0 comment Saturday, December 6, 2014 | admin
In a recent post, I discussed the fact that the psychological worldview, as presented by the popular culture and the old media, has become a widely accepted, very influential belief system. It's also insidious in that most people have absorbed many of the core beliefs of this worldview without even being aware of it. Anybody who watches shows like Oprah, or reads any of the best-selling 'self-help' books, or who undergoes therapy or counseling for life problems, has taken in a good deal of the beliefs of the psychological worldview. Anybody who has taken social science courses in the last several decades has also imbibed some of these beliefs.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Labels: Christianity, Death Of The West, Globalism, Liberalism, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, One World, Politics, Pop Psychology, Societal Decay, Therapeutic Society, Transnationalism
0 comment Friday, December 5, 2014 | admin
Another aspect of this pestilential 'niceness' is the moral agnosticism that usually goes along with it.
This seems to be an increasingly common problem in our society, and I think it is certainly a part of what ails us.
We've really taken to heart the idea that making a moral judgment or even a 'value judgment', in the namby-pamby social scientists' phrase, is to be avoided at all costs. We have to see everything in shades of grey, with ambiguities aplenty.
For example: two people of your acquaintance, both of them presumed 'friends' or at least people you purport to 'admire', are in a dispute. The moral agnostic 'nice' person makes sympathetic noises to both parties, and shrinks from making a judgment about which party is the wronged party, or which has right on his side. It may be that in rare instances, neither side is wrong, and neither is fully right, and it may be that the dispute is a mere misunderstanding or miscommunication which can be clarified by some detached third party stepping in and correcting the wrong signals.
But in my experience, when judging conflicting ideas or individuals, there is a preponderance of right on one side. Of course, a flawed human being will seldom be completely blameless, but the fact of human frailty does not mean that we can never, ever discern who is right, for the most part, and who is wrong, who was the aggressor or instigator and who was the recipient of the aggression.
I tend to think it's moral laziness to refuse to try to discern, or to seek to walk a tightrope, privately uttering sympathetic words to each side separately, while taking a neutral stance publicly. Or is it cowardice? Or a selfish desire to maintain oneself in the good graces of both sides, while feigning support to each party in secret? If so, that's also duplicitous and insincere, which the Bible condemns.
To refuse to take the right side in every case in which it can be discerned is immoral, and yet somehow these days, this is the default position of many people. Might it also be that so many people are deathly afraid of taking an unpopular position, and being isolated or ostracized for it? We certainly see many examples of this attitude.
The Bible also speaks against double-mindedness and having a 'double heart', or 'speaking guile.'
Psa 12:2 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
I find that when someone takes the spineless way out and tries to have it both ways, working both sides of the street, I lose all respect for that person.
This is especially so when the wishy-washy person turns a blind eye to someone's aggressive or cruel behavior because they 'like' the person. Usually this is the case when one party is socially popular or influential, and many people, being in awe of social influence or prestige, will give the person a pass on reprehensible or uncharitable or immoral behavior because of who they are, or because of their personal charm or social status. This is what the Bible calls 'respecting persons.' We are not to be 'respecters of persons' or to hold the offender's 'person' in regard.
But we are supposed to be respecters of truth.
Suppose one party gossips, maligns, and slanders another party, and perhaps bullies that person in direct or indirect ways. Do we continue to be friendly with the wrongdoer and the wronged party? Why would we do this? The bully or the slanderer is not a person who should inspire our loyalty or regard, yet many people will refuse to call out the bad behavior or shun the wrongdoer, preferring to turn a blind eye, trying to justify their moral agnosticism by saying 'but he's a nice guy, and he hasn't done anything to me.'
Again, I cannot respect the person who behaves this way, even though they may fancy that their behavior amounts to being an impartial or above-the-fray 'peacemaker' between the two estranged parties. Either we believe that certain actions are right, and others are wrong, or we don't. It appears many people don't want to be so 'controversial' as to believe unequivocally in right and wrong, and to support the right side openly. But we are supposed to take a side, the right side, whenever there is a moral conflict. We are not allowed to sit out the battle.
Many of the people I know are very fluid in their principles, being easily moved one way or the other, based on their feelings and emotions. For instance Christians who claim to oppose things like abortion or homosexuality or illegal immigration will, if they meet with a likeable individual who is an advocate of abortion, or a homosexual, or an illegal immigrant, will not be able to separate their liking for these individuals from their opposition to the actions of these individuals -- so what gets lost? The principles. If they meet a personable and charming gay activist, they will begin to say 'well, we mustn't be narrowminded. Times change.' Many people are swayed by the immigrants they meet and sympathize with, and soon say 'we have to make it easier for these people; the laws for immigration are inhumane.'
Most conservatives and Christians of a traditonal sort deplore the moral relativism or facile moral equivalency at which the liberals are so practiced, but it seems they too are falling prey to the tendency.
And in most cases, we are drawn in that direction by our personal feelings, through being charmed by certain individuals, or perhaps we are flattered at being drawn into the circle of a prominent or influential person, so we overlook or justify the bad behaviors this person practices, whether it's sexual immorality or social cruelty and arrogance.
'But this man does so much good! He gives to charity; he supports a lot of good causes.'
Or: 'he's a brilliant man, very intellectually stimulating, a great thinker, a champion of our side,' -- so they tolerate, or worse, justify his petty unkindness towards his 'lessers', and his belittling of those he sees as rivals, intellectually or socially or politically.
Where are the lovers of justice and truth and goodness? We seem to be, too often, respecters of persons, covetous of the social approval of those we admire or like, regardless of their moral worth.
This can apply on a national scale, with the idolizing of morally reprobate celebrities and amoral politicians, or with those we look up to in other, smaller spheres. We have our favorites and our little idols, and we are happy to turn a blind eye to the harm they do -- simply because we 'like' them. They make us feel good in some way, and we are hooked on 'feeling good.' Or they flatter us, and we feel grateful that they include us in their circles, so we happily cluster around and applaud their every pronouncement, regardless of its worth, in gratitude for their deigning to notice us.
In some cases, some rather sad people identify with some high-achieving or notable person, and vicariously partake in their successes, and that this person may be an amoral, self-seeking egotist or an immoral, deceitful manipulator matters not at all to their admirers.
It all seems to boil down to our loss of fixed principles and morality, with a loss of regard for truth and right and justice. It's all about who we 'like', or how we feel about something, rather than about the question of goodness and worthiness.
I've had more people giving me unsolicited statements about who they are voting for, and so often I am struck by the utter incongruity of their choices. People I would least expect to hear these statements from tell me 'I'm voting for Obama', or 'I'll vote for McCain', while giving no sound reason for doing so. Their choices seem utterly illogical, at least based on what they have said over time, or based on what they purport to believe in. When we cut ourselves loose from our moorings in reason, logic, or established principles of any kind, and behave according to our shifting feelings and moods, there can only be more irrational and morally derelict behavior.
I suppose it makes a twisted kind of sense, if we have outlawed judgements, to base our decisions mostly on personal feelings and whims, and on a sense of loyalty only to persons, not to solid beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong.
This seems to be an increasingly common problem in our society, and I think it is certainly a part of what ails us.
We've really taken to heart the idea that making a moral judgment or even a 'value judgment', in the namby-pamby social scientists' phrase, is to be avoided at all costs. We have to see everything in shades of grey, with ambiguities aplenty.
For example: two people of your acquaintance, both of them presumed 'friends' or at least people you purport to 'admire', are in a dispute. The moral agnostic 'nice' person makes sympathetic noises to both parties, and shrinks from making a judgment about which party is the wronged party, or which has right on his side. It may be that in rare instances, neither side is wrong, and neither is fully right, and it may be that the dispute is a mere misunderstanding or miscommunication which can be clarified by some detached third party stepping in and correcting the wrong signals.
But in my experience, when judging conflicting ideas or individuals, there is a preponderance of right on one side. Of course, a flawed human being will seldom be completely blameless, but the fact of human frailty does not mean that we can never, ever discern who is right, for the most part, and who is wrong, who was the aggressor or instigator and who was the recipient of the aggression.
I tend to think it's moral laziness to refuse to try to discern, or to seek to walk a tightrope, privately uttering sympathetic words to each side separately, while taking a neutral stance publicly. Or is it cowardice? Or a selfish desire to maintain oneself in the good graces of both sides, while feigning support to each party in secret? If so, that's also duplicitous and insincere, which the Bible condemns.
To refuse to take the right side in every case in which it can be discerned is immoral, and yet somehow these days, this is the default position of many people. Might it also be that so many people are deathly afraid of taking an unpopular position, and being isolated or ostracized for it? We certainly see many examples of this attitude.
The Bible also speaks against double-mindedness and having a 'double heart', or 'speaking guile.'
Psa 12:2 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
I find that when someone takes the spineless way out and tries to have it both ways, working both sides of the street, I lose all respect for that person.
This is especially so when the wishy-washy person turns a blind eye to someone's aggressive or cruel behavior because they 'like' the person. Usually this is the case when one party is socially popular or influential, and many people, being in awe of social influence or prestige, will give the person a pass on reprehensible or uncharitable or immoral behavior because of who they are, or because of their personal charm or social status. This is what the Bible calls 'respecting persons.' We are not to be 'respecters of persons' or to hold the offender's 'person' in regard.
But we are supposed to be respecters of truth.
Suppose one party gossips, maligns, and slanders another party, and perhaps bullies that person in direct or indirect ways. Do we continue to be friendly with the wrongdoer and the wronged party? Why would we do this? The bully or the slanderer is not a person who should inspire our loyalty or regard, yet many people will refuse to call out the bad behavior or shun the wrongdoer, preferring to turn a blind eye, trying to justify their moral agnosticism by saying 'but he's a nice guy, and he hasn't done anything to me.'
Again, I cannot respect the person who behaves this way, even though they may fancy that their behavior amounts to being an impartial or above-the-fray 'peacemaker' between the two estranged parties. Either we believe that certain actions are right, and others are wrong, or we don't. It appears many people don't want to be so 'controversial' as to believe unequivocally in right and wrong, and to support the right side openly. But we are supposed to take a side, the right side, whenever there is a moral conflict. We are not allowed to sit out the battle.
Many of the people I know are very fluid in their principles, being easily moved one way or the other, based on their feelings and emotions. For instance Christians who claim to oppose things like abortion or homosexuality or illegal immigration will, if they meet with a likeable individual who is an advocate of abortion, or a homosexual, or an illegal immigrant, will not be able to separate their liking for these individuals from their opposition to the actions of these individuals -- so what gets lost? The principles. If they meet a personable and charming gay activist, they will begin to say 'well, we mustn't be narrowminded. Times change.' Many people are swayed by the immigrants they meet and sympathize with, and soon say 'we have to make it easier for these people; the laws for immigration are inhumane.'
Most conservatives and Christians of a traditonal sort deplore the moral relativism or facile moral equivalency at which the liberals are so practiced, but it seems they too are falling prey to the tendency.
And in most cases, we are drawn in that direction by our personal feelings, through being charmed by certain individuals, or perhaps we are flattered at being drawn into the circle of a prominent or influential person, so we overlook or justify the bad behaviors this person practices, whether it's sexual immorality or social cruelty and arrogance.
'But this man does so much good! He gives to charity; he supports a lot of good causes.'
Or: 'he's a brilliant man, very intellectually stimulating, a great thinker, a champion of our side,' -- so they tolerate, or worse, justify his petty unkindness towards his 'lessers', and his belittling of those he sees as rivals, intellectually or socially or politically.
Where are the lovers of justice and truth and goodness? We seem to be, too often, respecters of persons, covetous of the social approval of those we admire or like, regardless of their moral worth.
This can apply on a national scale, with the idolizing of morally reprobate celebrities and amoral politicians, or with those we look up to in other, smaller spheres. We have our favorites and our little idols, and we are happy to turn a blind eye to the harm they do -- simply because we 'like' them. They make us feel good in some way, and we are hooked on 'feeling good.' Or they flatter us, and we feel grateful that they include us in their circles, so we happily cluster around and applaud their every pronouncement, regardless of its worth, in gratitude for their deigning to notice us.
In some cases, some rather sad people identify with some high-achieving or notable person, and vicariously partake in their successes, and that this person may be an amoral, self-seeking egotist or an immoral, deceitful manipulator matters not at all to their admirers.
It all seems to boil down to our loss of fixed principles and morality, with a loss of regard for truth and right and justice. It's all about who we 'like', or how we feel about something, rather than about the question of goodness and worthiness.
I've had more people giving me unsolicited statements about who they are voting for, and so often I am struck by the utter incongruity of their choices. People I would least expect to hear these statements from tell me 'I'm voting for Obama', or 'I'll vote for McCain', while giving no sound reason for doing so. Their choices seem utterly illogical, at least based on what they have said over time, or based on what they purport to believe in. When we cut ourselves loose from our moorings in reason, logic, or established principles of any kind, and behave according to our shifting feelings and moods, there can only be more irrational and morally derelict behavior.
I suppose it makes a twisted kind of sense, if we have outlawed judgements, to base our decisions mostly on personal feelings and whims, and on a sense of loyalty only to persons, not to solid beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong.
Labels: Justice, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, Societal Decay, Traditional Morality
0 comment Wednesday, December 3, 2014 | admin
Too much loyalty, or too little?
It seems that loyalty is at the core of much of what is wrong with America today. In some ways we have far too much of it and in some ways we are lacking in it. Or we have the wrong kind of loyalty, to the wrong people, and are deficient in it where it is most needed.
I have been thinking of this in connection with the current political situation, and the woeful choices being presented to us in this election, but this problem is widespread and has a bearing on many aspects of our lives.
The most pressing misapplication of loyalty is of the 'vertical loyalty' in which people seem to look for some kind of charismatic man on a horse to put the world to rights for them. We need only look at the example of Barack Obama and the bizarre cult surrounding him: women swooning at his public appearances, and people reacting as they would at a fervid prayer-meeting or revival instead of at a political rally.
A disturbing number of Republicans are also showing signs of being drawn into the Obama admiration society. Any perceptive and honest person can guess at the reasons for this.
The more common problem among 'conservatives' at this time is not the unthinking 'vertical loyalty' to a slick leader, but to the Republican Party, coupled with the flip side, a rather exaggerated fear of the opposing party. Is this a 'horizontal loyalty', loyalty to a group of people or is it just a loyalty to the brand name of the GOP and what it purports to stand for? I would say it's more the latter.
Lacking on both sides of the political aisle is sufficient horizontal loyalty towards one's people, and I would say our loyalty to our own stretches not just laterally to our contemporaries but backward and forward in time, encompassing our ancestors and our future progeny. We see far too little concern for this; there is too much orientation to the present with little thought for the future. Since we have become a materialistic people with a dwindling belief in things eternal, in the old verities, we naturally tend to neglect the long-range prospects for our people.
Why have we come to have so little 'horizontal loyalty' to our own? There is no simple one-sentence answer but obviously there has been a long-term effort to undermine this natural feeling of kinship. Divide and rule has been an effective strategy and our country with its tradition of welcoming in people from far-flung countries was susceptible to having its very core identity and essence assailed by means of immigration from incompatible peoples.
I think it's too easy to blame 'the liberals' for much of this; in so doing, many Republicans and conservatives absolve themselves of any complicity in it, when in fact they have acquiesced if not actively participated in the divide-and-rule process.
As it stands, we are now divided many ways, based, most obviously, on race and ancestry, then along religious lines (atheists vs. Christians, other religions vs. Christians, Christians among themselves), as well as sex/gender lines, class lines, regional loyalties, and of course politics. The first and the last categories seem to engender the most bitter and intractable conflicts.
Al Gore appears to have been unwittingly accurate when he mistranslated 'E Pluribus Unum' as 'out of one, many.'
So, lacking the normal and healthy quantum of lateral or horizontal loyalty among ourselves, we substitute vertical loyalty, and tend to submit to the powerful at the top, whether a charismatic individual in whom we invest our allegiance, or whether we make The Party the be-all and the end-all and bow our knee to the party powers-that-be.
Some people, of course, devote most of their loyalty to a religious system or hierarchy, with some systems being more authoritarian than others.
As a Christian I believe that God alone merits that kind of total submission, not any human being or system. Any absolute faith in or devotion to a human being or a man-made philosophy or institution is just misplaced and will lead to grief at some point. Patriotism can become a false religion when it crosses the line to unquestioning, blind faith in one's country.
Patriotism, party loyalty, loyalty to a religious system or ideology, all these have to be taught; they are not natural and innate in us, as is the bond to those close to us, to kin and kind.
It becomes a perplexing question: how is it that so many of us are willing or able to forego their "natural affections" in order to follow a leader or a political party or system which is actually inimical and destructive to their kin and kind? What is short-circuiting our natural affections and loyalties that enables this to happen?
Human beings do possess innate instincts for group loyalty and affinity; I am convinced of that. But human beings, being flawed as we are, can circumvent or bypass the natural inclinations in many ways. Maybe part of our fallen condition, in Christian terminology, is that we are malleable and suggestible. That's the whole story of Genesis 3, isn't it? The persuasive serpent in the garden, leading Eve astray -- aided by her cooperation.
We seem to have lost the discernment and the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, genuine from counterfeit, and when discernment is lacking, people look for a leader they trust and like. This might also be blamed on moral laziness; people seem to find it too demanding these days to discern right and wrong, good and bad, for themselves, so it's tempting to look either for a ready-made guide, some system of thought or ideology, to decide for us what is good or bad, right or wrong. And some declare that there is no wrong or right, merely different 'narratives' and preferences.
But following a charismatic leader is tempting for some people, perhaps the people who are the most emotionally immature, and the people who have nothing else in which they have faith. The leader then becomes their guide and their authority; they need only follow, and follow blindly in too many cases. Then it seems that when a cult develops around an individual, that in-group satisfies their natural need for group identity and belonging, a need which in a normal society would be met by the natural bond of the group one is born into.
In a society which is becoming more fragmented by the day, more lacking in normal attachments, we are on a path to becoming more susceptible to charismatic seducers who then provide the sense of belonging, and the sense of purpose that is lacking.
Thomas Carlyle, who wrote so much about heroes and great men, wrote about the different kinds of heroes or 'great men', including the prophet, the poet, and the 'commander over men.'
Carlyle said of the last type, the King, that "He is practically the summary for us of all the various figures of heroism: Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to command over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching to tell us for the day and hour what we are to do."
Is it true of all of us that we need this kind of authoritarian figure to 'command over us' and 'tell us for the day and hour what we are to do'? I like to think this tendency to submit blindly to flesh and blood is a weakness and a flaw that is not common to all human beings, but there may be that tendency in all of us. However it seems to me that Americans are more prone to this kind of submissive followership now than in past eras. Our founding ancestors did not approve of this kind of cravenness in human nature. George Washington (whose birthday just passed, without the honor due) refused the offer to make him a king instead of our first President.
In the past I've lamented the lack of leadership in our day; we seem to live in an age of pygmies and eunuchs who nonetheless have courtiers bowing to them. But in the end maybe it's true that each age gets the leaders it deserves.
If we could rediscover our history and our sense of unity we might be better able to raise up leaders, competent and decent men among us, and above all, to have the discernment to recognize those who are truly fit for leadership. As it is, we are at risk to be exploited by the manipulators and demagogues who dominate our age.
It seems that loyalty is at the core of much of what is wrong with America today. In some ways we have far too much of it and in some ways we are lacking in it. Or we have the wrong kind of loyalty, to the wrong people, and are deficient in it where it is most needed.
I have been thinking of this in connection with the current political situation, and the woeful choices being presented to us in this election, but this problem is widespread and has a bearing on many aspects of our lives.
The most pressing misapplication of loyalty is of the 'vertical loyalty' in which people seem to look for some kind of charismatic man on a horse to put the world to rights for them. We need only look at the example of Barack Obama and the bizarre cult surrounding him: women swooning at his public appearances, and people reacting as they would at a fervid prayer-meeting or revival instead of at a political rally.
A disturbing number of Republicans are also showing signs of being drawn into the Obama admiration society. Any perceptive and honest person can guess at the reasons for this.
The more common problem among 'conservatives' at this time is not the unthinking 'vertical loyalty' to a slick leader, but to the Republican Party, coupled with the flip side, a rather exaggerated fear of the opposing party. Is this a 'horizontal loyalty', loyalty to a group of people or is it just a loyalty to the brand name of the GOP and what it purports to stand for? I would say it's more the latter.
Lacking on both sides of the political aisle is sufficient horizontal loyalty towards one's people, and I would say our loyalty to our own stretches not just laterally to our contemporaries but backward and forward in time, encompassing our ancestors and our future progeny. We see far too little concern for this; there is too much orientation to the present with little thought for the future. Since we have become a materialistic people with a dwindling belief in things eternal, in the old verities, we naturally tend to neglect the long-range prospects for our people.
Why have we come to have so little 'horizontal loyalty' to our own? There is no simple one-sentence answer but obviously there has been a long-term effort to undermine this natural feeling of kinship. Divide and rule has been an effective strategy and our country with its tradition of welcoming in people from far-flung countries was susceptible to having its very core identity and essence assailed by means of immigration from incompatible peoples.
I think it's too easy to blame 'the liberals' for much of this; in so doing, many Republicans and conservatives absolve themselves of any complicity in it, when in fact they have acquiesced if not actively participated in the divide-and-rule process.
As it stands, we are now divided many ways, based, most obviously, on race and ancestry, then along religious lines (atheists vs. Christians, other religions vs. Christians, Christians among themselves), as well as sex/gender lines, class lines, regional loyalties, and of course politics. The first and the last categories seem to engender the most bitter and intractable conflicts.
Al Gore appears to have been unwittingly accurate when he mistranslated 'E Pluribus Unum' as 'out of one, many.'
So, lacking the normal and healthy quantum of lateral or horizontal loyalty among ourselves, we substitute vertical loyalty, and tend to submit to the powerful at the top, whether a charismatic individual in whom we invest our allegiance, or whether we make The Party the be-all and the end-all and bow our knee to the party powers-that-be.
Some people, of course, devote most of their loyalty to a religious system or hierarchy, with some systems being more authoritarian than others.
As a Christian I believe that God alone merits that kind of total submission, not any human being or system. Any absolute faith in or devotion to a human being or a man-made philosophy or institution is just misplaced and will lead to grief at some point. Patriotism can become a false religion when it crosses the line to unquestioning, blind faith in one's country.
Patriotism, party loyalty, loyalty to a religious system or ideology, all these have to be taught; they are not natural and innate in us, as is the bond to those close to us, to kin and kind.
It becomes a perplexing question: how is it that so many of us are willing or able to forego their "natural affections" in order to follow a leader or a political party or system which is actually inimical and destructive to their kin and kind? What is short-circuiting our natural affections and loyalties that enables this to happen?
Human beings do possess innate instincts for group loyalty and affinity; I am convinced of that. But human beings, being flawed as we are, can circumvent or bypass the natural inclinations in many ways. Maybe part of our fallen condition, in Christian terminology, is that we are malleable and suggestible. That's the whole story of Genesis 3, isn't it? The persuasive serpent in the garden, leading Eve astray -- aided by her cooperation.
We seem to have lost the discernment and the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, genuine from counterfeit, and when discernment is lacking, people look for a leader they trust and like. This might also be blamed on moral laziness; people seem to find it too demanding these days to discern right and wrong, good and bad, for themselves, so it's tempting to look either for a ready-made guide, some system of thought or ideology, to decide for us what is good or bad, right or wrong. And some declare that there is no wrong or right, merely different 'narratives' and preferences.
But following a charismatic leader is tempting for some people, perhaps the people who are the most emotionally immature, and the people who have nothing else in which they have faith. The leader then becomes their guide and their authority; they need only follow, and follow blindly in too many cases. Then it seems that when a cult develops around an individual, that in-group satisfies their natural need for group identity and belonging, a need which in a normal society would be met by the natural bond of the group one is born into.
In a society which is becoming more fragmented by the day, more lacking in normal attachments, we are on a path to becoming more susceptible to charismatic seducers who then provide the sense of belonging, and the sense of purpose that is lacking.
Thomas Carlyle, who wrote so much about heroes and great men, wrote about the different kinds of heroes or 'great men', including the prophet, the poet, and the 'commander over men.'
Carlyle said of the last type, the King, that "He is practically the summary for us of all the various figures of heroism: Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to command over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching to tell us for the day and hour what we are to do."
Is it true of all of us that we need this kind of authoritarian figure to 'command over us' and 'tell us for the day and hour what we are to do'? I like to think this tendency to submit blindly to flesh and blood is a weakness and a flaw that is not common to all human beings, but there may be that tendency in all of us. However it seems to me that Americans are more prone to this kind of submissive followership now than in past eras. Our founding ancestors did not approve of this kind of cravenness in human nature. George Washington (whose birthday just passed, without the honor due) refused the offer to make him a king instead of our first President.
In the past I've lamented the lack of leadership in our day; we seem to live in an age of pygmies and eunuchs who nonetheless have courtiers bowing to them. But in the end maybe it's true that each age gets the leaders it deserves.
If we could rediscover our history and our sense of unity we might be better able to raise up leaders, competent and decent men among us, and above all, to have the discernment to recognize those who are truly fit for leadership. As it is, we are at risk to be exploited by the manipulators and demagogues who dominate our age.
Labels: Identity Politics, Leadership, Loyalty, Politics, Societal Decay
0 comment Saturday, November 22, 2014 | admin
Or so says the writer of this piece.
As I sit here writing, a conservative victory in the midterm elections looms. But I find no reason to be optimistic. The midterm elections will solve nothing. The plain fact is that conservatives have lost the battle for America. The country that many of us were born in has ceased to exist. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Nothing can or will change until we come to terms with the grim reality of moral degeneration. And I have no hope that this can happen, save by some terrible trial.''
Is it true?
If so, is our mortal wound self-inflicted?
And if we think we are finished, and that we've done it to ourselves, I guess we should all close up shop and go amuse ourselves while we are waiting for the end.
The writer of the article has expressed some interesting views, and has had a somewhat controversial career, but ironically, he warns about the greatest danger to human civilization:
He maintains that "the greatest danger to human civilization today is not environmental degradation, but a return to the ancient plague of pessimism."
I agree with that, certainly. Say not the struggle nought availeth.
As I sit here writing, a conservative victory in the midterm elections looms. But I find no reason to be optimistic. The midterm elections will solve nothing. The plain fact is that conservatives have lost the battle for America. The country that many of us were born in has ceased to exist. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Nothing can or will change until we come to terms with the grim reality of moral degeneration. And I have no hope that this can happen, save by some terrible trial.''
Is it true?
If so, is our mortal wound self-inflicted?
And if we think we are finished, and that we've done it to ourselves, I guess we should all close up shop and go amuse ourselves while we are waiting for the end.
The writer of the article has expressed some interesting views, and has had a somewhat controversial career, but ironically, he warns about the greatest danger to human civilization:
He maintains that "the greatest danger to human civilization today is not environmental degradation, but a return to the ancient plague of pessimism."
I agree with that, certainly. Say not the struggle nought availeth.
Labels: American Decline, Death Of The West, Leftism, Societal Decay, Vanishing America
0 comment Sunday, November 16, 2014 | admin
I think we're all rather fed up, and weary of the dismal political prospects in our country, so for once I am going to blog about something rather more trivial -- or is it trivial? The subject is the role of hats in our society.
I tend to agree with that philosopher -- was it Confucius? -- who believed that every little detail of life had some significance, and that the small details and niceties and ceremonies were building blocks of civilization. I am one of those rare people who believes that clothes, in a sense, do make the man or the woman. By that I don't mean that the expensively-dressed people, or the fashion plates, are superior to the rest; far from it. But I think that not only does the way we dress and present ourselves reflect our total worldview and our attitude, but it also helps shape it.
I think most of us would agree that there is a different feeling associated with wearing our best, our Sunday finery, as opposed to wearing our sloppy, lounging-around clothes. But does the phrase 'Sunday finery' even have a meaning nowadays, when most people who attend church wear the same clothes they wear for a casual occasion or recreation? In most churches I've attended in recent years, I've seen more jeans and athletic shoes than dressy clothes, and I've seen a lot of rather revealing clothes on many women, especially the younger ones. When the subject is discussed, I'm always the lone voice speaking for dressing up; most people nowadays are very insistent that God wants them to be comfortable above all else, and that they have a God-given, Constitutional right to wear jeans and sneakers to church. Anything else is decried as being superficial or snobbish.
Again, I appeal to tradition here: generations of our ancestors believed in wearing their best on Sundays, and that did not mean being a fashion plate, nor did it mean competing to be the most stylish or the most expensively dressed. Past generations may not have had expensive clothing, and my Puritan ancestors believed in dressing rather simply and conservatively. Those who had little money and few items of clothing still wore the best they had for worship, and the clothes, no matter that they might be cheaply made or well-worn, were clean and pressed; it was a matter of showing respect.
But now it seems it's all about ourselves and what we want or what we feel most ''comfortable'' in.
People these days seem not to favor dressing up for fancy secular occasions, like going to the ballet or the opera or a concert. I remember when I was a child, we dressed up to go to the movies. My parents both loved movies and we went as a family, and dressing up was de rigueur for evening movies. Similarly for travel; you wore your good clothes to take a plane trip, or even a train trip. Nowadays, wherever you go, the Uniform is everywhere: jeans and athletic shoes. Male or female, the look is much the same. I remember being bemused and somewhat appalled about 15 or so years ago when John Kennedy Jr. was photographed by paparazzi with his then-girlfriend, and both he and the girlfriend were dressed identically, with jeans, sneakers, and identical bomber jackets and baseball caps. Unisex. I thought they both looked very proletarian and sloppy, these 'beautiful people.' What's the use of being rich and beautiful and young if you dress in frumpy, nondescript, shapeless, genderless clothes?
One of the items of clothing that was once standard though now rarely worn is the hat. This is true of men particularly; when I was a child hats were almost universally worn by men. And there was an etiquette involved in hat-wearing; the hat had to be doffed in certain settings (in the presence of ladies, and in church, for example). Men would tip the hat as a greeting. I remember in a building where I worked about 20 years ago, there were still a number of older men who visited there, who still wore their hats, and they unfailingly removed their hats as a chivalrous gesture when I entered the elevator. I found that rather gallant and touching, realizing that these men were a vanishing breed in our society.
Here is a rather fun article about 'Bringing Back the Hat'.
''Up until the 1950�s men were rarely seen out and about without a hat sitting upon their head. Since that time, the wearing of hats has seen a precipitous decline. No one is precisely sure why. Some say the downfall of hats occurred when JFK did not wear a hat to his inauguration, thus forever branding them as uncool. This is an urban myth, however, as Kennedy did indeed don a hat that day. Another theory posits that the shrinking size of cars made wearing a hat while driving prohibitively difficult. Most likely, the demise of hats can simply be traced to changing styles and the ongoing trend towards a more casual look.''
Yes, I think that the changing hairstyles and the overall trend towards a more proletarian, egalitarian, anti-style look explains the disappearance of hats. JFK's hatlessness might also be explained by his own hairstyle; he had a very thick, bushy head of hair that was probably not suited to wearing a hat. Later on in the 60s as young men began to adopt the Beatles hairstyle, and long, unkempt hair became the fashion among younger men, hats just didn't suit the look. Later on when some long-haired young men began to affect hats from earlier eras, for example, young hippie men wearing high silk hats with their ragtag, motley attire, the effect was clownish; similarly with long-haired young men wearing a fedora. It just looked absurd. But hair was all-important in the 60s and onward; long hair was a badge; it showed whether one was one of the 'enemy' or whether one was part of the Movement.
Women, too, abandoned hats around the same time, for similar reasons; the bouffant hairstyle, which was teased and sprayed into shape, was not well-adapted to hats. So the hats had to go; no big-haired woman wanted her hair to be flattened by a hat.
As the years went by, the counterculture look seemed to prevail, and people tended to associate the pre-counterculture fashions as being stodgy and ridiculous. Hats were square and passe.
''Yet hats are due for a full resurgence. Hats are both functional and stylish. They can cover a bad hair day, keep your head warm, and shade your eyes from the sun. They can also be worn to cover a receding hairline, which interestingly enough is why Frank Sinatra, an iconic hat wearer, start wearing one in the first place. They give you touch of class and sophistication, impart personality, and add an interesting and unique accent to your outfits. And hats are a sure-fire way to boost your confidence. A cool hat can quickly become your signature piece and give you extra swagger.
Of course men today still wear hats, but they are most often confined to ratty baseball caps, hippie beanie caps, or the thankfully almost extinct trucker hat.''
Personally I would like to see the last of those ubiquitous baseball caps, except on actual baseball players of course. They are fine in the appropriate context.
The comment thread contains a link to this piece by Theodore Dalrymple, called Use Your Head.
''Theodore Dalrymple believes that wearing proper hats � not hoods or woollen beanies � could encourage self-respect and civility in the young
[...]
Why do men behave so badly nowadays? I know that the question has been asked for more than 2,500 years, but it just so happens that, this time, it is entirely apposite. Any doctor who has worked in the NHS will tell you so.
The explanation came to me a few months ago in a blinding flash of illumination: the hat. To the hat, or rather to the lack of one, is to be traced the source of all our ill-deportment. Bare heads, or heads accoutred in the wrong kind of headgear, cause our want of self-respect, and therefore our want of respect for others. What we need, therefore, is more hats: proper ones, from cloth caps to trilbies, homburgs, bowlers and toppers.
[...]
Reflecting on hats, it suddenly occurred to me how much more difficult it was to behave badly in a proper hat, and how much easier to be polite in one. I recalled the days of my childhood during which most men wore a hat, and I remembered that my father, who was not always the most considerate of men, never failed, in a gesture of genuine politeness, to raise his hat to someone whom he knew. Indeed, the etiquette of hats was drummed into me as a child as being a stage in the taming of the natural savage.''
It's an interesting piece; I recommend reading it. Dalrymple asserts, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that we might encourage hat-wearing as a means of increasing public civility. But I think he is somewhat serious, too, and I do think that what we wear and how we behave are not unrelated.
I think that dressing appropriately shows a proper respect for convention and tradition; dressing for ''comfort'' or to make some rebellious or defiant statement is appropriate to a more adolescent society, which we have become in recent decades. One of the distinctions between the America of my childhood and today's America is that it seemed in the past that grown-ups were in charge; there were rules, there were standards, there were traditions and conventions on which there was a solid consensus. In today's America, it seems as if we've entered Neverland, as in James Barrie's Peter Pan, where there are no grown-ups, and each child creates his own personal Neverland.
I knew someone who said he liked old movies. When I asked him what kind of old movies he liked, he said, ''anything where they wear hats and drive black cars.'' I don't know the significance of black cars here, but the wearing of hats seems to be an indicator of the days when America was still sane and our society was still civilized and decorous.
I tend to agree with that philosopher -- was it Confucius? -- who believed that every little detail of life had some significance, and that the small details and niceties and ceremonies were building blocks of civilization. I am one of those rare people who believes that clothes, in a sense, do make the man or the woman. By that I don't mean that the expensively-dressed people, or the fashion plates, are superior to the rest; far from it. But I think that not only does the way we dress and present ourselves reflect our total worldview and our attitude, but it also helps shape it.
I think most of us would agree that there is a different feeling associated with wearing our best, our Sunday finery, as opposed to wearing our sloppy, lounging-around clothes. But does the phrase 'Sunday finery' even have a meaning nowadays, when most people who attend church wear the same clothes they wear for a casual occasion or recreation? In most churches I've attended in recent years, I've seen more jeans and athletic shoes than dressy clothes, and I've seen a lot of rather revealing clothes on many women, especially the younger ones. When the subject is discussed, I'm always the lone voice speaking for dressing up; most people nowadays are very insistent that God wants them to be comfortable above all else, and that they have a God-given, Constitutional right to wear jeans and sneakers to church. Anything else is decried as being superficial or snobbish.
Again, I appeal to tradition here: generations of our ancestors believed in wearing their best on Sundays, and that did not mean being a fashion plate, nor did it mean competing to be the most stylish or the most expensively dressed. Past generations may not have had expensive clothing, and my Puritan ancestors believed in dressing rather simply and conservatively. Those who had little money and few items of clothing still wore the best they had for worship, and the clothes, no matter that they might be cheaply made or well-worn, were clean and pressed; it was a matter of showing respect.
But now it seems it's all about ourselves and what we want or what we feel most ''comfortable'' in.
People these days seem not to favor dressing up for fancy secular occasions, like going to the ballet or the opera or a concert. I remember when I was a child, we dressed up to go to the movies. My parents both loved movies and we went as a family, and dressing up was de rigueur for evening movies. Similarly for travel; you wore your good clothes to take a plane trip, or even a train trip. Nowadays, wherever you go, the Uniform is everywhere: jeans and athletic shoes. Male or female, the look is much the same. I remember being bemused and somewhat appalled about 15 or so years ago when John Kennedy Jr. was photographed by paparazzi with his then-girlfriend, and both he and the girlfriend were dressed identically, with jeans, sneakers, and identical bomber jackets and baseball caps. Unisex. I thought they both looked very proletarian and sloppy, these 'beautiful people.' What's the use of being rich and beautiful and young if you dress in frumpy, nondescript, shapeless, genderless clothes?
One of the items of clothing that was once standard though now rarely worn is the hat. This is true of men particularly; when I was a child hats were almost universally worn by men. And there was an etiquette involved in hat-wearing; the hat had to be doffed in certain settings (in the presence of ladies, and in church, for example). Men would tip the hat as a greeting. I remember in a building where I worked about 20 years ago, there were still a number of older men who visited there, who still wore their hats, and they unfailingly removed their hats as a chivalrous gesture when I entered the elevator. I found that rather gallant and touching, realizing that these men were a vanishing breed in our society.
Here is a rather fun article about 'Bringing Back the Hat'.
''Up until the 1950�s men were rarely seen out and about without a hat sitting upon their head. Since that time, the wearing of hats has seen a precipitous decline. No one is precisely sure why. Some say the downfall of hats occurred when JFK did not wear a hat to his inauguration, thus forever branding them as uncool. This is an urban myth, however, as Kennedy did indeed don a hat that day. Another theory posits that the shrinking size of cars made wearing a hat while driving prohibitively difficult. Most likely, the demise of hats can simply be traced to changing styles and the ongoing trend towards a more casual look.''
Yes, I think that the changing hairstyles and the overall trend towards a more proletarian, egalitarian, anti-style look explains the disappearance of hats. JFK's hatlessness might also be explained by his own hairstyle; he had a very thick, bushy head of hair that was probably not suited to wearing a hat. Later on in the 60s as young men began to adopt the Beatles hairstyle, and long, unkempt hair became the fashion among younger men, hats just didn't suit the look. Later on when some long-haired young men began to affect hats from earlier eras, for example, young hippie men wearing high silk hats with their ragtag, motley attire, the effect was clownish; similarly with long-haired young men wearing a fedora. It just looked absurd. But hair was all-important in the 60s and onward; long hair was a badge; it showed whether one was one of the 'enemy' or whether one was part of the Movement.
Women, too, abandoned hats around the same time, for similar reasons; the bouffant hairstyle, which was teased and sprayed into shape, was not well-adapted to hats. So the hats had to go; no big-haired woman wanted her hair to be flattened by a hat.
As the years went by, the counterculture look seemed to prevail, and people tended to associate the pre-counterculture fashions as being stodgy and ridiculous. Hats were square and passe.
''Yet hats are due for a full resurgence. Hats are both functional and stylish. They can cover a bad hair day, keep your head warm, and shade your eyes from the sun. They can also be worn to cover a receding hairline, which interestingly enough is why Frank Sinatra, an iconic hat wearer, start wearing one in the first place. They give you touch of class and sophistication, impart personality, and add an interesting and unique accent to your outfits. And hats are a sure-fire way to boost your confidence. A cool hat can quickly become your signature piece and give you extra swagger.
Of course men today still wear hats, but they are most often confined to ratty baseball caps, hippie beanie caps, or the thankfully almost extinct trucker hat.''
Personally I would like to see the last of those ubiquitous baseball caps, except on actual baseball players of course. They are fine in the appropriate context.
The comment thread contains a link to this piece by Theodore Dalrymple, called Use Your Head.
''Theodore Dalrymple believes that wearing proper hats � not hoods or woollen beanies � could encourage self-respect and civility in the young
[...]
Why do men behave so badly nowadays? I know that the question has been asked for more than 2,500 years, but it just so happens that, this time, it is entirely apposite. Any doctor who has worked in the NHS will tell you so.
The explanation came to me a few months ago in a blinding flash of illumination: the hat. To the hat, or rather to the lack of one, is to be traced the source of all our ill-deportment. Bare heads, or heads accoutred in the wrong kind of headgear, cause our want of self-respect, and therefore our want of respect for others. What we need, therefore, is more hats: proper ones, from cloth caps to trilbies, homburgs, bowlers and toppers.
[...]
Reflecting on hats, it suddenly occurred to me how much more difficult it was to behave badly in a proper hat, and how much easier to be polite in one. I recalled the days of my childhood during which most men wore a hat, and I remembered that my father, who was not always the most considerate of men, never failed, in a gesture of genuine politeness, to raise his hat to someone whom he knew. Indeed, the etiquette of hats was drummed into me as a child as being a stage in the taming of the natural savage.''
It's an interesting piece; I recommend reading it. Dalrymple asserts, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that we might encourage hat-wearing as a means of increasing public civility. But I think he is somewhat serious, too, and I do think that what we wear and how we behave are not unrelated.
I think that dressing appropriately shows a proper respect for convention and tradition; dressing for ''comfort'' or to make some rebellious or defiant statement is appropriate to a more adolescent society, which we have become in recent decades. One of the distinctions between the America of my childhood and today's America is that it seemed in the past that grown-ups were in charge; there were rules, there were standards, there were traditions and conventions on which there was a solid consensus. In today's America, it seems as if we've entered Neverland, as in James Barrie's Peter Pan, where there are no grown-ups, and each child creates his own personal Neverland.
I knew someone who said he liked old movies. When I asked him what kind of old movies he liked, he said, ''anything where they wear hats and drive black cars.'' I don't know the significance of black cars here, but the wearing of hats seems to be an indicator of the days when America was still sane and our society was still civilized and decorous.
Labels: American Culture, American Customs, Civility, Egalitarianism, Societal Decay
0 comment Saturday, November 15, 2014 | admin
In response to a recent blog entry of mine, on pop culture and politics, the subject of television and the role it has played in the dumbing down of our culture, including our politics, was brought up.
I had been thinking of the huge role that the advent of television had in the social revolution that we mostly associate with the Sixties, and with my generation, the baby-boomers. While I acknowledge the foolishness of my generation and the responsibility we bore for some of the social destruction which was in full swing in the 60s and thereafter, I have argued that the changes we all recognize were in fact already well under way when my peers and I were children in the 50s, and even before.
Television, which began regular national broadcasting in the late 1940s, was a huge factor.
Television became an incredibly influential medium, which truly revolutionized the world.
This piece by Hereward Lindsay, called On the Decline of Our People, deals with the changes wrought by television, and the deleterious effects on our culture.
A friend recently sent me an email that concluded:
The cathode ray tube was the most powerful invention of the 20th century. I defy anybody to prove that wrong.
He didn't get any defiance from me. The malevolent impact of television is a subject I have thought about a lot. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that my hyper-Calvinist ancestors were right in their suspicion of drama and actors. (Socrates, by the way, had somewhat similar ideas. Read Plato's dialogue the Ion and you will be astonished at how timely it is with its warnings about actors trying to influence government policy and their inherent bad character as people who are professionals at creating illusions and fantasies, i.e. trained deceivers and people whose minds are not grounded in the concrete and real.)
All of us American dissidents (or "thought criminals", as might be more appropriate) have lain awake at night throughout our adult lives trying to figure out how our race and civilization have collapsed. There is no subject more important and more entitled to consideration.''
[Emphasis mine]
Lindsay goes on to tie together certain trends in our society, factors such as decline in the number of self-employed individuals, and the concomitant decline in the thinking skills and independence of mind of Americans. I am not clear, actually, how he correlates the advent of television with, say, the dwindling number of small independent farmers, but I agree with his argument that television has wielded enormous power in spreading a uniform set of ideas, which have become a stultifying orthodoxy. Received opinion dominates the national discussion, such as it is, thanks to the ubiquity of television, and the monolithic party line which is handed down mostly by that medium.
Newspapers are less and less influential; subscribers are fewer with each passing year, and many newspapers have disappeared because of dwindling readership. But cable news (and to some extent, the internet) are taking over the role once played by newspapers.
Lindsay writes about how the domination by the means of images rather than the printed word has made for more passive, less engaged, less imaginative citizens. It used to be said that radio, in its heyday, was the 'theatre of the mind', requiring considerable powers of active imagination and concentration on the part of its listeners. The visual media like TV, movies and videos, relying on pictures rather than words on a page, tend to 'dumb down' the populace, and literacy declines, along with the attention span.
Lindsay also mentions how political debates have become more simple-minded and devoid of serious content. This is obvious, however it may be less apparent to those who don't remember any other state of affairs. In the past, after some of the early ''debates'' in our present campaign, I drew my readers' attention to a website which contains transcripts of past presidential debates and of course there are now video clips of such debates.
The debates, even as recently as the 1960s, were true debates, and not merely 'panel discussions' and staged, scripted events which our recent debates are. However, the first series of televised presidential debates, in 1960, was the beginning of the trend of focusing on appearance, as Richard Nixon appeared nervous and sweaty on camera, while Kennedy appeared composed and confident.
I've blogged before, too, about our present society's obsession with 'image' and style, and the apparent preference for the telegenic and media-savvy candidate, no matter how inconsequential his ideas or his message. There are limitations to this analysis; if looks were all, John Edwards would be the Democrat candidate (even though some Republicans like to ridicule his looks or hairstyle, he is a telegenic, attractive man). And surely McCain would not be a frontrunner ,as he appears to be, if looks were all. But the truth is, being telegenic and glib, and facile with sound bites and one-liners counts for more these days than it did back in the days of Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, or Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.
One of the criticisms most frequently made of Tom Tancredo, who has now dropped out of the Presidential race, was that he was a 'poor speaker', too hesitant, not confident enough. On the other hand, we hear that Barack Hussein Obama's voice is supposedly a great asset. Personally, I think his voice is reminiscent of actor Ted Cassidy's.
Again, critics (most of whom, I would say, are already against Ron Paul) criticize and ridicule his 'nerdy' demeanor and his less-than-commanding voice. I say this is a shallow criticism. It is said that Thomas Jefferson had a very weak speaking style, despite his great facility with language in the written form.
Of his first Inaugural Address, it was said that
The speech was delivered in so low a tone that few heard it. Mr. Jefferson had given your Brother [Samuel Harrison Smith, editor of the National Intelligencer] a copy early in the morning, so that on coming out of the house, the paper was distributed immediately.
The second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805, like the first one, "was only partly audible."
Jefferson was by all accounts a shy and retiring man, hardly one of those back-slapping, smarmy politicians who are considered the ideal today. If today's superficial standards had applied in his day, we would have been deprived of his great genius in shaping our country.
The emphasis on looks, style, and image over substance and character are in some part a legacy of television.
Mitt Romney is considered by most to be the most 'attractive' Republican candidate (which is not saying much, considering the pickings). However I find him rather artificial and false, and I usually have a very good nose for insincerity. I was warning people about Bill Clinton from the git-go, and few were willing to be wary then; he seemed so friendly and warm, and people are so easily gulled these days.
But this is the result of looking only at the surface of people and things.
The way the primary season is shaping up, it looks as though Americans are gearing up to elect themselves another silver-tongued deceiver of whichever party, and to give a cold shoulder to principle and character.
The political campaign is just one manifestation of how television has deeply affected our society. The overall picture is that television has ensured that a single set of very liberal beliefs dominates our society, and this set of beliefs was in reality revolutionary, overturning the mores and habits of old America. The pernicious system we call 'political correctness,' which paralyzes us when it comes to protecting our territory and our people and culture, would not be possible without the role played by television in establishing 'respectable' opinion. One need not watch the cable ''news'' channels to be indoctrinated by the pundits and political hacks; one can get the party line via the favorite sitcoms, crime shows, reality shows, MTV, and even Country Music Television. And even if you manage to avoid all those, the commercials also carry the required memes. There is literally no escaping the 'message', the agenda.
And if you don't recognize that there IS an agenda and a message that is relentlessly pushed by television (and movies, and the music industry, etc.) then you are merely so used to it that you no longer see it. It is so ingrained in most Americans (and all Western peoples) these days that no one even notices it, or thinks it to be propaganda. It just 'is.' And for the younger generations, it's all they've known. So it becomes invisible, and second nature to most of us.
Lindsay correctly describes the entertainment industry in general as being about deception. And yes, some entertainment is innocuous, but few today have the discernment to sift the wheat from the chaff.
So we are easy prey for 'whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.'
It's facile to blame the 'liberals' or the baby-boomers for all that is amiss in our world, but the fact is, the process has been under way for some time, and it is not merely 'the liberals' or 'the hippies' who created the monster. It has been a process of collusion, unwitting or witting, between the ideologues who have set out to remake the world, and the people who are out to make a buck via the bread and circuses of television and the entertainment industry. The latter are happy to present subversive material if there is profit in it, and if revolution and transformation of Western society are good for their bottom line, they will happily collude. I don't know who is using whom in this strange alliance of leftists and corporate interests; I think they are both manipulating us.
As I've said, we have to free ourselves from the paralyzing effect of the prevailing orthodoxies and opinions, and as long as we are glued to the mass media, whether it's 'entertainment' or junk news on the cable news channels, we cannot extricate ourselves from the snares laid for us.
Fortunately we do have a choice; we can become aware of these destructive influences, and we can walk away, and we can create alternatives. It will be a long-term effort, and distressingly, we have a short time frame in which to try to reverse course, but we really have no choice but to try. The present course is taking us perilously close to a point of no return.
Forum comments here.
I had been thinking of the huge role that the advent of television had in the social revolution that we mostly associate with the Sixties, and with my generation, the baby-boomers. While I acknowledge the foolishness of my generation and the responsibility we bore for some of the social destruction which was in full swing in the 60s and thereafter, I have argued that the changes we all recognize were in fact already well under way when my peers and I were children in the 50s, and even before.
Television, which began regular national broadcasting in the late 1940s, was a huge factor.
Television became an incredibly influential medium, which truly revolutionized the world.
This piece by Hereward Lindsay, called On the Decline of Our People, deals with the changes wrought by television, and the deleterious effects on our culture.
A friend recently sent me an email that concluded:
The cathode ray tube was the most powerful invention of the 20th century. I defy anybody to prove that wrong.
He didn't get any defiance from me. The malevolent impact of television is a subject I have thought about a lot. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that my hyper-Calvinist ancestors were right in their suspicion of drama and actors. (Socrates, by the way, had somewhat similar ideas. Read Plato's dialogue the Ion and you will be astonished at how timely it is with its warnings about actors trying to influence government policy and their inherent bad character as people who are professionals at creating illusions and fantasies, i.e. trained deceivers and people whose minds are not grounded in the concrete and real.)
All of us American dissidents (or "thought criminals", as might be more appropriate) have lain awake at night throughout our adult lives trying to figure out how our race and civilization have collapsed. There is no subject more important and more entitled to consideration.''
[Emphasis mine]
Lindsay goes on to tie together certain trends in our society, factors such as decline in the number of self-employed individuals, and the concomitant decline in the thinking skills and independence of mind of Americans. I am not clear, actually, how he correlates the advent of television with, say, the dwindling number of small independent farmers, but I agree with his argument that television has wielded enormous power in spreading a uniform set of ideas, which have become a stultifying orthodoxy. Received opinion dominates the national discussion, such as it is, thanks to the ubiquity of television, and the monolithic party line which is handed down mostly by that medium.
Newspapers are less and less influential; subscribers are fewer with each passing year, and many newspapers have disappeared because of dwindling readership. But cable news (and to some extent, the internet) are taking over the role once played by newspapers.
Lindsay writes about how the domination by the means of images rather than the printed word has made for more passive, less engaged, less imaginative citizens. It used to be said that radio, in its heyday, was the 'theatre of the mind', requiring considerable powers of active imagination and concentration on the part of its listeners. The visual media like TV, movies and videos, relying on pictures rather than words on a page, tend to 'dumb down' the populace, and literacy declines, along with the attention span.
Lindsay also mentions how political debates have become more simple-minded and devoid of serious content. This is obvious, however it may be less apparent to those who don't remember any other state of affairs. In the past, after some of the early ''debates'' in our present campaign, I drew my readers' attention to a website which contains transcripts of past presidential debates and of course there are now video clips of such debates.
The debates, even as recently as the 1960s, were true debates, and not merely 'panel discussions' and staged, scripted events which our recent debates are. However, the first series of televised presidential debates, in 1960, was the beginning of the trend of focusing on appearance, as Richard Nixon appeared nervous and sweaty on camera, while Kennedy appeared composed and confident.
I've blogged before, too, about our present society's obsession with 'image' and style, and the apparent preference for the telegenic and media-savvy candidate, no matter how inconsequential his ideas or his message. There are limitations to this analysis; if looks were all, John Edwards would be the Democrat candidate (even though some Republicans like to ridicule his looks or hairstyle, he is a telegenic, attractive man). And surely McCain would not be a frontrunner ,as he appears to be, if looks were all. But the truth is, being telegenic and glib, and facile with sound bites and one-liners counts for more these days than it did back in the days of Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, or Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.
One of the criticisms most frequently made of Tom Tancredo, who has now dropped out of the Presidential race, was that he was a 'poor speaker', too hesitant, not confident enough. On the other hand, we hear that Barack Hussein Obama's voice is supposedly a great asset. Personally, I think his voice is reminiscent of actor Ted Cassidy's.
Again, critics (most of whom, I would say, are already against Ron Paul) criticize and ridicule his 'nerdy' demeanor and his less-than-commanding voice. I say this is a shallow criticism. It is said that Thomas Jefferson had a very weak speaking style, despite his great facility with language in the written form.
Of his first Inaugural Address, it was said that
The speech was delivered in so low a tone that few heard it. Mr. Jefferson had given your Brother [Samuel Harrison Smith, editor of the National Intelligencer] a copy early in the morning, so that on coming out of the house, the paper was distributed immediately.
The second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805, like the first one, "was only partly audible."
Jefferson was by all accounts a shy and retiring man, hardly one of those back-slapping, smarmy politicians who are considered the ideal today. If today's superficial standards had applied in his day, we would have been deprived of his great genius in shaping our country.
The emphasis on looks, style, and image over substance and character are in some part a legacy of television.
Mitt Romney is considered by most to be the most 'attractive' Republican candidate (which is not saying much, considering the pickings). However I find him rather artificial and false, and I usually have a very good nose for insincerity. I was warning people about Bill Clinton from the git-go, and few were willing to be wary then; he seemed so friendly and warm, and people are so easily gulled these days.
But this is the result of looking only at the surface of people and things.
The way the primary season is shaping up, it looks as though Americans are gearing up to elect themselves another silver-tongued deceiver of whichever party, and to give a cold shoulder to principle and character.
The political campaign is just one manifestation of how television has deeply affected our society. The overall picture is that television has ensured that a single set of very liberal beliefs dominates our society, and this set of beliefs was in reality revolutionary, overturning the mores and habits of old America. The pernicious system we call 'political correctness,' which paralyzes us when it comes to protecting our territory and our people and culture, would not be possible without the role played by television in establishing 'respectable' opinion. One need not watch the cable ''news'' channels to be indoctrinated by the pundits and political hacks; one can get the party line via the favorite sitcoms, crime shows, reality shows, MTV, and even Country Music Television. And even if you manage to avoid all those, the commercials also carry the required memes. There is literally no escaping the 'message', the agenda.
And if you don't recognize that there IS an agenda and a message that is relentlessly pushed by television (and movies, and the music industry, etc.) then you are merely so used to it that you no longer see it. It is so ingrained in most Americans (and all Western peoples) these days that no one even notices it, or thinks it to be propaganda. It just 'is.' And for the younger generations, it's all they've known. So it becomes invisible, and second nature to most of us.
Lindsay correctly describes the entertainment industry in general as being about deception. And yes, some entertainment is innocuous, but few today have the discernment to sift the wheat from the chaff.
So we are easy prey for 'whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.'
It's facile to blame the 'liberals' or the baby-boomers for all that is amiss in our world, but the fact is, the process has been under way for some time, and it is not merely 'the liberals' or 'the hippies' who created the monster. It has been a process of collusion, unwitting or witting, between the ideologues who have set out to remake the world, and the people who are out to make a buck via the bread and circuses of television and the entertainment industry. The latter are happy to present subversive material if there is profit in it, and if revolution and transformation of Western society are good for their bottom line, they will happily collude. I don't know who is using whom in this strange alliance of leftists and corporate interests; I think they are both manipulating us.
As I've said, we have to free ourselves from the paralyzing effect of the prevailing orthodoxies and opinions, and as long as we are glued to the mass media, whether it's 'entertainment' or junk news on the cable news channels, we cannot extricate ourselves from the snares laid for us.
Fortunately we do have a choice; we can become aware of these destructive influences, and we can walk away, and we can create alternatives. It will be a long-term effort, and distressingly, we have a short time frame in which to try to reverse course, but we really have no choice but to try. The present course is taking us perilously close to a point of no return.
Forum comments here.
Labels: Corportate Media, Entertainment Media, Identity Politics, Junk News, Propaganda, Societal Decay, Television, Western Decline
0 comment Saturday, November 8, 2014 | admin
'Good' is Not a Bad Word
by Chuck Colson - Breakpoint
Eight years ago, a young writer named Wendy Shalit took the culture by storm with a radical book called A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. While many people embraced the idea of a return to modesty�especially the young women whose struggles and aspirations Shalit wrote about�others were appalled. "I knew that my arguments . . . might be challenged," Shalit recalls now, "but nothing prepared me for the tongue-lashings I would receive from my elders. . . . [Feminist writer] Katha Pollitt called me a 'twit.� . . . The Nation solemnly foretold that I would 'certainly be embarrassed� and regret my stance 'in a few years.�"
Well, it�s now been a few years, and Wendy regrets nothing. On the contrary, she has a new book out, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It�s Not Bad to Be Good. As the title proclaims, Shalit is still convinced that true strength and happiness come not from deadening one�s emotions and having sex for fun, but from practicing modesty and self-restraint.
And guess who�s on her side?
As Shalit recounts, "To find out why modesty is more appealing to younger people, [feminist writer Katha] Pollitt might have talked to her own daughter, Sophie, who . . . was disgusted by contemporary sexual norms."
Colson's article then goes on to tell how some feminists' daughters, like the daughter of feminist writer Erica Jong, agree with Miss Shalit's point of view. It's obvious that the feminist ideology has not been a great success in achieving a better society in which women are 'freer' and safer and more 'autonomous', but instead, too often, young women feel more vulnerable and more distressed by the shabby state of male-female relationships, in which heartless, soulless 'hook-ups' often substitute for romance or loving companionship.
Shalit in her original book also made the point, a valid one, that many 'conservatives' who ought to have been on her side tended to dismiss some of her concerns as being feminist 'whining' and complaining. If she said that young women felt vulnerable or treated as objects, this was decried by many 'conservatives' as feminist victim rhetoric.
She said:
First, I want to invite conservatives to take the claims of the feminists seriously. That is, all of their claims, from the date-rape figures to anorexia to the shyness of teenage girls, even the number of women who say they feel 'objectified� by the male gaze. I want them to stop saying that this or that study was flawed; or that young women are exaggerating; or that it has been proven that at this or that university such-and-such a charge was made up. Because ultimately, it seems to me, it doesn�t really matter if one study is flawed or if one charge is false. When it comes down to it, the same vague yet unmistakable problem is still with us."
I think conservatives probably went too far in deriding some of the claims of young women about date-rape, for example, simply as an unthinking knee-jerk reaction against feminism. If feminists claimed that date rape occurred at a certain rate, then the 'conservatives' immediately rejected the claims as feminist propaganda, and tended to deny that rape was as common as feminists said -- just because feminists said it. Surely there is a better and more honest way: examine statistics, and pay attention to real-life anecdotes. We can't rely on anecdotes alone, but when you see patterns, those patterns are telling. I have heard stories from women and girls whose honesty is not in doubt; conservatives have been too quick to downplay and deny that women's rape claims are true.
I agree that false rape claims do happen; I believe that women sometimes do make false claims for vindictive reasons or for other reasons: to escape consequences for some bad judgment on their part, or to get attention and sympathy. But to acknowledge that false rape accusations are made (as with the Duke Lacrosse players) should not mean that we declare all rape claims to be lies or feminist whining.
A while back, when basketball player Kobe Bryant was accused of rape, I was staggered by the number of 'conservatives' who were quick to condemn the accuser as a liar and a 'gold-digger' or attention-seeker. I could not and cannot see how her claims would enrich her or bring her fame; instead, she was exposing herself to being called a liar and worse.
I think in an overreaction to feminist claims about rape, both 'date-rape' and forcible stranger rape, many 'conservatives' have dropped the traditional chivalrous protection of women and have been too quick to disbelieve women who have in fact been victims of rape or other sexual crimes.
Another recent case in which people, both men and women, have been quick to condemn a young woman was the Natalee Holloway case, in which the missing young woman was condemned as a slut, a whore, and worse, for having apparently left a club with a young man she just met. Yes, if that's the way it happened (and we have only the suspects' word for it) she certainly showed poor judgment, but did she deserve rape and/or death as a punishment?
I think conservatives have been too quick to adopt the harsh tone of lesbian libertarian writer Camille Paglia, who tends to blame young women for their poor choices. Paglia somehow has been established as a 'conservative' when she is simply anti-liberal (and often anti-traditional, hence anti-conservative). And she is a feminist, for Pete's sake, yet she has many ardent 'conservative' admirers. Conservatives are all too often easily pleased; anybody who insults liberals is taken to the hearts of these 'conservatives' as being on our side. Paglia is not on the side of traditional values, in any way. In her own words:
I'm someone who is on the record as being pro-pornography--all the way through kiddie porn and snuff films. I'm pro-prostitution--I mean really pro, not just pro-prostitute and against prostitution. I'm pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-drag queens, pro-legalization of drugs.''
Some 'conservative'. Some advocate of women.
More from the same piece
Like when this huge, nasty expose I wrote for Arion at Boston University came out, and the San Francisco Examiner magazine made it its cover story this summer. They asked me, by the way, "Would you pose as Madonna for our pages?" And I said, "No, but I'll do something just as good." So I posed in a purple miniskirt with a whip and chains in front of a porn store. I thought for San Francisco I should do that--make an extra effort!
So at any rate I got these wonderful moving letters from San Francisco and from the Bay Area--people who said that they were weeping, crying as they read my piece. They said that "for twenty years I've seen our Sixties ideals seem to be betrayed--I felt lost and uncentered--and when I read your piece I remember again the fire that we felt in the Sixties, I remember again what we were working for in the Sixties." Okay, so this is what I'm doing. I'm trying to bring back out of the woodwork all these Sixties people. Come out, come out, wherever you are!''
Paglia occasionally says a true thing, but she is no conservative, and should not be a darling of unthinking conservatives just because she insults their enemies occasionally. I see the same phenomenon with figures like Christopher Hitchins and Andrew Sullivan, neither of them conservative, yet they are still fawned over by conservatives because they aim barbs at favorite targets of many on the right, and they do so with verbal skill or eloquence. Yet they should not be mistaken for conservatives.
So Paglia is right to an extent; she is right that feminism has tended to infantilize women, a point which I have made myself on occasion. We might expect liberal feminists to adopt an infantilized victim image of women, but when conservative women embrace that image of women and defend women who ought not to be defended, on the basis of their helplessness, this is distressing. Women are not helpless and are not exempt from responsibility.
Infantilizing women, and inculcating them with the idea of their helplessness and lack of accountability is not the traditional way; women may have been 'second-class citizens' by our modern liberal standards in the old days, but they were brought up to believe that they were responsible for the choices they made, and they were taught that they had better choose rightly or there would be consequences. Hence young women, in the unenlightened pre-feminist days, were taught that public drunkenness, or even private drunkenness, was a bad and immoral choice, and that it left them very vulnerable to any number of possible fates, none of them good. Rape or worse would be a potential fate of a young woman who got falling-down drunk, or allowed herself to be alone with a strange male. Young women understood that, and behaved accordingly, and those who did not, were at the very least, likely to have their reputation diminished, and to find themselves gossiped about and sometimes shunned. Was this cruel? Maybe; but it brought many a young woman back in line, or deterred her from getting out of line in the first place. Better to be shunned or chastised and to avoid the wrong path than to become a drunk and a promiscuous slattern. And nowadays, drunkenness and sluttish behaviors are the norm for many young women, not the exception.
So was Natalee Holloway to blame, as many conservatives assert, for whatever sad fate overtook her? In some sense, maybe, but does her irresponsibility absolve the guilt of whoever abducted and/or killed her? Hardly.
The young woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape seems to have been less to blame, considering that her job brought her into contact with Bryant, and she may have been alone with him in the context of her job. So was she irresponsible? Most of us can't decide that because we don't know the facts. She may have been star-struck; some young people rashly believe that celebrities are not capable of criminal behavior.
But these young women are all in a sense victims, although I hate to use that odiously overused word, of our current society's libertine norms. In a world in which many young people have a careless and callous attitude towards sex, regarding it as a mere animal act, it's not surprising that 'hook-ups' are the norm and promiscuity no longer scandalous. And in such a degraded atmosphere, there will be more sexual advantage taken: drunk young women are vulnerable. And the dropping of social censure for drunkenness is a contributing factor. It used to be that drunkenness, or alcohol use in general, was considered 'unladylike'. Nice girls did not get drunk. But with the triumph of feminism, with women vying to outdo males in excesses like social drinking and promiscuity, being 'ladylike' was declared to be oppressive for women. It was male chauvinism that invented the image of the 'lady', so the feminists said, so the ladylike ideal must go. The word 'lady' became a fighting word, a grave insult, for feminists. Women must never be called 'girls' or 'gals' or 'chicks', and worst of all was the word 'lady'. because the 'lady' was a prisoner of the patriarchy, with censorious males telling her not to do this and not to do that; her freedom demanded the discarding of all rules of ladylike behavior. Women were thus encouraged to curse and swear like sailors, drink heavily like men, go everywhere unescorted, including into bars (remember ladies could not enter some bars unescorted in the old days). Women suddenly adopted a number of other risky behaviors like hitchhiking alone, often with bad consequences. And the feminists refused to see that their reckless casting off of old taboos and social roles made women immensely more vulnerable to the predators who unquestionably exist out there.
Feminists did women no favors, though they claimed to be 'liberating' women.
But Wendy Shalit is right; conservatives have overreacted against feminists and have thus turned against women in a sense.
Feminists may have exaggerated the victimization of women, and diminished their responsibility for the misfortunes that followed feminist 'liberation', but the fact is, women ARE vulnerable, if only by virtue of the fact that women are not the physical equals of men. And the 'conservative' women who believe the feminist nonsense about women being the equals of men in the military and in police work are as much fools as the liberal feminists on this score. Women, aside from the occasional -type, are simply not a match for men in size and strength. Women and girls are more at risk out there in a world with too many predators and deviants, Paglia and her ilk notwithstanding. Shalit tried to make that point: women are vulnerable, and we have to re-instill in our girls the need for greater vigilance and 'ladylike behavior' so as to minimize the risks. Yes, we can teach our girls to defend themselves as best they can, but to teach them that a few martial arts lessons will make them invulnerable while walking the streets at 2 A.M. is to delude them. And yes they should be taught to use firearms, but we should also teach them that it's still better to live a life which does not expose them to needless risks, and that the old-fashioned ways and norms were much healthier and safer for women than this egalitarian jungle in which foolish and reckless and misguided young women are exposed to dangers their grandmothers would never have imagined.
We do need a return to modesty and to some kind of sanity regarding sexuality and the balance between the sexes. Clearly the 'new' ways pushed on us by the left since the 1960s are not working; they are destroying the very basis of our society.
by Chuck Colson - Breakpoint
Eight years ago, a young writer named Wendy Shalit took the culture by storm with a radical book called A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. While many people embraced the idea of a return to modesty�especially the young women whose struggles and aspirations Shalit wrote about�others were appalled. "I knew that my arguments . . . might be challenged," Shalit recalls now, "but nothing prepared me for the tongue-lashings I would receive from my elders. . . . [Feminist writer] Katha Pollitt called me a 'twit.� . . . The Nation solemnly foretold that I would 'certainly be embarrassed� and regret my stance 'in a few years.�"
Well, it�s now been a few years, and Wendy regrets nothing. On the contrary, she has a new book out, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It�s Not Bad to Be Good. As the title proclaims, Shalit is still convinced that true strength and happiness come not from deadening one�s emotions and having sex for fun, but from practicing modesty and self-restraint.
And guess who�s on her side?
As Shalit recounts, "To find out why modesty is more appealing to younger people, [feminist writer Katha] Pollitt might have talked to her own daughter, Sophie, who . . . was disgusted by contemporary sexual norms."
Colson's article then goes on to tell how some feminists' daughters, like the daughter of feminist writer Erica Jong, agree with Miss Shalit's point of view. It's obvious that the feminist ideology has not been a great success in achieving a better society in which women are 'freer' and safer and more 'autonomous', but instead, too often, young women feel more vulnerable and more distressed by the shabby state of male-female relationships, in which heartless, soulless 'hook-ups' often substitute for romance or loving companionship.
Shalit in her original book also made the point, a valid one, that many 'conservatives' who ought to have been on her side tended to dismiss some of her concerns as being feminist 'whining' and complaining. If she said that young women felt vulnerable or treated as objects, this was decried by many 'conservatives' as feminist victim rhetoric.
She said:
First, I want to invite conservatives to take the claims of the feminists seriously. That is, all of their claims, from the date-rape figures to anorexia to the shyness of teenage girls, even the number of women who say they feel 'objectified� by the male gaze. I want them to stop saying that this or that study was flawed; or that young women are exaggerating; or that it has been proven that at this or that university such-and-such a charge was made up. Because ultimately, it seems to me, it doesn�t really matter if one study is flawed or if one charge is false. When it comes down to it, the same vague yet unmistakable problem is still with us."
I think conservatives probably went too far in deriding some of the claims of young women about date-rape, for example, simply as an unthinking knee-jerk reaction against feminism. If feminists claimed that date rape occurred at a certain rate, then the 'conservatives' immediately rejected the claims as feminist propaganda, and tended to deny that rape was as common as feminists said -- just because feminists said it. Surely there is a better and more honest way: examine statistics, and pay attention to real-life anecdotes. We can't rely on anecdotes alone, but when you see patterns, those patterns are telling. I have heard stories from women and girls whose honesty is not in doubt; conservatives have been too quick to downplay and deny that women's rape claims are true.
I agree that false rape claims do happen; I believe that women sometimes do make false claims for vindictive reasons or for other reasons: to escape consequences for some bad judgment on their part, or to get attention and sympathy. But to acknowledge that false rape accusations are made (as with the Duke Lacrosse players) should not mean that we declare all rape claims to be lies or feminist whining.
A while back, when basketball player Kobe Bryant was accused of rape, I was staggered by the number of 'conservatives' who were quick to condemn the accuser as a liar and a 'gold-digger' or attention-seeker. I could not and cannot see how her claims would enrich her or bring her fame; instead, she was exposing herself to being called a liar and worse.
I think in an overreaction to feminist claims about rape, both 'date-rape' and forcible stranger rape, many 'conservatives' have dropped the traditional chivalrous protection of women and have been too quick to disbelieve women who have in fact been victims of rape or other sexual crimes.
Another recent case in which people, both men and women, have been quick to condemn a young woman was the Natalee Holloway case, in which the missing young woman was condemned as a slut, a whore, and worse, for having apparently left a club with a young man she just met. Yes, if that's the way it happened (and we have only the suspects' word for it) she certainly showed poor judgment, but did she deserve rape and/or death as a punishment?
I think conservatives have been too quick to adopt the harsh tone of lesbian libertarian writer Camille Paglia, who tends to blame young women for their poor choices. Paglia somehow has been established as a 'conservative' when she is simply anti-liberal (and often anti-traditional, hence anti-conservative). And she is a feminist, for Pete's sake, yet she has many ardent 'conservative' admirers. Conservatives are all too often easily pleased; anybody who insults liberals is taken to the hearts of these 'conservatives' as being on our side. Paglia is not on the side of traditional values, in any way. In her own words:
I'm someone who is on the record as being pro-pornography--all the way through kiddie porn and snuff films. I'm pro-prostitution--I mean really pro, not just pro-prostitute and against prostitution. I'm pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-drag queens, pro-legalization of drugs.''
Some 'conservative'. Some advocate of women.
More from the same piece
Like when this huge, nasty expose I wrote for Arion at Boston University came out, and the San Francisco Examiner magazine made it its cover story this summer. They asked me, by the way, "Would you pose as Madonna for our pages?" And I said, "No, but I'll do something just as good." So I posed in a purple miniskirt with a whip and chains in front of a porn store. I thought for San Francisco I should do that--make an extra effort!
So at any rate I got these wonderful moving letters from San Francisco and from the Bay Area--people who said that they were weeping, crying as they read my piece. They said that "for twenty years I've seen our Sixties ideals seem to be betrayed--I felt lost and uncentered--and when I read your piece I remember again the fire that we felt in the Sixties, I remember again what we were working for in the Sixties." Okay, so this is what I'm doing. I'm trying to bring back out of the woodwork all these Sixties people. Come out, come out, wherever you are!''
Paglia occasionally says a true thing, but she is no conservative, and should not be a darling of unthinking conservatives just because she insults their enemies occasionally. I see the same phenomenon with figures like Christopher Hitchins and Andrew Sullivan, neither of them conservative, yet they are still fawned over by conservatives because they aim barbs at favorite targets of many on the right, and they do so with verbal skill or eloquence. Yet they should not be mistaken for conservatives.
So Paglia is right to an extent; she is right that feminism has tended to infantilize women, a point which I have made myself on occasion. We might expect liberal feminists to adopt an infantilized victim image of women, but when conservative women embrace that image of women and defend women who ought not to be defended, on the basis of their helplessness, this is distressing. Women are not helpless and are not exempt from responsibility.
Infantilizing women, and inculcating them with the idea of their helplessness and lack of accountability is not the traditional way; women may have been 'second-class citizens' by our modern liberal standards in the old days, but they were brought up to believe that they were responsible for the choices they made, and they were taught that they had better choose rightly or there would be consequences. Hence young women, in the unenlightened pre-feminist days, were taught that public drunkenness, or even private drunkenness, was a bad and immoral choice, and that it left them very vulnerable to any number of possible fates, none of them good. Rape or worse would be a potential fate of a young woman who got falling-down drunk, or allowed herself to be alone with a strange male. Young women understood that, and behaved accordingly, and those who did not, were at the very least, likely to have their reputation diminished, and to find themselves gossiped about and sometimes shunned. Was this cruel? Maybe; but it brought many a young woman back in line, or deterred her from getting out of line in the first place. Better to be shunned or chastised and to avoid the wrong path than to become a drunk and a promiscuous slattern. And nowadays, drunkenness and sluttish behaviors are the norm for many young women, not the exception.
So was Natalee Holloway to blame, as many conservatives assert, for whatever sad fate overtook her? In some sense, maybe, but does her irresponsibility absolve the guilt of whoever abducted and/or killed her? Hardly.
The young woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape seems to have been less to blame, considering that her job brought her into contact with Bryant, and she may have been alone with him in the context of her job. So was she irresponsible? Most of us can't decide that because we don't know the facts. She may have been star-struck; some young people rashly believe that celebrities are not capable of criminal behavior.
But these young women are all in a sense victims, although I hate to use that odiously overused word, of our current society's libertine norms. In a world in which many young people have a careless and callous attitude towards sex, regarding it as a mere animal act, it's not surprising that 'hook-ups' are the norm and promiscuity no longer scandalous. And in such a degraded atmosphere, there will be more sexual advantage taken: drunk young women are vulnerable. And the dropping of social censure for drunkenness is a contributing factor. It used to be that drunkenness, or alcohol use in general, was considered 'unladylike'. Nice girls did not get drunk. But with the triumph of feminism, with women vying to outdo males in excesses like social drinking and promiscuity, being 'ladylike' was declared to be oppressive for women. It was male chauvinism that invented the image of the 'lady', so the feminists said, so the ladylike ideal must go. The word 'lady' became a fighting word, a grave insult, for feminists. Women must never be called 'girls' or 'gals' or 'chicks', and worst of all was the word 'lady'. because the 'lady' was a prisoner of the patriarchy, with censorious males telling her not to do this and not to do that; her freedom demanded the discarding of all rules of ladylike behavior. Women were thus encouraged to curse and swear like sailors, drink heavily like men, go everywhere unescorted, including into bars (remember ladies could not enter some bars unescorted in the old days). Women suddenly adopted a number of other risky behaviors like hitchhiking alone, often with bad consequences. And the feminists refused to see that their reckless casting off of old taboos and social roles made women immensely more vulnerable to the predators who unquestionably exist out there.
Feminists did women no favors, though they claimed to be 'liberating' women.
But Wendy Shalit is right; conservatives have overreacted against feminists and have thus turned against women in a sense.
Feminists may have exaggerated the victimization of women, and diminished their responsibility for the misfortunes that followed feminist 'liberation', but the fact is, women ARE vulnerable, if only by virtue of the fact that women are not the physical equals of men. And the 'conservative' women who believe the feminist nonsense about women being the equals of men in the military and in police work are as much fools as the liberal feminists on this score. Women, aside from the occasional -type, are simply not a match for men in size and strength. Women and girls are more at risk out there in a world with too many predators and deviants, Paglia and her ilk notwithstanding. Shalit tried to make that point: women are vulnerable, and we have to re-instill in our girls the need for greater vigilance and 'ladylike behavior' so as to minimize the risks. Yes, we can teach our girls to defend themselves as best they can, but to teach them that a few martial arts lessons will make them invulnerable while walking the streets at 2 A.M. is to delude them. And yes they should be taught to use firearms, but we should also teach them that it's still better to live a life which does not expose them to needless risks, and that the old-fashioned ways and norms were much healthier and safer for women than this egalitarian jungle in which foolish and reckless and misguided young women are exposed to dangers their grandmothers would never have imagined.
We do need a return to modesty and to some kind of sanity regarding sexuality and the balance between the sexes. Clearly the 'new' ways pushed on us by the left since the 1960s are not working; they are destroying the very basis of our society.
Labels: American Culture, Conservatism, Feminism, Societal Decay
0 comment Saturday, October 25, 2014 | admin
David Yeagley discusses Michele Bachmann's candidacy and what it means for our country.
Though he praises her lavishly for her politics and her 'beautiful, tender, loving voice', he ultimately concludes that electing a woman, even a very 'conservative' woman, would mean the end for the White male in political leadership.
But, again, why are we talking about Michele Bachmann, mother of five and twenty-plus, wife of thirty one years, and seemingly perfectly normal�we should say, normative�American woman? She is in our sites because she is now running for president of the United States.
How is that possible? Through the emasculation of the white male.
It is the same abuse of "equality" that calls for the wealthy to surrender their wealth to the poor, and the strong to give up their strength to the weak.
[...]
Next, a child will become president.
What in the world happened to the white male? Has he been asleep? Is he on dope? Can he rise again? ''
Actually, in 2008, it seemed to me that the White male was already being displaced. A point that I tried to make then was that the election had established a precedent that would be hard to break, and was in fact an 'overturning' as Dr. Yeagley says of the potential election of a woman president.
It's already happened, and it could be that to have a woman president next would further marginalize male leadership, specifically White male leadership.
Where are the male leaders? This question has been asked here and elsewhere. Obviously the political movers and shakers, or the elites, have decided that no strong male will be allowed to be elevated to high position. Only the weak, the politically correct lackeys and appeasers, are to be presented as candidates.
I was thinking of these things earlier as I watched the live video feed of the Vancouver riots. I noted the number of female authority figures interviewed, and their schoolmarmish responses to the reporters. They did not present an authoritative image, these women; rather, they sounded like slightly irritated kindergarten teachers dealing with misbehaving five-year-olds.The male officials as well as the females kept using words like 'disappointed' in regard to the violence.
As I watched the rioters in action, I could only think: this is what a society of fatherless children looks like. It's true of all Western families. We often read articles about the problem of children, especially boys, who grow up without the presence of a father, specifically, a father who is actively involved. Even though many of society's misfits have been raised solely by women, in effect, our whole society is fatherless now. We have no real effective male authority figures or father-protector figures. We have only these irritable feminist schoolmarms in charge of things, and they cannot fill the male role. We are seeing proof of that all around us.
Women certainly have a role, but in the rightful order of things, men are to wield the real power, to enforce standards and rules, to administer justice. Women are too easily swayed by emotion, and tend to seek to 'understand' everybody, and they often fail to use a firm hand or to be harsh when that is called for. Just as our mothers tended to be the ones to forgive or overlook our misdeeds when we were children, and our fathers were the disciplinarians, representing order and justice, each sex has its particular qualities, and women are not best equipped to wield authority and to enforce order.
The fact that there are certain exceptions, such as the very masculine or faux-masculine women in authority here and there, does not prove the generalization false. Has anyone else noted the presence of so many female police chiefs and fire chiefs in many towns? Every time there is a press conference about a crime or fire, it seems a woman chief is front and center. This seems to be de rigueur nowadays. Political correctness, of course, demands this. And more often than not, the woman is also a minority.
It's no new observation, but our society has become so unbalanced towards the feminine side -- leftism/Marxism is a very feminine entity -- that we need to make a sharp correction in the opposite direction, and very soon.
As for Michele Bachmann, she seems like a very 'nice' lady, but her politics are far too politically correct, and this is most assuredly not what we need.
And even if her politics were more 'conservative' or pro-White, I would say she is far too 'nice' to exercise authority. Niceness and goodness are not the same thing, and we don't need more of the treacly niceness in this age of crisis we are entering.
Though he praises her lavishly for her politics and her 'beautiful, tender, loving voice', he ultimately concludes that electing a woman, even a very 'conservative' woman, would mean the end for the White male in political leadership.
But, again, why are we talking about Michele Bachmann, mother of five and twenty-plus, wife of thirty one years, and seemingly perfectly normal�we should say, normative�American woman? She is in our sites because she is now running for president of the United States.
How is that possible? Through the emasculation of the white male.
It is the same abuse of "equality" that calls for the wealthy to surrender their wealth to the poor, and the strong to give up their strength to the weak.
[...]
Next, a child will become president.
What in the world happened to the white male? Has he been asleep? Is he on dope? Can he rise again? ''
Actually, in 2008, it seemed to me that the White male was already being displaced. A point that I tried to make then was that the election had established a precedent that would be hard to break, and was in fact an 'overturning' as Dr. Yeagley says of the potential election of a woman president.
It's already happened, and it could be that to have a woman president next would further marginalize male leadership, specifically White male leadership.
Where are the male leaders? This question has been asked here and elsewhere. Obviously the political movers and shakers, or the elites, have decided that no strong male will be allowed to be elevated to high position. Only the weak, the politically correct lackeys and appeasers, are to be presented as candidates.
I was thinking of these things earlier as I watched the live video feed of the Vancouver riots. I noted the number of female authority figures interviewed, and their schoolmarmish responses to the reporters. They did not present an authoritative image, these women; rather, they sounded like slightly irritated kindergarten teachers dealing with misbehaving five-year-olds.The male officials as well as the females kept using words like 'disappointed' in regard to the violence.
As I watched the rioters in action, I could only think: this is what a society of fatherless children looks like. It's true of all Western families. We often read articles about the problem of children, especially boys, who grow up without the presence of a father, specifically, a father who is actively involved. Even though many of society's misfits have been raised solely by women, in effect, our whole society is fatherless now. We have no real effective male authority figures or father-protector figures. We have only these irritable feminist schoolmarms in charge of things, and they cannot fill the male role. We are seeing proof of that all around us.
Women certainly have a role, but in the rightful order of things, men are to wield the real power, to enforce standards and rules, to administer justice. Women are too easily swayed by emotion, and tend to seek to 'understand' everybody, and they often fail to use a firm hand or to be harsh when that is called for. Just as our mothers tended to be the ones to forgive or overlook our misdeeds when we were children, and our fathers were the disciplinarians, representing order and justice, each sex has its particular qualities, and women are not best equipped to wield authority and to enforce order.
The fact that there are certain exceptions, such as the very masculine or faux-masculine women in authority here and there, does not prove the generalization false. Has anyone else noted the presence of so many female police chiefs and fire chiefs in many towns? Every time there is a press conference about a crime or fire, it seems a woman chief is front and center. This seems to be de rigueur nowadays. Political correctness, of course, demands this. And more often than not, the woman is also a minority.
It's no new observation, but our society has become so unbalanced towards the feminine side -- leftism/Marxism is a very feminine entity -- that we need to make a sharp correction in the opposite direction, and very soon.
As for Michele Bachmann, she seems like a very 'nice' lady, but her politics are far too politically correct, and this is most assuredly not what we need.
And even if her politics were more 'conservative' or pro-White, I would say she is far too 'nice' to exercise authority. Niceness and goodness are not the same thing, and we don't need more of the treacly niceness in this age of crisis we are entering.
Labels: Ethnic Loyalty, Gop, Identity Politics, Political Parties, Societal Decay
0 comment Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | admin
Over at Intergalactic Source of Truth, the Colonel linked to this piece from One Cosmos, entitled 'The Pathetic Last Children of Nietzsche's Pitiable Last Men.' Blogger Gagdad Bob writes a very cogent analysis tying together the present degenerated state of party politics in America and the breakdown of the family and male/female polarities. Some of you may have read this post when it first appeared way back in January 2006, but I missed it, and it's a great read, touching on some themes that I have dealt with here at times.
In this piece, Bob also mentions an article entitled Wimps and Barbarians, by Terrence O. Moore, which you may read in its entirety here. Moore's article discusses the lack in our modern society of manly virtues such as what the Greeks called Thumos, which is
...the part of the soul that contains the assertive passions: pugnacity, enterprise, ambition, anger. Thumos compels a man to defend proximate goods: himself, his honor, his lady, his country; as well as universal goods: truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Without thumotic men to combat the cruel, the malevolent, and the unjust, goodness and honor hardly have a chance in our precarious world. But two conditions must be present for thumos to fulfill its mission. First, the soul must be properly ordered. Besides thumos, symbolized by the chest, the soul is composed of reason and appetites, symbolized by the head on the one hand and the stomach and loins on the other. Reason has the capacity to discern right from wrong, but it lacks the strength to act. Appetites, while necessary to keep the body healthy, pull the individual toward pleasures of a lower order. In the well-ordered soul, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the head rules the belly through the chest." In the souls of today's barbarians, clearly thumos has allied itself with the unbridled appetites, and reason has been thrown out the window.
The second condition that must be present is a sufficient level of thumos to enable the man to rise to the defense of honor or goodness when required. Modern education and culture, however, have conspired to turn modern males into what C. S. Lewis called "men without chests," that is, wimps. The chest of the wimp has atrophied from want of early training. The wimp is therefore unable to live up to his duties as a man:
'We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.''
Please read the discussion thread following Bob's essay on One Cosmos. The discussion covers, among other things, the role of anger in our society, and the tendency of some religious traditions to censure anger, notably Christianity (or some interpretations of it) and Buddhism.
Bob says
To the extent that a tradition tries to eliminate anger, it is a false or partial teaching. Righteous anger is needed, but only in service of what is good or moral. Again, these traditions apparently noticed that anger was a problem in human affairs, and thought that they should just jettison the whole thing instead of doing the much harder work of diferentiating between healthy and pathological anger or moral and immoral violence.
[...]We know so much more today about psychology than they did then, about the roots of pathological anger in childhood trauma. The key is not to split off or repress anger, but to integrate it harmoniously within the psyche.
With regard to Christ's teaching, if in saying that we should always be passive in the face of violence, he wouldn't be a very wise man, would he? He certainly wouldn't be worthy of worship. After all, if I am more moral than the God I worship, what kind of God is that?''
Evidently Bob is not a Christian, although unfortunately there are many nominal Christians who interpret Jesus' words in the same negative way. I would judge the dominance of psychology and the therapeutic culture, which Bob seems to be very conversant with, to be a huge part of the breakdown of our society and to be a contributing factor to the number of 'men without chests.' All the navel-gazing that is at the heart of modern man's self-focus, all the hand-wringing and ambivalence, and all the psychobabble about not being 'negative' or not 'judging' others, contributes to the loss of the manly qualities. Think of neurotic urban postmodern culture, embodied in Woody Allen movies and Dr. Phil, and secular liberal culture in which the least manly 'men' reside, the men who think hunting is barbaric, firearms are for redneck crazies, and war and self-defense are regressive ideas.
These people do not get their lack of manliness from Christianity and traditional Western culture.
A commenter, Kelly, on the discussion thread, makes some insightful comments about women and the loss of the male virtues; she says that women, too, suffer from the lack of courage and commitment. This seems true; the attitudes of many of today's ultraliberal women would not have been of much use on the frontier or back in the early days of the colonies. Women, too, are affected by the breakdown of our culture's values.
Moore's article says, in describing our culture's emasculating effects:
A close look at the culture in which boys are raised reveals not only that they are no longer encouraged to become vigorous and responsible men, but also that practically every factor affecting their development is profoundly hostile to the ideals and practices of traditional manhood and the painstaking steps necessary to attain it. The demanding regime of physical and moral instruction that used to turn boys into men and the larger cultural forces that supported that instruction have been systematically dismantled by a culture that ostensibly enables all individuals but in reality disables men. "It's too easy!" complained John the Savage of the overly efficient, overly sexual, overly youthful, overly fun Brave New World. That dehumanizing tyranny of pleasure, described by Aldous Huxley, resembles the world of easy effort and easy virtue that entices adolescent males today to indulge in their appetites at the expense of their nobler longings and passions.''
Moore also describes the debilitating effects of fatherless families, deficient discipline in schools, and the lack of male rites of passage in guiding boys to healthy manhood.
The essay and the blog discussion are stimulating reading.
I think the discussion of the role of anger, specifically, is one of the more important ones for us today, given that our society is under threat by some formidable forces -- demographic assault, and an invasion marked by sporadic violence, to which we seem unable or unwilling to offer the necessary resistance. Are we ourselves lacking in the courage and conviction, or is it only our rulers? Or do we get the government we deserve, as Joseph de Maistre said, and as I have quoted him? Why do we seem to choose the 'wimps' as rulers? Is this all we have to work with these days? Are there no 'men with chests' to lead? This also ties in with our discussion of the lack of leaders in our time.
And what's the solution? In our political scene, we seem to be locked into this struggle between the 'mommy party' Democrats, and the 'daddy party' Republicans. Or are the Republicans becoming another mommy party, with their 'compassionate conservatism', their political correctness, and the 'welcoming nation' policies? Do we need a real 'daddy party' to represent the masculine virtues which are so essential? Maybe this is part of the reason why a new party, a real conservative party is needed; the male virtues are not really represented in the two-party system we now have.
Personally I think we desperately need the male virtues in this day and age; the female approach, accommodation and peacemaking, are useless against merciless and aggressive enemies and rivals.
In this piece, Bob also mentions an article entitled Wimps and Barbarians, by Terrence O. Moore, which you may read in its entirety here. Moore's article discusses the lack in our modern society of manly virtues such as what the Greeks called Thumos, which is
...the part of the soul that contains the assertive passions: pugnacity, enterprise, ambition, anger. Thumos compels a man to defend proximate goods: himself, his honor, his lady, his country; as well as universal goods: truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Without thumotic men to combat the cruel, the malevolent, and the unjust, goodness and honor hardly have a chance in our precarious world. But two conditions must be present for thumos to fulfill its mission. First, the soul must be properly ordered. Besides thumos, symbolized by the chest, the soul is composed of reason and appetites, symbolized by the head on the one hand and the stomach and loins on the other. Reason has the capacity to discern right from wrong, but it lacks the strength to act. Appetites, while necessary to keep the body healthy, pull the individual toward pleasures of a lower order. In the well-ordered soul, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the head rules the belly through the chest." In the souls of today's barbarians, clearly thumos has allied itself with the unbridled appetites, and reason has been thrown out the window.
The second condition that must be present is a sufficient level of thumos to enable the man to rise to the defense of honor or goodness when required. Modern education and culture, however, have conspired to turn modern males into what C. S. Lewis called "men without chests," that is, wimps. The chest of the wimp has atrophied from want of early training. The wimp is therefore unable to live up to his duties as a man:
'We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.''
Please read the discussion thread following Bob's essay on One Cosmos. The discussion covers, among other things, the role of anger in our society, and the tendency of some religious traditions to censure anger, notably Christianity (or some interpretations of it) and Buddhism.
Bob says
To the extent that a tradition tries to eliminate anger, it is a false or partial teaching. Righteous anger is needed, but only in service of what is good or moral. Again, these traditions apparently noticed that anger was a problem in human affairs, and thought that they should just jettison the whole thing instead of doing the much harder work of diferentiating between healthy and pathological anger or moral and immoral violence.
[...]We know so much more today about psychology than they did then, about the roots of pathological anger in childhood trauma. The key is not to split off or repress anger, but to integrate it harmoniously within the psyche.
With regard to Christ's teaching, if in saying that we should always be passive in the face of violence, he wouldn't be a very wise man, would he? He certainly wouldn't be worthy of worship. After all, if I am more moral than the God I worship, what kind of God is that?''
Evidently Bob is not a Christian, although unfortunately there are many nominal Christians who interpret Jesus' words in the same negative way. I would judge the dominance of psychology and the therapeutic culture, which Bob seems to be very conversant with, to be a huge part of the breakdown of our society and to be a contributing factor to the number of 'men without chests.' All the navel-gazing that is at the heart of modern man's self-focus, all the hand-wringing and ambivalence, and all the psychobabble about not being 'negative' or not 'judging' others, contributes to the loss of the manly qualities. Think of neurotic urban postmodern culture, embodied in Woody Allen movies and Dr. Phil, and secular liberal culture in which the least manly 'men' reside, the men who think hunting is barbaric, firearms are for redneck crazies, and war and self-defense are regressive ideas.
These people do not get their lack of manliness from Christianity and traditional Western culture.
A commenter, Kelly, on the discussion thread, makes some insightful comments about women and the loss of the male virtues; she says that women, too, suffer from the lack of courage and commitment. This seems true; the attitudes of many of today's ultraliberal women would not have been of much use on the frontier or back in the early days of the colonies. Women, too, are affected by the breakdown of our culture's values.
Moore's article says, in describing our culture's emasculating effects:
A close look at the culture in which boys are raised reveals not only that they are no longer encouraged to become vigorous and responsible men, but also that practically every factor affecting their development is profoundly hostile to the ideals and practices of traditional manhood and the painstaking steps necessary to attain it. The demanding regime of physical and moral instruction that used to turn boys into men and the larger cultural forces that supported that instruction have been systematically dismantled by a culture that ostensibly enables all individuals but in reality disables men. "It's too easy!" complained John the Savage of the overly efficient, overly sexual, overly youthful, overly fun Brave New World. That dehumanizing tyranny of pleasure, described by Aldous Huxley, resembles the world of easy effort and easy virtue that entices adolescent males today to indulge in their appetites at the expense of their nobler longings and passions.''
Moore also describes the debilitating effects of fatherless families, deficient discipline in schools, and the lack of male rites of passage in guiding boys to healthy manhood.
The essay and the blog discussion are stimulating reading.
I think the discussion of the role of anger, specifically, is one of the more important ones for us today, given that our society is under threat by some formidable forces -- demographic assault, and an invasion marked by sporadic violence, to which we seem unable or unwilling to offer the necessary resistance. Are we ourselves lacking in the courage and conviction, or is it only our rulers? Or do we get the government we deserve, as Joseph de Maistre said, and as I have quoted him? Why do we seem to choose the 'wimps' as rulers? Is this all we have to work with these days? Are there no 'men with chests' to lead? This also ties in with our discussion of the lack of leaders in our time.
And what's the solution? In our political scene, we seem to be locked into this struggle between the 'mommy party' Democrats, and the 'daddy party' Republicans. Or are the Republicans becoming another mommy party, with their 'compassionate conservatism', their political correctness, and the 'welcoming nation' policies? Do we need a real 'daddy party' to represent the masculine virtues which are so essential? Maybe this is part of the reason why a new party, a real conservative party is needed; the male virtues are not really represented in the two-party system we now have.
Personally I think we desperately need the male virtues in this day and age; the female approach, accommodation and peacemaking, are useless against merciless and aggressive enemies and rivals.
Labels: American Society, Feminism, Political Parties, Societal Decay, Therapeutic Society
0 comment Sunday, October 12, 2014 | admin
Back in the 90s, I spent some time living and working in New Jersey, and I have ex-employers and friends who still live there. I've been saddened to hear that New Jersey is now one of the more invaded states in the country, with a large illegal alien population as well as great numbers of legal immigrants, and sizeable Moslem colonies in Jersey City and elsewhere.
Today this news story appeared in the Newark newspaper:
Immigration protests draw 500 to Morristown
An estimated 500 people descended on Morristown this afternoon for dueling protests on illegal immigration and immigrants' rights. The crowd waved signs and at times chanted heatedly, but stopped short of causing any major disturbances.
Protesters grew more vocal as the afternoon wore on, with both sides waiting for Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello to take the stage. Police outfitted in riot gear with helmets, batons and pepper spray surrounded the stage, while a line of reinforcements arrived to barricade South Street.
Despite some heated exchanges between the groups and two arrests, the rallies were peaceful.''
Now I know Morristown fairly well; it was not far from the small town where I lived while I was in New Jersey. The town I lived in was a safe, prosperous, 'bedroom community' with many residents who commuted to New York City to work. Morristown was a short trip from where I lived, and I often went there on weekends to shop, see a movie, or go to restaurants. It was a pleasant town, not a big town, and there was not that much 'diversity' there, although I occasionally saw Hispanic people, possibly Puerto Ricans or Dominicans. Mexicans were a rare sight there at that time.
Now, however, it looks like Morristown is now 'enriched' with diversity, enough so that hundreds of illegals and their leftist accomplices rallied there today.
But the Star-Ledger's statement that the ralllies were 'peaceful' is not what I have heard; there was apparently an assault on two of the attendees who were protesting illegal immigration. The only source which seems to give an account of this violence is this one:
Conservative activists attacked at Secure Borders Rally in New Jersey
...As two of the participants were leaving, a male and female, their vehicle was attacked. The victims were pulled from their car and beaten and the vehicle was smashed and looted. Members of a violent Marxist gang, known as the ARA, had shown up at the demonstration to scream profanities and may have been involved in the attack.
This is not the first time that violent white Marxists and/or pro-illegal alien Hispanics have attacked conservatives at public demonstrations. It has primarily happened in Southern California in the past. Far left organizations, such as the SPLC, constantly say that conservative secure border activists will promote anti-immigrant violence with their "rhetoric." However, every instance of violence has been perpetrated against conservatives, not by them.''
Wonder why the mainstream media do not report incidents such as this one, in which the illegals or their leftist sycophants commit violence? You can bet that if any of the anti-illegal, pro-borders people assaulted anyone, it would be the top of the news on all the cable channels, and trumpeted in the headlines. And next would be a pious editorial lecturing about the 'growth of hate' and xenophobia, and the usual suspects at the SPLC would be quoted about the dangers of 'righwing hate.' But when the illegals and the lefties assault someone? It's seldom reported, or it's reported only by conservative sources and goes down the PC memory hole quickly.
Some people will object to the source I linked here, the Council of Conservative Citizens website. Why? Because the usual suspects on the left have called the group a 'rightwing extremist' or 'racist' group. Quite honestly whenever these self-designated PC policemen condemn groups like the Council, I take that as an endorsement of their soundness. If they have these leftwing Politically Correct groups denouncing them, they have to be telling the truth.
I invite readers to check the website's Statement of Principles; I found nothing there to disagree with.
But most of all I am disgusted that nice towns like Morristown, though thousands of miles from the Mexican border, are now 'border towns', with American citizens squaring off against each other -- over illegals. What is wrong with this picture, America? What is wrong with America and Americans when we not only fail to protect our borders, but when, even worse, we are warring against each other over the invaders? And make no mistake; that's what is happening. The invaders have us at each others' throats.
Some will think that's hyperbole on my part, but is it? So far, mostly the war is a war of words, but words often lead to actual violence. And the rhetoric has been heating up for years, with the leftists foaming at the mouth over 'hate' and 'racism'. Does it never occur to the leftists that their language and now their actions epitomize the very thing they claim to be opposing? Do they not see the hate in their own rhetoric and in their violence against fellow Americans?
The details on the assault in Morristown are not clear; it may have been illegals who did the attacking and beating; or it may have been angry young home-grown leftists, or some combination thereof. But even if it was illegals who did the actual violence, they are being given support and encouragement by American-born people. And those renegade 'Americans' should be held to account for it.
Not so very long ago I made a fairly innocuous comment to a female relative about how a certain department store was courting illegal customers by offering credit applications all in Spanish. Now if they were legal, surely they would not need Spanish applications, would they? However this relative of mine snapped at me saying ''I would rather the Mexicans than some of these sorry white people.'' And her comments were said with a lot of anger. I thought, again, what is wrong with this picture? My own blood kin is angry at me for saying something critical of illegals, and she is saying she prefers Mexicans to some Americans. How did it come to this?
Whenever Hollywood made movies about the War Between the States, the breathless narration during the trailer always said: ''Brother against brother! Families divided!" Actually I think there were few families actually divided, with one brother in blue and another in grey; maybe in the border states where sympathies were mixed; not in the South. However this incipient civil war will pit brother against brother and families will be divided; most families have some mix of those with conservative traditional values and loyalties, and those with liberal 'we are the world' multicultist delusions. And then there are the families into which immigrants will have intermarried, further clouding loyalties and increasing divisions.
This is part of the phenomenon I blogged about the other day, 'America our house divided.' When we have a good proportion of the population inculcated with the idea that all discrimination, even the most logical and sensible, is tantamount to 'hate', which merits the harshest of punishments, then our country hasn't got much of a chance to recover control and impose sensible controls on the invasion. And the fact that our fellow citizens, including sometimes even our own neighbors and relatives, think that those with traditional values are 'haters' and 'racists' means that there can be little accommodation or compromise; somebody will have to change their thinking. Either we will have to change and conform and become docile members of the multicult, or they will have to change their thinking and realize that they are the extremists and the haters. The latter does not seem especially likely.
The present situation seems untenable, especially with the continuing influx of ever more divisive immigrants who will further destabilize our society and further catalyze the disorder.
Now it's not impossible that some liberals or 'moderates' might have epiphanies, and might be awakened by the increasing chaos and disruption in our society, but there are too many who simply blame all the trouble on us, on those of us who are merely trying to preserve our country, instead of on the intrusion of the immigrants.
Even some conservatives say that they don't blame the immigrants. I can't count the number of times I've heard a 'conservative' say 'I don't blame the illegals, they're just doing whatever they have to do to survive; I would do the same in their shoes.' My response is 'Really? You would break into someone's home and steal and lie to survive?" Did people do such things en masse during the Depression, when there was real hunger and want? Even if they had, the illegals are NOT starving and their survival is not in question. If you want to talk about survival, it's we whose survival is in question; the illegals are sitting pretty. They have successfully broken into Fort Knox, otherwise known as the U.S.A., where they have the keys to the kingdom. They've got access to Uncle Sam's bank accounts, with a free ride guaranteed them and their offspring: handouts galore, free education, free health care, interpreters, citizens who lean over backwards to be 'sensitive', churches who cater to them and put them on a pedestal, politicians who pander to them shamelessly. Please don't insult my intelligence and ask me to see illegals as poor waifs who are struggling to stay alive in a hostile world. They are on Easy Street. It's increasingly we who are out in the cold, and our wishes ignored and our voices excluded.
It would be wonderful if the current madness in our country was the result of some physiological malady which could be diagnosed and cured tomorrow -- but unfortunately it seems like a sickness of the soul, a plague of self-hatred and of hatred of those like oneself.
The liberals, always great devotees of pop psychology, are always prattling about 'self-esteem' and the vital importance of 'loving oneself' as the key to all success and fulfillment. Yet they are at the same time preaching that as a nation, we have to hate ourselves and prefer all others over our own. It's just one more contradiction, one of many in the senseless liberal worldview.
Update: Here is a much more complete account of what happened at the Morristown rally, although it does not mention the assault. It does mention the disorder and the arrests, along with the names of those arrested. They are apparently all or mostly Americans, not immigrants, judging by their names.
Today this news story appeared in the Newark newspaper:
Immigration protests draw 500 to Morristown
An estimated 500 people descended on Morristown this afternoon for dueling protests on illegal immigration and immigrants' rights. The crowd waved signs and at times chanted heatedly, but stopped short of causing any major disturbances.
Protesters grew more vocal as the afternoon wore on, with both sides waiting for Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello to take the stage. Police outfitted in riot gear with helmets, batons and pepper spray surrounded the stage, while a line of reinforcements arrived to barricade South Street.
Despite some heated exchanges between the groups and two arrests, the rallies were peaceful.''
Now I know Morristown fairly well; it was not far from the small town where I lived while I was in New Jersey. The town I lived in was a safe, prosperous, 'bedroom community' with many residents who commuted to New York City to work. Morristown was a short trip from where I lived, and I often went there on weekends to shop, see a movie, or go to restaurants. It was a pleasant town, not a big town, and there was not that much 'diversity' there, although I occasionally saw Hispanic people, possibly Puerto Ricans or Dominicans. Mexicans were a rare sight there at that time.
Now, however, it looks like Morristown is now 'enriched' with diversity, enough so that hundreds of illegals and their leftist accomplices rallied there today.
But the Star-Ledger's statement that the ralllies were 'peaceful' is not what I have heard; there was apparently an assault on two of the attendees who were protesting illegal immigration. The only source which seems to give an account of this violence is this one:
Conservative activists attacked at Secure Borders Rally in New Jersey
...As two of the participants were leaving, a male and female, their vehicle was attacked. The victims were pulled from their car and beaten and the vehicle was smashed and looted. Members of a violent Marxist gang, known as the ARA, had shown up at the demonstration to scream profanities and may have been involved in the attack.
This is not the first time that violent white Marxists and/or pro-illegal alien Hispanics have attacked conservatives at public demonstrations. It has primarily happened in Southern California in the past. Far left organizations, such as the SPLC, constantly say that conservative secure border activists will promote anti-immigrant violence with their "rhetoric." However, every instance of violence has been perpetrated against conservatives, not by them.''
Wonder why the mainstream media do not report incidents such as this one, in which the illegals or their leftist sycophants commit violence? You can bet that if any of the anti-illegal, pro-borders people assaulted anyone, it would be the top of the news on all the cable channels, and trumpeted in the headlines. And next would be a pious editorial lecturing about the 'growth of hate' and xenophobia, and the usual suspects at the SPLC would be quoted about the dangers of 'righwing hate.' But when the illegals and the lefties assault someone? It's seldom reported, or it's reported only by conservative sources and goes down the PC memory hole quickly.
Some people will object to the source I linked here, the Council of Conservative Citizens website. Why? Because the usual suspects on the left have called the group a 'rightwing extremist' or 'racist' group. Quite honestly whenever these self-designated PC policemen condemn groups like the Council, I take that as an endorsement of their soundness. If they have these leftwing Politically Correct groups denouncing them, they have to be telling the truth.
I invite readers to check the website's Statement of Principles; I found nothing there to disagree with.
But most of all I am disgusted that nice towns like Morristown, though thousands of miles from the Mexican border, are now 'border towns', with American citizens squaring off against each other -- over illegals. What is wrong with this picture, America? What is wrong with America and Americans when we not only fail to protect our borders, but when, even worse, we are warring against each other over the invaders? And make no mistake; that's what is happening. The invaders have us at each others' throats.
Some will think that's hyperbole on my part, but is it? So far, mostly the war is a war of words, but words often lead to actual violence. And the rhetoric has been heating up for years, with the leftists foaming at the mouth over 'hate' and 'racism'. Does it never occur to the leftists that their language and now their actions epitomize the very thing they claim to be opposing? Do they not see the hate in their own rhetoric and in their violence against fellow Americans?
The details on the assault in Morristown are not clear; it may have been illegals who did the attacking and beating; or it may have been angry young home-grown leftists, or some combination thereof. But even if it was illegals who did the actual violence, they are being given support and encouragement by American-born people. And those renegade 'Americans' should be held to account for it.
Not so very long ago I made a fairly innocuous comment to a female relative about how a certain department store was courting illegal customers by offering credit applications all in Spanish. Now if they were legal, surely they would not need Spanish applications, would they? However this relative of mine snapped at me saying ''I would rather the Mexicans than some of these sorry white people.'' And her comments were said with a lot of anger. I thought, again, what is wrong with this picture? My own blood kin is angry at me for saying something critical of illegals, and she is saying she prefers Mexicans to some Americans. How did it come to this?
Whenever Hollywood made movies about the War Between the States, the breathless narration during the trailer always said: ''Brother against brother! Families divided!" Actually I think there were few families actually divided, with one brother in blue and another in grey; maybe in the border states where sympathies were mixed; not in the South. However this incipient civil war will pit brother against brother and families will be divided; most families have some mix of those with conservative traditional values and loyalties, and those with liberal 'we are the world' multicultist delusions. And then there are the families into which immigrants will have intermarried, further clouding loyalties and increasing divisions.
This is part of the phenomenon I blogged about the other day, 'America our house divided.' When we have a good proportion of the population inculcated with the idea that all discrimination, even the most logical and sensible, is tantamount to 'hate', which merits the harshest of punishments, then our country hasn't got much of a chance to recover control and impose sensible controls on the invasion. And the fact that our fellow citizens, including sometimes even our own neighbors and relatives, think that those with traditional values are 'haters' and 'racists' means that there can be little accommodation or compromise; somebody will have to change their thinking. Either we will have to change and conform and become docile members of the multicult, or they will have to change their thinking and realize that they are the extremists and the haters. The latter does not seem especially likely.
The present situation seems untenable, especially with the continuing influx of ever more divisive immigrants who will further destabilize our society and further catalyze the disorder.
Now it's not impossible that some liberals or 'moderates' might have epiphanies, and might be awakened by the increasing chaos and disruption in our society, but there are too many who simply blame all the trouble on us, on those of us who are merely trying to preserve our country, instead of on the intrusion of the immigrants.
Even some conservatives say that they don't blame the immigrants. I can't count the number of times I've heard a 'conservative' say 'I don't blame the illegals, they're just doing whatever they have to do to survive; I would do the same in their shoes.' My response is 'Really? You would break into someone's home and steal and lie to survive?" Did people do such things en masse during the Depression, when there was real hunger and want? Even if they had, the illegals are NOT starving and their survival is not in question. If you want to talk about survival, it's we whose survival is in question; the illegals are sitting pretty. They have successfully broken into Fort Knox, otherwise known as the U.S.A., where they have the keys to the kingdom. They've got access to Uncle Sam's bank accounts, with a free ride guaranteed them and their offspring: handouts galore, free education, free health care, interpreters, citizens who lean over backwards to be 'sensitive', churches who cater to them and put them on a pedestal, politicians who pander to them shamelessly. Please don't insult my intelligence and ask me to see illegals as poor waifs who are struggling to stay alive in a hostile world. They are on Easy Street. It's increasingly we who are out in the cold, and our wishes ignored and our voices excluded.
It would be wonderful if the current madness in our country was the result of some physiological malady which could be diagnosed and cured tomorrow -- but unfortunately it seems like a sickness of the soul, a plague of self-hatred and of hatred of those like oneself.
The liberals, always great devotees of pop psychology, are always prattling about 'self-esteem' and the vital importance of 'loving oneself' as the key to all success and fulfillment. Yet they are at the same time preaching that as a nation, we have to hate ourselves and prefer all others over our own. It's just one more contradiction, one of many in the senseless liberal worldview.
Update: Here is a much more complete account of what happened at the Morristown rally, although it does not mention the assault. It does mention the disorder and the arrests, along with the names of those arrested. They are apparently all or mostly Americans, not immigrants, judging by their names.
Labels: American Culture, Immigration, Leftism, Liberalism, Multiculturalism, Societal Decay
0 comment Monday, October 6, 2014 | admin
[To my readers - First, let me say I am sorry for the lack of activity here, but this virus I'm fighting is a particularly nasty one; I had thought I was over the worst of it, but then had a setback. It may be a few days before I am back on my feet fully. I hope none of you contracts this ugly virus; it's spread like crazy in my area, and has really hit a lot of people hard.]
Meanwhile, I'm still following the discussion on Sarah Palin, and it appears that the left has decided to spread rumors in an attempt to smear Governor Palin. It seems that their favorite way of smearing a social conservative, especially a Christian one, is to try to find some scandal, a sexual irregularity preferably, so as to throw the 'hypocrisy' charge around.
The rumor that is being spread by the DU mob and the Kossacks is that Palin faked her last pregnancy so as to cover up the fact that it was her teenage daughter who was about to give birth. So the Palins' youngest child is really their illegitimate grandchild -- so the rumor has it.
Read the comments quoted in the above-linked blog entry; you will be disgusted.
This kind of scandal-mongering gossip is absurd. Surely there would be ample evidence to disprove it, but that kind of thing does not deter the left; they will try to discredit every bit of evidence to the contrary as being staged or fake. I hope Mrs. Palin does not dignify these scurrilous stories by 'answering' them.
Even if these rumors were true (and they seem far-fetched) would that discredit the Palins as 'hypocrites'?
I actually think it would be to their credit, were it true. In 'old America' it was not unheard of for parents or other family members to raise a 'chance child' as theirs, thus keeping the child within the family fold while not offering an occasion for scandal to the neighbors. I know of a few cases like this among the older generations, wherein a child was adopted and raised by the grandparents as one of their own children. In some cases, neighbors knew this to be the case, and yet it was simply not talked about.
Hypocrisy? No; it was an open secret, but rather than give some kind of official stamp of approval to illegitimacy, it was handled discreetly. In some cases, the child was relinquished to an adoption agency, or a 'foundling home' in the earlier eras. One can honor the ideals while recognizing that sometimes people fall short of the standards. That is not hypocrisy. Our age has decided to throw out standards altogether and drop any pretense of honoring morality or the Biblical commandments. That's too demanding and 'judgmental', after all.
Nowadays the answer, according to liberal anti-morality, is for the daughter to either keep the child, flaunting her 'mistake', and drawing benefits for the child in many cases, or it's straight to the abortion clinic, which the left seems to see as the 'best' option.
The other thing which the unscrupulous lefties have seized on is the issue of the baby's Down's Syndrome. They seem to think that this is somehow a disgrace. I suppose in their ideal world (heaven help us) there would be no imperfect children; actually there would be fewer children -- except those many children born to the protected 'victim groups' who are allowed to reproduce prolifically, while White Christians are denounced for being 'selfish and irresponsible' for having more than one child.
It was thought many years ago by most people that Down's Syndrome meant that a child would be ineducable and that they would need some kind of institutional care. However in recent years we've seen many people with Down's leading fuller lives, holding down jobs and sometimes living independently. I can think of a couple of cases in my extended family in which late-life babies proved to be Down's children, and they were simply treated like their 'normal' siblings and did quite well. That's the way it was handled in my family. It's obvious that Down's Syndrome people, despite their limitations, can in many cases function quite well, and most importantly they are usually very social and often very affectionate, loving children. We tend to over-value intelligence in our society; character and kindness are so much more precious. Many of those on the left have high IQs, and obviously it has not been of much benefit to them, much less to the rest of us.
For the leftists, these people are mistakes which should be prevented. And it appears that the majority of pregnancies in which Down's is discovered prenatally end in abortion. According to Wikipedia, 92-93 percent of such pregnancies are terminated.
I can believe it; it seems there are fewer Down's children visible among the very youngest ones. My town is something of an exception; there is probably a higher-than-average number of such children here because people tend to be Christian, very socially conservative and pro-life, of course.
To be fair, there are many hard-hearted 'conservatives' who decry the fact that the Palins had this child, as with at least one commenter on this blog. The 'conservative' rationale is that the parents are irresponsible to have such a child, since that the child will be unproductive. And what if the parents are able to take care of their child without any reliance on state help? Surely a conservative or even a libertarian would acknowledge that it is not their prerogative to dictate to the parents.
It really shows how far our society has fallen, when people are not ashamed to make a public issue of something like this, and to concoct stories impugning the character of the Palins individually or as a family.
I hope this low slander is rejected as it deserves to be, and I hope that those who start these rumors (Colmes et al) will be called to account for it.
Meanwhile, I'm still following the discussion on Sarah Palin, and it appears that the left has decided to spread rumors in an attempt to smear Governor Palin. It seems that their favorite way of smearing a social conservative, especially a Christian one, is to try to find some scandal, a sexual irregularity preferably, so as to throw the 'hypocrisy' charge around.
The rumor that is being spread by the DU mob and the Kossacks is that Palin faked her last pregnancy so as to cover up the fact that it was her teenage daughter who was about to give birth. So the Palins' youngest child is really their illegitimate grandchild -- so the rumor has it.
Read the comments quoted in the above-linked blog entry; you will be disgusted.
This kind of scandal-mongering gossip is absurd. Surely there would be ample evidence to disprove it, but that kind of thing does not deter the left; they will try to discredit every bit of evidence to the contrary as being staged or fake. I hope Mrs. Palin does not dignify these scurrilous stories by 'answering' them.
Even if these rumors were true (and they seem far-fetched) would that discredit the Palins as 'hypocrites'?
I actually think it would be to their credit, were it true. In 'old America' it was not unheard of for parents or other family members to raise a 'chance child' as theirs, thus keeping the child within the family fold while not offering an occasion for scandal to the neighbors. I know of a few cases like this among the older generations, wherein a child was adopted and raised by the grandparents as one of their own children. In some cases, neighbors knew this to be the case, and yet it was simply not talked about.
Hypocrisy? No; it was an open secret, but rather than give some kind of official stamp of approval to illegitimacy, it was handled discreetly. In some cases, the child was relinquished to an adoption agency, or a 'foundling home' in the earlier eras. One can honor the ideals while recognizing that sometimes people fall short of the standards. That is not hypocrisy. Our age has decided to throw out standards altogether and drop any pretense of honoring morality or the Biblical commandments. That's too demanding and 'judgmental', after all.
Nowadays the answer, according to liberal anti-morality, is for the daughter to either keep the child, flaunting her 'mistake', and drawing benefits for the child in many cases, or it's straight to the abortion clinic, which the left seems to see as the 'best' option.
The other thing which the unscrupulous lefties have seized on is the issue of the baby's Down's Syndrome. They seem to think that this is somehow a disgrace. I suppose in their ideal world (heaven help us) there would be no imperfect children; actually there would be fewer children -- except those many children born to the protected 'victim groups' who are allowed to reproduce prolifically, while White Christians are denounced for being 'selfish and irresponsible' for having more than one child.
It was thought many years ago by most people that Down's Syndrome meant that a child would be ineducable and that they would need some kind of institutional care. However in recent years we've seen many people with Down's leading fuller lives, holding down jobs and sometimes living independently. I can think of a couple of cases in my extended family in which late-life babies proved to be Down's children, and they were simply treated like their 'normal' siblings and did quite well. That's the way it was handled in my family. It's obvious that Down's Syndrome people, despite their limitations, can in many cases function quite well, and most importantly they are usually very social and often very affectionate, loving children. We tend to over-value intelligence in our society; character and kindness are so much more precious. Many of those on the left have high IQs, and obviously it has not been of much benefit to them, much less to the rest of us.
For the leftists, these people are mistakes which should be prevented. And it appears that the majority of pregnancies in which Down's is discovered prenatally end in abortion. According to Wikipedia, 92-93 percent of such pregnancies are terminated.
I can believe it; it seems there are fewer Down's children visible among the very youngest ones. My town is something of an exception; there is probably a higher-than-average number of such children here because people tend to be Christian, very socially conservative and pro-life, of course.
To be fair, there are many hard-hearted 'conservatives' who decry the fact that the Palins had this child, as with at least one commenter on this blog. The 'conservative' rationale is that the parents are irresponsible to have such a child, since that the child will be unproductive. And what if the parents are able to take care of their child without any reliance on state help? Surely a conservative or even a libertarian would acknowledge that it is not their prerogative to dictate to the parents.
It really shows how far our society has fallen, when people are not ashamed to make a public issue of something like this, and to concoct stories impugning the character of the Palins individually or as a family.
I hope this low slander is rejected as it deserves to be, and I hope that those who start these rumors (Colmes et al) will be called to account for it.
Labels: Leftism, Liberalism, Party Politics, Rumors, Social Conservatism, Societal Decay
0 comment Saturday, September 27, 2014 | admin
At Stuff Black People Don't Like, there is a piece contrasting the Vancouver riot with the inner-city riots and assorted violence that has been increasing around our country.
''Civilization can only exist when those who commit crime are shunned � violently if they must be � and castigated to the fullest extent the law can provide. When police and government can no longer guarantee the safety of civilians, people must shame the laws inadequacies to ensure peace and stability.
Black people refuse to snitch; Vancouver citizens have utilized social media to find those responsible for the violence in their city
[...]
Whereas whites use social media in the aftermath of the Vancouver riot to identity those who would bring shame to their city, Black people use social media to organize Mahogany Mobs, Smash and Grab attack, Polar Bear Hunts, and Knockout King games. Not an ounce of shame is lost in the process.''
Good points. I've been following the riot aftermath stories in the media, and it is impressive, too, how the law-abiding people of Vancouver have volunteered to help, not only with identifying the rioters,
but with the massive cleanup effort. That, too, is a point of difference.
On a less positive note, once most of the rioters are identified (and many of them apparently have been) the talk is that sentences will probably be light. Given the strong matriarchal/feminist orientation of the 'system', it would seem harsh sentences would not be in the cards.
One commenter at SBPDL praises the courage and the 'willingness to break rules' of the rioters, implying that it is this kind of 'disobedient' person who would defend us and our families, should law and order break down in our country.
I can't agree with that. The kind of 'willingness to break rules' that is needed for someone to go up against a powerful but corrupt system in the cause of right, or in defense of one's own, is not the same kind of 'courage' that rioters display.
In fact I would not call the rioters' brazenness 'courage' in any sense. As many of the reports pointed out, there are instigators in these kinds of events, and there are the sheep-like followers who will join in only when sufficient numbers of 'instigators' have started the trouble and violence. It takes little courage to join in with a mob that is running amok.
Those who follow the mob, or 'follow the multitude to do evil', as the Bible puts it, are simply getting swept up, almost passively, in the 'mob mind', or in the blind violence-for-the-sake-of-violence.
These young men are not the sort that would ever risk their own safety to help or defend you or me, or our families. They are the sort, that should trouble break out, will be out taking advantage of the situation to gratify their thirst for thrills or violence or gain.
The anonymous commenter at SBPDL was somewhat on the right trail, though, in that justice has to have force acting on its behalf, or it is ineffectual and useless. Might and right have to go together. The first one is simply blind force, without the second quality to direct and to give it impetus. Right justifies might, giving it purpose.
This also ties in with a theme that I've returned to more than once: goodness needs strength, and yes, the willingness to act forcefully and decisively at times to be real goodness. The kind of bloodless, saccharine-sweet 'goodness' that we see so often in our emasculated societies is not goodness at all; it is just niceness, and as such it is ineffectual, weak, and without energy. In a contest in which the bad guys are willing and ready to use force, and the ''good'' guys have right on their side, but no might, who will win? The answer is obvious.
And that's the situation we are in now; 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity', as Yeats wrote.
Genuine goodness must have a large measure of conviction and courage to back up the truth it embodies. That's the way of this world. There are too many 'nice' people who want to 'get along' with evil and appease evil, and worst of all, to pretty it up and call it good. Those nice people are not good people.
Edmund Burke is supposed to have said (though it may be an apocryphal quote) that 'the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' I've heard that quote many times, but after having heard it often, it finally dawned on me: it is not possible for good men to do nothing while evil is running rampant. Good men cannnot stand by passively in the face of evil. Nice men can, certainly, but good men? Never. That's how we will sort out the 'nice' from the 'good': the good people will be those with the courage of their convictions, and they will be the ones actively standing up against evil.
''Civilization can only exist when those who commit crime are shunned � violently if they must be � and castigated to the fullest extent the law can provide. When police and government can no longer guarantee the safety of civilians, people must shame the laws inadequacies to ensure peace and stability.
Black people refuse to snitch; Vancouver citizens have utilized social media to find those responsible for the violence in their city
[...]
Whereas whites use social media in the aftermath of the Vancouver riot to identity those who would bring shame to their city, Black people use social media to organize Mahogany Mobs, Smash and Grab attack, Polar Bear Hunts, and Knockout King games. Not an ounce of shame is lost in the process.''
Good points. I've been following the riot aftermath stories in the media, and it is impressive, too, how the law-abiding people of Vancouver have volunteered to help, not only with identifying the rioters,
but with the massive cleanup effort. That, too, is a point of difference.
On a less positive note, once most of the rioters are identified (and many of them apparently have been) the talk is that sentences will probably be light. Given the strong matriarchal/feminist orientation of the 'system', it would seem harsh sentences would not be in the cards.
One commenter at SBPDL praises the courage and the 'willingness to break rules' of the rioters, implying that it is this kind of 'disobedient' person who would defend us and our families, should law and order break down in our country.
I can't agree with that. The kind of 'willingness to break rules' that is needed for someone to go up against a powerful but corrupt system in the cause of right, or in defense of one's own, is not the same kind of 'courage' that rioters display.
In fact I would not call the rioters' brazenness 'courage' in any sense. As many of the reports pointed out, there are instigators in these kinds of events, and there are the sheep-like followers who will join in only when sufficient numbers of 'instigators' have started the trouble and violence. It takes little courage to join in with a mob that is running amok.
Those who follow the mob, or 'follow the multitude to do evil', as the Bible puts it, are simply getting swept up, almost passively, in the 'mob mind', or in the blind violence-for-the-sake-of-violence.
These young men are not the sort that would ever risk their own safety to help or defend you or me, or our families. They are the sort, that should trouble break out, will be out taking advantage of the situation to gratify their thirst for thrills or violence or gain.
The anonymous commenter at SBPDL was somewhat on the right trail, though, in that justice has to have force acting on its behalf, or it is ineffectual and useless. Might and right have to go together. The first one is simply blind force, without the second quality to direct and to give it impetus. Right justifies might, giving it purpose.
This also ties in with a theme that I've returned to more than once: goodness needs strength, and yes, the willingness to act forcefully and decisively at times to be real goodness. The kind of bloodless, saccharine-sweet 'goodness' that we see so often in our emasculated societies is not goodness at all; it is just niceness, and as such it is ineffectual, weak, and without energy. In a contest in which the bad guys are willing and ready to use force, and the ''good'' guys have right on their side, but no might, who will win? The answer is obvious.
And that's the situation we are in now; 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity', as Yeats wrote.
Genuine goodness must have a large measure of conviction and courage to back up the truth it embodies. That's the way of this world. There are too many 'nice' people who want to 'get along' with evil and appease evil, and worst of all, to pretty it up and call it good. Those nice people are not good people.
Edmund Burke is supposed to have said (though it may be an apocryphal quote) that 'the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' I've heard that quote many times, but after having heard it often, it finally dawned on me: it is not possible for good men to do nothing while evil is running rampant. Good men cannnot stand by passively in the face of evil. Nice men can, certainly, but good men? Never. That's how we will sort out the 'nice' from the 'good': the good people will be those with the courage of their convictions, and they will be the ones actively standing up against evil.
Labels: Civil Disorder, Justice, Morality, Societal Decay
0 comment Wednesday, September 24, 2014 | admin
I feel compelled to address a few of the canards and talking points that the 'colorblind conservatives' return to time and again. One that is frequently heard is that ''Democrat social programs cause all the black social problems. If it weren't for the Democrats/liberals, there would not be so much black crime or illegitimacy.'' Sometimes people elaborate on this one, and claim that black illegitimacy rates were negligible before the social programs of the 60s and onward were introduced. AFDC supposedly caused the number of unmarried mothers to skyrocket, and of course it's implied that were it not for the welfare checks, blacks would be chaste until marriage and monogamous within marriage.
Is there any evidence of that claim? One of the public figures who is most associated with the problem of social pathologies in the ''African-American community'' is Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Although he was a Democrat, he warned of the dangers of family disintegration among blacks. He said:
"The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States."
He was quoted here on the subject:
Mr. Moynihan speaks with passion about a poverty that is inextricably tied to "a volcanic change in family structure, for which there is no comparable experience in human history."
The 'respectable Republicans' say that the volcanic change, which led to a rise in illegitimacy and other social problems, was directly caused by Democrat/liberal bleeding-heart policies, like AFDC and other social programs. However, that is simplistic. The changes were already under way before the growth of the welfare state in the 60s and later. Much of the change resulted from earlier upheavals, first, emancipation, and then the uprooting of large numbers of rural blacks who went to large cities, many in the North, to find jobs. Disconnected from family and familiar surroundings, it was easy for many blacks (and poor Whites, for that matter) to break free of old social constraints and conventional morality.
It must be remembered, too, that many of these rural blacks did not hew as closely to conventional morality as did Whites. Illegitimacy rates and marital breakup rates were always higher than those of Whites.
Morality in general began to become more lax, especially during the years of World War II; this frequently happens because of the disruption caused by war, and the greater mobility and social disarray that accompanies it. Whites, too, had higher rates of social problems in the post-war years, though black problems were significantly more common.
This AmRen article from 1991 points this out.
''Black illegitimacy rates have always caught the attention of observers, even when they were forbidden to draw conclusions from them. As far back as 1944, when Gunnar Myrdal wrote An American Dilemma, he was worried about a 16 percent illegitimacy rate among southern blacks, which was then eight times the white rate. Today, nearly two thirds of all black children are born to single mothers (the figure for whites has risen to 15 percent), and if there is a single statistic that sums up the plight of American blacks today, this is it.''
But is that directly attributable to liberalism, as the 'respectable Republicans' insist? To claim such a thing is to deny that blacks bear any responsibility for their actions, or that they are free moral agents, not puppets of a political party -- or of White people in general, as many of the shriller PC Republicans imply.
Black people are not an inert mass who can be led this way and that by others. Yes, they vote consistently Democrat, because Democrats and their big-mommy government offer better pickings than the Republicans, and because the Democrats anti-White rhetoric and policies appeal to blacks and other minorities. To say that blacks are 'slaves on the Democrat plantation' is silliness. If they are being exploited, which is possible, given the corrupt political system we have, they are also doing some exploiting of their own. The Democrats deliver privileges to nonwhites -- as do the Republicans, but the Democrats go all out, and top Republican pandering every time.
Common sense would support the idea that subsidizing anything produces more of it, so that the easy social welfare benefits would provide an incentive for more single motherhood. This bears on the situation with illegal (and legal) immigrants, too. Subsidizing their irresponsible or illegal actions encourages such actions.
The rest of the talking points being disseminated by the PC Republicans involves a distorted picture of the War Between the States and the Reconstruction era. Their simple-minded scenario depicts Southron Whites as being cartoon villains out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and makes slavery the sole cause of the rift between North and South. This is a caricature of history, and I cannot refute it in detail here; it would require a book. Unfortunately most Northerners and sadly, many Southron people too, have been weaned on such a caricatured, distorted view of the North-South conflict, and so the PC ''conservatives'' find a ready and gullible audience willing to accept their childish and oversimplified account.
The gullible Republican audience believes that the Democrats represented ''racism'' while the noble and selfless Republicans of the War era and afterward were the friends of blacks and heroic supporters of ''equality'' and freedom. So, believing this, they believe that the only reason the old ''solid South'' voted Democrat for so many years is that White Southerners were evil ''racists''. They show no sign of ever having heard of how Radical Republicans ran rampant in the South during Reconstruction, and how these extremists stripped White Southerners of their civil rights and liberties. They know nothing about the depredations against the White Southron population that took place during Reconstruction. And how can they know, since most schools and history books present a politically corrected account of what happened then, of the excesses and outrages of Reconstruction, of which Republicans were the architects, turned White Southerners against the Republican Party for a century or so. This is why some of my older relatives to this day will not vote Republican.
Actually, the Republican Party has been making the claim that the Democrats want to 're-enslave black people' ever since emancipation and the Reconstruction era, as the above document put out by the Union Republican Congressional committee shows. (Click to enlarge the document)
So now there are two parties, made up mostly of White people, each claiming that the other group of Whites consists of a lot of vile racists who want to ''keep blacks down.'' According to the Democrats, the Republicans are the racists, and according to the Republicans, who want to live down their reputation as being a White man's party, the Democrats are ''the real racists''. So we've got twice as many White people affirming that other White people are hateful racists trying to keep the black man down.
What message does this put out? How does this help the country? It does not; it further cements the minorities' stereotype of Whites as bigots and hypocrites. It hampers relations between the races.
However, that last sentence does not indicate that I am one of those colorblind conservatives who thinks that the races would all get along famously if only ''those other racist White guys'' stopped stirring up hate and division. For Democrats to believe such utopian foolishness is predictable; they are not known for being honest or realistic. But for ''conservatives'', who used to pride themselves on common sense and groundedness to believe this is unforgivable. The Republicans are again proving to be the Stupid Party.
As I type this, I can just hear those objecting that ''but the Democrats are far worse; the Republicans at least have some good candidates!" Yes, I agree to some extent. I plan to vote next week, though my faith in the system is weakening by the day, but I will not have an easy time choosing between the evils.
If the Republican Party is to be salvaged -- and that is a huge ''if'', there will need to be a resurgence of common sense and a repudiation of the childish game-playing and name-calling, and above all, a jettisoning of political correctness and pandering. I know; that's a forlorn hope. But PC and all its attendant lies will have to go; the issues that are at the heart of it are the very issues that will be the death of us if we do not deal with them head-on, minus all the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and name-calling, minus the intra-racial hate and divisiveness.
A rejection of liberalism in its Republican guise is one of the most urgent needs if things are ever to turn around.
Is there any evidence of that claim? One of the public figures who is most associated with the problem of social pathologies in the ''African-American community'' is Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Although he was a Democrat, he warned of the dangers of family disintegration among blacks. He said:
"The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States."
He was quoted here on the subject:
Mr. Moynihan speaks with passion about a poverty that is inextricably tied to "a volcanic change in family structure, for which there is no comparable experience in human history."
The 'respectable Republicans' say that the volcanic change, which led to a rise in illegitimacy and other social problems, was directly caused by Democrat/liberal bleeding-heart policies, like AFDC and other social programs. However, that is simplistic. The changes were already under way before the growth of the welfare state in the 60s and later. Much of the change resulted from earlier upheavals, first, emancipation, and then the uprooting of large numbers of rural blacks who went to large cities, many in the North, to find jobs. Disconnected from family and familiar surroundings, it was easy for many blacks (and poor Whites, for that matter) to break free of old social constraints and conventional morality.
It must be remembered, too, that many of these rural blacks did not hew as closely to conventional morality as did Whites. Illegitimacy rates and marital breakup rates were always higher than those of Whites.
Morality in general began to become more lax, especially during the years of World War II; this frequently happens because of the disruption caused by war, and the greater mobility and social disarray that accompanies it. Whites, too, had higher rates of social problems in the post-war years, though black problems were significantly more common.
This AmRen article from 1991 points this out.
''Black illegitimacy rates have always caught the attention of observers, even when they were forbidden to draw conclusions from them. As far back as 1944, when Gunnar Myrdal wrote An American Dilemma, he was worried about a 16 percent illegitimacy rate among southern blacks, which was then eight times the white rate. Today, nearly two thirds of all black children are born to single mothers (the figure for whites has risen to 15 percent), and if there is a single statistic that sums up the plight of American blacks today, this is it.''
But is that directly attributable to liberalism, as the 'respectable Republicans' insist? To claim such a thing is to deny that blacks bear any responsibility for their actions, or that they are free moral agents, not puppets of a political party -- or of White people in general, as many of the shriller PC Republicans imply.
Black people are not an inert mass who can be led this way and that by others. Yes, they vote consistently Democrat, because Democrats and their big-mommy government offer better pickings than the Republicans, and because the Democrats anti-White rhetoric and policies appeal to blacks and other minorities. To say that blacks are 'slaves on the Democrat plantation' is silliness. If they are being exploited, which is possible, given the corrupt political system we have, they are also doing some exploiting of their own. The Democrats deliver privileges to nonwhites -- as do the Republicans, but the Democrats go all out, and top Republican pandering every time.
Common sense would support the idea that subsidizing anything produces more of it, so that the easy social welfare benefits would provide an incentive for more single motherhood. This bears on the situation with illegal (and legal) immigrants, too. Subsidizing their irresponsible or illegal actions encourages such actions.
The rest of the talking points being disseminated by the PC Republicans involves a distorted picture of the War Between the States and the Reconstruction era. Their simple-minded scenario depicts Southron Whites as being cartoon villains out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and makes slavery the sole cause of the rift between North and South. This is a caricature of history, and I cannot refute it in detail here; it would require a book. Unfortunately most Northerners and sadly, many Southron people too, have been weaned on such a caricatured, distorted view of the North-South conflict, and so the PC ''conservatives'' find a ready and gullible audience willing to accept their childish and oversimplified account.
The gullible Republican audience believes that the Democrats represented ''racism'' while the noble and selfless Republicans of the War era and afterward were the friends of blacks and heroic supporters of ''equality'' and freedom. So, believing this, they believe that the only reason the old ''solid South'' voted Democrat for so many years is that White Southerners were evil ''racists''. They show no sign of ever having heard of how Radical Republicans ran rampant in the South during Reconstruction, and how these extremists stripped White Southerners of their civil rights and liberties. They know nothing about the depredations against the White Southron population that took place during Reconstruction. And how can they know, since most schools and history books present a politically corrected account of what happened then, of the excesses and outrages of Reconstruction, of which Republicans were the architects, turned White Southerners against the Republican Party for a century or so. This is why some of my older relatives to this day will not vote Republican.
Actually, the Republican Party has been making the claim that the Democrats want to 're-enslave black people' ever since emancipation and the Reconstruction era, as the above document put out by the Union Republican Congressional committee shows. (Click to enlarge the document)
So now there are two parties, made up mostly of White people, each claiming that the other group of Whites consists of a lot of vile racists who want to ''keep blacks down.'' According to the Democrats, the Republicans are the racists, and according to the Republicans, who want to live down their reputation as being a White man's party, the Democrats are ''the real racists''. So we've got twice as many White people affirming that other White people are hateful racists trying to keep the black man down.
What message does this put out? How does this help the country? It does not; it further cements the minorities' stereotype of Whites as bigots and hypocrites. It hampers relations between the races.
However, that last sentence does not indicate that I am one of those colorblind conservatives who thinks that the races would all get along famously if only ''those other racist White guys'' stopped stirring up hate and division. For Democrats to believe such utopian foolishness is predictable; they are not known for being honest or realistic. But for ''conservatives'', who used to pride themselves on common sense and groundedness to believe this is unforgivable. The Republicans are again proving to be the Stupid Party.
As I type this, I can just hear those objecting that ''but the Democrats are far worse; the Republicans at least have some good candidates!" Yes, I agree to some extent. I plan to vote next week, though my faith in the system is weakening by the day, but I will not have an easy time choosing between the evils.
If the Republican Party is to be salvaged -- and that is a huge ''if'', there will need to be a resurgence of common sense and a repudiation of the childish game-playing and name-calling, and above all, a jettisoning of political correctness and pandering. I know; that's a forlorn hope. But PC and all its attendant lies will have to go; the issues that are at the heart of it are the very issues that will be the death of us if we do not deal with them head-on, minus all the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and name-calling, minus the intra-racial hate and divisiveness.
A rejection of liberalism in its Republican guise is one of the most urgent needs if things are ever to turn around.
Labels: American History, Creeping Liberalism, Cultural Marxism, Divisiveness, Faux Conservatism, North Vs South, Pandering, Political Correctness, Societal Decay