A question for Oreskes – But what do we mean by consensus?
July 16, 2015 Leave a comment
On The Blog Post “Hiatuses in the rise of temperature” at ClimateLabBook
July 16, 2015 Leave a comment
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that some persons believe I ridiculed Dr. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. in this post. That was not my intent and, on rereading this post, is far from the truth. I have the utmost respect for both climate scientists. I simply used Dr. van Oldenborgh’s blog post as a springboard for this one. Geert Jan has since written a follow-up post about lower troposphere temperature data. See Is there a pause in the temperature of the lower troposphere? And I referred to Dr. Pielke in this post for two reasons. First, he is known to skeptics, and, second, he agrees with Dr. van Oldenborgh about the importance of ocean warming. I simply put ocean warming into terms that are more familiar with most readers…deg C, instead of 10^22 Joules.
My apologies to Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Roger Pielke Sr…
View original post 1,639 more words
Living in a Material world, The Impoverished Thinking of “Income Inequality”
July 11, 2015 Leave a comment
It’s a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed
You think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won’t be free
Society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without
Though the message of the above song resonates within me throughout and though I have seen others on the same road as Alexander Supertramp I do not recommend walking away…
~~~
Two recent events reveal the impoverished thinking of populist economics and “society’s crazy breed”: A mandated minimum wage increase in Chicago (Chicago-Minimum-Wage-Notice) and Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman’s macro-hypocrisy increase.
Let’s start with the subliminal wage increase.
It feels so “Oprah-kind” to know that the minimum pay for your effort will be set at a fixed rate by Big Brother. Big Brother, of course, is not paying for the increase but he is certainly gaining political capital and tax revenue from your increased paycheck.
The media abets the ravenous pols by constantly bombarding us with income deltas as if materialism is the bread of life. Karl Marx did care about how much someone else made, he dined out on it.
On a daily basis I find some financial webpages and articles written about comparative CEO salaries. OMG! Reporter, get the socialist’s dirty needle out of your arm! Are you reporting these numbers so as to invoke class-ic envy?
“There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, For I did dream of money-bags to-night.” William Shakespeare
~~~
Thomas Sowell, economist
“Minimum wage laws make it illegal to pay less than the government specified price for labor. By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market. The result is a surplus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of farm produce and labor.
Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount….” Quote from Thomas Sowell, economist, “The Thomas Sowell Reader”.
~~~
Nothing happens in isolation. Consider also that the Obamacare/health “coverage” is also mandated. So, a worker’s hours are restricted to ensure that a business remains profitable to ensure employee jobs. And, a worker who doesn’t fulfill the Obamacare mandated-Justice Ruth Ginsburg-and-Justice John Roberts-mandated requirements is fined or taxed-actually, both. Big Brother has the gun law of coercion to your back.
~~~
Under the “People should and do trust me” department…
Hillary Clinton and Income Reality Inequality! Hillary Clinton Broke?
Why “income inequality”? Because good money is thrown after bad.
Paul Krugman, pop economist
Paul Krugman Sticks It To Poor People With $225,000 Salary To Study Income Inequality
By Eric Owens, Education Editor:
“This week, trustees of the cash-strapped, taxpayer-funded City University of New York (CUNY) system approved a hefty annual salary as well as the fancypants title of “distinguished professor” for Paul Krugman.
New York City’s public college system pays Krugman $225,000 each year to analyze the vexing problem of income inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Luxembourg Income Study Center, Gawker notes.
Krugman’s $225,000 salary — which is $18,750 per month — does not include his undisclosed earnings from other ventures, the sum of which could be substantial.”
Why “income inequality”? (You don’t have to pay me!)
A Fool and his money are soon parted. Duh!
-Folly: A fool and his money are soon parted.” That’s what state lotteries and casinos count on.
-Government and Progressive Income tax: I made a few dollars as a store clerk at age thirteen. Now I make a whole lot more money closer to retirement. And this is because I have worked a lifetime to obtain skills that have been of value to my employers. Should I be taxed more because I make more money due to the manifest effort on my part to take care of my family and to pay my bills, just to satisfy the ‘social justice” gnosis?
–Time and experience: Over the course of decades I have had “income inequality” every year of my life. Should I demand equal pay because someone is making more at some point in time? No way! I need to make myself of more value to my employer and then ask for an increase in pay or find a better paying job. This brings me to my next point…
-Denial: Degreed Millennials, as an observation, think that their academic credentials buy them a ticket to ride without much effort on their part. Some even think that blue-collar labor is beneath them. This denial of reality of their situation and a lack of healthy self-awareness is the result, in part I believe, of the effects of psychotherapy’s delusional self-awareness pharmacopeia on our culture. Psychotherapy provides the illusion that you can live an existence free of any tension over time, through endless sessions of… therapy. An analysand’s every thought must be reviewed, be given equal doses of “hmmm” and then before the open-ended session’s time is done, be given equal value. “You are not to blame yourself. XYZ is responsible. Look, our time is up. See you next week. Pay up front.” And, psychotherapy’s moral deficit is not a cure for a person’s lack of awareness of the obvious-many a Millennial thinks he is entitled. And, of no value is the politician’s “Hope and Change” pharmacopeia. A Minimum wage is not a cure at all. It is a placebo that generates no economic health whatsoever. In fact it denies the existence of bad economic choices an individual has made. Yet, perverse politicians say “it’s not you. You didn’t build that problem. The institution of big business is the problem. It must take our ‘medicine’ for your cure.
-Misdirected Self-awareness: Millennials tend to think of only what they need and not what an employer needs. Naiveté.
Money Well Spent?!?
sodahead.com
-Some people have a spending problem: Some people reinvest their money and create jobs. Others will spend their money and ask “Why am I ‘poor’ when others are rich?” The makeshift poor will demand the doctors of politics to up their dosage of cornucopian wealth.
-Lack of wisdom: “He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.” William Shakespeare
-Lack of wisdom: “It is senseless to pay tuition to educate a fool, since he has no heart for learning.” Proverbs 17:16
-Lack of wisdom: “Lazy people want much but get little, but those who work hard will prosper.” Proverbs 13:4
-Lack of wisdom: “Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!” Proverbs 14:23
~~~
In a twist of a Thomas Sowell quote, ”It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.” I say, ”It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to insure them against their bad decisions.”
~~~
Added 7-15-2015:
Thomas Sowell – Minimum Wage Exploitation (Economics 101)
Climate Scientism is Made of Green Cheese
July 5, 2015 2 Comments
Instead of the man-handled “AGW” data, the populist’s scientism data which has fueled a lot of politicized hot air about a coming apocalypse the world would be better served by science and a global credulity index…
Remember the Greek philosopher Plato’s symbolic illustration of a cave and the people chained inside? The cave captives were scared of their own fuel burning fire-generated shadows. Cave tour guide here.
Today we have the Climate Change doomsday cult who has chained themselves inside a dark and unventilated CO2 filled cave. This cult eats green cheese and they are very scared of their flickering carbon footprint on the wall. “Those bad humans! Bad!” they tell themselves.
Wafer thin Green Cheese for dessert?
The cave dwellers, using bits of charcoal, etched on the walls of their cave the words, “We are settled science, No Deniers Welcome!”
But wait! What is that light outside yonder cave? It is the east and hydrogen is the sun! In that light we see other light: there’s a living oxygen breathing CO2 expelling naturally occurring human who is standing outside the unventilated CO2 cave. He is calling to the cave people to come outside, out into the street light, to feel “summer’s ripening breath” on their necks.
If the cave people would just rub their smog filled eyes and stopped eating their green cheese, if they just came outside then they would see that flora is green because of CO2 and…that fossil fuels have helped mankind move around in the dark when the sun hides its helium/neon glare.
Solar nexus
Apparently, this outdoorsman humanist doesn’t eat the Climate Scientism green cheese even if it is labeled “Aged 2 days in science labs”! He is humanist philosopher Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress.
Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel
The greatest threat to mankind is NOT AGW! The greatest threat to mankind is mankind no longer caring for its neighbor. Remember! Climate cultists believe that humans are bad and Mother Earth is good.
The greatest threat to mankind is man seeking material gain, security and power at another’s cost.
Lest anyone think that I hate earth because I do not join the cult of climate change believers then think again. As a Follower of the Way I know that as part of the Kingdom of God I must care for the planet.
I care for the planet. I don’t care for the politicized religion of scientism. >>What is Scientism?<<
And you should know that God has enriched the planet with various sources of all-natural fuel sources including fossil, nuclear, wind, solar and gravity (dams).
Every living thing someday decomposes into fossil fuel. Why? So the cycle of life continues.
Fossil fuel is created from the decomposition of every living thing including you. You are renewable…in more ways than you think.
The body. It’s elementary Watson!
***
Calif. Philosopher Making the ‘Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’ Says “This Is How Global Warming Should Be Discussed”:
“If you look at the assumptions behind all the arguments against fossil fuels, they turn out to just be incredibly irrational,”…
Epstein said you are “taught this narrative” that “fossil fuels are an addiction” and, while they are convenient in the short-term, in the long-term they are “destroying us.”
“You’re given three basic reasons: One, they’re causing depletion. Two, they’re causing pollution. And, three, they’re causing global warming or climate change,” Epstein explained. “This is used to say, ‘They’re an addiction. We need to get off them. We need to use renewable, moral, green energy instead.’”
But Epstein said every other positive technological development that has side effects is not considered a short-term, destructive fix, and it is certainly not considered “immoral.” (emphasis added)
Read the whole article (link above) to find out the benefits of fossil fuel before the lights go out.
And come to the Heartland.
SCOTUS Goes Dumpster Diving and Comes Up with Tossed “Dignity”
June 27, 2015 Leave a comment
“As a dog returns to his vomit so a fool returns to his folly.” Proverbs 26:11
Theater of the absurd: This week the majority of the SCOTUS ruled twice in activist ad hoc fashion-once in favor of Obamacare subsidies by misappropriating the word “State” and the other ruling using a misappropriation of the word “dignity” to rule in favor of homosexuality.
Here is a brief summary of a dissenting Judge’s opinion “Clarence Thomas invokes comparison to slavery in raging gay-marriage dissent”:
Justice Clarence Thomas
“Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday wrote a fiery dissent in response to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.
In it, he took issue with the concepts of “liberty” and “dignity.” He argued that the petitioners in this case were not deprived of their liberty, as they have been allowed to travel and settle freely without government intervention.
This is why, Thomas wrote, the majority led by Justice Anthony Kennedy focused its opinion on the petitioners’ “dignity.” (emphasis added)
But Thomas wrote that there is no “dignity” clause in the US Constitution — and that, even if there was, the government could not bestow it upon a person or take it away.
To make his point, he invoked the examples of slavery and internment camps. From his dissent:
The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.
Thomas went on to write that one’s liberty and dignity should be shielded from the government — not provided by it….
Today’s decision… will have inestimable consequences for our Constitution and our society,” Thomas wrote in conclusion.
~~~
Here is my scathing dissent posted as a reply comment to one of the majority assent opinions posted on another blog:
“The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, but rights come not from ancient sources alone. They rise, too, from a better informed understanding of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that remains urgent in our own era.” (majority opinion)
Who is better informed-the academically inbred ad hoc elitists or the millennia of millions of people who have IDENTIFIED with traditions subject to God and not to the wiles and wills of tyrannical humanism? This improvised decision is solely based on the loudest noise in the room.
We the people were given a sacred trust and it has been despoiled by the folly of morally penurious populist popes.
Atheism has now become America’s state religion. Pay homage to the gods of humanism, say these popes.”
~~~
And another comment under the same post:
“This decision debases marriage to a level where even animals wouldn’t dare go. And, like I said, it also endorses atheism by its ignorance and/or rejection of any Authority other than man.
~~~
As I read Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent against using the cornucopia word “dignity” as a rule of law adjunct I was reminded of the opening of Martha Nussbaum’s essay “Danger to Human Dignity: The Revival of Disgust and Shame in the Law”: “”The law, most of us would agree, should be society’s protection against prejudice.” Wow! Now law enforcement and judges must not only protect us from crime, they must also read minds! A certain amount of prejudice-wisdom and discernment-is necessary to protect oneself from that which is repulsive, reprehensible, disgusting and yes, foolish-don’t you think?
Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in Law, Philosophy, and Divinity, most likely believes that prejudice is itself a crime. She is a devoted advocate of non-shaming to the degree that she would likely regard the shame Adam and Eve felt after they had sinned as beneath their ”human dignity and the equal worth of persons”.
Surrounded by the ubiquitous Epicurean pick and choose morality mindset I would guess that Nussbaum would very much like to completely erase sin and its concurrent and inherent shame (the gods are too harsh!) from public view. She would rather privatize shame as she would rather privatize religion-into nihilism.
As with most liberals with “Unconstrained Vision” (see Thomas Sowell’s book “A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles”) the institutions such as the criminal justice system or simply concerted public opinion are the problem. Under such curious thinking the individual personifying a predator or a thief or a homosexual or ‘other’, is just a ‘victim’ of institutionalized prejudice. In essence, the individual is not to be held publicly accountable for their behavior. The institutions of justice and of marriage must be changed to fit the deviation with “dignity”.
Adam & Eve & Shame Exposé
Nussbaum worries people will be stigmatized by the ‘penalties’ of shame. She believes that the law should protect people from insults to their dignity. According to her thinking doing away with sin (“Did God really say that?”) and shame would magically disappear. Hence, homosexuality is now given a pass by a SCOTUS ruling under a declaration of (someone’s tossed) “Dignity”-a dumpster diving decision to be sure.
Today mens rea (a guilty mind) is openly presumed before actus reus, or “guilty act” ergo a Baltimore DA and an abetting media and race industry presumes prejudice and subsumes the “guilty act” to the ignominy of Black lynch mob justice.
~~~
Under the category of Justices who say one thing to be appointed a SCOTUS Justice and then say another after being appointed comes a post titled “Elena Kagan 2009: “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.””
Here is my comment to that post about the Janus-faced Kagan:
“Man was endowed by his creator with inalienable rights-life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Most of the focus these days is on “rights” and not on the Creator of those rights…
“[But] as Pierre Manent pointed out in his 1993 essay “Christianity and democracy,” the history of modern philosophy, from Machiavelli to Nietzsche, appears as oriented to and animated by the elaboration of the concept of the will.” In its most radical forms, the “unbridled affirmation of the human will” is joined to the “unlimited polemic against Christianity.” The philosophical architects of modernity such as Bacon and Descartes identified the task of philosophy with nothing less audacious than making human beings “the masters and possessors of nature.” In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes explicitly denied that there are any superintending principles of justice above human will: “Justice and propriety begin with the constitution of [the] commonwealth.” From “The Limits of “Anthropocentric Humanism”” in the Chapter “The Totalitarian Subversion of Modernity” in the book “The Conservative Foundations of a Liberal Order” by Daniel J. Mahoney- a must read for any SCOTUS justice before tomorrow.
To put it differently, Epicureans have been telling us all along that God is out there somewhere minding his own business and we must make our own justice as we see fit.
Anthropocentric humanism seeks to deify man. Anthropocentric humanism mates Adam and Adam in a way nature and its creator would never conceive of.
~~~~
You were born with dignity. What you do with your dignity is based on the choices you make. And, tell me, how, under the name of “dignity” is an aborted child’s dignity saved by these same liberal do-gooders?
The SCOTUS ruling, in effect, says that you can choose homosexual relationships so as to not be deprived of any dignity! Imagine that! The SCOTUS ruling, in effect, says that you must genuflect to homosexual relationships so as to give them dignity!
Move over Greece and Rome, the West is the next civilization to be destroyed from within as promoted by Karma Khameleons President Obama and Elena Kagan and a host of other academic-robed miscreants.
As a growing number of fools return to their vomit our nation’s moral health is becoming more and more dyspeptic. Lady Liberty will soon be HIV positive because SCOTUS dumpster dived.
Added 6-27-2015-Dumpster Diving Brings Up a Rainbow of “Dignity”:
Rainbow hate aka Dumpster Diving Dignity
Something to think about:
60% – the percentage of young Americans living with HIV today who are unaware they’re infected.
36 million – the number of people who have died of AIDS since 1981
Only 1.6% of Adults in the UK Identify as Gay, Lesbian or Bi-Sexual According to Government Report
New figures published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that only 1.6% of adults in the UK identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual. The figures, which were collected by the ONS for its Sexual Identity Project, show that 1.2% of people identify as gay or lesbian whilst 0.5% identify as bisexual.
“The evil deny the suffering of their guilt – the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy and imperfection – by casting their pain onto others through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. They cause suffering. The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society.” Dr. M. Scott Peck, “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil” (emphasis added)
~~~
homosexual-Camille Paglia
~~~
Added 6-29-2015:
From a National Review article, “The Supreme Court has Legalized Same-Sex Marriage, Now What?”:
“This transformation is itself the “beginning” of something much larger and more dangerous than same-sex, monogamish “marriages.” Yes, polygamy is just around the corner. And Obergefell’s evident determination to, somehow, use the law to equalize the self-esteem (“dignity”) of adults and children in all sorts of irregular groupings is at least Orwellian.
But this is not the half of it. As it has been so far described, one might imagine that there is a dyad involved, one consisting of the “state” on one hand, and these diverse family-ish groupings — and that the rest of us just go about our business. Not so. The revolutionary mindset that the Court has perhaps half-witlessly embraced means to eliminate all felt “stigma,” any trace of social “humiliation,” just so that everyone’s “identity” is equally valued.
Doing all that requires a lot more than just a fair shake down at the courthouse. It requires getting all of our minds right. And so we should expect today’s decision to inaugurate the greatest crisis of religious liberty in American history. I am certain that it will.” — Gerard V. Bradley is Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.
~~~
D’oh!
~~~
Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn To Live as Exiles in Our Own Country
By Rod Dreher, senior editor and blogger at The American Conservative
“It is now clear that for this Court, extremism in the pursuit of the Sexual Revolution’s goals is no vice. True, the majority opinion nodded and smiled in the direction of the First Amendment, in an attempt to calm the fears of those worried about religious liberty. But when a Supreme Court majority is willing to invent rights out of nothing, it is impossible to have faith that the First Amendment will offer any but the barest protection to religious dissenters from gay rights orthodoxy.
Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito explicitly warned religious traditionalists that this decision leaves them vulnerable. Alito warns that Obergefell “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” and will be used to oppress the faithful “by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.” (see above tweet as evidence)
The warning to conservatives from the four dissenters could hardly be clearer or stronger. So where does that leave us?”
…LGBT activists and their fellow travelers really will be coming after social conservatives. The Supreme Court has now, in constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is equivalent to race. The next goal of activists will be a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status from dissenting religious institutions. The more immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society.” (emphasis added)
Added 7-1-2015:
Vanishing Point
June 20, 2015 Leave a comment
Vanishing Point
(Homage to the brothers and sisters in Christ at Emmanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC, 2015)
Lines converged
At the front of Emanuel AME church.
UnWise Blood, brooding in the back, ran cold.
~~
Lines converged
As Emanuel AME-“God with us”-black brother and sisters.
Wise Blood sought the unconditional, indiscriminate embrace of the Other.
~~
Lines converged
While prayers ascended
UnWise Blood descended…into hell.
~~
Lines converged
A fine point emerged (but not from prayer),
A trajectory of bile aimed at neighbors on their knees.
~~
Lines converged and Wise Blood flowed out
Wooden cross braces could no longer bear its sacred weight.
New Life arose away from earth’s downward pull.
~~
Lines Converged
As showers of prayers began descending:
“I forgive you.” “I pray that you repent.” “May God have mercy on your soul.”
~~
Lines Converged
When I was told “White Privilege is your name.”
“You are excluded, neighbor”.
~~
Lines Converged
When credence for exclusion beget civil war anarchy,
When credence for exclusion became Dogma from a bully pulpit.
~~
Lines Converged
When Evil handed UnWise Blood the means to destroy the spiritual growth of the Other.
At twenty-one.
~~
Lines converged
Dylann Roof emerged.
Civil War meet God.
© Sally Paradise, 2015, All Rights Reserved
~~~~~~
Pericles and the Guardians of Civility
June 13, 2015 Leave a comment
As citizens we are all on duty… the day of evil has come.
We live in the Internet era of instantaneous synthetic ‘truths’. We are cognizant that information and, in particular, history, is readily available to us within seconds. Sadly, because the information is so accessible and so immediate we do not avail ourselves of its import as it relates to life in the present…
The Funeral Oration of Pericles (excerpts below) is a translation from The Peloponnesian War of Thucydides (emphasis mine).
You may read the English translation of the full text transcript of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, according to the Greek historian Thucydides here and here with background. Pericles delivered this speech in the year 431 BC.
Thucydides: “The same winter the Athenians, according to their ancient custom, solemnized a public funeral of the first slain in this war in this manner. … And when the earth is thrown over them, someone thought to exceed the rest in wisdom and dignity, chosen by the city, maketh an oration wherein he giveth them such praises as are fit; which done, the company depart. And this is the form of that burial; and for the whole time of the war, whensoever there was occasion, they observed the same. For these first the man chosen to make the oration was Pericles the son of Xantippus, who, when the time served, going out of the place of burial into a high pulpit to be heard the farther off by the multitude about him, spake unto them in this manner.”
Greek Historian Thucydides
~~~~~~
Pericles
Pericles: “I shall begin with our ancestors. It is both just and proper that they should have the honor of the first mention on an occasion like the present. They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time by their valor. And if our more remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to us of the present generation.
“…”
“Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states. We are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition.
The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.”
“…”
“If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.”
“…”
Pericles Funeral oration text
Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.”
“…”
[These men] “… holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance, and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.
So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue. And not contented with ideas derived only from words of the advantages which are bound up with the defense of your country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honor in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valor, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer.
“…”
“These take as your model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valor, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these have nothing to hope for: it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!”
“…”
Turning to the sons or brothers of the dead, I see an arduous struggle before you. When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake, but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honored with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men, whether for good or for bad.
My task is now finished. I have performed it to the best of my ability, and in word, at least, the requirements of the law are now satisfied. If deeds be in question, those who are here interred have received part of their honors already, and for the rest, their children will be brought up till manhood at the public expense: the state thus offers a valuable prize, as the garland of victory in this race of valor, for the reward both of those who have fallen and their survivors. And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.
“Such was the funeral made this winter, which ending, ended the first year of this war.”
June 2015:
The good news: as of today, Saturday, June 13th 2015, Staff Sgt. Thomas Florich WILL be buried in Arlington National Cemetery…as a guardian of civility.
Those of us in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth must not seek revenge, as Pericles mentioned above. Rather we must stand firm when required and also defend with our actions what is true and good and the widow and orphans.
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” From the Apostle Paul’s letter to the churches found in Ephesians chapter 6: 10-18, (circa 60-80 AD).
Curiouser and Curiouser
June 7, 2015 Leave a comment
From the Big Bang to the Black Rabbit Holes of Moral Relativism
Have you noticed that many of the well-coifed commentator’s these days now use the phrase, “The fact of the matter” to preface their comments? This is empiricism trying to counter relativism’s cynicism.
Modern day liberals, pundits of the ersatz, consider themselves open-minded individuals. They are proud of their openness to all things. So open-minded are they in fact that when truth is encountered it is immediately short-circuited bypassing their AND/OR gates, never residing in memory. Truth is discharged from their feel good capacitors. Truth, for them, is just one of many options. Truth is not the warm and fuzzy logic they want to be plugged into. Truth is electrifyingly absolute.
“As a rule, only very learned and clever men deny what is absolutely true. Common men have less brains, but more sense.” -William T Stance, an epitome found at the beginning of Roger Kimball’s book “The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia”.
These open-minded folk are so welcoming to come and go Change that they post a “For Rent” sign on their foreheads for all to see their obeisance to the gods Openness, Diversity and Equality.
Oops, there goes another foundation!
These open-minded folk are also the ones who so voraciously attack the First Amendment as a mistake-a mistake to let people speak their minds. Go figure. But this thinking works in the Rabbit Hole known as Asinine.
Let’s take a look at only some of today’s Ass-saults on Absolutes.
It is 2015 and truth and its consequences can be hard to swallow. Truth and its consequences can be abstracted into “Am I a victim of uncontrollable influences?”
Here is a portion of Vanity Fair’s May 2015 article “Civil War at NBC News” written by Bryan Burrough about NBC’s Brian William’s deliberate lack of Total Recall scandal:
“[Deborah] Turness [head of NBC] and the other executives who had gotten involved quickly became frustrated, as they would remain for days, with William’s inability to explain himself. “He couldn’t say the words ‘I lied,’ “recalls one NBC insider.
We could not force his mouth to form the words ‘I lied’. He couldn’t explain what had happened. [He said,] ‘Did something happen to [my] head? Maybe I had a brain tumor, or something in my head? He just didn’t know. We had no clear sense what had happened. We got the best apology we could get.
And that was a problem…”
Brian Williams-post truth
It is 2015 and you can Tune in, toke up, smile big: Introducing The First Church of Cannabis.
(Bill) Levin, a 59-year-old carpenter, started the church on March 26, 2015, to push the limits of Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which prohibits the government from “substantially burdening” anyone’s right to exercise his or her religion. Earlier this year, the controversial bill sparked protests from gay rights groups claiming it would allow for businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians citing religious beliefs. (Emphasis mine)
The First Church of Cannabis is Epicurean in all in its smoke and mirror glory. Who needs a church with the living true God when the inaccessible uncaring-what-you-do god of Epicurus will do?
Speaking of “gay rights” it is 2015 and most Americans greatly overestimate the percentage of the LGBT self-described “queer” population. Perhaps this is due to air deprivation-the loud sucking in of all the air from the planet by the LGBT ‘community’ in order to replace it with the exhaust of revved up Epicurean narcissism:
“PRINCETON, N.J. — The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans’ 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population. These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year.” (Emphasis mine)
Of course the LGBT ‘community’ will refute the accuracy of this poll by saying that another 30% of the population is still in the closet (waiting to be coaxed out of the closet and into a confused symbolism state-the LGBT ‘light’ of gay).
It is 2015 and moral relativism’s apotheosis is a “fundamental transformation” POTUS with a bully pulpit.
Barack Obama’s latest political foray into untruth is his national domestic and foreign policy of fatalism-“AGW, this is settled science”. This populist scientism qualification is severely lacking in the facts due diligence requires asserting “settled science”. Obama’s stipulation is meant to shunt away the requisite evocative questions inherent within a democratic political process. In Obama-speak “Settled science” means “Settled issue”: “I said IT and therefore it must be true since I have enough power and sycophantic cohorts to proclaim it to be true”.
It is 2015, June, and Pastor Saeed Abedini has been in an Iranian prison for three years while Obama negotiates his own legacy.
It is 2015 and where we once had two distinct naturally evolved sexes-“He created them male and female”- we now have the amorphous word “gender” bandied about. The political winds of “Diversity” are uprooting millennia of family trees-naturally evolved binary sex procreations and ‘recreating’ traditional marriage in its own image with a frenzy to will to power one’s self-‘right’-ness… but never righteousness.
It is 2015 and have you noticed that multiculturalism is all the rage? You don’t hear the word “multiculturalism” proclaimed in public but one can see its assault on America and its devastating effects under Obama’s lawless immigration fiat.
Multiculturalism insists that all cultures and all religions are of equal value. Multiculturalism insists that there is no difference between Judeo-Christian beliefs and those of radical Muslim imposed Sharia Law. Per Obama and the Progressives all groups must be co-opted in order to dilute your white European background vote and shore up non-Western Democrat votes for the next election. “Divide and conquer” is his conscious mantra.
Multiculturalism is passive-aggressive toward America. Multiculturalism genuflects to the god “Hyphen”.
It is 2015. Have you noticed that we are no longer Americans? We are now hyphenated groups: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans. Many of these and other groups live a hyphenated life of one foot in and one foot out, having forsaken adopting the American settler’s values. “They are coming to America” for the handouts that only Big Brother can give and know full well that American values are ‘flexible’ according to who is in power, ergo kindled ethnocentricity melts the pot holding them.
It is 2015 and women now have added their maiden name to their married name-one foot and in one foot out of the marriage.
It is 2015 and I am reminded of Alexis de Tocqueville’s prescient warning about soft despotism. I apply it now to our 2015 morally relativistic “activist” judiciary that
“extends its arm over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
It is 2015 and moral relativism’s tyrannical belief system has taken modern man captive and placed him in chains within a dark but fire lit cave.
As pushed in Epicurus’ time an individual’s sensory feelings, his inner sanctum response to the self-projecting chimeras on the cave wall, have become a socialism everyone must share to ease pain or else. To make this a personal reality each Atlas must shrug off the moral cornerstone with which one needs to plumb line truth and then replace it with the Objectivism of ‘rational and ethical’ egoism or, better, self-interest à la carte à la cave.
The modern listener is now tuned into the frequency, “The fact of the matter” and “This is settled science” to reassure his free-floating cave-wall derived angst. At the same time leaving the cave of self-pity is not an option and thereby Democracy in a cave is denied the daylight of truth.
We say, “if Barack Obama’s scientism can make us a victim of say AGW in a society of victims then the scientism proposed becomes ‘truth’ for me, a willing adherent to the new criterion-moral relativism. And victimization means I am therefore oppressed and in need of Big Brother to take my Whole World in His Hands”.
Moral relativism as a formula for life and not yet atheistic (atheism would come after Christianity began) was tossed around during the time (BC) of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. The “atomists’ of that era believed in a distant out-of-sight-out-of-touch god. They believed that one’s own sensory feelings and close kowtowing friends would better serve their introspective needs. Scientism, born during The Enlightenment, is moral relativism’s distant cousin.
Scientism is the politics of fact. Where science is about seeking truth in the form of verifiable fact, scientism is about seeking consensus about how you feel about the facts. These feelings are Epicurean sensory feelings superimposed onto verifiable fact-“How will this fact affect me”.
I could go on giving examples of this post’s rubric but it is Sunday and I must go to my church to remove the impurities of Moral Relativism from my mind, heart and soul. Come join me.
Curiouser and Curiouser, to be continued…
Some things to ponder:
When everything in life is valued by the same lowest common denominator as the Progressives would have it does value retain value? Are we not animals at the lowest common point? Ergo, isn’t socialism basically the exalted rights of certain animals on the Animal Farm to determine the rights of the others? See de Tocqueville quote above.
Is it OK for teachers groups to have seminars decrying white privilege while at the same time affirmative action denies other races (e.g., Asians trying to enter Harvard) equal opportunity? Is “white privilege” really Black on-demand-privilege projection?
“Justice: by any and all means necessary.” Is it OK to place Black-American ethnocentrism over every other race while demanding diversity, equality, egalitarianism and justice? Isn’t “Justice: By any and all means necessary” spoken by a Black-American District Attorney a call to lawlessness and anarchy under our country’s rule of law?
Isn’t the application of discrimination of one race over another called racism? Inequality?
It is 2015 and the erosion of moral relativism is washing away the sand foundation of society’s structure.
“What Americans call “liberalism” is the ideology of western suicide.” -James Burnham, Suicide of the West
***
It is 2015 and WordPress has informed me that it is my six-year anniversary blogging with WordPress. Inconceivable!
Cindy Wity 
Happy Fourth of July-Dependence Day!
July 3, 2015 Leave a comment
!!Trigger warning – Snark attack!! Proceed with clarity of mind…
Who needs ISIS when Greece, Spain, Portugal, France-the totality of the West-can self-destruct from within just by voting for idiots and appointing people into positions of power who have no business (or moral rectitude or moral courage) for holding the position they are in?
I don’t need to name names but these Prime Suspects are currently seeking to placate a deaf, obstinate and Israel-hating-West-hating Iran; these suspects have dealt a fatal blow to the sacred institution of marriage by ascribing “dignity” to godless and blatant lasciviousness; these suspects have mandated Obamacarelessness! Wow! The U.S. can now be like Europe-morally and financially bankrupt with plenty of time off work! Happy Fourth of July Dependence Day!
Not the House of the Rising Sun but similar in Epicurean proportion!
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859)
We were warned …
Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1805 – 1859) prescient warning about soft despotism accurately depicts the political will of our three branches of government including the infamous 2015 SCOTUS. And, it certainly applies to all the over-reaching regulatory agencies armed with the tentacles of the politically motivated unelected. Here is de Tocqueville’s warning (emphasis added-across the post):
“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four, Chapter VI.
“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?”
“Democracy in America”, “Accidental or Providential Causes Which Contribute to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States.”
And this…
“I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”
Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843, Tocqueville Reader, p. 229
And this…
“Socialism is a new form of slavery.”
“As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can’t have it both ways.”
Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848).
And this…
“Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.”
Ancien Regime and the Revolution (fourth edition, 1858), de Tocqueville, tr. Gerald Bevan
“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.”
Democracy in America, Chapter XVII.
And this, the piece de resistance…
“The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.”
Old Regime (1856), p. 204
**
We were warned …
From my post “The West: Moral Courage or Moral Chaos?”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
(1918 – 2008)
Excerpts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speech at Harvard, June of 1978, “A World Split Apart”
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life….”
“Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”
“Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.”
“And what shall we say criminality as such? Legal frames, especially in the United States, are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist’s civil rights. There are many such cases.
Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually, but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature. The world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems, which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.
The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media.) But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?”
“How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.”
~~~
LGBT Motto
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.” The Apostle Paul’s second letter to his son in the faith, II Timothy 3: 1-3
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Filed under Culture, Current Events 2015, GLBT, LGBT, Obamacare, Political Commentary, Progressivism, SCOTUS Rulings Tagged with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alexis de Tocqueville, Fourth of July, LGBT, moral courage, SCOTUS