Ted Walther's Private Diary

Americans often say that freedom of speech is their most important right. I am not a believer in "rights". My God hands out blessings and cursings. Everything belongs to him. A persons only right is to serve and obey him, to enjoy his blessings, and to suffer his curses.

Is freedom to speak one of those blessings that יהוה gave to mankind in general? I believe that it is one of the earliest rights and privileges given to mankind, after the right to live and make babies.

Genesis 2:19,20: And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

Is it not the same action when a person calls a spade a spade?

The act of naming is one of power. If a thing does not have a name, it is hard to talk about it. If you can't talk about it, it is hard to share your knowledge of it with others. How could you warn others to avoid the poisonous snake if you had no words to refer to snakes?

Names are powerful, not in themselves, but in their ability to glue together societies. They are like electricity. Electric potential is worthless while it sits where it is. It becomes magical only when it is in motion, illuminating lights, turning over the motors of cars, and carrying our messages far and wide.

Does it matter whether you use 10 volts or 100 volts to send a message? Similarly, the form and pronunciation of a name means little; what matters is the role and function the name plays. Does the name refer to the correct thing? When people hear the name, do they attach the correct meaning to it?

To truly speak freely, one needs listeners. Speech that is not heard is not speech at all, it is useless vibrations in the wind. Ignorance is also a type of power. To ignore someone is the same as stopping them from speaking.

Are there limits to free speech? Pagans say "don't yell fire in a crowded theater". The Bible is simpler; you are responsible for your actions. If you slander someone, you are liable for all damage you cause. If you testify falsely against someone, you will get the same punishment you thought to put on the other person.

Proverbs 20:2 The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul.

Ecclesiastes 10:20 Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.

In 1933 George Orwell published Down and Out in Paris and London. Seventy years later, his book feels like it was written yesterday. The life of a young unemployed man seems to be universally the same at all times in history.

Orwell is most famous for his extreme left-wing anarchist and socialist politics. Yet, his humanity comes through clearly. He is a keen observer of life, and rarely let his politics cloud his writing. He described what he saw without histrionics, polemic, or ad hominem attacks.

Page 65: The doorkeeper played similar tricks on any employee who was fool enough to be taken in. He called himself a Greek, but in reality he was an Armenian. After knowing him I saw the force in the proverb 'Trust a snake before a Jew, and a Jew before a Greek, but don't trust an Armenian.'

What is one to make of such a proverb? It is undeniably true; yet, the most important, saintly theologian of the twentieth century was an Armenian. I refer to Rousas Rushdoony, author of the Institutes of Biblical Law.

This is my first diary entry written using nanoblogger. nanoblogger, also known as nb, seems like the program I planned to turn my own diary program into. It uses the same philosophy as mine. My hat is off to Keith Wood. He claims inspiration from Bowie Poag's microblogger, but microblogger has less in common with nb than it does with diary. I especially like his punting of the plugin problem. I was thinking of rewriting my diary program in LISP and allowing people to program their own functionality into the application on the fly. Keith's plugin architecture is the True UNIX Way; write a command line program in any language you choose, and tell nb about it. Instant functionality extension.

The basic syntax is: nb [-b blog_dir] [options]

How to ...

• create a new weblog (directory) = nb -b [blog_dir] -a
• create a new entry = nb -a
• create a new category = nb -c new -a
• create a new entry for a category = nb -c [cat_id] -a
• list current entries = nb -l [current|all]
• list categories = nb -l cat
• list entries by category = nb -c [cat_id] -l [current|all]
• edit an entry = nb -e [entry_id]
• move an entry to a category = nb -c [cat_id] -m [entry_id]
• delete an entry = nb -d [entry_id]
• delete a category = nb -c [cat_id] -d cat
• delete an entry from a category = nb -c [cat_id] -d [entry_id]
• force update of weblog = nb -u [current|all|main]

Thank you for trying NanoBlogger. Please direct comments and suggestions to the mailing list or submit a bug report to the project page on sourceforge.net.