lexicography.com

I am putting this domain up for sale. Obviously I do not have the interest to develop it. My new posts are found at bye-bye-usa.com, as I feel it is impossible to reform our government and the best avenue for anyone who can see what is coming is to do as the smart Jews did in Deutchland, go elsewhere.

I do have a parting idea. If libertarians/conservatives started a new political party it should be named “the ainti-statist party.” Doing so would make it doubly difficult for a member or candidate to be co-opted and advocate some sort of statist drivel just because it seemed to benefit him or his supporters.

Ladies and gentelmen, it is the Democratic Party candidate versus the Ainti-Statist Party candidate.”

It seems to me that we use gasoline to power our automobiles for the same reasons that we use glass in the windows of our homes, or paper for books and newspapers.

In each case we could use some substitute. Our windows could be rice paper or Plexiglas or wood. Our books could be flexible plastic.

With near total freedom to use whatever is available in the market at market prices, our builders and home buyers pretty much settled on glass windows (they keep out the rain, don’t cost much and let in the view), book publishers pretty much settled on paper and newspapers pretty much settled on newsprint. These products must have had some major advantages because they have near total domination of their markets. Just as gasoline has near total domination of the automobile fuel market.

No one in Washington decreed that we use gas, or glass for windows or paper for books. They were the best solutions to a particular need. Now Washington plans to decree that each utility must use 15% renewal energy or each car must be filled with 10% ethanol on pain of imprisonment. They are simply commanding that we use a worse form of energy because of the way politics makes decisions. Shameful

The only reason to look at the past is to make better decisions in the future. Period.

Thomas Sowell:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup

When I read this, I first wondered “how can the prospect of a military coup be the only thing that can “save” this country. Would not a military coup be the end of the experiment?”

Then I thought a little. A liberal web site commented on Dr. Sowell’s article as if he were a dottering fool. How would anyone get every local national guard base and each regional military base behind any coup? Hopeless and unimaginable.

My thoughts after that were as follows:

There would be no need for many local military establishments to join in any coup; because most of America is not behind the present incumbents. Let me explain.

Suppose a military fraction marched on D.C. and placed the present Congress and the present Supreme Court under house arrest. The organizers of the coup published an explanation - much along the lines of the Declaration of Independence.

When in the course of human events. . . a decent respect . . .

The people who start the coup publish a manifesto: (1) Each member of congress took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States (2) they violated that oath, we appeal to you the citizens of this great republic to judge if they followed their oath of office. The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The present incumbents interpret-et that to mean “the power to regulate anything the affects interstate commerce. The Constitution could have said the power to regulate anything that affects interstate commerce - it did not and reading it as if it said that is a violation of the oath to support the constitution. McCain Feingold just as clearly violated the Constitution. Taking private property for anything other than a public use (such as a public purpose) is prohibited in the Constitution but the incumbents read the plain words to mean other than their plain meaning.

If some military fraction marched on DC and placed the present Congress and the Supreme Court under house arrest, and published their complaints (we pledge our lives and our sacred honor) explaining that all the incumbents swore to support the Constitution and listed their evidence of violation of the oath.

Then if the military coup said that the next election would take place exactly as scheduled, but no incumbent could run because they clearly violated their oath of office - and the coup could end that November with a new Congress and Supreme Court.

Well, who in America would raise arms in support of the present incumbents of Congress and the Supreme Court.

Would you march on Washington with your personal firearm to keep the present incumbents of Congress in power? Would the local national guard or the state police.

Would anyone come to the defense of the individual people ( the incumbents) as opposed to the institution of Congress and the Supreme Court if such a march started.

One of the problems in this fantasy is the Presidency. Military coup ignore the President, he is the commander in chief of the military - if he said support the current incumbents it would be death for a soldier to go against his orders. Taking the President with Congress and supreme court under house arrest until the next election is the preferred solution.

In one of his novels, Phillip K. Dick had a clash of titans resting on opposite sides of some California valley. It was a world historical battle. The mountains which we mortals could see, represented the underlying greater forces of good and evil, engaged in combat.

Sorry, I can;t remember the name of the novel.

The upcoming election in the United States is similar in scale and repercussion.

2008 if won by the Democrats will lead to a “Rubicon” moment. The government will seize upon any problem that comes along to revamp the political landscape in radical ways. There will be no elections after this Rubicon. It will be the final breath of the republic.

Why do I believe this? Because the communistic, socialistic, collective, union, democratic, view is failing in the marketplace of ideas and in the marketplace of performance. Things are loose under our Constitution, there is slot for taking power. The tide is against them. What would you expect?

Now is not the time to argue

. . . now is simply the time to pick sides and fight for what you believe in.

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Sometimes a few words convey a paragraph or more.

When my 84 year old mother had some health problems which became more than things modern science could fix right up (and every reader will one day reach that point no matter where modern science goes) she said that she feared she was going to die, and she said: “So soon”.

If an 84 year old woman born before WWII and living a full life could meet the first serious danger to her corporal existence with the lament “so soon”, I judge that no measure of days would ever satisfy any one of us. For each of us, no matter how delayed, the end will be met with “so soon”.

In the Mainstream media when someone becomes sick they pretty much disappear. There are not many pictures of stars in their pain chair

I know that Seth Godin is well read in the blogosphere, but I do have to note, for myself as this place is for me, that he is a genius:

Many people have dropped me a line about JetBlue. Here’s my simple prescription:

Potlatch.

This is a Native American term for a ceremony involving dancing, feasting, and the most memorable part: giving someone too much. If I ran JetBlue, I’d go to each of the people affected (and it’s not that many) and give each person 40 free round trip tickets. Or maybe 50. More than any person could use for a long, long while. Let them fly with as many friends as they like until they’ve used up 50 seats.

Of course. Today, now, millions of people are focused on the perfidy of JetBlue. A marketing budget of trillions would not gain such attention in such a wide audience. So . . . perform. Fifty free first class tickets for every person who suffered 10 hours on the tarmac would cost less than a one minute major network ad and it would register 100% better in recall and brand identity. Interviews with customers so pleased to be able to fly their friends and relatives around (totally forgiving the error) would air for hours. After such an event when you think of JetBlue you would thing of a company that made everything right.

A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Said a man to a crapulent youth: “I thought
You a total abstainer, my son.”
“So I am, so I am,” said the scrapgrace caught —
“But not, sir, a bigoted one.”

By the way:

crap·u·lence (krpy-lns)
n.
1. Sickness caused by excessive eating or drinking.
2. Excessive indulgence; intemperance.

scape·grace
–noun a complete rogue or rascal; a habitually unscrupulous person; scamp

ABSOLUTE, adj.

Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign’s power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.

Collectivism is a vortex that sucks everything into it. We are meandering around the rim of the drain. Soon there will be a more direct movement. Since Nixon wage/price controls it has been pretty clear that NO ONE will stand up to any usurpation of any power, if the usurper has the mindset to do it and the color of legitimate government action.

Resting the republic on the character of the people who happen to be elected is a fool’s game; or worse. The nature of the institutions we are forging will inevitably lead to the worse among us rising to power.

I ain’t in this to convince you of what I say. I expect that we will all live through it. If I am wrong, no one will be more pleased than I.

There are always the gloom and doom websites (peak oil and credit bubble sites come to mind) but what is going on is a fundamental change from an individualist culture to collectivism. In the collective, truth ends, free will ends, discussion and rationality end. I’m reading “The Road to Serfdom” and have come to understand that in a collective culture the people are bent to the institutions. A man who would not hurt a fly will destroy a human being - because the institutions demand it. It is precisely because decisions in a collective must be arbitrary (there being no calculus of values) that the decisions of the ruler must become unassailable.

If you buy into it, Christmas is the ultimate good news. The good news is that eternal life is available to us all. Certainly grounds for major celebration. The lights, the decorations, the parties; it is all “too little” if “too anything”. The earliest literature I studied in college, the tale of Monkey, concerned itself with nothing other than the quest for immortality. The biggest question of all.

If, like me, you do not buy into it, are not a believer, the whole celebration, the lights and decorations, are pretty sad when you think about it. A celebration of a lie or a celebration of a nullity. No eternal life, no ultimate justice applied to this world, no anything except of a repeat of last year.

If you are a nonbeliever, not one iota of it makes sense. I decorate a tree and wrap presents, for what? What is my family celebrating? Why do my children get gifts? Why do we put up lights?

When I was young and my children were first born I thought it was unfortunate that I could not take them to church for a sort of “Christianity light”. They would get the good will towards all men, the imperative to be moral good people, the good society. It seemed a disadvantage to me that things got heavy so quickly, with metaphysics and eternal life and sin and doctrine - sort of total brainwashing just to get a few good things in life.

Now I am older, Christmas without the ultimate “good news” is nothing. The lights are empty ritual, not able to withstand the honest question of a clear thinking open hearted child. We do it for no reason, for nothing, is the answer.

Does anyone in the entire United States of America consider sending their children to DUKE UNIVERSITY, where your children will be totaly under the control of the local DA? I mean your children? The local DA ?

I’d send my children to Rutgers before I would turn them over to the local government of some established political cesspool like that.

people who cannot get into nearly as good schools. But the application readers will know that every applicant to Duke is a loser who can not get into the high demand schools.

Just applying to DUKE should make you ashamed

The one thing the entire blogosphere should agree upon is - never DUKE.

No DUKE for our children
No DUKE for us
NO DUKE ever.

Look, they can believe what they want - Duke will soon be gone. Who would send their child to Duke so some political could dance on their jail cell - when we all know a jail cell means repeated homosexual rape. Anyplace is better than Duke for your child - anyplace, really anyplace.

Here’s me at my daughter’s parent teacher conference:

Duke?
I’d rather have her at the local community college. My daughter’s life is not a plaything for politicans.
Those Duke players, what happened to them is bigger than a pre cancerous mass. Their lives are finished, finished. Not their fault and not in their control - it was a game in bigger fields with more power and money than I deal with. I would just like to find a college and a town where locking up a student is not the way to reelection and power. Never Duke. Duke sacrificed everything for something it wanted more than students - it has that.

I personally would never advise anyone in my extended family to even apply to DUKE I think DUKE is finished not a serious university at all not even able to avoid bankrupcy. Well deserved.

The Duke “no rape” case is instructive. Would you like your children thrown in jail to be raped by hardened criminals so that some politician who has a good life at the public tit gets his boost up to more power and greater glory?

They may arrest and handcuff parents who drive their children around without child seats, they should have mandatory prison sentences without the possibility of parole for parents who send their children to DUKE.

Never Duke, allow your children to not serve time for a crime they never committed.

It appears now the administration of Duke University is speaking up against the town in this neo-classic town/gown racial farce.

Look, it does not require much thought to see how this should have worked out.

You send your child to a university in a distant place. The place has its own politics, power structure, judiciary, business interests, all independent and insulated from you. You, as a parent, have near zero influence in the place. In your home town you may know the mayor, have contributed to the prosecutor’s election fund, know socially at least one local policeman or newspaper reporter.

In University ville, you are nothing and your child is represented by and protected by the pseudo parents, the academy. Not an insignificant power on your side. In college towns like New Haven and Boston, the local University is perhaps more powerful than the local government. Certainly has more money.

Now suppose the University decides that its job is not to protect its students (who are but visitors to the local community) but to weigh the race and economic class of anyone who has a dispute with a student.

An attractive person (to them) with a dispute with rich, white males garnered the support of the University Faculty on the side of the town, the black, the poorer. Good for them. That is what they believe is important in determining if a harsh physical crime has occurred. Every parent ever considering sending their tender naive children to DUKE UNIVERSITY need only note what their child will expect. A University that hates its students as much as our Mainstream media hates the culture that makes their lives possible.

You have to understand that in disputes between town and gown or white and black, initially no one knows the merits of the various claims. The town has its institutional protections, the local police, the local prosecutor the local judge. The student has only the University, if it decides to advocate for the student. I don’t claim that the student in a town/gown dispute is always in the right; but should not someone stand up for the student? Should the University take the side against the student so that no one on the face of the planet with any influence in the dispute supports the outsider?

Any fool that sends their child to Duke deserves the non-support and active attack they are likely to receive from the Duke Administration and faculty - not in some side area like housing or part time jobs; but in the area of total destruction of your child’s life, if it meets the political agenda of the academics at the moment.

More and more web commentators will write about Duke as being a dangersous place to send your children. Soon Duke will be a second rate college.

Language as a Tool for Persuasion

The more that I think about it, the more I believe that language is primarily a tool for persuasion. I do not mean the debating club or the rhetoric class; I mean all, everyday use. Language may imperfectly describe the state of some real referent, but it is extremely difficult to make it do so. That is why the protocols of a lab report or scientific paper are so over-structured. It is an attempt to make a tool, language, serve a purpose, describe reality, alien to the nature of the tool.

Language is like politics, pushing people around. [ that from the amorphism that physics is the science of pushing matter around and politics is the science of pushing people around.]

Geek with a 45 turned me on to this. He said:

It seems to me that when a bad act is discussed in academia, or the media, the offenders are described as part of whatever grouping includes both the offenders and white Christian American men. For example, Christian snake handlers or abortion clinic bombers are identified as Christian, while Muslim terrorists or Aztec human sacrificers are religious. European Americans endangered the buffalo, but when it comes to the extinction of most large North American Pleistocene mammals, (mammoths, saber-toothed cats, the native North American camels and equines, etc.) it’s humans not Native Americans who might have played a part. Abuses by a patriarchy are by men, abuses by a matriarchy are human nature. Humans, not Australian aborigines, may have burned the Australian forests to create a desert continent. It doesn’t work the same way if it’s a good thing; Aborigine art is Aborigine not Human. . . .

If you are my age you probably sent your parents to the hereafter.

My Mom lived a full life into advanced years. When things started to go bad, she was 84 or more, she looked me in the eye after one bad experience and said, “I thought I was going to die, I thought ’so soon.’ ”

Goethe in Dr. Faustus could not be so expressive. Whenever it comes, it will be “so soon”. No measure of life will be enough. My 84 year old mother saying “so soon” made me wonder what those exiting years earlier feel. What would I feel if it were tomorrow? It is always and forever “so soon”.