Central Planning or I Know What I Know?

May 19, 2024 Leave a comment

“If science is really given a free hand it can now take over the human race and re-condition it: make man a really efficient animal. If it doesn’t – well, we’re done.”

That is Lord Feverstone speaking to Mark Studdock in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength.

Feverstone, a shrewd sociopath, uses idealism to lure gullible Mark Studdock, an ambitious, self-centered and shallow intellectual looking to ‘upgrade’ his life. Feverstone wants Mark to join the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.)

N.I.C.E. is a scientific social engineering agency and a front for dark supernatural forces. It is bent on world domination through scientific management. Propagandistic media is used to persuade the educated, like Studdock, to join in disseminating N.I.C.E. propaganda:

One interesting feature in the effort toward totalistic control over society, as developed in That Hideous Strength, is the matter of influencing public opinion through the news media. Mark, the insecure protagonist in the story, finds himself drawn into the “inner ring” of the technocratic project; he eventually discerns his role to write stories that support the agenda of the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.). -Ted Lewis, Jacques, Jack and the Technocrats | | The International Jacques Ellul Society

Feverstone continues working Mark . . .

“Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest – which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of. Quite.”

[Mark] “What sort of thing have you in mind?”

“Quite simple and obvious things, at first – sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biological conditioning in the end and the direct manipulation of the brain . . .”

“N. I. C. E.’s symbol, devoted as it was to “Technocratic and Objective Man” (That Hideous Strength, 259), was a muscular male nude grasping a thunderbolt (That Hideous Strength, p. 215).” – The Devils in Our World – Official Site | CSLewis.com

There were significant parallels to N.I.C.E.’s scientific management activity and the characters involved in 1945, when Lewis came out with the final book of his Ransom trilogy. Mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) the “father of scientific management”, could have been one of the characters in the technocratic project. And there’s Le Corbusier (1886–1965), a Swiss French architect, designer, and painter who was an urban planner.

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.

-Theodore Dalrymple, Le Corbusier’s Baleful Influence: The Architect as Totalitarian (city-journal.org)

Today, there are significant parallels to N.I.C.E.’s scientific management activity and the characters involved. I suppose one could replace the Lord Feverstone character with a number of elites: Lord (Klaus) Schwab of the World Economic Forum (WEF) or Lord (Tedros Adhanom) Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization (WHO) or with the infamous Lord Science, Anthony Fauci and his COVID boss Lord (Francis) Collins who now Confesses Lockdown Damage Was ‘Another Mistake We Made’.

The scientific management of COVID “to save a life” went in a horrible direction against humans. Many of my posts from March 2020 onward document the destructiveness of central public health planning and what other experts were saying.

Certainly, there are those today who want to rework humans with neural links, gene therapy, AI, and scientific management via central planning.

The following well-produced documentary Trust Us is an absolute must for understanding the central planners and the elites. Homeschoolers should show this video to the charges.

““Trust Us” traces the rise of American technocracy: governance by bureaucratic experts. Beginning in the early 20th century, “Trust Us” reveals how our leaders funneled power to unelected experts, who were convinced they could engineer solutions to all our nation’s problems. Not only did these experts fail to solve those problems, but in example after example, they caused irreversible damage to the country.

With The One Best Way – scientific management – Progressives “impose an ideology that not only can every corner of society be planned and controlled from the top down, but that it must be.”

Trust Us | The Rise of American Technocracy (youtube.com)

As we saw during COVID, the collusion of science and state powers forms a dangerous mix. We were told and made to “trust the science” about masks, lockdowns, social distancing, and the COVID vaccine for a flu virus that was 99.9 % survivable for healthy adults who were not very elderly.

The elites of public health central planning lied to us about immunity so that the vaccine could be pushed by the medical-industrial complex. They told us lies about hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin so that the vaccine could be pushed by the medical-industrial complex. They told us lies about the origins of COVID to protect the medical-industrial complex that created a gain-of function virus.

At the same time, you would be mocked as “misinformed” and as a “conspiracy theorist” if you questioned the elites of public health central planning. You would be punished by censorship or loss of license or worse.

See this link for the lies we were told and for the adverse and deadly effects of the COVID vaccine: Investigations Archives – DailyClout.

A world-renowned scientist and leading immunology expert has raised the alarm with an explosive warning to the public that everyone who has been vaccinated with Covid mRNA shots “will die within 3 to 5 years, even if they have had only one injection.”

The alert was issued by Professor Dr. Dolores Cahill.

Renowned Scientist: All Covid-Vaxxed ‘Will Die in 3 to 5 Years’ – Slay News

The Onrushing Death Wave – by Richard Sauder (substack.com)

C.S. Lewis tried to warn us about the collusion of science and state powers used against humanity for “the public good.” (Who determines what “the public good” is should concern us all. Should the Godless determine “the public good”?)

That Hideous Strength “is a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked scientific and technological advancement.

The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) embodies the perils of divorcing knowledge from ethics. Their vision of progress, which seeks to dominate and control nature, starkly contrasts the traditional Christian understanding of humanity’s role as stewards of creation. In this, Lewis critiques a growing cultural trend that prioritizes technological advancement at the expense of moral and spiritual values.” Manrado Gorgio

C. S. Lewis’s Blend of Sci-Fi and Theology: ‘That Hideous Strength’ Analysis (sciencefictionclassics.com)

I am not against technological advancements. I have worked in engineering for many years. Experts are needed and should be given a platform but not the power to coerce.

Do not become so desperate and afraid that you beg government to do something.

I am against technological advancements tied to bureaucratic machinations and coercion by the state. I am against top-down scientific management central planning of my life. I am against elites telling me how to live my life. I am against being experimented on.

We, of Middle Earth America, are sick and tired of elites telling us how to think, speak and act!

~~~

Currently, there are organizations plotting world domination in terms of scientific management. The World Economic Forum (WEF) is one such cabal of elites chomping at the bit to control every corner of our lives. Another is the World Health Organization (WHO), the public health arm of the UN with more elites hankering to centrally plan our health under One Health.

Be aware! May 27th – June 1st, the Seventy-seventh World Health Assembly is being held in Geneva, Switzerland. The theme of this year’s Health Assembly is: All for Health, Health for All. There will be scheduled votes on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic treaty and the proposed changes to the International Health Regulations (IHR). The votes on this treaty and the IHR won’t be the end of an attempt at a global health security state; they mark just the beginning.

I do not want WHO oversight of my health/life. Nor do I want a Federal or State apparatus that has oversight of my health/life. I don’t want to exchange one authoritarian central planning system for another. I don’t want to live under a health technocracy. I prefer practical wisdom over central planning.

“. . .an unlettered peasant is considered ignorant, however much he may know about nature and man, and a Ph.D. is never considered ignorant, however barren his mind might be outside his narrow specialty and however little he grasps about human feelings or social complexities.” Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

In the video you will learn:

The status and legality of the WHO treaty and IHR votes.

How we got here.

What’s in the ever-shifting documents.

What states are doing about it.

How state AGs and U.S. senators are stepping up for health freedom.

WHO Update 5/13/24: The votes are still on! (rumble.com)

WHO Update 5/13/24 – STAND FOR HEALTH FREEDOM

~~~~~

If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. – Thomas Sowell

Government central planning means over-riding other people’s plans. – Thomas Sowell

“What is inadmissible, both morally and scientifically, is the hubris that pretends to understand the behavior of human agents without for a moment listening systematically to how they understand what they are doing and how they explain themselves.”
― James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play

“Social order is not the result of the architectural order created by T squares and slide rules. Nor is social order brought about by such professionals as policemen, nightwatchmen, and public officials. Instead, says Jacobs, “the public peace—the sidewalk and street peace—of cities … is kept by an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.”
― James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Here’s an inciteful brief description of James Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed:

“. . . the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?

“The author [James Scott] builds a persuasive case against “development theory” and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a “high-modernist ideology” that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.” (Emphasis mine.)

What remains of hubristic endeavors. . .

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”, 1819 

31 reasons why central planning failed in the Soviet Union | by Charles Orton-Jones | Medium

~~~~~

That Hideous Strength: Is technology dangerous?

Alister McGrath explores how CS Lewis addresses the perceived conflict between God and science in That Hideous Strength. What insights can Lewis give about pertinent issues such as the atomic age, eugenics and Artificial Intelligence? When does technology becomes technocracy and why was Tolkien so anti tech? What are some of the ways religion is being challenged and how does Lewis expose these critiques?

#143 That Hideous Strength: Is technology dangerous? – ThriveCast

John J. Miller is joined by Michael Ward of the University of Oxford to discuss C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.

The Great Books — Episode 224: ‘That Hideous Strength’ by C. S. Lewis | National Review

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Filed under 2024 Current Events, C.S. Lewis, central planning, Public Health, social engineering, totalitarianism, WEF, WHO, World Economic Forum Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-Ware v. 2.015

February 7, 2015 Leave a comment

As my last post noted Greece, the home of the ancient philosopher Epicurus, rejected fiscal restraint and austerity in exchange for “Hope is coming” debt finagling.

Epicurus sans hammock

Epicurus sans hammock

 “Syriza” or “Let the Good Times Roll Without Repercussions Party” has won a short-lived victory in Epicurean Greece: “Avoid pain or at least spread it around. Give it to someone else. Let us work a few hours a week and then let us seek our pleasures. Let us surround ourselves with good friends and good drink. Forget the creditors. Those fools believed we would pay them back”. And so it goes in ancient modern Greece.

 Well, back in the day Epicurus had an even bigger dilemma than a fiscal crisis. But it was a problem that he was able to philosophize or finagle away with even bigger denial than today’s Greeks. I am talking about the problem of evil.

 The problem of evil–whether viewed as a man being burned alive or as a Roman crucifixion or as someone stealing cigars from a mini-mart or as one neighbor lying to another neighbor-is in our face daily. This enormous topic can only be glanced at in this post. I will give you a perspective to consider. First, let’s see what Epicurus foisted on his followers from his hammock ‘high horse’.

 From Wikipedia Chapter One, verse two:

Logical problem of evil

The originator of the logical problem of evil has been cited as the Greek philosopher Epicurus and this argument may be schematized as follows:

  1. If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
  2. There is evil in the world.
  3. Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist.

This perspective of the problem of evil is held by many in the world. It is a perspective which atheism willing points to and one that bothers agnostics. It is a perspective that lends itself to the myopic religion of scientism where everything can only be validated through scientific proofs or, basically, through one’s senses (a more refined Epicurean philosophy). Yet, the above logical problem of evil is self-defeating. It assumes knowledge of good and evil.

One has to ask, how did Epicurus determine good and evil and the truth that defines them? Did he feel their effects via his physical senses? Did he and his friends determine what is good and what is evil via their collective senses? Did Epicurus make up ‘truth’ about good and evil by what his friends let him get away with saying? Or did Epicurus as a proto-Foucault define ‘regimes of truth’ as “the historically specific mechanisms which produce discourses which function as true in particular times and places”? Or, did Epicurus, as President Obama has recently done at the 2015 National Prayer Breakfast, use moral equivalency or relativism (in this case, high horse lecturing Christians with historical error) as a basis to decide what is a good and what is a bad by comparison (with God as a rubber stamp). It should be noted that none of these premises and perspectives is based on a perspective outside ones’ self or on an Absolute reference point. At the epicenter of these premises is self-serving man, ergo the likes of the American Humanist Association and their motto: “Good Without God“.

 If you believe as pre-Darwin-pre-Enlightenment-pre-scientism Epicurus believed-that humans are just randomized atoms (as he called them) that “swerved” and collided to form the materialistic world-then how did a rational concept of good and evil enter our gardens of random atoms? Remember, in Epicurus’ worldview god had been expelled from the garden of good and evil.

 This early formulation of the logical problem of evil, as I see it and now describe it, is when the Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware began its download hactivism into the software of our networked psyche creating a down-through-the-centuries botnet. This Mal-ware put God in the “Recycle Bin” and made Him inaccessible. It also redirected our boot up executable file to scientism, making it our default root drive. Social manipulation by amoral hactivists and humanists keeps the botnet going.

 The Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware searches for any thought of God and seeks to delete it from your consciousness. It causes doubt spam and creates a zombie-like effect with regard to outside-your-senses thinking. You are made subservient to a ‘regime of truth’, to those who now have the power to control truth. And, there are many who would desire to do so in this present age. And remember, Pontius Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?” as if Pilate could willy-nilly define truth through his earthly power.

 For the sake of brevity I think you will agree with me that the logical problem of evil comes down to premises and perspectives. You may also agree with me that there is a need to wipe clean the hard drives of our minds of all Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware.

 Here is a proper perspective from Dr. Ron Rhodes regarding the existence of evil:

 …it is impossible to distinguish evil from good unless one has an infinite reference point which is absolutely good. Otherwise one is like a boat at sea on a cloudy night without a compass (i.e., there would be no way to distinguish north from south without the absolute reference point of the compass needle).

The infinite reference point for distinguishing good from evil can only be found in the person of God, for God alone can exhaust the definition of “absolutely good.” If God does not exist, then there are no moral absolutes by which one has the right to judge something (or someone) as being evil. More specifically, if God does not exist, there is no ultimate basis to judge the crimes of Hitler. Seen in this light, the reality of evil actually requires the existence of God, rather than disproving it.

If Epicurus had read the even more ancient book of Job perhaps he would not have been so clueless and the “High-Horse” Mal-ware would never have been downloaded with its intent on hacking into our truth files.

One more perspective regarding truth, good and evil and moral equivalency:

C.S. Lewis has a few words to say about the matter, too:

“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

 “Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

 “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

Filed under Atheism, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Culture Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Road Less Traveled By – To The Solidification Zone

November 17, 2013 Leave a comment

The Great Divorce

You are about to take a bus ride into another dimension.  No, not a trip to the Twilight Zone. Or, maybe it IS to the Real Twilight Zone!

 Despite the nonsense that comes from Oprah’s benign (?) pulpit, all roads are not radii that lead to God and Heaven.  Instead there will be a Fork in the road.  It is this bus ride that will take you to that juncture, albeit through fantasy.

 I learned about this bus ride from a recent series of classes I attended at a nearby church.  The topic of the class was C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce.  The discussion was led by a retired Wheaton College professor, Dr. Rolland Hein, Professor Emeritus, English. Dr. Rolland also teaches a class on Saturday mornings at the Wade Center which is located near the college.

 The title page of The Great Divorce, “A Dream” has this quote from George MacDonald:

 “No, there is no escape.  There is no heaven with a little of hell in it ~ no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Our Satan must go, every hair and feather.”

 The Preface to The Great Divorce lets us know that Lewis will be endeavoring with his dream story to break up the marriage of Heaven and Hell (a response of sorts to William Blakes’ book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell), a marriage that many in our lifetime wish for. He writes to inform us of their necessary divorce.

 In an age of moral relativity and subjectivism many want to synthesize good with evil in hopes of redeeming evil. But as Lewis reveals, the choices we make take us down divergent pathways.  We either choose a path of good that becomes an even greater good as we continue to make good choices and stay on its narrow way or we choose a broad path that leads towards ever greater evil.

 The Great Divorce offers us a bus ride from “grey town” with its “continued hope of morning” to the “High Country,” a place of contrasts and a place where God honors the choices we make.

 You will meet many characters, many perhaps like someone you know.  There will be those who cannot fathom Heaven as any place they would want to stay and there are others who fear losing what they had on earth in “grey town”. There will be the proud, the stubborn, the willful and the angry.  There will be those who demand their rights and also the ego-unchallenged.  There will be those whose feet hurt them as they walk on solid ground for the first time and there will also be the “bright solid people” who move about the “High Country” without effort.  And finally, there will be those who reject Joy and solid Reality to return to “grey town” on the same bus. 

 The passengers are all phantoms or ghosts.  When they arrive in the High Country they are almost completely transparent – you can see right through them in every way:  there is the well-dressed (and very self-conscious woman); there is the broad-minded man, the artist, the Tousle-Headed poet, the mother who has lost a son, the golden apple stealing materialist, Sarah Smith and the Dwarf and Tragedian.  You will also meet George MacDonald: 

 Lewis, the main character in the dream and a phantom, meets up with George MacDonald, one of the solid people.  (MacDonald, forerunner of the “Inklings,” was a good friend and mentor to Lewis.).  Together they discuss what they see the phantoms choose.  At one point Lewis hears MacDonald say, “Milton was right, said my Teacher, “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven…There is always something they prefer to joy— that is, to reality.”

 The bus ride ends with the choice you make.  God honors your choice:

 “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’

 Lewis’ The Great Divorce is the bus ticket; the Choice is before you.

Filed under C.S. Lewis, Christianity Tagged with , , , , , ,

tête-à-tête

October 8, 2011 Leave a comment

Though I am a political and social conservative with a strong libertarian streak I often read the opposition’s pabulum in order to discern whether I am holding on to what is good.  This deliberate questioning of my conservatism has helped me to further understand my own ideology and has helped put into contrast the false thinking that is prevalent today, most notably found in liberalism, progressivism and atheism.

 It should be noted here that I came to my understanding of my conservatism/libertarianism through my own reading (early on, Milton and Rose Friedman’s book Free to Choose) and by listening to programs such as Firing Line with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr..  My conservative ideology, as I told my attorney recently, is not the result of my viewership of FOX news. FOX News only highlights what I already know to be true and false.

An aside:  My attorney who is a Democrat once told me how he picks jurors for his accident injury trials:  The attorney asks perspective jurors if they watch FOX News or listen to Rush Limbaugh to determine if they are Republicans or Democrats. He pejoratively calls such Republicans “Rush Limbaugh Republicans”. The reason for his disdain of these Republicans:   he said that most Republicans believe in torte reform and ridding the courts of frivolous lawsuits.  My attorney won’t pick them to be a juror. They would likely vote against a substantial injury award. Ergo, my attorney wouldn’t win enough money for his client or himself (usually 40% take of the award compensation)

My attorney didn’t describe the Democrat jurors. He left me to believe that they were the opposite of Republicans with regard to willingness to make someone pay out.  Many attorneys are liberal Democrats (including their well-known lobbyists Obama, Eric Holder, Rahm Emmanuel, etc.). Many of these attorneys use frivolous lawsuits to make a living.  They are called the “ambulance chasers” (or, in Obama’s and Emmanuel’s case, the “crisis chasers”).

I let my attorney know that I did watch Fox News but that I didn’t listen to Rush Limbaugh, Jon Stewart or to Bill Maher. I told him I was my own conservative:   I related to him that I was a William F. Buckley Jr.-Milton Friedman-Neal Cavuto-Christian conservative. I wasn’t bought by what money I could weasel out of someone’s pocket. (BTW, as a Conservative I am not against accident lawsuits, only injustice.)

That aside, beyond my own research into political ideology, economics and morality, in school I also studied economics, finances, accounting and business among other related courses. These studies helped me see that free market enterprise and capitalism creates the most opportunities and the most wealth for everyone. And, that charity is both what you have to give (maybe a widow’s mite) and the desire to give.

 My belief in God came through my reading of the Bible and, specifically, the eyewitness accounts recorded therein. The historically factual account of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was sufficient proof for me.

 I am currently reading two books:  essays by Christopher Hitchens in a book titled Arguably, copyright 2011, and The Thomas Sowell Reader, copyright 2011.

 Christopher Hitchens is a well-known left-winger and atheist, born in England and living in America.  He became an American citizen in 2007.  He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Slate and The Atlantic. His books include, among many, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America and God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

 I am reading Hitchens’ book even though I do not agree with his positions on most issues and most decidedly his atheism. His pronouncements against the fascism of Islam I do agree with.  I do like his breadth of knowledge in literature and his love of the English language. I enjoy his way of writing and his way of stating things. And, as I read I do make marginal notes wherever I disagree with his thinking. As a writer I continue to learn a lot about the art of essay writing from Hitchens.

 Here is a blurb about Hitchens’ book, ARGUABLY, from the Richard Dawkins Foundation website:

 The first new book of essays by Christopher Hitchens since 2004, ARGUABLY offers an indispensable key to understanding the passionate and skeptical spirit of one of our most dazzling writers, widely admired for the clarity of his style, a result of his disciplined and candid thinking. Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, ARGUABLY burnishes Christopher Hitchens’ credentials as-to quote Christopher Buckley-our “greatest living essayist in the English language.” (emphasis mine)

 Regarding this blurb, while I would certainly disagree with the relevance of Karl Marx as an answer to anything I would agree with what is said about Hitchens’ art. It is a product of one of the greatest living essayists in the English language.

 About Christopher Hitchen’s athesim, I believe that those who are most adamantly opposed to knowledge of God are often those who are the closest to the Truth, as was the case of another profound English writer and apologist, C.S. Lewis.  Lewis was an atheist turned agnostic turned believer.   Lewis’s writings are characterized by a lightly carried erudition, critical thinking, psychological insight, humor and sympathy. 

It is my prayer that Christopher Hitchens will someday soon come “kicking and screaming into the Kingdom of God” just as Lewis, a reluctant convert. (Update:  Hitchens died recently.)

 Christopher Hitchens currently has throat cancer. He has difficulty speaking and certainly cannot lecture.  From a lover of the  English language perspective, this throat business must give him great pain and a deep sense of loss. Pray for him.

 Turning to Thomas Sowell’s The Thomas Sowell Reader I find a treasure trove of wonderful essays and articles written by a well read economist, social theorist, political philosopher and conservative Black American. Sowell uses easy to understand commonsense language in his writings. Most would find this book accessible and informative. It is this simplicity which more than anything defines truth and true conservatism. Liberalism, much like in Hitchens’ writing, seeks to overwhelm the reader with its own great knowledge and pompous profundity. Not so with Thomas Sowell. His plain spoken and humble writing speaks louder than any hubris.

 Here are some excerpts from a chapter titled The Survival of the Left, from The Thomas Sowell Reader:

 Biologists explain how organisms adapt to their physical environment, but ideologues also adapt to their social environment.  The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

The academic world is the natural habitat of half-baked ideas, except for those fields I which there are decisive tests, such as science, mathematics, engineering, medicine—and athletics. In all these fields, in their differing ways, there comes a time when you must either put up or shut up.  It should not be surprising that all other fields are notable exceptions to the complete domination of the left on campuses across the country…

 You might think that the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe would be considered a decisive failure for Marxism, but academic Marxists in America are utterly undaunted.  Their paychecks and their tenure are unaffected.  Their theories continue to flourish in the classrooms and their journals continue to litter the library shelves.

 Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it..

 Nor is economic failure the worst of it.  The millions slaughtered by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot for political reasons are an even grimmer reality…

 Academia is only one of the places where totally subjective criteria rule—and where leftists dominate.

 Sowell goes on to list these “places”:  foundations, museums, cultural institutions such as the Smithsonian, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities and taxpayer supported “public” TV and radio.

 These endowed and insulated institutions, often full of contempt for the values of American society and Western civilization, are not the only bastions of the left counter-culture. So are Hollywood and Broadway.  Although show biz faces the financial need to get an audience, the truth of what they portray is hardly crucial.  If they can make it punchy and sexy, then those who complain about historical inaccuracies and ideological bias can be dismissed as irrelevant pedants.

 Why are leftists able to crowd out other kinds of people from these places?  Because those who are willing to subject themselves to the test of reality, whether as a businessman in the marketplace or as surgeon in an operating room, have many other places to work and live.They do not need special sheltered niches in which to hide and to cherish their precious notions.

 Darwinian adaptation to environment applies not only to nature but also to society. Just as you don’t find eagles living in the ocean or fish living on mountain tops, so you don’t find leftists concentrated where ideas have to stand the test of performance. (emphasis mine)

I have to get back to my reading… Here’s Christopher Hitchens and William F. Buckley Jr. in conversation.

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A Friend Closer Than a Brother: Solitude

October 15, 2010 Leave a comment

“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”
–C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

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