The Theocratic War

America has two wars pending. Both are attacking the very foundation of our governmental system. One is pushing toward a theocracy, while the other is beginning its fight for socialism. This week I will speak on the topic of this Theocratic War.

This nation within the last decades has been in the middle of a faith revival, particularly, Christian, which is absolutely fine. However, our Senators deem it now of national importance to know the faith of a Supreme Court nominee and that is simply unconstitutional. Moreover, we, as citizens, vote for government officials based on their religious/spiritual beliefs or either the absence of those beliefs, and again, it is simply unconstitutional.

If one disagrees with me, just research and read the last paragraph of Article Six of the U.S. Constitution. Yet, let me save one the energy of seeking out the old dusty text, “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Many look around and wonder how we have gotten ourselves to this polarized governmental situation: Democrats (Left), Republicans (Right).

I disagree with many Democrats (mostly the extreme liberals, as I do with the radically conservative Republicans), yet it is not based on the same grounds that most Americans do. According to former U.S. Senator Gray Hart (D-Colo.), many Americans view the Democrats as immoral human beings.

With that particular stereotype pushed on our minds daily, we then begin to believe Left equals Evil, so then Right equals Right; there enter the Republicans.

Many vote Republican for their personally religious beliefs (specifically, Protestant Christian beliefs), instead of voting for the best candidate for the task. That goes for the followers of the Democrats as well. That is the root, now, of the polarization problem our nation faces, religion dictates our politics. Yet again, that is simply unconstitutional; furthermore, within the next decade or two, it will play out before our very eyes.

Because we live in, as the CIA Factbook states, a “Constitution-based federal republic [with] strong democratic tradition,” we live in a stark contradiction.

In a republic citizens’ possess natural rights, which are protected (in our case) by the Bill of Rights, and the minority’s rights are the priority--hence, the filibuster.

In a democracy the majority rules; 51 percent is all that is needed. Additionally, any rights for the minority are civil rights--more or less, just privileges--granted by a condescending majority. The reality of a democracy is it is a dictatorship of the majority.

The majority of the group voting republican for religious reasoning actually push for a majority-rules democracy, while the ones voting democrat want a minority prioritized republic. I find that ironic.


Here is my weekly column for The Parthenon. Firstly, I did not title this column. The Parthenon is not the New York Times--where the columnists have the privilege to write their only titles. However, it is fine; I cannot wait to see next week's follow-up title. Secondly, I want people to praise or condemn my thoughts and words. At least, those people will read and ruminate and digest (to some degree or another). Lastly, if the Managing Editor of The Parthenon, Rasmi, ever reads this blog, I want her to know I hold nothing against her; it is the newspaper process, which I have a problem with, and maybe in a future column, I will write on the commercialism of that process.

A Truth about The Truth

If one believes his or her truth is The Truth it is he or she who judges The Truth of another individual by the sole comprehension of his or her own truth; ergo, another’s truth is The Truth to him or her, yet not to the one’s truth, so is there then an actual The Truth?

That means: if one believes his or her truth is The Truth he or she then holds others to his or her personal standard of his or her truth. Furthermore, one will or can easily forget or just plainly dismiss that his or her truth is not a universal truth but a single belief held solely by that individual and nought more.

One cannot pretend to know the full complexities of The Ultimate Truth because The Truth is not objective nor a particular thing, which one can reach out with his or her ardent or meager hand and touch it by physical fingers and/or understand it by mental capabilities; it is purely relative to one’s own path of life‘s experiences.

When one condemns another for his or her actions (mind they stay within the boundaries of the societal and governmental laws, if deemed justice or equal to the minority as well as the majority) or personal convictions based on his or her interpretation of The Truth and still holds him or her up against one’s personal truth without concerning that individual’s own belief in his or her truth, where then is The Truth?

Try wrapping your mind around this: ruminate how something can never go wrong, never break, never malfunction. The answer would be the most deplorable of answers, if one valued his or her humanity. The only way for everything to go right is for nothing to exist in the first place. For another example, what is veritable love? One would first have to acknowledge that love has a myriad of different forms, intensities, and expressions, so thence veritable love would be the sum of all of the forms, intensities, expressions.

So now, by the acceptance of The Almighty, Enlightening Truth, consequently, one would have to encompass all truths (not only his or hers); hence, the acceptance of all truths would thus prove that there is no The Truth.

To conclude: no one individual and/or group’s truth is beyond another, if there is even a truth, for The Truth exists only when there would be no truth. To be The Truth, one most be all, whereby the embracing of all would no longer be one, so that ascertains there is no one truth, if The Truth exists.

I wrote this to be my first column for this spring term for the Parthenon (campus newspaper); however, it was "too advanced," at least that is what the editor said. I have mixed feelings on the issue of ed-op piece in a newspaper. It is enough to make one question his career plans.

Coexistence—Odds Appear to be Slim

Media consolidation has its ups and downs; big businesses purchase and sell small companies easily, so economically it allows for savings, which benefits the consumer and investor in us all. Nonetheless, media consolidation in television limit’s the diversity of programs, so what we consume through television channels (broadcast and cable) are controlled and selected by fewer and fewer people, which we know fewer and fewer about. Apparently, then we are in the midst of losing localism thus losing the promotion of diversity to the masses, at large.

Moreover, according to an article titled “Consolidation, Budget Cuts Mean Party Must Learn How to Play by New Rules” by Flavia Colgan, a MSNBC-TV Contributor, published November 18, 2005, “Investigative reporting is expensive, but talk is cheap. Very little investigative journalism is done by television news anymore. When is the last time you heard of Fox News Channel breaking a story, for example?” Colgan added, this problem is not isolated to television news; “competition [overall] in the news business has increased dramatically and this has led to a decrease in the ability of news organizations to take risks.” This competition is fueled by appearing the most appealing.

Ted Turner, CNN founder and Turner Enterprises chairman, stated in article, “My Beef with Big Media,” that “the media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies that pipe in the signals of their competitors and the studios that produce most of the programming.” Turner shows how consolidated the television industry has become throughout the past fifteen years by mentioning, “In 1990, the major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox—fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged to 77.5 percent.”

So one can grasp consolidating the television industry, the most consumed media in the United States, is restricting the variety of programs. A poll conducted by Project for Excellence in Journalism found through surveying journalists, editors, and news executives that editors say their staff size has declined over the last three years by forty-three percent. Of national journalists forty-four percent write or produce four stories a week, if not more; only thirty-five percent say they compose three or less. Colgan also states, “When asked if the ‘bottom line’ was hurting news coverage or just changing the way organizations do things, 74 percent of journalists said it was hurting coverage, as did 69 percent of editors.”

Furthermore, in an interview with Newspaper & Technology in June of 2001, Joseph Basara, chief executive officer of WRH (Walter Reist Holding) marketing, discussed the company’s U.S. plans for Ferag. Basara replied to the question about the effects of newspaper consolidation on the manner he carries out business by saying, “Yes, there is some consolidation and fewer individual ownership entities that are in the market.… What we also need to acknowledge is that while newspaper consolidation has occurred in terms of ownership, this has not necessarily translated to operations. While it has some national components to it, the newspaper is still a local product.”

Andrew Carnegie, 19th Century steel industrial giant, believed the reason for a single company to own the whole production process of a particular commodity or product was to protect the customer--from start to finish the sole company has control over the item in return regulating the quality of the product firsthand. So, with Carnegie’s concept of consolidation, it is a good idea, yet we, as consumers, cannot rely fully on a single enterprise to care about our billfolds more than their bottom-line, e.g Enron. However, media consolidation has its ups and downs; nevertheless, I full hearty support diversity (the ability to have a variety of minds and beliefs represented and distributed to the masses) in a single market.

Concluding, consolidation is good, when it does not interfere with the quality and diversity of a particular media outlet, yet the odds appear to be slim that both can successfully coexist.


Media consolidation raises the fear of the Orwell's 1984 Big Brother society, which could be across the horizon--if we, as members of a free society, unlearn the precious able to question, even our authorities. That is, we leave ourselves open for a Jerry Cantrell-like "Degradation Trip."