Conservative beliefs, which have not evolved from their agrarian tribal roots, are incompatible with a world population of 6.8 billion.
The first 10 months of 2010 tied with the same period in 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperature on record.
Pew Poll Oct. 27, 2010
Views about climate change continue to be sharply divided along party lines. A substantial majority of Democrats (79%) say there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been increasing over the past few decades, and 53% think the earth is warming mostly because of human activity. Among Republicans, only 38% agree the earth is warming and just 16% say warming is caused by humans. Roughly half of Republicans (53%) say there is no solid evidence of warming. These patterns are little changed from a year ago.
World population growth
Modern American conservatism has deep roots in southern agrarian culture. Early American settlers from rural England, Scotland and Wales were leaving farmland that was fully populated. English law gave control of land to the oldest son. Additional sons and daughters had to fend for themselves.
Chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, engage in war-like behavior to gain territory,
Conservatism is, at it's heart, a dark world view centered on tribal control of finite productive resources. An acre of land has a set amount of productivity that will support a set number of people. Rural American conservatism arose from people with the belief in a zero sum game stole land from the indigenous people and enslaved Africans.
Southern conservatives support their actions and beliefs by interpreting the Bible in a way that isn't supported by Jewish or Christian scholarship. Genesis describes agrarian tribal behavior that civic society had moved past before the Christian era began. However, American agrarian conservatives have adopted pre-Christian values that predate the development of cities.
Conservative tribal behavior is exemplified by Genesis 34, the story of Dinah. Rather than bond competing tribes through marriage, the younger sons murdered their perceived opposition.
Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, went out to visit the women of Shechem, where her people had made camp and where her father Jacob had purchased the land where he had pitched his tent. Shechem the son of Hamor, the prince of the land, "seized her and lay with her and humbled her. And his soul was drawn to Dinah ... he loved the maiden and spoke tenderly to her," and Shechem asked his father to obtain Dinah for him, to be his wife.
Hamor came to Jacob and asked for Dinah for his son: "Make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us; and the land shall be open to you," and Shechem offered Jacob and his sons any bride-price they named. But "the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah," saying they would accept the offer if the men of the city agreed to be circumcised.
So the men of Shechem were deceived, and were circumcised; and "on the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came upon the city unawares, and killed all the males. They slew Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went away." And the sons of Jacob plundered whatever was in the city and in the field, "all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses."
"Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, 'You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.' But they said, 'Should he treat our sister as a harlot?'"
Source: Wikipedia & Genesis 34
Conservatives deceitfully frame this story of love between members of different tribes as rape, as a justification for violence.
Going to the Text
Upon hearing the news about his daughter, Jacob is at first silent; then he negotiates Dinah's marriage to Shechem. If Dinah has been raped, Jacob ignores his obligation to protect the women of his household and ignores Dinah's suffering. This seems peculiar--does it suggest that Dinah was not raped? In the Hebrew Scriptures, rape is generally indicated by a cry for help from the woman (showing lack of consent) and violence on the part of the man (indicating a forcible, hostile act).
But the intercourse of Shechem does not fit this pattern. Genesis 34:2 reports that he sees Dinah, takes her (the Hebrew word for "take" is often used for taking a wife), lies with her (a euphemism for sexual intercourse), and shames her (the NRSV combines the last two verbs, rendering "lay with her by force," a reading that should be contested).
Then the text (v. 3) provides three expressions of affection: first it says he bonds with her (the NRSV uses "was drawn" to her, but the word bonds more appropriately represents a word used for marital bonding), then that he loves her, and finally that he speaks tenderly to her. From this description Shechem appears to be a man in love, not a man committing an exploitative act of rape. Rapists feel hostility and hatred toward their victims, not closeness and tenderness.
So why does the text include the verb to shame (or to humble, put down), and why does it record that Jacob's daughter has been "defiled" (34:5; compare 34:13, 27)? Shame, or intense humility, usually relates to failure to live up to societal goals and ideals. Because sexual intercourse should be part of marital bonding, it is shameful for an unmarried woman like Dinah to have sex. The declaration of love and desire for marriage comes after she and Shechem have intercourse.
Photo and quoted text: Glynn Wilson, Locust Fork News
HORSESHOE BEND – If you squint your eyes and listen close, you can almost hear the battle cries here where United States General Andrew Jackson slaughtered the last of the Creek Warriors in 1814. They say the river here ran red with the blood of 800 Creek natives, otherwise known as the Red Stick Indians, who valiantly stood up for the last time to the white men of European descent who invaded this land and committed genocide on a mass scale against the indigenous population.
According to the official history, in the spring of 1814, Jackson and an Army of 3,300 U.S. soldiers attacked 1,000 Upper Creek warriors on the Tallapoosa River. More than 800 Upper Creeks, a.k.a Red Sticks, died defending their homeland.
Never before or since in the history of this country have so many American Indians lost their lives in a single battle.
The 2,040-acre Horseshoe Bend National Park preserves the site of the battle.
Rural southern American conservatism has its roots in racism, genocide and slavery. Modern American conservatism continues the rural southern traditions on a global scale by using global military force to maintain a supply of global labor working for multinational corporations at slave wages.
American conservatives support the world's largest military in the belief that it will extract resources and wealth from the rest of the world to benefit Americans, in particular, white Americans. Allowing Latin Americans into the U.S. divides the spoils. Even the poorest, dirt poor Mississippi farmer believes he is better than African Americans and Latin Americans because he is white.
At its core, conservatism is zero-sum-game racist, militarist, tribalism. Conservative militarism is crushing America with foreign wars, seven hundred military bases globally, and military expenditures that overwhelm all other items in America's discretionary budget.
And we haven't had a major enemy since the Soviet Union fell.
We are fighting phantoms.
We are fighting terror.
We are fighting for the delusion of a southern agrarian society that doesn't exist.
America has descended into madness.
Conservatives, have paranoid delusions that the very real threat of global warming is a global conspiracy. Conservatives have descended into madness.
The idea of dangerous anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW) is promoted by liberals and socialists seeking greater government control over the production and use of energy, which is a substantial percentage of the economy. In economic terms, they would like to 'internalize' the 'externality,' which is to say that they think that producers of emissions should be directly connected to the consequences of those emissions, leading syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer to warn of an impending Environmental Shakedown.[5] The unsuccessful Democratic candidate for President in 2000, Al Gore, won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for claiming that there is a dangerous man-made global warming that threatens the world. Neither he nor his supporters admit that a rapid cooling in temperatures is being observed.
Numerous scientists, especially those outside of university faculties, have been critical of anthropogenic global warming, but their general lack of comparative credentials has led to agreement that, among authorities in scientific disciplines, there is a "scientific consensus" supporting their theory for greater government control. Global warming skeptics question whether there is a financial incentive for supporting research.[6] Global warming skeptics charge that on most college campuses criticism of it is silenced or censored, and provide evidence of scientists skeptical of AGW being repressed.[7][8]
Temperatures have been decreasing rapidly throughout this decade (as of 2009).
2010 is tied with 1998 as the warmest year on record according to NOAA
Agrarian conservative ideas failed thousands of years ago. By the late chapters of Genesis failed agrarian conservative ideas were beginning to be replaced by civilization.
The story of Joseph in Genesis 37 shows the path from agrarian zero sum game violence towards civilization. Joseph, like Dinah is turned on by his violent conservative, jealous and greedy brothers.
But Joseph thrives under adversity because he rejects the zero sum game thinking of his conservative brothers. He outsmarts his adversaries and works with the Pharaoh for the common good.
Joseph forecasts a severe drought.
Joseph plans for the adversity that the the coming drought will bring and saves the people of both Egypt and Israel.
One day, when Joseph was seventeen,[6] his brothers plotted to kill him. But Reuben, the eldest brother, advised them to throw Joseph into a pit, intending to rescue him later.[7] And so the brothers stripped Joseph of the coat of many colours and threw him into the pit. A caravan of Ishmaelites passed by, and Judah, another of the brothers, suggested that they sell Joseph to the merchants. Some Midianites were passing by and took Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver and they took him to Egypt.[8] When Reuben came back to the pit he found Joseph gone. The brothers dipped Joseph's coat in the blood of a goat and showed it to Jacob, who mourned for Joseph, believing him dead.[9] The Midianites (or Ishmaelites, at 39:1) sold Joseph to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard.[10]
Joseph gave orders to his servants to fill their sacks with wheat: illuminated Bible by Raphaël de Mercatelli, Ghent, late 15th century
After Joseph was in prison for two more years, Pharaoh had two dreams which disturbed him. He dreamt of seven lean cows which rose out of the river and devoured seven fat cows; and, of seven withered ears of grain which devoured seven fat ears. Pharaoh's wise men were unable to interpret these dreams, but the chief cup bearer remembered Joseph and spoke of his skill to Pharaoh. Joseph was called for, and interpreted the dreams as foretelling that seven years of abundance would be followed by seven years of famine, and advised Pharaoh to store surplus grain during the years of abundance. Before Joseph was 30 years old, Pharaoh made him viceroy over Egypt,[18] renamed him Zaphnath-Paaneah and married him to Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On.[19] Joseph had two sons with Asenath, Manasseh and Ephraim,[20] and Egypt became prosperous under his care.
The years of famine arrived, and people came from the surrounding lands to Egypt to buy grain.[21] Among those who came were ten of Joseph's eleven brothers, the youngest, Benjamin, remaining with their father Jacob in Canaan.[22] Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. Joseph received them roughly, accused them of being spies, sent them back to their father and, keeping Simeon as hostage[23], demanded that they return with Benjamin. And so the brothers returned to Jacob in Canaan, with Reuben lamenting that they had not listened to him and spared the life of their brother Joseph.[24]
For deeper background please read Genius at Wrok's history lesson (that I lost the link to). That wonderful diary was a prequel to this diary.