are vested in traditional law would predictably find for maintaining the status quo.

It’s well past time to reform our entire process of jurisprudence. There is a statement inscribed over the doors of the United States Supreme Court building. It reads: “Equal Justice Under Law.” That has never been true. And, at this juncture we must ask ourselves: “Is it even an aspirational statement for those currently occupying the judiciary?” Nibbling around the edges, in incrementalist fashion, will not produce the change required to reform our system of jurisprudence. When one president can abruptly shift the idealogical balance of the court in just one term, we have a big, big problem. 

As state legislatures are producing bills, that actively corrode the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic, because they perceive a compatible ideological bias on the high court, it has become abundantly clear that the entire process has become corrupted. SCOTUS Justices, occupying positions of honor and trust, have no ethics code. Their nominations, confirmations, and accommodations are secured through dark money. If that’s not conducive to corruption what is? The stench described by Justice Sotomayor has, at this juncture, become just too hard to ignore.

We need to reform the judicial monastery in a big way. And we should begin at the very top. When a judicial panel set to hear any given case becomes randomized, by the drawing of lots, legislatures will be much less able to game the system as they did in 2021. This randomization should start with a United States Supreme Court composed of twenty one justices. When seven justices are selected at random to hear each individual case, only after certiorari is granted, we can then begin to trust the court again.

At the trial court level we must also realize that jury nullification is ill defined. It is, in actuality, what happens when judges selectively amplify, filter, and contextualize everything a jury gets to hear. Are these not the tools of the modern day deceiver? Witnesses are sworn “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Then we often watch helplessly as integrity challenged officers of the court routinely extract half truths so they can cobble together any narrative that might suit them.

The doctrine of equal justice under law has been a fantasy throughout the entire history of the United States. The country’s original sin of slavery was codified in the Three-fifths Compromise that insured a black man or woman would never be counted as more than three-fifths of a person. Since that time the jelly-bean jar, the shadowy purging of voter roles, the politically tainted district maps, the voter intimidation tactics, the removal of mailboxes and polling sites from minority neighborhoods, the legislative sophistries, and the deceptive practices of those occupying positions of honor and trust have surreptitiously kept the nation’s corrupt compromise alive.

When the Preamble of the United States Constitution is effectively set-aside by the courts; and when the various oaths of office are widely regarded as somehow having little value by those sworn to uphold them, the legitimacy of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government are severely undermined. The proximate cause for such a rotting foundation is directly attributable to those occupying high office who have a reckless indifference to the truth. In the context of an authentic democratic republic, deceiving We the People in elections and judicial confirmations should carry penalties far more severe than even those typically imposed for lying to law enforcement or for perjuring oneself, while testifying in court or before congress.

Being truthful with the general public is an indication of rare statesmanlike qualities. It insures the consent of the governed is one that is fully informed. The dark money, the closed door hearings, the shadow docket, and the unsigned letters are all indications of a deep seated cowardice that is antithetical to informed consent. Together, they constitute the best evidence of a ruling class composed of individuals that are morally and intellectually defective thus prompting their pathological engagement in subterfuge.

We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, must demand integrity.

The main difference between bribery and lobbying is that bribery is considered illegal, while lobbying is not. That’s it folks! Bribery has always been about the effort to buy power and paying to guarantee a certain result. And, until recently, lobbying was about influencing power. Today, those distinctions are mostly gone while the money offered as contributions by lobbyists is simply laundered through campaign and PAC accounts.

While the Federal Election Commission has strict rules prohibiting the personal use of campaign funds, helping one to get elected or re-elected to a cushy job is just one type of payoff. In addition to the form fitting seats and a generous vacation schedule, legislators make names for themselves that have marquee value. They have a history of using inside information to acquire or dump stock while exempting themselves from the insider trading laws that typically land mere citizens in jail. 

Officially, lobbying is organizing a group of like-minded people, industries, or entities to influence an authoritative body or lawmaking individual. This influence is often brought to bear through financial contributions. Bribery involves the payment of something such as money, services, goods, or an intangible favor in the subversion of normal practices. This is done for gain, special treatment, or some sort of advantage.

If this seems to you like a distinction without a difference, you’re not alone. Efforts to differentiate between the two is, in today’s politics, intended for deceiving the public. The one thing that should now be obvious to all of us is that bribery in the form of lobbying is systematically diminishing the influence of voters while steadily augmenting the influence of donors.

Lobbyists have existed for as long as governments. They once operated as information givers and were considered to be a valuable source of facts. Although the information was typically skewed in support of their cause or industry, they rarely engaged in bribery. They would instead gradually and methodically build support for their causes. They might have funded a study, survey, or research that would sway a politician’s opinion and that of their constituency.

Now lobbyists operate by ensuring contributions are made from all levels, the grassroots on up, to influence decision-makers at all stages. These contributions aren’t directly paid to any official or lawmaker. They might go to that person’s election or re-election campaign, to purchase advertising, to finance a fundraiser, to help a politician’s favorite cause or charity, or to support a project in the politician’s home town or state. The excessive prominence of a politician operating in such a quid pro quo fashion only serves to enrich them in some way.

We need to pay attention to each and every announcement about some former politician joining a lobbying firm and thereby leveraging their knowledge of how the government machine works. We should also confront each and every one of those companies, and each politician, including Supreme Court justices, about the use of dark money to distort the public discourse. The total spending on lobbying has grown from $1.44 billion in 1998 to $3.53 billion in 2020. And that just includes the amounts that have been reported. It doesn’t include the fungibles and intangibles. 

Bribery is the first step leading to subversion within any system of government. An alternate and corrupted system is formed incrementally that introduces inefficiencies, instabilities, and obstacles to democracy. Over time, it erodes the economic foundation of a country while redirecting its benefits to a select few. The most vulnerable members of society get marginalized and any middle class, should one even survive, becomes increasingly cynical.

Once upon a time, a gift was given freely out of goodwill. When it became an incentive provided with the intention of receiving something in return, it became a bribe. Certain members of the United States Supreme Court and the Legislature have shown increasing contempt for the cardinal precepts of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic as they have undeniably and steadily blurred the lines between gifts and bribes.

Bribery was once considered to be a felony. Now it is standard operating procedure. It is long past time to restore the penalties for both the bribe giver and the bribe receiver. We should not be giving a pass to those who exert or tolerate a corrupting influence. The electorate is not being served when their representatives are engaged in whoring for some donor base. Campaign Finance Reform is an issue that has, like any other can, been kicked down the timeline for as long as most citizens can remember. Why? 

The United States is now being seen as the dimming beacon of democracy while its credibility, as a representative republic, is also on the decline. Unless we,as citizens are also dim-witted, we already know that we must reverse this trend lest our grandchildren inherit a dystopian world. It’s entirely on us.

Unless our so called representatives are going to be true to their oath, and actively protect our constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic, they should be promptly and summarily relegated to the trash heap of our national history.

The church of today is in free-fall because it is a house divided against itself. And, the only hope for a possible unification of Christianity is Jesus. The invisible, spiritual, brotherhood and sisterhood that Jesus personally advanced is not characterized by theological uniformity but rather by spiritual unity. The Jesus brotherhood is the true church and it must not be eclipsed by even a well intentioned and well organized institution.

Spiritual unity is achieved only through faith union with the living Jesus. The visible church should not continue to impede the progress, of the invisible and spiritual brotherhood of the kingdom of God, by insisting on a uniform response to creative diversity. The non-Christian world is simply not going to capitulate to such an unattractive and sect-divided Christendom. To conceive of God as a slavish law-bound power is to misrepresent the true devotion of our loving Heavenly Father.

Most differences within the church are the result of a great humanity’s individual and varying response to spirit leading. To insure the harmony of the whole, in the face of underlying creational differences, it should be recognized there is a basic uniformity of character within the complementary Spirit ministries while there is also a diversity of function. The spiritual siblinghood is destined to become a living organism that is far greater than any institutionalized social organization can ever be. It may very well find such social organizations serviceable, but it must not ever be displaced by them.

Religious experience within a cultural, ethnic, social, or racial group derives its unity from the identical nature of God’s indwelling each individual. Humanity’s unselfish interest in the welfare of other persons originates with this Divine indwelling. Because personality is uniquely bestowed, no two persons are alike. Therefore no two human beings will identically interpret Divine guidance. The Spirit of Divinity, which lives within our minds, compensates for this differential response by enabling us to become understandingly sympathetic with one another.

The religion of the Spirit reveals the unifying and coordinating quality we have learned to recognize as Divinity. This attribute of God progressively draws us together while the religions of lesser authority only divide us, pushing us against each other. By the mid-twentieth-century, theologians and philosophers had formulated more than five hundred different definitions of religion. Because religion is intensely personal, in actuality, there are as many religions as there are people. Theological and philosophical uniformity will thus remain elusive. However, because groups of people can and do experience spiritual unity, we may indeed learn to appreciate and value diversity with respect to the interpretation of religious thought and experience.

The Spirit of God is real. The divine impulses that originate with the Spirit complement that indwells and envelops us are uniquely conditioned by our own experiential interpretations. Such interpretations are altogether personal and therefore different from the religious experiences of all other human beings. The sincere pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness invariably leads us Godward. 

If philosophy is ever to achieve unity, in the intelligent comprehension of the universe, then both science and religion must become less dogmatic and far more tolerant of criticism. The church that dares to remove all creedal pressure from its members is the one that will attract a congregation that grows, increasing its joy, while enjoying the liberty of ennobling deeds, of loving service, and of merciful ministry.

The kingdom of heaven in the hearts of individual human beings will create religious unity because any and all religious groups composed of such religious believers will eventually be free from all notions of ecclesiastical authority. There is great hope for any church that worships the living God, validates the siblinghood of humanity, and encourages the enjoyment of religious liberty. Unity may be discovered in the full expression of our unique personal interpretations with respect to the truths of religious belief and the facts of religious experience.

Cohesiveness within any religious group depends upon spiritual unity, not on theological uniformity. The only “religious sovereignty” is the relationship with the One in whom we live, and move, and have our being. The religions of authority tend to compel uniformity that crystallizes into lifeless creeds. But the religion of the spirit requires only the unity of experience, a commonality of insight and, perhaps, a shared vision of destiny. It makes full allowance for diversity of belief. It does not require a rigid uniformity of viewpoint and outlook. With every scientific discovery the discoverer was free to make the discovery.

Uniformity in belief is impossible given the present state of the world. Within the consciousness of a healthy group, there can never be doctrinal finality or sectarian superiority. The religion of the spirit does not demand uniformity of intellectual views while it does foster the formation of, and affinity between, kindred souls. Jesus prayed for unity among his followers. He did not insist upon uniformity. True righteousness nourishes the creative spirit. It recognizes individual experience with the living realities of eternal truth. It fosters progressive communion with the divine spirits of the Father and the Son,

In the 1990s, I was working as a glorified pack mule. My load consisted of video monitors, trans-pushable computers, laserdisc players and a heavy case of twelve-inch laserdiscs. I would travel between the academies, colleges, and universities to demonstrate what curriculum designers of that day described as “interactive video.” Back then it was seen as supporting the pedagogy of full immersion instruction although, in light of the way things have evolved, that was a bit of a stretch in those days.

Still, the people I worked with were excited about the promise implicit to such technology and it had attracted the interest of such luminaries as Andrew Lloyd Weber and Paul McCartney’s former business manager. I represented their London based Interactive Instructional Systems product in the Eastern states of the USA. The offering included the most beautifully produced instructional videos I have ever seen, before or since. It was in this context and through this lens that I considered Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of Facebook’s name change to Meta. I wasn’t buying.

Among the earliest flight simulators was the Link Trainer. Edwin Link’s Binghamton, New York company offered it for sale in 1929. Ever since the feasibility of such immersive simulations became known to educators and trainers, it has been perceived as both a curse and a blessing. Some teachers saw it as a potential threat to their jobs. Others saw the technology as a way to liberate them from the most repetitive tasks, so they could instead focus on the highlights and hurdles as experienced by individual learners.

To think that Facebook is to dominate, in a world of artificial intelligence, largely depends upon our willingness to accept a filtered reality. There are lots of players. And, if Aaron Sorkin’s Social Media docudrama is to be believed, Facebook started out as a data-scraping project that had, as its aim, objectifying college women and their physical attributes; rating them on a scale of one to ten. To vest any confidence in that particular company’s good behavior, or its arbitrarily assumed authority to regulate proper social discourse, would constitute a serious failure to learn from history.

Evan Greer, an activist with Fight for the Future, told the Associated Press “This is Mark Zuckerberg revealing his end game, which is not just to dominate the internet of today but to control and define the internet that we leave to our children and our children’s children.” Amie Stepanovich, executive director of Silicon Flatirons at the University of Colorado, said “Picture an online troll campaign — but one in which the barrage of nasty words you might see on social media is instead a group of angry avatars yelling at you, with your only escape being to switch off the machine.”

Our broadcast news media has long operated in accordance with the profit-motivated doctrine “If it bleeds it leads.” And today we are constantly bombarded with the bullying tone of self-serving politicians and cult followers who never quite understood what most of us learned, through experience, as toddlers. The fact, that diminishing external restraints are always contingent upon augmenting internal restraints, is a tough lesson. And, some seem destined to learn it the hard way, by wearing an ankle bracelet. Or, perhaps not at all, even as they sit in solitary confinement.

A more service motivated approach to building meta-verse experiences that take us onward and upward is informed by what is arguably the high mission of true art. To be true it must be aligned with something. And if it is to serve as a prelude to something better, something higher; it will be born in a culture of benevolence. If true art is at the heart of the artificial, it must somehow take us from one level of attainment to the next. Rather than indulging the voyeuristic tendencies of those binge watching a Truman Show, we could be designing the next steps in societal evolution.

What would happen if we were to borrow the best from our universe of universes, to become strategically proactive in all the decision processes related to the architecture of a meta-verse? What if it were to have equality in structure to the highest reality we can envision? Why then we could bring people in, rehearse them, and then send them back into the real world as emissaries of social uplift. We could advance an appreciation for the enduring value of individual advancement, a culture of benevolence that will accept nothing less than truly authentic democracies and republics.

If you have been following this series, you’ve probably heard this commentator harp on the promise of a 21^st Century enterprise architecture. If so, you know that there is a way to express our preferences for what we call Employee Owned Benefit Corporations or EOBCs. Consider the possibility that the best meta-verse could be built by such a service-motivated group. For it is people, working in company with one another and acting corporately, that are building the most authentic corporations. And, such a benefit corporation could be guided by an unambiguous mission statement to serve a greater humanity.

I knew a man that, prior to embracing Jesus, spent much of his life residing on skid row. He later dedicated his life to a ministry for special populations that had challenges similar to his earlier ones. This man exuded a wisdom that was informed by the hard work associated with getting his life back onto a even keel. It included none of the sappy platitudes we’ve come to expect from ease drifting souls.

I’ve never found myself on skid row. Although, I have lived a significant portion of my life on what some might describe as a shoestring budget, or at a subsistence level. And I know why so much of what Jesus taught and exemplified resonated with the poorest of the poor. Even on those rare occasions, when obstacles seemed insurmountable, I wasn’t unhappy. Sure, I would express frustration with more than a few expletives from time to time, but I never really doubted God’s provisioning.

I distinctly remember one morning when my car ran out of gas as I was sitting at a traffic light. When I looked in the rear view mirror, I noticed that right behind me was one of those roadside assistance trucks with a bid ol’ pusher bumper on the front. The driver pushed my car about a hundred yards into a gas station. I bought gas with the pennies I rolled the night before and got to work on time. The experience added about three minutes, if that, to the fill-up. When a friend of mine marveled at my “luck,” I simply said “it’s nice to go through life with Divine favor.”

Don’t get me wrong, I know that I’m a greatly flawed individual. I also know that God loved me anyway and all I want to do is reciprocate. I want to serve, unencumbered, in the way I have been called to serve. In the original movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, the main character, George, is sitting in a bar after his thwarted suicide attempt. Clarence, the wet and disheveled man sitting next to him, introduced himself as George’s guardian angel. To that, George responded saying, “Yeah, you look like the kind of angel I’d get.”

I loved that movie, in part because my dad’s name was Clarence and he had an understated sense of humor similar to that of George’s angel. It took George quite awhile to appreciate Clarence. And it took me a very long time to really appreciate my dad. But to me, both Clarences represent fidelity that is informed by high purpose. In addition to being flawed I have been greatly blessed. Not everyone has obvious models for what it means to be called in accordance with God’s purpose.

The Apostle Paul said “I have learned that, in whatever situation I find myself, therewith to be content. His was a truly great witness. For even in the midst of circumstances that would break the will of weak individuals, Paul maintained a positive view of the road ahead. Even when he was locked in the pokey, Paul knew that God’s ultimate justice is tempered with abundant mercy. This doesn’t mean that we should enter into sin with the expectation of Divine mercy. That is likely to have harsh consequences for the wages of sin is death.

Sooo, if “the wages of sin is death,” and if “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” then why aren’t we all dead? If justice reigned supreme in the universe, we probably would be. But as judges go, God is the fairest of the fair.

In the Parable of the two sons, after one son had squandered his inheritance sowing his wild oats, he realized he had reaped the consequences while dining with the swine. He thought “’How many hired servants of my father have bread enough to spare while I go hungry. I will go to my father, and I will say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no more worthy to be called your son; only be willing to make me one of your hired servants.’ 

This father loved this son and was always on the lookout for his return. On the day when the son approached his home, even while he was far off, the father saw him and ran out to meet him. When the son asked to be treated as a servant, the father would have none of it. He turned to the gathered servants and said ‘Bring quickly his best robe, the one I have saved, and put it on him, and put the son’s ring on his hand, and fetch sandals for his feet.’

When a Samaritan woman, a woman of questionable character in the eyes of men was brought before Jesus, he saw through eyes of love. He beheld a human soul who sincerely and wholeheartedly desired salvation. And that was enough. Jesus regarded her as having been sinned against more than sinning of her own desire. And she was forgiven.

To have a vested interest in something means that one has a personal stake in its continuation or success. This simple fact explains how politicians can engage in continued subterfuge long after it has become apparent that such a course will lead to their ultimate destruction. And it is one way that, once compromised, a person is no longer the arbiter of his or her own destiny.

Consider the kind of obfuscation that typically surrounds the person championing an abhorrent system of values. When it is no longer possible to win, based upon a concise delineation of principle, a politician will undoubtedly resort to deceptive practices that include, but are not limited to, diverting the attention of the electorate away from first principles. The path is especially perilous for those who have traded what may have once been a Christian witness for what is now a masquerade.

This type of behavioral blasphemy manifests in a variety of ways that usually involve the simplest of sophistries. For example, you may have noticed that one former Senate Majority Leader constantly rails against socialism while, at the same time, his state gets three dollars back for every one dollar his Kentucky home contributes to the public treasury. His caucus warns about court packing when he personally enabled one president to pack it with one third of the Supreme Court justices in just one term.

It doesn’t really help to point out such hypocrisy to individuals for whom hypocrisy itself is a point of pride. And, this is why we should expand the common definition of blasphemy to include their contempt for the values Jesus personally taught and exemplified. Sure, they can conveniently interpret the words of his imperfect followers to support all kinds of moral relativism. But their motivations are clear to anyone in possession of the critical thinking skills they detest.

The kind of voter suppression and election subversion we have witnessed is the inevitable consequence of having an electorate, composed of special interest groups that are each focused, almost exclusively, on their narrow interests. When the right to cast a vote and have it properly counted goes away, most minority rights will disappear as well. The one exception will be the supposed right of the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth to consign the rest of us to conditions of peonage.

It would appear that many, perhaps even most, of the elected representatives in our constitutionally grounded democratic republic are seriously vested in corrupt elections. Their lackadaisical response to the ongoing disenfranchisement of large constituencies is clear evidence of the extent to which they have been compromised. Their reluctance to address campaign finance together with their tolerance for dark money in politics is just one a category of the mounting evidence. And their inability to prioritize, in a way that serves the greatest good, makes it possible for them to pay lip service to important things without actually making any meaningful progress.

Edmond Burke is best known for the famous statement: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” He was also widely regarded as the quintessential conservative. It is unlikely that Burke would recognize what passes for conservatism today. He once wrote concerning a Gentleman of Fortune saying: “He introduced a manufacture, which, though not very considerable, employed the whole town, and in time made it opulent.” Contrast that with the fraudulent conservatism that characterizes the Shareholder Rights Movement.

When a business pays poverty wages, for full time labor, it is offloading expenses and losses to the public treasury. Housing, heating, and nutrition assistance are not without cost to the taxpayers. And it is important to recognize the proximate cause for what appears to be parasitic behavior. The whited sepulchers of today are to be found in the corporate boardrooms and the halls of congress. Milton Freedman wrote, the corporate executives are merely employees of the shareholders. And, as anyone who was born and raised inside the Washington Beltway can tell you, congressional leaders spend most of their time whoring for those same shareholders.

Now that the perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court is gone, we can take a fresh look at their sociopathic notion of corporate personhood. Legal scholars continue to advance the original definition of stare decisis as “the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to precedent.” A more contemporary understanding is informed by the way it has actually been used throughout our integrity challenged court’s history. Today it constitutes a doubling down on prior idiotic decisions in ways that insure our society simply cannot evolve.

The regressive factions at the commanding heights are not conservative. The unrepresentative elected officials are not republican by any common definition of the term. That is, of course, unless you regard the representation of donors over voters to be appropriate in the context of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. When we elect representatives and install judges that set-aside the interests of We the People in favor of they the few, we should certainly not be surprised when they operate well afoul of their oath.