Like anyone else, it makes me feel good when readers say my ideas are absolutely original. But as CS Lewis said, “Prophets come among us, not to declare new truths, but to remind us of the old ones.

In this vein, it comforts me when what I have worked hard to explain, something that is going on, I end up running into some old saying. In fact, what I say, if I am working it right, ends up going back to an old truth.

I keep explaining how things work in terms of normal human action. I introduced a careful going-over of people’s motivations in ALL cases. We all know we should “Follow the money,” but until I wrote my first book, no one even THOUGHT of doing that in the case of the Human Betterment Industry as well as “ the military-industrial complex.”

You might think it would bother me that I think hard about something, put a LOT of hard intellectual work into it, and end up with a piece of common sense someone expressed better two centuries ago. But that is really all that prophets do.

Everybody knows how awful anyone can get if they are not called on it. But it is only a prophet who looks the King straight in the eye and tells HIM he is violating basic decency like any other human being. Only a prophet will go into a Sodom or Gomorrah and tell them what they are doing wrong.

They had people Beyond Criticism back then, too. They had Authorities in Robes like our Supreme Court who were not to be questioned. One man did that and he was lynched for it. He was nailed up by the Romans, but only the Guys in Robes gave them no choice.

So when I say you should always ask “Why is this information being produced?” it is clear that every conservative politician’s credibility is tested by this standard all the time. Many times a commentator will simply explain that a politician gets so many tens of thousands of dollars a year from the NRA. He leaves the implication that only conservatives get contributions.

They almost never say where liberal contributions come from, though the Democrats recently got a hell of a lot more money than the Republicans.

And it was in huge chunks. Foundations, unions half of whose voters vote the other way, and groups as activist as the NRA give money to them. But until 1976 no one ever “followed the money” on the LEFT. They don’t now, because conservatives never challenge on this, either.

So what strikes a lot of people as pure genius in BUGS is really just applying one’s THINKING in all areas.

This doesn’t hurt my ego a bit. I am trading in genius for the title of Prophet.

I’ll take that deal!