It is difficult to break through the wall that screens out competition and uncooperative patients because dentists collude and all present the same competitive barriers.   

Cutting a man’s hair and filling a tooth both take technical skills and similar amounts of time; the barber gets $10 to $15 while the Dentist gets $200 or more; educational status, the artificial leverage of government licensing, and collusive practices work together to support high fees.

If you have never experienced the God-like demeanor that allows doctors and dentists to dismiss a patient with a formal letter as if partaking of their service is a privilege rather than a high priced sale, you have probably never confronted one of these demigods.  Rather than seeking to provide a needed service to society at an affordable price the touchy plutocrats seek to be treated with divine deference. 

Young people who begin working at $10.00 an hour (common here in Florida) will work a week and a half (sixty hours) for what a dentist earns in an hour or less.  Many young people cannot afford dentists and live with poor dental hygiene   Senior citizens whose life span is almost complete can spend several thousand dollars on dental work that death renders useless.

Patients have a vested interest in having their teeth cleaned but despite the heavy padding it is a nuisance to dentists.  They maintain their upper 1% status by gluing on crowns and doing root canals.  A root canal takes about an hour of the dentist’s time and costs between $600 and $1000 (Sometimes more!).  When a crown is added fixing a single tooth might cost $2000.  My experience seems to indicate that when a dentist see $10,000 work in a person’s mouth he will take a little guff and might even negotiate but when only cleaning is involved he is quick to dismiss.

Altruism has been wrung out of medical and dental care.  The Hippocratic Oath may still be administered in some form but in practice it is as dead as Christianity in the church.    Today medical and dental professions are businesses conducted by individuals who have fulfilled educational requirements in order to harvest a bumper financial crop.   Ministering to patients is a means of making money and if there is no money to be made or if the patient cannot pay, the relationship is quickly severed.  For the patient who fails to pay, the credit rating is ruined and harassing bill collectors are marshaled.

Dentists and doctors have succumbed to the advancing brutality that has infected our culture.  It began with the Revolutionary War, advanced during the Civil War; was inflicted on the indigenous Indians, on the civilian population of the Philippines, on the Germans in WWII, on the Vietnamese, it is now ravishing the Arabs in the Middle East and is pervasive in our culture.

Brutality has driven out mercy and justice and fertilized the lawless avarice of pagan Capitalism.  John Adam said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  Injustice is rampant and mercy is scarce.  Our people are religious but immoral.  As a nation we have forsaken God’s Law and opted to live under a human standard of justice.

Morality is impossible without law and justice is impossible without God’s Law. Sinful men and women cannot write just law. Those that claim to follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the redemptive work of His Son, The Christ, have drifted so far away from their God that His Laws are repugnant.  Even some who should know better delight in the heresy of Dispensationalism  denying the efficacy of God’s Law favoring law devised by the evil minds o of men.  Death by stoning sounds like cruel and unusual punishment because death by losing the lower half of a human body to an explosive device is hidden and never pictured in our deluded minds.

We live in a sanitized society; hiding grotesque brutality so we can considering ourselves civilized.    Aborted babies are seldom seen.  Pictures of the slaughter of their tiny bodies are unpopular and in some cases banned.  War is advertised as altruistic and soldiers are urged to sign up and see the world.  The returning caskets and the maimed participants are not public fare.  An aberrant press and media fail to mention that for every soldier killed nine civilians die.  The pillage and wreckage of Iraq is kept from the public.  In spite of the brief publicity around Abu Grave torture continues as a weapon.

We have lost our fear of God.  When there is no fear of God there is no active religion.     If stoning did nothing else, it might renew our fear of God    

In his lengthy indictment of the Jews Martin Luther wrote, “For every country, if it is to endure, must have these two things: power and law. The country--- must have a lord, a head, a ruler. But it must also have a law by which the ruler is guided--- For wherever sheer power prevails without the law--- there is no government, but tyranny.” (Excerpted)

God admonishes us in Proverbs, “My son, keep my words, and treasure my commandments within you.    Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching as the apple of your eye.   Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.”   Chapter 7; 1-3 

As our government continues to impose tyrannical laws and procedures on the United States, patriots and Christians approach the coming election with the usual chronic insanity, repeatedly seeking the culprit as the remedy.  Though many of our older citizens have lived through many of these same charades they still participate with vigor. The human mind is easily distorted and often incapable of reaching sound conclusions.  Elections are rife with empty promises and mendacious accusations.  Popularity is manufactured by the press and voting is often controlled by the counter rather than the voter.  When the wicked process is over the winner may initiate some minor social changes but the planned shrinkage of American wealth and power continues as it has now for several decades.  

It is tragic that good men sell their souls in order to become marionettes on the stage of government.   Ron Paul maintained his stance for many years and seemed to be mostly above the evil pragmatism.  Nevertheless, he was summarily shoved aside and though he may have siphoned a few votes from the Mormon King he accomplished very little.  Powerful forces mute the policies that might remedy our downfall and the soulless empty suits we have elected value their jobs more than their character.

The transformation of our doctors and dentists from responsible contributors to the well being of our society to avaricious wealthy craftsmen is a small matter compared to the complete downfall of civilization.  It is, however, a symptom and without confrontation it continues its downward spin along with that of the nation.

Indian Christian intellectual Vishal Mangalwadi has used the clear vision of a Godly man in a newly published book entitled “The Book That Made Your World”.  He speaks to Americans in general and Christians in particular about the overweening influence of the Christian Bible on our culture.  In the Forward he writes, “It was above all, a civilization in which truth was understood to be real, where the collective pursuit of virtue shaped behavior, and the redemptive work of God in the person of Jesus Christ provided a radical and historically verifiable transforming response to the abyss of human selfishness, corruption , and sin.”  Pg.17

Unfortunately, he writes in the past tense.

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