Is Melting Pot a Misnomer?

What 69 years of the socialist melting pot looks like.

The Coca-Cola Superbowl commercial this year cranked up a lot of conservatives who claim that it is divisive and some sort of evil liberal plot to promote communism through soft drink commercials.

I didn't get that from it at all. I saw it as an affirmation of America as the melting pot. Remember, the song returned to English at the end as all those languages once again became melded into one. The English language and especially American English is the sum of many languages.

Don't believe me?  Sit down to supper.  Are you having jambalaya, barbecue, burritos or pizza?  Maybe you'll schlep down to the deli for a bagel. You could sit out on the patio and play your banjo, eat a banana or dip some tortilla chips in guacamole made with fresh avocado. Maybe eat a frankfurter or polish sausage. English borrows its vocabulary from the best of every other language there is. I think what we should see from this commercial is not that people come to this country speaking other languages, but that they all contribute to the beauty that is the American language.

Coke's behind-the-scenes video points out that, though we come from many countries with many different languages, we become one country out of all that. Rather than seeing our differences in that brief bit of film, why is it that we are not seeing the things that make us one.

It's little wonder we are called racists so often. There are racists among us as conservatives, though by no means are all racists conservatives. The liberal racism, anti-semitism and cultural paternalism is no lest pernicious.  It is time that Christians and conservatives seize the narrative and interpretation of things like this Coke commercial.  While it may be true that liberals try to make a point and use things like this to damn conservatism as a racist philosophy, it does not follow that these things are inherently racist in and of themselves.

Diversity is not a bad thing. If we as conservatives embraced diversity and made it an essential part of our own narrative, we would defang those leftists who treat people from diverse backgrounds as "groups".  As a conservative, I embrace our differences and believe we should lift up people of all backgrounds. We should point out what we have gained from every single culture we have absorbed into the American stew. I think melting pot isn't a particularly good metaphor.  A melting part makes a homogeneous liquid of everything put into it - everything the same everywhere.  That's a Communist idea.

The reason I put a picture of Moscow at the top of the page is to show what happens when Marxist socialism makes everything "fair" for all people. It created a melting pot that turned the very city of Moscow, once a colorful vibrant city into a bland, smoky gray and dull misery. We do not want that. Free market capitalism doesn't do that. America has never done that before except in places like Detroit where the socialist, central-planning experiment has been conducted with vigor. The consequences are obvious to anyone who looks hard at the historical evidence.

Freedom of opportunity, freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the right to self-defense have allowed us to become a vast stew (note I did NOT say melting pot). We have chunks of this and that and flavors that mingle throughout the broth. We are a banana split, not a milkshake. We are a five course meal, not a smoothie. The conservative ideal that raises the right of the individual human being to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness over everything else can be seen in that Coke commercial.

Let us not let the liberality of the framers of the Constitution be relabeled again. What was liberal in 1776 is now the ideals of those labeled "conservative".  We have seen a shift over 200 years of the opposition as well.  Those who supported government by the elite, central planning and rule by the powerful were once conservatives and sided with the British during the revolution. These same elitist; the same people who once defended the divine rights of kings have simply redefined the nobility as the hereditary smart people. They have appropriated Darwin's "survival of the fittest" to justify the rule of the nation's elite families that for generation after generation attended Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton and went on to become senators, congressmen and presidents.

They have toyed with idea of eugenics to weed out the lower classes, then with Marxism as a tool to pacify the ignorant masses so they would not revolt again as they did in 1776 and endanger the preeminence of the new nobility that the liberal chattering class have fancied themselves to be. They've used Planned Parenthood as a tool to reduce the number of black people and poor people in America through the promotion of abortion generating a death toll of unborn children of more than 57 million. They've used a welfare system that's rigged to discourage the poor from rising above their station where they might make trouble.

They've pounded the middle class with taxation and regulation because the middle class make a disproportionate amount of trouble for our would-be overlords. The don't want to ever see the middle class elect another Reagan as president - someone who threatens change that would derail the steady march of socialism and give hope to the American people again. So they substitute the hope of bread and circuses today for the hope of a better future tomorrow. For the restoration of traditional American values, they substitute change that undermines our lively free-market capitalist economy and turns it into a dismal, over-regulated gradual and seemingly inevitable slide toward socialism.

These are not toy boats. These are full-sized fishing boats.
The Soviet government managed to dry up an entire sea.
That's what a centrally-planned economy will do for you.
Amazingly, we do not seem to be able to learn from this.

Sometimes our fans are our worst enemies where American bedrock conservatism is concerned. The racists, the conspiracy theorists, the paranoid and the ignorant cling to our flanks and weigh us down. We should not fear to shake them off by speaking truth to them. We need only one rule to give us the power to take back our society. It is a golden one and if we practiced that one rule above all others, we would be irresistible. We could take back our country; put it back on the right track.

Sadly, I think it may take the Second Coming to accomplish that. I am not discouraged by this. On the contrary, the more people who come to understand and embrace, freedom, diversity, opportunity and honor, the more fun heaven and the New Earth will be.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King © 2014

Christ and the Collective

by Tom King

One may become a member of the Body of Christ with almost embarrassing ease.  It requires but one act and one small symbolic ritual.  The act required is repentance.  Repentance is not in any sense some sort of self-flagellation. It is not a trip to spiritual boot camp nor even 40 days in the wilderness, although that may be part of your spiritual journey at some point.  We need to be careful not to postpone taking up membership in Christ’s church in order to perform some great work of contrition or some great ritual of joining.  Joining the Body of Christ differs fundamentally from joining the Masonic lodge or the Communist party.  The Body of Christ is not in any sense a collective.

In the Body, we are members, not subjects.  We are, if you accept the idea that we are all created beings, already children of God and called according to His purpose.  We are organs of the Body of Christ, not all copies of one thing.  We are not called to sign up to join as soldiers. We are not called to be trained to sublimate ourselves to some collective state and be turned into another  identical egg in a stack of boxes of eggs all destined to be scrambled in service to the aims of the chef. We simply assume the place in the body that we were created to occupy.  It is not so much a process of molding so much as it is a process of restoration.

 C.S. Lewis* argued that “true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective”.  He compares membership in the Body of Christ to the structure of a family.  A family is made up of unique individuals.  They are not units of “homogeneous classes”.  You cannot interchange one for another.  If grandpa were to die, you couldn’t replace him with a Labrador retriever.  Grandpa has one role in the family. The family dog has another.  Brothers can’t be swapped for sisters as though they were all just “children” with identical functions.  You can’t even swap one brother for another.  All members of the family are unique; almost a species unto themselves.

We instinctively recognize the family structure as the “way things ought to be” – the ideal way to organize human beings.  Look at the myths and stories we tell ourselves.  The best ones are always about groups in which each individual is a separate, unique, but essential part of the whole.  The Wind in the Willows unites a Badger, a Mole and a Water Rat.  Star Wars unites a princess, a Jedi-in-training, a pirate, a stuffy robot, his comical sidekick, a teacher and a “walking carpet” that communicates by howling.  Every member of the Dirty Dozen has his own unique function.  Even Christ chose as his disciples, not identical acolytes, but an incredibly diverse band of fishermen, fanatics, theologians, tax collectors and accountants.  In none of the stories, that so appeal to us, does any member sublimate him or herself to the collective.  They simply work together in service to a common goal.  Each has his own part to play. Not one could be easily replaced.  None are members of a class. If you remove one member, as Lewis puts it, “You have not simply reduced the family in number; you have inflicted an injury on its structure.”

The Body of Christ is a unity of individuals.  This idea of the unique individual as part of a motley crew of rugged individualists is enshrined in the US Constitution and in Scripture as the model for all human endeavours.  We are not designed to be trained to robotic sameness, pumped full of ideology all spouting the same talking points and shoved into whatever box the collective deems appropriate for us. We are not part of a class that can be treated as though it were a chunk of cheese or a block of wood.  We are not blacks, Hispanics, conservatives, “the” poor, “the” rich or the ruling class. The central planners would put an end to individualism for individualism is seen as a threat to progress.  Individuals make for too many pieces on the chess board to push around.

By progress, the great leaders of our day mean the evolution of the people of this world into a vast homogeneous soup. The collective is a soup in which every man, woman and child is a bit of the broth which can be seasoned, stirred and heated into whatever flavor the planners happen to favor this week.  Individualism is anathema to the collectivist.  

The very existence of the solitary, independent-thinking individual is a threat to the collectivist ambition.  That is why membership in collectives requires extensive prerequisites.  There must be relentless training to subdue any tendency to think independently. Art, music and writing are encouraged, but only such art, music and writings which reflect the talking points of the collective.  To remain a member of the collective, one must perform frequent ritual obeisance to the collective throughout his life. The almost comic displays of “patriotism” and devotion to the great leader that one sees in places like North Korea are not an aberration, but are rather the logical conclusion of the collectivist vision.  

Where Christian faith is all about faith and trust and being secure as to one’s place in the universe, one is never really secure as a member of a collective. Someone is always looking over your shoulder, searching for telltale signs of individualism that must be rooted out.  The threat of being cast out or punished by the collective for unorthodoxy is always there hanging over your head.

The only ritual required to join the Body of Christ is baptism.  It is a once for all ceremony. It is a public declaration that I am unclean and would be washed and made new by Christ. It is submission, not to a denomination, a particular church group or even to a set of doctrines, but to Almighty God Himself and no other.  Anyone who says differently is organizing a collective with himself and not God as its head.

Christ did not die for a society, a political party or for a nation-state, nor even for a church.  He died for each individual soul, whether that soul chooses to accept the gift or not. To the secular-collectivists, communists, progressives, socialists and statists, Christianity would have to seem like an almost militant assertion of individuality.  To defeat this pernicious movement toward uncontrollable individual liberty, the collectivists must accuse the Body of Christ of their own sin, that of suppressing individuality.

In this the collectivists are having some success, because without experiencing it for oneself, it is easy to misunderstand what it means to be a “servant” of God.  Christianity must seem “maddeningly ambiguous” C.S. Lewis pointed out.*  Christian faith seems to come out against our own natural individualism in that the practice of that faith requires that we abandon our own “natural” will to God. The Apostle Paul described the natural will as doing what you do not want to do because you are compelled to do it by your old nature.  

What the secular-collectivists do not and cannot comprehend unless they experience a relationship with God themselves, is that, in exchange for our giving of our old “self” to Him, God cleans the old self, repairs the damage, polishes it up and gives it back to us.  We then are true individuals as we were meant to be; free from all the old urges, compulsions, terrors and cravings that living in a corrupt world had placed upon us and once used to control us. We become, in Christ, new people who can freely choose to do what is right because they want to and because they are no longer bound by fear, no longer deluded by old programming and no longer weak and able to be manipulated.  

To the leaders of the collective, the existence of such people must be terrifying indeed. 

© 2013 Tom King – Puyallup, WA

*From “Weight of Glory” by CS Lewis.

Whose Faith is a Joke?

Is Atheism the True Path to Peace?

© 2011 By Tom King

Examining the elephant of religion!


There's a video on Youtube that my liberal and atheist friends like to send me on occasion when I get too “religious” on them. It's an intellectual argument in favor of being disrespectful to the idiots that practice religion. The snippy little Englishman who delivers this pithy little diatribe has earned a devoted following among snippy little liberals who love to show off how smart they are for rejecting the faith of their fathers and how stupid you are for falling for the whole fraud.

According to the gentleman* in the video (and yes I watched it to the bitter end), faith is the cause of all the troubles in the world. He also suggests that a proper acceptance of atheism would end all the troubles of the world. Let's examine that.

Okay, I will give him that religious symbols ahave been pasted on the shields and bucklers of countless armies throughout history. So what? People stick up eagles on poles and seals and flags as symbols of all sorts of evil empires. Does that mean that eagles are inherantly evil, merely because people use them as symbols of their evil enterprises?

Religious motives have been claimed by despots and despoilers time and again throughout history. Claiming a religious purpose does not make that purpose religious, any more than claiming to be a representative of “true Islam” while blowing yourself up means that you were doing it on behalf of all your fellow Muslims. Terrorists seldom ask for a vote from their fellow faithful before blasting themselves and some farmer's market to smithereens. Claiming you represent something means little or nothing. Madmen do it all the time.

I find the claim that atheism induces peace to be a bit far-fetched. For instance, can anyone remember what was the official religion of the guys who had nukes pointed at every civilized country in the world and whose leader once pounded his shoe on a desk at the UN and threatened to "bury" us all. A little hint. He was an atheist! No believer in religion him. In fact, the USSR was “officially” atheist. They were also not shy about funding terrorism, revolution and murder – officially. Their leaders murdered tens of millions of their own citizens. Stalin and Mao alone were responsible for a 20th century communist death toll exceeding 100 million human beings. That doesn't even include the peripheral slaughter in communist inspired revolutions worldwide.

And does anyone remember the religion of the folks who held that “peaceful” atheist power in check for 4 decades and finally induced it to stand down its hair-trigger missiles and tear down "that wall"?  I'll just tell you. It was Christians living in a country that allows for the free exercise of all religions including atheism, led by a devoutly religious president. That faith was behind our firm resolve not to attack and conquer an enemy, even one that had openly promised to destroy us as the Soviet Union did.

And isn't it strange that Christianity tolerates atheism, while atheism does not tolerate Christianity – a least not in officially 'atheist' countries.

And read your history. The despots that led virtually every tyrannical nation in history never bothered to actually practice the religion they espoused. It was used as a means to an end. Folk like France's Cardinal Richelieu never believed in God for a moment or they would have never behaved the way they did. Richelieu plundered France, plotted intrigue, assassinations and took bribes. He had mistresses (he was supposed to be celibate), his own private goon squad and his own private castle. He dripped gold and he was no more a Christian than Beelzebub.

And lest you think atheism or "nonreligion" is inherantly good, please remember what happened in France when they tossed off the shackles of "religion". The guillotine spilled rivers of blood in the streets. So much for the whole "peaceful atheism" theory. Oh, and by the way, France wasn't throwing off a faith in scripture or the Judeo-Christian God. The church at the time didn't allow the faithful to look at scripture for themselves anyway. What the French were “throwing off” was an impossibly corrupt brand of Roman Catholicism whose leaders in France were practicing atheists for all intents and purposes with no real fear of God whatsoever.

And if you are going to protest that Communism or the French Revolution was a misuse or corruption of atheism, I would ask you to remember that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. Christianity gets misused all the time.

Despite its occasional misuse, Christianity's influence, I maintain, is a positive influence in the world. After all, it was Christian people who induced their governments to be merciful to the vanquished when we conquered Japan, Germany and Italy, despite the horrors they had inflicted on the world. And time after time, it has been Christians at large, horrified by what governments have done in their name, who come in afterward to clean up the mess, bind up the wounds and heal the injured.

The golden rule as taught by Jesus and by someone in virtually every corner of the globe in some form or other, has reduced the level of violence and evil in this world. The guiding principle behind all faith, stands like a great dike holding back the flood waters of evil. Does it get swamped sometimes? Yup! Does it spring leaks? Man is fallable. But faith struggles unrelentingly against evil, even evil that springs up within its own ranks

That's why Christians react with horror to the David Koreshes**, the Jim Joneses and other phony, power-mad lunatics that seek to use religion as a tool to lord over their fellow man. But I tell you this. Those whose relationship is not with "religion", but with God Himself are not fooled. Those who look for a human being to follow are inevitably led to destruction - often literally.

So, I politely disagree with the guy in the “Your Faith Is a Joke” video. I've heard it all before and it doesn't wash. He knows nothing of faith. He is like one of the blind men and the elephant in the Kipling poem. He has formed his whole opinion from the fact that as far as the religious elephant is concerned, this snippy little blind man has managed to position himself so that his hand is shoved up what the Church Lady would call the elephant's "naughty parts". And from this one aspect of the religious elephant, he forms his whole opinion of faith. And faith is not even the elephant at all, but what the elephant of religion seeks to discover. Faith is what feeds religion; what gives religion its reason to exist. Religion, like the elephant, without the nourishment of faith is dead! And that food is only available directly from the hand of God and not from any human being or human power.

There's a fine distinction between religion and God. I know God and have a relationship with Him. I practice religion***.  Religion is an organizational structure that like-minded believers create for themselves - a government if you will, that helps the faithful manage their shared business. To say that "religion" is bad is to say that "government" is bad. They are one and the same thing, just organized for different purposes. I maintain that big religion is every bit as unhealthy as big government or big corporations or any too-large, power-wielding entity. The temptation to corruption is too great for those who run the show as history tirelessly demonstrates.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King
*  I do not use this man's name here because I don't think he deserves the publicity and I refuse to contribute to his self-marketing campaign or attempt to establish himself as a credible spokesman for any philosophy.
** The members of the church I attend every week recognized the evil purpose within Vernon Howell, the man who later took the name David Koresh. We cast him out of the church and warned others about him. We got bomb threats during the Waco standoff simply because he had once been among us. He did not represent us. We did not teach him to be as he was. He simply passed through our midst and attempted to use us to gather followers. We flatly rejected him and the evil work he was doing, but even so, later, some people still attempted to tar us with the same brush they used to condemn Koresh.


*** A lot of folk do it backward. They know religion and practice God, an entirely ineffective method for making you a better man or woman.