(cta)
FALSE ELITES AND CLEANSING FIRES:
Peggy Noonan is as false in her pretense for having elite wisdom as is Bill Ayers. Like Ayers, she endorsed Obama.
Prophets often warned against false prophets. They should also have warned against False Elites.
Environmentalists appreciate the need for natural forest fires, to clean out deadwood and underbrush. Capacity for a successful society to shade moral ignorance and failure may not be altogether unlike capacity for a forest to shade deadwood. Perhaps a periodic prairie fire is as necessary to burn off moral deadwood of false elites (of those-who-just-don’t-get a civilizing-morality-for-preserving-human-liberty) as it is to burn off forest deadwood.
In any event, such a prairie fire would hardly establish the kind of utopian socialism Bill Ayers imagines.
Ayers can write audaciously and well for inspiring figurative prairie fires. Compare http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_Organization: “...the rhetorical flavor of Weatherman on the attack—combative, uncompromising, confident, and outrageously arrogant.” (Sounds like Obama, yes?)
However, ability to write well is hardly evidence that one is elite in the wisdom of experience. See: Peggy Noonan, viz http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/peggy_noonan_sarah_palin_jealo.html.
See also July 8, 2009, What Is Wisdom? Sarah Palin and Her Critics, by Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media.
Must our moral development require that we endure a cleansing moral fire? Or may those of wise vision show us an alternative way?
Meantime, does not the very air of “elite” Ivy’s remain steeped in Ayers’ philosophy?
BTW:
“Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war.” http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/. (Sounds like Obama, yes?)
“…dedicated the book to Robert F. Kennedy's killer Sirhan Sirhan.”
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Pause to enjoy some grins, at:
The Wood Spider: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc;
The Good, the bad, and the Ugly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3gp7B8WC4Q&feature=related.
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12 comments:
As near as I can tell, corporate and government employers tend to reward and raise to management feminized men, i.e., men able to talk well, with the character of happy faces on sticks, trained in diversity appreciation and adept at turning with the direction of the wind (or the teleprompter), repulsed at rocking the boat of feelings, but keenly interested in sinking self reliant competitiveness.
Among white men, opportunities for promotion are as improved by becoming femimen as are opportunites for being accepted and grade-inflated at elite, non-ROTC colleges. IOW, the white men being selected are those who favor the reduction of masculinity. The consequence is that our entire culture is tending to favor the reduction of masculine defense of sustaining principles.
It has been white men who have sourced much of modern America's character for initiative and invention. All other races, as well as women, are fully as able to attain such character. And many have! But, cultures from which they have come have often not naturally tended to have imbued them with such character. Instead, many have been imbued with character not for individual initiative and invention, but with character for demanding reparations, entitlements, and hyphenated respect.
As a result, finding self-starting entrepreneurs, and volunteers to provide good military and police defense, will become increasingly harder. Unless trends are reversed, America, as a land of vigorous initiative and self reliance, will disappear.
This transition will not go well for humanity. Freedom and dignity will be replaced by a deadening bureacracy that can sustain only despondency and falsely veiled masking. Unless American culture reverses its feminization of men, the lamp of hope will be snuffed out.
Obama and those who get "the vapors" from his presence are signs and symptoms of a dangerous onset of "the wobblies," worldwide.
Deep Viagra:
Imagine the perfect orgasm in itself, orgasm within orgasm, without shape, form, definition, limit, or mind. Perfect, pulsating, glandular, mindless, collective, fulfillment-in-itself. Sort of like the “scientific” (democratic?) notion of an original “big bang.” Except “big” has no referential meaning for the universe-in-itself, and there was no “bang” (for there was no atmosphere to carry sound waves). Rather, the “scientific” notion of “big bang” may as well be one of “big idea.”
For an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, imagine reducing all self-defining independence into a collective, mindless, pulsar, nirvana. Imagine an orgasm (original big bang?) of no moral purpose, no limit to pleasure, and no meaning to seek to fulfill. Is that not the wet dream of a collectivist?
However, does not that dream elude? For there is no pure, un-sponsored, orgasm-in-itself. Rather, there is perennial, creative tension between perspectives of individual idealism vs. perspectives of collective idealism, and between perspectives of parts to wholes vs. wholes to parts.
In ideals, Islamists, Marxists, Rinos, and Dinos are united as Collectivists (Statists). When not “in name only,” Americans, Republicans, and Democrats, in their ideals, tend to be Individualists, i.e., Conservers of Individualism. In practice, competition among perspectives and ideals may (rarely) produce a culture of empathetic respect for individual freedom and dignity within a civilization that avails common referents of familial decency.
More likely, such as when “God” is mis-appreciated, the competition reduces mankind to a state of perennial madness, war, and preparation for war — with ever more spectacular “creative destruction.”
A “funny” on O’Reilly last night lampooned “birthers” by first showing a caricature of Obama displaying his certificate of live birth and then displaying his image in a mirror, to debunk any notion that he is a vampire. However, the “funny” did not generate laughs altogether free of unease. After all, is not a vampire “undead”? Is not an undead a zombie? Is not a zombie akin to a modern democrat? (Bob Hope would say so.) Are not those who nowadays call themselves democrats prone to idealize collectivism?
In history, what societies have favored extreme forms of collectivism? Where the Vlads, the soul-less, and the collectivists have resided, is that not where there have occurred the better part of tortures, genocides, and heads on spikes? How is Obama fundamentally different from any other soul-less collectivist in history, operating with an iron fist in a velvet glove?
Between the living and the undead, give me liberty or give me death. Don’t give me the plight of the undead.
Re: Aristotle warned: "Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
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A defensible republic may be the best form of government for availing liberty within a framework of decency, which naturally leads to opportunities for genius and creation of wealth. The problem of wealth is that government becomes tempted to tax it. As government grows, the temptation to siphon off such wealth among well placed pols and lobbyists becomes greater. Eventually, the amount of wealth that can be siphoned becomes too tempting for most mere mortals to resist --- especially when they have been recently reared under an "elite" educational system that extols romanesque wealth and pleasure over principles and modesty.
The bigness of our government and of our international financing has presented us with a worldwide connected network of sewage pipelines for conveying graft and corruption back and forth among those whose price for selling their souls is only that they be allowed to rule the rest of us. Unless we devise means or institutions for policing and disenfecting the sewer pipelines of graft, we will fall inexorably under the rule of the most successful grafter, i.e., the next Caeser.
This fundamental problem is not in the least addressed merely by alternating elections among candidates of equally grifting political parties, equally at ease with letting our borders fall to illegals, invaders, and all who mean us ill. We are beset with a beguiling, two headed snake of a system of political parties.
Wealth corrupts; immense wealth corrupts immensely.
User Zero said:
"Why does the left vilify Western Culture? Why does the left demonize individualism, personal responsibility, and capitalism? Why have they focused on Western institutions to blame for all of the world's evils? What is it about the unprecedented successes of Western thought, founded on the tenets of classical liberalism, that so enrages the hard-core left? Why, in fact, have they chosen to co-opt the term "liberal" - a label that is completely invalidated by their unbridled moral absolutism?"
The entire post by User Zero from which the above quote is lifted bears reading. Several times. Indeed, I have seen somthing like it, several times. And I hope User Zero will post it several times more.
The fundamental, perennial, political battle of our age is not between Repubs and Dems, nor Haves and Have Nots, nor Belivers and Atheists. The fundamental battle is between those who idealize INDIVIDUALISM and those who idealize and seek the perpetual security of COLLECTIVISM. The Collectivists are not just mental and moral adolescents. Rather, they are adolescents who actively desire never to have to take responsibility to grow up. They are hostile to authority, yet perpetually upset and angry because they know they cannot take care of themselves. They do not want to assume individual responsibility because they have NO SHAME, no sense of modesty. A society of adults that allows its governance to be turned over to such adolescents is upside down. Grave danger closely follows, often leading to totalitarian rule under emotionally stunted tyrants. And now, Obama is content to entrust nukes to the adolescent-collectivist-totalitarians in Iran.
Adolescents raised to be long in tooth yet without shame are not innocent. We will have to do what must be done. If adult conservatives do not soon summon the courage of their convictions, all will be consumed in an adolescent's raging fire.
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Ridicule is both the sword and the shield to which mentally challenged children (including leftist opiners, i.e., Dowd, Tucker, Collins, Maddow, Matthews, Olbermann, etc.) are most devoted, because no amount of reasoning can ever counter or pierce a child who is mostly devoted to ridicule. Ridicule is Leftists' god, and they permit no higher god before them. For such children, who have no reasoning and no shame, chutzpah is first and second nature. Among such know-nothings, what could work better to blow the clarion call to their collective?
T said:
"In a perverse and deeply ironic twist, the theory of class warfare and Marxism itself have been co-opted and converted into the ideological superstructure, now serving to protect and advance the interests and power of the capitalists by creating a false consciousness in the proles that all of the gigantic financial transactions and government programs are for their welfare instead of that of the ruling class.
It is therefore the bourgeoisie, not the workers, and certainly not the capitalists and plutocrats, who now must rush to the barricades, not to overthrow, but to protect the legitimate state."
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Indeed! Only a truly idiotic useful-idiot believes Soros and his buddies mean to look out for the proles any more than is necessary to use them to rule both the proles and the middle class. In successful Western Civilizations, ruling us by making Huxley-like cheap promises to proles is so much easier than with Orwell-like brute force. Especially now that academia has addled the brains of so many educated fools with so much false social "science." See http://fatpita.net/?i=1952.
(Thx. Marie Claude.)
Re: "... type of God working through the bloody hand of evolution"
Well, if no one died, we would all be immortal. In a way, we would all be Gods. And if we could not kill anything, then there could hardly be change. Death is part of how evolution occurs, and evolution is how change occurs. It is part of how we have freedom to make creative choices. In any event, "death" is only in temporal, physical forms. But whatever is the unchanging Source of Consciousness that is beyond physical appearances, that --- in some aspects --- neither changes nor dies.
It would seem a bit silly to want change, creativity, challenge, meaningfulness, and moral purposefulness, and yet still want that there be no death. That would seem akin to wanting to have one's cake and eat it too. But I don't see how that could be done consistent with what presents to us as our "physics." However, insofar as that which sources our physics, I suspect that IT does not die. That is, I suspect that IT does have its cake and eat it too.
The blood that is spilled in the course of evolution is often the blood that we choose to spill. Holistic God avails us opportunities, but it is we who are responsible to live with the consequences of how we compete and choose among such opportunities.
Events such as WWII can and should be lessons to us, subject to context. But I lack capacity or authority to say that they "should" be lessons to God (even if I suspect that they are).
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Regarding persons in place to demolish ("burst") America: Does anyone have an explanation for how the House of Representatives came to elect Pelosi as Speaker? I cannot believe that even the Dems could be that stupid or corrupt all by themselves. Is the hand of Soros, the "American bubble burster," in this? Do he and his minions somehow "own" the Democrat party and direct how its campaign funds are distributed? Did he put the word out that anyone who wanted help from the national organization could forget about it unless they helped to install his idiot puppet as Speaker? The middle class has figured out that Soros does not really have the interests of Americans at heart. Have the Proles? Just asking.
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If Al Gore believes the scientific debate about global warming is over, and that science has similar power to rule out any room for God to use evolution, then why, except for purposes of chicanery, did Al Gore study for the ministry?
If Rev. Wright believes modern Whiteys should pay reparations and finance affirmative action for no reason other than the color of their skin, then how is it he claims to be a Christian?
If Obama equally values the freedom and dignity of all Americans, then why does he persist in adopting such racially polarizing stances?
If soros is intentionally financing activities meant to burst America's bubble in order to advantage his own syndicate of international cohorts, then why is he not prosecuted or expelled as a traitor?
Re: "Thomas Jefferson was not a Deist because Deism holds that the Creator withdrew from the Universe, leaving it and all life therein to fend for its self unattended by any further supernatural action on His part."
Or TJ could have been capable of holding two models in his head at the same time, one for Deism and one for Theism. Some see classical physics as holding that the past still exists, even though they may see quantum physics as implicating that time proceeds granularly. TJ could have considered that the Deity has already fixed that we shall make our appeals to Providence, even though Providence is merely a constant rerun of the same DVD. (How many kids have watched Star Wars umpteen times?)
But that is no matter. The more important point is, regardless, even TJ deemed it important to appeal to Providence, as if God were interactive with us.... as if it takes two models, even if they are not amenable of unification, to explain and guide human experience.
H said:
"These are offered in contradiction to the claim, made here over and over, that our modern rights derive from biblical morality..”
....
I would agree that natural rights derive from God, not from any frozen in scribbled time story about God.
I see no reasonable alternative. If one's moral basis is not arbitrary, then it derives not from the State nor from man (nor from Man's scribbles), but from Something consistent with the cosmos. And that Something one may just as well name "God."
I am ambiguous about "believing" in Christianity. I have not appreciated a need to resolve whether Jesus was a divinely inspired metaphor or a flesh and blood person. This is probably because I think physics (including flesh and blood) are derivative of nothing more than God and Math. In any event, if our Constitution can "live," I see no reason why the New Testament could not also "live."
I love animals also. And I do not think the human form is some kind of apex in physics.
But I think we need to be connected to our history, both to facts and to myths. They are how we assimilate our empathies and our humane and social purposes. I think we should not hate our history, but embrace it as a living history.
I think our Constitution is a "living" document. Even so, I think we often lack the discipline or moral fortitude to accept it as such. Given our vulnerabilities to temptations, we slide quickly from a living constitution to no constitution at all. So, it seems best, if we are to have law, that we idealize the Constitution as a settled document with its own internal means of amendment. But, for appreciating the Bible, there is no such a means for settled amendment, nor do I think there should be. Rather, the meaning of the Bible lives in the unfolding and recombining contexts of all of us.
There does, however, seem to be one moral constant, which I would formulate as: Be ye each empathetic with one another in respect of God!
In that, one may or may not consider oneself a Christian, but yet consider oneself as respecting God.
In any event, I have enjoyed and benefited from the wonderfully scholarly (even if often heated) comments of all, and hope I have not been too much of a nuisance.
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Re: "Those who embrace Western ideals generally reject third-world barbarism as backwards and unjust. On the other hand, those on the far left who reject Western ideals condone acts and institutions which they see as a just reaction against Western oppression. What is clear is that neither the pro-Westerners nor the ant-Westerners are morally relativistic."
Yet, pro-Westerners see the absolutism of the anti-Westerners as misguided, and anti-westerners see the absolutism of the the pro-Westerners as misguided. Each engages "absolutist-moral-relativism," while complaining about the other's. The battle seems to be less about logic than about ideals. That is, the battle seems to be between those who idealize life (as liberty) and those who idealize death (as collectivism). The terminology of absolutism and relativism are tropes for the troops. The party lines are secondary to the ideals of the parties: individual birth vs. collective death.
Here we go again, trying to impose absolute category distinctions among homicide, murder, and sacrifice. But such distinctions are artificially rationalized to context and creative purposes.
For that, one's orientation can be to hate God, hate life, and hate one's existence. Or, one's orientation can be towards empathetically participating in how our creative purposes should unfold.
But neither of such orientations is justifiable in absolution, but only in rationalized choice. We cannot devise a consistent categorization of laws that would correlate with a precise system of absolute morality. Ultimately, it is we who must choose, and live with the consequences.
In empathy, we can try to cooperate to choose what is good, as well as what is consistent with a sustainable system of civilization. But we cannot objectively or empirically know or prove what is good.
Some rules are arbitrary to a time and place because the alternative was thought to lead to slippery slopes of social instability. In the context of primitive societies, the sacrifices we take to be outrageous are not objectively outrageous, but are only perceived to be outrageous when considered in relation to our present social system.
Does it not seem odd when Atheists seek absolutely to condemn historical conceptions of God, even as they favor statist or non-religious based conceptions of absolutist morality? That is, they often assume the existence of an absolute standard of morality in order to prove that no such a standard exists. But, if existence is fundamentally absurd, how does such argument by reductio ad absurdum "prove" anything about our existential predicament or about what "should" be our process for making moral choices?
I suggest the "proof" is within, in intuitive empathy.
Re: Animal Rights
Humans too easily apply their big brains to play shell games with classifications, but then too often fail to realize they have confused even themselves. We try to transition smoothly from discrete, particular (quantum) perspectives to continuous, general (cosmic) perspectives, and then back again, even though, at least thus far, we have no unifying model that allows us to do that in any measurable objectivity.
We try to put concepts such as "consciousness," "human," "soul," and "rights" into absolute categories, as if we could force the cosmos to absolutely obey our conceptual schemes.
But what if the only absolute were pure Potential (i.e., God), with unique capacity to apply systems of math to unitize perspectives of its own potential? What if our "universe" were a mathematical algorithm, which God has set in place to avail perspectives of potential (i.e., consciousness) with ranges of freedom within parameters (degrees of freedom)? What if all that we perceive as "physics" were derivative of Pure Potential leveraging particular perspectives in respect of an algorithm set in place to rule our universe?
If so, our mortal attempts to impose schemes of classification are not themselves absolute, but only in creative respect of a Higher Absolute. In respect of its uniqueness, Pure Potential may have capacity in some aspect to be "unchanging" even as it also has capacity to engage in (changing) relations with its particular perspectives (i.e., us). We change, even as we are derivative of Something which has an aspect that does not change. If this seems bizarre, is it not equally bizarre that anything at all should exist?
IOW, we may receive guidance from God, but that guidance is in many respects relative, changing, and contextual --- not entirely absolute.
That which translates to our perceptions as the human form is not an absolute Apex. Capacity to experience and make moral choices is not limited to humans. We all have a self evident, God given right to pursue meaningful choices, but there is nothing self evident or absolute by which to say that any particular choice was the one and only moral choice.
Q: What, then, is the use of "God"?
A: God is the Source of Feedback Empathy: from God to conscious beings; and from among conscious beings back to God.
Q: How do we rationalize sense out of our lot?
A: Within the mathematical parameters of our expanding and changing boundaries, we explore, experiment, communicate, empathize, and create. And there are few limits to that which perspectives of consciousness, in the full math of space-time, can create. Our sense of purpose and awe is in our god given capacity to create by making choices. Our capacity to create is enhanced insofar as we are able to give reasonable rein to the liberty of perspectives of consciousness within a framework for sustaining a decent transmission of family and cultural values.
Q: What are "rights"?
A: In main, "rights" are what we choose to legitimize and assimilate in respect of God, in respect of how we pursue parameters of our creativity. Our "rights" tend not to be absolute, but often do tend to be necessarily arbitrary, in respect of higher purposes. Were it otherwise, we would dissolve into hopeless attempts to impose regulations upon God.
Q: For rationalizing or legitimizing "rights," should the "State" replace "God"?
A: No. That would be neither logical nor, from history, merciful. It would replace a "priesthood of the congregation" with a "priesthood of the nomenklatura." It would be to reprise hell on earth.
M The Infidel said:
"p.s. Even if God exists, why should I waste my time groveling about how much I love him and thank him and so on? Open you eyes. The human race is a pretty wretched experiment. If I were God I would never have made the decision to create human beings. I mean, what's the point? for every enlightened, God-fearing and god-loving Christian with a loaf of wonderbread in the kitchen, there are a thousand children starving to death, being slaughtered, falling from trees, burning themselves beyond recognition, stepping into the streets, tumbling down stairs, and so on. Why create a species along with the circumstances that would allow the most innocent members to routinely die and suffer? Seems awful stupid to me."
1) You should not waste time groveling. But we become how we act. We strengthen our mental muscles for empathy by coming together in forums for exercising such muscles.
2) Whether you, as God, would create humans is quite beside the point. Surely, you do not feign to have God's perspective? Even so, for grins, suppose you were God, and knew you were God. Wouldn't you want to explore some points of view?
3) If you think a hungry and destitute person does not value his life, you might imagine trying to take it away. I suspect many hungry and destitute folks would quite kick your behind.
4) Imagine the potential before us, before you discount the value of where it may yet lead.
Johnny Appleseed --- Bravo!
Viz:
The far left is Socialism which is based on the philosophy of Rousseau and Marx, and Socialism has become a religion. The religious nature of Socialism explains why it labels individualism and free enterprise as evil and totalitarian government and government-controlled economics as good. Socialism is a theophobic religion which may either equate good and evil, or in many cases label evil as good and good as evil - moral inversion. The religious aspects of Socialism, Marxism, etc. were studied by the brilliant Soviet mathematician and dissident, Igor Shafarevich; we should pay attention to what he had to say.
“The religious aspects of socialism may explain the extraordinary attraction of socialist doctrines and their capacity to inflame individuals and to inspire popular movements. It is precisely these aspects of socialism which cannot be explained when socialism is regarded as a political or economic category. Socialism's pretensions to be a universal world view comprising and explaining everything also make it akin to religion. A characteristic of religion is socialism's view of history not as a chaotic phenomenon but as an entity that has a goal, a meaning and a justification. In other words, both socialism and religion view history teleologically. Bulgakov draws our attention to numerous and far-reaching analogies between socialism and Judaic apocalyptics and eschatology. Finally, socialism's hostility toward traditional religion hardly contradicts this judgment--it may simply be a matter of animosity between rival religions.” Igor Shafarevich
“It is certainly true that socialism is hostile to religion. But is it possible to understand it as a consequence of atheism? Hardly, at least if we understand atheism as it is usually defined: as the loss of religious feeling. It is not clear just how such a negative concept can become the stimulus for an active attitude toward the world (its destruction or alteration) or how it can be the source of the infectiousness of socialist doctrines. Furthermore, socialism's attitude toward religion does not at all resemble the indifferent and skeptical position of someone who has lost interest in religion. The term "atheism" is inappropriate for the description of people in the grip of socialist doctrines. It would be more correct to speak here not of "atheists" but of "God-haters," not of "atheism" but of "theophobia." Such, certainly, is the passionately hostile attitude of socialism toward religion. Thus, while socialism is certainly connected with the loss of religious feeling, it can hardly be reduced to it. The place formerly occupied by religion does not remain vacant; a new lodger appeared.” Igor Shafarevich
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BTW, note to Z:
Everywhere above, the words "Randian Objectivism" could just as well be substituted for "Socialism."
Rand was an evangelizing theophobe! A theophobe with a religiously zealot purpose!
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