Thursday, February 11, 2010

What is Really Causing the Auto Recalls? Maybe it wasn't Toyota's Fault?

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Now that number one auto seller Toyota and the company with the highest consumer ratings has suffered a series of recalls on nine different models we see the price one does pay to be first. But wait a minute, why are there right now 45 different cars being recalled for a variety of reasons?



Could it be that it may not be just the fault of the auto companies? For many years I have been involved in the study of frequencies and the effect on people and the electrical devices we have come to depend upon.



Nearly 25 years ago I got involved with the Monroe Institute and the work Robert Monroe, a former audio engineer at CBS, was doing to open the doors to the use of energy frequencies to heal people. In addition his research was followed closely by the Defense Department as he explored ways to leave the physical body and project to other locations, a technique the military and intelligence agencies pursued called remote viewing. More will be written on this in a later article.



Much earlier I had studied the work of Dr. Royal Rife from the Midwest.



The following account is posted on the Minnesota Wellness Directory website.

Dr Royal Rife was probably one of the most brilliant (not to mention persistent) scientists ever to have walked upon this planet. He won 14 awards from the government for his research and was given an honorary medical degree from the University of Heidleberg.

When the technology didn't exist, Rife invented it. Financed by millionaires like Henry Timken, Rife invented the Universal Microscope with 5,682 parts. It was a miraculous machine that could see things smaller than waves of light (which was then and is still today thought to be impossible). Rife was the first to see a live virus. Today's electron microscopes see viruses, but they destroy them in the process through the bombardment of electrons.



While examining bacteria and viruses, Rife noticed that each one gave off a distinct light (or color) pattern. (In the late sixties it was discovered that every living cell actually gives off light and the healthier the cell the healthier the light; conversely the sicker the cell the weaker the light. But this research by Rife was done in the twenties using technology Rife himself invented.) So Rife began to experiment with instruments he invented that oscillated at the frequencies he'd determined from the organisms (bacteria and viruses) and he discovered that by playing back their own pattern of oscillation, slightly modified, he could destroy them without affecting the tissues around them. In other words, Rife could kill a particular virus or bacterium using light rays alone, light rays that were absolutely harmless to the host animal, but deadly to the microbe.

Now comes the really interesting part of Rife's work: he discovered a virus that caused cancer. And he discovered a cure.

Rife named his human cancer virus Cryptocides Primordiales (primordial hidden killer). He injected his virus into 400 lab animals creating 400 tumors. Then, using equipment he had painstakingly designed and tweaked, he exposed the diseased animals to a modified form of energy that was unique to the Cryptocides Primordiales virus, and destroyed all the tumors. You can read all about this in The Cancer Cure That Worked.

Rife diligently worked for decades isolating patterns, modifying them, and playing them back killing microbes that caused disease.

When Rife went public, the University of Southern California sponsored a special medical research team to evaluate this new therapy on the terminally ill. After 130 days, every patient recovered with no side effects to the treatment.

The head of the AMA hopped a train from Chicago to visit Rife in San Diego. Pictures were taken, the story ended up on the front page of the San Diego Evening Tribune: Rife was on his way to a Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Today you would be hard pressed to find any reference to Rife in history books. Contact a newspaper for a specific date or story and they will probably tell you that that one is missing from their archives. It is as if Rife and his work have been utterly expunged from the annals of history. His microscope did not exist. His instruments did not exist. His research did not exist. The man himself did not exist.

The AMA wanted a cut. Drug companies pressed for more proof before allowing his instruments to be used. It seems that when a medical device wants FDA approval, each and every use must be evaluated (at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars). Now, keep in mind that Rife had built his microscope and instruments and had worked for decades studying and destroying microbes all before 1930. From 1934 to 1939 doctors all over America used the Rife machines to cure disease, and all over America doctors were being pressured to stop this practice. Offices were broken into and their machines were confiscated. With the backing of the AMA an engineer working with Rife, filed suit against Rife, and this was the beginning of the end. The unending court battles wore Rife down, and the more depressed he got, the heavier he drank and then came the unexpected, the terrifying conclusion: his microscope was stolen and soon afterwards his laboratory went up in flames and his records and research burnt entirely.

The Burnett Lab in New Jersey where Rife's work was being independently validated burned to the ground. Dr Milbank Johnson, a supporter of Rife's and one of the people who had worked to validate Rife's research was poisoned. Dr Nemes who was duplicating Rife's work just 40 miles from Rife's own lab was killed in a mysterious fire that consumed his lab and research papers. Rife's closest associate was given a grant for $200,000 and quickly vanished. People who had worked with Rife suddenly denied knowing him. Rife sunk further and further into depression and alcoholism. By 1940, Rife's work had been wiped out entirely. Every time he tried to pull himself back on track to reduplicate his research, he was hounded and harassed and finally his life ended in a hospital by an overdose that was not self-administered.

No one has yet been able to rebuild Rife's microscope. Many of Rife's associates have come forward in the past two decades, and some have reengineered Rife's equipment for creating these light waves. The frequencies at which certain bacteria and viruses are killed are once again being compiled. However, without a powerful enough microscope (and Rife's perspicacity) and all the while battling the powers that be (thriving drug companies backed by the power of the FDA) it could take years to reduplicate Rife's work.




People have been stopped before with miracle cures in order to protect multi billion dollar industries intended to treat your illness, not cure it. The use of science and frequencies by Dr. Rife and Robert Monroe demonstrated how little we know about the impact of frequencies on our lives.

Now fast forward to today. We are being bombarded by frequencies from satellites, cell phone towers and who knows what other sources. We are also being blasted by solar radiation at levels not seen for years from unusual sunspot activity. A new development that has caught the attention of our own scientists as noted from the following report by the BBC last week.

Researchers say the Sun is awakening after a period of low activity, which does not bode well for a world ever more dependent on satellite navigation.

The Sun's irregular activity can wreak havoc with the weak sat-nav signals we use.
The last time the Sun reached a peak in activity, satellite navigation was barely a consumer product.

But the Sun is on its way to another solar maximum, which could generate large and unpredictable sat-nav errors.

It is not just car sat-nav devices that make use of the satellite signals; accurate and dependable sat-nav signals have, since the last solar maximum, quietly become a necessity for modern infrastructure.



Military operations worldwide depend on them, although they use far more sophisticated equipment.

Sat-nav devices now form a key part of emergency vehicles' arsenals. They are used for high-precision surveying, docking ships and plans are even underway to incorporate them into commercial aircraft.

Closer to home, more and more trains depend on a firm location fix before their doors will open.



Simple geometry

The satellite navigation concept is embodied currently by the US GPS system and Russia's Glonass network, with contenders to come in the form of Europe's Galileo constellation and China's Compass system.

Solar flares - vast exhalations of magnetic energy from the Sun's surface - spray out radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from low-energy radio waves through to high-energy gamma-rays, along with bursts of high-energy particles toward the Earth.

The radiation or waves that come from the Sun can make sat-nav receivers unable to pick out the weak signal from satellites from the solar flare's aftermath.
There is little that current technology can do to mitigate this problem, with the exception of complex directional antennas used in military applications.
Sat-nav receivers will be blinded for tens of minutes, probably a few times a year at the solar maximum.

Charged up

A further complication comes from the nature of the outermost layer of the Earth's atmosphere, the ionosphere.

That is composed in part of particles that have ionised, or been ripped apart by radiation from the Sun, with the composition dependent on how much radiation is coming from the Sun at a given time.

The problem comes about because sat-nav technology assumes that signals pass through at a constant speed - which in the ionosphere isn't necessarily the case.
"The key point is how fast the signals actually travelled," said Cathryn Mitchell of the University of Bath.

"When they come through the ionosphere, they slow down by an amount that is actually quite variable, and that adds an error into the system when you do the calculations for your position," Professor Mitchell told BBC News.

The amount of solar activity runs on many cycles; the ionisation will be different on the sun-lit side of the Earth from the night side, and different between summer and winter; each of these cycles imparts a small error to a sat-nav's position.

But the disruption caused by solar flares is significantly higher.

The increased radiation will ionise more molecules, and the bursts of particles can become trapped in the ionosphere as the Earth's magnetic field drags them in.

The effects that sat-nav users will face, however, are difficult to predict.
"We can look at the measurements from the last solar maximum," Professor Mitchell said.

"If we project those forward, it varies quite a lot across the Earth; looking at the UK it will be about 10-metre errors in the positioning."

The errors would be much more long-lasting than the "blindness" problem, lasting hours or even days.




Researchers have no idea what the effect of this solar radiation will have on the machines we have become dependent upon. However, it is enough to cause them to spend millions trying to determine what is happening. They also have no idea what the effect of the concentration of cell phone towers will have on people or machines.



We all know that all recent autos are dependent on a computer driven operating system and that virtually every function in a car is computer driven. Could it be the same radiation is causing a breakdown in the computer chips in autos?

That would explain why the most reliable cars in the world have suddenly become unreliable. It would also explain why suddenly 45 different cars are having major problems with functions directly related to the computers in cars.

I have seen enough over the years to know how little we know and it would seem that if the problem is related to the natural occurrence of solar activity or even to the saturation of the earth with our own microwave, cell phone and other devices then what we have experienced to date could be the beginning of our troubles, not the end.



Science owes us answers to the effects of what they are doing and if they don't know then they should warn us. Much of the work of Nicola Tesla, a pioneer in energy and it's use, Rife and Monroe has been suppressed by authorities and could give us much insight into what is the truth. You should take some time to look in to these matters.

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Winter 2010 is Not Through Yet

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Just when you think we might get back to a normal winter which means it has to stop snowing since we are already way beyond normal snowfall, here it comes again. So this latest blast left about 10 more inches here but the quite cold temperature and winds of 40-60 mph drove the wind chill down to around 5 to -5 degrees.



This time the roads were frozen solid with a nice coating of ice. Of course Maryland, Washington, DC and the entire North Atlantic have closed yet again, the third straight day for the federal government and they announced they will be closed Thursday, the fourth straight day.



When I worked at the White House and Congress I never remembered snow like this and for good reason since Washington, DC and Coltons Point both broke records for the most snow in a winter in history. The DC record was set in 1898. I have no idea what the new records might be since we are already over 60 inches and it is only mid-February.



Now Coolin, my giant Irish Wolfhound, seen below trying to stay out of the blizzard while still staying outside, loves winter and cold and snow but hates ice. He is so conscious of his size he will not walk on ice, nor go up stairs with ice, meaning I have to put rugs on the steps when it gets icy which has been almost every day since about a month ago.



Maryland must have cut the budget for snow removal because there is little hope of getting anywhere in a storm or for the next few days after. Just tonight our governor declared a snow emergency (a little late after the state has already been paralyzed by the blizzard) and said the side streets would not be cleared for 72 hours.



Back in Iowa and Nebraska if a mayor or governor said roads would not be cleared of snow for a week, which is how long it has been between the last two storms, he wouldn't be a politician for long. And if he said any car stuck in the snow would be ticketed and towed with more charges he'd probably be lynched.



Since we have a bunch of Democrats in Maryland and Washington we can only assume this liberal snow clean up chaos is a result of Democrats being in control. Liberals must not like snow much and certainly don't want to jeopardize their base by making the union members on the highway crews go out in that awful cold.



We still have electricity and heat, food and clothes so things could be worse. It is supposed to get well below zero tonight with the wind chill and there are thousands of people with no heat or electricity so we hope they are okay.



Stay tuned for more from the Southern Maryland artic.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Snow, Blizzard, Winds and Ice - Mother Nature Shuts Up Politicians

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It started snowing about 2 pm yesterday, Friday, and has not stopped snowing since. So far we have about 20 inches of new snow, some areas have over 30 inches,and it is supposed to snow for 6-7 more hours.



Incredibly the politicians of Washington, DC went silent and have not been heard from since the snows came. I think it is Mother Earth's way of protecting us from a severe political overdose.



Now there are a few unusual things about this monster storm as the media likes to hype it. First here at Coltons Point 60 miles down the Potomac River from our nation's capitol we have had a blizzard and flood warning in effect since the storm began.

That means we are supposed to be overrun by river water while suffering blinding snow, we call it white out conditions, with wind gusts up to 75 miles per hour.



Instead it rained all night meaning we got a lot more precipitation than the snow areas up north. You see every inch of rain equals 10 inches of snow and we had well over an inch of rain all night, probably two inches.

However, this morning it did start snowing and by 2 pm this afternoon we had over 12-16 inches of fresh snow on top of the 1-2 inches of rain which was on top of the remainer of the 12 inches of snow last weekend and the 24 inches of snow about 30 days ago.



So here in our little Southern Maryland outpost we have had about 50-60 inches of snow this winter, the most in history, and the magnolia trees are getting mad as hell.



I grew up in Iowa and Nebraska so this is more like a typical winter for me but these St. Mary's County natives long ago got spoiled and expect tropical winters.

Send Al Gore a message, where the heck is the global warming that has filled your bank accounts.



More than 300,000 people around here have no power and the Super Bowl is a little over 24 hours away. You can bet there will be power by then since Super Bowl commericals are the best thing on television.

I have a great many readers in Florida. Bet you are happy you fled the Northeast for the orange groves. There is also a strong contingent from New Orleans where Super Bowl fever has hit an insane pitch.



All the hotels in New Orleans are booked the nght of the Super Bowl even though the Super Bowl is in Miami about 500 miles away. Those cajuns are throwing the biggest party other than Marti Gras to celebrate the first team appearance in the Super Bowl and no matter who wins they will probably be happy.



You see, it is the first trip for the Saints but if Indianapolis wins the star of the Colts, Peyton Manning, grew up in New Orleans and his father has been with the Saints for 39 years as a player and executive.



For those of you outside the US and there are readers from over 100 countries don't believe all you hear about the storm in the media. We are quite well prepared for storms like this, even for the power outages. Many of us grew up with them.

It will make for good headlines but it will not disrupt much of our way of life because we were all going to be watching the Super Bowl anyway tomorrow.



And for those of you who are conspiracy seekers this could be a good one. The threat of a paralyzing storm emptied all the stores in the entire northeastern United States, where 55 million people live, of food, supplies and survival gear not to mention snow shovels, generators, water, etc.



I saw people so panicked they were buying shopping carts full of stuff. I mean how much food and toilet paper can you go through in a weekend? So wouldn't that threat of a huge storm help the Obama economic recovery with the burst of consumer spending in the biggest markets in America after a bad week on the stock market? What do you think Glenn Beck?

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Friday, February 05, 2010

Wake Up Washington! Are Obama & Congress Listening to the People?

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It has now been a full year since the Democrats extended their control over all of Washington. People seem to have forgotten that Nancy Pelosi has been in control of the House for three years now. We have now had four elections in this era of change, Obama, New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts and finally those folks in our capitol figured out people want results, not hyperbole.



Not only that but aside from Obama, who promised change but had no idea what to give us, the last three elections have shown a return to American values, not Republican and not Democrat. Over and over the people have clearly said give us a responsible president and congress who understand that deficit spending and increasing our national debt so all people benefit is the agenda.

No it is not just about jobs, although they are tied in to responsible fiscal government, it is also about reducing the debt and not increasing the deficit. It is about helping all Americans, not just Democrats, or Republicans, or liberals, or conservatives, or unions, or management. Most Americans expect the Constitution and our president and congress to work for the good of all Americans.

How did the Washington gang respond over the past year? Well, in the words of Wanda Sykes, as if all of Washington, DC was on medicinal marijuana. It seemed as if all of the politicians were on a different planet, in the Twilight Zone, dead drunk or stoned.



First Obama supported and then completed the implementation of the bank bailout bill which cost $700 billion. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts were another $100 billion. The AIG insurance bailout took another $180 billion. The auto industry bailout was $100 billion. The stimulus bill was another $789 billion but CBO said it could cost $3.27 trillion over ten years.

The president sought a cap and trade bill that would raise energy costs and taxes by billions of dollars. A secret analysis of the Obama bill prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.



Stop it!

A health care reform bill was slammed together over the entire year with a price tag of $1.1 trillion and did not even include the cost of about a dozen new programs required in the legislation. Millions of dollars in new taxes and fees that would be passed on to the taxpayers would be spent every year though the benefits would not start until 2013. What kind of nonsense is that?

Stop it!

Obama also wants Climate Change at a cost of $46.7 billion, Education spending increased $81.1 trillion, and after a year in office proposed a new budget for 2011 of $3.8 trillion with a deficit of over $1.6 trillion.

Hasn't anyone been listening?



I mean Obama promised to save unions over $60 billion in taxes on luxury health benefits in his health care program. Add this to the billions of dollars the auto unions preserved in the bankruptcy of GMC and Chrysler and the unions have benefited by billions of dollars already, and over $100 billion in health care gets approved.

Yet what about jobs? The only jobs only legislation proposed, none has been approved except the supposed impact of everything else on jobs, has a price tag of just $90 billion. He proposed more money be spent saving unions than he wants to spend on all the small businesses in America who generate the jobs so desperately needed in America.

We spent trillions of dollars to save the banks so money would be available to small business. Trillions more were spent by the Federal Reserve making cheap money available to banks. Yet no money is available for credit to small business to generate the jobs.

Only a fraction of expenditures are targeted for small business from all the government deficit spending. Is anyone in our nation's capitol listening to the people? Words in Washington no longer have meaning and promises seem meant to be broken. All the while the Independent movement who expects to be heard gets angrier.

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Thursday, February 04, 2010

Today the News Dominated the People, Not the People Dominated the News

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Today I watched in awe as the news dominated the world, not people dominated the news. In a way it was refreshing but it was also a stark reminder that mankind remains vulnerable to allowing their ego to become the center of the universe, especially in the world of politics, while missing much of what is important in the world.



For example, take today's stories that were not expected. After a month of the Obama administration claiming the economy and jobs situation had turned the corner toward recovery such soothsayers of good tidings were dealt a series of crushing reminders that we are not in control of our own destiny. It all started last week when Obama turned on the business sector and blasted companies for executive bonuses and taking advantage of the government.



Today came an unemployment report on job losses far worse than anticipated. Then came the next in a series of recalls from Toyota sending shocks waves through the domestic auto market and international money markets. Just last month Toyota became the number one auto seller in the world. No one is talking about it but most Toyotas sold in America are made in America so if the Japanese giant loses huge market share which is likely and probable, it will most certainly shut down the US operations first further accelerating the economic disaster for America.



The reaction to Obama's new budget this week finally surfaced, and it was a resounding dud with the record spending increases and ominous increase in our national debt. His budget says our budget deficit will reach a record $1.565 trillion this year, equal to 10.6% of the entire GDP, Gross Domestic Product, and the highest since World War II. Obama's long delayed concern for American jobs and our economy are doing little to reassure people the administration has a clue in managing the economy. The young president has stumbled through bank bailouts, insurance and auto bailouts, housing and mortgage bailouts, a non-stimulus and those incredible executive bonuses.



AIG, one of Obama's least discussed bailouts and actions, announced they were paying out another $100 million in bonuses to people who drove the company to the brink of bankruptcy, an action approved by the Obama management team. While Congress and the president twiddle their thumbs Wall Street, unions, auto companies and who knows who else pick apart the scraps left of America.



Finally came the action by Congress today to raise the national debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion to over $14 trillion, the highest in history, an emergency action to accommodate Obama's spending frenzy. It is the first time the national debt will equal the entire annual GDP of America and Obama says it will climb to $26 trillion over the next ten years.



As the world absorbed this rash of unexpected developments today the stock market wiped out all the gains over the past month dropping nearly 300 points and barely closing above 10,000 mark. Tomorrow the unemployment rate is likely to increase, not decrease as Obama projected, so the economic adjustments may be far from over.



Tomorrow begins the Tea Party national convention in Nashville, with Sarah Palin headlining the speakers this weekend, and I predict the horrible response of the media and both political parties to this independent movement will make it a far stronger force as it emerges from the convention. Right now it is a loose coalition but it could easily become a national force and stands as the greatest threat to back room politics and old time politicians, including our Ivy League president, in our nation's history.



For a year the media ignored the people's populist revolt and ever since the victories over the establishment in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts the past few weeks the political parties, Democrats and Republicans, and President Obama have tried to claim ownership of this independent movement. How stupid? The Tea Party movement is the only thing keeping our nation from being controlled by crooks and con artists disguised as politicians and media.

Today an earthquake of 6.0 magnitude hit a few miles off the coast of Northern California following another a couple of weeks ago of 6.5 magnitude. So far they have not reached the California fault lines but they are powerful enough that it could be an indication of imminent danger. For comparison the Haiti quake was 7.0 magnitude.



If you are into natural disaster monitoring consider this. Between January 17, 2010 and today there have been 1,719 earthquakes in the Yellowstone National Park region of Wyoming ranging up to a 3.8 force. That is the second largest earthquake swarm ever recorded at Yellowstone and continues today. Underground at Yellowstone lies one of the largest magma pools of lava in the world measuring as much as a staggering 50-90 miles wide. Scientifically it is called a supervolcano and about 2.1 million years ago the area blew up and caused 2,500 times as much volcanic ash as the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980.



Other strange news today included the missionaries in Haiti who went to court expecting to be released and wound up being formally charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to steal children from Haiti. The guru who led a sweat lodge ceremony about a year ago in Sedona, Arizona that killed 3 and sent 18 more people to the hospital was charged with manslaughter. I have participated with Native Americans in many sweat lodge ceremonies, a spiritual ritual of the original Americans, and what he did was an insult to the culture and spirituality of Indian cultures.



The list goes on and on but that is enough for now. You get the impression that higher forces took control of events for the day to give us a break from the non-stop political nonsense we face and also to give us a warning that we are so preoccupied with what we want that we are losing sight of what really counts. Maybe we should be paying more attention to Mother Earth and Father Creator and less to our own needs and desires? If you need more read my last article on the Seven Cardinal Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Seven Cardinal Virtues, Seven Deadly Sins -The Survival Guide for Politics in America

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Anyone exposed to the media and politicians in America has a real good idea that something is terribly wrong. Partisan bickering seems to dominate the media stories as if the reality we face isn't bad enough. Obama blames Bush for everything wrong. Then he blames Republicans for doing nothing when the Democrats control everything and don't even need the Republicans.

The Democrats blame the Republicans for being obstructionists while the Republicans blame the Democrats for not including them in back room deals. All the while the media grovel for stories that incite the hatred and drama so they can beat each other in the ratings. Of course Obama blames Congress for not doing enough while Congress blames the White House for never taking a stand.



What we have is a classic stalemate in chess terms. What happens in a stalemate? No one wins. That leaves it up to the people to sort through the barrage of claims and counter claims, through the greed and corruption, through the lies and half truths in order to make some sense of where we stand and where we are going. It also means the politicians in Washington, the executives on Wall Street, the bosses in the union headquarters and the media in their ivory towers are all lost in the storm.

What does a captain of a ship do when facing a storm? Preparation and patience, combined with faith, strength and hope will always help you make it through the storm and tomorrow will always be there to reward your courage, strength and faith. In times like these when the truth is elusive and our leaders are paralyzed, when ethics and morality seem gone from governing, and when self-preservation dominates the common good it helps to remember the old ways.



In the ancient teachings of the Catholic Church through the works of theologians St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and dating all the way back to the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, long before the time of Jesus, good and evil was defined by the Seven Cardinal Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins.



It would do us well in this time of a crisis of confidence and moral corruption to remember the Seven Cardinal Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins whether you are Catholic or not as they were an inspiration to the Christian founders of our great nation. It also would not hurt to see if you are living the virtues and rejecting the sins and apply the same standards to our candidates for public office.

The Cardinal Virtues



Four virtues play a pivotal role and accordingly are called "cardinal"; all the others are grouped around them. They are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. "If anyone loves righteousness, [Wisdom's] labors are virtues; for she teaches temperance and prudence, justice, and courage." These virtues are praised under other names in many passages of Scripture.

Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it; "the prudent man looks where he is going. Keep sane and sober for your prayers." Prudence is "right reason in action," writes St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle. It is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation. It is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure. It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience. The prudent man determines and directs his conduct in accordance with this judgment. With the help of this virtue we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.

Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the "virtue of religion." Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. The just man, often mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of his conduct toward his neighbor. "You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven."

Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life. The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause. "The Lord is my strength and my song. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will's mastery over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable. The temperate person directs the sensitive appetites toward what is good and maintains a healthy discretion: "Do not follow your inclination and strength, walking according to the desires of your heart." Temperance is often praised in the Old Testament: "Do not follow your base desires, but restrain your appetites." In the New Testament it is called "moderation" or "sobriety." We ought "to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world."



The Theological Virtues

The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man's faculties for participation in the divine nature: for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive, and object.

The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

Faith

Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith "man freely commits his entire self to God." For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God's will. "The righteous shall live by faith." Living faith "work[s] through charity."
The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it. But "faith apart from works is dead": when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body.

The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: "All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks." Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: "So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven."

Hope

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. The Holy Spirit, he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life."

The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.

Christian hope takes up and fulfills the hope of the chosen people which has its origin and model in the hope of Abraham, who was blessed abundantly by the promises of God fulfilled in Isaac, and who was purified by the test of the sacrifice. "Hoping against hope, he believed, and thus became the father of many nations."

Christian hope unfolds from the beginning of Jesus' preaching in the proclamation of the beatitudes. The beatitudes raise our hope toward heaven as the new Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through the trials that await the disciples of Jesus. But through the merits of Jesus Christ and of his Passion, God keeps us in the "hope that does not disappoint." Hope is the "sure and steadfast anchor of the soul . . . that enters . . . where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf." Hope is also a weapon that protects us in the struggle of salvation: "Let us . . . put on the breastplate of faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." It affords us joy even under trial: "Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation." Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire.

We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere "to the end" and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ. In hope, the Church prays for "all men to be saved." She longs to be united with Christ, her Bridegroom, in the glory of heaven:

Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end.

Charity

Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.

Jesus makes charity the new commandment. By loving his own "to the end," he makes manifest the Father's love which he receives. By loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of Jesus which they themselves receive. Whence Jesus says: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love." And again: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

Fruit of the Spirit and fullness of the Law, charity keeps the commandments of God and his Christ: "Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love."

Christ died out of love for us, while we were still "enemies." The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself.

The Apostle Paul has given an incomparable depiction of charity: "charity is patient and kind, charity is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."102

"If I . . . have not charity," says the Apostle, "I am nothing." Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, "if I . . . have not charity, I gain nothing." Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues: "So faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the greatest of these is charity."

The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which "binds everything together in perfect harmony"; it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love.

The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. He no longer stands before God as a slave, in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him who "first loved us":

If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children.

The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.

The Gifts and Fruits of The Holy Spirit

The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are permanent dispositions which make man docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. They belong in their fullness to Christ, Son of David. They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make the faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations.

Let your good spirit lead me on a level path.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God . . . If children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: "charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity."



The Sins

Beginning in the early 14th-century, the popularity of depicting the Seven Deadly Sins by artists of the time ingrained them in western popular consciousness. The Italian poet ante Alighieri (1265-1321 C.E.), wrote three epic poems (known collectively as the Divine Comedy) titled Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In his book Inferno, Dante recounts the visions he has in a dream in which he enters and descends into Hell. According to Dante, he is told by his guide that a soul's location in Hell is based upon the sins that they commit when they are alive. In each 'ring' of hell, a specific punishment is doled out. As they descend lower and lower, the punishments (and consequently sins) become worse and worse until he reaches the bottom and discovers Satan. In Inferno, Dante encounters these sins in the following order (canto number): Lust (5), Gluttony (6), Avarice (7), Wrath (7-8), Heresy (10), Violence (12-17), Blasphemy (14), Fraud (18-30), and Treachery (32-34).

The Seven Deadly sins are listed today as follows:

Lust (Latin, luxuria)

Lust (fornication, perversion) —
Obsessive, unlawful depraved thought, or unnatural desire for sexual excitement, such as desiring sex with a person outside marriage or engaging in unnatural sexual appetites. Rape and sodomy are considered to be extreme lust and are said to be mortal sins. Dante's criterion was "excessive love of others," thereby detracting from the love due to God. Lust prevents clarity of thought and rational behavior.

Gluttony (Latin, gula)

Gluttony (waste, overindulgence) —
Thoughtless waste of everything, overindulgence, misplaced sensuality, uncleanliness, and maliciously depriving others. Marked by refusal to share and unreasonable consumption of more than is necessary, especially food or water. Destruction, especially for sport. Substance abuse or binge drinking. Dante explains it as "excessive love of pleasure".

Avarice (Latin, avaritia)

Greed (treachery, avarice) —
A strong desire to gain, especially in money or power. Disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason, especially for personal gain or when compensated. Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects. Theft and robbery by violence. Simony is the evolution of avarice because it fills you with the urge to make money by selling things within the confines of the church. This sin is abhorred by the Catholic Church and is seen as a sin of malice. Dante included this sin in his first novel. Simony can be viewed as betrayal. Thomas Aquinas on greed: "it is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things."

Sloth (Latin, acedia)

Sloth (apathy, indifference) —
Apathy, idleness, and wastefulness of time. Laziness is particularly condemned because others must work harder to make up for it. Cowardice or irresponsibility. Abandonment, especially of God. Dante wrote that sloth is the "failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul".

Wrath (Latin, ira)

Wrath (anger, hatred) —
Inappropriate (unrighteous) feelings of hatred and anger. Denial of the truth to others or self. Impatience or revenge outside of justice. Wishing to do evil or harm to others. Self-righteousness. Wrath is the root of murder and assault. Dante described wrath as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite".

Envy (Latin, invidia)

Envy (jealousy, malice) —
Grieving spite and resentment of material objects, accomplishments, or character traits of others, or wishing others to fail or come to harm. Envy is the root of theft and self-loathing. Dante defined this as "love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs".

Pride (Latin, superbia)

Pride (vanity, narcissism) —
A desire to be more important or attractive to others, failing to give credit due to others, or excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor". In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, superbia is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the famed Doctor of Paris, Cenodoxus. Pride was what sparked the fall of Lucifer from Heaven. Vanity and narcissism are good examples of these sins and they often lead to the destruction of the sinner, for instance by the wanton squandering of money and time on themselves without caring about others. Pride can be seen as the misplacement of morals.

Interpretation

In the original classification, Pride was considered to be the 'deadliest' of all sins, and was the father of all sins. This relates directly to Christian philosophy and the story of Lucifer as told in the Bible. Lucifer, the highest angel in heaven, surrendered to the sin of pride and demanded that the other angels worship him. This being a violation of God's will, Lucifer and his followers were cast from heaven.

Summary

Our forefathers talked of the need for all Christians to continually work to master the Cardinal Virtues and to eliminate the Deadly Sins. It was a lifelong dedication. The results of such perseverance were the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Would we not do well to do the same? These are the standards that created America, they are the foundation to preserve America. Live them and demand the same from our elected officials.

Thanks to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and New World Encyclopedia for guidance in this article.

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