Monday, March 26, 2007

The Negative Hallucinations of the Left: In Search of the Lost Entitlement

"Still up to your old tricks, I see. It is amazing how such sublime teachings can be so twisted to suit a limited, hateful ideology such as yours."

That imbacillus of a parasitic comment yesterday must take the cake, for the ignoranus who impropagated it is referring to my "hateful twisting" of the sublime Meditations on the Tarot. But if my ideology is hateful, then so too is Meditations on the Tarot, which is quite unyielding in its disdain for leftism. In fact, it is not possible for me to conceive of someone as wise as the author of Meditations on the Tarot falling for something as stupid and evil as leftism. After all, he's not Deepak Chopra or some other passive-aggressive new-age snake charmer.

As I have said before, any leftist who calls himself religious is primarily a leftist, only secondarily religious at best. The catalogue of foolish and harmful leftist beliefs is so extensive for the very reason that the leftist mind is not inoculated with the Word -- with perennial religious wisdom that prevents the mind from being hypnotized and lured down a host of fruitless, destructive, and anti-human paths.

Ontologically, leftism is "the substance of nothing," which is why politically it is the party of nihilism. There is no leftism without the intoxicated celebration of tearing down, of thanatos, the death instinct. When I say Democrats are the party of death, I mean it quite literally, but as always, in a way that the leftist cannot possibly understand. This is why, when they read this, they will have the subjective experience that I am "hitting" them instead of teaching them. Which is why they keep coming back, because they wish to be hit, as it gives them sanction to hit back -- which is what they wanted to do to begin with.

Not only is the leftist destructive, but his primary unconscious identification is with a destructive or absent object instead of a nurturing one. Bear in mind that I am mainly talking about activists and true believers; respectfully, the majority of Democrats are basically too stupid, too busy, or too informed by habit to know what they are supporting, but have simply internalized a "ruling cliche" repeated endlessly by the MSMistry of Truth, such as "Democrats are for the little guy" or "Republicans only care about the rich." But the true leftist believer is a sick soul and a dangerous person, probably a sociopath, not in terms of the DSM, but in terms of their unconscious mental structure.

In the sense I am discussing, the sociopath is someone who, for whatever developmental reason, was not safely ushered into the human community by benign parental objects, but was excessively frustrated or traumatized, leaving them deeply alienated and cynical.

Although we regard alienation and cynicism as common in our postmodern world, this only goes to show you how successful the left has been in normalizing a deeply pathological condition. On the one hand, alienation and cynicism are more or less absolute barriers to knowing God. On the other hand, you will have undoubtedly noticed that leftism represents the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Alienation and Cynicism. Its pope could be the foul-minded Bill Maher, but millions are equally qualified, as it takes no talent to have a catabolic mind capable only of mocking and tearing down.

Because of the developmental arrest, the leftist true believer is attached to that which originally frustrated him so. As a result, two things happen. First, he will spend his life "in search of the lost entitlement." This is because there is a time in our lives when we are entitled to the ministrations of omnipotently powerful caretakers who indulge our every whim. This period of time is called "infancy," and it is entirely appropriate that the infant should be granted this largesse, because it becomes the very foundation of the personality. All of us have a "foreground" self, but it is superimposed on an unconscious "background object" of infancy.

In fact, the word "object" is misleading, for the proper phrase would be something along the lines of "the background subject of primary maternal identification," coined by Dr. Grotstein. If you have ever wondered about the "dream substance" in which your self exists, this is it. This is why it is such a challenge to raise a baby, because this is precisely what good parents are trying to provide the baby -- not just food, warmth, and love, but a loving, predictable and "containing" psychic environment that the baby internalizes.

Importantly, the baby must do this in such a way that he believes that he himself is the creator of this benign psychic universe. A baby really does need to believe that his cries magically convert hunger into food, or fear into soothing, or psychic fragmentation into containment. In the mind of the omnipotent baby, he creates the parents, not vice versa. How could it be otherwise?

In other words, in the normal course of events, we are all born of magic. Only later are we gradually dis-illusioned to discover what is called the "reality principle." This means, paradoxically, that the psyche of a normal person rests on a foundation of benign magic. He lives in a trustworthy universe in which he is confident that his needs will be met, in which he can find love and give love in return, and where he can enjoy a generative creativity in the magical "transitional space" between brain and world.

For it is within this transitional space that the thing we call "reality" occurs. This is why there are so many arguments over what constitutes reality, for it really depends upon the nature of your transitional space. A generative person will see one thing, whereas a person whose transitional space has been foreclosed by trauma or disappointment will experience something entirely different.

In this regard, the pathological transitional space can become stuck in one or the other direction, either toward excessive fantasy or "malignant imagination" -- which we will call "hysteria" or "psychosis" -- or toward the excessive concreteness of the materialist or obligatory atheist. These popular lowbrow atheists such as Sam Harris or Daniel Dennett are essentially suffering from what I would call "negative hallucinations," in the sense that they imagine they don't see something that is there, as opposed to seeing something that isn't (which would be a positive hallucination).

Both forms of hallucination are equally dysfunctional, except that negative hallucinations are more subtle and can therefore go unnoticed. But I'm sure, now that you have the concept, you can think of countless experiences you have had with people who negatively hallucinate and "don't see things." This is why I would never bother to debate such a person, since it is an utter waste of time. They live in a certain transitional space which makes religion a closed world for them. All they can do is describe their proscribed little world and insist that it is the real one.

A moment's reflection will reveal to you that all meaningful human evolution takes place first in the transitional space. It is because the transitional space is so central to human evolution that political liberty is so critical. For the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of human cultures down through history have foreclosed the transitional space as a way to allay collective anxiety or to consolidate power. Only certain thoughts and attitudes are permissible. As such, the individual is not free to discover his soul's unique idiom in the transitional space of culture, but is forced to believe certain things and to behave in certain ways.

And this, of course, is where the perversion of modern Islamism meets the perversion of primitive leftist progressivism, for they share the pathology of foreclosing the transitional space. In the case of the Islamists it is rather obvious, as their project involves building and enforcing a cultural monument to infantile anxiety toward the mother, who must be controlled, devalued, and desexualized (which only makes her more insanely provocative and frightening, hence, the Islamic shadow world of anxiety-driven homosexuality).

For the left, political correctness is nothing more or less than an intellectual burqa to cover up various anxiety-provoking truths or to control the parents. It is equally sexualized, but in a different way. For example, there is an obsession with sexual differences that comes out as an irrational insistence that the differences do not exist (which is the unconscious basis of all perversions), as we saw, for example, in the firing of Larry Summers at Harvard. It is the same psychosis that insists that homosexuality and heterosexuality are indistinct -- a position that follows from the original psychotic effacement of sexual difference.

But perhaps the most troubling positive hallucination of the left involves the creation of victims. Importantly, the hallucination of victims is not a conscious process, but the end result of the unconscious logic that binds the leftist mind.

Recall that the true-believing leftist is traumatized and persecuted by the lost entitlement of infancy. As a result, he knows that he is a cosmic victim -- that the world owes hims something, something so deep that it is literally beyond words (infant comes from infans, incapable of speech, something to bear in mind when you watch those leftist demonstrations of raging inarticulacy on CSPAN).

This lost entitlement is too painful to bear, so the condescending and matronizing leftist projects it into others, to whom he then attempts to minister in fantasy (through the intermediary of government drained of its coerciveness through negative hallucination). You might say that he projects a type of primitive and painful emotional hunger, and then attempts to placate the projected mouth. But you will notice that the mouth only gets hungrier and more demanding, since it partakes of omnipotence -- of the (false) infinite.

This is very, very different from true charity, which comes from love (caritas), whereas leftist giving ultimately comes from rage and control. Here again, what I am saying is soph-evidently true to someone not caught up in the leftist fantasy world, but I cannot imagine that a leftist would be able to comprehend what we are talking about. But the full enactment of the leftist fantasy obviously results in an utterly selfish and ultimately death-bound world of entitled mouths, as we see in the welfare states of Western Europe, which are not just economically unsustainable, but psychologically and spiritually so.

Well, I can hear that His Majesty is starting to stir in the next room. He's almost two now, starting to reach that age when he will have to gradually be disillusioned and leave the infantile leftism of his youth behind. But not quite yet. There are still many illusions for me to nourish before he will be capable of creating reality. One of which is that he magically conjures his caretakers out of the morning Light -- caretakers who will continue to sustain him for the rest of his life, especially after he discovers their true source.

*****

More on the murderous negative hallucinations of the left.

How the anti-science religion of the left forecloses the transitional space in the "climate change" debate.

Dr. Sanity on Time magazine's "double hallucination" vis-a-vis Ronald Reagan. Such leftist fools.

*****

The shabby coon den where it all happens. Ignore Johnny's exuberant gesture above Mrs. G's head -- it is not directed at you, but "the man." If it looks like a teenager's bedroom, it's because it was my bedroom as a teenager. Long story. The rest of the house has been slowly remodeled over the years. This room is frozen in the 1970's, green shag carpeting and all. Oh, and Future Leader imagines he made that sweater, when it was really made by Sal.

46 comments:

Lisa said...

I'm really glad you continued with this line of thought. I wanted to expand a little bit more about how poor posture is really the body's form of Leftism. Poor posture is a result of continued bad habits and compensation of injuries to the body.

When the body injures itself say twists an ankle for example, it will figure out a way to move without putting more pressure and weight on the ankle while it heals and regenerates. The body is designed to be mostly symmetrical and bipedal. No one is perfectly symmetrical, probably not even God, so don't even go there...The point I'm trying to make is that this compensation is throwing off the natural balance of the body and it's weight causing other joints and muscles elsewhere to work(over/under) in a different way. So, like the Leftist, the body is a victim of some injury. The body FEELS better if it compensates and moves in an unnatural way (starting to see the parallels?). All of the sudden there are all these unintended consequences resulting from the form of compensation. Bob does a great job of highlighting these problems in the Leftist. In the body these problems usually manifest in the spine and pelvis, mirroring the Leftist once again! More discomfort is created long after the initial problem has disappeared or is not painful enough to be bothered with.

This vicious cycle of injury and compensation looks like a variety of postural problems to an outside observer. This is where Pilates and other bodywork is really beneficial. We are trying to rebalance the body and strengthen it while increasing flexibility. This combination helps prevent future injury hopefully breaking that vicious cycle. The more superficial results such as a flat toned stomach, lean long muscles, and the holy grail of the high tuchas is only a side-effect. It's not the real meat of the work.

Thanks for the title, Bob. I'm honored to be the toe-coon Jew here at One Cosmos! I'll expect the tiara in the mail sometime this week. ;)

Anonymous said...

It's been reported that 40% of children in the U.S. are now born out of wedlock. In the black community, that number is close to 80%. If the psyche of a normal person depends on parents who provide "a trustworthy universe in which he is confident that his needs will be met," growing up without a father no doubt results in serious psychic distortion. I wonder if this is a cause or a result of the dominance of leftist thinking in our society.

Anonymous said...

Lisa--

Spine and pelvis. Heh heh. Good one.

NoMo said...

Philo - I would say it is the cause and the effect in a vicious circle...

NoMo said...

Wow, Bob, so many multifaceted gems here today, I got tired trying to list them. Then the transition / conclusion into / out of "the morning Light".

"Importantly, the hallucination of victims is not a conscious process, but the end result of the unconscious logic that binds the leftist mind." Or, illogic.

Thanks, as always.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Lisa-
ConCoontulations!
And a great comment to boot!
I've been much more aware and self-conscious of my posture because of your comments.
Bad habits die hard, but they will die if I'm persistent.
I used to hunch over a RADAR screen for several hours at a time, or hunch over while running through ship's passageways (I have many scars on my head as a result of not hunching when I should've).
But, since I retired, there is no reason to continue the bad posture, so I'll take your advice to heart, and back, and neck, etc...:^)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Bob said:
"For the left, political correctness is nothing more or less than an intellectual burqa to cover up various anxiety-provoking truths or to control the parents."

Now I see those intellectual burqa's when Leftists speak.
The Left are on a jihad against reality and truth (except they don't want to consciously commit suicide as a result).

The end result is the same as the Palestinians.
The Leftist activists are political/religious/
cultural/etc... terrorists posing as victims.

Anonymous said...

Philomathean's example of the father-deprived family is an example of could come to be known worldwide as Lisa&Petey's [Spine&Pelvis] Sequence.

That is, an initial dysfunction in family provision (which may be traced to a number of culture niches, not just the fecklessness of the poor) elicited a response now evident as half-hatched, distant, and sentimental -- Aid ($$) to Dependent Children, which other than SSA disability, is what "welfare" was.

Then, to regulate its distribution and protect it from the inevitable profiteering, social workers were to visit and prowl the home to make sure no man (i.e. income provider) was in evidence. Thus the program, with its immediate mechanisms and eventual unintended consequences, incentivized fatherlessness (plus as an added feature weakened the family by the humiliation intrinsic in these interactions); and a culture began to form and solidify and re-seed itself around the kernel of that experience.

All from a conceptually and structurally-flawed response to an injury in the body of the community. Those flaws themselves probably reflect very interesting character deformations (those common to vertical humankind) in the politicians and citizenry. Multiplying the damage were the opportunistic infection of power-driven ideological leftists flanked by platoons of their useful idiots.

Pelvis and spine indeed.

Not to mention symmetry (which might be reciprocity) as a principle of health ... and public philanthropy.

Anonymous said...

Bob said:

"This is very, very different from true charity, which comes from love (caritas), whereas leftist giving ultimately comes from rage and control."

This is an important distinction, that rather than being motivated out of love, the left is motivated from a place of anger and retaliation.
I am reminded of the petty "bill of rights" initiatives put forth by the Clinton Administration and would cringe each time one was proposed. I knew that rather than solving problems, these bills would be used by the worst among us to cause more problems and that they would take full advantage. The worst being those without an innate sense of justice and fairness but with a raging sense of entitlement or being "owed" something (we've all worked around them). Backed by the legislation, it would be impossible for employers to take corrective action or fire the slacker deadwood thus imposing a governmentally sanctioned anchor on free enterprise.
Leftists live in some of the most disfunctional families on earth, but instead of recognizing that fact and cleaning up their own back yard, they project their disfunction onto the rest of the world and try and change things on the outside when it is they who need the change.
There is no end to the machinations they will impose on the rest of the world in order to "fix" that which ultimately lies within themselves.

Mizz E said...

Lisa wrote: "When the body injures itself say twists an ankle for example, it will figure out a way to move without putting more pressure and weight on the ankle while it heals and regenerates."

I'm coming out today to witness for Lisa's comments and Pilates.
Having been a student of Pilates for 13 years, when I slipped
off a single step six weeks ago and created a Grade A ankle sprain, I knew immediately that if I didn't want to experience negative consequences throughout my body, I'd have to put the ankle into intensive care as well as continue with a modified Pilates regime. I had to forgo foot work on the "reformer", but I could still do exercises on the matt, the "cadillac" and the "step barrel". The results have been very positive. I'm now up to walking the dogs a mile a day and can stand balanced on the right foot without pain - I'm still a little wobbly on stairs, so I use the hand rail, but I gno this too will pass.

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous sweater, Sal. Look forward to some knitting hints in the near future.

Winnicott and the conception Bob references of the "transitional space" is helpfully discussed for non-APA-types in an elementary introduction called Boundary and Space. I found that the way he puts things is helpful in addressing for oneself the existential grief that arises for pretty much everyone sooner or later. Just knowing about a transitional space helps navigate it. In my experience, original deficiencies can be consciously repaired -- so long as one recognizes that (s)he has to take the initiative [is not entitled], and so long as there is a healthy culture in which to do it.

Culture, based approximately on some coherent idea of the Good, is the transitional space par excellence. It is not only the forum for sustaining meaningful concepts and artifacts, it is The Forum for connection between people -- the intermediate platform built up over millennia. I am much less willing now to disdain ordinary custom, even custom that does little for me personally. And this is in part the justification for waging argument against those who would dismantle it for some incoherent non-idea, or who think it is not fragile.

For any interest it may have, here's a drawing made for for a local elder-education program that after the fact turned out to be a kind of Winnicott transitional-space glyph, showing one way to think about its nature and its functions (as discussed earlier with the delicious and ever-wise Mrs. G., whom we may assume (?) from the fine-looking photo is feeling first-rate again).

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Got more 'Machinations' going on myself. Check it out if you're somewhat of a gear-head. (Click on my name, and it will be at my site.)

Lise, been working on my posture too; my lower back is my biggest weakness, and that exercise helps it a lot. One day, it might be as strong as my shoulders and upper back (which are stupendously massive, actually...)

Learning how to do crunches 'correctly' helped as well.

Anyhow, I especially like your post from yesterday, and this one is quite good - especially this:

"These popular lowbrow atheists such as Sam Harris or Daniel Dennett are essentially suffering from what I would call "negative hallucinations," in the sense that they imagine they don't see something that is there, as opposed to seeing something that isn't (which would be a positive hallucination). "

Reminds me of Schoun's explanation of space - its three axes; six directions. This idea applies to any spaces it seems. This is, North, South, East, West, Nadir, Zenith.

Each is a positive/negative pair, and applies to a particular place. The 'space' of a leftist is:

North - De-nile (negative hallucinations)
South - Victims (Positive hallucination)
East - Activism
West - Bad Relationships
Nadir - Fear
Zenith - Utopia.

My mental guy-row-scope is taking me down the river of dreams...

Anonymous said...

This is a bit off topic, but since I would never have attributed this particular article to its source (Time!), and it also gives some hope that the brain-washing factories may be undergoing a change of direction, I just had to share.

A choice quote:

"Without the Bible and a few imposing secular sources, we face a numbing horizontality in our culture--blogs, political announcements, ads. The world is flat, sure. But Scripture is among our few means to make it deep."

Anonymous said...

Another interesting article, a bit more on-topic this time:

"Why Feminism Could Be Bad for Your Health"

This time, however, in the true leftist-destructive mindset, the cure for this problem is more equality, achieved of course by feminizing men.

Anonymous said...

"A moment's reflection will reveal to you that all meaningful human evolution takes place first in the transitional space. It is because the transitional space is so central to human evolution that political liberty is so critical. For the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of human cultures down through history have foreclosed the transitional space as a way to allay collective anxiety or to consolidate power. Only certain thoughts and attitudes are permissible. As such, the individual is not free to discover his soul's unique idiom in the transitional space of culture, but is forced to believe certain things and to behave in certain ways.

And this, of course, is where the perversion of modern Islamism meets the perversion of primitive leftist progressivism, for they share the pathology of foreclosing the transitional space."

Very thought provoking indeed, Mr. Bob.

I would like to add by way of suggestion, that the "Straussians", say, like an Alan Bloom, or all ideological decendents of Strauss, are also foreclosing the transitional space, but, in the end, in an even more insidious way, as they profess conservatism, but inwardly are ravening wolves. My now year-long study of Strauss and his followers has led me to believe that he and they are not in the conservative tradition of Burke, or a Russell Kirk, and most certainly not of Richard Weaver. I recommend Claes Ryn, in particular, for a conservative critique of Strauss, for what it's worth.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

joe: I've heard of the Straussians myself- is there a thing in particular that they believe which is so odious? I never had a particularly negative view of them (though neither had a I great impulse to read Strauss either.)

Anonymous said...

Bob,
Thanks for the photo - I love it!
Lots of "grow room" in there. He must be all muscle, like his Dad.

Had an "entitled" client Friday. What worried me was not only her utter relentlessness at getting everything she thought she had coming (2 year olds don't eat jar baby food but she was by God going to get some if it was on the voucher)and a little bit more. But that I, still mending, didn't stand up to her because I just wanted her to go away.

Later, I was reflecting on what a hard life that must be - to be always at the mercy of somebody else, to be always trying to work the angles to get by and yet still think that you were being cheated out of what you deserve and I deplored my silent bad temper. But at the same time, I shouldn't have wussed out - not useful to her or other clients.
You've shined some very useful light on this.

Wonderful posts these last few days - anyone else feel vaguely uneasy, as though we're being armed for something in the near future?

Dily- you, mizze and me, Austin eatery. Nothing wrong with that picture...

Anonymous said...

Contempt can be a problem characteristic of the beginning of the spiritual path. You have ideas, you've worked on them hard. You think your ideas are expressions of enlightenment and people who don't have your ideas are worthy of scorn.

When you've truly digested the teachings, you don't have these problems with contempt and scorn. You learn that the religious path is an integration of body, mind, heart, spirit. It isn't a matter of thinking the right thoughts.

Contempt is going to be a particularly difficult for people embracing neo-platonism as a mystical tradition. Neo-platonism will priviledge powers of abstraction and obscure the importance of body and heart in the religious life. Neo-platonism will provide almost no resources for managing the problem of contempt. That's part of why Neo-platonism was explicitly rejected by the major world religions.

Clearly people here are VERY satisfied with their level of understanding. That is the condition of not being able to learn.

I can just witness that a fully integrated spiritual life won't suffer from the kind of contempt expressed here and that such contempt is a valuable clue about unfinished business.

Anonymous said...

Someone's been reading I'm OK You're OK lately huh...

One other aspect of leftism is that it tends to belittle and trivialize any argument against it by using words such as hate and contempt. Go away anaonymous. We know you. You are contemptible.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Sal: Perhaps--
The 108 Are Gathering again?

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

eponymous: Thinking the right thoughts... so, we're headed East today? West must have had some problems to make you head this way. My suggestion: Go West, young man; and restore the frontiers.

There is actually no necessity to be any more mystical or 'right thinking' than one already is; to do so is done only out of a selfless love for God. To do so out of ambition is volunteerism; and to do so out of supposed necessity is simply fear.

But I'm sure you've been avoiding the Nadir...

Look, upward, to Utopia!

Anonymous said...

Some negative hallucinations go unnoticed for decades. One of the most disturbing scenes in a movie I saw in 1973 - O Lucky Man - has come true today: 15% Human. I swear I see John Kerry in there. :-) Not that subtle, actually.

I guess if you live long enough, you see everything. That's not one I had high on my list though.

There is a short clip of the "sheepman" scene on youtube. It's tame by today's standards, but gave me nightmares back then.

Anonymous said...

RC,
Very briefly, modern politics can be traced to either the French Revolution or the American Revolution, ideologically speaking. The origin of the American conservative movement easily traces its ideolical fundaments to the American Revolution. Leftism of all varieties traces its roots to the French Revolution. The Straussian movement claims to adhere to the American, but actually sides with the French. Now there are many ugly colors to the French Revolution, and there's is precisely Jacobin in nature. Other's, much more eloquent and learned could provide a more clear and thorough examination, and Ryn's work would be among those.

Anonymous said...

anon,
My reading of the gospels finds a number of areas where Jesus holds contempt for various groups. He seemed to have no trouble situating that in the spiritual life.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm not buying it. I don't think leftism is as bad as all that.

Take two people: one says "I live for God" and the other says "I'm not so sure about God."

Then watch: they both get out of similar beds at about the same time every morning, go to similar types of work in similar types of cars, play and love children and spouse about the same, watch similar things on TV, shop for similar foods, etc, day in and day out.

So just what the "F" are you screeching about over here? If you can't tell the difference between a raccoon and a leftist by looking, then what's the point?

I would like to see more radicalism among 'coons.

Start from the endpoint: imagine a world of nothing but 'coons. What's next then?

Bob's Blog said...

Bob,
Your comments about His Majesty and infancy remind me of the writings of another psychologist, Dr. John Rosemond. Are you familiar?

Doug said...

Bob said: "Because of the developmental arrest, the leftist true believer is attached to that which originally frustrated him so."

This reminds me of my favorite quote from Last of the Mohicans: "Magua's heart is twisted. He would make himself into what twisted him."

Gagdad Bob said...

Bob-

No, never heard of Dr. Rosemond.

Anonymous said...

>>"I can just witness that a fully integrated spiritual life won't suffer from the kind of contempt expressed here and that such contempt is a valuable clue about unfinished business."<<

HE IS RISEN! ;)


P. S.

W. Booger,

WTF?

Bob's Blog said...

"a person whose transitional space has been foreclosed by trauma or disappointment will experience something entirely different."
Bob,
You have so much to say about what infancy is supposed to be all about, and I am sure you and your wife are providing that for your very fortunate son. You have less to say about those who do not get that normal infancy. I guess that is where my wife and I come in, as we are trying to give our foster children the mother and father that they have never experienced. I have made a New Year's resolution on March 26, 2007 to be a daily visitor to your wonderful blog!

Anonymous said...

anonysmom said...HE IS RISEN! ;)

INDEED, HE IS RISEN!
(very soon, and always)

wv: tsrytcha (sounds Russian to me)

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

A World of nothing but Coons? Radicalism? You are quite confused. For it is a great paradox: There exists no world of nothing but coons except nothing but the world that exists.

As for radicalism, does using the word 'Radical!' count?

Wo, dude.

Also, given that time continually halves, or your mental capacity continually doubles, an arrow will never reach its target.

Never!

Van Harvey said...

Joseph,
This link has several articles by Claes Ryn, including "Irving Babbitt: An Introduction, Claes G. Ryn", Babbitt was a large influence on Richard Weaver (and a big favorite of mine). On the main site, this one is I think the article you ref'd above, Leo Strauss and History: The Philosopher as Conspirator, Claes G. Ryn .

robinstarfish said...

i feel like watching
all of the lonely people
that feel like dancing

Van Harvey said...

woolly bugger said... "...Then watch: they both get out of similar beds at about the same time every morning, go to similar types of work in similar types of cars, play and love children and spouse about the same... So just what the "F" are you screeching about over here?"

Here's a hint, a Leftist would want come with an idea to use governemtal power to forcibly create "A World of nothing but Coons", ensuring their extinction. The true Racoon's? They look at droolers such as yourself and and the divine Anonymous above with a distinct sense of WTF? and a dismissive Contempt.

Still waiting for the Inte-trolls to say something worth getting worked up over... yawn.

Van Harvey said...

(my computer broke. I'm using my spare. That's why the typo's & chop-thoughts. honest. It's ALL IT'S FAULT. wtf.)

Anonymous said...

Van, I think WB meant a world of Coots where he would feel at home. And I hope he meant for us to take his moniker to mean, "woolly booger", since "bugger" is quite an unsavory interpetation. Ask any Brit. (Coons are nothing if not culturally sensitive to idiomatic phrases that could be miscoonstrewed.)

Thinking more about it, the world could likely be divvied up between Coons and Coots. I'll cogitate on that and posit a likely scenario at some later date.
:)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link, Van.

Van Harvey said...

joan of argghh! said..."he meant for us to take his moniker to mean, "woolly booger", since "bugger" is quite an unsavory interpetation."

Mmm... that may be... I just assumed he really liked sheep.

Van Harvey said...

Your welcome Joseph.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Joe: Hmm, Ryn is well read and written, but his main critique (so far) seems to be the notion dislodging virtues from history - which is not entirely incorrect. In fact, I've heard this critique before. But Ryn seems rather vague and does not directly quote Strauss much; I feel like I'm doing time until I get to the real meat of his argument...

I'm torn, honestly. I see both 'Divine Mandate' - which is what the Neoconservatives stress - and 'The Path of Tradition' - which is what the Paleocons stress - both to be important. But in this sense it seems to be just the very same division on which all conservatives are fractured; If the Neocons side with the progressives on their subversiveness, the Paleos often side with the progressives on paralytic inaction. Ryn's critique is valid; but it feels like I'm wasting my time reading it(?).

That's my thought so far.

Van Harvey said...

River & Joseph,
I've been rummaging for some Articles by & on Strauss that I'd scribbled on years ago, haven't found them yet... but for the life of me, I can't remember much about him. I remember he didn't buy the separability of scientific and moral Truth... seemed to go for the Group over the individual... that thoughtful ends could justify the means... eh, I think I'm spinning my wheels.
Any particulars, or particular article you think highlights the issue Joseph? He's one I've been meaning to take a look at again, what with all the references to him lately, but haven't moved him up my stack yet.

Van Harvey said...

BTW, "For the left, political correctness is nothing more or less than an intellectual burqa to cover up various anxiety-provoking truths or to control the parents."

Love the LOL's that sum 'em up so well - more effective than reams of articles!

Anonymous said...

RC and Van,
I thought the article linked by Van was a fairly thorough critique of Strauss', and I could do no better, as the arguements are philosophical, and, therefore, require several pages to construct.
I don't think Ryn or even Babbitt, so far as I can tell, are paleo-conservatives, but simply deeply philosophical conservatives. In fact, his main argument is that Strauss' ideas have crept into conservatism due to its own philosphical weaknesses that ought to have been shorn up.

Van Harvey said...

Joseph,
Yeah... I couldn't find my copy of Ryn's article that I'd read & marked up before... been a couple years (tried to skip rereading 28 pages!).

"I don't think Ryn or even Babbitt, so far as I can tell, are paleo-conservatives, but simply deeply philosophical conservatives."

I think you're right there too. What I like most about Babbitt is the sense of seeing someone deeply consider and think through significant issues. His 'Literature and the American College'(sp?) is top notch.

I'd read Strauss before, and truth to tell he didn't impress me much, didn't seem like he had much worth pursuing... seems like I recall he was another Romantic anti-philosophic variant... argh, frustrating that I can't remember clearly. Age seems to be creeping into my brain... that or lack of sleep (don't let my wife know I admitted that).

Van Harvey said...

A big part of Babbitt's battle was trying to prevent the Progressives from taking over and trashing Humanism, a battle he unfortunately lost.

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