The Power of Ideas

Current debate about Islam based on false premises, has also been waging on Nazi Germany until decades after the event. And sadly, analysts have not taken the right message away from it. Their blaming ethnic nationalism for Nazism is like diagnosing one of the symptoms, leaving the disease itself untouched. It is sad, but it is also very dangerous.

For a long time we have been so racist to believe that only Germans could be capable of constructing a foul ideology like Nazism. But nothing could be further from the truth. According to the Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff Nazi Germany could occur, due to a specific set of ideolocal circumstances. If these conditions can be transfered to another time and place, something like Nazism could happen again, pershaps differing only in form and intensity.

The first prerequisite for a totalitarian state to occur is collectivism. As Ayn Rand has cleverly pointed out, racism is nothing but a quite primitive form of exclusive collectivism. In a collective, the individuals of which it consists, are nothing but cogs, drones, existing solely for the purpose of the collective. The queen bee and her drones come to mind, as does "resistance is futile".

Ethnic nationalism, communism and socialism are all forms of collectivism. Christianity, if it ever was a collective, soon shed it with the first schism. It has since fallen apart in numerous denominations. The Ummah (the Muslim community) is also a collective, and is in its development closely related to the tribe, which is also a miniature totalitarian state.

Collectives can be exclusive: one must have a number of characteristics (racial, or a blood relationship, or a social class) in order to belong to it; or the collective may be inclusive; or both simultaneously. Inclusive collectives assimilate individuals into it, whether they want to or not. One needs only to recall the Iron Curtain or the Berlin Wall to visualize how that might work. Those who do not belong to it, can't get in and for those who do belong, there's no out.

Collectives, while offering safety in numbers for underdeveloped cultures, are in effect evil because they snuff out human creativity and smother the free will and with it, morality.

Instilled in collectives is altruism: the requirement that is demanded from the drone to exist solely for the sake of the hive or the queen. They must submit. Islam means, to submit. Soldiers are asked to do the ultimate form of altruism, to give up their lives for their country. One can see that in the defense of the realm or for the sake of universal values like liberty, this is a good and noble thing. But if for the sake of an aggressive, exclusive or inclusive collective, this form of altruism becomes an evil.

Philosophies produced by the so called German Idealists culturally strengthened the ethics of altruism. Deontology, taught by Immanual Kant for example, demands one does not lie ... not even to a murderer, even if that might save someone's life. It is obvious that in this extreme form of ethics, nobility comes full circle and starts reversing in on itself.

Suicide terrorists come to mind as a perverted form of altruism. Those who self-sacrifice in order to take out those they consider to be enemies. The Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II performed similar deeds. Some collectives manage to rationalize sacrificing women and children, the so-called human shields.

Another ingredient required is pragmatism. The kind of pragmatism that makes you want to say: well, it may be evil and it may be dangerous, but we do it anyway. This is a form of expediency that comes to the fore when there's little or nothing left to lose. The Germans felt they had nothing to lose. World War I was lost, the German Revolution and the Weimar Republic produced cultural nihilism, and the Peace of Versailles had lumbered them with a heavy burden of reparations. Indeed, it was designed so that the aggressor might never recover to unleash another war again.

The power of victimhood cannot be underestimated. It's only justice that a victim is allowed to retaliate. It's a very strong incentive for war. Hitler told the German people they were the victims of Jewish greed and capitalism. A culture, a people or a country under pressure, with the incentive of victimhood, tends to expand by violent means. Ask the Palestinians. The Israelis are not even allowed to act in self defense, but the Palestinians, after years of prolonging and cultivating destitution and devastation, are allowed just about anything.

A real or perceived inside, or outside enemy not only helps in the cohesion of the collective itself by drawing it closer together, it also enhances the feeling of victimhood, of being in danger and under attack.

- Caption: Sioux Chief Running Antelope -

Another prerequite is relativism. This may surprise some who might expect here absolutism instead. The contrary is the case. Absolutism usually goes hand in hand with a healthy dose of self righteous tolerance, but relativism opposes universalism, enhances pragmatism and ends in polylogism. See here why present day polylogism - multiculturalism - produces sectarianism and is racist and evil.

So, aggression by a relativist, victimized collective is not inherent in Germans or in any human being, but is concocted in the cultural make-up of any given people by an ideological constellation, that given the circumstances, may be duplicated at another time and place.

Islam likes to guise itself in the robes of religion. Before the onset of political theory, the only ideological model known to man, was religion. Even Auguste Comte's philosophy of positivism as late as the 19th century took the form of a ridiculous pseudo religion. This confuses culturally relativist liberals who believe in freedom of religion and 'to each his own path to sainthood'. They are making the fatal mistake of equivocating Islam with other religions that do not share with Islam a number of ideological characterics: collectivism, relativism, pragmatism, existential angst, and a narrative based on slighted supremacy.

Home-grown terrorists like Jihad Jane are by now hardly unique. It provides proof positive that Islamic violence has nothing to do with race or is inherent in Arabs or Iranians, but has everything to do with Islam as an ideology. Apparently there is something in this set of ideas, that encourages hostile behavior, not just towards infidels, but also towards fellow religionists: most victims of islamofascism are Muslims. Watch the terror belt.

We end this post by repeating our findings of yesterday, "Easter Celebrations in a Storm of Postmodern Iconoclasm". While the older religions of Judeism and Christenity according to the Platonic mind/body dichotomy have separated the sacred from the secular, the younger religion of Islam permeates every aspect of life, including politics.

The test that liberal democracy has in store for Muslims will be if the Ummah will be able to break up its collective, and if it will manage subsequently to separate Mosque from State. That will be the sole hope of integration into Western culture, so as to avert the clash of civilizations that everyone fears so much.

Update

Following article by David Solway on Tariq Ramadan is highly recommended. Ramadan combines Islam with postmodern ideas: it doesn't come more insidious than that.

Pajamas: "Tariq Ramadan: A Viper in Our Midst (Thanks to Hillary Clinton)", door David Solway

Related

- Politeia: "Why Islam is an Ideology", by Dr Sam Holliday
- PJM: "Was Marco Polo an ‘Islamophobe’?", by Raymond Ibrahim
- Politeia: "Why Multiculturalism is Racist and Evil"
- Political Islam: "The Pseudo-Golden Rule or Do Unto Which Others", by Bill Warner

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• How Nazism shaped Islamist views (thejc.com)
• WWII And The Cold War (slideshare.net)

Of Elites, Liberty and the Manipulation of Perception

Word is getting out, and it is explained better and better. I first heard about the false Left and Right dichotomy, reading Stephen Hicks' "Explaining Postmodernism", now entirely available online.

With Communism and Socialism on the far Left, and Nazis and fascists on the extreme Right hand side of this political scale - capitalism and liberty is positioned smack in the middle? It just doesn't make sense.

Ayn Rand had this to say about Nazism and Mussolini's Italian Social Republic:

The political origin of that notion is more shameful than the “moderates” would care publicly to admit. Mussolini came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Italy. Hitler came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Germany. It is a matter of record that in the German election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis—with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.

It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?” into “Which kind of dictatorship?”—thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism). (...) Read the lexicon

Oh, and let's not forget the secret Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Non Aggression Treaty, which was not as outrageous as it may seem. Word has it that even before 1939 Nazis were holding military exercises on Soviet territory.




Andie Brownlow on Pajamas today has the following overview on the subject, and throws in a shortlist of recent history, of the Leftist press dealing with the enemy, i.e. liberty. As a now deeply middle aged, Leftist stand-up even last night had it: everything bad that befalls us is America's fault (but then, he also thinks reactionary is the opposite of proactive, so perhaps never mind him).

As we conclude in "Socialist Causes Explained", in case Leftist actions defy all sense and logic, ask yourself this and you've got your answer: what course of action would hurt the West or the cause of liberty (read capitalism) most?

Pajamas: "American Media, Blaming the ‘Right’: From Duranty and the KGB to Reuters", by Andie Brownlow

A Reuters article last month titled “German protesters stop neo-Nazi march in Dresden” takes a hyper-partisan stab at what would otherwise have been a dull story. The article is short, 474 words, and describes a neo-Nazi funeral march in the German city to remember Nazi deaths by the Allied air raid in WWII. This event was thwarted by anti-Nazi protesters.

In this brief article about clear-cut good and evil, the political “right-wing” was awkwardly invoked six times, including under the caption. Such a ham-handed approach to finger-pointing can hardly go unnoticed. It is a sloppy attempt to paint the right-wing as sharing the ideology of one of the most evil men in history, Adolf Hitler.

As many people are beginning to understand, Nazism has nothing to do with modern conservatism or the clichéd “extreme right-wing” canard favored by the political left. In fact, all totalitarian regimes are on the extreme political left; nothing but anarchy exists on the extreme political right.

The modern left has its roots in the political phenomenon of the 1930s when progressivism, communism, fascism, socialism, and Nazism coalesced under the common flag of centralized governments and an ideology of collectivism. This worldwide movement went largely unchallenged ideologically until the reassertion of classical liberalism through the American conservative movement in the 1950s. (...) >>>

Read here about the moral equivalent of war, which explains the need for unity in the face of a common enemy, global warming. The moral equivalent of war turns out to be nothing less than an exalted means to mobilization for what's deemed an ethically superior cause: that's fascism, thought up by the groundlayer of "progressive" collectivist Pragmatism, William James.

Read here how politically demoralized commentator Andrew Sullivan is wriggling out of Orwell's correct analysis that pacifism is objectively pro fascist. This RINO is juggling objectivity and subjectivity as it were a cup game, and plays the card that any old Leftist habitually does, the ethics of good intentions (or deontology), in other words, the-perpetual-get-out-of-jail-card.

The more you learn, the more you feel liberated from INGSOC.

Related:

- "The Dystopia of Paradise"
- "Just Doing his Job", interview with Soviet defector, Juri Bezmenov
- "Socialist Causes Explained"
- "The Press from Hell"
- "Under the Bus"
- "In Defense of Liberty"

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• Nazi references are all the rage these days! (hotair.com)

The New New Left: the Return of Authority

In the American Democratic party liberalism is as dead as a doornail. The party has been taken over by the postmodern, radical Left. In Europe they're not yet aware of the fact: they're still laboring under the impression that Obama is the next best thing to JFK. Little do they know. Denial is rife. 

In Europe another sort of Change is in the air. Perhaps because they've stumbled upon the obverse side of relativist thought, or maybe because they've stretched the abuse of liberalism to its outer limits, who's to say.

Philosophical twists in Leftist doctrine usually end up as justifying the awful means to an Utopian end. In the best tradition of Hegel's dialectic they're veering from one extreme (relativism) to its antithesis (absolutism), all in the good cause, that goes without say!

Proponents of the relativist approach spent years deconstructing authority and absolutes which they deemed the cause of religious zealots foisting fundamentalism, and bourgeois bigots passing moral judgment. They've done so in a very thorough way over the years. To be fair, there's very little in authority left to deconstruct, and absolutely nothing is left that's absolute (except higher taxes and their relentless hatred).

The problem with relativist thought - as is true for all its derivatives (for example multiculturalism) is that it holds that every idea/culture/nation/class/people/religion/gender/species is equally valid (with the exception of the West's). This ideal of value neutrality makes it impossible for them to criticize their own, or to do some foisting themselves. Not that it ever kept them from savaging their opponents! If it suits their agenda contradiction becomes part of the theory, but it does cause significant levels of cognitive dissonance in the more rational followers. 

Just when the Western world had been brought mentally to its knees, the Left make a turn and start the reintroduction of authority. The irony is that it comes from the same crowd that acquainted us to anti authoritarianism 3-4 decades ago. You can bet your bottom nickle that they'll use it against the Right, but for the moment they're making the case that liberalism, well, has it's downside and that the beneficiaries of their concerns are the lumpenproletariat. You know, those who they've kept on the fringes of society for donkeys years to make up their voting base and act as cannon fodder should the occasion arise.

Perceptive observers may have noticed lately a habit in the Left of displaying elitist tendencies. They themselves have also suddenly woken up to their own nobility. The pulpit strategy has alerted some in academe to hitherto untapped possibilities: passing moral judgment on cut-throat capitalism, the noble aim of elevating the unwashed masses (really!), bashing individualism in favor of the safety and coziness of collectivist society, preaching about the necessity of the nanny state, paternalistically telling others what to do and how to live, what to think, and how to behave - all under the usual cover of deontological ethics, that their intent is of the highest moral standard and that it's all for our own good - upper crust knows best. 

The disasters of their previous ideas and policies will be offloaded on to liberalism (the pejorative of which is neoliberalism); it will be blamed for malignant Narcissism, out of control  individualism, the nefariously greedy bankers and corporate magnets, the autistic obsession with selfexpression, the atomization of egocentrist capitalist societies. Reds, greens and confessionals are endlessly pounding the cozy togetherness drum against personal achievement, the fruit of labor and the pursuit of happiness.

Here's what's happening on the philosophical level:

- The Platonic mind/body dichotomy is deemed no longer tenable. The new paradigm is entirely biochemical Materialism. The mind resides in the physical brain and man is urged on by hormonal triggers (and society).

The model of man is a computer, with the hard drive in the role of the brain. The elemental question, what in this analogy is feeding this computer, has not yet arisen. It looks like another fallacy of the type that blames the spoon for one getting fat.

In short, the Naturalist and Darwinian perspective that man is the sum total of cells, synapses and the endocrine system carries the day (you will be hardpressed not to get cynical).

Also out are ...

• Empiricism (don't ask - I haven't been able to find out yet, but I have an inkling what's meant is objective knowledge; but that would mean retaining that element from relativist thought - it will be hard to maintain absolutism if you've got no way of knowing anything for certain [note to self: mark as future trouble spot if they embark on pushing the subjective as an absolute, which they will].
  
  
• Individual autonomy (very important! it is essential to all Leftist thought that man has no free will to speak of (imperative for a functional moral compass), and absolutely no personal autonomy whatsoever (this never sat well with liberalism). This enables blamelessness and victimhood, so central to the progressive narrative!
  

It will be a sight to behold what Leftist thinkers will come up with to explain the U turn and how to gell authority and absolutes with standing doctrine! But it does facilitate in a great way the compartmentalization of society in minority groups and social classes, enabling the Left to set them against each other so that progress may reign - somewhat like what's happening in the States right now where any opposition to President Obama's anti American policies warrent shrieks of "Racism!"

Proponents of the authority strategy claim the primary aim is to promote universal self-esteem, but not on the basis of talent (which is no achievement) or of personal achievement (which is competative and capitalist). So this self-esteem presumably is on the sole basis of being a member of the collective (this comes perilously close to mob ethics). 

Altruism remains the highest trait in a drone: the willingness to sacrifice self to the hive. Dissenters are traitors to the cause and are out ... out! The Leftist elite, like the Soviet nomenklatura, form the uppercrust of an ostensibly classless and egalitarian society in which every cog knows his place in society and is valued on the basis that he's one of theirs.

They will put paid to the neoliberal horrors of hereditory meritocracy. This piece of lingering eugenics follows from the logic that intelligent parents breed even more clever children, while their grandkids in turn will outsmart their parents. These neoliberal meritocrats - in order to get one up on their neighbors have rat races amongst themselves, the root cause of all ills in Western society, to wit:

• loss of sense of safety and shelter;

• rewarding of talent (which is unfair because unevenly spread in populations);

• Rousseau's clarion call: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer (a cliche and a lie which refuses to wear thin over its 250 year old history);

• the lack of self-esteem in those "left behind" (the disenfranchised lumpenproletariat).
  

- Caption: Engraving "The Emancipator of Labor and the Honest Working People (Communists)", Harper's Weekly, February 7, 1874 - 

At this point it's getting really fascistic, eh progressive. Try to follow the logic, as it is very instructive!

The neoliberal meritocracy is also detrimental to the autonomy of the family (as if the Left care!) because - in order to meet the progressive standard of equal opportunity, "poor" (equals dumb) families need to be broken up and their children placed in institutions so as to ensure equal starting positions ... 

There's no way of knowing at this point if this strand of thought will catch on with the Left. Postmodern relativism initially also made a slow start, but eventually spread like wildfire to the point of debilitating the entire West. We are keeping our fingers on the pulse of the progressive heartbeat and are keeping you abreast of what's brewing.

The Roots of the Unholy Alliance (redux)

From an article up on Pajamas by its CEO, Roger Simon entitled "Israel Alone", it transpires that the alliance between the broad Western Left and Islamism, is as yet mystery.

Although no Leftist, Simon labors under the purposely disseminated meme that Leftism is morally superior to any other political ideology because of its altruistic ideals for One Happy Egalitarian World in which all of humanity is to participate, voluntarily or otherwise.

I named that process the dystopia of paradise, in reference to the secularization of its religious roots and the catastrophic effects, whenever the lofty ideals are put into practice.

The author's reasoning follows from one specific definition of ethics, posited by philosophy's Mr Magoo, Emmanuel Kant. It is an approach to morality in which only the duty - the intention - to 'do good' counts. Intent is an end itself. In the Magoo book of ethics the effect - the result of a particular action - is entirely excluded from the equation; indeed it renders the action invalid as far as the field of ethics is concerned.

It is known as deontology and gives birth to immoral no-brainers as "it is wrong to lie to a murderer, even if it saves someone's life".

Following Kant's definition of ethics we have a variety of Leftists historically giving evidence of lofty ideals and the construction of Utopias, thereby going literally over dead bodies. But no Leftist has ever, ever apologized, conceded defeat, declared moral bankruptcy, or shown signs of remorse over the piled up human sacrifices. Instead they get posthumous tributes from the socialights in Hollywood.

Following such cataclysms they point to the lofty ideals - invoking Kant's built-in get-out-of-jail card - and blame not the principle of the thing but the brother-operators who have obviously made mistakes in implementation and execution.

Roger Simon and some of his commentators seem unaware not just of the ethics, but prove also ignorant of the root of Leftism. The last few years, the keen observer could have watched the Left shedding the thin layer of democratic principles, that were never part of the ideology to begin with.

The late adoption of democracy was part of the reconstruction efforts that are regularly exerted to prolong the life of the morally bankrupt beast. Social Democracy should have died when the experiment in the German Weimar Republic collapsed into full blown National Socialism.

Simon et al. express their surprise at the ease with which the Left have thrown all their traditional minority proteges under the bus in favor of the apparent antipod, Islamofascism: women, blacks, gays, transexuals, the entire laundry list of victim groups was declared irrelevant practically overnight.

It's not just simply a matter of the greater numbers of the masses (the loyalty of feminists and gays is simply taken for granted); it is also a case of reverting back-to-basics.

- Caption: "The Evolution of Socialist Strategies to Rescue it from Failure" (click to enlarge) -- Hat Tip: Dr Sanity -

Venture a guess to whom the following edifying words can be ascribed:

"A society properly founded on natural passion and religion will override the self-centered individualism that reason leads to, making it possible for individuals to form a new, collectivized, social organism. When individuals come together to form the new society ... "the individual particularly of each contracting party is surrendered to a new moral and collective body which has its own self, life, body and will." "The individual (...) puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of society's leaders," and those that do not summit to the state "should be put to death."

What the éminence grise of Leftism has to say about compulsory participation in religion, puts the combined efforts of the Ayatolla Khomeini, Oliver Cromwell, and the Inquisition to shame.

Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the Left's ground zero: a paying job to him was slavery and an indignity no human being should ever have to endure. The education of his kids he entrusted to the care of the Paris orphanage.

More pernicious than anything else, he outfitted the collectivist state with a persona, an animus, and a 'common will' to remind individuals of their duty to self-sacrifice to the whole.

Rousseau laid the groundwork in which the proud, rustic tree of collectivist Socialism would grow, roots since soaked in the blood of millions of individuals and reduced to a putrefied, amorphic mass, a monument to Nothing, that is Postmodernism.

A comparison of the roots of Socialism and the secular characteristics of political Islam, renders the following illuminative chart:



The fundamental principles underlying both Socialism and Islamism explain the mutual appreciation and attraction and clarify why scores of Leftists hit the streets this weekend in support of a set of pathological murderers in Gaza who claim to act in the name of victimhood.

Surprised why the Left descends into fascism? On a philosophical level there's not much difference between the twin ideologies of Socialism and ... well, National Socialism. The cosmetic rifts lie in the choice of the totem and the field of implementation: the one variety seeks out ethnic roots as a religious surrogate (nationalism), the other limits that to the Germanic tribes (National Socialism), in the Italian Social Republic fascism was a amalgam of Socialism and corporatism, while in Communism the means of production were nationalized. All outlawed independent thought and action.

The principles as detailed in the chart are deeper and much more fundamental than that. They remain the same for The Unholy Alliance as a whole, made up by both Left and Right Socialism, as well as Islamism.

The Postmodern strategy of confusing the enemy has been successful enough as it is; very few people today can distinguish between fact and opinion, cause and effect, equality and identicalness, public opinion and truth, intolerance and diversity. The cacophony in the field of ideas is sheer endless.

Given the circumstances it would be a relief to know that the thinking part of civilization at least has done its homework.

- Filed on Articles in "The Dystopia of Paradise" and "The Unholy Alliance" -

The Non-Defining of Terrorism and the UN’s Ethical Relativism

This post is published on All American Blogger as part of an ongoing series they made, on dangerous United Nations schemes Barack Obama could buy into.

- Caption: photo by David Paul Ohmer- a visit comes highly recommended -

- Filed on Articles in "Transnational Bankruptcy" -

Dutch Eugenics, by Commission

The Dutch coalition Government is on the verge of collapse. The comprising parties' irreconcilable principles can withstand the strain no longer: it should never have been in the first place. It consists of Labour, the Christian Democrats (CDA), and a small but sturdy Bible-based Calvinist party with a pendent for 'compassionate politics.' In theory it should have worked. We'll shortly see why on philosophical grounds, it was a non-starter from inception.

Recently in "Christian Ethics: Of Muzzles and Jackboots" we analyzed the basic amorality of the Christian Democrats (CDA). In fact, identity crisis is its permanent state of being. They sport an assertive Leftist strain, but in recent years supported a number of Libertarian free-market policies on the Pragmatist basis of 'best practice'. Having just ruled a number of years with the Libertarians, the collectivism of the Leftist Hegelians is at present the dominant faction.

Both perspectives within the party are at principle mutually exclusive. Don't ask how their leaders manage to make breathtaking U-turns without experiencing massive pangs of conscience! It leaves no other conclusion, that at some point in their history they must have dispensed with the field of ethics.

What's going on? It would seem that a Labour Secretary of State has given fertility treatment clinics the go-ahead this week to select embryos on genetic markers for breast cancer. Selection already takes place with respect to other genetic disorders deemed unacceptable to postmodern society. This selection, based on deontology (Kant's good-intent-bad-result-never-mind ethics) takes place on 'compassionate' grounds. The Calvinist contingent aren't having any! They've said they will withdraw their support of the Government if the fiat stands. Good for them!

Hurling abuse at 'God's people', the finer points are - as usual - lost on a very, very confused nation. They lose themselves in articles and discussions on just how serious and certain the chances of a genetic disorder should be to warrant selection (liberals and Libertarians); others take a more principled stand, reserving the right to trash embryos and flush zygotes, period (the Left, liberals); others hold that a tiny minority has no right to foist their retarded morality on society at large.

Just where the CDA stand in this debate is not exactly clear at this point, but Elsevier registers CDA's 'surprise.'

Amidst the cacophony of party-political opinion - Bible-based or otherwise - we could do with a reality check: for example an exercise in Aristotelian philosophy. Alas, it is not to be ...

- Caption: The Gates of Hell, by Rodin. Top center: The Thinker -

Protestants don't 'do' philosophy for theological reasons - but that was after their scions Kant and Hegel turned it into an unusable speculative parlour game for collectivist intellectuals with a view to obliterate reason - the basis of liberty, limited government, individualism, and free trade, otherwise known as Capitalism.

Hegel's war on existence brought forth the Young Hegelians, Messrs Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels c.s., the forerunners of today's Left. So no joy there either ...

Roman Catholics regrettably have forgotten their golden days of Scholasticism and St Thomas, who single-handedly revived Aristotelian philosophy, laying the basis for Renaissance and Enlightenment.

At the core, the matter here literally is life and death. Since it is plain that half alive or a little dead does not exist, it follows that half-wash compromises are no option. There's nothing for it, but to muster moral courage and take a stance in this matter of 'extreme ethics.'

I don't know about the reader's personal experience with breast cancer or any other hereditary disorder deemed unacceptable to postmodern society, but my sister was told today by the proponents of Selection, on 'compassionate' grounds, that - as far as they are concerned - she should never have been born. My best friend's family and children were informed today by the Selectors that, on 'compassionate' grounds, her life has not been worth living.

On the basis of American figures one in three cases in woman is diagnosed as breast cancer. Since ideas have consequences, and in consideration of such staggering numbers, what would the effect of above message be on society at large?

Not waking up yet ... to the postmodern eugenics?

This chilling spawn of the serpent Gaia is the product of the war on existence, of those who think that the pursuit of human life - as a value - must be rejected. Watch it closely, it's the future ...

The War on Existence continues.



N.B. to Dutch readers: JPB as the country's 'leader' might have pointed out that the meaning of value, is something that is worth pursuing. It presupposes an answer to the questions, to whom and to what. Value suggests a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. No alternative, no value, no ethics. Btw, 'value' has no relation whatsoever with vegetables, brussels' sprouts or any other horticultural product.

Update:

Is it any surprise that while we are exercising our 'human right' of a decease-free life, there are over 50,000 suicides in Europe each year? EUX has it that Europe will explain this week to the subjects what it means by ethical globalization ... postmoderns cannot even spell the word! Since Kant, the philosophical field of ethics has become synonymous with fulfillment of duty: the mentality that any horror is acceptable as long as the beneficiary is the collective, for then it is considered an act of altruism: don't pass on your faulty genes!

Update II:

The abominable coalition Government has been saved by the joint decision to impose a commission of ethics experts who will decide on a case by case basis if Selection is warranted - the issue is not worth creating an 'embryo crisis' over (if that is the case, nothing is). The entire history is a classical example of Dutch style politics.

- Filed on Articles in "The Dystopia of Paradise" - (the entry is followed by another example of 'extreme ethics')

Your Guide to Acting Irresponsibly Yet Never Go to Jail

Yesterday in this blog in a post "Pomo Goes to Washington DC" - dedicated to the Postmodern approach of American President-in-waiting B. Barack Obama - we discussed the Leftist favorite branch of surrogate ethics known as deontology - or the morality of good intent. Whatever the outcome, if intentions are good this is designed to get you out of jail, permanently.

Today we have the misfortune to address the matter once again, this time accompanied by an example of yet the latest nightmare currently unfolding on the world stage.

Leftists live in a permanent state of offence about the lousy job that God (or Nature) did in creating this imperfect world. Instead of wonder, they find fault and injustice everywhere. As a consequence they never cease remedying error, stopping the gaps left by reality: regulations, bans, controls, legislation, harmonization, rules, compulsion, prohibition, redistribution of just about everything - from capital to speech rights, no tool is shied in the cause of real progress.

Such a furious flurry of activity calls for some impunative mechanism. Just so, that should things turn sour - as they invariably do - progress to perfection can be carried to full fruition nevertheless. Fortunately some critical theorist thought up the notion that if we do away with judgments about Good and Evil, the problem would be solved. Much like burning the law-books would solve crime.

The result is deontology - or the good-intent-bad-result-never-mind principle. This means that good intent is for ever beyond suspicion: all Leftist initiatives are the result of working towards the greater good and for mankind's own best interests; should unintended results ensue these could not be foreseen at the time.

The latest episode in a long history of politically motivated sins of this kind, is the scandalous starvation as a result of the current 'food crisis'. Once again, intent is beyond reproach - fixing the environmental crisis, even if so many independent scientists have repeatedly warned not to approach this too dogmatically.

Bradley Doucet has the story in Le Québécois Libre: "Going Hungry: Why Biofuels are Bad for People, Prosperity, and the Planet." The reader is reminded that one of the composing cohorts of the Postmodernist movement is an anti-human branch of environmentalists, followers of evolved NatSoc exponent Heidegger.

Blogger-psychologist Dr Sanity looks at the real Heroes and Villains of the piece.

By the way, the UN's IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has finally seen its monopoly crashed by some healthy competition. Here's the Heartland Institute's report. - Hat Tip: De Klimatosoof.

- Filed on Articles in "The Food File" -

The Postmodern Anti-War Hero: "The Red Baron"

The hypocrisy of the postmodern let's-pretend-there's-no-reality brigade reaches Jagdgeschwader height in the latest anti-war product, "The Red Baron"! Instead of breaching the taboo against German war heroism, another one is erected by means of political correctness, against the reality of war and its place in human existence. One barely dares mention its name for all the tut-tuts and feigned indignation towards the facts of history.

To the postmodern cohort in Hollywood modern Western history serves but one purpose only: a showcase for the embarrassing caricature that it is collection of 'continual conflict, wars of almost unimaginable destruction, colonialism and despair and religious persecution', 'wave after wave of ethnic cleansing', culminating in the conclusion that 'war and genocide are not part of the history of Europe, but constitute the whole of its history'.

This rhetorical parlour trick aims to deflect attention away from the 110 million or so victims that were butchered on the altars of the postmodern forebears, to wit the essentially anti-modern, anti-liberal and anti-human ideologies of nationalism, communism and National Socialism.

The rape of reality is well illustrated by the German World War I hero portrayed as the typical post counter-culture anti-war dialectician àvant la lettre: "He says he's not going to be the immortal god that Berlin wants him to be; he knew millions were lured into the trenches with such propaganda," he said.

Postmodernists are also blissfully unaware that sentimentality has nothing to do with empathy or sensitivity towards others, but - on the contrary - according to the grandfather of psychology C.G. Jung, is a superstructure overlaying brutality. But of this deontological feature (the ethics of good-intention-bad-result-never-mind), of the aim justifying the means, we were already aware ...

BBC: "German war film challenges taboo", by Tristana Moore
He is a handsome, blond, young pilot - and he's not your typical baddie. In the new film The Red Baron, which had its premiere in Berlin on Monday night, Germany's legendary flying ace, Manfred von Richthofen, is portrayed as an emotional, sensitive man. (...)

Manfred von Richthofen, who shot down 80 British, Canadian and Australian pilots during World War I, is played by the dashing German actor, Matthias Schweighoefer. The film shows how 24-year-old Von Richthofen and his fellow airmen treat the war like a sport, hunting down the enemy in lively air-battle scenes. (...)

The film, with its sentimental touch, makes you aware of Von Richthofen's humanity. The young officer falls to pieces when his friends die, he buys a harmonica for a friend, and he feels embarrassed because he cannot dance well. (...) >>>

- Caption: Von Richthofen Squadron - Hat tip "The House of Gutenberg" -

Related:
- IMDb slideshow of the movie
- "The Death of von Richthofen"
- "The Red Baron: Rittmeister Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen"

- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled"-