Isaac Puente - Libertarian Communism

Isaac Puente was a doctor and an anarchist from Spain, who lived in the first half of the twentieth century. He was an advocate of sex education, eugenics, microbiotic food, and naturism amongst other things. He was shot by the Nationalists in 1936.
Here are some quotes from Mr. Puente, taken from Hugh Thomas's epic history of the Spanish Civil War. I'm not sure if he is describing Heaven on earth, or Hell.

'At the end of the violent stage of the revolution, the following will be declared abolished: private property; the state; the principle of authority; and, in consequence, the classes which divide men into exploited and exploiters, oppressors and oppressed. Once wealth is socialized, the producers, already free, will be charged with the direct administration of production and consumption. After the setting up in each locality of the free commune, we will set the new social mechanism on foot. The producers.......will freely decide the form in which they are to be organised. The free commune will take over the previous property of the bourgeoisie, such as food, clothes, work implements, raw materials etc. These......will pass to the producers so they can administer them directly for the benefit of the community. The communes will first provide the maximum of commodities for each inhabitant, ensuring assistance to the ill and education to the young.....all able-bodied men will seek to carry out their voluntary duty to the community in relation to their strength and skill. All those functions will have no executive or bureaucratic character. Apart from those with technical functions.... the remainder will carry out their duties as producers, meeting in sessions at the end of the day to discuss the questions of detail which do not require the approval of the communal assemblies.'

'On the problems of moral idiosyncracy, which love may bring to the society of libertarian communism, the community and the principle of Liberty leave only two roads open........absence. For many illnesses, a change of air is recommended. For the illness of love......a change of commune is recommended. Religion, that purely subjective manifestation, will be recognised in as much as it stays relegated to the sanctuary of the individual conscience, but in no case will it be permitted as a form of public show, nor a moral and intellectual coercion (all churches thus would be closed).'

She Walks In Beauty

By Lord Byron:

She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to the gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwellng place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Child Poverty Action Group - Lobbying For Government

The Child Poverty Action Group was set up by concerned social workers back in 1965. At the time they wrote to the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, explaining 'at least half a million children are in homes where there is hardship due to poverty.' According to the CPAG website there are '3.5 million children in poverty in the UK, 27% of children, more than one in four.'
The problem they say is seven times worse than in 1965! They can't be doing a very good job!
Apparently, during the Blair/Brown years, 1.1 million children were 'lifted' out of poverty by a combination of Feminism in action and Big Government. Many more lone mothers went out to work full time and there were 'real and often significant increases' in benefits.
Unfortunately, this current, rather nasty, government will increase child poverty by 600,000 by 2015. By 2020, they reckon 4.7 million children will be living in poverty.
Amongst CPAG  policies is lobbying for increased higher rate income tax, increased inheritance tax and giving benefits to illegal immigrants.
The CPAG gained huge amounts of state funding during the New Labour years, as the government sought to assimilate the voluntary sector as a branch of government. It receives Lottery funding, of course, and it has had lucrative contracts with HM Revenues and Customs and the Scottish government for 'tax credits publications, advice and training', all of which dwarf the mealy amounts it raises through private donations and legacies.
Basically, whatever its origins, the Child Poverty Action Group is a state funded lobby group calling for higher taxes and greater bureaucracy. For the CPAG, alleviating poverty means more State, which, of course, means more violence against you and me.

How Things Are

John Ball writes;
There are many blessings that our Lord has granted us in our earthly existence - love, friendship, good food, and not least, glimpses of the Divine - his justice, his truth, his eternal and boundless charity towards we sinners.
But all around us, in all ages, there is selfishness and folly. There are many who claim a certain righteousness or godliness for themselves.
It is a trap that I fear to fall into myself.
In these last days folly is all around, as the Apostle Paul wrote in his second letter to Timothy;

'This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves; covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambrea withstood Moses, so these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men,.....'

I Am What I Like

It's easy to look down at the people of twenty first century England and its young people,  brainwashed to cheap slavery, debt and self-indulgence, unable to forge an identity as mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, as workers both paid and free, scratting around for purpose as artists, writers, Thespians of endless mediocrity and engineered radicalism, unable to see form, harmony and meaning beyond appetite and the morality of appetite.
But the nightmare world inhabited by these lost souls is one created by their parents, people who were growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.
Whereas the material comfort that the ordinary English peasant enjoyed back in those  days was not only miraculous, but also welcome, the profusion of goodies profoundly changed the way people thought. Instead of 'make do and mend' the young people of those days simply bought 'off the peg'.
A sexual revolution came about with the invention of the Pill and other effective measures of contraception, in the absence of Aids and with venereal disease being easily cured, people could now consume each other, consumer and consumed.
The whole way of thinking changed from duties and responsibilities to self centred feelings and appetites.
When exchanging personal information young people of those days rarely spoke about what they believed or what they did, but of what they liked.
For the first time there was passively received popular music on a massive scale. Most people stopped playing music and singing and just listened. Yes, there was some great music around, but back in my day, in the fourteenth century, everybody - and I mean everybody - could play music, sing, recite verse. But the young people of the 1960s and 1970s could do none of this.
It was the golden age of television. Every evening half the population would watch the television - either BBC or ITV. Nobody could tell a story anymore, nobody could discuss an idea. They simply picked a story from the television or chose an opinion which they liked (though they certainly hadn't investigated the idea or thought about it).
Ready made meals became readily available. People didn't have to make their own entertainment anymore  -they didn't have to make anything.
The nightmare world of childlessness and isolation that we are living in now, a world only made bearable to many by the massive consumption of drugs, both legal and illegal, is the creation of the first consumer generation, those brought up in the 1960s and 1970s, the first generation whose primary experience was not as a Person, but as a Life, a consumer item to be watched and felt.
It was back then that it began forty or fifty years ago, when the young separated from their parents and learnt to think, 'I am what I like.'

Patrick Kavanagh - In Memory Of My Mother

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane amongst the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily
Going to a second Mass on a summer Sunday -
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget about the cattle -'
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.
And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life -
And I see us meeting at the end of a town
On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shop and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.
O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us - eternally.

A Verse On Sunday

The Gospel According to John, chapter 1, verse 8

'He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness to that Light.'

How easy it is, as I know too well, to start thinking that you yourself are the Light, that somehow you too can do good, that you can save people from their earthly and everlasting perdition, that somehow your kindness, your goodness, can help people, taking for yourself the glory that belongs to God.
Moses made the same mistake on the border of the Promised Land. He began to believe that it was he who had led the Israelites to the land of milk and honey, rather than the Lord.
It is easy to feed our vanity by doing what is righteous in our own eyes, believing we are doing good, taking a misguided course of action, espousing certain political points of view which are in reality the fruit of our prejudices, our vanity and our misunderstanding rather than the will of God.
I am not the Light that shines in the darkness, and neither are you. For all our efforts we can neither help nor save anyone. Jesus Christ is the Light who shines in the darkness. Like John we are to bear witness to the Light, and never forget, as Moses did, that all the glory belongs to God.