0 comment Tuesday, May 27, 2014 | admin
As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable....Armies cannot protect it then; and walls that have remained impenetrable to cannon have fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt. - Edwin P. Whipple
I am just beginning a book called Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison. It's about the Pilgrim fathers and the Plymouth colony. This post is not about the book, however; I may blog about that when I finish reading it. But one part of the book describes the conflicts in England that led to the Puritan separatist movement, and the subsequent flight to Holland and then to Massachusetts.
The Puritans, as dissidents in their country (remember, church and state were one) were very harshly regarded by those who held the power. One tactic the Puritans used against the ecclesiastical authorities was satire. The writer of the book describes how Puritans, using pseudonyms of course, disseminated tracts or broadsides, some of which were very humorous and which ridiculed those in power relentlessly. Some within the Puritan movement thought that the humor was ill-advised because they thought it diminished the importance of the evils they were up against, but the method seems to have had some success.
Every now and then somebody on our side asks why we don't use more such techniques, such as music, films, videos, and satire. If anybody is ripe for ridicule, it is the humorless and fanatical bunch of zealots on the left. They do employ something they call humor in service of their ends; look at the TV programs and movies that use heavy-handed and over-the-top ridicule against conservatives and anyone that is not sufficiently subservient to their all-devouring multicult cause.
Personally I find little that's funny about Saturday Night Live or any other such 'comedy'. I was young when that show first aired, and even then it seemed crude, stupid, and witless.
Most people would agree that humor has its limits; some things should not be made the subject of jokes. An example: one of the reasons I stopped watching SNL (other than that it was crude and stupid) was a sketch about child molestation. This episode was in the days of Gilda Radner and John Belushi. But somehow I can't laugh about child molesters; doing so does make light of something that has no intrinsic humor in it.
Apparently, though, I was in a distinct minority because Saturday Night Live went on for decades, and as far as I know, is still on TV. So apparently some think child molesting is joke fodder. Maybe this also illustrates my point of the last post, about how our minds and attitudes were being primed for this Orwellian world that was in the making.
But notice that today, one thing cannot be ridiculed or made fun of. We cannot lampoon or ridicule anyone who is of any certified 'victim group', even if the lampooning is fairly harmless. What does that say? Once upon a time, people could not blaspheme the name of God without being ostracized by polite society at least. Nowadays we can utter the most vile things about God but not about 'victim groups', or individuals within those groups. Does not that say something? Cambria Will Not Yield often uses the term 'worship' when he talks about this exaltation of certain victim groups, and I really don't think the term is an exaggeration.
The Puritans could ridicule people in high places -- aristocracy, church officials, government officials -- even if they had to do it under a nom de plume. We cannot use ridicule as a defense as they did. Who was freer?
A frequent criticism that comes up among people on the right when minorities are discussed -- for example, Hispanic illegal immigrants. Somebody usually says ''they aren't the problem. They are just the symptom. We need to blame our own, the people in power who are promoting mass immigration.'' Well, yes, we need to. And we do. But if someone hires a criminal to harm me or threaten me, is the actual perpetrator not to blame as much as the many who hires him? Both are wrong and both are responsible. The man who instigates the crime apparently cannot or will not carry out the crime himself, but the man who carries out a criminal act does so willingly, and is just as much a criminal as the instigator. No innocent person would cooperate to harm others. So the illegals and the Moslems may be enabled by our treasonous kinsmen, but they are not innocent. They are willing co-criminals, motivated by their own covetousness or desire to 'conquer' or plunder us. No innocents there.
Notice too that minorities are free to ridicule and insult us in the name of ''humor'', often in the most vile terms, but we cannot reciprocate, even in a mild way.
So who can we lampoon and ridicule? Sure, some mainstream comics make feeble jokes at the expense of politicians of both parties, but even the politicians are 'a symptom, not the problem.' They are just as much pawns or cat's-paws as the illegals for whom our elites have thrown open the gates.
The elites themselves, though we know a few names, are mostly a shadowy group of people. Most of them we would not recognize by face or even by name. How can we confront anybody who will not show himself, or admit to his obvious complicity?
If we can't, or mustn't, blame the people who are invading our country, and we don't know who, specifically, is colluding to make this possible, then we have no convenient object to whom we can address any satire -- or any complaints.
In the Puritans' day back in England, they at least had some place to go to escape what was happening, and while still in their own country, they could use ridicule and humor to make their case. We lack even those options.
This post sounds rather pessimistic. The only thing that is to be remembered, though, is that the elites, whatever their names, are just human beings. The TakiMag piece I linked to the other day made one point with which I could agree: conspiracists are ultimately human beings, and as such, fallible and flawed. Money and influence do not spell invincibility. Their plans may not work out as intended. Remember what Burns said about the best laid plans of mice and men.
I am just beginning a book called Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison. It's about the Pilgrim fathers and the Plymouth colony. This post is not about the book, however; I may blog about that when I finish reading it. But one part of the book describes the conflicts in England that led to the Puritan separatist movement, and the subsequent flight to Holland and then to Massachusetts.
The Puritans, as dissidents in their country (remember, church and state were one) were very harshly regarded by those who held the power. One tactic the Puritans used against the ecclesiastical authorities was satire. The writer of the book describes how Puritans, using pseudonyms of course, disseminated tracts or broadsides, some of which were very humorous and which ridiculed those in power relentlessly. Some within the Puritan movement thought that the humor was ill-advised because they thought it diminished the importance of the evils they were up against, but the method seems to have had some success.
Every now and then somebody on our side asks why we don't use more such techniques, such as music, films, videos, and satire. If anybody is ripe for ridicule, it is the humorless and fanatical bunch of zealots on the left. They do employ something they call humor in service of their ends; look at the TV programs and movies that use heavy-handed and over-the-top ridicule against conservatives and anyone that is not sufficiently subservient to their all-devouring multicult cause.
Personally I find little that's funny about Saturday Night Live or any other such 'comedy'. I was young when that show first aired, and even then it seemed crude, stupid, and witless.
Most people would agree that humor has its limits; some things should not be made the subject of jokes. An example: one of the reasons I stopped watching SNL (other than that it was crude and stupid) was a sketch about child molestation. This episode was in the days of Gilda Radner and John Belushi. But somehow I can't laugh about child molesters; doing so does make light of something that has no intrinsic humor in it.
Apparently, though, I was in a distinct minority because Saturday Night Live went on for decades, and as far as I know, is still on TV. So apparently some think child molesting is joke fodder. Maybe this also illustrates my point of the last post, about how our minds and attitudes were being primed for this Orwellian world that was in the making.
But notice that today, one thing cannot be ridiculed or made fun of. We cannot lampoon or ridicule anyone who is of any certified 'victim group', even if the lampooning is fairly harmless. What does that say? Once upon a time, people could not blaspheme the name of God without being ostracized by polite society at least. Nowadays we can utter the most vile things about God but not about 'victim groups', or individuals within those groups. Does not that say something? Cambria Will Not Yield often uses the term 'worship' when he talks about this exaltation of certain victim groups, and I really don't think the term is an exaggeration.
The Puritans could ridicule people in high places -- aristocracy, church officials, government officials -- even if they had to do it under a nom de plume. We cannot use ridicule as a defense as they did. Who was freer?
A frequent criticism that comes up among people on the right when minorities are discussed -- for example, Hispanic illegal immigrants. Somebody usually says ''they aren't the problem. They are just the symptom. We need to blame our own, the people in power who are promoting mass immigration.'' Well, yes, we need to. And we do. But if someone hires a criminal to harm me or threaten me, is the actual perpetrator not to blame as much as the many who hires him? Both are wrong and both are responsible. The man who instigates the crime apparently cannot or will not carry out the crime himself, but the man who carries out a criminal act does so willingly, and is just as much a criminal as the instigator. No innocent person would cooperate to harm others. So the illegals and the Moslems may be enabled by our treasonous kinsmen, but they are not innocent. They are willing co-criminals, motivated by their own covetousness or desire to 'conquer' or plunder us. No innocents there.
Notice too that minorities are free to ridicule and insult us in the name of ''humor'', often in the most vile terms, but we cannot reciprocate, even in a mild way.
So who can we lampoon and ridicule? Sure, some mainstream comics make feeble jokes at the expense of politicians of both parties, but even the politicians are 'a symptom, not the problem.' They are just as much pawns or cat's-paws as the illegals for whom our elites have thrown open the gates.
The elites themselves, though we know a few names, are mostly a shadowy group of people. Most of them we would not recognize by face or even by name. How can we confront anybody who will not show himself, or admit to his obvious complicity?
If we can't, or mustn't, blame the people who are invading our country, and we don't know who, specifically, is colluding to make this possible, then we have no convenient object to whom we can address any satire -- or any complaints.
In the Puritans' day back in England, they at least had some place to go to escape what was happening, and while still in their own country, they could use ridicule and humor to make their case. We lack even those options.
This post sounds rather pessimistic. The only thing that is to be remembered, though, is that the elites, whatever their names, are just human beings. The TakiMag piece I linked to the other day made one point with which I could agree: conspiracists are ultimately human beings, and as such, fallible and flawed. Money and influence do not spell invincibility. Their plans may not work out as intended. Remember what Burns said about the best laid plans of mice and men.
Labels: Dissent, Free Speech, Political Correctness, Satire