lexicography.com

Hitler found Dead in Bunker - New Leader Appointed for Third Reich

The newly appointed leader of the Third Reich said that Allied soldiers and airmen would meet “tragic, pointless” deaths in trying to subjugate a now peaceful Germany. He stated that the former leader, Adulf Hitler, died in a “firearms accident” and quashed rumors of suicide.

Watch, when their leader are captured or killed we will hear, not about victory, but about their replacements.

There are two camps in the USA and I don’t think there is an inch of overlap in basic principals or agreed standards of discourse between them.

It is not necessary to support such a statement with links or citations. Either you understand perfectly what I am saying, or you understand what I am saying but refuse for your own reasons to acknowledge it.

The collectivists seem to be losing power at the grunt level on the political stage. The two elective branches of federal government are in the hands of the party which nominally supports individualism. The people vote for restrained government and individual freedom.

Here in New Jersey, every time there is an election my mailbox becomes full of campaign literature. There is only one theme, only one selling point, and only one promise every candidate makes every election cycle: I will lower your taxes. After the election, whoever is elected builds new municipal buildings, providers more services, signs more generous contracts with the public unions, and improves the town pool. Pretty soon, the budget is in absolute crises and taxes have to be raised, not lowered as promised. They have to be raised, there is no choice.

Simply reading the campaign literature will show you what the electorate wants. No candidate has any doubt about what the electorate wants. They all campaign on lower taxes.

Yet for some reason the candidates, once elected, deliver what the electorate does not want. We get growth of the public sector, less freedom, less legal respect of private property, and higher taxes.

Of course we do not need a project to discover the problem. When the first mapping of the possible political philosophies was being done by the ancient Greeks, they immediately saw that democracy with no restraints on political power leads to one coalition of people destroying another; like the first Survivor series. Whoever creates the bigger coalition, quicker, wins everything. Except, when it is played through there is nothing to win, despotism replaces democracy soon after.

You would think professors of classics, history, politics and literature, would know a little about prior democracies and their fate. You would think they would know the reason for the structure of the Constitution and the limitations on democratic action (not minority rights, but individual rights).

If you vision was clear, you would realize that while government could never be completely restrained, the faster it was un-caged the faster the scramble to use it to remove value from your neighbors and redistribute it to you would occur.

Well, we are there. The only pressues on an elected politician is which interest group to give what government favors. The only question the press asks about any problem is what laws should or will be promulgated. Most people accept anything from government as long as it seems to benefit them. If there are no restraints on elected government power, then we will get one interest group taking from another interest group, backed by the instruments of government, the gun, the handcuff and the jail cell. Well, the future is inevitable given what you accept and do. One could see that 2500 years ago.

If it is against the Geneva Convention and other international law to show pictures of prisoners of war, why is the mainstream media publishing the pictures of Saddam offered to them? There is no question they know he is a prisoner of war; there is no question they know publishing such pictures tramples his rights; there is no question they could refrain from publishing the pictures, just as they refrain from publishing the pictures of certain sex crime victims or of minors. Does not international law, or the law of decency, apply to them?

Here’s the deal: these pictures echo former prison pictures and appear at first blush to hurt the US military, the war on terror and President Bush. Their appearance implies that the US military hawked the pictures of a helpless adversary in disgrace to the media.

Those are the concerns of the mainstream media, not the rights of the prisoner of war, which they could easily support. Michael Jackson’s accuser gets a blackout, although the press holds countless pictures of him. Mr. Hussein is now a pawn in a power game against a sitting US President and we all get to examine not only him, but him in his BVD’s thanks to the respected world media.

For leftists, liberals, multiculturalists, trans-nationalists, feminists, “third way”ists, communists, environmentalists, and academics there is no contradiction.

They require a religious American to tolerate unlimitd attacks on his faith. Piss Christ and dung Mary are things he is required to endure without complaint and even to pay for with his own money.

Yet, if another culture rejects everyone who does not follow and publicly profess every aspect of their dominant religious dogma, it is simply that culture’s truth. No one calls for them to change, modernize, or accept others.

I took a course in legal philosophy and got a dose of neo-Kantiasm. It is pretty easy to sum up the ethical and moral content of the course. If you wanted to play the piano well, you would go to someone who was recognized as a good piano player. In 1850, the piano piece might be played a little fast for modern tastes; there in no correct way to play anything, only the way your neighbors and the people playing agree upon is good. You go to someone recognized as good at it, in your particular cultural enclave, to see how it should be done.

In this way; all contradictions dissolve. The Catholic from Long Island has to be tolerant of other religions to the point of never saying a critical word about them, because that is what well respected western thinkers do. The Islamist living next door dose not have to tolerate anyone who disagrees with him, because that is his truth; that is the way the piano is played in his culture. Present Western culture is saddled with tolerance and relativism, destructive of our survival, but that is just the way it is, more primative or more brutal cultures get their own truth.

Do you think that the liberal professors feel superior, secretly, to more earthy cultures? Yeah, me too.

An interesting question is, where do subcultures fit in? The people who run TV, newspapers, and the Universities pretty much agree on how the piano is played in America. However, maybe the leaders (and rank and file) of of the military, small business perople, the religious, and many other respectable people in our culture have different views. You know jazz did not exactly follow the rules of the stogy American music culture and some would say it was a good thing. Suppose it is 51% to 49% that the American way of life is superior to other cultures? The 49% fraction controls the mass media and the University. The 49% fraction has inordinate political power and visibility. Do the 51% of Americans with other views have any claim to their own culture, truth, and right way of playing the piano?

Now I reject all forms of Neo-Kantianism. I would not even cogitate over the claims of someone who says that all cultures deserve equal respect. It is self-contradictory that tolerance and non-tolerance can both be right. But even if you buy into that view, should not the red states people of America, the religious and the conservative, have their own truth? Newsweek and CNN may be the most visible in the typical person’s daily existence, tied to mass media as it is, but just because you are outshouted does not mean your beliefs deserve no respect. We are told to respect the beliefs of people who loose elections. What about those who win?

Mark Golblatt: Back to Basics:

Those hundreds of hours spent in classrooms with posters of William Shakespeare and Alice Walker on the walls, those hundreds of hours spent as your teachers prattled on about the joys of creative writing — those hours are worthless, utterly worthless, and you can’t have them back. Those A’s you received for free-verse poems, those stories you wrote to explore your feelings, those papers returned to you without a single grammatical correction — they’re worthless too. You didn’t learn what you should have learned, what you needed to learn.

Al-newsweek. Best new coinage, even cool.

When someone annotates a representation of the Virgin Mary with elephant dung or immerses a crucifix in his own urine, it is free expression, art, and must be defended.

Did I just see the Secretary of State on TV lecturing me that we (presumably the United States, the most powerful entity ever seen on the planet) will not tolerate showing disrespect for the Holy Koran?

I suspect that I know what is going on here. It indirectly involves the fear of having your throat opened while bicycling down the street.

I looked at the Sunday Times. The Editorial page was full of commentary, almost like the comments found here and at most other blogs, about the use of annonymous sources.

My beef is not about the use of announymous sources, it is about the passive voice. A typical Times article in this post-modern age:

Some say that the election of George W. Bush marks the end of America because of his foolish arms buildup and imperialistic foreign policy. Some say the pandering of W to the religious right will lead to a new American Taliban which will end civil liberties. Some researchers say our president is a sub human chimp in IQ and will be causing the destructin of the environment.

That is not reporting. In these cases the source has no reason to be hidden, in fact, the reader’s evaluation of the reporting requires information about the “”some”. Some say just about any claim you want to make, but if you tell me who is saying it, I will have a better idea of the credence I give to it. Name the source, the credential, and the quote; or remain silent.

Some say the New York Times has less cred than it had even one year ago.

I hate bloggers who do posts about their interviews and guest spots on old media. “I will be on Hannity at 6 pm today; tune in right now.”

One possibility is I envy them. They are getting into the big time. The big jump into reality.

Another possibility is I suspect that they have been co-opted by the system. Their own actions show that they discount their blog and respect the mainstream media.

A small gap between rich and poor is good and a large gap between rich and poor is bad. Why?

I undertand that crushing poverty is horrible to experience and we want to see as little of it as possible. No one wants people to experience hunger; but in the United States eating too much is the main nutrition problem of the poorest people.

I would even agree that if most of the people in a place lived in poverty, observing a minority live in wealth could make the sting of want greater. Reinds me of the story of the two Russians, Ivan and Igor. Ivan and Igor are both dirt poor and live in great privitation, but Igor has a cow. Ivan prays to God. Does he respectfully ask that Igor and he suffer less from the pains of poverty? No, he prays “I should like that Igor’s cow die”.

Once you are able to fill your gut, it is not very relevant that others are able to eat twice as much or consume better grades of beef. Once you are able to own a car, it is not very important that someone else can afford a Lexis (h/t Thomas Sowell). When the hospital by law must provide you with medical care when you are in need, why this fetish for economic equality?

Culture is the Operating System for the human being. Without a culture we are hardware with little more than BIOS. With a bad culture every application hangs and locks up. With a quality culture some little island can rule a quarter of the world and cause changes worldwide and for centuries.

Some people tired of the OS wars and proclaimed that all cultures are equal.

The local newspaper had a spring contest, fill out a form, take it to a participating car dealer and you might win a plasma TV. Well, would you not know it, one of the participating dealers was Lamborghini.

I had to go. I run my own business so I visited on a weekday, middle of the morning. Parking my minivan in the lot, I entered the showroom. Empty. Salesman eventually comes over, looks like one of “them” from “The Day of the Comet” – deep bags under the eyes. Sizes me up, no thousand dollar watch, no bespoke clothes, and no attitude. Looks almost puzzled as to why I am there. To put him to rest, I explain the newspaper contest. I was almost troubled by his discomfort.

Why is it that the more expensive the car, the less savory the salesperson? I bought a Mitsubishi from an honest seeming yeoman like person who explained the safety features and engaged in minimal games in the sales process. I bought Audi and Mercedes for my wife without major event. This guy, while willing to talk to me about the ten and twelve cylinder models, was pretty dissipated. I thought that if I looked like a more realistic prospect, I would be offered some blow.

After I explained I was there just for the contest entry, a buxom woman appeared from the inner office and the salesman and the woman made a big show of putting my entry into the red box. What a bunch of shits. Just because they wait on people richer than me does not make them anything special.

On the practical level, the Lamborghini were grossly overpriced. Started at $200K, not even a twelve, and went seriously up. Style was much too much. Every model screamed standing still.

Today I went to the local Staples for paper and folders and there was a Dodge Viper convertible parked in the lot. In ways nice, but, overall lacking in comfort and quality. You could see the seams fit poorly in the hood.

I am cursed with an appreciation of cars and live in the desert of 2005, no good cars available anywhere.