Hello, 2011

My first post of the New Year.  The year 2010 is now for the history books.  The history for 2011 begins today.

I didn't stick around late last night in order to watch the New Year come in, or the Old Year go out.  There wasn't anything interesting to do.  It didn't seem worth it to me to stay up.  So, I retired at the normal hour and now I am back at work on this blog.

The first thing I did this morning is to check the gold price.  It is near the all time high, over $1420 an ounce.  I suppose I can congratulate myself on my good judgment, for I remain bullish on gold.  But, to be bullish on gold is to be bearish in another way.  That's because gold does well in an environment of uncertainty and fear. That is not a good sign, not something to be celebrating.  The old year went out with a whimper, the new year is not off to a great start.  This is my indicator, gold is, and it bears watching.  And watch it, I will.

I've had this feeling that the wrong people are in charge of this country.  But what can I do about it?  There is little that can be done but to suffer through this until the right ones get into power.  The new Congress will be sworn in soon, but I am not so sure that this will make a big difference.  The sickness that plagues this country runs too deep for one election to cure.  That sickness is called Liberalism.

That last sentence may lose a lot of readers.  I may offend people who might ordinarily like reading my stuff. But why hold back on what I believe?  I tell it like I see it.  If I can't do that, what's the use of having this blog?

I like to study things and to think it through to a conclusion.  The conclusion is that the left does more harm than good.  But people keep voting for it, so we have to accept that reality.  There is little you can do to get people from swallowing the same old snake oil that is making them sick in the first place.  Until such time as enough people will see the light and abandon the left, we are stuck with them in power.  Their influence is a plague upon us all.

This brings me to the solution for our troubles.  It may sound crazy that outer space holds the answer to what the problems are on the ground, but I that is the conclusion that I am coming to.  Why have I come to that conclusion?  It is more complex that I have let on.  There could be rather profound reasons for why this is so.

But that thought causes me to segue into another thought.  Is what a person's choice for doing something more related to reason or to belief?  What if belief conflicts with reason?  Do you abandon one for the other?  Can two conflicting ideas coexist in the mind at the same time?  I think not.  Something has to give.  So, when I say that space has the answers, is it more based upon belief, or upon reason?  If reason doesn't support my belief, then idea of space holding the answers must give way.  I will state that I am open to such a possibility.  That's because I think reason can trump belief.

Boy, that statement could get me into a lot of trouble.  It appears that I am knocking religion.  But not exactly. I am knocking the tendency to attribute to reason that which is proceeding from belief.  The two are not necessarily compatible, as I mentioned above.  All too often, the two ideas get intertwined and mixed up so that one can't tell another one from each other.

I think that is one of the things that the left is doing wrong.  They are claiming the mantle of reason, but they are really proceeding from the position of belief.  That doesn't mean that conservatives are immune from this though. Only that the left is definitely doing it.  I hold some hope that conservatives can be a little more rational. But being right isn't enough.  It will take some guts too.  On that score, I am not quite so sanguine about conservatives.  Conservatives need a bit more moxie, in my opinion.  When they get that, I will be a little more confident.

So some of us go boldly marching into the new year.  Who deserves to be more confident?  The man of reason or the man of faith?