All the Left is Saying is Give Piss a Chance

Short book. Long exegesis.

I mean The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas.

In this regard, it is similar to other highly condensed tracts such as the Tao Te Ching, the Yoga Sutras, and the Upanishads, each serving as a compact owner's manual for the human being (and we do own ourselves -- although God co-signs the mortgage -- leftist ideology to the contrary notwithstanding).

Come to think of it, that itself is a cosmic principle: you own yourself. What we call the left begins with the contrary principle: that you first belong to the collective, the state, the class, the volk, etc.

That's really what it comes down to if you follow the ideas upstream to their first principles. Most ideas of the left can be traced to the principle that the individual is either illusory or selfish and antisocial, and therefore something to be eliminated or transcended. Or violently suppressed.

Which is why the left is organized around the idea of "identity politics." When they use the word "identity," they don't mean it in the way you or I do, that is, who we are as individuals.

Rather, they subordinate the individual to the group identity, such that one's primary attribute becomes race, class, gender, sexual preference, etc. Which is why it can be said that feminists love womankind, but can't stand individual women such as Margaret Thatcher or Ayaan Hirsi Ali; or that blacktivists love astract blackness but detest particular blacks such as Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, or Thomas Sowell.

Truly, it is a soul sickness, something one can only affirm 1) if there is a soul, and 2) if the soul has a proper order. The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas is all about the proper order of the soul, which is why it is again such a fine owner's manual.

"The principles of reason are those which are conformed to nature," i.e., in the nature of things. This is the same Nature to which the founders appeal when they advert to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" -- there being no possibility of Nature without a divine author.

For example, even Sartre has the rudimentary intellectual honesty to concede that "there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it."

In short, you are what you do, and what you do is whatever you will, such that you are encased in a meaningless tautology.

Which is where I believe the left comes to the rescue. The other day, Dennis Prager commented that leftism provides meaning for the soulless. I would say that it is a kind of therapy for the existentialized person who denies his own soul and therefore God -- the soul being the link between man and God.

With reference to cosmic principles, Thomas says it is not even possible to think they can be false. But then, this was before Marx came along and achieved the impossible. And look what happens when you attempt to force the impossible upon an intransigent reality: only 100 million murdered, give or take.

"Reason is man's nature. Hence whatever is contrary to reason is contrary to human nature."

Just try to disprove that. In so doing, you will have proved it. The only way to effectively disprove it is to eliminate the person who believes it. In other words, the will must take precedence over the intellect, such that power trumps truth. And now you understand Antifa, which answers reason with blows. If you're lucky. Bottles of urine if you're not.

They do not speak truth to power; rather, urine to truth.

A psychoanalyst would have much to say about the symbolism of urine, but I don't have time for such trivial insultainment. Well, maybe a little. According to Melanie Klein, in infantile (unconscious) phantasy,

the excreta are transformed into dangerous weapons: wetting is regarded as cutting, stabbing, burning, drowning, while the fecal mass is equated with weapons and missiles.... these violent modes of attack give place to hidden assaults by the most refined methods which sadism can devise, and the excreta are equated with poisonous substances.

So it's the same old whine in new bottles. Nevertheless, all they are saying is give piss a chance. We can only hope they never attain fecal capability.

Recall what was said above about owning oneself: "Human nature in the strict sense consists in being according to reason. Hence a man is said to contain himself when he acts in accordance with reason."

Hence it is possible to not contain oneself.

Here again, psychoanalysis is all over this subject, for every psychological defense mechanism comes down to an unconscious means of denying or expelling unwanted content: splitting, projection, denial, et al. This is why in the book I used the pneumaticons (•) and •••(•)•••, the latter symbolizing the person who is out of his mind; or rather, whose mind is out of himself.

Are we free to be another? No, for that would be the essence of un-freedom. It is another iteration of gaining the world but losing the soul, the latter being "everything." Which is why "every movement conformed to false knowledge is in itself bad and sinful," and "the will which departs from the reason is always bad."

In other words, whether the will is good or bad depends upon whether or not it is in conformity with truth. If a will informed by the lie isn't wrong, then nothing is.

Bottom line for today: Wherever there is intellectual knowledge, there is also free will. And where there isn't intellectual knowledge, there is always free urine.

Omniscience and Omnignorance

We left off with the radical idea that "the truth or falsity of an opinion depends on whether a thing is or is not." Thus, "man's thought is not true on its own account but is called true in virtue of its conformity with things" (Cosmic Zingers of St. Thomas).

Collusion with Russia is not a thing and never has been (except by Democrats); nor are Trump's racism, anti-Semitism, and fascism things at all. It is impossible to be conformity with these, because they are not.

So, with what are these millions of liberal lunatics in conformity? The short answer is ideology, or the Narrative (the latter being Ideology for Morons); perhaps equally important, they are reliably in conformity with each other. You've heard Rush play the clips in which every liberal media outlet not only has the same angle on a story, but uses the identical words. Sheep with no shepherd; or thanks to PC, the sheep conveniently herd themselves.

Two days ago the narrative Word of the Day was empathy -- as in Trump's absence of it for the victims of Harvey. Obviously, this is not something anyone can actually perceive. Rather, it is seen only through the lens of ideology. Ideology is the grandest lie one can embrace, because not only is it a lie, but it makes all the other lies possible.

Recall that the thing is prior to our thinking, and that truth is conformity between the two. But for the left, ideology is not only prior to the thing, but the thing itself. Which is why it "sees" things that do not exist, e.g., racism, collusion with our enemies, absence of empathy, racist cops, etc.

Look at academia: the only place you're sure to find conservative principles is in the business department. This is because in business, if your ideas don't conform to reality, you are bankrupt.

Conversely, in the humanities, if your ideas are bankrupt, then you're in business!

In real business, the customer is always right. But since ideology is prior to reality, the liberal is always right (and just and empathic and charitable and socially conscious and woke & stuff).

It's all so basic, and yet, no one is taught these principles. And "taught" isn't even the right word. Rather, they are seen; once seen, they are obvious; and they are obvious because they are in meta-conformity with human nature -- and with the nature of things more generally.

Thus, knowing the principles is vertical recollection; it is also elementary self-awareness -- so, never wonder why the left is so lacking in this commodity as well. One cannot embrace leftism without first banishing self-awareness from the psyche. It is why they can promulgate such nonsense with no shame.

"Nobody perceives himself to know except from the fact that he knows some object, because knowledge of some object is prior to knowledge of oneself knowing" (Thomas).

Again, one is tempted to say Tell me something I don't know. And yet, in this degraded age there exist entire university departments dedicated to systematically not knowing (or knowing nonsense): women's studies, queer theory, critical race theory, Chicano studies, et al.

In each case, knowledge of the ideology is not only prior to knowledge of oneself (and of reality), but effectively prevents it. Truly it is omniscience in reverse, or omnigorance. It is G3AOA.

The following truth can also be perceived directly, but one may require perfect 20/∞ vision in order to see it: "The intellectual light dwelling in us is nothing else than a kind of participated image of the uncreated light in which eternal ideas are contained."

In other words, the Light with which we see the Light is the same Light with which we are able to see it.

Sounds paradoxical, but there is no other explanation. Certainly it explains how someone can plausibly claim to be the Light of the world. This Light shines even in the university, although the tenured do not see or comprehend it.

Another basic one: The truth is something good; otherwise it would not be worth desiring; and the good is true; otherwise it would not be intelligible.

In fact, truth is the good -- and beauty -- of the intellect, without which the intellect is worthless or even harmful. For an intellect not conformed to truth is a will conformed to power. This is the disloyal opposition of the left, being that they have no fealty to the reality prior to ideology.

******

The power of omnignorant ideology (courtesy Ace of Spades; click to enlarge):

Thy Thingdom Come vs. Thine Face be Punched

I didn't oversleep. Rather, I overdreamt. What a show! However, the show ran overtime, leaving time only for a brief and rudely insultaining post:

"The greatest kindness one can render to any man," says Thomas, "consists in leading him from error to truth."

If that is so, then the most grievous injury one can inflict upon another consists in leading him from truth to error; or even from curiosity to error, curiosity being the precursor to, and incubator of, truth.

In a certain sense curiosity is similar to faith, the latter representing conformity to the Infinite (recognition of doctrine being conformity to the Absolute). Each is a womb, whereas ideology is a tomb.

This being the case, then the greatest wholesale sources of evil in our day are 1) the left, 2) its seminaries of indoctrination (the university and educational establishment), and 3) its vectors of crude propaganda (the MSM and entertainment industry). Mother-daughter-unholy spirit, you might say (with no offense to their proper instantiations!).

In any event, all three are barreling hellward and trying to drag us there with them.

Do I really believe this? Yes, but only literally.

This goes to the essential difference between human beings and animals. Which is guess what? The intellect. To deny the intellect and its needs is to reduce man to an animal.

I wish!

For in reality, it reduces man to a station beneath the animals, for no animal can live a lie and still live. If you prefer to consider hell metaphorically, this is how it works: the Lie places man in a kind of negative ontological space, i.e., non-being. This follows logically from the fact that being and truth are convertible; so too lies and non-being.

This goes back to why it is such a grave sin to lead a man from truth to error: it is literally a kind of existential murder, or theft of being.

The other day Secretary De Vos tweeted that "Our prayers are with all those in the path of Hurricane Harvey" and that the federal government "stands ready to assist impacted schools." Innocuous enough.

In response, Keith Olbermann temperately tweeted that "The hurricane is going to do less damage to schools than you are, Motherfucker."

Now, even liberals -- who have been in control of the educational establishment for generations -- acknowledge that public education is a disaster. True, it succeeds in indoctrinating and molding future obedient liberals, but that's all it does. So, whose fault is this, Mr. Enthusiastic Violator of the Incest Taboo? Who has been f-ing the children for decades?

Not surprisingly, everything said above also converges upon freedom. It explains why freedom is a central value for conservatives, but public and private enemy #1 for the left. For as Thomas says, "the root of all freedom lies in the reason." To the extent that we are alienated from reason, or we have provided it with false premises, then we are unfree.

The other day I tossed off a comment at Instapundit to the effect that "Political correctness shows that the most effective form of totalitarianism is self-imposed and self-monitoring."

Political correctness is, among other things, an attack upon the very foundation of freedom, which is conformity to truth. Put conversely, if everyone "voluntarily" believes the lie, then vertical development is denied and enslavement is complete.

What is truth? For the left, it is perception -- so long as you perceive correctly, for example, that boys can be girls or that women are identical to men or Trump is Hitler.

But for the restavus, "the truth or falsity of an opinion depends on whether a thing is or is not." In other words, we begin with the object, the thing; the left begins with the ideology -- the subject -- superimposed upon the thing. The rest is commentary.

Or was anyway. Now it's masked thugs beating up people who believe in the primacy of the thing.

[M]an's thought is not true on its own account but is called true in virtue of its conformity with things. --Thomas the Brain