(cta)
Thug Chutzpah:
As I begin another dreary day reading about the same thug-chutzpah that passes for representation in D.C., I find myself struck by the myriad of shameless shenanigans that are fronted as “objective reasoning,” or “science.” This is not a matter of parallel universes of conceptualization. It is a matter of ungodly fidelity to no higher purpose than each participant’s pursuit of pleasure and power. In such pursuit, the useful idiots are only the ideologues.
But Obama and his henchmen are far too worldly to be mere ideologues. Rather, they are well versed in what they take to be cynical truths: (1) that political thuggery is a game of skill, with plays proven to be effective for every situation; (2) that, with smoothly confident deployment of force and doublespeak, it is possible to fool some of the people all of the time; (3) that --- when a group of thugs can reduce an electoral majority to a perpetual state of ignorance, confusion, entitlement-envy, and practiced rationalization --- the producing class can be cowed and corralled into a permanent feed lot.
Heed the doublespeak of the Thugs Of Chutzpah:
1) Conservatives who want to know about the upbringing, family life, early conditioning, and education of their President should be ridiculed as “birthers,” because they have no further right to know. They should just get out of the way and let the Thugs “clean up.”
2) As taught in “elite” American colleges (see Horowitz’s “One Party Classroom”), the only objective, scientifically valid, higher purpose is to overcome the historical hegemony of the blue eyed, male, white devils. (You want CHUTZPAH? Read One Party Classroom to take a gander at what the “scientific” left takes as passing for political and social SCIENCE!)
3) Conservatives who conceive that their consciousness implicates a higher power and purpose are non-bright haters of science, led astray by the Discovery Institute.
Well, why does such ridicule work for Thugs Of Chutzpah?
I think ridicule works better for Thugs because their easily riled followers and troops consist of: persons reduced by their educations to fools; persons made corrupt in believing in no purpose higher than pleasure and power; persons of desperation who are easily corrupted by cheap financial favors and promises; and persons who are simply too ignorant and cosseted among fellow travelers ever to reach beyond the kool-aid of the Thugs.
There is much tragedy in this farce.
First, the Thugs Of Chutzpah, being unable and unwilling to feed themselves, will themselves fall off the carapace of the cowed producers, once the cowed producers stop producing and laze in the ranks of the entitlement-mongering, non-producing masses.
Second, the knowledge base of civilization will falter or fail, as “science” becomes twisted more and more to the “one party classroom.”
Unfortunately, the producing class only now is realizing that it looks to its present “representation” in Congress in vain. Rather, Congress is filled with the likes of those who idealize no higher purpose than their own pleasure and power. Their fidelity is to the KUSD hierarchy: kiss up and s*** down.
Among American Jews who idolize Obama, is it because they admire his chutzpah?
Bottom line: Ordinary Americans who idealize patriotism, principle, and purpose are only now learning that they are without representation in D.C. At long last, will their anger be heard, felt, and resolved? Pray it is so.
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34 comments:
Babe In Woods:
How will Conservatives EVER get representation? If “Obama and the Cynics” are right, nearly every representative will always either be rendered ineffective or will be corrupted by necessary associations among those who are beholden to no higher purpose than to pursue cliques for doling out pleasure and power. Insofar as monied interests generally seek to make more money, they will not flock to finance campaigns or activities of the merely morally principled.
But what if a few Congressmen began exploring Americans’ interests in conserving freedom and dignity within a civil society that respects family friendly values? After all, the Conservative political philosophy is generally well assimilated, thought out, and easily available at various internet websites.
What if a group of principled representatives were to assimilate as a cross-party force, to pursue and advocate for Conservative American Ideals? Sure, they would be subject to various threats and disciplines from party whips and money-extorting interests. But suppose they worked together as they advocated the Conservative Case to the American people, perhaps even by sharing opportunities to post information, arguments, and political positions on a website for which only they could approve articles (even though opened up to the general public for comments)?
Thereby, could they not elicit enough contributions from website followers to counter any need to rely on Blueblood Rinos or Corrupt Dinos? So long as they remained in good standing as members of such a Conservative Coalition, it would matter to me not a fig whether they ran under political banners as Republicans or as Democrats.
Why should not similar Conservative websites be availed for politicians at all levels of governance? How else may ordinary Americans work politically to take back their country?
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When a problem is so complicated that a collective (government) solution would require a thousand page bill, which no representative has time or talent to understand, then perhaps most aspects of the problem should best be left to the marketplace. That is, unless we want intimate decisions being made by bureacratic hacks.
But why should anyone trust an obvious Marxist, who has filled appointments with obvious Marxists, to provide any "collective solution" that will be other than an opportunity for ripping us off while providing shoddy service and then telling us there is nothing we can do about it?
What we have now is wild, lawless, and raw government telling citizens it can do a better job of deciding what is in their best interests than they can, and then siphoning off the top to reward and empower rip off enablers and political con artists (i.e., "leftist patriots").
It seems too bad we do not tally votes by cumulating the IQ's of all citizens who are for Obamacare versus all who are against it. But for connivers bent on manipulating votes under a rule of one vote per simpleton, Obamacare would be a nonstarter.
Is this how America ends? Not with a bang, but with a cumulative whimpering of simpletons?
Globalists love to argue that if there ever was any such a thing as an American culture, it is now surely dead. Well, they have certainly done their utmost to kill it. However, I think there remains a strong seed of American culture. This country, more so than any other modern nation, has been founded and nurtured by adventuring immigrants, trusting to their individual resourcefulness, energy, and courage. It seems improbable that natural selection would have failed to add a genetic component.
Only recently have America's borders been swamped by those looking for entitlements, handouts, amnesty, and opportunities for dissembling political gangsterism by enticing and enlisting derelicts, criminals, dopers, and non-assimilable illegals. Of this, "elites" at the NYT seem to find cause for celebration.
Unfortunately, because we allow even children, simpletons, and enemies of the State to vote, those of us who remain true to the promise of the American ideal are being slowly drowned. But we who are being drowned are not selected for being blue eyed white anglo saxon men. Rather, we who are being selected for drowning are all Americans of whatever race who despair at having our once proud nation reduced to a collectivist farm, to be abused by henchmen appointees of the likes of Obama.
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Why should it not be the power of America that everywhere, where reasonably feasible, supports freedom, including freedom from tyrrany? Where would freedom exist, were it not for America? Without American defense and support, in what other modern country have institutions arisen in support of individual rights against collectivists and tyrants? If not America, what nation or group of nations has the background that makes it trustworthy in the eyes of any other to defend freedom?
Collectivists sometimes rationalize that it was right to spread nuclear bomb making know how to other countries, in order to balance power. I don't believe the scientists who gave aid and comfort to that idea were honest. For if they were honest, any fool should have foreseen the danger of competitive nuclear proliferation. I think all along their sympathies were for American style individual freedom either to be obliterated or to lose in a contest with collectivists. Among Americans who value freedom, why should we advocate sharing with would-be collectivists the responsibility to preserve it? And how shall we sustain fortitude to preserve it, so long as our academic institutions are rotted with collectivists? Thanks to traitors to liberty, we are now in mortal peril. And the collectivists expect we shall simply submit and surrender, to "the inevitability."
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Obama's mental fixation for not being especially concerned with nuclear proliferation is comparable to A'jad's mental fixation for bringing about the 13th Imam:
A'jad's mind is blinded by the light of the notion of using holocaust to hurry conditions for bringing his religious beliefs to fruition;
Obama's mind is blinded by the light of the notion of uniting workers, erasing borders, and bringing us to one collective, in order to hurry conditions for bringing his Marxist beliefs to fruition.
Given the glory of the 13th Imam, or the glory of the uniting of the workers of the world, any collateral damage on account of nuclear proliferation is a small price.
It's not about the fulfillment of humanity, stupid; it's about fundie fulfillment in the religions of jihad and collectivization. For those glorious causes, humanity is not just expendable; it is unimportant. Thus believe the undead zombies.
And they call Christians befuddled fundies.
I do not like where Republican bluebloods want to take America. Not at all. Why should anyone want to dither with the devil?
Either Repubs need to be re-birthed and shed the Big International Governmental Corporatism philosophy of strange bedfellowry, or else we need a new Conservative Party.
Or, failing that, more of us need to be Independents, and at least favor a rise of Conservatism, even if among Dems.
Repubs who want to go to the devil can go there without my joining or financing them.
Just WHAT THE HELL IS SO MUCH BETTER about helping bring to victory a party of Big International Governmental Corporatism? If the only official choice is between a party of Big Governmental Regulation vs. a party of Big Governmental Corporate Corruption, I will make my choices unofficial.
Re: "For example, in 2007 The Royal Society (UK) morphed the meaning of their original 1663 motto, Nullius in Verba, ("On the word of no one") to "Respect the facts", i.e. the facts which the Royal Society has determined to be true, particularly those on global warming."
So, when the R.S. changed the motto, based upon what "facts" was the change recommended?
Obviously, the change --- among scientists! --- was based on a political agenda!
Is there anything so dangerous as a mess of educated fools who fail to appreciate the limits of their education?
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I have read that modesty is a trait liberals tend to have less of. And so, they are less likely to see anything wrong with sexual exhibitionism, polygamy, whatever, ... no limits.
But what about how they practice Marxism? Now that is something about which they exhibit a strange sort of modesty. Indeed, even a red faced modesty. But it is red faced more in the sense of being enraged than in the sense of being embarrassed.
Leftists are "modest" about practicing Marxism in the daylight, preferring the dark --- sort of like those who plant I.E.D. devices. And if you come across them practicing Marxism in the dark, it's "guns up time."
In McCarthy's time, leftists were less enraged about being labelled as Marxists than about having been found out for what they were. Most were Marxists. They just couldn't forgive McCarthy for exposing them for what they were.
They want to do their best work in the dark, in crisis, in a rush, without time for public debate, without even having each new collectivist intrusion or 1000 page bill written before it is approved. The gap between that step and the rule of tyranny is small.
Insofar as the opponent of our liberty is prone to red faced, ad hominem tactics, why should we not engage in whoop ass, red-ass disruption and ridicule of their agenda and of their abject, historical illiteracy?
After all, modern "liberalism" is less about historical based faith in human liberty than it is about social sickness, i.e., a cultural infusion into our youth of an illiterate, narcisstic sense of unearned superiority and entitlement.
Will some modern liberal please cite an historical example of any successful society that was based on its youths' self admiring sense of entitlement (i.e., "we are the ones we have been waiting for")?
I doubt "we are the ones we have been waiting for." I suspect we are the ones the wolves have been waiting for.
I doubt our present circumstances will end well for those among us who consider that "we are the ones we have been waiting for." One way or another, "those ones" will soon be eliminated.
The world has little patience for those who not only fail to grow up, but actively resist it.
America is and has been polarized for some time. The opposing camps consist of Faux-Progressives (Godless or Soul-less Despots of the Collective Proletariat or Umma) vs. Conservatives (Lovers of Liberty). (Both Marxists and Islamofascists, in surrendering all capacity for independent thought, render their consciousness soul-less.)
The problem has been this: The de facto polarization is only just recently dawning on Conservatives.
It took Bush-McCain's faltering on protecting the border to get us to start noticing. And the more we notice, the more things add up. We had thought Republicans were, in the main, reliable partners. But most of them, being Rinos, are not. Rather, Rinos are in a "progressive" fellowship with Dinos.
Real Dems and Repubs are mainly without representation. In fact, America is without representation.
Instead, what we have in D.C. is a mess of soul-less crooks out to sell out American borders, traditions, and values --- at every opportunity to turn the sell out into cash. The Republican Rinos are no friends of Conservatives or of America.
Challenge: Name 10 decent representatives in the sell-out-Gomorroh we call D.C.
There is a polarization, but the Conservative end of it is without political representation. Why? Because we assumed what was floating to the top of our political leadership was not soul-less. To our wakening horror, we find it is soul-less, and has been --- for quite some time.
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4USA said:
"Start listening for the re-definition of the meaning of freedom. It's not going to be about free-will, it's going to shift to freedom from worries and responsibilities."
You, sir, are a wise American! I would add that no man knows the hour or the day when we shall be "woodshedded" by a higher power. I grant you this: We are acting as if we were on a blind sperm race to get to it!
(Re --- "shift to freedom from worries and responsibilities":
The goal of collectivists seems to be to reduce everyone --- whether they want it or not --- into one big collective, mindless, orgiastic release into nirvana. No wonder they prefer not to notice or believe in any higher purpose!)
From Delphi:
No Gaps In God:
“God” can be considered as that which conducts the music of math, which is conducted through descending, overlapping, fluxing levels of conductors of music, every conductor having an empathetic ear to feedback, every conductor exercising degrees of freedom within parameters of the free-flowing musical score. Every conductor at every level embodies a perspective of the music of the orchestra.
There is no need to conceptualize God as being confined to some ambivalent notion of “gaps.” Rather, God may better be conceptualized as availing all gaps, availing all changes among gaps, and availing all degrees of freedom within gaps.
There is no eternal imprisonment of the set of mathematical rules that we presently conceptualize as governing our universe. Such mathematical rules do not imprison God, nor does any variation thereof forever imprison conscious and empathetic perspectives of God. There are only metaphysical sheets of music, upon which the music is continuously free flowing, some scores seeming (to us) to linger longer, some encompassing other scores.
What avails our empathies and experiences of meaning and music is our interconnecting consciousness of the musical potential of mathematical interactions among our own potentials. All of “physics” is derivative of nothing more than math and potential. There are no “gaps” in God. (Show me the “Higgs Boson,” or any ultimate “physical” source of mass!)
God is the Potential and the Director that avails our sustaining of music. To try to deconstruct, annihilate, or utterly replace our historical parables, analogies, myths, and sacred stories is to try to reduce the music of our habitation to a hellish dissonance.
Prove me wrong. Hell, prove by some degree how “probable” it is or is not that I am wrong. Prove there is some unifying, godless algorithm that forever rules all consciousness. Prove there is a unifying algorithm that rules even our decade, which is not amenable of being undermined or phase shifted by higher intervention.
You can prove no such a thing — not in math, nor in empiricism. Your “gaps analogy” for trying to reduce God is so childish that your “Four Horsemen” flew to it like butterflies, whose wings would be broken upon their own hellishly contrived wheel of the gaps (to apply a metaphor of Alexander Pope and Mary Midgley).
Leftist-like attempts to “prove” the concept of God to be superfluous are too hellish to be laughable. Such attempts are Trojan Horses for inviting our rule by new and false gods, i.e., gods of secular, self-interested gangs of thugs who only pretend to hold dear the interests of the collective. Such attempts seek to undermine the spiritual and equal priesthood of each citizen, to impose an arbitrary rule by “The Elite Betters.”
Z said: "All I ask is that you keep this belief out of the politics."
Q's: Well, what other beliefs should be kept out of politics? Other than trivialities, what moral or political beliefs are reducible to objective proof? When people are challenged about why they hold a political belief that is not reducible to objective proof, what should they say, if not, "Based on my life's experiences, this is what I am guided (by the Source of "should-ness") about what should be done"?
Z said: Do you see how muttled it makes the argument? Instead of talking about why the government can't legally do what they want to do to us from a rational secular point of view we are shouting God prohibits you from doing it.
Q's: How do we arrive at laws, interpretations of laws, and changes in laws, if not from arguments about what the law should be, based on some standard of morality that seems to each of us to be inherent in the cosmos? Apart from Constitutional law, there is a body of law referred to as the Common Law. From whence do you think it comes? When you argue for a change, do you base your argument on random chance, what you and your buds had for breakfast, or some higher principle that you seek to weave consistently with other higher principles? And, unless I share some selfish or gang style interest with you, then why should I follow your exultations, if they are not based on any higher principle, but only on regurgitations of hollow, high sounding quotes?
Z said: They all know the Constitution wasn't founded on Christianity or God.
Q: Aren't you merely playing a word game about the definition of "founded"?
Z said: No instead we are being laughed at behind our backs. Politicians do not care about your God.
Q's: When someone laughs behind your back about how you have derived your higher principles based on your experiences within the cosmos, what does that say about them? Does it say that they are worthy of being leaders? Does it say that your principles are wrong? Does it not rather say that they are empathetically and emotionally immature?
Z said: "Karl Rove is a Atheist for crying out loud."
Q's: If God exists, and if there do exist higher principles inherent in the cosmos, then, aside from being mistaken in his belief, how could Karl Rove really "be" an Atheist? Are you saying that Karl Rove is a 100% perpetual and constant atheist, to the exclusion of ever believing in any higher system of moral principles inherent in the cosmos?
Z said: I'm not trying to abolish your beliefs, just keep them out of political discourse.
Q's: Have you ever seen or written any political discourse that, at bottom, is free of being based on beliefs about higher moral principles inherent in the cosmos? When you would enjoin others to keep their beliefs about sources of social morality out of political discourse, are you not simultaneously violating your own injunction? Please identify your higher principle by which we should all be convinced to keep moral beliefs out of political discourse.
Bottom line: Those who would wall religion away from political discourse are, even if unwittingly, opening the gates for an invasion by a new secular religious source of "oughts," to be harnessed for the monopolistic use of a new set of governing kings, popes, and enforcing thugs. That is, they seek to bury the "priesthood of the common person." This is the sure road to collective serfdom. What better way to devalue human freedom than to utterly devalue each citizen's spiritual authority and interest, i.e., soul?
Thadeus said "So, all this talk of absolutes, totalism, relativism and the like . . ."
Well, the only Thing that does not change is an aspect of That which avails that things change.
"Something" absolutely exists, but all its particular expressions of components are fleeting relatives.
How can we comprehend the Something which actually exists, except as Pure Potential, with unique capacity to assume varying perspectives of relative particularity? Our universe may be conceptually explicated as that which manifests as a Potential, which applies math to leverage varying combinations of potential units for perceiving and reflecting about Itself --- the units being in empathetic reflection about the whole, of which they are mere perspectives.
The only absolute moral principle: Be ye empathetic in respect of God!
The only absolute for our universe is a mathematical algorithm, which defines and limits parameters by which we can creatively relate to the Holistic Potential.
Apart from the Algorithm, and the injunction to be creatively empathetic, there may not be much else that we can "know" about the Holistic Potential. And if we can "know" the Algorithm, it will be via mathematical testing for consistency, coherence, and completeness. There is no "physical empiricism" for testing Pure Math.
It seems enough that:
1) Our "playground" for creativity is finite yet unbounded; and
2) We can intuit a Source Potential for our creative purposes.
After all, we have no choice but to make (purposeful, creative, teleological, empathetic) choices.
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I would not say that one should never abort. I would say that one should always assimilate empathetically moral consequences. A decent civilization should avail liberty and yet sustain family values.
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People do not kill "for religion." They kill as a result of memes or mindsets being warped to rationalize individually and collectively selfish interests. After the fact, revisionists and apologists come to re-rationalize how it was that some particular ideology or religion led the killers astray. It was not. What led them astray was their fallen nature for being tempted by twisted servings of self interest.
Given better leadership, religion could just as well be rationalized to help lead people away from killing. Our problems arise when we have a lack of humane leadership combined with situations and contexts that push us counter to spiritual empathy. Religion is an oft, after-the-fact, rationalized lamb or goat. Merely turning to Secular Collectivism, however, will never cure us of a lack of humane leadership or of fellow empathy. In the service of humane and wise leaders, religion and philosophy can help define and strengthen our empathies of decency. In the service of snakes and idiots, religion and philosophy will merely define our moral failing. Our problem is not religion. Our problem is our vulnerability to chicanery and idiocy.
Johnny Appleseed said:
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
[www.robertlstephens.com]
Regarding Gerald L. Schoreder, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Schroeder; and http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0099.htm.
See http://www.geraldschroeder.com/accordingtogod.aspx:
Quotes:
Schroeder argues that we have ignored those traits of God we find unappealing, replacing them with our personal desire for the all-knowing, all-loving, neverchanging deity that so many worship today. This leads to the age-old problem: How can there be such a God when the world is filled with tragedy? Yet Schroeder reveals that this troubling juxtaposition is really smoke and mirrors. The God revealed in the Bible is 100 percent compatible with the world as we know it today. It is our misconception of God that causes the disparity. In fact, the concept of God that atheists rail against and that believers defend is inaccurate.
In God According to God, Schroeder presents a compelling case for the true God, a dynamic God who is still learning how to relate to creation. The key to God's action in the world, says Schroeder, can be found in a well-known verse in Exodus that is typically translated "I am that which I am." Schroeder's correction that it should be translated "I will be that which I will be" reveals a God that changes Its presence to fit the ever-changing world.
This opens our eyes to other characteristics of God that we have long overlooked despite their being present in some of the most popular stories in the Bible - a God who regrets (the flood of Noah), a God who wants us to argue with Him (Jacob wrestling with God in the desert), and thus a God who changes His mind (Moses convinces God to spare the Israelite people), and a God who allowed nature, and the creation itself, from the very start, to rebel (Adam's and Eve's betrayal in Eden).
Contra, see: http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/stenger_25_2.html. (NOTES: I agree that Schroeder’s book, “The Science of God,” seems a bit of a strained apoligia, although an interesting one. I do not agree that the notion of innumerable lifeless universes, i.e., multiverse, should be accepted as a “more likely” alternative explication. I might agree that “There is no reason why the physical universe cannot be it’s own first cause.” But then, I would also say there is no reason why the physical universe can be it’s own first cause. Nor, for inspiring folks to come together to try to choose what we SHOULD do with or make of our unfolding experiences of the world, would I agree that we can or should “just stop at the world.” IOW, the contra seems trite and whinny --- not untypical of secular humanism, and not untypical of bents towards rationalizing Marxist materialism and collectivism.)
For short (“bot”) quotes, see http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/science-quotes/.
Quote about George Wald, see http://www.angelfire.com/home/fantom225/resources/hof.htm#GEORGE WALD, Ph.D., ’23:
GEORGE WALD, Ph.D., ‘23
Biologist, Nobel Laureate
George Wald retired in 1977 as the Higgins Professor of Biology at Harvard University, having held that chair since 1968. The joint winner of a Nobel Prize in 1967 for his research on how the eye passes images to the brain, Dr. Wald spent 43 years doing research and teaching at Harvard University. Dr. Wald's chief contribution was to help understand how light activates photoreceptive cells in the retina, causing the molecular changes that lead to impulses along the optic nerve to the brain. Dr. Wald also carried out significant research about the way Vitamin A affects vision and about the roles of various cells in the perception of colors and black and white vision.
Note to Dr. Appleseed and Gene Man:
I am midway through a book by Gerald L. Schoreder, entitled “God According To God,” copyright 2009. I will soon undertake researching a little more about Schroeder and George Wald.
Meantime, I note that Schroeder, at page 48 of his book, talks and quotes a bit about George Wald, Noble laureate and former (now deceased) professor of biology at Harvard University.
“It has occurred to me lately --- I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities --- that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from nonliving matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality --- the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science -, art-, and technology-making animals. In them the universe begins to know itself.”
At page 49, Schroeder notes: “This almost mystical analysis of life is from the same George Wald who thirty years earlier in an article in Scientific American declared with no equivocation that life is indebted totally to pure random chance for its existence ….”
At page 51, Schoreder suggests: “Wisdom is ubiquitous, the substrate of every particle.”
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To me, it seems that political collectivists have for many years clamored that humanity should just accept the “truth” of an “inexorable” materialist vision. However, folks are more and more coming to their senses, seeing that the collectivist vision leads to a dead end, with further digging leading only to a pit.
Unfortunately, materialist-collectivists have come not only precariously close to taking over our politics. They have also come precariously close to taking over our institutions for teaching science and philosophy.
I hardly apprehend what the teleology of this is, nor what will become of us if we somehow learn to leverage the wisdom that is in “the substrate of every particle” into a computer-machine intelligence. This seems to relate to a choice in faith: How deep should we burrow our heads in ignorance versus with what speed should we seek to leverage technical wisdom?
Is it possible for an enlightened society to impose civilizing management over our exponentially accelerating pursuits of the sorts of absolute technological prowess that have potential to corrupt or destroy us absolutely? To preserve human liberty, must we find some way to come together to manage access to absolute power?
I do believe this: Unless we somehow better balance our pursuit of materialist power with humility before God, we have no prayer. The goal is neither absolute liberty nor absolute collectivism, but enlightened liberty. The purpose is to politically neuter those elitist Rinos and Dinos who seek through projections of power and propaganda to become secular lords over the collective.
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?"
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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.
******
Johnny Appleseed noted, "... the hostility toward religion--could be regarded as a manifestation of one basic principle: the suppression of individuality...Finally, human individuality finds its greatest support and its highest appreciation in religion. Only as a personality can man turn to God and only through this dialogue does he realize himself as a person commensurate with the person of God. It is for this very reason that socialist ideology and religion are mutually exclusive.” Igor Shafarevich"
Good quote! Quite applicable to enlightened takes on religion. Not so applicable to Islam. But a good explanation for why atheists tend to be collectivists, and vice versa. In a way, Islam seems less like a religion than like a strait jacket for controlling every detail about how one lives --- as a zombie.
I guess Islam is the religion for zombies and those they capture. Maybe Mohammed and Marx were related?
Collectivist religion is religion for zombies!
******
Gene Man said
The essential problem is that these absolutists believe they are based on modern science, while their mindset is at least a quarter century out of date. I've pointed out that this has been explained in the book "The Atheist and the God Particle"
*****
We need to get Amazon to make "The Atheist and the God Particle" accessible on Kindle.
By now, no Conserver of America with two brain cells to rub together should be surprised about the demolition style nihilism that Obama intends, through his Czars, for whose destructive antics he cares no more to moderate than did the Wicked Witch of Oz care to moderate the antics of her minions of monkeys. Aside from Dr. Francis Collins, one is hard pressed to name an Obama appointee who is not a nihilistic obamanation.
Take Eric Holder, the B’tard now running DOJ. He is noted for having advocated the pardoning of FALN terrorists, the non-investigation of Acorn, the wussifying of the CIA (by subjecting it to investigation for not having informed Mad Am Pelosi of a non-program), and the wussifying of our Military by requiring that Miranda warnings be given to battlefield prisoners.
Hello MSM. Hello! If you cannot read dotted writing on the wall, can you at least read writing that is in bold, connected caps? After all, now that the Henchmen of Collectivism believe they have us so tightly in their grasp that we can do nothing about it, they hardly remain shy about filling in boisterous details about how they intend to bury us --- even to swallow us whole.
MSM, are you so willfully blind in your twist not to notice that the Obamaknots are anti-American that you actually buy that it is best that we now release, for pillaging upon ordinary Americans, large percentages of the incarcerated dregs and thugs of society? Or have you, yourselves, simply been co-opted into the thug class?
Conservatives: The goal of the Obamaknots is not to reinvigorate, not to remake, but to demolish America. WAKE UP!
******
Mutant Collectivist:
Regardless of whether Obama-The-Collectivist is also an official Muslim, he is certainly like an Islamist in his heart.
The fundamental riddle of our existence, and of our responsibility by our choices to create, imposes a burden which exceeds the acculturated capacity of any Islamist to bear. Indeed, the burden exceeds an Islamist’s acculturated capacity to bear that anyone should be permitted to dare to accept responsibility for his or her choices. Rather, all must be in submission to the predetermined, literal dictate of what an Islamist takes to be the sacred menu for his life.
Similarly, Marxists insist that all must be in submission to the dictate of what they take to be the collectivist menu for their lives.
The “evil” most feared in common among Islamists and Marxists is individual responsibility for the results of one’s own choices. Such evil must be zealously and thoroughly subjugated and destroyed, even if it means stifling, killing, or banishing to Siberia all dissenters.
In hindsight, the political commercial that made Hillary out to be a would-be dictator of the collective was masterful in its cynicism for diverting concern about Alinsky-style Marxism away from Obama.
What Obama absolutely is not is a freedom loving American. Rather, he is the icon of a grave, mutant hazard to the heart of America. That mutant hazard consists in (1) Big Governmental Regulation by Dems, conjoined to (2) Big Governmental Contracting by Repubs.
All who would conserve America from Big Governmental Mutant Collectivism should understand that the hazard is a two headed snake — one that beguiles, hisses, and pushes waste out at either end.
*******
Yellow Dog Uncle Tom:
Karl_In_Phoenix, well put. Black "Uncle Toms" among the Dems will never forgive Repubs for not being on board for Johnson's Great Society --- the same Great Society that has decimated Black families to this day. This must be the unofficial 16th Rule for Radicals: Never let any good dead by your opposition go unpunished. Dems have well learned how to buy votes by keeping their "Uncle Tom" electorate dependent, addled, and addicted. Had Rev. Sharpton a soul, he would be ashamed of his race baiting self. But he and his cohorts sold out their souls long ago.
Dependent, Addled, and Addicted --- sound like good names for newborn, future Dems.
Folks with moral sense who are not useful idiots or sell outs look at the kind of people Obama surrounds himself with and the kinds of tactics he uses and soon recognize him for what he is. But, being Conservatives with brains, they are not permitted to describe the situation except in polite terms. To use emotional terms (like, for example, calling the admin and its enabling propaganda outlets of MSM and elite schools a nest of vipers or a pack of rat bast*rds) if verboden. Only the left is permitted to do things like that.
Yet, polite language and careful reasoning does not pierce through to Leftists. They are far too shielded behind careful scholastic mind-numbing and unearned airs of believing themselves to be educated. Indeed, smug youth politely tolerates ordinary seniors of common sense only because youth tends to think seniors are feeble minded or simply without benefit of superior education. But ask any smug 18 to 29 year old any fact-based question about politics and test what they know. Then compare what is known by folks who are 50 to 75 --- or older. What person of any intelligence or experience would doubt the result?
So, if we cannot get through to the leftist (i.e., collectivist, statist) base with polite language and facts, and insofar as much of the leftist mindset is based on emotions and anger stirred and kept on edge by leftists, why do we surrender the use of angry words (i.e. "Bush-hitler'ism") primarily to Leftists? Why should not seniors get angry and in the faces of know nothing leftists laboring under false illusions of their elitehood?
Watch the moral depravity of the Leftist juggernaught as it sneers and name-calls Americans, who simply expect their President to be transparent about his background, as "birthers." Watch as Leftists name-call Americans who believe there is a moral order at work in the cosmos as "creationists."
Another name sometimes used in place of Marxism is dialectical materialism. And the materialism is taken seriously, as applying to morality, economics, philosophy, and science. Anyone who takes issue with materialism of any kind risks the disfavor of the materialist juggernaught (especially the criminals and traitors who run it). This state of affairs is not based on reason or proof, but on raw imposition of power. Obama is the good cop smiley face on this materialistic juggernaught. But his posse of czars and political appointees is filled with bad cops. Against a smiley-faced, Capone-like regime, mere reason has no chance.
Fortunately, the materialist juggernaught messed with the wrong crowd --- the seniors. They do not feel young college kids or their usefully idiotic TA's or their paid off profs beholden to big gov are their intellectual or moral superiors, thank you very much. And the seniors have enough moral gravitas to get some of those who are among the smug punks to do a re-think.
Maybe we can yet turn this thing around. But I don't think we will be able to do it by relying exclusively on good cops.
In 2010, American Conservatives need to take over. I don't care to what party they nominally belong, so long as they have backbone enough not to be sell outs as Rinos or Dinos. It is a mistake to think Rino Republicans are not deep in bed with those who are selling out America. It is a mistake to think Rino Republicans adhere to any moral standard higher than immediate pleasures blowing in the wind. The devil we face is a two faced devil, each face flicking a forked tongue.
As we have plainly seen, Rinos will not defend America's borders, nor America's control over its own infrastructure. Rinos will not defend America against big international slosh money. Rinos cannot be trusted to have backbone to defend America because they have no fidelity to any principle of morality in the cosmos that is higher than their own immediate desires.
Merely to run from the Dino Snakehead is not to escape the Rino Snakehead.
Snakes (Dinos and Rinos) flick between forked messages to divert reason, to mesmerize prey into believing moral reasoning can be applied even without respect to any organizing principle. As if merely to give a name to one's random, ricocheting pleasures should be called "reason."
The moral snakes now running our big government, big corporations, big media, big academia, big science, and big international thug syndicates are conditioned not to favor but to resist organizing their identities in respect of any higher moral principles. Rather, from birth, they are conditioned under a depraved meme to collect from every unprincipled opportunity that blows in the wind. They do not view fellow citizens as being worthy of independent dignity, but as being potential serfs to collect. A thug who preys on those who are most easily mesmerized into collectivism will always wear a mask, but under the mask is always a disreputable viper with moral self respect never exceeding that of a useful idiot.
Bottom line: We are in a moral war against those souldead zombies who feign that we can and "should" reason or rationalize even without respect or reference to any higher, organizing principles. This is the neo-reasoning of moral zombies. If American Conservatives lose this war, the world will fall as snakefood into an utterly depraved and collective pit.
Unless there is summoned and instilled respect for higher moral principles (aka, "enlightened empathy"), both Collectivism and Capitalism are calibrated for reducing a population to souldead philosophies for the pleasuring of Alinsky Snakes.
*****
Leftists do not like authority. Not in their parents, not in governmental law enforcement, and not in God.
Yet they feel entitled to demand that others suckle them with "noogies."
This is why poor leftist neighborhoods complain both when the cops do not patrol and when the cops do patrol. This is why nothing gets done when everyone is owed. This is why America, now being run by Leftist Statists, is upside down.
This is why American seniors of common sense need to get a serious case of the red a** against the faux-elite and mis-educated nutbags now running our country, along with their enablers, i.e., the head-in-a**, faux-elite MSM and universities.
Imagine a political postcard showing a Statist-Leftist's head in a dark place, with a word bubble connected to a caricature of Jim Varney, saying "Well there's your problem Verne!"
E. said:
"By the time Hayek writes, in the 1950s, the rule of law in Britain was pretty much done for, with Parliament passing very vague and general laws that told the administration to do whatever it needed to do to fulfill the aims of the law. Thus the citizens became subject not to laws but to men.
So, the rule of law requires that the law apply equally to everyone, that laws be made by a body separate from the administrators, and that laws be specific to keep the executive from becoming a tyrant.
Clearly, the health care proposal being floated is not a law in the sense of the rule of law at all."
*****
I suspect that the bigger and more centralized government becomes, the more the central authorities will rationalize open-ended, non-specific "laws." This will take control away from locals, and put dictate into the hands of the federal administration. The system eventually becomes so unwieldy as to become ad hoc. Judges become as inconsistent as if we lived in Wonderland. The people cry for Caeser to come to restore order. The rule of dictate returns and individual dignity dies. To flourish, even to survive, it becomes prudent for no one to stand on principle, but to consider carefully to whom to kiss up and upon whom to crap down (aka, "KUSD").
Not only the rule of law dies. Moral character dies also. And civilization retrenches into a depraved pit.
N. B. said:
"I profoundly disagree with your argument that "both Collectivism and Capitalism are calibrated for reducing a population to souldead philosophies" because they fail to reflect "higher moral principles." (I presume you mean religion.)
Capitalism is the system that naturally grows from the basic principles laid down in the Constitution. It is the only social system that consistently upholds the moral principle of individual rights. This is a high, moral cause if ever there was one.
The only way to enforce "higher moral principles" on a society -- if you believe there is something "higher" than allowing people to pursue their own goals and their own happiness here on Earth -- is by government regulating people's lives. Once you throw out the principle of individual rights it makes no difference to the subjects whether their despot is animated by socialism or religion."
******
To be clear, I do favor Repubs over Dems. But that is not enough. Repubs would just lead America along a little longer walk towards oblivion. Recall how Bush had to be brought kicking and screaming to do much about the border, how he had to be diverted while kicking and screaming from turning over our port security to a Dubai company, how he failed to provide us with decent economic advisers and regulators, and how he sold us into TARP.
Ideal Capitalism is fine. But we do not have that. We have totally out of whack capitalism, with large chunks of our very infrastructure being held by foreign investors or nations. When moneyed interests can buy Congress for cents on the feedback dollar, and capitalism has gotten in bed with government to become Mussolini like Corporatism, when big corporations desire government regulations designed to preclude competition, and when all this can occur with no significantly progressive penalty, tax, or discouragement, then such Capitalism has morphed into something that is no longer the best system.
Congress humors ordinary Americans, but usually does not represent us. Congress waits us out, diverts our attention, slips deals unter the table, and caters almost exclusively to special, not even American interests. How much of Obama's campaign contributions came from dubious or foreign sources? Do we even have means to find out?
When special interests --- regardless of whether funded by international commie agitators (Dems) or international corporate syndicates and media monopolists (Repubs) --- have become essentially all that count to our representatives, then Capitalism has come to undermine American style republicanism every bit as much as Communism.
A Republic cannot be sustained merely by unleashing greed. Individual drive should be rewarded, but not to the point of allowing it to undermine Individualism or Republicanism, and not to the point of allowing mega-corporatists to corner the market on owning our politicians.
I don't care whether you call "higher moral principles" as religion or as natural religion or as objective ethics. I do care that citizens should be inculcated to respect an ethical organizing principle (enlightened empathy?) that is more than "take what thou wilt."
I am saying that if we do not address our society's failure to balance capitalism with additional checking mechanisms, then nature will. And when our problems finally degenerate and snowball to the point that nature must reset the balance, we will not enjoy the reckoning.
Re: "The only way to enforce "higher moral principles" on a society -- if you believe there is something "higher" than allowing people to pursue their own goals and their own happiness here on Earth -- is by government regulating people's lives."
No. First, one does not enforce moral principles. One teaches moral principles. But one cannot very well teach moral principles when our government curtails such teaching, our media ridicules it, our "objectivist philosophers" pretend to disprove it, our greedbags ignore it, and our ordinary citizens forget it.
Re: "Once you throw out the principle of individual rights it makes no difference to the subjects whether their despot is animated by socialism or religion."
I am not throwing out the principle of individual rights. First, there are no rights without law (regulation). There is no freedom of choice without a system of natural law to avail its degrees of freedom. That is, it is silly to speak of perfect freedom. What we can seek is enlightened freedom. What we can seek is individual freedom within institutions that avail and protect a decent and sustainable civilization. Our ideal should not be completely unfettered individualism nor absolutely intrusive statism. Our ideal should be enlightened individualism.
And allowing monopolists to corner the market on owning politicians who only pretend to represent ordinary Americans is simply not enlightened individualism.
Bottom line: Our system of checks and balances has become unbalanced, in that our representatives, whether Rinos or Dinos, no longer represent ordinary Americans. Indeed, many are hardly loyal to America. Something is needed to reset the balance. I do not know what that something is. A good start would be for seniors to get mad as hell and let their anger be felt. Making America more energy self sufficient would also help. But those who are not loyal to America, but more loyal to international collectivism or international corporatism, are actively working against that. What is needed is an institutional way to sap their power. And their power is in their wealth for buying politicians. An idea that might be considered would be to extract a painfully progressive financial penalty on all lobby related forms of political consumption. More than that, we should perhaps phase out the income tax altogether and replace it with a progressive tax only on accumulated individual consumption.
Maybe those ideas are untenable. But we need to come up with something to reset the balance without undermining the good aspects of capitalism as an ideal.
****
Re: Recall how Bush had to be brought kicking and screaming to do much about the border, how he had to be diverted while kicking and screaming from turning over our port security to a Dubai company, how he failed to provide us with decent economic advisers and regulators, and how he sold us into TARP.
****
Not to mention how "W" had to have his arm twisted hard to nominate Roberts instead of his White House Counsel to the Supreme Court.
I try not to be a conspiratist, but I do trouble about the influence of Goldman Sachs, the easy lobbying friendliness of Daschle and Dole, and the not uncommon investments among supposed political opponents (such as in the Carlyle Group). Among our Repubs, I see a lot of the governing philosophy of the Bushes, not so much of Reagan. I regret that I do suspect the loyalty of even many of our Repubs to America. I do not sense that they respect a moral organizing principle that entails love for the ideal of America.
I see America as Protector of decent human freedom freedom and dignity. I do not see our Blueblood Rinos as sharing that ideal. And I see little value in Conservatives sacrificing that ideal just to help one set of disloyal corporatists of governmental regulation (Repubs) win power over another set of disloyal commie regulators (Dems).
Note to Rinos: You wanna win? Then show us you love America. And that you know what being an American means.
Ellie said:
"It is also true that the stonewalling is creating converts. As Teleologicus suggests, the normal reaction is "what is he hiding?" and "I had to produce one, why shouldn't he have to?" I do not see any evidence that the "birther" questions are damaging the Conservative cause, although I've heard many so-called Conservatives (elitists all) sneer at them."
Indeed! And I could give a rat's hindquarters about the Rino argument or helping the Rino cause. Rino traitors to American Traditions (aka, RATs) can take a scurvy scurry to the wilderness. I want a return to good conservative sense. Those who lean towards Conservatives probably amount to 60% of the electorate. Yet we have been replaced by Dino and Rino RATs at nearly every chokepoint. Obviously, what we have been doing ever since Reagan left office has not worked so well. To continue as we have is insanity.
****
Can any civilized system of checks and balances long or reasonably accommodate both (1) those who idealize Collectivism under some man-confabulated notion of the State and (2) those who idealize Individualism in respect of a Higher Source (God)?
When more than half the electorate of a Republic based on representative governance has been “educated” or led to favor (secular) Collectivism, can either (self-evident rights) Republicanism or Individualism long survive? Is this the arithmetical math that is the usual harbinger for a long cycle of soul destroying, mind robbing, dark ages -- world wide?
Is this the future into which our “elite” universities fervently wish to sell all of us?
****
With apologies to Buffalo Springfield:
There's a man with a hammer and sicle over there,
Telling me that I've got to beware.
Stop, children, look around,
Everybody see what's going 'round.
SSA said, "You are seeing the large gorge, a product of long erosion that was not there before."
The bigger and more intrusive we allow our laws and government to become, the more opportunity we avail for those who care little about their neighbors but who care a great deal about finding ways to milk the system. Training our students to believe more in government solutions than in neighborhood, civic club, and church solutions merely leads them to be abused by the sociopaths who tend to run the chokepoints of government.
For goodness sakes, look at those now empowered to control our chokepoints: Soros, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Murtha, idiots who run the NYT, traitors who run GE, retired senators now working as whoredog international sell out lobbyists, colleges that actually confer college credits for attending "educational" classes based on hate America and hate whitey (i.e., radical minority feminism and speech codes for criminalizing "hatespeech" against elements bent on undermining traditional family values).
We are not moving towards replacing the assimilation of traditional social and church values with worship for the State. Rather, we are moving towards empowering sociopaths bent on ruling the choke points of the state apparatus. And we are allowing our youth to be deceived by failing to resist those who call the intellectualization of that movement as "education."
Every Congressman who voted to elect Pelosi as Speaker should wear a scarlet "T," as shame for treason to every decent and traditional ideal of American Individualism.
Although 60 % of Americans likely lean in a conservative direction, all main chokepoints of our society are controlled by Marxist, nutbag, globalist, treasonous sellouts of American values and quisling enablers of accelerating Sharia creep.
Conservatives need to mount counterattacks to retake every chokepoint. For that, we have no chance if we restrict ourselves only to playing nice pattycake.
Why is Western Civ not rallying? I can think of only one main reason: Marxist Collectivists have infiltrated through and through, and see Islamic Collectivists as their allies. IOW, Marxist Collectivists have become their own useful idiots. And Blueblood Rinos and Libertarians tend to be here just to party while the partying is good. It is up to Conservatives to rally. I pray they will.
****
2thman said:
“The Lockerbie terrorist was given a hero’s welcome. How quaint.
Are the Scots expecting a deal on oil?”
******
Eric Holder recommended pardons for FALN terrorists. Clinton got a hefty quid pro quo for pardoning Marc Rich. It would probably bring one to shock and horror to learn to what extent America’s “leaders” have been selling out military promises and secrets in exxhange for covert contributions from despots to personal campaign accounts, libraries, bank accounts, and mortgages.
“Ghostbusters” was about “Who you gonna call.” D.C. is about “Who you gonna trust” to work the system. Now, Conservatism is about who’s gonna conserve America, as Americans gag awake and find D.C. ghols and rats at all chokepoints.
The scoundrel behind taxation without representation is no longer King George and his functionaries, but rats and ghouls of D.C., and their idiotic sidekick, the NYT.
*****
Mr. Dunn,
Instead of being a conservative anti-birther, you should try being a “cleaner,” as in “Obama should come clean.” Lay aside the birth certificate controversy. It is only a small part of the problem with Obama’s insulting failure to come clean.
Do not Obama and his media enablers look small and scared as they run away from transparency, and do they not look asinine as they employ ridicule as a substitute for honesty? Is not such cowardice, hypocrisy, and malice against Americans’ legitimate concerns hurting Obama and his apologists?
Does not Obama’s evasion of transparency paint him as a deceiver who cannot be trusted, whose legislative initiatives must always be read in their fine print and under suspicions about motive? Does it not seem that every Obama initiative is a trojan song for the sorts of ideals he learned as a young Marxist songbird -- one who did not spend his formative years learning much of anything about America or its values?
I agree that we should focus on defeating Obama-backed legislation. But a substantial part of the energy and reasoning is that we can no more trust Obama and his stooges with important live rounds than could Andy Taylor trust Barney Fife with more than a single bullet. (BTW, even Barney could have adopted an air of noblesse oblige, had he been supported with omni-totus.)
Obama was not raised among persons who were in their hearts Americans. He was raised among vipers, and he continued to live among them for many years. Unless he can come clean and repent or show cause why he should be trusted, he absolutely should not be trusted.
That is why I consider myself not as a birther, but as a “Cleaner.”
When being a "cleaner" can be defeated with callow sarcasm of mere juveniles, then the Republic shall indeed have become hollow.
Ninja Mouse
Rose said, "If earth is over populated then does that make Heaven over populated?"
*****
Well, I suspect heaven (by that I mean the hereafter) is not altogether different in fundamentals from the present. I suspect time is an illusion derivative of mind-stuff and mathematics, and that all of experience is a derivative matter of perspective.
If the hereafter avails more pleasing perspectives, I suspect it will be because we take a hand in working on it, in cooperative respect of God. (If "you" are to continue to exist as any sort of responsible entity, would you have it any other way?) On the other hand, if we want to insist on making our experiences of the hereafter like a slum, we can probably choose to do that also. If that is the recommendation under Catholicism, then the Catholic position hardly seems the most responsible one. Sorry.
I do not think we just sit back and let God suckle us with whatever notion of heaven we think we are "entitled" to or with whatever notion we think we have been promised in grace. Rather, I think grace is the opportunity to lend our hands and to take responsibility for our choices.
Regardless, in ultimate aspect, I don't think there are entirely separate personalities. Rather, I suspect, in spiritual aspect, we are each and all simply different perspectives of the same single underlying Essence, i.e., God. That is, I do not believe we are God, but that we are each a particular perspective of the "mind-stuff" that is God. (This position is not solipsism insofar as it recognizes a significant distinction between the perspectives of parts or fractals vs. a perspective of the whole. Parts, sum of parts, and whole: these perspectives are not the exact same.)
As you suggested, something to think about.
BTW, no one said anything about eugenics.
*****
BTW, if each of us, spiritually, is simply a different perspective of combinations of the same underlying "mind-stuff," then any believed urgency for causing every possible genetic variation of humanity either to be incubated or to be offered up to God to roll the dice would seem to dissipate. Rather, what is morally important would seem to center more in how we relate and empathize among ourselves than in how much we worry about whether some of our seed goes unsown. My notion does not devalue that human life begins at conception. It simply values choice about whether to conceive.
Folks with moral sense who are not useful idiots or sell outs look at the kind of people Obama surrounds himself with and the kinds of tactics he uses and soon recognize him for what he is. But, being Conservatives with brains, they are not permitted to describe the situation except in polite terms. To use emotional terms (like, for example, calling the admin and its enabling propaganda outlets of MSM and elite schools a nest of vipers or a pack of rat bast*rds) if verboden. Only the left is permitted to do things like that.
Yet, polite language and careful reasoning does not pierce through to Leftists. They are far too shielded behind careful scholastic mind-numbing and unearned airs of believing themselves to be educated. Indeed, smug youth politely tolerates ordinary seniors of common sense only because youth tends to think seniors are feeble minded or simply without benefit of superior education. But ask any smug 18 to 29 year old any fact-based question about politics and test what they know. Then compare what is known by folks who are 50 to 75 --- or older. What person of any intelligence or experience would doubt the result?
So, if we cannot get through to the leftist (i.e., collectivist, statist) base with polite language and facts, and insofar as much of the leftist mindset is based on emotions and anger stirred and kept on edge by leftists, why do we surrender the use of angry words (i.e. "Bush-hitler'ism") primarily to Leftists? Why should not seniors get angry and in the faces of know nothing leftists laboring under false illusions of their elitehood?
Watch the moral depravity of the Leftist juggernaught as it sneers and name-calls Americans, who simply expect their President to be transparent about his background, as "birthers." Watch as Leftists name-call Americans who believe there is a moral order at work in the cosmos as "creationists."
Another name sometimes used in place of Marxism is dialectical materialism. And the materialism is taken seriously, as applying to morality, economics, philosophy, and science. Anyone who takes issue with materialism of any kind risks the disfavor of the materialist juggernaught (especially the criminals and traitors who run it). This state of affairs is not based on reason or proof, but on raw imposition of power. Obama is the good cop smiley face on this materialistic juggernaught. But his posse of czars and political appointees is filled with bad cops. Against a smiley-faced, Capone-like regime, mere reason has no chance.
Fortunately, the materialist juggernaught messed with the wrong crowd --- the seniors. They do not feel young college kids or their usefully idiotic TA's or their paid off profs beholden to big gov are their intellectual or moral suepriors, thank you very much. And the seniors have enough moral gravitas to get some of those who are among the smug punks to do a re-think.
Maybe we can yet turn this thing around. But I don't think we will be able to do it by relying exclusively on good cops.
Emily said:
“There are three main tests. The laws must apply equally to all citizens. They must be made by a body that is completely separate from the body enforcing the laws. And the laws must be detailed and specific, so the administrators do not have discretion. (If the laws are vague and the administrators make up the details as they go, we have the rule of men not of laws.) For example, under these criteria, the government health care proposal does not conform to the rule of law.”
****
A bit like the rule of law, our bodies are “living laws of math” for our spiritual perspectives. Mathematical equations are always in balance. However, the balance can be temporally traded. Reckonings can be put off. But the balance collectors must always eventually be paid.
As Emily implicated, when we participate in establishing laws that are “detailed and specific,” such laws are more likely to be understood and applied as intended. When laws are made carelessly, vaguely, even nihilistically, we become ruled instead by those who rationalize superstition and non-reason, i.e., leaps of faith into collectivism, which we hope will be ruled by kind thugs instead of by vicious thugs.
One factor in the equation that balances America is capitalism. Another is representative government. When capitalism overbalances to allow a few to corner the market for controlling our representatives, so that they become “non-representing representatives” (i.e., two faced snakes), then the equation for what is America is jeopardized.
Nature will require a reckoning. Either America (what we have known as representative protection of the freedom and dignity of Americans and, by extension, of humanity) will be consumed by something else, or Americans will add new factors to reset the balance of the mathematical engine that drives America’s energies.
In ideal, capitalism is a vital factor in what defines America. In a practice of unchecked excess, even drinking water can become poisonous.
Civilized liberty should be moderating, but defense of liberty should be eternally vigilant and extremist.
****
Emily said: “Shareholder rights may be part of the answer.”
Indeed!
****
Hoads said: “It's always been about "a foot in the door" and physicians rightly pegged it so back then.”
As we are led by our elites to lose sight of what it means to be Americans (some would even lie to us that there is no such thing as an American ethos or culture), we become ever easier prey for the wolf with the foot in the door. And blindfolding Americans is on the Agenda for both parties. All the better to sell us out. “Just sit tight,” says the wolf. “I have elite training for this.”
Emily said: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
Not just in Denmark. Worldwide. I fear a consensus is hardening among great elite powers of politics and wealth that all of us should be pushed towards some kind of worldwide, federalized collectivism. So long as elitists run it, they are more concerned about salvaging their playgrounds than about preserving human freedom and dignity. They see the rest of us as necessarily expendable. For those moral zombies of pleasure who rule large collectives or large corporations, the only common guidepost of morality pertains to what is necessary to preserve their prerogatives.
Although most ordinary Americans have not yet awakened to this horror, more and more are awakening. We know we are being fed smiling pretenses for rationalizing changes that will lead us to the opposite of what we have been promised. Unfortunately, we lack the pulpit and press for putting the word out to the proles. Unless, that is, we Conservatives keep raising the ruckus and holding up enough mirrors so that even the proles finally figure it out.
I believe in God. So I believe deliverance is possible. If God has created us out of nothing more than potential and math, then God can show us ways to right the moral equations. You are correct. We need to collect ideas for possible solutions and then distill them.
The keystone, I suggest, pertains to how to preserve the American ethos for individualism as an exemplar. To enforce a collectivist alternative --- whether secular, religious, or catholic --- is simply too dehumanizing.
Michael Savage emphasizes borders, language, culture. Probably add infrastructure.
The "how to" is the hard part. (1) What checks could work, (2) how could they be tested in some sort of hierarchical laboratory of the mind, and (3) how could the public be led to adopt them?
Broad, preliminary ideas:
Revamp stockholder rights in relation to lobbying political input.
Somehow sap the progressive expenditure of wealth to purchase and consume political power.
Form trading alliances that incentive republicanism without leading to loss of sovereign control.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions as well as with intentions pretending to be good. The advantage of nationalizing everything is that there is no way legitimately legal oversight can be managed. The more the government overtakes, the more the coast is clear to divert even the most blatant of payoffs to partners in crime. Society is reduced to living in fear under a Chicago style syndicate of outright thugs with smiley faced front men. Derelicts without responsibilities and thugs who milk the labor of folks who are responsible become natural allies. It's a great coalition of liberals! And Whitey Repubs deserve it! At least, that is the subtext.
Forget the N word. Dems need to be branded for what they are, with the R word. Dems are the racists. The NYT and MSNBC are the racists. You wanna show racists to them? Hold them up to a mirror.
*****
Truxrule5 said:
"Congress authorized the extension of this program not because it is effective (or not effective) that is 100% beside the point. They were just so happy that 1 aspect of the $787B stimulus bill was popular that they authorized an extension. Nothing more than that...a pure political play."
*****
This is what our "non-representing representatives" now occupy themselves with --- not with doing anything respectable or for the good of the country, but with trying to buy as many votes as they can, as cheaply as they can. That is, when they are not playing back room games of quid pro quo. These rat basta*ds are doing to America far worse than any lib with a vivid imagination ever fancied about the Duke lacrosse team.
We are well into a classic race to the bottom, and still no leader of either main party has gravitas enough to put a stop to it. All that can stop this impending circus train wreck is angry Conservatives with time and concern, i.e., seniors with brains, guts, and work ethics. And every vet needs to heap mountains of shame on these detestable weasels. Nothing too subtle will do.
The God of those who value human liberty (most Christians) is a fulfilling God who inspires us to come to Him.
The God of Collectivists (and of those who wish to rule all others as submissives) is a false, nihilistic God that would reduce all humans to formula-rote-machine-grunters.
Ask Obama:
1) Since when did Jesus appoint him and the government as head tax collectors to force such redistributions as the government pleases, as opposed to alms as each giver pleases?
2) Where in any holy book, apart perhaps from the Koran and The Communist Manifesto, is such behavior sanctioned?
3) Where does Obama-donga-ding-dong even find any secular authority in the Constitution?
4) What distinguishes him from any run-of-the-historical-mill of false messiahs and psychopathic, despotic men-of-destiny and of eventual despair?
Obama's God is a false secular God of Collectivism, with Obama as head Tax Collector. Run this thug and fool out, before his virus spreads!
What Collectivist ever cares what the people think? Does Putin? Dear Leader? Hugo? Fidel? Whackjob?
Collectivists know how to take control of social choke points in government, CIA, FBI, DOJ, media, NYT, banks, corporations, GE, academia, Ivies. What choke point is not under the Collectivists' control? If they were concerned with what we think, would they be so brazen? They barely hide their contempt. Middle fingers. Code words in the Atlantic Monthly. Why would any decent Congressman have elected Pelosi as Speaker? Why would legitimate concerns of the public be met with ridicule or invasive investigations and audits?
They know our youth have been brain washed and left for political zombies. They know our ethnic groups have been divided by their own shenanigans and race baiting.
The only hope for human freedom and dignity not to perish from the earth is if the Thug Heirarchy that means to rule the Collective Farm (of persons henceforth to think as cattle that are told what to think) have made a giant miscalculation from pride and hubris. If so, such miscalculation will have occurred because their brains have been so far removed from America that they never saw the blowback coming.
All Conservatives who believe in one another's freedom and dignity must rally, we must not weaken, and we must not fall for false crocodile tears. Run them out! Condemn their antics! Never again! No more Dinos and no more Rinos!
Suppose there were operating at every important power point in America an international syndicate of billionaires of no loyalty to America or to its founding values. Suppose its members have no faith in God but only in a "natural selection" (survival of the fittest) secular-chain-of-command, in respect of which some need to be ruled and some need to rule.
Suppose the "faith" of such syndicate is that the law of natural selection trumps man made law as well as any higher law (which the syndicate takes to be of no consequence except as opium for controlling the masses). Suppose its members consist of by-invitation-only psychopathic billionaires who have made their wealth by having no loyalty to any country or creed.
Who would come to mind, as having seats at such a syndicate-table of international moral criminals? Soros? Sheiks? Nomenklatura? Hugo? Is some syndicate-financed bus now being driven throughout the main power points of America?
Why would any Congress composed to any significant extent of decent representatives have elected Pelosi as Speaker? Why should ordinary Americans not suspect that each member who voted for Pelosi was made "an offer he or she couldn't refuse?" Why should ordinary Americans not suspect that every Dino and Rino is brought to heel in respect of the offer?
Is Obama a relatively low level thug and fool who is being used to front a truly evil syndicate? Does he have a past that ensures he must bow to the syndicate's demands?
If Obama, in some of his tactics, is not unlike Lenin, then, in his grandiosity, he seems also not unlike Napolean --- albeit without the military background.
Some quotes from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Napoleon_Bonaparte:
“I saw myself founding a religion, marching into Asia riding an elephant, a turban on my head and in my hand the new Koran that I would have composed to suit my needs.”
“There are so many laws that no one is safe from hanging.”
“The truth is that one ought to serve his people worthily, and not strive solely to please them. The best way to gain a people is to do that which is best for them. Nothing is more dangerous than to flatter a people. If it does not get what it wants immediately, it is irritated and thinks that promises have not been kept; and if then it is resisted, it hates so much the more as it feels itself deceived.”
“…to speak of any universally recognized national rights or that these rights have played any part in its history, is to play with the powers of public credulity ….”
“He who fights against his country, is a child who would kill his own mother.”
“In politics stupidity is not a handicap.”
“Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.”
“Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.”
*****
Some wisdom attributed to Napoleon that Obama has neglected:
“In practical administration, experience is everything.”
“An army of sheep, led by a lion, is better than an army of lions, led by a sheep.”
RE: AGENDA 21 --- http://worldinbalance.net/agreements/1992-rio-agenda21.php
Roopodsx said:
" I bet you all thought we won the cold war, didn't you? Actually, our globlist elitest leaders joined the Marxists by adopting Agenda 21. You should all read it sometime. It's available on the internet at the United Nations websites. Particularly Agenda 21 - Chapter 4 - CHANGING CONSUMPTION PATTERNS. This is what Obama meant by the redistribution of wealth and change."
*****
Regarding N.W.O.:
I have had an uneasy feeling about whether it is part of a conspiracy or "just" an emergent phenomena. I also have little respect for the MSM that chides us not to fret, that Glenn Beck is just putting on a freak show, and that Americans have no right to know the background and origin of their President. Simply put, MSM ABSOLUTELY CANNOT BE TRUSTED!
As part of Americans' history, perhaps even DNA, we seem a bit different from much of the rest of the world, which seems more prone to take to heart a philosophy of "better red than dead."
But factor in our accelerating skills worldwide for inter-continental holocaust and the ever increasing danger of nukes falling into hands of small bands of pirates or apocalyptic fanatics. Also factor in the exposure of high tech, wired infrastructure to EMP and other first strike attacks, so that every nation that is secretive in preserving its borders makes every other nation uneasy.
So, how shall we get those threats under control, so that international billionaires and elitists who enjoy the good life can continue to do so?
Their Answer (?):
Promote and "educate" for acceptance of international ownership and control by elites of media, banks, and international law. Promote the authority of the U.N. and international law. De-weaponize space. Convince all the little people, for their own interests, that they need to consent to be closely monitored and regulated and that their national borders need to be erased. Rationalize that it simply cannot be avoided that the freedom and dignity of all the little people must be sacrificed. Prepare the way by inventing other forms of crisis, such as global warming. Diminish respect for religions that are friendly to republican individualism while promoting acceptance of religions that are totalitarian in insisting on great control over individual behaviors, as "religions of peace."
But if so, why do Russia, China, and Islamic states remain so border conscious? And why do they not cooperate more fully to help remove nukes from North Korea and, potentially, from Iran? Is it because they are still waiting for some preliminary quid pro quo? Or is it because the goals of the international elitists have already been largely achieved in such countries, so that they need to preserve their borders in order to protect their populations from being undermined or infested by unclean outsiders? Is that why "leaders" of nations of Western Civ push for laying down their borders, even as totalitarian societies reinforce their own?
Problems:
IF SO (and I hardly know that it is; rather I only know that I have no trust or respect for MSM): No one consulted the American people about such an agenda. No one has explained why other means (Internet deployment of information to otherwise insular societies; back up systems to protect against EPM attacks; increased deployment of sniff dogs and machines; scientific hegemony for military defense among states of Western Civ; encouragement of democracies; population management and incentives?) cannot be sought for protecting the world from mutual imposed destruction. No one has explained why removing America as a defender of human freedom and dignity would not push the world into a global, anarchic conflagration (in competition to fill the power vacuum). No one has explained why stepping back from science is not calculated to reduce our defenses against asteroids or our capacities for colonizing space. No one has explained why preserving the good life for international billionaire elites should be valued over preserving human freedom and dignity generally.
Bottom line:
I don't know whether the position of international elitists is merely emergent or actually conspiratorial. REGARDLESS, I do see that elitism is an insult to human freedom and dignity. In short, we are beset by EVIL snakes, whether they are actually conspiring or not.
Thoma said, "The question is, how did we allow these people to take control of our government?"
First, identify "these people."
I suggest that anyone who has more money and influence than they know what to do with, who is not grounded or conditioned in any basis for fellow empathy outside his or her narrow secular interests or transient pleasures, is suspect. And they hedge their bets by buying influence for all contingencies. IOW, they tend to own pols as fungible goods, both Dem and Repub. I think this is why the real power brokers among both parties tend often to want the same sort of things that feather the nests of the already wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
Dems want open borders to gain influence over illiterate, desperate, or easily purchased voters.
Repubs want open borders because they want to exploit cheap labor.
Neither cares much about either the new comers or the old citizenry.
IOW, they do not give a damn about what defines America.
To them, America is only a fungible, easily replaced commodity.
IOW, if you mean to limit the power brokers who control the Dems, you will not accomplish much unless you also limit the power brokers who control the Repubs.
You will not get this done merely with laws, regulations, education, or protests.
You will need a hammer by which to hit those who would abuse America, to hit them where they can feel the pain.
That is, you will need to make it progressively more expensive upon them to spend money buying political influence.
And you need to re-instill shame.
Which you have no hope of accomplishing without inspiring and re-instilling some sense of respect for fundamental decency ("spiritual principles").
Eventually, it comes back to "God."
There is no substitute, and we only increase our torment as we pretend there is.
Especially when we pretend that either the Self or the State (or the Collective) should be the sufficient, complete, and perfect substitute.
Obama-smiling must be implicated in one of Alinsky's Rules: Hew to fascism (socialist faith for the unwashed masses) while fronting a dubious smile to hide outright lies in order to keep the gullible and the enemy guessing as long as possible.
The truth is not in Obama. Nor in the MSM for which he fronts. Oh, Dr. Obama! I feel your comprehensive chemo therapy changing (killing) me!
Why did not a single campaign opponent have enough fortitude to say the obvious: The radiation detector for everyone whose B.S. Meter was not broken was ticking off the charts! Answer: Obama is not the only empty suit being fronted.
Problem: Excepting counter-demagogues, no one who has the least ability to detect and confront villainous, elitist b.s. is likely to be promoted very high within the self-gratifying, elitist hierarchy. That which affirmatively floats among secular elites is the waste product of narcissism, not hope. Rather, true hope rises in the free hearts of those who hew to the true Source of human empathy.
True hope is that secular elites have outsmarted themselves by at least half. True hope is that Obama will become a symbol for our age for rallying forces that oppose false prophecy and false elitism. True hope is that Conservatives unite and do not relent until the smiling villains and their deluded collectivists are defeated --- physically, intellectually, and morally.
"Government financed science" is an Orwellian joke. Look at what government finances as soft "science" for teaching at elite schools as feminism, multiculturalism, colonialism, and anti-capitalism. Is science funding favored for politically favored notions (global warming, effects of hate speech, etc.)?
Scientific pretensions have been riding high for a long time, but they take an accelerating path under leftist regimes. One needs a strong sense of humor to appreciate leftist pretense at being "more comprehensively science-friendly." LMAO.
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