Chapter Twelve: Angry Gods

The Spaniards now devoted themselves to building Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. On a plain half a league from Quiahuitztlan (qwee-ah-weets-tlan), a fort was erected with high wooden walls and watchtowers, followed by a church, market place, arsenals, barracks, and officers’ quarters.

Cortez himself was the first to work, digging trenches and hauling foundation stones. Cajoling his officers to join him, they all set to work, as did all the soldiers at whatever task they could do ? making bricks, nails, and lumber, working the lime kilns ? while over a thousand Totonacs labored with them. Within less than three weeks it was habitable enough for the colony to be formally founded (1).

A few days after "Villa Rica" had been established, a delegation of Mesheeka nobles arrived, led by a military commander named Motelchiuh (mo-tell’-chee-you), and including two of Montezuma’s nephews. Motelchiuh grandly presented Cortez with the gilded helmet requested by Tendile at the sand encampment of San Juan de Ulua. It was now filled with gold dust ? as Cortez had requested.

When the government "fines" you for not buying health insurance, is it, in fact, a fine, a tax or government extortion?

The biggest U.S. banks have been "fined" something in the neighborhood of $125 billion (yes, billion) over the past five years, without anyone in the banks or the banks themselves charged or convicted of criminal wrongdoing. How can that be?

Countless individuals have had their property (automobiles, cash and bank accounts) seized by state, local and federal law enforcement officials, including the IRS, without being convicted of wrongdoing. How can that be?

The distinction between a tax, a fine and government extortion is not trivial, particularly when fines are running into the tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue for the government.

The  basic and clear provisions of the Constitution's Article I and the 4th and 5th Amendments are violated on a daily basis by all too many ignorant or corrupt law enforcement officials, and upheld all too often by judges who think their own opinions trump the Constitution.  How can we put an end to this?

Envy is passive greed. It is also the result of a particular way of thinking of yourself.

Greed as it is commonly used refers to an "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions." Of course there can be a beneficial effect to a desire for more, when it is channeled through the free market system, where in order to get more yourself, you have to create value for others - as Milton Friedman so brilliantly explains here.

Envy is an expression of that same "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions," but with a difference: the envious person does not believe that he has the ability to earn the things that he desires. Which leaves only one alternative: he must covet what others have attained for themselves.  For very good reason does the 10^th Commandment condemn it.

Greed and envy are the negative qualities that you can fall into when you allow your Rat Brain to guide you - following your impulses and automatic responses without regard to your consciously chosen principles, values, and priorities.

The dysfunctional nature of greed and envy have one thing in common: a fixed trait mindset.

On our hike through the Garden of the Gods at the TTP Summer Rendezvous last August, TTPer Ed Sanders gave me a good-natured ribbing about my mentioning in some previous article that I loved to celebrate things by drinking good red wine in a Reidel crystal glass.

Ed and his wife Susan, it turns out, are the US distributors for Reidel's competitor, WineStar.  "Our hand-blown unleaded crystal leaves Reidel in the dust, Jack," Ed told me.  "If you drink a favorite red from our Diamond Cru instead, you'll be blown away by the difference."

Ed kindly offered to send me a sample to prove it.  There was a shipping delay and it just arrived.  Okay, I asked myself, I've got the glass - what do I celebrate? 

Well, tonight, October 12, there is celebration to savor.  Not only is it time to toast the 515^th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America, but of the world's greatest buffoon winning the world's most tawdry and degraded award.

Whatever glass you have, WineStar or not, fill it full and raise it to Algore's Nobel.  You can be quite sure that one person who will not is Hillary Clinton. 

Shortly after Bernal resumed his post as look-out over the sandy dunes of the camp, he spotted five native men walking on the beach. With smiles and bows they approached, and their gestures made it clear they wanted to be taken into the camp. Bernal sent a messenger to bring Do񡠍arina and Aguilar to the tent of Captain Cortez, while Bernal took the five men to the Captain himself.

Bernal had never seen such men. While they cut their hair and wore their loincloths differently than the Mesheeka, it was their lip plugs that distinguished them. They all had a large hole in their lower lips, filled with heavy stone disks of turquoise or covered with thin sheets of gold ? so heavy that they pulled the lip down over the chin exposing the teeth and lower gums. Their ears lobes were also pierced with large holes also filled with turquoise or gold-covered stone disks ? but it was the hideous lip plugs that repelled Bernal.

"Lope Luzio, Lope Luzio!" they cried out as they bowed deeply to Cortez while rubbing dirt on their foreheads as a sign of supplication and respect.

Blueberries are healthier than bread, so why don't people eat more blueberries and less bread?

Perhaps it's because blueberries cost roughly 15 times more than bread (depending on the time of year) for the same number of calories. Blueberries are a labor-intensive crop and are costly to harvest (as are many healthy fruits and nuts), unlike wheat and corn.

There are those who want to increase the minimum wage, and there are those who want to further restrict the use of foreign, seasonal farmworkers. Both fail to think clearly about the consequences of such actions.

Let's do some clear thinking for them.

I was, of course, hoping to write a celebratory column today. We are in for some trouble over the next four years, and each of us should be aware of the reality facing us, and accepting of the circumstances. By accepting I do not mean that we like it, or that we make believe that it's just fine. I simply mean that the truth is the truth, and we all function better when we accept this fact of life.

In every area of life, there are things we have control over or influence on, and many more things that we do not. I have no control over what a debate moderator does, but I can ridicule the obvious bias; I have no control over how other people vote, but I can know my principles, speak my mind, and seek to build bridges of influence rather than repelling people with ad hominem attacks.

Today, so that we can remember our principles, and in so doing become stronger, more resilient, and more effective in maintaining our republic over time, I want to identify several of the principles that Obama has wrong, and that we have right.