Sunday, March 19, 2006

Political Seance, Part 2

Many adults never metamorphose into moral manhood; if they cannot take the step from moral dependency onto the dry land of political maturity, democracy, then they are in an infantile predicament indeed. For dependency will always find a political father to exploit it, as the history of absolutism sufficiently shows. And if a man does not become his own small part in the state, then the state must always seem to him an omnipotent external power. --Weston Labarre

Clearly, political maturity has been a long time coming for human beings. Because of the very design flaws that allow us to become human to begin with--neurological incompleteness and plasticity, infantile helplessness, and extended neotany--various personal and cultural mind parasites get more or less hardwired in, so that the field of politics becomes a displaced struggle with the projected ghosts of the nursery. Forget about the grave. Leftists demand cradle to cradle welfare. Only the size of the cradle changes.

The plasticity of language is a vehicle of creativity, but it can also easily accommodate itself to infantile omnipotence. But the left takes this omnipotence to a new level, challenging the entire truth-bearing capacity of language. Language is very much tied up with reality, so if we attack language, then perhaps we can alter reality. This is what political correctness is all about. If on college campuses you cannot say that men and women are different, then through a sleight of language, you have made them the same.

Nietzsche's famous "death of God" soon was soon followed by an all out assault on the living Word, or logos. The official name of this death of the Word is "deconstruction," although it is really more of a murder, with murderous consequences. For if truth is relative and perception is reality, then no one’s ideas about the world are any better than anyone else’s. Fact is reduced to opinion, and conformity to opinion is ultimately maintained by the group or institution that has the power to enforce its version of reality.

Ironically, this achieves the opposite effect intended by its "liberal" proponents. That is, if we cannot judge the merit of competing ideas by assessing their relative truth value, then either everyone will have their own private truth, or truth will be enforced by the state or some other powerful collectivity. On college campuses, no one is unsophisticated enough to believe that truth exists; however, you'd better not utter the wrong truth, or you will come face to face with the Dark Cosmocratic Power that has replaced the Luminous Word.

In one version of history, the "secular revolt" may be traced to the alienation and disenchantment caused by the scientific and industrial revolutions in the 17th and 18th centuries. (Although "vertically" and metaphorically, I believe we may trace the trouble back to a certain charismatic and seductive serpent who whispered the false promise, "ye shall be as gods"). There was a deep sense that the organic unity of the world had been fractured--a widespread perception of a sort of breach with the natural order of things, and with it, a collective mourning over the loss of timeless and familiar ways and customs. The romantic movement of the early 19th century was actually a reactionary and nostalgic yearning for an idyllic past, answering to the sense of loss of community and oneness with the rhythms of nature. This backward looking movement idealized the primitive and sought to unleash the subjective and irrational passions (countering the rational and objective detachment of science).

Up to this time, one's personal identity had been based on such objective standards as a clearly defined role within an organic hierarchy, or merger with a large extended family. With modernity, this gave way to an uncertain identity that had to be forged for oneself in the world. The philosopher Charles Taylor (see his magisterial Sources of the Self in sidebar) calls this "an epistemological revolution with anthropological consequences," as it led to a new kind of human being that had never before existed on a mass scale: the modern, self-defining subject in a world devoid of intrinsic meaning.

Virtually all modern ideologies, movements and philosophies are somehow aimed at addressing this problem of alienation, of recapturing the broken unity of the world. Communism, nazism, European fascism, the beat movement, the hippie movement, the free love movement, the environmental movement, the new age movement--all are futile attempts to turn back the clock and return to a mystical union with the "volk," with nature, with the proletariat, with the instincts. You can see this phenomena in today's leftists, who clearly long for the "magical" 1960's, which represented a high water mark for a resurgence of romantic merger with the group, free expression of the primitive, and idealized notions of recreating heaven on earth: "All you Need is Love," "Give Peace a Chance," "Sing a Simple Song of Freedom," etc. As the scientist E.O. Wilson put it in another context: Beautiful theory. Wrong species.

We can see how contemporary liberalism fits the bill as a bogus cure for modern alienation. For example, multiculturalism devalues the concept of the individual in favor of the ethnic group, while socialism in all its forms favors the large and powerful mommy state that unites us all (and suppresses--for any time government does something for you, it does something to you). Leftists are uncomfortable with the painful idea of competition, but replace it with the notion of individual expressiveness. Everyone's natural impulses are beautiful, and we must not judge them, much less try to elevate them. Deconstruction throws all objective meaning into question, so no one has to have the disappointing experience of being wrong or denied tenure, no matter how stupid one's ideas. The burden of personal responsibility is mitigated, because one's being is determined by accidental factors such as race, class and gender, not one's owns values, decisions and actions. Skillful knowledge acquired by intense effort (or just being born smarter) is replaced by an obnoxious, hypertrophied adolescent skepticism that knows only how to question but not to learn. It is grounded in a sort of bovine materialism that is not the realm of answers, but the graveyard of meaningful questions. The primitive is idealized, because it is within everyone's reach.

But most importantly, radical secularism fails as a religion because it has no God, only demons: George Bush, Christian fundamentalists, Israel, tax cuts for the rich, Diebold, stolen election, Halliburton, Fox News, Abu Ghraib, Karl Rove, corporate profits, disparities in wealth, strict constructionists, parental notification, talk radio, guns, and so many more. On the other hand, the sort of classical liberalism to which I ascribe--now embodied in the modern American conservative movement--recognizes that politics must aim at something that is not politics, something higher, not lower. The alienation of the world can be healed, but not in the flat and horizontal line of secular history, or in the endlessly recurring cycle of primitive fusion with nature, but in the ascending, evolutionary spiral.

The secular world is a value-free flatland of nihilism and urgent nonsense, whereas the vertical world accessed by authentic spirituality is a world of hierarchical values to which we are perpetually drawn, like an attractor at the end of history. It is here where the frontier of psychohistorical evolution lies, for so long as there are free individuals endowed by their Creator with an orientation toward that transtemporal Word that pulls us into its vortex of Truth and Beauty, there will always be frontiers. While the exterior frontier might have closed in the late 19th century, the internal frontier is full of prime, undeveloped real estate for the adventurous.

*****

As the Christian hermeticist Valentin Tomberg summarizes it, the human being is always faced with the choice between two basic attitudes or outlooks: that of existential being or that of essential Being. According to the choice he makes, he is either "orphaned" in a purely material, deterministic and "horizontal" realm with no reality higher than the individual self, or his individual being is grounded in the more essential, trans-subjective Being which is his true home. The secular leftist lives shackled in the Egyptian "house of bondage," in manacles forged by the deterministic/materialistic outlook, whereby one is situated in a fully material reality in which the past fully determines the present and the present determines the future. That is, no "vertical" causes can arise in the closed chain of cause and effect, so that one is truly imprisoned as it pertains to the moral/metaphysical/spiritual realm.

From the secular leftist outlook follows a host of disastrous ideas, such as class determines consciousness, poverty causes crime, free will is an illusion, private property is theft, hierarchy is evil, the vertical dimension is a hoax, or "dopiate," to keep you oppressed, and worst of all, the idea that a coercive state is needed to enforce equality (vs. the American belief in a Creator who endows us with spiritual freedom which it is government's primary job to protect and nurture). The freedom of mere animal passion forges the fetters that bind Western Europe to the horizontal wasteland.

The difference between spiritual progressives and secular reactionaries is that they worship different gods--or more accurately, they have entirely incompatible understandings of the meaning of One. There is an antinomy between these two Ones: there is a left one and a right One--or more precisely, a higher One and a lower one, a Luminous One and a dark one.

Tomberg uses a visual image to conceptualize the problem. Imagine two cones placed base to base. At the top there is a point, in the middle an “equator” where the bases meet, and at the bottom another point. Now imagine this as a sort of crystal. At the top is the “white point” where pure light, which is the synthesis of all colors, enters. As the light moves down toward the equator it becomes more and more differentiated into the various colors of the spectrum, until they reach their maximum degree of separation and intensity at the equator. Moving further down, the colors begin to merge until, at the bottom point, they once again lose all of their distinction and become black, which represents the blending and confusion of all colors. There is one sort of synthesis or Oneness above (the white point) and an entirely different kind of oneness below (the black point).

The white point is analogous to wisdom, for it represents the underlying unity of all the different types of knowledge available at the equator, where all of the individual colors represent various disciplines and sciences.

Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this, for it touches on the central point of my book and of this blog. The synthesis of all our seemingly contradictory truths lies “above,” toward the white light of wisdom. If two seemingly contradictory things are true, say, the Book of Genesis and the theory of evolution, then their common source of truth must be found above, not below. There is a way to resolve the contradiction, but not by finding a compromise between the two at the "equator" or by simply confusing and blending them together below.

For example, teaching intelligent design as an adjunct or alternative to natural selection is simply adding another color to the equator. Even worse, teaching it as the only truth would take both the Creator and science down to the black point, merging and blending science and theology in an unhealthy way. In fact, this is what is done in the Islamic world. Yes, they have intellectual and spiritual unity there, but it is the bad unity of the black point: One Nation Under Allah’s Big Sandal Heel, so to speak. The identical thing happens in secular totalitarian states, where diversity is not permitted. What we want is to allow maximum diversity but to synthesize it on higher level, not eliminate it on a lower one: this is the meaning of One Cosmos Under God.

Ironically, the secular left in America regard their fellow religious citizens as an incipient Taliban that wishes to enforce a black-point unity, when the opposite is true. That is, to the secular left, there is no white point above or black point below. Rather, there is only the equator, where we all live in our beautiful, diverse cultures and subcultures, none better than any other: multiculturalism, moral relativism, no objective or "privileged" truth. And yet, multiculturalism and diversity are enforced from on high despite the fact that the left supposedly does not recognize the existence of morally superior cultural perspectives. What’s going on?

In reality, the left is enforcing their absolute black point god, but simply denying it. They don't really care what culture you're from, so long as you are committed to diversity itself, and intolerant of any other view. This is nothing less than the unholy god of the black point flexing its muscle while pretending to be just another beautiful color in the rainbow.

In reality, there is no absolute system at the equator that can synthesize knowledge and explain our existence. There is only diversity and contradiction there, which is as it should be. Otherwise there would be no creation, nothing separate from the Creator. However, it is only the white light above that illuminates and unites everything below. We must maintain a commitment to that absolute white light that is reflected in all the relative truths at the equator, not to this or that relative truth enforced absolutely from below.

Or we may simply affirm the trinitarian root of all goodness, the secular curse that is found on any coin: Liberty, In God We Trust, and E Pluribus Unum. For if the ACLU had their way, you can bet that our coins would say Equality, In Matter and Collectivism We Trust, and E Unum Pluribus.

40 comments:

Lisa said...

I understand the point you are making using Tomberg's cone image, but I do have a few questions. Isn't the black point of the image necessary for us to distinguish between the white point of the cone? The ying-yang sign cannot exist with only a black or white side...What happens if we rotate the cones in some direction? I am assuming the light is representative of God. Would that light shine from any other direction or is it always from above? Must we assume there is only one light?

Gagdad Bob said...

Lisa--

To to be a strictly orthodox bobist, one would say that there is first an involution of light into matter and nescience--of the One into the many, followed by an evolution of the many back to the One. The black point is the point of utmost nescience, of total blending. It is a unity, but a false unity. The equator is the world of relative truth. Nothing wrong with that, just don't elevate the relative to the absolute.

Yes, there is one light, but imagine it like a light bulb at the center of a lampshade that is filled with pinholes. Looking at the lampshade from the outside, it looks like many different little lights, but there is really only one source.

Anonymous said...

Bob -

I think there's a certain irony in the fact that, on the purely secular level, there can be only the Multiplicity. Thus the Oneness, the coveted secularist ideal - and that which can only be comprehended spiritually - has to be forcibly engineered on the secular level. The colors of the Multiplicity have to be bleached into sameness.

I sometimes entertain the notion that modern/post-modern anomie is roughly analagous to, say, the state of spiritual limbo that follows from the shattering of preconceptions yet is prior to the New Vision. Were the old religious convictions truly sound, they would, I think, have held, same as if Jim and Tammy's ministry had been the real deal, it wouldn't have gone down like the Hindenburg. Such preconceptions, false as they were, had to be destroyed. Same is true of the spiritually progressing individual - there comes a time when comforting preconceptions and consensus realities have to be destroyed, leaving the individual poised over the existential abyss.

Obviously this analogy can be taken too far but I have to wonder if, in psychohistorical terms, it might be roughly true if not exact.

Anonymous said...

Lisa -

There's lotsa lights - you, me, the Rockettes, etc. - but only one Light.

Anonymous said...

Will,

"Same is true of the spiritually progressing individual - there comes a time when comforting preconceptions and consensus realities have to be destroyed, leaving the individual poised over the existential abyss."

The Biblical schlep through the desert - applicable to the individual or society.

Anonymous said...

A point comes at which all you have learned is no longer relevant.

Drugs are not necessary to squeegee one's third eye, but still it must be opened. One takes that last step into faith by oneself.

Of course, now dealing with fallout from all those who thought their third eyes were opened in Sixties, but were looking in wrong direction when the 'shrooms finally hit. They saw salad bowl and thought it was melting pot (Petey might get that).

As result, schools now run by teachers who have no problem indoctrinating classes in no-god-but-Society, immanentize-the-Eschaton, Republicans-are-all-evil horse hockey.

Digression: If Republicans are all evil, Democrats are all evil too. Incompetence abounds on BOTH sides; our representatives, like us, flawed human beings. Danger arises when they start thinking they're NOT flawed.

Anonymous said...

I'll just speak for myself and say that where I live in the vertical, none of us are really left or right wing, but overwing. Likewise, our problem with the left is that it isn't really left, but "underwing," at least from our vantage point. From here, the left doesn't look progressive at all--it's like looking through a reversed telescope. They're very far away from here. Not as far as Muslims, but it's hard to tell, because they're both moving backwards so fast. Either that, or time is whooshing past them so quickly, making it look like they're falling backwards.

Lisa said...

I now see the light! hee hee! Thanks for the clarifications Bob & Will! I hope we can help rid the world of dim bulbs and guide many bulbs to become bright!

LiquidLifeHacker said...

Oh you guys gotta read THIS NOW they are saying that "Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ..."

90 said...

OK, having looked at that article liquid, I am going to ask you according to what that aricle claimed... hahahaa... what are you supposed to be?

90 said...

There is one thing they left out of that study, the bias of those who made judgements on whether the kids were whiny or not.

Lisa said...

The liberal whiners all grew up and became lawyers for the ACLU!

Note: I am being overly generous by declaring that they actually grew up!

Anonymous said...

Pilates for light bulbs!!

Anonymous said...

Pilates for light bulbs!!

Lisa said...

Are you drunk again, will? Was that a hiccup?!

90 said...

A good Freudian psychologist would surely say that liberalism and conservatism is related to the oral and anal stages of development. There could be some humorous comments with some Freudian analysis.

Gagdad Bob said...

I agree entirely with the study, but I would word it differently:

"The outspoken kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into solid young adults who undersand that men and women are not identical. They were not subject to the sexual identity confusion that bedevils liberals. Nor were they comfortable with ambiguous, wishy-washy, feeling-driven, liberal-type thought.

The kids that turned out liberal ended up undiscplined thinkers forever living in confusion and ambiguity, rebelling against reality. Like their adult counterparts, these little liberals are forever trying to explore alternatives to reality. Of course, there is no alternative to reality, but this doesn't seem to mitigate their ambiguity about it in the least.

LiquidLifeHacker said...

Lisa--The liberal whiners all grew up and became lawyers for the ACLU!

Ha Ha...yeah lets do a study on those lawyers...oh my, wouldn't that be interesting!

90--OK, having looked at that article liquid, I am going to ask you according to what that aricle claimed... hahahaa... what are you supposed to be?

I don't know what you mean by what am I suppose to be? It sure seems alot of studies today are quite bias and perhaps even agenda driven, for example the new study published by the Harvard University which CAIR uses on the Israel issue! As for this recent article on the study about the whiny kids, which was done by Berkley, I personally agree with Jeff Greenberg's view!

LiquidLifeHacker said...

Yeah Bob...I like the way you word it better!

Anonymous said...

I haven't thrown in my two cents worth for a while-but there is a lot here that has me thinking.
It's funny- synchronicity at work here- I came over to this blog from LGF which used to eat up huge amounts of my computer time. But as of late I've been avoiding LGF, and just lurking here. The truth is- LGF is just too scary. Especially this morning. I looked at the pictures posted yesterday from the various organized protests staged around the country on Saturday.
Charles posts this stuff, and links over to Zombietime whenever these moronic convergences are held. Usually it's amusing in a pathetic sort of way.

This time there was nothing amusing about it. Go look for yourself. I go deersick trying to find the words to put on it.

You see, I've been poring over the Religious Question. And warring hard with my own set of personal demons who seem to go into overdrive any time I begin poring over the Religious Question. The demons have won a round or two.

But something is happening. Because this morning when I looked at the shots of the protestors I didn't see a bunch of laughable loonies and lame-o's. The idiots haven't changed. But I have undergone a rather jarring shift in perception.

What I saw in these pictures was people in service to Evil. As in Biblical- work of satan, life and soul destroying, civilization ruining, utterly dark and rotten Evil.

It's what I saw on 9/11, but did not have the depth to comprehend. Evil as a manifest presence. An anti-god with a will and a desire to thwart the prime directive- the Will of God- which is that life should flourish.

Otherwise what could possibly drive these people- the shock troops of the far left- to make common cause with islam? How could anyone hold the idea that there is something compatable between the absolute license on display at these loonfests and the dictates of sharia which would have them all killed?

It's hard not to entertain thoughts, fears and, oddly enough, hopes that the end of the world- some sort of apocalyptic reckoning is coming down the pike. I'm only half serious about the 'hope' part. You know how that is. Let's see what do I want- take out the trash, clean the house, fix the car- or the end of the world? Today I'll reluctantly opt for the chores.

JWM

Gagdad Bob said...

Oh yes. The anti-divine forces exist and are palpably real. Perhaps I'll post about how they fit into the cosmic economy tomorrow. After all, it is a full employment cosmos.

Anonymous said...

Lisa -

By posting my comment twice, I was merely making a symbolic statement re the primal duality, the yin/yang polarity that allows for all of Existence.

I would have thought that obvious. Sheesh.

OK, actually, I'm a ditzhead drunk. ON LIFE.

Anonymous said...

re the study: what about us post-adolescent jerks who were reflexively liberal, then saw the LIGHT? More evidence for the quantum leap, I say.

"A conservative is a liberal who got mugged". (by reality)

I honestly think that the primary difference between liberal and conservative is not merely in "perspectives" but - I speak generally now - in levels of consciousness. As people get older, they do generally get more conservative, that is, their consciousnesses are raised as they escape the magical reality/solipsistic consciousness of childhood. "If you're young and conservative, you don't have a heart" - heart meaning passion, the primary fire, which is later to be sublimated. "If you're older and liberal, you don't have a brain" - brain meaning you don't have a brain.

I really think that libs believe we progressive conservative-types see reality just as they do, only out of our greed and tight-fistedness, we simply give it another coloring. Truth is I can easily imagine myself into the perspective of a lib. (I do not recommend doing this for any longer than 15 seconds) I have yet to encounter a lib who would say they could imagine themselves a con. Being a higher state of consciousness, it is simply a mystery to them.

Anonymous said...

whoops, that last "anonymous" comment was me, Will.

This is what I mean when I say I am a ditzhead.

Gagdad Bob said...

Anonymous--


That's just about right. The circle knows nothing about the sphere. To the two-dimensional circle it looks just like another circle. Except it's an arrogant circle, because it pretends to have a third dimension.

Anonymous said...

Honestly, Bob, that anonymous "cons are liberals who've been mugged" commentor was me. Being (mistakingly) anonymous makes me feel like my persona has been bleached by Lefties, all in the interest of "fairness" and "diversity".

Gives me the creepy-crawlies.

LiquidLifeHacker said...

Hiya Jwm! Good to see ya here!

Will...I think you're funny under any name ya post under!

Lisa said...

JWM- I also ran across this article at American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5341
entitled The Real Reasons Behind The Peace Movement. There definitely is a sinister element involved in organizing the so called Peace Movement. Unfortunately, most people who go out to these demonstrations have no idea who is really behind them. I can almost understand the well-meaning making a mistake during Vietnam, but geez, to go through the same thing 30 years later with the same people behind it. Talk about dim bulbs. How long will it take before people learn?

PS. Will, you may be a ditzhead but at least you are charming!;0) And you always have something relevant to say even if you say it twice!

Anonymous said...

A post so fine ... can't comment ...

Oh, wait, yes, I think there's an entire book topic on liberty on the horizontal > traction-for-liftoff to the vertical. Taking into consideration such exceptions as gulag saints. And explaining how horizontal liberty is a necessary but not sufficient condition, and how it goes awry into license and materialism.

Unless that's a whole history of the world.

Anonymous said...

Lisa: Synchronicity again. Thank you for that link. It will make me sleep better tonight.

Well, no it won't. ;)

Hello LLH! And Will, I have very much enjoyed the stuff you've had to say since you began posting here!

JWM

Anonymous said...

dilys, yes, yes, a book on said subject!

if I may add: liberty >>the sublimated fire (choice of)>>vertical liftoff.(or fiery on-the-pad explosion))

and not just gulag saints, per se. Every saint has his or her own gulag of sorts.

Anonymous said...

JWM - thanks, gracious of you.

Anonymous said...

Whew! A moment of Silence here in the foothills of Bobland.

will's oracular
liberty >>the sublimated fire (choice of)>>vertical liftoff.(or fiery on-the-pad explosion) just handled Grace vs. Works. No escaping the paradox of Both.

Sublimation entering the algorithm in Liberty's tangle with license, suggests Lent and ascesis, generosity and sacrifice, as inalienable sublimated fire, banking the coals against the hours before dawn.

Anonymous said...

"I really think that libs believe we progressive conservative-types see reality just as they do, only out of our greed and tight-fistedness, we simply give it another coloring. Truth is I can easily imagine myself into the perspective of a lib. (I do not recommend doing this for any longer than 15 seconds) I have yet to encounter a lib who would say they could imagine themselves a con."

This is one thing that gives me conviction in my views. I know that I can make their arguments right back to them, I can disagree and still view them as well intentioned and even intelligent. But for a leftist it is impossible to see a conservative as anything but evil or stupid...and now, in the face of a civilizational crisis, the left-wing relativist worldview is further exposed to reality it becomes even more impossible to hold on to it.

One night down at the cafe (this is here in SF) I found myself chatting with one of our more absurd local moonbats (in fact, this guy frequently pops up - with his paragraph long signs about Halliburton and the CIA, et al - on Zombie's site). I know better than to argue with these nuts, so when he started talking to me and politics came up I told him I was a Trotskyite. I intended it as a short rhetorical experiment. I began making calm, intellectual arguments for worker's rights, the abuse of the means of production, etc.

Well, 2 hours later I was somehow still going strong, pounding the table in outrage that he would dare to question the alleged human rights violations of Father Fidel. After all, I told him, Cuba's worker's utopia is under constant threat from a relentless foreign enemy (Bush and The Zionists - figured I'd throw them in too) who is bent of the destruction of their society and our ideals!! How else is Fidel supposed to protect the healthcare, education and grand Marxist ideals than to imprison those who aid in this assault!?!

Eventually my leftism frightened him off, and I haven't seen him since - nor have I seen him on Zombie. I just hope his head didn't explode.

Now, I'd be really impressed to meet a liberal who could fool me by parroting conservative arguments.

In fact, a liberal - but not politically obsessed - friend, who's an SF native, just told me a story about how one year she and her friends went into the San Francisco streets to mock Republicans. One pre-election Halloween they dressed up like Frankenstein and Dracula, etc. and held a mock rally with signs saying they were Republicans and in favor of "Evil." They figured this would get some laughs. But no, the satire was apparently too sophisticated for the locals. They had liberals screaming, yelling and spitting on them! Telling them to get the hell out of the city! The moonbats thought this was REAL Republican rally!!!!

Although, I can imagine it must have been jarring to think that members of The Right had caught on to the political potency of street theater.

Anonymous said...

I've recently read Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" which I've been trying to reconcile with Bob's concepts of vertical and horizontal. I've come to the conclusion that the left violates Jesus's maxim about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

The left (or as Sowell terms it, the "unconstrained" vision) values the idea over the reality. Although Europe's poor are no better off than America's, Europe is "better" because they more fervently proclaim how much they care about the poor.

In more extreme forms of leftism, such failures can never actually be the result of dimwitted policies, so they have to find remnants of bourgeois thought to blame and purge. Even though in the late 1970's, Democrats controlled the presidency, both houses of congress, and most major mayorships, poverty increased because reactionary interests still had some influence over some things somewhere and evil self-interest held back the realization of their dreams. Does Castro ever blame his own boneheaded economic policies for Cuba's endemic poverty? Of course not; there are still capitalists who sabotage the purity of the implementation of his revolution.

Few would argue that any but the most effective of police states could eliminate all firearms from America, and it's hard to dispute that if we tried to do so but fell even a little bit short, only bad people who break the law would still have guns. Crime has soared in London since they banned guns. Does this phase them? Of course not, for we are supposed to imagine a world without firearms. The unprecedented massacre in southeast Asia after we left is ignored because it resulted from the hippies' sincere desire for peace.

Some leftist ideals are purely about control, but sometimes they actually want something nice. Nevertheless, they are doomed to fail because they insist on emphasizing that which should be at the expense of that which is. There are some wonderful "spiritual" ideals out there that reality just won't adapt itself to, so I guess we'd better just keep proclaiming those ideals more loudly and pretend even harder that reality just might somehow fit in.

Anonymous said...

kahn - lolol, very good. That's using elevated kahn-sciousness. hoist 'em by their own petard.

Anonymous said...

bunnies, for more perspective on Europe's failures as you underscored them, try Berlinki's Menace In Europe.

is good.

LiquidLifeHacker said...

Will--- hoist 'em by their own petard

I am beginning to wonder if there isn't a little "pirate" in ya! Ha Ha

Anonymous said...

Liquid- it's just my inner Keith Richard.

Anonymous said...

Will:

I finished Menace in Europe about three days ago. I second your recommendation to any who might be reading this.

When I checked the Amazon reviews for it a couple of weeks ago, the only negative review was from a Scottish guy who obviously had not so much as seen the cover of the book. It's much easier to refute a "right-wing nutty criticism of Europe" than to refute any of the contents of the book in question.

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