My Core Beliefs
- Life
- God
- 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.
-----------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
