The Human Condition

Benedict Arnold, one of the most outstanding American generals in the Revolutionary War, is notorious for switching sides during the war and joining the British. Anytime, anywhere, anyone speaks of traitors, the name Benedict Arnold is at the top of the list. But, remember he had distinguished himself as a general and patriot in the American Army at the Battle of Ticonderoga and the Battle of Valcour Island. It was later when he tried to surrender West Point to the British, that his true colors came out. Like Benjamin Franklin, who's illegitimate son had been appointed governor of New Jersey after having stayed with his father in Britain, smooching up to the British. The British used the ultimate insult against Dr. Franklin in appointing his son as Governor. There were many mixed emotions during the Revolutionary War, some still holding loyalties to the British crown, with only about 10% of Americans fighting against the British. As in the Civil War, families split, some supporting the North, some supporting the South, especially in the Indian territories.

Don't confuse notoriety with success. Think of Helen Keller and Madonna, or even Tiger Woods, the richest athlete in history. Woods, a billionaire with mansions and a 150-foot yacht, a private plane, healthy children, beautiful wife, everything the human mind could dream or desire, all just tossed away because of addictions. In a news conference, Reverend Al Sharpton blames Tiger for a lack of black mistresses. Sharpton said, “the pretty black girls are disappointed with his discrimination.” Obviously to Reverend Sharpton, adultery is not a problem.

There is not a writer, director, or producer in Hollywood or anywhere else who could imagine the characters with which we have daily contact through the media. Could any sick, perverted, addicted individual actually design a Nancy Pelosi? A Bill and Hillary Clinton? A Michelle Obama? A Maxine Waters? A Charlie Rangel? An Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, or Louis Farrakhan? Could anyone in Hollywood actually get drunk enough to imagine an Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California? Think of it: a pretentious, gay, bodybuilder waltzing around in a bikini, showing off his muscles, the idol of every homosexual publication actually believing himself smart enough to govern the largest state in the Union.

Most Americans, if applying for a passport at most state and federal license agencies, you must produce a birth certificate. President Obama has spent millions of dollars in the courts fighting against producing such an instrument. On June 27, 2004, the Kenyan Standard Times along with the Associated Press produced a story which read in part, “Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.” This week, a judge in California has instructed the Obama lawyers to produce the Obama birth certificate. So, after much consternation the facts of the matter may soon surface. He either has a birth certificate or does not. He was born in Kenya or not. He is eligible to be president of the United States under the Constitution or not.

Most of America's problems, and most of the world's problems come from a love for money. God only had to say it once, no truer words were ever spoken by God or his creation, for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10). When you analyze the failures of most men and women, it is usually a matter of money and greed. If a man is right with his pocketbook, he is usually right. Prisons are full of people with an unhealthy desire for money. The cause of most divorces is money. The corruption in all politics is a matter of money. The failure of most pastors and churches relates to an unholy relationship with money.

Before the flood, the Noah Covenant, the population of the Earth was about 5 billion. Only 8 human beings were saved. For 120 years, Noah, his sons, and probably some hired help built a great ship (about the size of the Queen Mary) according to the specifications given by God, and by who's ratio specifications ship building is still made. I believe that even after the animals were aboard, Noah probably stood in the great doorway of the ship and begged the people to come aboard and save themselves. Then, as today, they just scoffed. God closed the door and they all died.

After the flood, for 200 years, Noah's family rapidly multiplied, there was a huge population on Earth and great wickedness even to Babel. From this area of the Euphrates, God called Abraham, the first Jew, who traveled 600 miles north to Caanan, a place for him with no forwarding address. Abraham's father Terah, like the rest of the population, was a worshiper of idols. God cleansed Abraham's family from idol worship with Terra's death near Damascus. We are all familiar with the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic Covenant, the 2000 years on the other side of the cross, and now the 2000 years on this side of the cross... The cross, the pivotal point of all history. Christ, our redeemer, through His atonement on that cross has delivered us (believers) from the law which God gave to Moses with which to guide his chosen people, the Jews.

The Bible, is a Jewish book. The rest of us are Gentiles, our only relationship in the Bible is our relationship to the Jew. For the doubters of the Bible, the doubters of God's Word, all you have to do is study the Jew, and remember, in spite of the Human Condition, in spite of global warming or cooling, in spite of greed or wickedness, “The Earth is the Lord's”. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine”(Exodus 19:5) For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven. (Psalms 119:89) It is settled, the answer book is complete, every prophecy, every promise to this minute has been fulfilled and regardless of man's condition, God is still in control. Jesus himself said, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. (John 11:26)

Committee of One

Everyday, as we listen to the news, we wonder how the world can get any crazier. Reverend Al Sharpton gave a news conference in which he expressed despair that Tiger Woods did not show enough diversity in his mistresses. He said, “It is a reflection on beautiful black girls and makes them feel very bad that he did not have a black girl as a mistress.” We learned yesterday that in one year President Obama has spent more tax funds than all 43 previous presidents combined (George Washington through George W. Bush). This morning the featured headline in the local paper, just off the busiest thoroughfare in this city, an 86 year old woman dead in her home and probably had been dead since spring. Even though paid caregivers were in and out of the house each day. A New York City fireman told me that any time a fire was in a government housing project in Manhattan it was routine for them to find closets full of dead people covered in lime. Any time an older person dies in one of these housing projects, the body is put in a closet and covered with lime so whoever can keep cashing the social security and welfare checks that come in.

As a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean era, most of my time is spent inside staying abreast of everything with radios. I refuse to listen to the sewer known as television. Participating on many national talk shows, I stay in contact with disabled veterans and handicapped citizens from around the country. I have appointed myself a committee of one to write letters and bring the plight of the disabled to the attention of the power brokers, locally, state-wide and nationally. I will assure you that none of the people paid handsome salaries to act as agents for the country's largest minority are doing anything. Evidently, the ADA, elected senators, and congressmen and the agencies which they are supposed to regulate and give oversight, are just “paid to sleep”.

Recently, an aide from Senator Burr's office (each Senator and Congressman has 50 assistants) called me about a matter I had brought to the Senator's attention. She said, “We have never heard from you before.” I said, “That is strange because I write you almost everyday about some matter of interest to me.” In a few minutes she called back, they had discovered a filing cabinet full of my correspondence which evidently, had never been read. Senator Burr, being the ranking minority member of the Veterans Committee, had been contacted by me about many problems concerning many veterans.

One of my early telephone contacts in this city was a lady named Catherine Vasalou. Catherine had been born blind. She did have one young brother, Billy, who fell into a pot of hot wash water when her mother was doing the family wash. Young, blind Catherine said she would never forget his begging her to do something for him as her mother went out to the highway trying to flag down some help. She told about the small casket and her weeping parents. Catherine went to the School for the Blind in Raleigh. She told me about her mistreatment there but, more than her personal mistreatment, the mistreatment of the blind students from the segregated Black School for the Blind in Garner. They would bring the black, blind children to the white, blind school to rake leaves and do the yard work. She said, “As bad as the white blind students were treated, the black blind students were treated worse.” I can testify to this because, as a young child, I saw the treatment of the black mental patients at the NC Asylum for the Negro Insane in Goldsboro (now Cherry Hospital).

Catherine graduated from ECU and did graduate work at UNC-CH. She came home to care for her parents until their deaths while working full time at a local hospital as a typist. After her mother's death, Catherine lived alone until her death at age 85 three years ago. I asked Catherine once, “During all your years as a blind citizen in Wilmington, NC, how many times did any church, civic group, state agency, ever do anything for you?” She said, “When my mother died one church brought by some food to the house.” During hurricanes or holidays she was left to live alone and died alone. She told me she had left instructions with the funeral home just to take her body to the cemetery and bury her next to her parents without any services, any obituary...anything. She said, “The world left me alone while alive, I want to be alone in death.”

As chief of a clinic at one US Army hospital, a sergeant under me who had survived WWII and the Korean Conflict, was the EKG technician (he did all the EKG tests and readings). He and his wife had one child, a son which I saw once, who was both deaf and blind. There were no military facilities for this child and the public schools in Alabama did not make arrangements. The child lived very much as an animal. Can we even imagine what it would have been like for Helen Keller, also from Alabama, if her parents had not had the money to furnish specialized care for her deafness and blindness. She describes all this in her 1903 book, an inspiration for any life. When Hitler was burning books in Germany in 1933, her biography was the first book on his list because he so despised disabled people. He put 275,000 disabled German citizens to death. This seems like a small number compared to the 6 million Jews who went to the death chambers, but where were the sane, responsible citizens who saw this inhumanity to man going on? Are we really doing any better in this country?

Veterans know what it is like to be second class citizens, those who have returned disabled...blind, deaf, crippled, mentally disparaged. There will be more from these wars taking place at the present time. Think of young men seeing these spattered remains of their comrades from the brutality of suicide bombers taking place at present. I can tell you without fear of contradiction, that this blind veteran never had one minute of rehabilitation. It took 30 years for me to get the disabled housing allowance wherein I could put a security system in my house. For 30 years, I put cement blocks by my exit doors so in a break in I could try to get some help by phone. Since my windows are all nailed shut I fully realize the disaster of fire since I cannot see fire.

On radio, and at other times, I have offered to give anyone $1,000 who can show that any veteran's group, civic club, church, and I could almost say family member, has done anything for this disabled veteran. I would not even attempt to describe the insults, such as the nurse spitting on me in a University hospital because of her disdain for veterans and military activities. Veterans did not serve for recognition, but this veteran has tried to bring the disparity of the disabled and the handicapped, the largest minority in the population (est. 33%), to the attention of the media and the public.

Christ never appointed a committee, he always called upon a man to do His work, Abraham, Elijah, Paul. Perhaps, as was the case with civil rights and voting rights, attention to the disabled will occur. It was said, in Germany, that when the Nazi's came for the gypsies no one cared. When the Nazi's came for the disabled, no one cared. When they came for the intellectuals, no one cared. When they came for the Jews, no one cared. When they came for the rest, THERE WAS NO ONE TO CARE.

Ballad of Tiger Woodley

(Apologies to Tom Dooley)

Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Poor boy you're bound to lie.

I met her in Las Vegas
And there I cheated on my wife
I met her in Aussie land
And clubbed her with my drive.

Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Poor boy you're bound to lie.

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
If it hadn't been for Florida Sun
I'd've been in Nordic glee

Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Poor boy you're bound to lie.

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
In some lonesome courtroom
A hangin' to a lawyer's fee

Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head Tiger Woodley
Poor boy you're bound to lie...

Mr. Tiger Woodley (Woods), world's highest paid athlete, world's most famous athlete, world's most recognized athlete, a man with a remarkable talent, a beautiful wife, two beautiful children, parents who gave him every opportunity, a country which held him up to their children (especially minority children) as a role model.

Now, we find that Tiger has clay feet like the rest of us mere mortals. Why did not someone advise him that the world is full of Jezebels only too willing to share everything they have in the ultimate conquest, and he was the ultimate conquest. Sampson was very relaxed and happy with his head in Delilah's lap. Little did he recognize how much sight he would gain after he lost his eyes. With the liberal media in this country and their delight with the misfortunes of the gallant, their happiness that every man can demonstrate weakness and sinfulness, that sin of any type is acceptable, that fornication and adultery is as normal as the intake of food and beverage, Tiger will probably escape the perils involved in media ridicule. He may even be more popular than ever because debauchery has always been a competition in popularity.

Simply because his wife showed her effectiveness with a golf club, simply because his children will always look back on this time of parental publicity, simply because his devoted father is probably reeking with despair, simply because there still are some decent children in the world who are disappointed with the failures of adults, I am still waiting to hear one news reporter, in print or audio, radio or television, talk about the sin of adultery.

Tiger could have had any woman in the world he wanted, on any terms. The billionaire athlete could have surrounded himself with people who could have protected him from this embarrassment, if it truly is an embarrassment to him. One thing Tiger should know, when God breathed breath into man he installed a living soul with a conscience, the ability to know right from wrong. It seems to some of us that many in America have lost that conscience because of our spoiled, humanistic, secular belief system. Even in the most remote native villages of the world, where the message of Christianity has not reached, we are told that a system of law exists whereby one male honors the wife and children of another male, where, even without a Supreme Court, these natives know that murder is wrong, lying and cheating are wrong and adultery is wrong.

Don't confuse celebrity with accomplishment, think of Madonna and Helen Keller.