“People living in capitalist countries, even if less than perfectly free, don’t think about it. As customers, they place orders with their suppliers. As producers, they satisfy the orders of their customers. Consumers are the bosses, producers are at their service. And producers happily accept this role because they want money to, in their turn, order goods as consumers on markets. A free rather than less free economy naturally organizes itself around this principle because we produce in order to consume and not the other way around. For Christmas, you gave orders to your suppliers, not the other way around. A producer could not order you to buy from him. Only public producers — governments or suppliers backed by governments — can do this.” (12/24/24)
“When I think about biblical stories, I sometimes have to remind myself — and try to emphasize in my writing — that we are expected to believe that these are stories about real people, who, when they are not appearing as characters in Scripture, have the usual problems real people have …. for every wise man who came journeying from the east, there probably was a wife or a boss or a brother-in-law back home who suspected that he was not so wise, after all, that he was off on some damned fool’s errand with his wise-guy friends, taking a long and no doubt expensive trip to some faraway land in order to observe — and financially support — events of no obvious immediate consequence to him or his family or his people or his community.” (12/25/24)
“Christmas is the season of joy, gatherings, and gift-giving. Streets sparkle with festive lights, and the spirit of celebration fills the air. Yet amid the cheer, there are always a few Grinches and Scrooges in every family — those who grumble about the neighbors or lament about how things were ‘better’ in the past. In truth, we are living better today than even Louis XIV, the infamous Sun King of the French Empire. … Modern advancements have dramatically transformed our world. The global GDP per capita, the average out per person, since the 1800s has exponentially grown. Our living standards have improved not threefold, not tenfold, but at an unimaginable rate.” (12/24/24)
“Last week I wrote about how Claude Fights Back. A common genre of response complained that the alignment community could start a panic about the experiment’s results regardless of what they were. If an AI fights back against attempts to turn it evil, then it’s capable of fighting humans. If it doesn’t fight back against attempts to turn it evil, then it’s easily turned evil. It’s heads-I-win, tails-you-lose.” (12/24/24)
“In 1989, US forces invaded, conquered, and occupied Panama, replacing its pet dictator, Manuel Noriega with a new regime. Then-president George H.W. Bush’s justifications for the invasion included protecting US citizens in Panama and prosecuting the ill-conceived and ill-fated US war on drugs. The more likely reason is that Noriega, after many years of obedient service to his US masters, had increasingly become his own man (not necessarily in good ways, but that wasn’t the issue — he was plenty bad before, too). In 2025, president-elect Donald Trump proposes that the US regime regain control of the Panama Canal, ceded to Panama in 1999 pursuant to a 1977 treaty proposed by then-president Jimmy Carter and ratified by the US Senate. Implementing Trump’s proposal would likely require another invasion, another conquest, another occupation, and imposition of another regime change.” (12/24/24)
“Though Iraq War I had allegedly been fought to protect the Saudi monarchy, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had been enraged at the king’s rejection of their offer to liberate Kuwait from Iraq in favor of his allowing the Americans to station their mostly white, Christian combat forces on holy Arabian soil to do so. So as ‘payback,’ the U.S. would back their Arab allies from the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s in another war, this time in Europe. President Clinton wrote that ‘standing up for the Bosnians had another benefit to the United States: it would demonstrate to Muslims the world over that the United States cared about them, respected Islam, and would support them if they rejected terror and embraced the possibilities of peace and reconciliation.’ This goes to show Clinton’s vastly displaced priorities and hypocrisy.” (12/24/24)
“The risk of migrant terrorism is low, immigrants generally have lower crime rates than natives, and migration restrictions are both unjust and less effective than other strategies for reducing violence.” (12/24/24)
“In ancient Greece, those who sought counsel from the Oracle at Delphi passed under an arch that bore the inscription, ‘Know thyself.’ Presumably, those who did not know themselves would be ill-equipped to hear the truth. Yet unanswered questions reverberate down through the ages: what form does such self-knowledge take, how are we to gain it, and what difference will it make if we do? Knowing yourself could mean many things. Knowing your strengths and your limits. Knowing that you are both mortal and sinful. Knowing that you are an embodied creature with a soul. Knowing that you are not an island. Or knowing that, in knowing yourself, you glimpse reality itself, the universe.” (12/24/24)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land. Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later? What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given?” (12/23/24)
