I just realized something. If the King decrees something contrary to judgment, that makes him a bad king. So, while the disagreement might seem arbitrary and petty, the worse villain is the Lion for decreeing a thing which is untrue, and then punishing the Tiger for what was. It’s funny, but this kind of represents all of the problems in Western Civilization today, that we justify the Lion in his bad judgment.

The fact is, the premise of Western Enlightenment rests on reason’s capacity to win. If we say that there is no capacity in some, and that trying to win them by reason is wicked and unlawful, and deserves to be punished, then we fundamentally undermine Western Society, and the King really does decree that the Grass is Blue.

This is not a good moral. At all.

Author Unknown. Edited by Hamilton, Jeffery W.. "Don't Argue with Donkeys." La Vista Church of Christ.org, archives. https://www.lavistachurchofchrist.org/cms/bible-studies/moral-principles-for-young-people-volume-ii/dont-argue-with-donkeys/. Web.

However, as a fellow brother in Christ's story, I believe the point is good as a proverb for dealing with foolish people. However, the King in this instance is not a good king. He should never lie out of spite. Nor should a man be punished for speaking what is true by authority. Rather, authority should punish the Donkey, not the Tiger. Thus, the story shows our modern error in judgment.

Questions answered:

The Lion in the story was not just, and is an emblem of today's civil court system. That it explicitly, knowing what is right, justifies fools.

One ought to disagree with someone, if what they are saying is blatantly false, as if their idea gets perpetuated, and becomes law through the King, who then becomes persecuted? Obviously we do. Is it the Tiger's fault that the Lion's decree was unwise? Does not a wise King tell the truth, and reward truth tellers? Will not Christ reward us, for speaking the truth in Christ, and for disagreeing with the world? How does the Gospel get preached, if there can be no disagreement? If Lies are upheld by those in high authority?

We do not have to win every argument. But, that's not the point of this story? Is it? The Tiger went to the King to get a just discernment. And the King failed in this simplest of tasks.

No. Reality does not change because of beliefs. Nor does it change because of the Lion's decree.

I think there was no better way for the Tiger to handle it. As, he went to the authority, but the Authority lied and punished him, insead of the evildoer. As is what happens so often in this world. There is no authority, except what is depraved and wicked and unlawful ordinance. That is why so many people suffer.

Who should have been punished was the Ass and not the Tiger.

I'm reading it right now. Am at the chapter where Charles tells the Doctor that he loves Lucile. 

I thought it was disjointed, too. I literally was dreading coming to this novel, but at about the scene where the wine flowed through the street, and the gritty realities of Feudalism were revealed to me, it began to make sense. The random scenes turned into a tapestry, and a story emerged. It's one of the most fantastic things I'd ever seen, actually. It really shifted focus once Monseigneur Marquis was introduced. It became a tapestry, and then adding Charles as the love interest of the Dr.'s daughter Lucile... It's very good. Like, everything else is making sense, and the earlier scenes have weight to them.

I think as Dickens was writing---it was first a serialized novel---he didn't know what direction to take, until the Marquis arrived, and then a plot formed out of thin air.

It's really a completion of War and Peace. Like, Tolstoy gives the Russian perspective of the French Revolution---and I have to say I'm kind of left wondering in Tolstoy why the French would invade---but then seeing the absolute tyranny of French Feudalism, it became clear why they would launch a campaign into the rest of Europe. Like, I know where the novel is going, to show the energy of the French and the oppression they felt.

It really puts into perspective our modern movements. Like, they're rebelling in their affluence. They aren't abjectly poor, and sheep for the slaughter. You can't run someone over in a city, and kill them, and expect to get away with it in America. Like seeing that scene with the Marquis---which is pretty high up in the food chain, but still ought to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law---running over men and children on the street. And that there is no accountability for him. He does it with impunity. It's a good explanation for the social conditions which led to the French Revolution, and later on the Napoleonic Wars.

Like, it's truly one of the most important pieces of literature ever---it's kind of the other half of Tolstoy's War and Peace. You really get it, why the French would be enraged, but when they met the Russians, the Russians weren't dissatisfied with their treatment. Not until they were freed---which is kind of worrying actually.

A Tale of Two Cities is a great piece of literature. I shouldn't have called it disjointed at the beginning, as those first six chapters establish the character of Lucile and the Doctor. It gives us a portrait of their tender relationship, and the struggle, and when the plot explodes onto the scene, it's gripping.

Upon reading the novel, it dawned on me that Ray had felt that way in 1960. He'd seen it. And, I, in 2022, feel that way. It is the alienation of any genius---that is the ethos of the book.
Yet, the insidious thing about Fahrenheit 451 is that the dystopian doesn't actually censor books. It's far worse than that. It censors creativity. It censors openness. It censors genius of any kind.
That's the thing about it. I feel that way right now, but it is rather the social awkwardness of being what I am. If that were made illegal, and it were a crime to think, a crime to be open, a crime to be different, that's the insidious nature of Fahrenheit 451. Not just the burning of books---which is bad---but the outright denial of one's right to think, act, believe, experience. 

There are certain people with High IQs, and most scientists and scholars are among them, who having the elephant memory they do, cannot piece together information to create new ideas. There are such individuals with extremely high IQs which are incapable of creativity.
Then, there are people like me, who have a high IQ, but have extreme openness, extreme creativity, extreme existential intelligence. Who, would certainly be the figure Fahrenheit 451's society censored.

I feel that encroaching sense that it may be coming soon. But, I do not wish it, to. But, there are two kinds of geniuses. Mathematical, and Linguistic. Mathematical geniuses have the ability to do arithmetic. They have the ability to edit books meticulously, for no punctuation or grammatical errors. They remember like an elephant rote rules, formula, traditions,---and they are very intelligent people. Ask them anything about protocol or a certain duty they will be able to tell you down to the exact letter. That's probably why I didn't do well in Boy Scouts.
Yet, creative geniuses---being that we are so rare actually---have another ability. That ability to piece together thoughts, and weave them, and express them. To make new from raw materials. To rediscover ancient philosophies and traditions.

It may just be the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Yet, when I look at a fireman, I see Ray Bradbury's creature. I see Guy Montag. I saw in the woods a fireman, one who worked for a fire company, and the soulless determination, the thoughtless trample through the woods without even looking at the bluebells in full bloom to his left---rather, he was determined to accomplish some arcane goal.

Christ is very strange, as a godlike figure, in that He inverts the traditional values we assume when we think of conservatism. Unemployment, aimless wandering, long diatribes and discussions, parables,---Christ lived as a man of words, and He told us to live the same. Because, obviously, determination and desire to reach a goal thwarts the wisdom. Of rubbing dandelions on your cheek, of opening your mouth and catching the rain, of stopping to smell the flowers. These are utterly human things, and by seeking to accomplish a goal, by mindlessly driving ahead for the attainment of a reward or occupation, one does not appreciate the things they see. They, like Mildred, get ensconced in a play about nothing.

And the problem is so many people are like thus. So many people, instead of being creative, are not able to be creative. There are intelligent people who cannot be creative. There are intelligent people, conversely, who cannot do simple arithmetic. Like myself. Though maths were my better subject in school---I hated reading---it still didn't change the fact that I was better off as a philosopher than a mathematician. I never learned math past algebra, and I never got into Quadratic Formulas or exponents until College. Literally, I never saw a quadratic equation until my second year at college. Yet, I was proficient enough at the basic rudimentaries of math that I could get a 100% on my first Math Test without a calculator. My grades actually declined the more I required a calculator. But that doesn't stop the fact that I am inconsistent at math.

What use is there for a philosopher? Namely, that is the question Fahrenheit 451 asks. What use is there for contradictory wisdoms from numerous books? What reason does a man like me, falsely state that all summer leaves begin as flowers? Perhaps to take notice to it. As, most leaves look like flowers---if not outright are flowers---in their beginning stage, while unfolding from the bud. Yet, some haughty scholar, will do like they do with Aristotle some years down the line. "All trees do not flower."  One of their more tender students will chuckle at the insidious misrepresentation of my thoughts, and then think "You miss the essence of a flower." If you can look at the oak bud when it's first unfolding, and see it has a consistency much unlike any leaf I'd ever seen. Or, that the ant has four legs. Of course, we like to think of insects as having six legs---when, indeed, their first two legs are protracted to use as arms when the insect is stationary. How many other such observations have we  mistakenly discredited in the past? And what wisdom does the past have for the future?
Fahrenheit 451 is the outlawing of thought, the censoring of aberrations, the dictum that only the present knows best, the belief that all things must be literal. And with that, we lose our sense of who we are. And really, what Fahrenheit 451's society outlaws, is humanity itself.
Let it never come to that.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451, with Afterward and Coda. Del Rey Books, 1996. Text.

Whenever I read a work, one of the first things I do is research the Author. I look for any interviews the Author did, I look for any kind of biography on the author. I look for anything I can to help me understand the Author's thoughts, and what might have been going through their mind as they wrote.

This is helpful, because then I can properly extrapolate the theme from the Author's stories or essays. By knowing who the Author was, and what the Author spoke, and what he or she actually believed, I can reference that as a Rosetta Stone for interpreting any Author's work.

It's almost imperative that someone know the author, before they interpret their work. And doing so, one can look at the four Gospels in the Bible, and use it to fully understand the Bible. Both Old and New Testament, we can see Jesus' extreme mercy, His extreme kindness, His meekness, and understand this characteristic was the personality who blessed David and told Joshua to go out to battle. We can understand that Jesus, Who is the same God Who told Israel to defeat Canaan, is the same God Who died upon the Roman cross.

It's imperative that we understand this, too, as most people believe the Old Testament is a different God than the New. The fact is, they are not. Jesus, when He returns, will bear the sword in wrath, and will exercise all of God's judgment upon the world. He came in the Roman times to demonstrate His mercy, and to later bestow the gift of His ministry to men and women, so they could share in the impartation of blessing which Jesus had lived. Yet, it is imperative that we understand every word in the Bible is a red letter. It's all Jesus' words, and it's all Jesus' sayings. Save the dialogue, when one of the people are speaking. Yet, even those, in their certain way, are paraphrases used by Christ to express the person's true feelings, and to concisely speak their words, not His.

When we understand an author, we can have better insights into the work they've created. We can know their beliefs, their motivations, their systems and ways of thinking. When reading a book, one ought to absorb every ounce of information they can about the author, if there is ever going to be any kind of understanding the text. It's a part of the circle of readership. The text is a mediator between Author and Reader. It's been said before, yet with one of the pieces missing, there can be misinterpretations of the text.

 For works which we do not know the author, there is only the times we can understand. That is equally as important. When we do not know the Author, we must understand the times, the traditions, the works' place in history. What previous commenters had said about it. Yet, with the Bible it is quite different. We need only know the man responsible for Writing it, and that is Jesus. Who, I'm sure, was like any other writer, and wrote His book in His spare time, between sanding and shaping stools and tables; or whatever materials His family could afford. Jesus probably was gifted vellum from His mother, on which He'd carefully inscribe the scriptures the way He wished them to be read. And Christ would write, both Old and New Testament. He would set down, and slowly scribe out His masterpieces, prophesying the entire thing. That's how I imagine it, as it's a lot easier to understand the Bible when we know it's written by one Author. And we need to have faith that God is careful enough to preserve a work for us to study, so that we don't believe He would leave His children in the dark.

When I'm studying other authors, I use the same methods. I look over their life, I study their beliefs, their patterns of thinking, their phraseology, their mentality, their age, the way they died. I pore over their interviews, their biographies, their extraneous philosophies. That way I can get an accurate portrait of who the Author was, or is. As, without it, there is no way one can conceivably understand the works they read. Without knowing the man or woman behind the voice, there can be no true knowledge of the stories one reads, and their meaning. Aesop, we know, was a slave. Therefore, we understand his fables as concealed metaphors which hid their meaning from the slave owners, and they were passed down from slave to slave. And we know that he was freed for his cunning. Plato, we know, knew Socrates, and was intent on finding a perfect Form on which to base all other things. He, as it were, was looking for the Author of Creation. And we, being in the current century, have found Him and His name is Jesus. Then there is philosophers, writers, thinkers, theologians. Their lives are important to study, so their works can be accessed. Whether miserable failures, victims, prosperous or conquerors of the world---we must know the Author of a text in order to understand their work. And without it, we must condescend to the time period it was written.
 
Yet, sometimes, also, there are things we shall only know about the Author through his or her writing. And that, my friends, is why we read. We can only, truly, know a writer by reading their text. As many biographers try to piece together the puzzle of an author, they cannot unless they were there to meet them. And sometimes, biographers can be outright wrong about the great ones, if there is political interest to skew the authors' personal lives. Thus, we come full circle, as the other thing which is true about the Bible, is that all we know about Jesus is written in the scripture, as if by His own hand. Just like Shakespeare's sonnets betray our modern scholars are wrong about him, so does Jesus' words betray that modern Scholars are wrong when they wish to frame Him as a sinner or otherwise try to defame Him as a lunatic. His words do not betray a decrepit mind. We know Jesus existed for two reasons: One, His census still exists, and two because Paul, after his conversion, eight years after Jesus' death, approached James and Peter. James, who was Jesus' little brother, confirmed the teaching that Jesus had resurrected, and that He was indeed God made into Human Flesh. And that is how we know, for Paul indisputably is a historical figure, and we know he did indeed persecute the church. Therefore, the Gospel was not, nor could be, an invention of his mind. It was, from its beginning, the gospel handed down to us we see today.

These are two of our best and brightest. Good people with common sense. Not stupid. The media and some people in the government are hinting at throwing them in prison, because Tulsi reminded the American People Ukraine has Bio Labs---US Funded---and that war could compromise them. And Tucker repeated what she said.

I stand with free speech, and it's time that Americans stand up to their government and say "No" to this authoritarian move. We deserve to know these things, because who will suffer if this happens? All of us, like we did during Covid. We---being voters---have to know exactly what our officials are doing, and its time the government stop hiding secrets from us which we need to know in order to elect sound officials. As, the officials of our country are betraying us.

There is no reason anyone should be talking about sending anyone to prison for free speech. And I have half a notion to think if we knew the compromising position our government has placed the American people in, we'd be ashamed of them and vote them all out.

The U.S. needs to stay out of the Ukraine war. Let them fight their Iraq. Feed the Russian people the truth, like our media ought to have done for us. And frankly, those labs ought not have been there in the first place.