I have one major advantage over theologians when it comes to understanding what Jesus Christ said. That advantage is that I have been in and dealt with many totalitarian and authoritarian societies. Jesus was speaking in a place where he could have been stoned to death on the spot for saying the wrong thing.

As usual, what I have to say that is of use to you consists of looking closely at a fact that is so obvious that those who get paid for making learned comments on words completely overlook it.

I have pointed out that Old Testament fanatics put most of their faith on Jesus’s statement that he did not plan to erase one iota of the Jewish Law. So, as one Old Testament fanatic put it, “Seventy percent of the Bible is the Old Testament.”

Not one of these people ever considers the fact that if Jesus had said anything else, he would have been stoned to death on the spot. If they ever noticed this, it would put Old Testament Christianity in a very tenuous position.

And you couldn’t become a Christian without full circumcision at any age.

Another obvious fact like this is that the Declaration of Independence, which is so often quoted an objective statement of principles, was written in wartime. In fact, it was written in a city that would soon be occupied by enemy troops.

Nobody ever even MENTIONS this when they discuss the Declaration. I guarantee you that it was very much of the minds of those who wrote and adopted the Declaration. The Declaration was a cry for help and a bid for foreign support, not an abstract declaration of real American principles.

This brings us to today.

If we are going to deal realistically with the society in which we live we must have a more realistic grasp of the reality we live in.

So let’s face one reality: everybody knows that what is really ailing our society is not discussed in the media.

People on our side keep quoting the media and those who make their livings in the media, left and right, as if what they say is what people believe.

They therefore reflect an understanding of our reality that comes straight out of a cartoon.

I like to rent DVDs and listen to the commentary version of the movie, where the movie is played with running commentary from the people who made the film. Nobody is more Politically Correct than movie-makers, but in every commentary they are bitching about the “political correctness nuts” who criticize them and threaten them with violence.

Out in the real world, not only does EVERYBODY know about political correctness, the people who live in the real world all consider it a pain in the ass. But people on our side keep acting as if only they knew what is allowed in the media is silly.

You simply cannot deal with political reality if you keep living and commenting from inside a cartoon.