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Written by dave

Category: Amplification

Published: 20 December 2012

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Marriage. A publically acknowledged, legally recorded, and most often celebrated by religious sanctification and ceremony, physical, emotional, spiritual union between a man and a woman.

 

While contemporary US society has increasingly dismissed the 'need' for marriage, or warped its application to other kinds of unions, the ancient reality is that the institution of 'marriage' between one man and one woman came about for sound reasons. Millennia of observations of human behavior taught the wiser older members of society - many, though not all - religious figures - that being a young man, from the age of 14 or so on, able to engage in copulate with a girl or woman without later physical consequences to himself, while the girl or woman from the age of puberty who accepts, willingly or not, his advances, runs the risk of becoming pregnant and delivering a child.

 

In fact both their bodies are designed, and were evolved by nature to procreate sufficiently to perpetuate the race. The reality is that the woman has to care for the unborn and herself for 9 months, during which she often cannot totally provide for herself. And after the child is born it falls to her as a mother, far more than its father in the very earliest years, to care for the infant and begin his or her relationship to others and education for life. This is a critical period in a child''s total development. And if, only for the convenience or neglect by either the mother or the father, that care is not given, the child has a high probability of stunted development - which then appears later in that child's health and behavior - and often perpetuates a society which does not value either life, or children. That is a threat to society.

 

Marriage was a wise way devised by societies over centuries for humans to deal with the rights and obligations - not just to biological mothers and only to a slightly lesser extent fathers - but above all for the physical and mental welfare of children before and after their birth. Children need both mother's and fathers. Legal Marriage greatly encourages that state, deters its arbitrary dissolution, and continues the obligations for the welfare of the child of both parties.

 

Circumstance - sickness, accident, genetic traits, the acts of other men or women or self destructive tendencies - may cause marriages once entered into in good faith with the best intentions, which produce children - to fail. But I believe unless the majority of people enter into marriage before their first child is born, and remain married until, at least, the youngest of their children grow to puberty having observed and learned from the model set by both their parents - whether good or bad - their next generation will not be prepared to further the species with wisdom, courage, and a deep understanding of what is good, or bad, for their fellow man.

 

From those belief's above I do not 'believe in' the modern form of absolute 'woman's liberation' - which has, in the US at least, become, willy nilly, the mantra that women have unlimited freedom and 'rights' - but no corresponding 'obligations' to society as women. Woman are and should be the primary 'care givers' of a society. Males should be the primary providers, and protectors of that same society.

 

Thus I believe a society that not only permits but actively encourages women to join the armed portion of the Military Forces - whose singular purpose is to 'kill people and break things' - is morally bankrupt, and threatens and endanger's future generations.

 

Real human progress takes time, even if new ideas are worthy of trying - and I believe new ideas should be tried. Discarding of Marriage is not one of them

 

Perhaps I am biased after 55 years of happy marriage to the same woman, seeing its benefit to us, our children and grandchildren, and to the communities of which we have been a part. And we have seen where marriage is dismissed, the sad consequences, not just to those who did not marry or stay married long enough but to their children - who are always the hope of the future, not of the present or past. I see the decline of society that does not value 'obligations' as much as 'rights.'

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Written by dave

Category: Amplification

Published: 20 December 2012

Hits: 4068

My Core Beliefs

 

- Life

- God

- Duty, Honor, Country

- Marriage as being between one man and one woman

- Marriage Commitment - 'Til Death do us Part'

- Private Enterprise - Capitalism

- Unadorned Factual History

- Community

- Republic form of government

- The Constitution, Bill of Rights

- That men are not created equal, but with our values we      properly treat all men as if they were.

- Right of armed Self Defense

- Men are best fitted for physical defense, women for creating the home and nurturing their young children, while keeping their husbands civilized. 

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                        My Plans for After I Die

 

Of course, like all living humans - with a developed human brain - I have been capable, all my life of learning new things, and changing my mind about things I once believed - in the face of sufficient new evidence, self reflection, or going through sufficient new experiences.

The problem is, that when a man dies, even if he has written down for his heirs - as in a printed autobiography - what he believes, it remains unchanged forever. His further wisdom is lost.

Man's collective societal, as well as individual, ability to live, grow , and change - is the basis for humanity's progress. 

But what if one's essential human memory of his accumulated experiences, his reasoning ability, and his ability to take in new information is preserved - so to speak - 'in silicon' instead of eventually deteriorating soft tissue brain cells, why can't the individual mind - a continuation of the individual -  continue to learn, store, and change?

Seems to me, advances in 'artificial intelligence,' some of which are being applied to learning 'how' some profession's practitioners - like doctors of medicine - are teaching machines - which can remember - how they make a diagnosis, and thus make it possible for patients to be diagnosed by a computer, emulating past doctors 'knowledge' and basis for deciding.

So, as part of this Legacy web site, I, with my more technical son David III, am endeavoring to build a connected (via the Internet from a web hosting service and both wireless connectivity to/from smart phones at my grave site) so that my silicon self can converse with live persons on the subject of Life's Values). After I am nominally gone.

Or to put it in practical human terms, when (1) one of my great granddaughters approaches my gravestone, after I am 'dead' (2) connectes her smart phone to my QR code, which (3) links to my Silicon mind and ask's "Hey gramps. I am thinking of marrying XYZ, what do you think?" And I, as I probably will answer "Don't marry him, he is not good enough for you." Knowing the independence of my descendents she probably will marry him any way.

But then, if she comes back years later and says "Hey Gramps. Guess what? It all worked out. We are happy. And we are expecting our third child"

Then I shall be capable, of changing my Silicon Mind. And my Silicon Mind will update. My Learning and Mental Life will go on. And my wisdom grow.

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                    MY WARRIOR ANCESTRY

 

Now I will only write this one time, for all the Descendent's of the Hughes line, which go back into the mists of time and the place – Anglesey, North Wales to August 22nd 1485 when Henry Tudor and his Welsh Army on Bosworth Field defeated England's King Richard the III, and killed him. Thus becoming King Henry the VII (leading to Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I, and the creation of the Anglican, rather than Catholic, Church throughout the UK)

 

Now dead King Richard's body has been rediscovered recently, and dug up and studied, showing that he, indeed, both lost his helmet and most certainly his horse during the battle. His skull was struck and penetrated many times by Henry's men during that battle, leading William Shakespeare to make Richard cry out in his play “Richard III' - “A Horse, a Horse! My Kingdom for a Horse!”

 

Some family members wonder where I got the warrior temperament that spurred me to attend West Point, earn the Distinguished Service Cross, and three Silver Stars while winning all my battles during my two wars.

 

Well I am sure it comes down the bloodlines from the wronged, but true warrior Welsh Tudor King Rhys ap Tewdwr who started the Tudor Dynasty on Anglesey before 1093,

 

Now Anglesey, Wales, that near-island across the Menai Strait, and 50 miles across the sea from Ireland, was always the home of the earliest Welsh Kings. One of them was Henry Tudor. Who was banished to France by the English King and only returned in 1485, to do battle with, and defeat, the hated Richard II during the War of the Roses.

 

Cousin Ann Benwell(from Menai Wales) , whom daughter Rebecca and I met in 2002, not only had traced the history of my grandmother Ellen Hughes, she showed us where Ellen grew up on Anglesey.

 

Ann, an active member of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society after having assembled the lineage of your great great grandmother, Ellen Hughes, unearthed one 'Tudor' name in the relatives mix among the relatives before Elen, whose father's name was a dull 'Jones'.

 

Now, even though both Ann and Rebecca dismiss the probability that there was any relationship between Ellen and any Tudor, I am aware that if ANY distant relative, by birth or marriage, had the name Tudor' anywhere in their names – that was a famous, and rare, handle. That was NOT a common name. It derived from Welsh Royalty. Commoners would NOT be permitted to use that name (unlike the Hughes – or Hugh – name, that is a dime a dozen in Wales)

 

Grandmother Hughes always told me, personally 'we' through 'her' were related to Royalty. THAT Royal would have been a Tudor – who came back from exile in France, raised his army, and whipped Richard II on Bosworth Field in 1485, becoming Henry VII.

 

When I visited North Wales, near Carnaveron Castle – from which the hated King JohnII of England dominated northern Wales in the 1200's, a gathering of local VIPs held a dinner in my honor – as a West Pointer, decorated warrior, and a 'son of Wales.' – A local antiquarian, Erl Wyne Rowlands. expert in Anglesey lineages spoke, and he had traced my lineage back to a Welsh prince.

 

So thanks, I will accept my grandmother's assertion, and that Welsh Anglesey-historian's claim.

 

So I think my rising to the wartime occasion, came from that thin stream of Tudor blood, from whence my warrior soul stemed. Its just taken a few generations before it reemerged in a Dafydd Hughes - me. 

 

 

 

Details

Written by dave

Category: Amplification

Published: 20 December 2012

Hits: 2876

Life. First of all, I believe in Life. The entitlement of all humans to Life. Which can be taken by other humans only under the most exceptional of circumstances decided by the larger community for the betterment of mankind and their own survival. While there is a theological and scientific dispute about when Life begins, I am content to believe that it starts at the moment of conception. For, since a man and a woman are capable of bringing that moment about, I believe they both must take joint responsibility for the creation of that Life by their mutual acts, and from that moment onward.

 

 

Thus I do not believe that the woman inside of which that conception has occurred has a unilateral right to terminate that life. At the minimum the decision should be made by the father and not just the mother. Or by society for extraordinary reasons - not just the convenience or whim of the woman. Those who create life must do all they can to sustain it - the Survival of our Species depends on that fundamental ethic.