Though terror is prone to induce panic, I would advise people who want to live a life resembling their understanding of freedom and privacy that they take this election VERY SERIOUSLY and that they listen closely to their inner terror alerts. The discussion of religious freedom is being framed by very serious people in utterly fallacious ways. what makes constitutional law work in this country is that there are people trained to analyze legal and constitutional texts in the clearest and most precise way; this is no longer part of the discussion of constitutionality, or when it is, it is not considered important input. There is a huge “SO WHAT’S YOUR POINT?” factor in the voting public, much as an argument for the actual, non-entmological humanity of certain ethnic groups in Nazi Germany was considered an incomprehensible irrelevancy. The regular repetition of illogic, like so many other things, becomes common wisdom over time. This form of thinking is invading and skewing cogent minds, which shows the power of social pressures. Catholic dogma and Evangelicalism is metastasizing. For the Catholics, there is much irony, since they will be the first to be cast out by the Calvinist revolution presently being fomented. Meditate on this fact: CONTRACEPTION has become a political issue taking up hours of media discussion time. A man who is presently LEADING the Republican voting population for the office of the Leader of the Free World calls RAPE A GIVER OF GIFTS. We’re in big trouble.
To claim that cause is effect is a demagogue’s work in trade. The example of Sharon Angle pointing to safety-net expenditures as the cause of the recession is a perfect example, perpetuated by most Right Wing demagogues. Those who have learned to hone their thinking more sharply find these little logical fallacies stunningly incomprehensible, and believe that correcting them will shut up their perpetrators. But they resonate with the vast majority of people who, unfortunately, have no method of thought to follow closely to check for precision. They primarily feel, and react – to fear, anger, xenophobia, and a powerful sense of threat and resentment. David Brooks often speaks in the same fallacious manner. Who knows why? His mind is better trained than that. Probably because he is committed to a Myth of Humanity; an Edenian notion of an innocent humanity that existed only in the United States and was lost after 1959. This shows in his blithe interpretations of Sociobiology – using a dynamic and fluid science to cherry-pick little nuggets of possibility and fit them tightly over his own desired scheme of human reality. The entire Right Wing agenda is based on time-tested rhetoric designed to bring the unthinking majority into their fold for as long as there is still a Democracy to deal with in gaining and maintaining power. The Democracy is the next problem they intend to eliminate.
When will human needs be priorities over the ideologies of the Always Right? Austerity has never worked – it is based on a false and dangerous ideology and only assures the very wealthy that they will cut their losses. Economics is not ruled by metaphysical laws but by the utterly imperfect behavior of human beings who are more likely than not to follow cognitive and emotional biases in making decisions rather than Aristotelian logic. Austerity caused Roosevelt in 1937 to destroy the progress he had made and bring on a new depression. Of course, FDR was a man of wisdom and recognized his mistakes and worked on undoing them. This is not how ideologues operate. Ideology is the bane of civilization. Practical and adaptive actions, based on the realities of the moment and the actual situations which are always unique in important ways, are what allow us to survive as a species. Ideologues don’t understand the imperative of adaptation.
What has penetrated and overtaken the public psyche over the past few decades is the unidimensional defining of Freedom or Liberty as the ability to make and utilize money without constraint. No other “freedom” is as unqualified in its absolute requirements of public recognition and allowance. No indignity has greater justification than that which arises from any such restraint. Note that when John Boehner is moved to sobs, he is always relating a feeling he has when realizing that in this country one can become as wealthy as one desires and is motivated to be. If you want to plan your family, be free of unwarrented searches and seizure (e.g. drug testing), speak your mind, build a mosque, receive equal treatment in business and society, there are millions of exceptions that will be spelled out to you, by those lexicographers of freedom, from which there is no appeal. One is FREE to act against you racially or genderally, so that other person’s FREEDOM must be allowed as prior to your own sense of freeedom and dignity. A religious institution’s “religious freedom” allows it to refuse you what other organizations are compelled to give you. FREEDOM must not be confused with mere justice; any claim you have to a particular freedom does not mean you have a just case to demand that claim. There is only one FREEDOM to which all are entitled: unrestrained acquisition and use of money. When that is infringed by any means, we are, as Hayak would say, “On the Road to Serfdom.” Serfdom has the resonance it has as a special evil because it is a description of a “financial/labor” relationship. Only this qualifies for universal, absolute censure.
I can only read fine poems from out a book
not a computer googled and search-engined
or punchy Kindle or heaven forbid a Fire’s slickly finger drug
drunken images slipping in and away from the fumbling eye
craving one brief static moment to encompass a tipsy trope and hold it fast
for mulling
But a soft, smooth book
Where pages nudge my hand’s heel
and olfact slight smudgy smells
papery wafts hinting
decay accompanying
signs transduced to inward private aurality
across years and miles as alien spurting neurons
of neither me nor not at all not me
a thinking feeling stranger takes up residence
and the house continues to fill
Missed the Bowl. Spent the day reading Wapshott on Keynes and Hayek, John Rawls and Stephen Priest on Hobbes, Hobbes (a kind of proto-Nietzsche), and Herder. a strange and original thinker of the Enlightenment. (Lot of H’s in there, I just noticed). Feel I learned a bit today and am strengthened in my principles because of it. I read voraciously on the issues that exercise me and always include those I disagree with in my reading. One must always know intimately not only what one believes, but what one DOESN’T believe in order to have a qualified opinion. Few people do that. Kahneman and philosophers of science speak of the confirmation bias. Looking only for that which backs up one’s ideas and ignoring that which is opposed. But, I guess because my opinions are strong and I express them with certainty, I am frequently accused of being “closed minded.” That is another way of saying I am in disagreement with the person making the claim. So I will be getting to Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, a Market Economy Scripture. The Free Market People are utterly committed to the idea that any restriction on the right to make unlimited money is the most outrageous attack on Liberty and human dignity that can ever exist. They see it as “serfdom”, i.e., slavery. Racism, lynching, voting rights, freedom of expression, unequal schooling, lack of healthcare, inability to contract one’s labor as an equal with the user of the labor, and on and on are not issues of Liberty and in most cases are overstated by resentful and envious parasites (Ayn Rand, the guru of the Right’s favorite term). Repeal of civil rights laws is in the air. But don’t you dare touch one penny I accumulate. NEVER! OVER MY DEAD BODY! Interestingly, Hayek thought government provided health-care was a good idea (he took advantage of it himself, having not retired with much of a nest-egg) and even allowed for some Government intervention in the economy in special circumstances. But like the absurdly lionized actor/spokesman who was cast as President of the United States in the 1980s, Hayek is still worshiped by a generation of poseurs who have no true knowledge of economic actualities and are merely immersed in unbridled will to power and the uncontrollable drive of hatred that this will brings about.
According to Nicholas Wapshott, in his book Keynes-Hayek, there were “Three Decades of Unrivaled American Prosperity”. 1946-1980. This was the great Keynesian age of controlled government interaction with the economy. After that , starting with the Age of Reagan, we have had nothing but bubble and bust, the outcome of which has been massive, obscene changes in income distribution, a wealthy class that has abnegated all social responsibility, a thuglike approach to politics and social justice, an incipient oligarchical attempt to destroy the US Government and replace it with a Market based Totalitarianism. The Koch movement , secretive and clandestine, is Big Brother in embryo; a cell by cell cancer devouring the lives of the general population of the country. Libertarian fallacies of freedom lead to Social Darwinism, victimization and victim blaming. Ron and Rand Paul, racists, isolationists, domination by neglect and scorn. All underpinned by Calvinist Puritan posturing. Government coercion is and always has been legitimate when justice is the issue. Absolute Freedom must be restrained by justice. Absolute freedom is a myth that merely perpetuates social misery. Limitations of action must be in place for the good of all. Not limitations of expression, but of material power. Social misery can only lead to violent disruption or Totalitarian control. The word Freedom has lost its cachet in this political climate; a mere cliche for “get out of my way, bitch!” The Christian Right is the slave force that supports the oligarchic masters, run by its High Priests of the MegaChurches, inspiring the “Real America” of solid white, Anglophone racial exceptionalism. Such robotic slave forces are always the footsoldiers for violations of human rights. Voting restrictions, abuse of the President, treatment of immigrants, non-Christians, women’s health – the actions and mood of this baleful nation are toxic. And of course, the lies, the lies, and after all is said and done, the lies. Market Economics and Kochian viralism will destroy, are destroying, the Last Great Hope of Mankind. Until quite recently, it had never occurred to me this would happen here. We may have lost the will to be free.
“I enjoy Stein most as a theorist: her ideas startle me, in whatever form they appear. (I call myself an inexpert.) One of those ideas was that becoming a classic could kill a work of art. Readers’ responses should shift, like Ida, with changing times, to make a book new(er); otherwise it doesn’t truly live in the present. If Stein becomes an endpoint for literary invention — a classic — her work can’t be read in the present tense.” Lynne Tillman on Gertrude Stein
Whether it’s Homer, Lao Tse, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or Camus their immediacy is my spark. They’re not classics, they are the perennial human voice. What use can I have with a classic? Stare at it and nod? Stagnate in static stuckness? It needs to liven me, quicken my step, animate and inform me forwardly, nudging my budge from behind. If I want a moral crypt, let me die first. Now is my favorite place because it is in constant and imperceptible motion. You only realize you’re traveling when you look back. My greatest wish is to desire where I am now, now, and put all aspirations behind me. My best advice to myself: Stay in place.
Give a coward a gun and he is the king of the world. The coward’s fantasy – to be all powerful and not risk life or limb. The will to power. Well, cowards need to feel good too. I sympathize with them. They, like me, are human, all too human. We all want to feel safe and sound. Our means of doing so aren’t always in our own best interest. Reason only pops in when we are in the deepest of holes we have dug for ourselves, and always too late.
Give a coward an army and he will gleefully sic it on the rest of the world, spew the word “exceptionalism” and accuse those who oppose him of treason. How can he do that? Because he is not any old coward, he is a coward with an ARMY. His own military service is nil. But so what? He is a coward with an ARMY. And of course he will impose his religion on the world. Beware of a coward with an army. He will call himself courageous. Courage, according to Orwell, is cowardice (with an ARMY). He will call his antagonists cowards (without an army) and traitors. He will torture with aplomb and murder with gleesome alacrity. Those who oppose him are weak. How can one outreason a coward with an army? The reasoning of a coward is infallible, just as long as he has an ARMY.
Great insight, American Thinker. The double standard we have been giving Barack Hussein Obama over the true Americans of this country is nothing short of a scandal. A colored man who didn’t somehow get all sorts of perks (i.e. double standards) could never make it in America.He would, of course, but since all those coons keep screaming racism instead of learning to read and write, they really don’t deserve to make it. After all, there is not and never has been racism in America. MLK made that shit up so he could get famous and screw white women. Ask Pat Buchanan: as he said of Sonia Sotomayor, she was an Affirmative Action student, so she lacks any ability whatsoever; never had it, never will. A third grade reading and comprehension ability was enough to make her salutatorian at Princeton and top of class at Yale. They expected nothing of her.Just filling their quota. Even her long record as a Federal Judge was judged by Affirmative Action Standards, thus no standards at all. Simple enough. Same with Barack at Harvard. No double standard here: Newt, for instance, was a creep, a liar, a womanizer, who repented, thus a qualified president (he REPENTED for God’s sake, can’t the left get that? They want justice for some spic chiquita so she can abominize the Supreme Court, yet won’t forgive Newt? Double fucking standard). Since we don’t know every little detail of Barack’s academic work, it must be assumed that he did nothing of note despite his grades and Presidency of the Harvard Law Review.I also wonder how long it took him to learn to speak like a white man. With practice, it’s possible. They say some of these people have a good ear; lot of musicians and dancers. Some white man ended up at DePaul so we could give the Law Review to an ignorant spade. Colored freeloaders become food stamp presidents. No double standard here. Newt and Huckabee both said, as a given fact , that Barack grew up in Kenya and was raised into a culture of Mau-Mau anti-colonialist revolutinaries. He has no concept of America as we know it. He was never in the little league or the Rotary Club as a kid. Huckabee is a man of the cloth (a degree he got WITHOUT affirmative action, it must be pointed out) and Newt, well. let me say it again. He REPENTED for cryin’ out loud. Would they lie? Pobably not. They know that is wrong. Unlike POTUS, they have morals. They’re Christians (well, Newt is a Catholic. I’m not sure whether Huckabee’s true religion allows Catholicism. More research on my part is needed here). So I agree. The double standard has destroyed the country. How can we expect an economy that was deeply in the gutter when this affirmative action food stamp president took over to ever recover? What can an uppity coon do about it? Especially one who we aren’t even sure went to Harvard and who we know grew up in Kenya (there is no reason to mistrust Mike and Newt on that one). Newt or Mike would have prayed this economy into a boistrous recovery, I guarentee that. Great work for uncovering that double standard. Nothing is more annoying than an ungrateful pickaninee.
Ms. Regan’s article is available at http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/a_gop_candidates_bitter_ex-wife_receives_more_coverage_than_a_video_of_obama_dining_with_terrorist_s.html#ixzz1kG6zZ300
