Europe Under Siege by 'Flying Sand Paper'

After five days of thousands of stranded passengers, numerous airports in chaos and an economic loss now dwarfing the damage sustained as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it is now transpiring that the European national authorities have severely mismanaged the eruption of the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

Eyeing initially European transnational entities like Eurocontrol and the Commission's Transport Department, word now has it that the responsibility for closing air space rests entirely with the national authorities.

While safety is an imperative in the industry, these measures of closing swathes of European airspace for days on end, appears to have been taken without the slightest consideration for economic consequences.

The English edition of NRC newspaper has this tonight ... (Climategate, anyone?)

"EU can't be blamed for closing European airspace"

Airlines have complained that the decision to close Europe's airspace was based on computer models, rather than on factual information regarding the level of volcanic ash. Matthias Ruete, the top-official of the European Commission's transport department (...)  said the US uses a different system in similar situations. 

"Don't fly over the volcano," is how Ruete described that system. "If you look at the statistics there is no reason to assume that is any less safe," he added. (...)  It is unlikely Europe will adopt the American system any time soon, even if it is just as safe. In the US, the authorities only issue advisories to airlines, which they are free to ignore at their own peril. "We are Europeans," Redeborn of Eurocontrol said. "We like to regulate."

Many are now looking to Europe regarding the ban's financial consequences. Some are even asking whether Europe should bail out airlines the way it did troubled banks. This question too is based on a misconception, however. National governments, not the European Union, kept banks afloat with capital injections. Still, the commission could choose to relax regulations governing state aid. Competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia has already said he would consider such a move.

It is unlikely Europe will ever adopt the American system any time soon, even if it is just as safe, for the reason alone that it is the American system.

What is it these people don't understand in the words 'tax payer'? What's up with the disdain for economic considerations?

The answer is simple: the general European has grown up to believe there's a tree somewhere in the center of his country, which when shaken is dropping gold coins. The relation between paying taxes and the redistribution of it by the state, has purposely been severed.

The governing oligarchies are made up of collectivist statists who look with disdain upon the tax paying middle classes and their shop-keepers' mentality.

Something tells me we haven't heard the last of this matter yet. The angry man in the volcano is far from done.

Updated

Telegraph: "Volcanic ash cloud: Virgin boss Branson criticises flight ban as 'wrong decision' "

The Virgin Atlantic boss said the airline lost about £50 million in six days and called for compensation for the industry. Speaking in central London ahead of the Virgin London Marathon, Sir Richard said: ''We've never asked for Government help in 25 years. We didn't even ask for Government help after 9/11. We took it on the chin. ''But I think on this occasion this was very much a Government decision to ground the planes and we would suggest that the Government should compensate the industry. ''Behind the scenes our engineers and all the experts were telling us that there was no danger at all to flying and that the danger would have been if we had flown close to Iceland through the volcano. (...) ''The experts in the industry were saying it was safe to fly. 'A blanket ban of the whole of Europe was not the right decision. (...) >>>

Apr 24, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

• EU transport ministers agree to gradually open airspace (calgaryherald.com)
• Volcanic ash cloud: European flights set to resume (telegraph.co.uk)
• Ash chaos 'a lesson for Europe' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Anger rises from ashes as air chaos subsides (financialpost.com)
• Iceland volcano air restrictions are excessive, says European Commission (telegraph.co.uk)
• Airlines Seek Bailout From EU For Ash Crisis, British Airways Losing $30 Million Per Day (huffingtonpost.com)

On Authority, Sovereignty and We the People

First posted on September 13, 2009

On August 16 , 2009 we published an essay written by Dr Sam Halliday entitled "The 'American Manifesto'". As a sequence we are posting today his "The Mandate of Heaven". Enjoy!

Earlier articles and essays from the pen of Sam Halliday posted on Politeia, are available on the Articles file of the Armiger Cromwell Center, a non-profit organization aiming to contribute to more effective and efficient policies in international relations.


The Mandate of Heaven

In the Chinese tradition the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ has long been associated with legitimacy. It confirms the authority of a ruler; it withdraws legitimacy from a despot or tyrant. A loss of the Mandate of Heaven necessitates a change in governance.

As a practical matter the Mandate of Heaven argues for the removal of incompetent or despotic governmental officials, and provides an incentive for officials to govern well, justly, and for the common good. It can also be invoked to curtail the abuse of power.

In America this same idea is expressed in the motto ‘In God We Trust.’ Legitimacy comes from something superior to humans. There is no agreement on what this superior authority is; those who accept this concept only agree that it gives legitimacy to the laws, procedures and practices of Secular Authority.
Secular Authority is created and administered by humans within governmental structures; however, it is The Mandate of Heaven, which gives Secular Authority legitimacy. When those in government usurp Secular Authority in order to advance their own interests—rather than to protect, preserve and advance the interest of all citizens—it can be claimed that the Mandate of Heaven has been lost. Then the alteration or abolishment of that regime can be justified.

The Mandate of Heaven at the Founding of the United States of America

The Founding Fathers never used the term Mandate of Heaven, but they acknowledged it in their reference to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” in the first paragraph of The Declaration of Independence. This is in keeping with English common law that “man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything” and the will of “his Maker is called the law of nature.”

This view is repeated in a reference to unalienable Rights being “endowed by their Creator” in the second paragraph. And again they acknowledged it at the end of that document: “with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The Mandate of Heaven is both similar to, and different from, the European concept of the Divine Right of Kings. Both sought to legitimize rule through something superior to human made laws, rules and procedures. However, the Divine Right of Kings granted unconditional legitimacy, something the Founding Fathers rejected--just as does the Mandate of Heaven.

Both the Chinese concept and the view of the Founding Fathers are conditional on the behavior of the regime maintaining a climate of order and satisfaction. Revolution is never legitimate under the Divine Right of Kings, but a revolt might be justified after the fact under the Mandate of Heaven--a successful revolt being evidence that the Mandate of Heaven had been lost. The Founding Fathers expressed their view on this in the Declaration of Independence.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station ….

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

In the Chinese concept the words Mandate and Heaven have meanings different from the common usages of these words in the English language. It is not a message that a religious zealot claims to have received from God. Mandate does not mean a command from a superior to an inferior; it means legitimacy, or approval to establish and administer Secular Authority.

Heaven is not the abode of God with the angels of the after life. It is not a Supreme Being, i.e. a God in the Western sense. Heaven is an authority which judges mortal behavior, in this life and the after life, and which directs the forces of nature.

The Mandate of Heaven is an unwritten agreement that proposes a set of mutual obligations between rulers and ruled; in China it was used by authoritarian regimes to maintain a “harmonious society”.

The Rise of Those Who Do Not Accept the Mandate of Heaven

Since the 18th Century many Americans have not accepted, or have ignored, the views of the Founding Fathers. Also today many do not recognize Sacred Authority as being equal to Secular Authority. They want laws, legal procedures, and legal practices determined by humans to be supreme and unchallengeable.

- Caption: b/w photo of the Supreme Court
by Andrew Prokos - 

In fact today most lawyers, politicians, professors, and pundits think the Supreme Court has unchallengeable authority, i.e. the equivalent of the Divine Right of Kings. As a result the United States has become increasingly like countries that preceded it with struggles among factions, the centralization of power, and growth of bueaucratic government. The new form of governance that the Founding Fathers envisioned has been increasingly ignored.

However, the First Amendment of the Constitution explicitly recognizes the Mandate of Heaven concept: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. In other words, there is something superior to human laws.

However, the original intent of the Constitution has been eroded by many interpretations of the courts.  If “In God We Trust” means anything, it means that the legitimacy of government and Secular Authority (so called “rule of law”) are both subordinate to some higher authority. It is time to return to the principles and ideals of the Founding Fathers.

Why the Mandate of Heaven Is Important

Secular Authority must be conditional if those in government are to be prevented from taking unto themselves the authority of the sovereign. In the United States of America the citizens are the sovereign. The citizens are not subjects of the government.

When those in government usurp the authority of the sovereign and attempt to dictate what should or should not be done, or to transfer the sovereign’s authority to some supranational organization, they are no longer legitimate—they have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

It is then appropriate for the sovereign, i.e. the citizens, to remove those attempting to usurp their authority. It is the duty of the security forces to support the sovereign in re-establishing the Mandate of Heaven through a new regime.

All governance is some combination of centralization and decentralization. Centralization goes from oligarchy to authoritarian to the extreme of totalitarian. Decentralization goes from representative republic, to pure democracy to the extreme of anarchy. In practices the forms of governance are mixed.

Thus the despotism of a totalitarian regime cannot survive in the long run, just as anarchy, in which many refuse to be ruled at all, cannot last. The extremes tend to create their opposite. Anarchy usually results in a call from greater authority to maintain order, and when a totalitarian regime falls there are demands for greater individual freedom.

Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization, self-help, and the acceptance of responsibility can arrest a tendency toward centralization with authoritarian rule by an elite controlling all positions of power in the government. Such a movement can only be successful if the security forces (police and military) support it.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which an all-powerful executive is supported by a compliant judiciary and an ineffective legislative. And one in which the executive retains control of the security forces. In effective centralized regimes the people are subjects who do not have to be coerced, because they accept their servitude. In a servile state even the most centralized regime retains the Mandate of Heaven.

- Caption: "Chinese Emperor Han Wudi, the fifth emperor of the Han dynasty
(156 BC–87 BC) - 

Extreme centralization of power is the outcome whenever Secular Authority (the rule of law) is the supreme, and unchallengeable, authority. This is because the method of decision-making is the dialectic, which is the struggle of thesis versus anti-thesis producing a synthesis.

This is the path to what Hegel called the World Spirit. Those who follow Hegel’s method consider the human created State the final and perfect development of political institutions. They assign to the State an importance greater than the individual. For them the State has “the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the State”.

This was not what the Founding Fathers wanted to create. They wanted power decentralized as much as possible. They wanted citizens to be the sovereign, and for governmental officials to be beholden to the citizens.

This is only possible when Sacred Authority is separate from, but equal to, Secular Authority. Sacred Authority provides an inner compass to individuals so they can make judgments between good and bad, between right and wrong, and between virtue and sin.

- Caption: Washington enforces British surrender at Yorktown, by Eugene Hess (1824-1862) - 

Sacred Authority provides a check on Secular Authority, and thus it discourages the self-serving excesses of governmental officials; it encourages the removal of incompetent or despotic governmental officials; it provides an incentive for officials to govern well, justly, and for the common good; and it curtails the abuse of power by officials.

Throughout history demagogues, heading political factions, have destroyed States and Nations in order to create some Utopia which they hold dear; true believers have used rhetoric, inflated views of themselves, and raw power from militias, gangs, enforcers, and the security forces (police and military). America is now at a crossroads and patriotic Americans must determine which road is to be taken.

Questions to be Answered

Are today’s Americans as unwilling to accept servitude, as were those who founded the United States of America in the 18th Century? Do they consider themselves free citizens who are the sovereign, or do they consider themselves subjects of an all-powerful government who will determine social justice for all?

Today how many will rally to “Do Not Tread on Me” and “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”. Today will the police and military support the sovereign (the citizens) and the Constitution as it is written, or will they support the Commander in Chief and the Constitution as interpreted by the ruling elite?

Do we want an America in keeping with the vision of our Founding Fathers? Or do we want to transform America into a centralized socialist Utopia in which every one receives the same benefits regardless of their merit, effort, or commitment to America?

What will be America’s future? Will America follow the cycle of past states and nations into decline and decay, or will the citizens reestablish their position as sovereign in keeping with the vision of the Founding Fathers?

Will America return to the principles and convictions that made it great? Will the Mandate of Heaven play its critical role? Only the American people can answer these questions. And they must be answered with actions—not merely words.


Copyright © 2008 Armiger Cromwell Center, Atlanta, GA 30319-1322. 404-201-7374. Permission is granted to forward this article by e-mail to friends or colleagues on a fair use basis. For reprint permission, contact Armiger Cromwell Center at armigercc@comcast.net

An online printable version of "The Mandate of Heaven", by Dr Sam Holliday

- Filed on Articles in "The Armiger Cromwell Center" -

Pomo Politics: Why it is Shallow and Evil

If it's one thing that is standing out like a muzzleman at choir practise it's the staggering superficiality of postmodern thinkers. It struck me years ago when I came across some propaganda of the Dutch Liberal Democrat party D66, that has adopted not liberalism, but elements of Pragmatism as its in-house philosophy.

It was an awkward read, and unaware of relativist thought as I was at the time, was unable to pinpoint the source of the cognitive dissonance I felt. Later it transpired that Pragmatism, a branch on the Postmodern tree - unlike Classical Liberalism - is a form of collectivism. It doesn't deal in social classes as Socialism does, it doesn't deal in the nation or the state as nationalism and statism does, but it breaks down society in social classes based on culture and race, but also in categories as lifestyle, fashion, subculture, income brackets, age groups, levels of education and the like, almost as is done in marketing.

Progressives for their social engineering love putting people in boxes. This shallowness is exacerbated by their essentially materialistic world view. Man is but a sum total of cells, synapses, hormones and other bio-chemical substances. At night, one doesn't rest the mind, but one reduces adrenaline levels. After the mechanical and computer model of humanity, now the chemical factory.

But there's more. Postmodernism is hollow by definition. In "The O Team: Mental Babies with Razors" and many posts since, we've analyzed the nature of pomo lingo (or Leftist rhetoric, if you will). They deny the existance of objective truth and morality. It follows that anything goes. Early victims of this world view are concepts, abstracts and universals (e.g. 'the' quintessential Briton, or Britishness).

Words, language and meaning in classical philosophy are reduced to the sensory level and therefore have a referent in reality. This won't do with subjectivists, as they deem the senses untrustworthy epistemological partners. Instead they delve into their own minds, and find but meanings, narratives and agendas according to the collective to which the thinker belongs.

Karl Marx was supposedly right when he came up with the dialectic of oppressors versus oppressed, but later on in the evolutionary process sub collectives were added. The Left discerns meanings, narratives and agendas according to social class, race, culture, religion and increasingly also related to the gender of choice, life-style, income bracket, and level of education. The result is what is called identity politics.

Everything is facade - all form, no substance.

You still with me? That's it, folks - the vacuous universe according to pomo! Behind language and words go subjective social agendas, pitting one group or class against another in competition for the zero sum game that is life, pomo style. Rhetoric and written texts need 'deconstruction' and 'close reading' in order for the subjective group narrative to be 'unmasked'.

Philosopher Stephen Hicks, an authority on Postmodernism (his book "Explaining Postmodernism" is now available online) has posited that:

"Postmodernism is the first ruthlessly consistent statement of the consequences of rejecting reason, those consequences being necessary given the history of epistemology since Kant." 

"Postmodernism is the academic far Left's epistemological strategy for responding to the crisis caused by the failures of socialism in theory and in practice." 

"Postmodernism is a symptom of the far Left's crisis of faith. Postmodernism is a result of using skeptical epistemology to justify the personal leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism."

I've put it this way:

Postmodernism propagates the in essence political agenda with the defense argument that if reason makes no sense to what you're saying, as reality clearly shows otherwise, you attack reason as superficial and pernicious, and you try to persuade the world that reality doesn't exist!"

In view of all of the collectivist debacles in the course of history, the current, covert onslaught of Neo Marxism may well be the very last chance of establishing a truly global collective. Barack Obama and his transnational progressive brothers in arms at the EU and UN are doing their utmost to strike successfully this time. Remember, it's always the operatives and never the ideology that is at fault: this time they'll show us how ethically superior they are!

Expediency is therefore required. Pragmatism provides it and pomo lingo is the weapon of choice. It's an ultimate fight to the death, unrestrained by any rules or niceties. While the opponent is held to live up to his own standards (Alinsky), the rhetorical pomo warrior is have a free-fight: fibs and lies, ridicule, equivocation and double standards; logic, facts and reality have become irrelevant; no punches held and the occasional temper tantrum or tear jurker is also thrown into the mix.

Some have held that true moral relativists don't exist. Such a person would have to be a psychopath. Well, isn't that a coincidence! James Lewis, writing on American Thinker, has actually identified them as such as early as September 25, 2008 in a remarkable, eye-opening read: "Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths". Do read it all!

From the above we draw the conclusion that, on the contrary, it isn't reason that is shallow, vacuous, hollow and superficial, but that it is postmodernism that is out of its depth, is all of the above, and evil besides.

Quote of the day
"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
-- Barack H. Obama

Update

- Outside the Beltway: "Elena Kagan Lesbian Rumor Smear Neither Smear Nor Rumor", James Joyner
- The Examiner: "Clinton links McVeigh to Tea Parties", by Robert Moon

Related

- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Postmodern Fallacies" (PMF long, worksheet)
- Excerpt of "The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism", by Richard Wolin (Google Books)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Does Stanley Fish Know What Reason is Missing? (trueslant.com)
• The Real Power of Ideas (newcitizenship.blogspot.com)

Of Human Hubris, Coverups and the Debilitation of the Mind

Two results of a number of enquiries into the University of East Anglia's Climate Unit (CRU) are in. Complete whitewashes, as was to be expected. Here are the results. But after I've reported on a typical anti-human, Rousseauian narrative on radio last night, an interview with diver-photographer Dos Winkel (do visit the site; like Riefsenstahl's, the artwork is simply stunning).

The problem is, these self-appointed researcher-activists-Cousteau-wannabees are talking through their hats! Winkel is wildly peeling the alarm bells as entire species are disappearing and seas are being drawnetted dry. He knows, because as a diver he has witnessed the devastation with his own two eyes. Who wouldn't take him seriously?

But when you come think of it, there's something highly subjective and selective about such reports. Climber-activists have been doing the same in the Himalayas and the Alps as we know to our detriment. Some of these amateur-researcher reports have 101 found their way into the UN's IPCC 2007 Update without further ado, where they were used to influence politicians and other decision makers at the expense of the tax payer.

- Caption: photo by Dos Winkel - 

There's nothing scientific about these sightings (or lack thereof). How misguided are these people? Very. A Dutch commuter newspaper is suggesting there may be no summer this year "due to Iceland's volcanic eruption". A volcano is now standing accused of "polluting the climate". How dare it, they exclaim, as they're shacking their fists at the angry ghost in the mountain.

Robert Moon is reporting today in the Examiner that the climate lobby in the media are making the case, not of a direct cause and effect as they did with climate warming and hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007, but are now concocting a narrative as if there were a relationship between volcano eruptions and a decline in the weight of gletchers (whatever).

Human hubris can at times be quite staggering. This goes for the entire man-made global waming hypothesis. In the face of the mighty forces of nature, it's the question if man is capable of such a feat in the first place. The notion is the result of the erroneous postmodern habit of confusing the metaphysical and the man-made. Their minds have reached the level of the medieval bumpkin who's blaming the plague on demons (see reports on man-made climate warming being responsible for massive earth quakes).

Besides anti individualim, anti reason and anti capitalism postmodernists share this confusion with the Islamists: an Iranian cleric has just discovered that earthquakes are caused by extramarital sex. It beggars belief what divides these two members of the Unholy Alliance!

A debilization of the mind has taken place as a result of a world view that is a fallacy. Like the foundation of a house is out of whack, causing eventually the entire edifice to crumble, this warped world view produces nothing but inside out, upside down bolderdash - crap in, crap out.

I recently retrieved some of my earliest work on the critique of postmodern thought, laid out in - for want of a better word - the PMF (postmodern fallacies). It needs updating with the latest discoveries on present confusion (which is rife!), and the analysis of what constitutes pomo lingo (read also "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors").

Here's a digest of the Climategate cover-up, but I encourage you to read the entire original article - it's quite concise.

National Post: "Climategate whitewash", by Peter Foster

'Climategate scientists cleared of wrongdoing” read the headline in yesterday’s Post. Who expected anything else? The two self-inquiries launched by the University of East Anglia into its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were always destined to produce whitewashes, as did a recent UK parliamentary inquiry, and as will an “independent” review by the UN.

The first of the UEA reports, from a committee headed by ardent warmist and anti-carbon profiteer Lord Oxburgh, appeared this week. As Lawrence Solomon points out elsewhere on this page, the choice of Lord Oxburgh indicated that the fix was always in for an inquiry which fails to address, let alone probe, most of the major issues. And yet there is a mountain of condemnation-by-faint-exoneration between the lines of the report’s ridiculously slim five pages.

Its attempt to present CRU head Phil Jones, and his beleaguered band, as unworldly boffins who were blindsided by all this attention is ridiculous. (...) The CRU’s data has appeared in two forms: raw and cooked. Much of the raw variety, unfortunately, has been “lost.” This is treated by the review as infinitely excusable due to the pressures of the academic life. You know, tedious admin meetings, the pressure to publish, the need to get in those applications for multi-million dollar grants attached to proving man-made global warming. But how can ditching the fundamental data on which your science depends be dubbed mere carelessness with “non-essential record keeping?”

As for the cooked data, the CRU has been accused of “manipulation” not in the legitimate statistical sense, so that different data sets may be comparable, but in support of the results required by government-funded, highly politicized science. Without data suggesting rising temperatures due to anthropogenic emissions, there would be no justification for massive global programs such as cap-and-trade, redistributionist “clean development,” or the hefty subsidization of alternative energy. The CRU is also gently fingered for its lack of statistical sophistication. (...) >>>

Related

- James Delingpole: "When the Germans give up on AGW you really do know it’s all over…"
- "Greenism"
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Global Warming: a Problem That is not Supposed to be Solved"

Related articles by Zemanta

• Oxburgh blesses Climategate boffins (go.theregister.com)
• Can we trust the 'Climategate' inquiry? (telegraph.co.uk)
• Second expert panel shows "ClimateGate" was a ClimateSham (desmogblog.com)
• 'Climategate' scientists criticised for not using best statistical tools (telegraph.co.uk)

Tax Day #TeaParty Tweets

- PJM: "Exposing the Party Crashers: the Big Day", by Charlie Martin

(...) WE REJECT RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA, AND ANY EXTREME AND OFFENSIVE SIGNS OR STATEMENTS

As part of this, Pajamas Media and PJTV will be providing a special website to document and repudiate anything that appears to fit with the tea party crashers’ agenda. We invite all attendees at any of the Tea Party events to photograph or video any signs that would call the tea party demonstrations into disrepute. In particular, look for:

Deliberately misspelling words in signs
Using racist slurs in signs or verbally
Using homophobic slurs in signs or verbally
Using exaggerated imagery, such as showing Obama as Hitler
Generally behaving in a hostile and disreputable manner that reflects poorly on the demonstration
Capture these images and send them to us at tpcrashers@pjtv.com. We will publicize them on PJTV and here at Pajamas Media.

Here are a list of do’s and don’t’s as a guide (...) >>>

Latest

- PJM: "Tea Partiers Epitomize the Tension Between the Individual and the State", by Rick Moran
- Now Hampshire: "Source: State Dems scrambling to deploy tea party ‘crashers’ UPDATE: Sullivan denies"
- PJM: "The ‘Crash’ That Burned", by Bob Owens
- PJM: "UPDATED: Tea Party Crashers: Not Quite Understanding the Assignment", by Bob Owens

The Lie

"In our country the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state."
Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Pajamas: "A Letter to the American People", by John Voight

This call for the American people to join the tea party movement was first read by Jon Voight on Mike Huckabee's Fox News show of April 10, 2010. It is published here in Pajamas Media by agreement with Mr. Voight. (...) >>>

Related

"Of Potentates, the Lie and Altered States of Reality"

The Leftist Tactic of Infiltration and Agitation Exposed (updated)

Enjoy your Alinsky Rules for Radicals 101

HTTP://CrashTheTeaParty.ORG

This provides a rare insight into the mindset of the Left and their 'aim justifies the means' mentality. Unfair, unethical? The idea doesn't even enter the minds. The terminally self-righteous have no morality to speak of.

Update

Pajamas Media: "Who’s Behind the ‘Crash the Tea Party’ Website?", by Bob Owens

(...) Out of momentum, out of sorts, and out of ideas, progressives were left with one alternative: framing tea party activists as a group of unpalatable racists and bigots that any reasonable person would shy away from.
Such is the mission of www.crashtheteaparty.org, a newly incorporated website seemingly dedicated to widespread and organized fraud to discredit the tea party movement (...) Meet Jason Levin: he digs Olbermann, ObamaCare, and 9/11 truther websites. Oddly enough, he really, really doesn't like the idea of tea parties. (...) As you may suspect, crashtheteaparty.org was not created by a Republican or an independent, but instead by someone with a red-tinted sickle to grind. (...) >>>

Related

- The Clarion Ledger: "Foes of tea party movement to infiltrate rallies", by Valerie Bauman (Associated Press Writer)
- Conservative Examiner: "Liberals caught posing as Tea Partiers", by Robert Moon
- Thaindian News: "Crash The Tea Party Movement Spies On Tea Partiers"

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

Related articles by Zemanta

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

Easter Celebrations in a Storm of Postmodern Iconoclasm

Unless you've taken up residence on planet Vulcan (which is becoming a more attractive prospect by the day) you can't have helped noticing the Catholic Church coming under heavy assault. In the chain of events the story happens to culminate over Holy Week and Easter.

While the abuse at the hands of priests is entirely despicable and without wishing to whitewash the guilty, it must be said that some of the media exposure has been disproportionate, to put it mildly. The postmodern left have reacted true to nature: dialectically and entirely in line with the Alinsky tradition: hold them to live up to their own standards (which no human being can do all of the time), then come down on them like a ton of bricks.

The smear campaign unleashed this week affects many groups and entities: the Tea Party movement, Republicans, Conservatives, Geert Wilders, Israel, the Berlusconi government in Italy, Euroskeptics, warmist deniers, Georgia and its President Saakashvili, the US Constitution (now toilet paper), George Bush and Dick Cheney, Eric Cantor, the usual talk radio hosts, Fox News, banks, insurance companies, big oil and big pharma, Capitalism, the private sector, reason, the middle class, weapons, heterosexual marriage, the Pope and the Vatican - all dissent from the Neo Socialist line is fair game. See here what's happening in the UK, where the Tory leader turns out to be a follower of Lucifer "community organizer" Alinsky.

The Counter-Enlighteners have had their eye on religion for a very long time. But Catholicism, as the ultimate adversary, has been singled out for demolition from the get go (others get the "boring from within" treatment). They've had too much power for far too long. Now's the moment to strike and paint them as essentially evil. And that, they do. They've been ramming nails into the coffin all week long.

But Free Republic in a post just up entitled "Forgotten Study: Abuse in School 100 Times Worse than by Priests" have been summing up the figures and put them into some perspective:

"(...) the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests. After effectively disappearing from the radar, Shakeshaft’s study is now being revisited by commentators seeking to restore a sense of proportion to the mainstream coverage of the Church scandal. 

According to the 2004 study “the most accurate data available at this time” indicates that “nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career.” (...) 

In an article published on Monday, renowned Catholic commentator George Weigel referred to the Shakeshaft study, and observed that “The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague” in which Catholic priests constitute only a small minority of perpetrators." (...) >>>

By a chance constellation the Jewish Passover, Western Easter, and Orthodox Easter, all happen to coincide this weekend. But there's no love lost in the Christian brotherhood. While the Archbishop of Canterbury has said the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has lost "all credibility", and "Experts offer opinions on whether the pope should be held responsible", Galveston-Houston Archbishop Cardinal Daniel DiNardo criticized the media coverage.

The Church has started pushing back: "several prominent European clergy on Thursday denounced suggestions that Pope Benedict XVI was anything but a vigorous defender of victims of priestly sexual abuse."

And at a Good Friday service, the Pope's personal preacher, Reverend Cantalamessa, likened allegations of the pope's involvement in an alleged cover-up to "some of the worst aspects of antisemitism". It didn't take long before that was viciously savaged in a fit of moral indignation. Antisemitism is on the order of the day, unless Jews can be exploited to attack Christians! Talk of bigotry! After the dust settled it transpired the cleric had been quoting from a letter he received from a Jewish friend. You can hardly expect postmodernists to understand the parallels in using a few rotten apples to tarnish the whole basket, or can you?

That is, unless their favorite religionists are involved! When it comes to Muslims, it is entirely outrageous and racist, indeed fascist to lump an entire religion of peace pieces, with a few assertive victims of Western imperialism who - in their desperation - have turned to asymmetric warfare (a.k.a. terrorism, or man-made disasters). Hold them to their own standards and then apply double standards, is the line.

The Jihad Jane case - "white Al Qaeda", home-grown hirabahism, is by now hardly unique. It provides ample proof that Islamic violence has nothing to do with race or culture, but has everything to do with Islam as an ideology. There must be something in it, that triggers its practitioners into bloodletting. 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.

Happy Passover, a happy and blessed Easter, Kali Anastasi kai Kalo Pascha ...

Related articles by Zemanta

• Williams critical of Irish Church (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Child abuse scandal 'left Catholic church with no credibility', says Rowan Williams (telegraph.co.uk)

Of Cultural Marxism, Blue Helmets and the "Pink Army"

A Dutch lobby group for gays in the military, "Pink Army" is livid! An American General has told the US Senate Armed Services Committee, that the sacking of the Bosnian enclave Srebrenica in 1995 occurred as a result of the Dutch policy that allowed gays in the military. At least, that is what the MSM, and fuming liberal politicians after them have been paroting for days. The chaps in the Pink Army are pondering a law suit.

But what General Sheehan has actually said was that European armies deteriorated after the collapse of the Soviet Union and focused on peacekeeping because they did not believe the Germans were going to attack again or the Soviets were coming back.

Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and other nations believed there was no longer a need for an active combat capability in the militaries. They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialize their military — that includes the unionization of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. 

- Caption: Serb General Mladic and the Dutch Commander Karremans -  

Dutch troops serving as U.N. peacekeepers and tasked with defending the town of Srebrenica in 1995 were an example of a force that became ill-equipped for war. The battalion was understrength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them.

Truth is, that the haphazardly declared enclaves were impossible to defend. The Bosnian Muslim army continued to conduct raids into Serb territory from this 'neutral zone'; one day the Serbs decided to act. But worst of all it was the UN that had the lead in the war. They provided the peace keeping forces with light arms, throwing in 1 (one) tank between them for good measure, so as not be 'provocative'!

General Sheen is right, but he is missing the full picture. The 'socialization' of the military to which he's refering happened during the Den Uyl government, who - like Obama today - was conducting a program of "fundamental transformation" (code for a bloodless revolution).

This government vowed to reform society based on the "democratization" of private corporations and governmental institutions - higher education, police and the army amongst others - and 'nivellation', the redistribution of wealth with a view to an equality of outcome. The military and civil servants were allowed to unionize and obtained the right to strike.

Ideally corporations and institutions "mirrored" minorities in society - the early form of what is now termed 'diversity'. Reverse sexism and racism was the result. The last remaining vestiges of that era are the military unions and now, the "Pink Army".

- Caption: the case of the long haired Rinus Wehrman - 

But the scope of the New Left's bloodless revolution was much wider and took place all over the Western world. Only now, years after the events do we know that some years prior, McCarthy wasn't that far off the mark as is often claimed. The West was riddled with Soviet moles, fellow travelers and useful idiots. The Frankfort School was the incubator and director of this onslaught of cultural Marxism.

The peace movement was infested with agitators and agents provocateurs. They were protesting against the same cruise missiles that eventually necessitated the Soviet Union to drop out of the arms race. It was however a fatal mistake to think that after the collapse of the USSR, the Left had conceded defeat. Now they're back with a vengeance.

Looking back on history from satellite height one can discern the pattern of the postmodern dialectic. This narrative builds on the Marx dialectic, that created the dichotomy of oppressors versus oppressed. This narrative  goes as follows: "the" truth does not exist; all oppressed minorities - genders, races, ideas, religions and cultures - are equal in value and validity ... except the West's which are uniquely evil. The group oppressors consists in affluent, white, heterosexual males. (Read or watch Isabel Allende's "The House Spirits" which embodies this drama like no other.)

Gays in the military are a part of this dialectic. Also peruse our dossier "Socialist Causes Explained". Despite all this talk of equality there is a certain hierarchy of victimhood: some are definitely more equal than others. But whoever has the audacity to outgrow one's victimgroup, is inviting the fulll wrath of socialist curse. More on this subject in part II of our series on progressive cosmology.

- Caption: Condoleezza Rice lost her black victimhood status because she is a Republican i.e. political color trumps race - 

If you fail to see the logic or common sense in a certain position the Left is taking, just ask yourself the question, what course of action would hurt the West most, and you've got your answer. That is the ultimate goal, also of gays in the military. The sacking of Srebrenica wasn't because of gays in the military, but it happened as a result of the demoralization program, of which they are part and parcel..

Related

- "Socialist Causes Explained"
- "The Dialectics"
- "The Cosmology of the Progressive Narrative"
- A Soviet defector tells about how he was just doing his job
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Pomo Lingo"
- "The Case of Neo Communism"

- Discover the Networks

- "Horowitz on Alinsky: the Postmodern War on Reality"

- "Atbashian on Commie Agit-Prop and Info War-Fare"

- KeyWiki Blog - KeyWiki