The Sad Road to Socialism
- Thread starter fossten
- Start date
Yes, but they were still communist nations. Those are much better to judge socialism by then quazi-socialist, egalitarian states.
Then why base policy and political programs on an ideal (socialism) that takes away freedom to unrealistically and irrationally attempt to achieve a utopia on Earth; effective turning the perfect into the enemy of the good?
There is no way you can compare America and any of the aspects that might lead someone to conclude that it is close to a police state, to actual socialist countries and come out in favor of socialism.
If you are comparing the quazi-socialist nations of the western world to America, you need to show that it is the socialist aspects that are making the nation less prone to being a police state, and not the more democratic and/or capitalist aspects.
Besides, it is not suprising that Canada isn't a police state. Haven't you hear the reason there are no orgies in Canada? Because there would be too many thank you letters to write afterward. :lol:
"Your not my buddy, pal!"
A: Canada is not near as productive as America.
B: The more "egalitarian minded" uber-socialist enviromentalists are the ones who have kept us from being energy self sufficient.
Then why base policy and political programs on an ideal (socialism) that takes away freedom to unrealistically and irrationally attempt to achieve a utopia on Earth; effective turning the perfect into the enemy of the good?
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There is self interest on the part of the rich to pay the poor some money.
Money buys protection.
This picture sums it up nicely.
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There is self interest on the part of the rich to pay the poor some money.
Money buys protection.
This picture sums it up nicely.
You love to post pictures! I will admit, most of them are pretty funny.
Yes, there is a self interest for the rich to help the poor (that doesn't necessarily always mean pay them). But from a "protection" POV, it is through generating good will toward the rich. That can only happen when the giving is voluntary.
The giving is not voluntary is socialism. In fact, there is a bigger class gap between the rich and the poor in socialism, and more animosity and resentment toward the rich.
Capitalism functions on the idea of self-interest (more then any other aspect of human nature). Socialism functions on the denial of self-interest (except when that self-interest is in line with what is best for society as a whole, which is the chief focus).
In fact the issue of self-interest exposes the biggest flaw in socialism and the biggest philosophical point American conservatism and capitalism have over socialism; the understanding of human nature. Specifically with regards to weather that nature is on the whole good and/or bad, and if the philosophy attempts to work around that understanding of human nature, or change it.
A picture is worth a thousand words, a good funny one even more.
My parents escaped the Nazis and Communists in WWII and made their way to Canada.
Both pharmacy graduates, they opened a drug store in 1954 Toronto, worked hard for 17 years and sold out to Shoppers Drug Mart (a large chain in Canada) in 1972.
My father invested his million or so dollars well and didn't have another paying job for 33 years till he passed away in 2005.My mother worked(and still works) part-time just to do something,have some space and her own spending money.
He spent his time as an intellectual, went to U of T and became a Dr. prof, edited a Ukrainian newspaper,wrote books and articles and had a radio show 2 hrs a week. He also smuggled US currency taped to his body and in specially made shoes into the USSR in the mid 70's to fund the resistance to Communism and Russian Imperialism.
After the Soviet collapse in 1990 and the dawn of Ukrainian independance he raised enough money to put 3000 students through university for the diplomatic corp and government in his home country.
As a well healed successful (after 25 years of hard work)
businessman, I know a lot about the motivation of self interest and the role of capital.
If I pay a worker 25,000.00 I also make roughly 25,000.00 off his labor but of course I never tell him that.
Many of my press operators are paid piece work (a very self disciplining method which sounds so 19th century) so it's in their self interest to make as many pieces as possible.
They get 1.25 and I net net 3-4.00 for each of 300 pieces that get made in 4 6 hour shifts. (the workers work a straight 6 hours, making as much or more than they used to in 8 hours with a 1/2 hr lunch and 2 15 min breaks.
We make about 30,000 pieces a month out of 5 presses that run 24/5 and have 2 more presses coming into service shortly for a new product line.
They get a Euro 36 hr week and we get an extra shift for the same overhead.
Every government redistributes wealth for social purposes.
"Yes, there is a self interest for the rich to help the poor (that doesn't necessarily always mean pay them). But from a "protection" POV, it is through generating good will toward the rich. That can only happen when the giving is voluntary" shagdrum quote
We're not talking about generating good will, just giving
the smallest amount possible to keep most poor people from acting up and stealing or commiting other crimes so we don't have to call out the police to put them down.
Poor man want to be rich, rich man want to be king, as the Bruce Springsteen song goes.
Local police are primarily paid by property owner taxes and enforce laws that this group wants.
Communism has been a total failure everywhere except China where it has morphed into a quasi capitalist system.
But Western European countries are very socialist by American standards and not on the verge of any collapse with a strong Euro being prima facia evidence of investors faith in the Euro future.
My parents escaped the Nazis and Communists in WWII and made their way to Canada.
Both pharmacy graduates, they opened a drug store in 1954 Toronto, worked hard for 17 years and sold out to Shoppers Drug Mart (a large chain in Canada) in 1972.
My father invested his million or so dollars well and didn't have another paying job for 33 years till he passed away in 2005.My mother worked(and still works) part-time just to do something,have some space and her own spending money.
He spent his time as an intellectual, went to U of T and became a Dr. prof, edited a Ukrainian newspaper,wrote books and articles and had a radio show 2 hrs a week. He also smuggled US currency taped to his body and in specially made shoes into the USSR in the mid 70's to fund the resistance to Communism and Russian Imperialism.
After the Soviet collapse in 1990 and the dawn of Ukrainian independance he raised enough money to put 3000 students through university for the diplomatic corp and government in his home country.
As a well healed successful (after 25 years of hard work)
businessman, I know a lot about the motivation of self interest and the role of capital.
If I pay a worker 25,000.00 I also make roughly 25,000.00 off his labor but of course I never tell him that.
Many of my press operators are paid piece work (a very self disciplining method which sounds so 19th century) so it's in their self interest to make as many pieces as possible.
They get 1.25 and I net net 3-4.00 for each of 300 pieces that get made in 4 6 hour shifts. (the workers work a straight 6 hours, making as much or more than they used to in 8 hours with a 1/2 hr lunch and 2 15 min breaks.
We make about 30,000 pieces a month out of 5 presses that run 24/5 and have 2 more presses coming into service shortly for a new product line.
They get a Euro 36 hr week and we get an extra shift for the same overhead.
Every government redistributes wealth for social purposes.
"Yes, there is a self interest for the rich to help the poor (that doesn't necessarily always mean pay them). But from a "protection" POV, it is through generating good will toward the rich. That can only happen when the giving is voluntary" shagdrum quote
We're not talking about generating good will, just giving
the smallest amount possible to keep most poor people from acting up and stealing or commiting other crimes so we don't have to call out the police to put them down.
Poor man want to be rich, rich man want to be king, as the Bruce Springsteen song goes.
Local police are primarily paid by property owner taxes and enforce laws that this group wants.
Communism has been a total failure everywhere except China where it has morphed into a quasi capitalist system.
But Western European countries are very socialist by American standards and not on the verge of any collapse with a strong Euro being prima facia evidence of investors faith in the Euro future.
"If you are comparing the quazi-socialist nations of the western world to America, you need to show that it is the socialist aspects that are making the nation less prone to being a police state, and not the more democratic and/or capitalist aspects."
Yes we're so polite and well mannered
Our socialist aspects coincide with our low crime rate requiring less police and even less laws.
Gun control limits firearm deaths so it the socialist aspects do make the nation less prone to being a police state.
Never wrote thankyou notes after orgies though but there was this set of twins.....
:dancefoolfossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Wrong. Care to tango with me on this one?
Still, is that simply correlation? Or is there some causation there, and in which direction?
Another question would be where do the high crime rates in America come from? I am sure you could probably demonstrate that most states that are more conservative have less violent crimes, but is that due to more conservative (and less socialist) policies, or simply due to lower population?
Places like New Orleans, New York, Los Angles, etc. All have very high crime rates and all are very egalitarian.
Yeah, this issue is really Fossten's baby. But I will say that, at least here in the USA, gun control laws do not limit firearm deaths. In fact, the case could be made that they increase them, by preventing law abiding citizens from having guns while criminals (who would ignore the law anyway) have them.
Never wrote thankyou notes after orgies though but there was this set of twins.....
Well now that demands a story! maybe pics? Is that where you got that pic of the gun in the cleavage?
Well now that demands a story! maybe pics? Is that where you got that pic of the gun in the cleavage?
I'll have to plead the 5th here and any pics I have are XXX but lets just say I've had the luck and priveledge to have had 2 women (some that were bi) at the same time on a half dozen occasions in my life.
Makes ya feel like the King with a smile that just won't go away!
Gun control in the US is a moot point.
With over 100 million handguns and countless rifles it's probably better to own a gun especially in high crime areas.
SCOTUS has given it's final blessing on guns so there isn't much to argue about.
My point is that the less guns out there the less chance there is of getting shot, deliberately or by accident. A simple premise.
In Canada as well as in many non police state countries only the police and licensed private investigators are allowed to own handguns.
Gun collectors are allowed but can only transport their weapons in a locked box on an approved route to the gun club range.
Get caught off route and the gun is confiscated.
Criminals get their guns through the black market most of which are smuggled into the country from the US or steal them from gun collectors.
Even with that there is still a lot less handguns available.
The history of the 2 countries has a large part in the current situation.
America was(is?) the wild west where people were on their own and needed the protection.
Canada was founded by British Empire loyalists and most people didn't have a problem with that.
The Americans rebelled against the British and fought and killed off (most of) the indigenous Indians.
The gun is a much more ingrained part of the US culture than that of Canada and other countries.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
And a misleading one.
Check out this article by Dave Kopel:
A World Without Guns
Be forewarned: It’s not a pretty picture
By Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen of the Independence Institute
December 5, 2001 9:40 a.m.
"Imagine the world without guns" was a bumper sticker that began making the rounds after the murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon on December 18, 1980. Last year, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, followed up on that sentiment by announcing she would become a spokeswoman for Handgun Control, Inc. (which later changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and which was previously named the National Council to Control Handguns).
So let's try hard to imagine what a world without guns would look like. It isn't hard to do. But be forewarned: It's not a pretty picture.
The way to get to a gun-free world, the gun-prohibition groups tell us, is to pass laws banning them. We can begin by imagining the enactment of laws which ban all non-government possession of firearms.
It's not likely that local bans will do the job. Take, for example, New York's 1911 Sullivan Law, which imposed an exceedingly restrictive handgun-licensing scheme on New York City. In recent decades, administrative abuses have turned the licensing statute into what amounts to prohibition, except for tenacious people who navigate a deliberately obstructive licensing system.
Laws affect mainly those willing to obey them. And where there's an unfulfilled need — and money to be made — there's usually a way around the law. Enter the black market, which flourishes all the more vigorously with ever-increasing restrictions and prohibitions. In TV commercials that aired last August, New York City Republican (sort of) mayoral candidate Mike Bloomberg informed voters that "in 1993, there were as many as 2 million illegal guns on the street." The insinuation was that all those guns were in the hands of criminals, and the implication was that confiscating the guns would make the city a safer place. What Bloomberg never explained was how he planned to shut down the black market.
So let's imagine, instead, a nationwide gun ban, or maybe even a worldwide ban.
Then again, heroin and cocaine have been illegal in the United States, and most of the world, for nearly a century. Huge resources have been devoted to suppressing their production, sale, and use, and many innocent people have been sacrificed in the crossfire of the "drug war." Yet heroin and cocaine are readily available on the streets of almost all large American cities, and at prices that today are lower than in previous decades.
Perhaps a global prohibition law isn't good enough. Maybe imposing the harshest penalty possible for violation of such a law will give it real teeth: mandatory life in prison for possession of a gun, or even for possession of a single bullet. (We won't imagine the death penalty, since the Yoko crowd doesn't like the death penalty.)
On second thought, Jamaica's Gun Court Act of 1974 contained just such a penalty, and even that wasn't sufficient. On August 18, 2001, Jamaican Melville Cooke observed that today, "the only people who do not have an illegal firearm [in this country], are those who do not want one." Violent crime in Jamaica is worse than ever, as gangsters and trigger-happy police commit homicides with impunity, and only the law-abiding are disarmed.
Yet the Jamaican government wants to globalize its failed policy. In July 2001, Burchell Whiteman, Jamaica's Minister of Education, Youth and Culture spoke at the U.N. Disarmament Conference to demand the "implementation of measures that would limit the production of weapons to levels that meet the needs for defence and national security."
And as long as governments are allowed to have guns, there will be gun factories to steal from. Some of these factories might have adequate security measures to prevent theft, including theft by employees. But in a world with about 200 nations, most of them governed by kleptocracies, it's preposterous to imagine that some of those "government-only" factories won't become suppliers for the black market. Alternatively, corrupt military and police could supply firearms to the black market.
We'd better revise our strategy. Rather than wishing for laws (which cannot, even imaginably, create a gun-free world), let's be more ambitious, and imagine that all guns vanish. Even guns possessed by government agents. And let's close all the gun factories, too. That ought to put the black market out of business.
Voilà! Instant peace!
Back to the Drawing Board
Then again.....it's not very difficult to make a workable firearm. As J. David Truby points out in his book Zips, Pipes, and Pens: Arsenal of Improvised Weapons, "Today, all of the improvised/modified designs [of firearms] remain well within the accomplishment of the mechanically unskilled citizen who does not have access to firearms through other means."
In the article "Gun-Making as a Cottage Industry," Charles Chandler observed that Americans "have a reputation as ardent hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers, building everything from ship models to home improvements." The one area they have not been very active in is that of firearm construction. And that, Chandler explained, is only because "well-designed and well-made firearms are generally available as items of commerce."
A complete gun ban, or highly restrictive licensing amounting to near-ban, would create a real incentive for gun making to become a "cottage industry".
It's already happening in Great Britain, a consequence of the complete ban on civilian possession of handguns imposed by the Firearms Act of 1997. Not only are the Brits swamped today with illegally imported firearms, but local, makeshift gun factories have sprung up to compete.
British police already know about some of them. Officers from Scotland Yard's Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Group South recently recovered 12 handgun replicas which were converted to working models. An auto repair shop in London served as the front for the novel illegal gun factory. Police even found some enterprising gun-makers turning screwdrivers into workable firearms, and producing firearms disguised as ordinary key rings.
In short, closing the Winchester Repeating Arms factory — and all the others — will not spell the end of the firearm business.
Just take the case of Bougainville, the largest island in the South Pacific's Solomon Islands chain. Bougainville was the site of a bloody, decade-long secessionist uprising against domination by the government of Papua New Guinea, aided and abetted by the Australian government. The conflict there was the longest-running confrontation in the Pacific since the end of World War II, and caused the deaths of 15,000 to 20,000 islanders.
During the hostilities, which included a military blockade of the island, one of the goals was to deprive the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) of its supply of arms. The tactic failed: the BRA simply learned how to make its own guns using materiel and ammunition left over from the War.
In fact, at the United Nations Asia Pacific Regional Disarmament Conference held in Spring 2001, it was quietly admitted that the BRA, within ten years of its formation, had managed to manufacture a production copy of the M16 automatic rifle and other machine guns. (That makes one question the real intent behind the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, which followed several months later: the U.N. leadership can't be so daft as to fail to recognize the implications for world disarmament after learning of the success of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.)
If this single island of Bougainville can produce its own weapons, the Philippine Islands have long had a thriving cottage industry to manufacture firearms — despite very restrictive gun laws imposed by the Marcos dictatorship and some other regimes.
It looks like we'll need to revisit our fantasy, yet again.
Okay. By proclamation of Kopel, Gallant, and Eisen, not only do all firearms — every last one of them — vanish instantly, but there shall be no further remanufacturing.
That last part's a bit tricky. Auto repair shops, hobbyists, revolutionaries — everyone with decent machine shop skills — can make a gun from something. This takes us down the same road as drug prohibition: With primary anti-drug laws having proven themselves unenforceable, secondary laws have been added to prohibit possession of items which could be used to manufacture drugs. Even making suspicious purchases at a gardening store can earn one a "dynamic entry" visit from the local SWAT team.
But laws proscribing the possession of gun-manufacturing items would have to be even broader than laws against possession of drug-manufacturing items, because there are so many tools which can be used to make guns, or be made into guns. What we'd really have to do is carefully control every possible step in the gun-making process. That means the registration of all machine tools, and the federal licensing of plumbers (similar to current federal licensure of pharmacies), auto mechanics, and all those handymen with their screwdrivers. And we'd need to stamp a serial number on pipes (potential gun barrels) in every bathroom and automobile — and everywhere else one finds pipes — and place all the serial numbers in a federal registry.
Today, the antigun lobbies who claim they don't want to ban all guns still insist that registration of every single gun and licensing of every gun owner is essential to keep guns from falling into the wrong hands. If so, it's hard to argue that licensing and registration of gun manufacturing items would not be essential to prevent illicit production of guns.
Thus, we would have to control every part of the manufacturing process. That would add up to a very expensive, complicated proposition. Even a 1% noncompliance rate with the "Firearms Precursors Control Act" would leave an immense supply of materials available for black-market gun making.
In order to ensure total conformity with the act, it's difficult to imagine leaving most existing constitutional protections in place. The mind boggles at the kinds of search and seizure laws required to make certain that people do not possess unregistered metal pipes or screwdrivers!
For example, just to enforce a ban on actual guns (not gun precursors), the Jamaican government needed to wipe out many common law controls on police searches, and many common law guarantees of fair trials. We'd have to trash the Constitution in order to completely prevent a black market in gun precursors from taking hold. Still, as the gun-prohibition lobby always says, if it saves just one life, it would be worth it.
But, what if, despite these extreme measures, the black market still functioned — as it almost always does, when there is sufficient demand?
It's time to seriously revisit our strategy for a gun-free world. Maybe there's a shortcut around all of this.
Okay. We're going to make a truly radical, no-holds-barred proposal this time, take a quantum leap in science, and go where no man has gone before. There may be those who scoff at our proposal, but it can succeed where all other strategies have failed.
We, Kopel, Gallant, and Eisen, hereby imagine that, from this day forth, the laws of chemical combustion are revoked. We hereby imagine that gunpowder — and all similar compounds — no longer have the capacity to burn and release the gases necessary to propel a bullet.
Peace for Our Time
Finally, for the first time, a gun-free world is truly within our grasp — and it's time to see what man hath wrought. And for that, all we have to do is take a look back at the kind of world our ancestors lived in.
To say that life in the pre-gunpowder world was violent would be an understatement. Land travel, especially over long distances, was fraught with danger from murderers, robbers, and other criminals. Most women couldn't protect themselves from rape, except by granting unlimited sexual access to one male in exchange for protection from other males.
Back then, weapons depended on muscle power. Advances in weaponry primarily magnified the effect of muscle power. The stronger one is, the better one's prospects for fighting up close with an edged weapon like a sword or a knife, or at a distance with a bow or a javelin (both of which require strong arms). The superb ability of such "old-fashioned" edged weapons to inflict carnage on innocents was graphically demonstrated by the stabbing deaths of eight second graders on June 8, 2001, by former school clerk Mamoru Takuma in gun-free Osaka, Japan.
When it comes to muscle power, young men usually win over women, children, and the elderly. It was warriors who dominated society in gun-free feudal Europe, and a weak man usually had to resign himself to settle on a life of toil and obedience in exchange for a place within the castle walls when evil was afoot.
And what of the women? According to the custom of jus primae noctis, a lord had the right to sleep with the bride of a newly married serf on the first night — a necessary price for the serf to pay — in exchange for the promise of safety and security (does that ring a bell?). Not uncommonly, this arrangement didn't end with the wedding night, since one's lord had the practical power to take any woman, any time. Regardless of whether jus primae noctis was formally observed in a region, rich, strong men had little besides their conscience to stop them from having their way with women who weren't protected by another wealthy strongman.
But there's yet another problem with imagining gunpowder out of existence: We get rid of firearms, but we don't get rid of guns. With the advent of the blow gun some 40,000 years ago, man discovered the efficacy of a tube for concentrating air power and aiming a missile, making the eventual appearance of airguns inevitable. So gunpowder or no gunpowder, all we've been doing, thus far, amounts to quibbling over the means for propelling something out of a tube.
Airguns date back to somewhere around the beginning of the 17th century. And we don't mean airguns like the puny Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun with a compass in the stock, longed for by Ralphie in Jean Shepard's 1984 classic A Christmas Story ("No, Ralphie, you can't have a BB gun — you'll shoot your eye out!").
No, we're talking serious lethality here. The kind of powder-free gun that can hurl a 7.4 oz. projectile with a muzzle energy of 1,082 foot-pounds. Compare that to the 500 foot-pounds of muzzle energy from a typical .357 Magnum round! Even greater projectile energies are achievable using gases like nitrogen or helium, which create higher pressures than air does.
Before the advent of self-contained powder cartridge guns, airguns were considered serious weapons. In fact, three hundred years ago, air-powered guns were among the most powerful and accurate large-bore rifles around. While their biggest disadvantages were cost and intricacy of manufacture, they were more dependable and could be fired more rapidly than firearms of the same period. A butt-reservoir .31 airgun was carried by Lewis and Clark on their historic expedition, and used successfully for taking game. [See Robert D. Beeman, "Proceeding On to the Lewis & Clark Airgun," Airgun Revue 6 (2000): 13-33.] Airguns even saw duty in military engagements more than 200 years ago.
Today, fully automatic M-16-style airguns are a reality. It was only because of greater cost relative to powder guns, and the greater convenience afforded by powder arms, that airgun technology was never pushed to its lethal limits.
Other non-powder weapon systems have competed for man's attention, as well. The 20th century was the bloodiest century in the history of mankind. And while firearms were used for killing (for example, with machine guns arranged to create interlocking fields of fire in the trench warfare of World War I), they were hardly essential. By far, the greatest number of deliberate killings occurred during the genocides and democides perpetrated by governments against disarmed populations. The instruments of death ranged from Zyklon B gas to machetes to starvation.
Imagine No Claws
To imagine a world with no guns is to imagine a world in which the strong rule the weak, in which women are dominated by men, and in which minorities are easily abused or mass-murdered by majorities. Practically speaking, a firearm is the only weapon that allows a weaker person to defend himself from a larger, stronger group of attackers, and to do so at a distance. As George Orwell observed, a weapon like a rifle "gives claws to the weak."
The failure of imagination among people who yearn for a gun-free world is their naive assumption that getting rid of claws will get rid of the desire to dominate and kill. They fail to acknowledge the undeniable fact that when the weak are deprived of claws (or firearms), the strong will have access to other weapons, including sheer muscle power. A gun-free world would be much more dangerous for women, and much safer for brutes and tyrants.
The one society in history that successfully gave up firearms was Japan in the 17th century, as detailed in Noel Perrin's superb book Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword 1543-1879. An isolated island with a totalitarian dictatorship, Japan was able to get rid of the guns. Historian Stephen Turnbull summarizes the result:
[The dictator] Hidéyoshi's resources were such that the edict was carried out to the letter. The growing social mobility of peasants was thus flung suddenly into reverse. The ikki, the warrior-monks, became figures of the past . . . Hidéyoshi had deprived the peasants of their weapons. Iéyasu [the next ruler] now began to deprive them of their self respect. If a peasant offended a samurai he might be cut down on the spot by the samurai's sword. [The Samurai: A Military History (New York: Macmillan, 1977).]
The inferior status of the peasantry having been affirmed by civil disarmament, the Samurai enjoyed kiri-sute gomen, permission to kill and depart. Any disrespectful member of the lower class could be executed by a Samurai's sword.
The Japanese disarmament laws helped mold the culture of submission to authority which facilitated Japan's domination by an imperialist military dictatorship in the 1930s, which led the nation into a disastrous world war.
In short, the one country that created a truly gun-free society created a society of harsh class oppression, in which the strongmen of the upper class could kill the lower classes with impunity. When a racist, militarist, imperialist government took power, there was no effective means of resistance. The gun-free world of Japan turned into just the opposite of the gentle, egalitarian utopia of John Lennon's song "Imagine."
Instead of imagining a world without a particular technology, what about imagining a world in which the human heart grows gentler, and people treat each other decently? This is part of the vision of many of the world's great religions. Although we have a long way to go, there is no denying that hundreds of millions of lives have changed for the better because people came to believe what these religions teach.
If a truly peaceful world is attainable — or, even if unattainable, worth striving for — there is nothing to be gained from the futile attempt to eliminate all guns. A more worthwhile result can flow from the changing of human hearts, one soul at a time.