In reading the news today, under the heading of “equity,” we find masturbation taught to first graders, hardcore porn taught to high schoolers, and San Francisco, CA., sliding into lawlessness and chaos. Honestly, I felt my mind trying to explode; yet, life must go on. In several previous posts, I have described how equity is a mask for envy. For example, sexual grooming of the innocent comes from people envious of the innocent. The district attorney in San Francisco is envious and uses his envy to gain power and lord that power over those who elected him.
The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints, in their book of scripture The Doctrine and Covenants, Section 121, verse 39, has an applicable declaration.
“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion” [emphasis mine].
For those interested, “unrighteous dominion” is considered to be oppression, pride, vain ambitions, and a host of other contention-increasing actions designed to stay in “power” where the exercise of authority can be abused. For example, the district attorney and staff in San Francisco were informed by those who elected the DA to power that the crime and the lawlessness in the city were hurting them. The DA and staff are reported to have claimed those raising concerns were racist. The governmental leaders in San Francisco consider themselves as having authority. Yet, they refuse to acknowledge that their “authority” comes from the governed and was granted through the electoral process and can be taken back. Hence the verse quoted is an excellent description of what is being witnessed today at every level of government.
Various sources define morality; in fact, morality has been considered a philosophical debate, and much is written on this topic. For this reason, the definition of morality is as follows:
“Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper. Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.”
I am not here to dictate what is and is not moral between you, your conscience, and your supreme being worshiped. However, I will emphasize that America was founded upon the morals of Judeo-Christian theology, and these morals have been a solid anchor in the chaotic push and pull of beliefs and morals across time. I mention this because that definition of morality opens the doors for people to insist that sexually grooming young children is morally acceptable because they believe that sexual grooming should be universal. Planned Parenthood, GLAAD, and several other groups believe that sexual grooming and stealing the innocence of youth is required because they personally envy children their innocence.
Believe it or not, sex is NEVER free; there will always be consequences. The 1960s sexual revolution has done more harm globally than any other revolution or clash of arms in history, bringing us back to the topic rather forcefully; morality is the only vaccine to envy. But, who decides the morality of a nation, a state, a country, or a city? The electorate as a collective voice selects the morality of that area. The electorate decides the laws through the ballot box in a representative government. In a non-representative government, the king, monarch, dictator, etc., dictate the morality of the population, which is one reason why old countries have histories where immorality was rampant as the people followed the examples of the leaders, not the leader’s words. Want a history lesson in morality and how people copy a leader’s morality, look no further than King Henry VIII of England.
Circling back again to how morality is the vaccine for envy, provided the morals involved in supporting morality are selected carefully and exemplified by leaders. In the discussion on morality, philosophers question if there are absolutes? Absolute right and absolute wrong, or are morals a gray area where time and social pressure keep everything gray? Depending upon your appetite and your ability to control your appetites tends to set your moral convictions.
For example, Playboy and Hustler have made billions of dollars selling sexually explicit content to the masses. Some participate in pornography; others refuse pornography. Those who choose to imbibe in pornography live a fantasy life where no woman will ever be good enough to meet the pictures witnessed and the lurid content from the magazines selling appetite suppression. Both sides of the morality issue will complain they deserve attention and should be free to express their rights. Both are using the same tool, envy, to make their moral stand become a legal standard.
Who wins and who loses? Why? These questions get to the heart of the problem and identify why morality is a vaccine for envy. Morality, where all men (including women) are equal, would see the chains of pornography and set a moral standard to limit the content to adult audiences. But, every 10-year old knows a friend whose dad has a subscription and has seen a Playboy or Hustler magazine. Is this a failure of the law or moral codes; no, it is a failure of parents and parenting. Yet, society will consider this a social problem. The K-12 educators will become involved in peddling worse to your children, all because of curiosity, failed parenting, envy, all of which stem from moral problems and morality breakdowns in social systems.
As a kid, I remember the fierce debates over convenience stores being allowed to sell adult content, video stores carrying adult movies, and the continued fight over how much is too much in an R-rated, PG-13 rated, and G-rated movies. Why were these fights and debates occurring; the lude and loose morality of the 1960s perverted sex into being “free,” and morality took a back seat to legal freedoms without accountability and responsibility. Consider the gargantuan awards against cigarette manufacturers; why were these awards so high, poor moral choices, envy, and a refusal to accept that the daily choice of smoking 5-45 cigarettes is going to cost you your health as a consequence.
Sure, medical professionals peddled smoking as a curative; but they also peddled mercury, heroin, cocaine, and a ton of other chemicals and poisons, and those companies never got in trouble. So why were cigarette manufacturers singled out; envy and a lack of morality where consequences are accepted for personal behaviors. Nobody twisted arms and forced anyone to smoke. Yet, the cigarette manufacturers have been forced to pay for advertising to prevent smoking, smoking cessation classes, and a host of other programs by legal mandate, for the moral failures of people in society.
Is the connection clear? Envy breeds bad case law, which enables poor moral choices without consequences. Except, the consequences for personal choices cannot ever be escaped! Therein lay the issue and the answer. I do not care what moral code you choose to follow, provided that moral code does not infringe upon another person’s rights and liberties; believe who, what, and where you will. Just understand that your moral code comes with consequences that others should never have to pay for.
Equality in the world, since the 1960s, has been a mask for envy. Through the power of envy, people have become discontent, disabled, and disconnected from morality and the consequences of immoral behaviors. America stands on a tipping point where envy is concerned, and if we, the citizens who can understand, cannot persuade, educate, and correct this trend line, disaster looms large! We must recognize that the path of envy, in all its nicer sounding, feel-good imitations, is part of the problem we face! Yes, I believe in liberty, freedom, the inalienable rights of man. But freedom, liberty, and the rights of man are not government benefits to be doled out at the whims of bureaucrats. It is not more government we need when morality is threatened by envy, but less!
© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.
Is this properly honoring and remembering the veterans and their sacrifice? Is this behavior acceptable in your workplace? Why do we allow this behavior from government workers?
Long have I wondered why the second item in the comprehensive inspection is “Quality, Safety, and Value.” When the VA continues to present the bare minimum of quality, disregards patient safety, and due to complexity, offers less value than a broken wrench to a mechanic, but I digress.
If you read any of the comprehensive inspection reports, you will see this is a common and recurring theme at the VA. Some of the medication policies are being followed, but the same problem with drug testing, informed consent, patient follow-up, and quality measuring monitoring always remain a problem. It is almost as if the SAIL learning matrices do not even exist as a quality improvement tool.
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America continues to open its doors to a large group of new immigrants from countries worldwide, but especially from war-torn and ravaged lands. Welcome; I am glad you are here! A :strip_icc():format(webp)/what-is-the-american-dream-quotes-and-history-3306009_final-5b632cfd46e0fb002505f2ca.png)
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The principles of unity are many, but also very few. Unity is all about choice; having a choice is all about freedom. Freedom is all about shouldering the consequences of making choices to become more unified or less unified; simple and complex, easy and difficult. Unity is not a paradox; unity is a learned principle. Consider the young child. Being a child is challenging, learning a language, culture, basic education standards, and growing. The same is true for immigrants. Many come here and are overwhelmed. Like children, simply asking for help becomes a great challenge, and many times that challenge is because immigrants do not realize that support is available and merely requires asking for help. Hence, the responsibility is all on you, not everyone else; this means the consequences for asking or not asking are also all on you; this is freedom.
The principles of unity include understanding, learning, and choosing to plot your own path. No one is going to run your life for you. Choosing to run your own life requires learning, understanding value, and shouldering the consequences of good or ill choices. In America, you can choose to be homeless, and this is perfectly acceptable. You can choose to chase money; acquiring great riches is possible and completely acceptable in America. Acquire those funds legally, and America rewards them greatly. Acquire those funds illegally, and eventually, American Justice will prevail, and those funds will be lost in a very public trial. Again, we see unity combined with choices, leading to coming together under the same standard and enjoying positive consequences or refusing to come together under the standard and enjoying negative consequences.
The principles of responsibility go hand in hand with the principles of unity—many of the principles of unity overlap with responsibility principles. For example, fail to rally under the US Constitution’s standard, break the law, and watch how quickly the consequence leads to being forced to shoulder the responsibility to yield to unify affects you personally with the full weight and scorn of the American people. Do illegal actions, and you may sometimes not get caught and punished. Eventually, all of society will know how deplorable you are, and justice gets served in myriad different ways.
Making America better is not a job that can be neglected, evaded, shirked, forgotten, ignored, or refused. America is all about working together. Work requires sacrifice, learning, and correctly using freedoms to achieve more freedoms. Working together requires a common language; the common language signifies a common bond amongst those striving to achieve freedoms as a symbol of desiring more freedoms. Please, take the best you have, add it to the best America offers, and assimilate into America. Unify with us in a beautiful patchwork quilt of diversity and togetherness.
The Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) reports they are returning to a more regular schedule of release for the inspection reports with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recovering from COVID-19. Congratulations are in order, to the VA, as they begin returning to normal operations and procedures. The reality is that standard operating procedures (SOP) are regularly missing at the VA, this absence causes uncertainty, and forms the crux of this report. A question for the VA-OIG, “How can you assess employee competency without SOPs?” To the VA VISN leaders, “How can your directors and supervisors, conduct employee evaluations without written SOPs?” The short answer is you cannot!
The Marion VAMC VA-OIG report raises a common theme, and this is a reality the VA appears to be incapable of addressing training and two-directional communication. From the hospital director to the patient-facing staff, training always appears as a significant issue in VA operations. Having experienced the training provided by the VA for employees, and as an adult educator, I know the uselessness of the training program and have several suggestions. Perhaps the problem would be best addressed if more evidence was provided of a systemic failure in training employees at the VA.
The VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System in North Las Vegas, in response to a referral from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), was investigated by the VA-OIG after a community healthcare worker was attacked. The VA-OIG findings are appalling, but the reasons for the problem are worse.
The Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans’ Hospital in Columbia, Missouri, and multiple outpatient clinics was recently provided a comprehensive healthcare inspection, and the leadership team provided 14 recommendations in 7 different areas for improvement. While congratulations are in order, for the patient scores, the employee scores, and the overall conditions discovered. Yet, again staff competency, e.g., training and communication, remain critical articles requiring targeted improvement. Is the pattern emerging discernable; in Nevada, an employee is assaulted and training and communication are blamed, comprehensive healthcare inspections are conducted in three different geographic areas and the same causation factors discovered; training and communication are systemically failing at the VA. But, the evidence continues.
It is time for these petulant and puerile excuses to be banished and extinguished. The following are suggestions to beginning to address the problems.
04 October 2016, the VA-OIG released a report on dead veterans after the comprehensive investigation into the Carl T. Hayden VAMC in Phoenix, Arizona. The same event occurred in 2014, at the same hospital, with the same causes and the same conclusions. The core causes for the dead veterans, no written procedures, poor to no training, and reprehensible communication practices. The Phoenix VAMC went out of their way to fire all the employees who reported problems at the Phoenix VAMC before the veterans began dying in 2014, I can only speculate that the same occurred in 2016. Staff was frightened in 2014; they are demoralized in 2020. Nothing has changed at the Carl T. Hayden VAMC in Phoenix, Arizona, after two successive hospital directors, if anything the problems have worsened. The problems worsened because leadership failed to act, failed to write down SOPs, failed to communicate, and failed to train. The hospital directors since 2014 have been appointed from the same pool of candidates who created dead veterans in the first place, and that is a central failure of the VA Secretary and Congressionally elected representatives’ failure to act!
I love words; I was taught from a young age three invaluable lessons:
Consider a term oft used to describe the political left, “Social-Justice Warriors.” Long have I asked my political left-leaning colleagues what this term means, how it applies, and the veracity of the term as a description of societal action. Breaking down the term, we find three definitions taken from Dictionary.com:
Thus, to extrapolate meaning from the definitions, one would conclude a social justice warrior is “a person in society, looking for the social administration of law, who has experience fighting for the proper administration of law.” Yet, the definition from the dictionary for this term is 180-degrees different and is termed derogatory, “a person who expresses or promotes socially progressive views.” Those rioting and looting in the streets got there because a social justice warrior enraged the community on an issue that is racist, one-sided, and emotionally driven. Lest it is forgotten, the term being applied to the people driven by emotion to launch protests that become mob violence is derogatory in nature, critically disrespectful of the person calling themselves a social justice warrior. But, the social justice warrior carries this title as if it were a compliment and a badge of the highest esteem.
A recent attack by a social justice warrior regarded the inability of poor black people to have government-issued photo ID, and that without that photo ID, the poor black person would be disenfranchised in exercising voting rights. My response was that holding any person down by race was racist, and the social just warrior preceded to become unhinged. Let us be clear, anytime a person’s race is the sole reason that person, or group of people, cannot take part in something, is racism, and the person espousing that opinionated garbage is racist.
From that day to this, I have been attacked for not seeing race, not being sensitive to the race of others, and refusing to allow a person’s race to be an excuse for poor performance, bad language, and infantile public and private behavior. I remain unapologetic; I am not a racist! I hold myself to the highest standards publicly and privately as my first obligation to society. Without regard to race, color, creed, etc. I hold others to the same standards. I am willing to teach and remain willing to learn as my second obligation to society.
I quickly learned that if any other race of person employed “Ebonics” they were told to speak properly, but there was a pass for black people. When I pointed out this was racism, I was sent up on charges for being disrespectful to see the Commanding Officer. In the US Army, I was the only white person in my squad in S. Korea. I was never invited to squad parties, social get-togethers, or allowed into training. I asked why I was being excluded and was told it was because the squad leader did not understand white people. The command structure supported the exclusion, and I was left without support as a new soldier in the US Army.
In the name of racial equality, America has been taught since the early 1980s that words create problems, and some words cannot be used by “white people.” This behavior is inherently racist and spreads the problems of race, not improving racial relationships. During President Obama’s reign, America learned that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are racist. Fluffernutter sandwiches are racist. But, this is not so, they are sandwiches, food, and delicious. Yet, through plasticization and a social justice warrior, suddenly, a staple of millions of people is now “off-limits” and cannot be consumed. My local sandwich shop had to stop selling a peanut butter honey spread on bagels as a sandwich option because the owners feared being picketed.
Improving communication is all about knowing and using language succinctly and precisely, and then supporting proper social behaviors through courage and tenacity. There is no reason the grocery store, the restaurant, and other social and community gatherings should be an atmosphere of foul deprecations, excuses for small minds to emotionally lose control, or for adults to imitate the worst childish behaviors. Standards promote freedom, and the US Republic is all about personal freedom through responsibility and accountability for one’s self.
DNC-Consulting 