Interesting Times:
Are Garry Trudeau, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert the comic versions of David Brooks?
Are the following the curious beliefs of incurious “Trudeau Reasonists” (aka, “anti-conspiratists” or “anti-patternists”)?
1) There is no good reason to suspect that there is anything fishy about:
a) Obama’s seeming admiration for third world socialist movements (Hugo Chavez?);
b) The election of Pelosi as Speaker;
c) America’s (i.e., of the powers that run America’s politicians) lack of development of abundant, domestic energy resources;
d) America’s unwillingness to defend its borders or to restrict its immigrants to legal channels;
e) America’s undermining of requirements to prove eligibility to vote;
f) The devolution of content of college courses from entailing the analysis of fact-based trends to the inspiration of hatreds for America, Capitalism, and Social Conservatism --- based mainly on unexamined opinions;
g) The efforts to erect ever more speech codes, station blacklists, and federal controls to require “localism” --- all designed to insulate the general population (of “Trudeau’ian Reasonists”?) from attempts by Social Conservatives to explain their positions; and
h) The amplifying of voices of victim-mongers clamoring for reparations *against middle class social conservatives.
[*Note: Predatory billionaires, when non-domestic and "too big to fail," do not pay. Rather, the "payments" are made in blood, sweat, and tears worked out in "let's you and him fight" rivalries that are enticed between minorities and conservatives by side-betting billionaires who are covered and hedged with insurance (and, if that fails, by your tax payments, since they are "too big to fail"). For strife side-betters, our fights are their money-making opportunities. At least, so long as we remain unable to avert our attentions from shadows on a wall.]
2) There is no need even to consider tort reform to help resolve problems with scarcity and cost of health care, such as by reducing the influence of advocates for giving voice to dissension between middle-class conservatives and victim mongers of “entitlementarianism.”
3) There is no good reason to expect MSM to account for why it has been so reluctant to cover Van Jones’ background, or Obama’s obvious propensity for surrounding himself with whacked out radicals.
4) There is no good reason to suspect that international billionaires would be corrupt or smart enough to take advantage of, or to exacerbate, trends that could opportunize their elimination of any middle class with power to question or to counter them.
5) There is no “invisible elephant in the room,” consisting of an emerging syndicate of opportunity-following international billionaires (too big to fail?), forming alliances to carve up and reduce the rest of the world to its control by taking every possible measure to wipe out the power of any middle class of social conservatives of decent civilization.
6) There is no good reason to suspect that many international billionaires, national despots, or religious totalitarians are psychopaths, lacking any higher conscience or notion of moral accountability.
7) There is no good reason to expect Obama to come clean with information about his background, childhood, and education.
INDEED, to think there may be good reason to expect such information to be forthcoming is to be an anti-reasoning conspiratist. So there! Would sayeth a “reasonist” Garry Trudeau.
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24 comments:
America seems to be in a physical crisis. But I suspect the physics of it is illusory, and is brought on by deliberate infliction of spiritual crisis. Perhaps Bush 41 and 43 did not realize they were being used, but it appears they were. Sociopathic stalkers have been hunting America for a long time, and now, years after Reagan, they sense they are on the verge of a major kill. And with that comes, they think, power to rule the world.
Why has America been made dangerously vulnerable to a sudden constriction of oil supplies? Given the staggering size of our own reserves, there is no decent justification for this self-imposed crisis. Except that we have turned the muscles that control our bodies and wills over to a mess of predatory Sociopaths pretending for the sake of their idiotic followers to be communal, sociable, and progressive.
Why is America allowing its military defenseability to be compromised? There is no decent justification for failing to reinforce the morale of servicemen, nor for breaking faith with Israel, nor for allowing Iran to arm itself with nukes, nor for encouraging third world adventures in thuggish faux-socialism.
Bottom line: The crisis presently felt by America in so many areas seems to have been contrived solely for the purpose of reducing the nation to the control of international predatory sociopaths, for whom Obama is either a front or a fool, but not a fount.
Regardless, the crisis has been manufactured.
On AT, Teleologicus noted:
"There is this much to be said for the Obama presidency, that it is acting as a firebell in the night to wake all Americans who have not been paying attention. It is a loud and unceasing firebell that is being rung by the arsonists themselves. If Mr. Obama and his pals were consciously and deliberately striving for all they were worth to rouse and alert Americans to the dangers they represent they could scarcely do any better."
This insight excites me with both hope and fear. Hope, because at last all but the most ignorant must come to hear and see. Fear, because why would the arsonists ring the alarms unless for sport, firm in the belief that there is nothing we can do? But if it's sport they want, it's sport we may yet give them.
If memory serves, an American father was late in leaving Iraq some months before Desert Storm, so his son wound up in Saddam's clutches. Saddam made a TV tape to show him tenderly stroking the boy's hair. The message was two fold: Saddam had utter control over the boy, and he also had utter control over the message. [See http://www.blackpressusa.com/news/Article.asp?SID=3&Title=National+News&NewsID=18337 and http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/24/opinion/essay-the-hitler-analogy.html.
Now, America is "the little boy," and an international syndicate of billionaire sociopaths is "Saddam," in a script writ large for the Stockholm Syndrome.
Notice --- Obama and the international crime family for which he fronts (the syndicate fronted by Soros and Goldman Sachs) have: Reduced America to servile reliance on foreign energy sources, notwithstanding plentiful national reserves; weakened America's border and military defenses; signaled America's moral irresolution and committment to socialism worldwide; and
bowed and kow towed to foreign despots.
The boy in Iraq was eventually allowed to leave, under what seemed to be a carefully orchestrated whimper. Saddam had the boy, and knew there was nothing America could do about it.
Now, Obama has delivered America to a "new Saddam." Given czar-like forces for intimidating and directing media, information, lobbies, banks, academia, education, corportions, and politicians, why should those who control Obama fear any whimper from America greater than was made on behalf of the little boy?
Pray they have "mis-underestimated" us.
Government As A Commodity:
Suppose you were a psychopath who, by chicanery or connivance, had acquired wealth enough to invest in, and come essentially to “own,” the government. Then, in exchange for government services, which you would regulate while controlling supply, you should have power to reduce all citizens to dutiful serfs. What a kick for a psychopath! What an indecent and invasive insult for every other human being! Such an economic system, in combining free enterprise capitalism with governmental regulation, may be called “Corporatism.”
Were one truly a “Republican,” one should wish for a system of fellowship that availed and defended opportunity for enterprising-expressionism among all citizens. However, in becoming a Corporatist, one would become no longer a Republican, but a RINO (or a “Blueblood Faux-Republican”). In becoming a Corporatist, one would become no longer a Democrat, but a DINO (or a “Radical Faux-Democrat”).
Regardless, as a Corporatist, one would have no “not-for-sale” loyalty for preserving any boundaries for any nation, culture, religion, political affiliation, republic, or decent opportunity among fellows. Rather, as a Corporatist, one would see humanity as nothing more than a syndicate-line of ducks, in which all compete only to be Head Quacker. Near the front of the line, there will always be several ducks temporarily allied in seeking to replace the Quacker next above them.
Among Rinos and Dinos, all are invested alike in The-Same-Corporatism. The only difference is that each political-affiliation-of-convenience is associated with a different set of political slogans for deceiving the general population of “useful idiots.” That is, Corporatists are united in prizing advantages for keeping the general populaton at bay, by keeping it in divisions and at one another’s throats.
Rino (“spread the opportunity”) Corporatists are charged to stir animosities of small business persons and social conservatives; Dino (“spread the wealth”) Corporatists are charged to stir animosities of union employees, minorities, and social deviants. In stirring such animosities, Rinos enlist usefully-idiotic, true-believers in “arms-length free-markets,” while Dinos enlist usefully-idiotic, true-believers in government-regulated “economic equality and fairness.”
However, while Corporatists rule, there is not much sense in such slogans, neither of “arms-length free-markets” nor of “economic equality and fairness.” Rather, so long as the attention of low-level true-believers remains diverted to sects of nonsensical, political dogma, none shall notice that the struggles are “shadows on a cave,” the projection of which is controlled mainly by villains not noticed (or thought to be beyond touch). In this way, middle classes are wiped out (aka, “comprehensive solution”), and humanity is reduced to (1) rulers and (2) those they rule.
And so, true believers of each sect, Rinos and Dinos alike, remain as serf-ducklings, each paying fealty to his or her Head Quacker, while Real Power Projectors remain largely out of sight and out of mind. Real Power Projectors (Soros, Goldman Sachs, etc.) tend to remain the same people, always managing and hedging their bets (such as by making campaign contributions on all sides, in order to control and own chokepoints and politicians on all sides).
The only chance is for small business people, social conservatives, AND minorities to dare to notice common ground: for spreading opportunity, for constricting Power Projectors, and for taxing them enough --- not to spread wealth, but to level power in order to pay for common infrastructure, maintenance, and “surpassage.”
But this would require a Source to inspire us towards a new movement for conserving human freedom, dignity, and opportunity. May some inspiring aspect of Consciousness (aka, “God”) inspire us to keep striving, to rebel against siren calls for the nihilistic grabbing of despotic power for no reason apart from desiring power?
And so, minorities, Blacks, Hispanics, and a rainbow of misfits are led to believe thay have no choice but to heed the siren call of Dinos. And small business persons and social conservatives are led to believe thay have no choice but to heed the siren call of Rinos. In this way, a Syndicate of Real Power Projectors rules the rest of the world. Those with power sense this – even without need for becoming expressly or openly conspiratorial.
The only serious and decent countermeasure is through republicanism, crafted in a system of checks and balances, with institutional checks to make it nearly impossible for any one person or cohort to acquire such disproportionate wealth and influence as to unbalance or upend the system.
Presently, however, a Syndicate-Of-Despots is unrestrained from acquiring disproroportionately snowballing wealth and influence, free of serious checks or penalties, with scarcely any spiritual, inspirational reason to apply effort to the service of decent, republican civilization. And so, without seriously constricting the influence of Real Power Projectors, the main idea of Western Civilization --- of freedom and dignity --- will flicker out.
Warren Buffet is either confused or not in good faith. Making government bigger by giving it more tax revenue would simply invite those princes who control government to invent ever more schemes to justify controlling, regulating, and confining human liberty, all rationalized under Orwellian euphemisms, such as for: saving the planet, sharing the wealth, or leaving no tribe or race behind.
IF taxes for increasing government revenue could be applied to building common infrastructure, rather than to rationalizing the building of governmental intrusiveness, the undermining of liberty, or the reduction of the middle class, then a proportionate increase in taxes against billionaires may be worthwhile.
However (provided corporations were more precluded from buying political influence), I would not see the point to taxing corporations (which would merely turn their profit-making efficiencies into unprofitable governmental inefficiencies).
Provided the income tax were replaced by a proportionately increasing tax on individual consumption, and the government were more restricted from applying such tax revenues to saving the planet, sharing the wealth, or leaving no tribe or race behind, then it may be worthwhile to enact such a tax and to apply its revenues to building, maintaining, and defending infrastructure.
But that would require a much more powerful middle class. Presently, ruling elites have distracted the attention of the middle class towards being utterly devoted to class war within itself, between its minorities and its entrepreneurs.
If Warren really wanted to serve decent human civilization and liberty, he would volunteer his money for countering the below listed Anti-Ten Commandments.
***************
For Ruling Princes ---- The Anti-Ten Commandments:
1) Nationalism and Culturalism constitute parochial jingoism;
2) Until a nation is filled with cheap labor, its borders sh0uld be opened to cheap labor;
3) Governmental regulation in all things is good;
4) The white middle class is bad;
5) Minorities should disdain middle class-ness;
6) It is important to constantly stir envy and strife ("diversity") between middle class small business persons and minorities, in order to divert attention from their common puppet masters;
7) We would be better off with no middle class, but only a ruling class and a ruled class, for which elite leaders should be entrusted to save the planet;
8) Speech and education must be controlled so that they are not hurtful, deceitful, politically incorrect, or counter to saving the planet;
9) God does not like non-submissive individualism; and
10) God is not great.
Government does not do charity very well. Governmental charity begets entitlement-arianism, and entitlement-arianism begets slum mindedness. Initiative and creativity drop out, while mind drugging tunes in. Then begets the Real Crisis, which can be tamed only by a man on a horse.
But that man has no time for cries of the masses. Rather, that man sets loose the Government Blob (or Borg), to absorb and constrain every function and every thought of the masses.
This is well paying work for those who rise to feed the Blob. Not so much for those whom the Blob needs to feed upon.
Have we lost our sense for knowing when to just say no to more government?
Secular Humanists tend to believe Government should replace those non-government charities that are derivative of Higher (Spiritual?) Mindedness. But, once we lose Higher Mindedness, who are we kidding, to suggest that government will fill the gaps? What --- we are going to replace God of the Gaps with Government of the Gaps?
Manna from Government! Feed me more regulations, Seymour! LMAO.
Well, who in China (and elsewhere abroad) has learned? International Profiteers learned how to sell bubbling opportunities, and Chinese leaders experimented with the purchase. Some of the profit is from expanding the pie. But some of it is from the corrupt and criminal selling out of America. (Remember Bush and Dubai!)
American independence in resources of energy, labor, and industry has been deliberately sabotaged by side-betting hedge artists in what has now become "the international business of politics." In competing in the "marketplace for buying governance," all middle classes are now "incentived" to learn and heed their places. The neo-middle-manager is just a smiling face rocking on a stick. And the neo-voting-class is an irrelevant sideshow, since the only choices among candidates will always be advancing the globalist agenda.
If economics were all that were at stake, one may pretend to morally rationalize such a redistribution. But human liberty has also been staked. For weakening the institutions and forces that protect liberty, those faux-American snakes who have sold out America are to be condemned to the lowest realms of Hades. And now, if liberty is to hope to live, we must begin to unmask and face them.
Re: "Among the cost-cutting measures is the necessary tort reform with caps on non-economic damages. The costs of defensive medicine are estimated at 10% of total healthcare dollars spent. No reform can possibly be expected to bring down cost (absent rationing) without providing caps on non-economic malpractice damages. The Patients First bill provides for the establishment of administrative health tribunals, also known as health courts, which will ensure speedy resolution of claims."
Until Leftists are willing to commit to triage the problem of defensive medicine (aka "the elephant in the waiting room"), their cries of health care crisis will play as sympathetically as the tears of crocodilian lawyers. (With apologies to Lewis Carroll, were you an oyster, would you visit the waiting room of the Walrus and the Carpenter?)
Dems were in an uproar about W's usurpation via signing statements. Now, Obama, via czar appointments, makes W look like a piker when it comes to executive usurpation. Yet, Obama gets it done under the nose of MSM, whose radar is in the off mode. We are being hoodwinked by flowery words and Houdini body language. Jesus said it well: By their acts shall ye know them. Meanwhile, the Left conflates government with Jesus, as if government should replace Jesus. IOW, for Leftists, the test for what government should do (WWGovtD) is WWJD. IOW, with apologies to Buck Owens, while Obama gives us the bird, the Left is flying the bird of paradise up our noses.
See http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/415244/page-2.html.
Well done. To the far left is rule by despotic dictators and kings, and to the far right is uncivilized anarchy.
Go far enough in either direction and meaningful liberty is lost.
But what appears to model for a line returns, eventually, to model as completing a circle.
At some point, conceptualization switches and "right" becomes "left."
There is no freedom without law; there is no material choice without gravity.
IOW, eliminating law (either man-made or natural) does not necessarily increase liberty.
The ongoing goal of each intelligent agent for communicating consciousness is to maximize and conserve individual liberty of expression and enterprise within a system that accords due regard for common and civilizing standards of decency.
The author's model, however, does nicely point up how the meaning of "liberalism" has taken a bad turn.
Classically, liberalism was more concerned with individual rights than with group redistributions of wealth.
Somehow, "freedom from want" became confused with liberal ideals, leading to a false notion of "freedom" as "freedom from individual identity or responsibility."
IOW, liberalism as an ideal was uprooted and upended.
Now, who but modern faux-liberals are more prone to want to illiberally restrict free speech?
*****
Truth2madness says: "This way we can properly designate fundamental differences between individual liberty and economic liberty, which is something Mr. Muller fails to account for."
I am not so sure. Fundamentally, I think that way may lead to more madness. I would not t confuse physical models with the reality of consciousness. No matter where you are, your experience revolves around your consciousness.
The "best goal" for a healthy perspective of consciousness is to maximize its individual liberty, both for expression as well as for enterprise, within a system that can sustain it. As Appleseed intimates, such a system tends to be a Constitutional Republic. There simply is no perfect physical or conceptual distinction between expression and enterprise. IMHO.
But one does not reach that goal by going further either left or right. Rather, one finds that goal within, and communicates with others about the need to defend it. That goal is not a fixed location on a line or a circle. Rather, it is a matter of perspective, within. That goal is not at a "moderate" location. Rather, "moderation" will not suffice to defend it. Because the price of defending a Constitutional Republic is eternal vigilance --- both from leftish depredations of the would-be king and from rightish depredations of the mob. The goal is "extreme moderation" (aka, a vigilant defense of self expression).
What we try to reconcile is how to maximize individual liberty within a system that can sustain it. But I doubt we can completely resolve that goal in respect of any objective reference, line, circle, chart, or graph. Any more than we can resolve the difference between a perspective for a sum of individuals as it switches to a perspective of their whole.
However, for the limited purpose of communicating about the upending of "liberalism," the author's re-conceptualization of "left" and "right" is quite nicely done. Ommmmm.
Government does not do charity very well. Governmental charity begets entitlement-arianism, and entitlement-arianism begest slum mindedness. Initiative and creativity drop out, while mind drugging tunes in. Then begets the Real Crisis, which can be tamed only by a man on a horse.
But that man has no time for cries of the masses. Rather, that man sets loose the Government Blob (or Borg), to absorb and constrain every function and every thought of the masses.
This is well paying work for those who rise to feed the Blob. Not so much for those whom the Blob needs to feed upon.
Have we lost our sense for knowing when to just say no to more government?
Secular Humanists tend to believe Government should replace those non-government charities that are derivative of Higher (Spiritual?) Mindedness. But, once we lose Higher Mindedness, who are we kidding, to suggest that government will fill the gaps? What --- we are going to replace God of the Gaps with Government of the Gaps?
Manna from Government! Feed me more regulations, Seymour! LMAO.
At some tipping point, America's desire to embrace the rest of the world transmogrified into a desire to elect pols who want Americans to be absorbed into the rest of the world. And so, American liberty has slouched towards an altar, awaiting sacrifice to the lowest common denominator of the sub-human Blob. Somehow, our "educators" -- in their analyzing of history, psychology, and morality -- have failed to present us with decent and workable models for coordinating American liberty with the rest of the world. Almost all our pols, in sensing that globalism is becoming increasingly inevitable, sob to Americans that individual liberty has to be sacrificed for the greater good of saving the planet. IOW, better red than dead. And any American who disagrees is just too redneck to know what is best. All hail the "Leftist Reasonists"! Not.
We need to elect pols who better respect that reasonable accommodation with the rest of the world need not entail undue, "blobular" sacrifice of human or American liberty.
I have seen enough of the underbelly of humanity to appreciate that we are fallen indeed. We often dress up or cover our fallen nature better in wealthy neighborhoods than in poor neighborhoods. I have seen that no nation, race, or ethnicity has a monopoly on techniques for rationalizing abuse and racism against others. I have seen under the covers that the abuse is worse and more extensive than many who lead relatively sheltered lives likely imagine. I have seen that no ideology, by itself, particularly disposes its adherents to be less abusive, more tolerant, or more humane. Rather, adherents of each of the ideologies tend, in their fallen nature, to “justify” their own favored abuses. This is not a problem that mere ideological indoctrination can likely cure. While I think there are avenues for mitigating the problem, I do not see a solution merely in ever increasing regulatory and detailed controls.
What we need is enlightened respect for traditions and sacred stories that are appropriate for conditioning, inspiring, and appealing to our common empathies. But how do we get that?
Well, we need to nourish and inculcate respect for being receptive to it — from a Higher Source. I do not care so much whether your experience has debilitated or conditioned you to prefer not to refer to such Higher Source as “God.” But if you, in the core of your being, respect no higher philosophy for justifying, rationalizing, or inspiring shared beliefs about what is moral or decent, then it makes little sense to expect that you should inspire anyone — except by self justified deceit.
So long as we fail to recognize our need to be receptive to a Higher Source of unifying moral relationships, we will continue to “justify” wordy rationalizations for the “survival of the fittest” chauvinism of gangs, tribes, races, and cultures, which will continue to divide us to justify inhumane (and racist) encroachments against freedom and dignity.
The problem with Obama is that he sees the “Higher Source” as Big Gov, rather than as the God who would avail opportunity for human freedom and dignity for all. And his Gov of Big Hope and Change and of Black Liberation Theology is not so different from Big Stifling Allah.
In America, we have been blessed with traditions for respecting equal opportunity for all in the pursuit of happiness. Over the years, we have refined many such traditions, and have thrown out many laws that stood against such refinements.
However, those efforts have been undermined by rationalizing false and debilitating notions of entitlement-arianism from Big Gov. Mainly, such notions empower the evils of self justifying deceit and gang thuggery. And the purveyors of such empowerment of evil consist largely in our own Rinos and Dinos. We have been busily “educating” (indoctrinating and conditioning) generations of citizens whose notions about public decency and morality revolve mainly around their self absorbed wants and entitlements.
Although we have dug ourselves into a hole of challenges, our choice is stark: Surrender our American birthright and submit to Big Allah Gov, or start reclaiming our individual moral power and responsibility based on a Real Higher Source that remains self evident to all who are receptive.
I think Government should be incentived to cooperate in good faith with Enterprisers in order to avail maximum sustainable human freedom and creativity.
For that, the blunt instrument of (Mohammedan-like) force consists in detailed legal Regulation (which incentives loophole artists). (However, Regulations can actually enhance freedom when they consist in rational setting of industry standards or the precluding of Foreign or Corporate purchases of political influence.)
But the more enlightened instrument of (Christian-like) persuasion may usually consist in Tax policy – both affirmative and negative.
For that, the Income tax should be scrapped.
In its place there should be four kinds of national taxes:
1) Customs, tariffs, and duties, for protecting vital industries and national independence;
2) Death taxes, for protecting society against the rise of an aristocracy, prone to translate wealth into disproportionate political influence for the undermining of national sovereignty;
3) A progressive yearly Consumption tax, for financing national defense, basic Infrastructure, and a decent social safety net, while discouraging excessive “consumption” of political influence in the form of legal bribery of politicians; and
4) Sales taxes (affirmative and negative), for encouraging or discouraging various kinds of desirable or undesirable invention, production, or consumption.
Examples:
1) Environment and Population: I suspect some species have an instinct for knowing when to curtail breeding. Regardless of whether Earth can sustain ever more billions of human beings, quality of life and capacity for empathy are not well preserved as “elbow room” is lost and as ever more compromises to freedom must be made. Human “instinct” for voluntarily breeding less could easily be incentived by enlightened, general, non-discriminatory Tax policy. Better management of population incentives would do much to help us step safely away from concerns about environmental tipping points. Do that and most other egg-headed schemes for "saving the planet" may be safely consigned to the archive room.
2) Environment, Health, and Inventiveness: Differential tax rates on sales of various commodities could easily avail general management of production and consumption, without needlessly interfering with specific marketplace allocations.
Examples: Taxes on tobacco products to relieve social expenses for certain kinds of health care. Taxes on carbon-based fuels to incentive more balanced usage and development of alternatives. Why resort to “cap and trade” when simply increasing tax rates on commodities could more efficiently accomplish the desired end, with less encouragement of bureaucracy, graft, and Three Card Monty schemes for political kickbacks? (Problem: This would require the restoration of Trust in government, which would require effective safeguards.)
Example: It is said that raising taxes on petroleum products cascades to negatively affect industry as a whole. Well then, why not simply Manage-The-Increase? Suppose government were to begin incrementally increasing fuel taxes while letting it be known that the increases would continue, incrementally — not to destroy industry, but to wean it to alternative energy sources?
Logically, I suspect such methods could help manage a complex economy even while actually enhancing human freedom, industriousness, and creativity.
Practically, I think the corruption in D.C. is so endemic and wrong headed that the best that can be done for the next 3 ½ years, as Glenn Beck suggests, is simply to “quarantine” D.C., so that no new laws of significance come out of it. Presently, our political leadership is simply too adolescent and too corrupt to allow any rational person to expect that any good could come out of the present regime. IOW, Conservatives are not presently adequately represented. That is, Conservatives who respect the enhancing of human Freedom and Dignity over the orderly regulation, drugging, and propagandizing of human Duck Lines.
Bill Gates, H. Truman, and A. Lincoln were well enough educated without having earned PhD's. I doubt Americans would want to rewrite the rules to allow only college graduates to vote, run for public office, or serve on juries. Give me a Hank Hill over an Egghead any day. By definition, an Egghead is so devoted to a small spectrum of experience as to be prone to be dazed or lost when confronted with the rush of reality.
K-D's own posts show he does not accept everything a person says merely because he is "educated." He does not particularly defer to being "educated" by PhD's. After all, many A.T. commenters have PhD's, as well as a wealth of practical experience. I have not seen anyone at A.T. insinuate that K-D is "anti-education" (although I do suspect he would benefit by losing some hubris and reading more on A.T.).
Before FDR, America had a very competent and educated engineer as President -- H. Hoover. However, as President, HH was not so competent. Now, we have a Harvard man. As President, he has destroyed trust.
It is one think to be proud of educational achievement. It is another to overvalue it and presume advanced education in a narrow field enhances one's qualifications for public service. As President, I would prefer nearly any ordinary American who has held a responsible job, raised a decent family, actively participated in community affairs, stayed abreast of a good variety of news and educational sources, not been indoctrinated in demonstrably failed philosophies, not been corrupted by greed-mongers, and had real world experience in management.
Does K-D mean to insinuate that to be "anti-indoctrination to failed busybody socialism" is to be "anti-education?" If so, that simply does not compute.
Conservatives are not anti-education. I suspect most are simply anti-quack-indoctrination.
Re: “What liberals fail to see is that their cozy world of non-profits, advocacy coalitions, and foundations is utterly self-serving and corrupt.”
****
Quite true!
However, I also think blueblood libertarians fail to see that their cozy world of free competition among international corporations not bound to be loyal to any state is also utterly self-serving and corrupt. (Because it reduces America to a lowest common denominator of international corruption and national disloyalty.)
So, we could have the pot of “Dino buying of the Dem political party” call the kettle of “Rino sacrifice of national boundaries to international corporations” ... black.
The only kind of systemic thinking and political philosophy I admire is coming from Conservatives.
Regarding systemic thinking, it seems to me that the only “systemic policy” of Blueblood Rinos and Liberal Dinos is an unbounded one: “Get Power.” Bluebloods want to do that by sacrificing power of America’s middle class to international corporations. Liberals want to do that by leveraging the power of the State to demand redistributions and reparations from America’s middle class. IOW, by reducing the American middle class to the financial level of Mexican laborers.
For seeking fulfillment by defending institutions for preserving decent civilization, neither Rinos nor Dinos have the least clue or interest.
To think intelligently about a moral system, one needs to appreciate how equations, limitations, and moral boundaries writhe and function. But Bluebloods and Entitlement-mongers tend to be oblivious of boundaries, especially of national borders. For that matter, both seem also oblivious to much need for moral boundaries (at least in the sense of giving a hoot to preserve the individual freedom and dignity of members of the middle class).
Indeed, both libertarian-bluebloods and dope-addled-libs seem equally militant in their atheistic quest to entirely undermine any basis whatsoever for asserting spiritual guidance for moral limits. (Check out LGF lately — can any moral code to it be deciphered?) Rather, for Bluebloods, he who dies with the most toys wins; for Entitlement-Connivers, money conned is twice as sweet as money earned.
But “Dirty Harry” noted that a person has got to know his/her limits. Conservatives tend to appreciate that a Higher Source exists and that they are not it. Conservatives tend to have capacity to seek fulfillment within the system that God has availed. But I am not confident that government-enthralled Rinos or Dinos have the least clue to comprehend moral limits, much less means for comprehending systemic planning.
So I don’t quite grok that Bush, Clinton, or Obama should be considered as systemic, policy-making thinkers. If there is any “system” to any of them, I suspect it consists mainly in political-finger-to-the-wind willies and wannas, and their friends.’ “Saving the planet” is just sop for casting greed and envy upon the waters of government. (In what way did Bush seek to strengthen or preserve the middle class, as opposed to strengthening of international-corporatist rulers?)
IOW, it’s not the Ainos’ moral compasses or higher visions that trouble me, per se. It’s their lack of receptivity to a higher vision of human freedom and dignity, or to a vision higher than the economic politics of greed and envy. It’s their plans for employing ever more governmental rule – whether by coopting corporations as part of the government or, more directly, simply by buying political parties and politicians – in order to snuff out the general liberty of all others to be intuitive and receptive to the ebb, flow, and fulfillment of higher guidance.
Re: "Barack H. Obama doesn't really want to be president but only to play at being president."
Well, do you remember Jim Carrey in The Truman Show? Remember all the idolizing watchers? Are not they like unto the ones who were waiting for Obama? I think it was Marshal McCluhan who said "the medium is the message." Are the people who suspend reality to believe in media-made Obama mainly comprised of people who believe reality is closed to any higher spirituality? It should be hardly surprising if, for their beliefs, the only possible Messiah were an Obama-like version. Problem is, waiting for Obama to perform any miracle is like waiting for Godot. Maybe Obama can entertain us awhile longer by using his hands to project shadow shapes on our collective tabula rasa. Pretty good wages for a few little lies.
The "Dreams-Ayers" connnection is a grand slam demonstration that Obama (1) has lied about his wordsmithing brilliance, (2) lied about his connection with a radical terrorist, (3) sealed his lie about the length and breadth of his connections with moral deviants, mind abusers of children, communists, anti-capitalists, and persons violently opposed to fundamental American tenets and spiritual values, and (4) deployed his middle finger to those who see through him, as if to sneer that there is nothing much they can do to counter his moral gall and audacious skill in lying.
If Conservatives and their leaders are not smart, energetic, and motivated enough effctually to address this mind-numbing, grand-slam deceit and sneer that has been and is being deployed for the annointing and marching of Obamanation, then we hardly merit any chance for setting things aright.
In nearly every important aspect, moral leadership all around is upside down. We can no longer pretend it is not and still hope to have a chance to reset. Have we really become so morally hollow that we should now let this insult pass, in order to turn to "more significant" insults and challenges? What insult is more significant than this grand slam? How do we expect to ignore Leftists as they corrupt our nation beyond recognition, yet hope to preserve anything? We must reassert moral control over the contemptible degenerates and moral children who we have somehow, to our own shame, allowed to assume control.
We are not merely in a clash of civilizations. We are in a deep moral hazard, in which we shall sink into oblivion if we fail immediately, insistently, loudly, and everywhere to call this evil for what it is.
Every American politician who fails ---- immediately, insistently, loudly, and everywhere to call the evil for what it is --- is part of the problem, not part of any possible solution. A virgin can hardly remain silent while in a whorehouse and still retain respectability. Every politician who fails his or her country in this hour of need is to be shamed, unto many generations.
Why do we not simply avail schools to be "safe" for not disrespecting the First Amendment, traditional American values, or beliefs that there is a Source of "shoulds"?
Why do we not avail public schools simply to be "safe" for leading students to appreciate and think about basic moral and familial values for themselves, from their own accultured frames of reference?
Why do we tolerate "educators" who assume that the inculcation of reasonable tolerance requires governmental regimentation of moral belief systems, using a velvet glove which is backed by an iron fist?
Insofar as a State's law does not sanction gay marriage, why should schools teach that it should?
If the subject of sexual orientation is an appropriate one for State enforced opinions and approval, what subject is not?
Do we really know how much a kid's conditioning or orientiation towards fundamental lifestyle-choices is affected by subtle signals, biases, or encouragements that are sponsored by a p.c. movement that takes over a school?
How "shape-able" is the human mind? Once a person begins to act on a system of beliefs and psychological payoffs, do we really know the opportunity cost? Depending upon subtlety and severity of encouragement to a kid to take a path, how much may dopamine or feedback eventually condition him/her to become unlikely to take or revert to a different path?
To the extent signals in the social mileau may tip a kid to one direction or another, why should the good will or aspirations of scholastic agitators be valued over those of parents?
Even insofar as many parents may be less than ideal, why should any parent believe that a gang of social agitators (or freak Obama czars) would be "better"?
In wider or national respects, what is the empirical or non-arbitrary basis for simply declaring that the impositions of social agitators will make America or society a better civilized place than otherwise would have been the case?
Why cannot schools be "safe" from using p.c. and government to undermine the authority of families?
What is the difference in principle between detailed trumping of families by Islamic thugs over detailed trumping of families by p.c. gov gangsters? After all, both devalue the authority of parents and both substitute coercion for individual responsibility.
Should/does Jesus/God value (or save) us because Gov forces us to do right, or because we endeavor to learn and do right for ourselves, in respect not of Gov or Priests or Imams, but of "God"? For beginning that journey, who is the prime source, among mortals, for providing nurture --- if not parents?
The path we are on will diminish parental capacities and replace them with Gov, which is very, very prone to becoming controlled by narcissists and sociopaths. For allocating primary responsibility for raising the next generation, this path is neither a good one, nor an intelligent one.
We are being overrun by so many "scientific" busybodies who believe they "know best" how society should be run and children should be raised! Scientists claim to have disproved God, and now claim authority over "shoulds." This is audacious fraud and capital Evil, indeed!
Under this Evil, our leaders "justify" turning ever more to Deceit and Dictate, in respect of their sponsoring busybodies' beliefs that individual freedom of thought and speech should be sacrificed for the collectivist greater good ... which, of course, only the busybody enforcers (Obama's freak czars) are qualified to discern.
This is what it means to march to the siren call of Big Gov-Who-Loves-You, to sacrifice individual liberty in order to get Collectivist entitlement, assurance, and insurance of health, shelter, food, entertainment, pravda, and politically-correct-think. This is the spineless, panatywaist path for trying to make every whim, pleasure, and departure from any norm into a government enforced and financed "right."
Assuming Morality (or mores) is important to our civilization, then: Is a unifying Source (or standard) of moral behavior: (1) Caring, (2) Intolerant, or (3) Indifferent? Is IT Consciously involved, intrusively dictatorial, or distantly removed; or does IT avail or prescribe degrees of Freedom within lawful parameters, minute pre-Determination, or Random chance?
In other words, should the Source best be conceptualized as consisting in (1) a consciously empathetic and charitable God, (2) a frightfully authoritarian Allah, or (3) a withdrawn and unconcerned Deity?
In rationalizing our assessments, how much do we tend to overindulge our initial inclinations, soon to render ourselves blind to alternatives?
(1) Have not many Jews and Christians, among other believers in a caring God, childishly presumed God to be an omni-tolerant libertine, such that no one need be concerned with preserving any mortar for holding in place the bricks for our civilization?
(2) Have not many Muslims acquiesced to leaders who have blinded themselves to tolerance, making themselves into self-annihilating, moral zombies and agents of soul-deadening Borg-dom?
(3) Have not many so-called Scientific Elitists and secular humanists childishly presumed to replace God with pure, scientifically-backed Governance, sailing afar on a ship of fools, wandering from the domain of the empirically testable and mathematically demonstrable, yet expecting to govern, indeed, to rule, the domain of the morally imaginable?
In every case, for every one of such three “Teams,” does not pride often go before a fall? For mortals, may it not reasonably be said that there is no completely Judeo-Christian Freedom, no perfectly Islamic pre-Determination, and no exclusively Scientific, Random dice?
For myself, I intuit God to be caring, such that laws are availed, in respect of which we are to enjoy freedom within such laws, for guiding our relational empathies. For myself, America, fairly checked and balanced, remains the best hope for preserving society that respects ideals of caring and charity enough to avail citizens with freedom and dignity under law.
To preserve hope, now is not the time for Team America to surrender or submit to the faux-hope of Islamic brutishness or Elitist pretensions. Now is not the time to devolve under the erasing of America’s boundaries --- not on land, not in trade, and not in law. Quarantine Team Obama.
Re: The unambiguous message of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee of the Storting, Norway's parliament, is candidly stated in the public announcement of the Prize. It is the dream of a world in which the role of the United States of America in all respects is vastly diminished.
Well, why is this dream of Soros the dream of the world? It sounds as mature as the dream of a beauty pageant contestant. Is there no educational system anywhere on the planet that has thought maturely about the consequences of a weak America? Has any intellectual thought past his wannas to consider what will arise to balance the world stage, once the only nation with a semblance of workable checks and balances for preserving liberty is weakened? Imagine a mob of Norwegians tying Marshall Dillon down and then ramshackling through his stuff, stealing away bits and pieces here and there of his badge, ammo, and firepower. I wonder what sort of checks and balances the planet will enjoy once every society, every gang of pirates, and every apocalyptic minded nation, is freed from the tyranny of Uncle Sam (Matt) Dillon to acquire its own horrendous arsenal. How long and how well will that secure the peace? Insofar as many nations are under autocratic rule, why do democratic nations pretend all should be democratically equal? Does long exposure to democracy make citizens soft in the brain? Maybe war is periodically necessary, to reawaken minds grown soft in democracy to reality, back from dreamland. Possible book title: "When Obama Wakes.”
Re:
1) “I believe that it is important to draw our conclusions of Obama as a human being and President in the context of historical and factual analyses.”
2) “... feeds into the name calling already taking place by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, David Axelrod, and others.”
3) “Recall the right coining the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome" for those that spoke out against President Bush.”
4) “... I do not believe that we now need to start labeling ourselves as having lost all rationality.”
5) “Does anyone really think that if we on the right go about calling Obama and his administration evil, we are going to influence the independent vote and begin to dig ourselves out of this mess?”
6) “What is the goal in writing articles?”
7) “The right needs to build credibility, not a field of bad dreams.”
***
Whew! Would that the world were that good and rational. But it is not.
1) I don’t think any human being is Evil in the sense of being Satan. But I do think anyone can be so badly mis-educated and mal-conditioned as to be a great agent of evil, even if unintentional. The same may be said of a person who believes himself so elite as to be the sole judge of his own private morality.
In any event, I cannot look into a person’s heart to judge or condemn his/her soul. But I certainly am responsible to apply my best common sense, as God gives me the light to see it. Applying that, and considering the context of historical and factual analysis, I think America and much of the world is presently in more danger than it was in the immediate lead up to WWII. By the way, it was an evil absence of foresight and receptivity to higher consciousness that led us at that time into such evil, was it not? Where in the main article is there any hint of understanding that?
2) Does the author really think the Radical Left needs any excuse or pretext whatsoever in order to characterize anyone who stands in its way as being of the devil? Please! The Radical Left will always engage in name calling and deceit. I recommend a reality check by taking a walk through history.
3) The BDS of the Left is reflexive of its tunnel vision and disinclination to read beyond its sources of Pravda. Most Conservative thinkers read from a wider variety of sources. Conservative leaders and their followers tend to hold responsible jobs. The jobs of Radical Leftists and their followers tend to pertain to agitation or feeding feelings of entitlement. To observe facts and follow their trends is hardly to be deranged. IOW, the deranged left does not rehabilitate itself by saying, “Oh yeah, well it takes one to know one.”
4) I agree. However, to fail to notice the leftist derangement that is all around is to have lost touch with decent reality.
5) Most of us are not calling Obama evil. We are calling his conditioning and his agenda evil, and we are calling the conditioning and agenda of his enablers evil — because we actually believe it is. Question: Does the author really think that all that is at stake is just a matter of playing nice and taking turns driving the bus?
6) Well, for myself, I think the goal is to recognize the trends, ascertain the reality, intuit the goals of the opposition, understand when the opposing goals in fact are evil, and plan and effect countermeasures.
7) The right is not going to build credibility with leftists who have been programmed since early school to think like leftists and to view everything within the leftist prism without fundamentally challenging the prism itself. No “objective reasoning or credibility” is going to survive the trip through the left’s prism. The “debate” is not purely logical or reasonable. It is also physical. Sometimes rudely physical, as in knocking at the prism. Or as Obama says, getting in their faces. Bush’s problem was not that he talked back. His problem was that he lacked the skill to be able to talk back!
There is no one size fits all rational solution for talking sense and credibility. Every opposing leftist is his or her own challenge. The right needs its “no drama” debaters, but it also needs to not fear the physics of confrontation. If we are significantly clear in our fundamental vision, we will prevail. And that will restore our credibility.
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