Our crime was that we were beginning to live a new and contagious lifestyle without official authorization. We were tried for being out of control. Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection, was reinterpreted by William Graham Summer, a Yale University political scientist and prototypical public intellectual, into a social philosophy—always described as “scientific”—that enshrined competition and validated the worthiness of whoever and whatever came out on top. Millionaires were explicitly compared to the superior biological species that had emerged from eons of evolution in nature: J.P. Morgan, William Wirt Winchester, Sarah Winchester, William Randolph Hearst, and Henry Clay Frick were, presumably, descendants of the first hominids to stand on two legs, while the less affluent were more closely related to creatures who lacked opposable thumbs and continued to grope on all fours. Professor Sumner declared emphatically that the business of the Gilded Age (an era of rapid economic growth and prosperity from the 1870s to about 1900, especially in the Northern United States of American and the Western United States of America) were a “product of natural selection…just like the great statesmen, or scientific men, or military men.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Because millionaires emerged from fair competition, governed by the supposedly scientific laws of the market, “all who are competent for this function will be employed in it.” Between 1860 and 1910, in spite of the deaths of more than six hundred thousand men in the Civil War, the American population nearly tripled—from some 31 million to more than 92 million—as a result of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. During the 1880s and 1890s, a network of public elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and libraries emerged to meet the challenge of absorbing millions of non-English-speaking immigrants and raising the education level of the entire American population. Publics schools were viewed as vital instruments of assimilation, by the White Angelo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) establishment that still controlled most American cities and by the immigrants themselves—especially the East European Jews, whose pent-up desire for education finally found an outlet in a society with no legal anti-Semitic restrictions. In the 1878, there were fewer than eight hundred public high schools in the United States of America; by the eve of the First World War, the number had increased to more than eleven thousand. And between the 1880 and the 1900 censuses, the official illiteracy rate declined from 17 percent to 11 percent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The progression of literacy in American was quite impressive, considering none of the new immigrants had any knowledge of English before they set foot on American soil. The passage of compulsory school attendance laws in many states raised the duration of the average American’s schooling from four to six years between 1880 and 1914—again, a notable accomplishment in view of the influx of immigrants with no schooling at all. The expansions of secondary education was paralleled by the growth of adult education programs and the creation of a public library system, spurred across the nation by the money and leadership of the self-made Andrew Carnegie (who believed in private philanthropy as strongly as he detested the idea of government handouts), which offered broad access to ordinary citizens. In large cities, not only neighbourhood libraries but central research libraries—the nucleus of what would become some of the greatest research collections in the World—were open to anyone with a library card. When the grand Forty-second Street headquarters of New York Public Library opened its doors to the public for the first time on May 24, 1911, some fifty thousand New Yorkers passed through the Fifth Avenue entrance—guarded by the stone lions that would soon become famous civic landmarks—to view the marvels within. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Ordinary citizens were gaining access to cultural and intellectual resources previously locked away from all but the wealthiest, most privileged members of society. The marvelous thing about education is even if you are not born rich, if you learn to love education and see how important it is in life, the skills and degrees you earn can elevate you to the status of the affluent. Good parents are parents who truly make youth understand how serious and important education is. Many youths like to rush through school and get out so they can make money and have fun, but they do not realize how much more fun they will have once they earn a college degree and find gainful employment. Youth do not understand that the World cost money, they are not exposed to economics in elementary school and housing prices. So, they believe all they have to do is graduate high school and the World opens up to them. However, education is the key to get the World to open up. Books always excite me because I am learning something new and I envision one day being around a table of executives and being able to contribute to the conversion because I have read so many books and should have something to say. When I was younger, I had the opportunity to set around the table with an executive from Warner Brothers and her colleagues and I did not understand how important that was. I had nothing to contribute to the conversation because I was so young and sky. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

She also got me into events expensive media events for free where celebrities were giving lectures and I wanted to meet some of the, but was too shy because they looked like they were in the mafia and I was too intimidated to talk to them. Sometimes when I reflect on my life, I write like my life is over and my youth is gone because I have no idea what is in God’s plan for me, but I am still relatively young. I just have no idea what is next and kind of live life day by day because there is always some challenge. It reminds of trying to hold on to a corporation under threat of hostile takeover, and having no idea what is going to happen next. It is certainly not the kind of life I would want for my kids, if I had kids. I do not want people to see them as an asset to control and keep them isolated in an unfriendly ivory tower. Nonetheless, the Gilded Age was also the golden age of the lecture as a source of both entertainment and instruction. The old community-based lyceums were replaced by national lecture bureaus that offered high fees to well-known speakers but were able to keep ticket prices low because of huge popular demand. The rising literacy rate, and the proliferation of adult education programs, libraries, museums, and lecture series, intensified the public’s appetite for intellectual amusements and information of every kind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Some of the things I have learned about life are fascinating and I want to share them without people becoming offended. The reading I do allows me to find out things that is not in the textbooks in college or high school and it explains why people say things like the theory of evolution is racist. For example, Alexander Winchell, an evolutionist argued in an 1878 screed titled Adamites and Preadamites, that Africans did not descend from Adam—who, as everyone knew, was European. Therefore, the human race must be older than the biblical Adam, and Africans represented an earlier evolutionary stage. This statemen left me kind of confused. Did Europeans consider themselves to be gods? This theory was used to validate American-born Caucasians of Anglo-Saxon heritage—who came out on top in society. This is perhaps the real reason the royal family has a problem with accepting the Duchesses of Sussex, Megan Markle. Not only is she gorgeous, famous, and rich, but she is, in their eyes, half goddess, half human, married a god, and is now because of a business deal she and her husband made, worth $100 million dollars, which is much more than William and Kate. Nonetheless, the idea of tickle down economics, which United States Senator Mitt Romney made famous, was actually invented by William Graham Sumner. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The theory of trickle down economic is that the rich should not be taxed, “no man can acquire a million without helping a million men to increase their little fortune.” The idea follows that if you do not tax the rich, they have more money to spend and invest and that will encourage them from holding their money in offshore bank accounts where they are funding development in other countries. Tickle down economics will also prevent outsourcing. Everyone has a natural right to be happy, to be comfortable, to have health, to succeed, to have knowledge, family, political power, and all the best of the things which anybody can have. Then they say that we all ought to be equal. Just as the survival of certain species in nature proved their fitness, the accumulation of wealth proved the greater fitness of the rich in society—and the greater fitness of rich societies in the World order. As you know, the World was said to be overpopulated when the population reached 5 billion. There are now 7.34 billion people in the World, and it would make sense that the World is overpopulated because just look at traffic, the roads are not meant to handle that many people. Also, COVID-19 seems to be reenforcing the mandates of natural selection of the Gilded Age because countries and people with lower income are being infected and killed more than wealthy nations and people. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

There is a contradiction. American is the wealthiest nation in the World, but it also has a poor population that is equal to 50 percent of the people. Therefore, COVID-19 is thriving in American because it does have a large poor population, even though it is a wealthy nation. If we were intentionally to neglect the weak and the helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, as for America’s founding generation, there was no conflict between political equality and individuality: humans were equal as human beings and as citizens because each has one’s unique place as a representative human, and one’s natural right is the right to opportunity for the full development of one’s particular potentialities…the equality of all humans means not that all are alike or have the same interests and capacities but that all are equally important in the Universe. However, the Gilded Age concept of American individualism, so often accompanied by the adjective “rugged,” meant something entirely different: it suggested not just that individuals have different natural capacities but that those different capacities proved some human beings to be much worthier than others in the social universe. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Thorstein Veblen—who had studied under Dr. Sumner at Yale had reached very different conclusions from those preached by his teacher. Veblen argued that the law of natural selection proved precisely that—“Whatever is, is wrong.” In Veblen’s view, governing institutions always lag behind the social exigencies of any era; and in periods of rapid change, like that late nineteenth century, the gap widens between society’s needs and the institutional capacity to meet those needs. “They [social institutions] are the result of a more or less inadequate adjustment of the methods of living to a situation which prevailed at some point in the past…and they are therefore wrong by something more than the interval which separated the present situation from the past. The institution of a leisure class, by force of class interest and instinct, and by precept and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the existing maladjustment of institutions, and even favours  reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme which would be still farther out of adjustment with the exigencies of life under the existing situation even the accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the immediate past,” reports Thorstein Veblen.  #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

As time went on, pioneering Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas discovered that all recent immigrants to the United States of America—whether East European Jews, Sicilians, Bohemians, Hungarians, or Scots—had all grown taller and heavier, as a result of a better diet, within a single generation. Therefore, the duty of humans is not to study how evolution creates, but to create evolution. Nature does all possible experiments as long as possible, that is, until that species is extinct. Instead of being governed by the laws of chance, scientific experiments reduce the elements of chance to minimum. Humans may make in a single year ten thousand times as many crucial tests as Nature blunders up in ten years. In fact, scientists were recently able to impregnate male cows and pigs using genetic engineering and they gave birth, but humans are not able to eat their offspring because more studies need to be conducted. I did really understand how a male could get pregnant because males are not born with a uterus nor a birth canal. However, human evolution has methods of doing things. Meanwhile, while humans are trying to make birth possible for people who are not designed to give birth, they also tried to stop people from giving birth because they are mentally ill. During World War II, Nazi conducted genocide of psychiatric patients. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Approximately 245,000 individuals with schizophrenia were sterilized and murdered by the Nazis to cure mental illness. Darwinist eugenics, was even taught in school. William J. Bryan quoted not from Darwin but from a crude high school biology text book called A Civic Biology, by George Hunter, who believed that the mentally ills are “true parasites,” adding that “if such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading.” That idea should have been banned from classrooms, some thought, but the “Monkey Trial,” revolved solely around the clash between biblical literalism and the idea that man was descended from lower forms of life. However, as true musicians listen to all genres of music, true scholars should learn many ideas and theories. Once we start banning information, people will be exposed to less ideas, and unable to think and have competent conversations. Nonetheless, that is probably while woman and men in their 50-70s are acting like Lindsay Lohan and the Mean Girls and/or the Basket Ball Wives, or Looney Toons. Censorship of information is also why gossip is king. People do not have any relevant thoughts in their heads and their brains are burnt out from drug use. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

If a brutal struggle for survival must characterize human existence in a state of civilization as well as in a state of nature, people need to know what they are struggling against. Or else we will end up with the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak, which we already see happening. However, White Flight makes you wonder who the strong are because as the affluent keep running from poverty and building new and more expensive suburbs, the less affluent are, by reflexive properties of the catch-up effect, gaining on them and destroying their culture, and eventually the land will run out and there will be no where to go. For instance, I was watching a grown, affluent man, doing the “WAP,” dance in front of his adult WASP parents as they just gazed at him. I could only wonder what his father might have been thinking. It looked ridiculous for his son to be gyrating and twiningly his legs in the art and beating on the floor like a judge pounding the gavel to get order in his or her courtroom, as he shakes his rear-end like a dog in heat. I have also seen other affluent lace curtain suburban male youth, who can afford million-dollar apartments in Manhattan, New York in their brand-new Lexus SUV singing lyrics by Megan Thee Stallion called Savage about how they are “A savage. Classy, bougie, ratchet. Sassy, moody, nasty.” You know, there are some gender issue things going on here with the rapper and the young men, but also some class issues. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

While people may say, “the upper class do not accept Blacks because they do not see them as equals,” I think that is a statement that needs further evaluation because there is something going on there. Nevertheless, there are upper class members in all races. I think what the person was trying to say is that people are still against mixing of the races, which actually has some genetic benefits. Not only that, but White people have come a long way in accepting Blacks. Some of them name their kids after Black athletes, mentor young Blacks and help them get jobs so they get it right the first time. However, class and culture and gender roles in America are changing and I think that is because people are allowed to be who they want to be. And even if people still do not accept mixing of the races, all that is doing is creating a segregated upper class who behaves like people they admire. In the past, American men had clandestine same sex love affairs behind closed doors, and it is just a matter of time before people allow their children to love who they want to love, no matter their colour. Now, on the subject of immigration, this is not the first time in modern history that people have wanted to shut the Golden Door. Starting from the 1880s to 1924, because the Red Scare and Red Diaper Babies, Americans wanted to put in place in immigration ban from Southern and Eastern Europe. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Even more controversial, in modern times, while Europe is criticizing America and President Trump for wanting to ban immigration and build a wall, Europe and Europeans have been very brutal about accepting immigrants from other nations as well. So anyway, something else interesting that I learned was that the lyrics Yip Harburg for Over the Rainbow was in honor of Stalin. And the characters Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, from The Wizard of Oz, were Stalinist dupes. Now, if Americans cannot learn to get along and become advocates of law and order, the passion with which they attack one another over their disagreements will leave the entire intellectual community vulnerable to political attack. It seems many politicians are faking their loyalty oaths. By the way, The Pledge of Allegiance, that was required for many youths to recite in class every day, with their right hand over their heart, while looking at the American flag, which was proudly on display in ever classroom is probably kept so many people dedicated to being good American citizens. Because now, the un-American sentiments being preached in the streets and in the media is absolutely devastating. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

How can people who do not love America be trusted with forecasting the news and teaching our children or representing our country? How can these people assume the practical burden of instilling knowledge in the next generation of fulfilling the aspiration, so integral to the old and new American dreams of buying a McMansion, an Ultimate Driving Machine, building a career, and raising children who will exceed the achievements of their parents? At midcentury, the most profound hopes of adults who subscribed to what was then called middlebrow culture were vested in the higher education of their children. The parents of baby boomers dreamed of educating a son who would work with his brain instead of with his hands and a daughter who would marry a man capable of earning a living with his brain and not his hands. Now, people are raising the sons to admire a female who is confused about her gender and teaching them to do the WAP dance. And daughters are being raised to chase drug addicted men all their lives and when they suffer from a few episodes of neurosis and have no education or work experience, they can move back into their childhood bedroom and lay in bed all day watching TV while they wait for their “man” to get out of jail. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Currently, 52 percent of children under 30 live with their parents, and I think it has more do with something other than a few recessions and a pandemic. God uses His grace to us in our submission to His providential working in our lives. The apostle Peter said, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time,” reports 1 Peter 5.5-6. God gives grace to humble, to those who humble themselves under His mighty hand of providence. Our tendency is not to humble ourselves but to resist the workings of His mighty hand. At best we fret and murmur and worry even as we cry out for deliverance. At worse we become angry or even rebellious against God. In so doing, we have become proud, and “God opposes the proud,” He actually set Himself in array against us. The disciplines of work are practical disciplines. The Scriptures are very explicit here.  Both the Old and New Testaments are crystal-clear on the necessity of energetic work as opposed to laziness. Proverbs mocks the false wisdom of the lazy: “Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!’ As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“The sluggard buries the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth. The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly,” reports Proverbs 26.12-16. The New Testament epistles likewise disparage all laziness—sort of a spiritual ultra slim-fast for sluggards. Evidently the Thessalonian church had some “brothers” who ostensibly lived “by faith” while they sponged off the church—Christian parasites, we might say. For such, Paul gave explicit advice: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us,” reports 2 Thessalonian 3.6—“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat,’” reports v.10. In our Lord’s Parable of the Talents that master tells the servant who had done nothing with his talent, “You wicked, lazy servant!” (Matthew 25.26). No one has ever been both faithful to God and lazy! It is impossible. However, perhaps the most withering epithet comes from Paul: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for one’s immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever,” reports 1 Timothy 5.8. There is no escaping it—Godliness is associated with hard work. Since high school, it was my dream to live and work around people who look like the characters from Suits TV Show. Their lifestyles are so glamorous, professional and high tech. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

You cannot be lazy and be a Godly employee (or employer for that matter). This said, it must be understood that the Scriptures do not commend the workaholism that comes from pursuing wealth and a career instead of God’s glory. In this respect it should be noted that the hard-working Puritans were zealous in enforcing Sabbath laws without which employers would have made people work seven days a week. The bottom line for us, humans, is: Are we truly hard-working? And if so, are we doing it for God or merely for self? “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, after Moroni had received and had read Helaman’s epistle, he was exceedingly rejoiced because of the welfare, yea, the exceeding success which Helaman had had, in obtaining those lands which were lost. Yea, and he did make it known unto all his people, in all the land round about in the part were he was, that they might rejoice also. And it came to pass that he immediately sent an epistle to Pahoran, desiring that he should cause men to be gathered together to strengthen Helaman, or the armies of Helaman, insomuch that he might with ease maintain that part of the and which he had been so miraculously prospered in regaining. And it came to pass when Moroni had sent this epistle to the land of Zarahemla, he began again to play a plan that he might obtain the remainder of those possessions and cities which the Lamanites had taken from them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“And it came to pass that while Moroni was thus making preparations to go against the Lamanites to battle, behold, the people of Nephihah, who were gathered together from the city of Moroni and the city of Lehi and the city of Morianton, were attacked by the Lamanites. Yea, eve those who had been compelled to flee from the land of Manti, and from the land round about, had come over and joined the Lamanites in this part of the land. And thus being exceedingly numerous, yea, and receiving strength from day to day, by the command of Ammoron they came forth against the people of Nephihah, and they did begin to slay them with an exceedingly great slaughter. And their armies were so numerous that the remainder of the people of Nephihah were obliged to flee before them; and they came even and joined the army of Moroni. And now as Moroni has supposed that there should be men sent to the city of Nephihah, to the assistance of the people to maintain that city, and knowing that it was easier to keep the city from falling into the hands of the Lamanites than to retake it from them, he supposed that they would easily maintain that city. Therefore he retained all his force to maintain those places which he had recovered. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

“And now, when Moroni saw that the city of Nephihah was lost he was exceedingly sorrowful, and began to doubt, because of the wickedness of the people, whether they should not fall into the hands of their brethren. Now this was the case with all his chief captains. They doubted and marveled also because of the wickedness of the people, and this because of the success of the Lamanites over them. And it came to pass that Moroni was angry with the government, because their indifference concerning the freedom of their country,” Alma 59.1-13. God of growing things, of warm and moist Earth, of soil-piercing shoots: praised in all lands, praised through all ages, praised by all peoples, praised with rites of life. Father of All Tribes, of men and women both, of beasts and plants and people: praised in all lands, praised through all ages, praised by all peoples, praised with rites of life. King of all countries, of crafts and industry, of poets and priests: praised in all lands, praised through all ages, praised by all peoples, praised with rites of life. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; and the displeasures of the Lord will be aroused against you, and He shut up the Heaven, so that there shall be no rain, and the ground shall not yield her fruit; and ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you. #RandolphHarri 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

The seasons are a-changing! Not quite feeling in the “fall mood” yet? Check out today’s blog post to learn 7 simple ways to get into the fall spirit! 🍂🕯 https://cresleigh.com/blog/

There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass listening to “Those Were the Days,” by Aaliyah.

If you saw a new house in your dream, then this dream is a symbol of a new chapter in your life or a new start. You are becoming emotionally mature and more self-reliant. This is the right moment to make all of your dreams come true because no one will be in your way to success.

#CresleighHomes