Insanity Rules

In a post "Some home truths for men" James Higham on nourishing obscurity comes out in defense of the traditional relationship. He writes:

“Society’s moved on since then,” is one of the worst constructs trotted out, the idea that not trying at all is somehow modern, in keeping with our onwards and upwards path, that commitment, fidelity, genuinely trying, great tolerance and willingness to be elastic enough because you want it to work – that that is somehow old-fashioned, something your grandparents did and then you convince yourself [or let others convince you] that they weren’t happy, on the grounds that you know of strife they had in their marriages."

- Caption: Hat Tip: Mindart - 

Yes, that is an appalling construct, but it goes even further than that: the thinking class of humanity has evolved on an ethical level beyond the mere mortal of say, the onset of the Age of Aquarius. The Darwinian notion is pushed on a more physical level in television series as The X-men and Mutant X.

It is somehow suggested that reality itself has evolved. That the laws of ordinary physics somehow no longer apply. This is possible because the postmodern mind rejects objective reality. Rather, they reason from the premise that each human being lives in his own subjectively created reality: to each his own 'narrative', everyone his own Master of the Universe, the New Reality of "the smart set".

Since then we have emotive creaters of pseudo realities. This is all good and proper for companies selling cars and lipsticks, but when politicians are embarking on a conscious quest to manipulate the voters' perception, things tend to get a wee bit problematic in the real world.

Third way politicians like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton tried to manipulate the perception of voters with rhetoric and mild NLP techniques. Since then, things only gotten exponentially worse. We have witnessed the Obama campaign, in which styrofoam Ionian columns and other postmodern kitch superficially created the pseudo reality of the celebrity saint, the Obama, and the young, upcoming statesman, the Obama.

Everything in the artificial Obama reality serves as a prop. Projection is rife in the subjective world of the perceptionists. This is how they unwittingly reveal what they are doing, simply by accusing the other side of same. The omnibus Obamacare Bill wasn't the physical manifestation of the subject matter, but "a prop".

The pliable, fleeting reality of the subjective Obama universe was made audible this week when he uttered the undying words: "I'm an ardent believer in free markets". In the face of blatantly doing and saying everything that is in contrast with that, truly a chutzpah of staggering proportions! But he wasn't lying - it was merely his "truth of the moment".

As we have seen in "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors" the postmodern, subjectivist mind is quite literally insane, not in any physical or psychological sense, but on a philosophical and mental level.

Dr Sanity illustrates the matter in her post "What a Joke", relating to the Obama budget. She quotes the authority on postmodernism, Stephen Hicks:

"(...) unmasking means interpreting or investigating to a literal meaning or fact of the matter. The process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality. For the postmodernist, by contrast, interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality...." 

Stephen Hicks' book "Explaining Postmodernism" is now entirely online available.

A similarly constructed reality is climate alarmism. We can see the narrative under construction as they change the labels from "global warming", to the blanket cover of "climate change". Subjectivists really believe that changing the labels, will change the reality. As I heard a journalist exclaim the other day concerning an issue that was exposed as a scam, "But they changed the name, didn't they?" In other words, that should have restored its validity.

Do not ever believe that their insane, sentimental and enfantile ravings are innocent blather. As Dr Sanity points out in yesterday's post:

God help us from their ministrations, as the moldering bodies of the millions upon millions they have destroyed with their perfectionistic techniques. 

When objective reality no longer exists, quite literally anything goes!

Updated:

Politics Daily: "Obama on Health: Stunning Arrogance or the Edmund Burke Theory of Leadership?"

Related:

- Glenn Beck: "Progressives by another name..."
- Hicks: "Scientific fraud and politics"
- PJM: "Narcissism and Denial in the Obama Administration"

- Caption: doctors (or probably actors) as props - 

Related dossiers: 

- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Pomo Lingo"

Related articles by Zemanta

• Imploding UN Global Warming Forecasts on Front Page of Washington Post (newsbusters.org)
• Second Generation Postmodernism (teabreak.pk)

Of Mental Train Wrecks, Subliminal Leaps and Cultural Suicide

Before straight up nihilism struck, another curious phenomenon hit the postmodern psyche: that valuelessness equals objectivity ... if we are able to take our own personal values and opinions out of the equation, we can come to an objective conclusion. You know: the elimination of bias, those darned preconceptions and preconceived ideas for which postmodernists go to pomo hell, provided they have one.

Note that at this stage objectivity itself is still considered a goal worth pursuing; nor is it considered unattainable or even non-existent, as is currently the case. But because practitioners failed to make distinction between the given - the metaphysical - and the fallible - the man-made, the premise already contained the fallacy that all personal convictions are necessarily 'opinion', not fact and are never actually true.

It was preceded by a meme injected into common popular culture, that one is somehow “not allowed to generalize”. No one ever asked why this self-censorship was pressed upon us, let alone anyone wondering who was the source of this sudden imperative. But this is how postmodern thinkers in ivory towers reconstruct society in accordance with their ideologies.

The mechanism of incrementalism was brilliantly illustrated last week by Glenn Beck and his (rubber!) frog put to gradually heating water: insinuating minute, mental seedlings into the cultural blood stream over a long period of time a big revolution make (ask the European federalists). It was to be a very first step only.

It was followed by two further subliminal leaps: that values are always personal and non universal, in turn resting on the notion that objective truth is only known to God, or but a figment of our imagination.

Let's illustrate this with a typical example involving one of pomo's favorite social factions: homosexuals, otherwise known as “the gay community”. The generalization that “all gays are perverts” was vetoed by the imperative. “But as a hetero, how can I separate the perverted gays from non perverted gays?”, morphing into the hip, Sex-and-the-City truism, “who am I to judge?” The grand finale is an act of suicide: “perversion does not exist, all sexual behavior is perfectly natural”.

Were it to remain at that things might not have been that bad. But the postmodern nudgers are waging a war on reality, so the train of thought plunges into a moral black hole with the worst offenders of pomo subversion calling for lobby groups “protecting the rights of pedophiles”.

Applied to morality we can see where this politically correct assault is getting a wee bit pernicious. This is also illustrative of a claim made by biologist Marc Hauer that man has an inbred moral compass - it's explained in strictly evolutionary terms of course. Atheists can lead perfectly moral lives, but it's their warped view of reality that leads them to draw immoral conclusions.

If we take the absolutism as an example that “all criminals belong in jail”, this is followed by “how can we know which criminals belong in jail and who doesn't?” This question is made possible by swapping “a debt to society” followed by absolution, with “curing the unwashed of anti social tendencies”. This 'civilized' insight itself is a precurser to mental asylums for the dissenting. This shading ends in relativism: “who am I to judge?”, to finally crash to earth in anarchy: “the ultimate cause of crime is the law, let's abolish the law”.

Or, projected on to current affairs: is it morally abject for a middle aged bloke to slip a 13 year old girl a mickey and then Greek-rape her against her will? How do we know? - who am I to judge? goes off the cliff in “she's forgiven him, and it's three decades ago, and everyone was doing drugs back then, and his wife was murdered, and he was a Holocaust victim, and her parents are to blame for letting her out at night, and a 13 year old Hollywood Lolita doesn't look 13, and perhaps she even liked it (or asked for it!) ... how dare they judge him! Free Roman Polanski!

It can get worse. It culminates in moral nihilism when Mary Jo Kopechne is made to ponder the question if her premature death was perhaps “worth” the later accomplishments of Ted Kennedy. Man may have an inbred or God given moral compass, but not everyone is able to use it when the occasion arises.

If - inevitably - we start confusing fact with opinion as the premise requires, we can see where this mental and a moral train wreck also becomes a major impediment to defend the values that define us and becomes an instrument for cultural suicide.

All Muslims are terrorists.

Oops! Thou shalt not lump and generalize!

Then how can we separate the good-willing Muslims from the terrorists?

Who are we to judge? This is followed by irrelevant observations how people are “the same” (or even “One”) and that the worst Koranic Suras do not essentially differ from Jewish and Christian texts (as if that makes - even if true - sacred incitement to hatred and violence any better).

All Muslims are peace-loving innocents and anyway, we asked for it!

Update:

Pajamas TV: "Hollywood's Lame Defense of Roman Polanski"

- Part I
- Part II

Lionel Chetwyd and Roger L. Simon criticizing the reaction of Hollywood and intellectual elites to the capture of Roman Polanski.

One of the list of signatories (others petitions are linked to it at the bottom). Refer to it the next time you spend money on film productions.

US Radio "Mille Collines"

Conservatives and Republicans made the best of it, and refered to it by its funny name coined by Charles Krauthammer: BDS, or Bush Derangement Syndrome. 

It wasn't the only form of political madness around, not by a long chalk. But it mostly amounted to variations on a single theme. 

Analysis after analysis and diagnosis after diagnosis tried to make sense of the phenomenon, which with hindsight, was nothing more than ordinary 'community organizing', or the art of agitation, provocation, intimidation and subversion. 

Yes, it could be diagnosed as projection and cognitive dissonance, but only on the part of the hapless followers. The campaign against Conservative talk radio hosts is a clear example of that.

But the instigators themselves are led by cold, political calculation. David Horowitz has recently put up a series of posts on the Alinsky strategy (links assembled in "The Postmodern War on Reality").

It should never have been tolerated. Enduring it, condoning it, is in fact trivializing it. Satire and ridicule can be deadly as political tools, but it takes quite a dramatic craftsman to apply it in the precise dosis and in effective proportions.

Some forms of demagogy have such serious consequences that there's only one way to deal with them: to call them by their proper names and expose them to the best disinfectant available: sunlight. That should have been done with the senseless, irresponsible ratcheting up of hatred that was poured out over the world and the two Bush administrations.

It was the American equivalent of Rwandan RTV "Libre des Milles Collines". RTLM completed its dirty work in one single year's time, whereas BDS lasted a full eight years (and counting). Will it remain without consequence, ya think?

Hatred is a terrible thing. If it is within the bounds of reason and is the result of something done to you, the best way to deal with it is to pray hard for the strength to forgive. Hatred and the wish for vengence have a nasty habit of turning against you.

If it is the result of a purposely irrational campaign of agitation - a simplified version of a Sorelian myth - it must be exposed for what it is to render it harmless. As it was, BDS induced hatred nestled in the hearts and souls of millions of people where it festers to this very day.

As Glenn Beck points out in the following footage, tolerating the ratcheting up of hatred has been doing the fight on the terms of the radical demagogues. Please help save civilization (really) and take time out for an hour or so, to sit down at ease and watch ...

... Glenn Beck explaining it, and laying out a plan how to fight it (link to entire Friday episode) - Hat Tip: Patriots Network - (N.B. All five Glenn Beck Specials live now... They will stay on the site until after the 9/12 March. The site will be down sometime this weekend. My hosting service is moving us to a different server.)

Let me explain again how the pomo agitation works. In large part it consists of their particular approach to linguistics, and how they apply it in order to make you comply with their ideology (yes, they're little pocket Hitlers).



For indepth understanding study this file on "Pomo Lingo" (note: it was originally titled "Neo Communism and Cultural Marxism" and is dated 27th December 2007 - well before Obama and his team of radicals ever came on the scene - this has been in the works for a very long time - you can watch the prehistory of political correctness here on a PJTV video).

Pomo name calling is all about intimidation - in fact there's nothing to be afraid of since it is precisely that ... tossing labels around. As Glenn said: "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". Read in "The O Team: Babies With Razors" how come there's literally no concept behind the hot air and empty rhetoric.

Related:

- The offical site of "The 9-12 Project"
- The unofficial 9-12 Project Fan site
- Press Release by Bond Action, a black group coming out in support of Glenn Beck's exposure of racism

- Filed in Articles in "The Pomo Presidency" - 

Up Yours!

This is rich! Very rich indeed!!!

After having literally suffered two entire Bush terms of this stuff; with on the one hand the Political Pathology Asylum (and by all means do scroll down the archive for a fuller and enhanced experience); and on the other the associated nut jobs and fruit cakes of the new green creed; not to mention the bankrupt Press from Hell and The One's relentless campaign during which He led us up and down a garden path littered with the scattered remains of styrofoam, faux classicistic props, and even more exotic mass suggestion fests brought to us by Voodoo Light and Hypnosis 2.0.; leaving aside for the moment the treasonous actions committed by The Unholy Alliance and the gutter practices foisted on us by the ones currently in power; This Is What We Must Endure Today by one of the Horned One's lackeys piling lie on lies ...



By now we should know better than to take the postmodern Left seriously. Facts - according to their world view, mere snippets of fleeting 'reality' - are irrelevant to them. Their quest isn't after truth either, but the creation of a string of impressions, the dissemination of memes on the perceptual level, the manipulation of gullible, immature minds on a simply grandiose scale, not seen since Corporal Hitler held sway over equally suggestible masses.

We are holding an entire dossier here of rhetorical parlor tricks, of dishonestly moving goal posts in mid-debate, of erecting and taking down straw men, and of assorted other tricks held up the pomo sleeve.

This rhetorical game of accusing opponents of senseless 'hatred' in an attempt to shut up the opposition through intimidation, is actually irresponsible in the extreme.

On the other hand it would only be symptomatic that in a gesture of psychopathological projection they're pointing the finger at the opposition (this brilliant analyst has all but made political pathology her day job). 

Well, not after eight years of compiling evidence, you're not! To a chutzpah as perpetrated by the SoroS lackey there's but one response: from Delft, up yours!

Related:

- Pat Dollard: "New York Times: Conservative Media, Right Wing Extremism Responsible For Terrorist Agenda"
- Politeia: "The War on Existence"
- Politeia: "Politics=War in Action" 

Update:

"The Left isn't build on the vigilante rhetoric of hate" ... no, it's built on:

- "The Left's Default Position: Coercion" (series)
- "A Short History of Bad Ideas (Part I): the Victims" (series)
- "The Assault of the New Storm Troopers" (file)
- "Obama's Radical Connections" (file)
- and much, much more elsewhere in these pages ...

- Filed on Articles in "The Press from Hell" - 

Global Warming = Earth Lib

"The battle for the world is not a battle between two political ideals. It is a battle between two views of the nature of thought."
-- Leonard Peikoff
_______________________________________________________________

Psychology deals with mental processes and behavior. Philosophy explains man's understanding of reality in terms of broad abstracts, based on three axioms: existence, consciousness and identity.

Axioms are self-evidences rooted in the perceptual awareness of the world around us. They have a built-in protection against attacks by reality dodgers who disagree: being the basis of all human knowledge, to disagree means relying on the very same axioms.

A child realizes that objects exist and learns to integrate sensations into percepts. This leads to the axiom of identity, which is necessary for human cognition. Entity and identity - differentiating one object from another - leads to the next discovery: the Law of Causality. In time a child absorbs and integrates all axioms.

Entities perform actions; it is what entities do. Walking is not possible apart from an entity with legs. An entity has certain attributes, while lacking others. A child shakes its rattle and hears a sound, whereas a pillow is mute. Every entity has a nature: specific, non-contradictory and limited. An entity must act in accordance with its nature.

On the basis of two points the adult validation of Causality consists in stating the relationship explicitly: the Law of Identity, and that action is an action of an entity: A = A. The alternative would be that an entity acts apart from its nature, or against it. Both are impossible: existence is identity. Apart from its nature a thing is nothing: a ball is not a ball if its nature is not that it is round.

Causality is a corollary of identity. A corollary is a self-evident implication of already established knowledge. The Law of Causality is the Law of Identity applied to action.

Vast numbers of men never get beyond axioms. A primitive tribesman - often even lacking an integrated consciousness - does not have the benefit of Aristotelian principles; he has no way of adhering to axiomatic consistencies. He ends up contradicting the self-evident, as is also the case in various mystical world views.

Of an entirely different order are men who have the benefits of advanced education, yet consciously reject axioms on political grounds, as is the case with Postmodernists - Leftist as well as Rightist subjectivists. A declared war on reality - deliberate and systematic self-contradiction - is the essence of their 'narrative.'

The philosophers of the past two centuries known as the anti-modernists, the Counter-Enlightenment movement or present Postmodernists reject the very idea of the self-evident as the base of knowledge and repudiate all three axioms, attacking them as 'arbitrary postulates,' 'linguistic conventions' or 'Western prejudice or (meta)narrative' (e.g. science).

Is it any wonder that the sequence of events get confused? The military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq are placed prior to the tragic events on 9/11 is but one example of time-line problems with cause and effect, the Law of Causality?

A CNSNews article has identified other difficulties related to direct causes: "A top Democrat told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol Thursday that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the “black hawk down” battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels."

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House (Select) Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, betrayed his credentials by using another popular rhetorical trick from the Postmodernist cupboard, the false equation: (he) "equated the drive for global warming legislation with the drive for women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

Either that, or a dialectical process from the Rousseau school of thought is taking place in the mind of the Representative, the liberation of planet Earth from the oppressions of the perceived 'white, male power structure' (another term for rational civilization).

More such stories have been compiled by M. Barbay in "Global Warming' Caused Regional Problem? (Since 1975)."

Here we see how a seemingly minute, deliberate, philosophical manipulation of the speculative, ideological variety - which separates the world of ideas (subjectivism) from the world of reality (objectivism) - can lead to major problems. But then, it was invented two centuries ago for that self-same purpose: the peddling of literally, 'non-sense.' The cause of crime is the law ... thought creates reality.

Another interpretation would be the manipulation of facts, or the 'Orwellian' rhetorical trick of changing definitions into their opposites resulting in oxymorons, for instance Hegel's "true freedom through the state."

Who remembers that modernity - the Enlightenment and its political offshoot liberalism, once stood for what is presently its opposite? Individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and rationality became collectivism, statism, socialism and anti-reason, the latter presently morphing into the ultimate expression and most frightening form of subjectivism: anti-humanism.

- Filed on Articles in "The Dystopia of Paradise" -

When Reason Fails (I): Bush Derangement Syndrome

Seldom has a president had so much opposition and bad press from the outset as George W. Bush. He never stood a chance against the onslaught of parlor tricks and other theatricals that the postmodern shop of rhetorical attributes has to offer. It was full throttle from day one: for just an example read "The Party of Defeat Top Five Lies About Iraq," by Ben Johnson on Front Page ... read it all!

The world - not all of it, but a very vocal part - was determined from the get go to trash and ditch the man. Some have axes to grind, but the main reason? Of course they didn't need an excuse, but the truth is, he wasn't a member of the Democratic Party, but a Republican ... and in Their White House!

Europeans - even the thinking, 'Right' part, have bought the propaganda that the Democrats are conservative enough for their standards, and that Republicans are a rabidly reactionary bunch of religious morbids. They even think slavery was abolished by the Democrats (they're the good guys, aren't they?).

They needed no excuse but on top of that, W. owns a ranch in Texas (a bowboy in the White House), he's no natural orator (dim), he's plain speaking (crude), is a Christian (a religious maniac, possibly insane), and a man of action (a war-monger): any characteristic can be turned into a negative if taken to extremes. This rhetorical trick is the postmodernist's specialty: raising straw-men, making caricatures, switching contexts.

Ronald Reagan met the same fate in Europe. He didn't have a paradigm shattering terrorist attack on his hands, so the histrionics were limited to the stationing of cruise missiles. Of course the vocals would rather have the Soviets over - ostensibly rather not 'provoke' them - what else is new with the habitual traitors.

Examples in the Eurotrash press abound, but here's a typical article in last night's Der Spiegel from Germany: "THE COWBOY AND HIS SUNSET," subtitled "Europe Happy to See the Back of Bush" - well, not in my name, you don't!

The innuendo from Orwell's Press from Hell in the meanwhile continues. Take this morning's article by the fallen BBC: "BBC Uncovers Lost Iraq Billions": the accusations are hurled in hyperbole, but nowhere are they substantiated. To legitimize the story the BBC come up with one example. We may never hear of it again, no retractions, no apologies, but the mud sticks.

This is how you trash a subject. Quite a bit of what is going on in that department is compiled on Articles in the dossiers "The Demise of the Press from Hell," "Big Bro's Smoke and Mirrors," and in the series of posts "Blurring the Border between Reality and Perception."

Times Online had an exclusive interview with the Number One Cowboy: "President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war." W. doesn't go any further than expressing regret for some of the rhetoric, and rightly so. I agree with commenter Steven from London: "History will be kind to George Bush because expectations of him were so low yet the actual positive results will last for generations. Al-Qaeda almost destroyed. Afghanistan mainly pacified. Installing the first Arab democracy in Iraq. All necessary. A truly decent and remarkable man."

The same psychological mechanism that causes all rational faculties to break down is responsible for the exact opposite, in the case of B. Barack Hussein Obama. Not only is there no healthy scrutiny into the man's past or present At All, the adoration (in which he shares!) is reaching truly disquieting levels.

- Continued in Part II: "The Left's Narrative" -

- Filed on Articles in "The Political Pathology Page" -

The Postmodern Thuggism of the New Storm Troopers

Last week saw the latest gathering of the blogging Counter-Jihad movement, this year in Vienna (data collection point on the Mission Europa Netwerk). There's some cause for pause. Some speakers and attendees pronounced the wish to move on after the rift that developed about a year ago between the publisher of Little Green Footballs, and everybody else in the Counter Hirabah. Scouring the paperwork doesn't allow for much optimism in that department. We'll go over some texts produced in the meeting in the coming days.

Essayist Fjordman cannot help himself either in that respect and has a part retrospect running up on The Brussels Journal. After initially harking back what follows is a shocking expose about the state of affairs in Scandinavia. He describes the almost institutionalized thuggism in Sweden by what might accurately be termed the new Storm Troopers.

Our own investigations on the philosophies contained in Postmoderism meanwhile have hit rock-bottom. Scraping the base of that particular pond reveals that the dichotomy of political Left and Rightism is in essence artificial and non-existent. We've all been had by the wrong markers.

Just as an American once queried me on the subject, arguing that the Left cannot be identified with the Right 'as they do not do antisemitism,' just as wrong-footed is the notion that the Left is Socialist, whereas the Right isn't. Then, what is the Right? Is it a movement entrusted with the interests of royalty, the elite, or capitalism? Evidently not!

Much as it must never be trivialized or belittled, the antisemitism of Nazism is not a typical marker of the Socialist Right. Mussolini's Socialist Republic of Italy didn't have race laws until Hitler pushed their implementation much later, when very reluctantly and halfheartedly some antisemitic measures were put in place.

In the insightful book "Explaining Postmodernism" (p. 106) Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks writes: "By the early twentieth century (...) the dominant issues for most continental political thinkers were not whether liberal capitalism was a viable option - but rather exactly when it would collapse - and whether Left or Right collectivism had the best claim to being the Socialism of the future. The defeat of the collectivist Right in World War II then meant that the Left was on its own to carry the Socialist mantle forward. Accordingly, when the Left ran into its major disasters as the twentieth century progressed, understanding its fundamental commonality with the collectivist Right helps to explain why in its desperation the Left has often adopted 'Fascistic' tactics."

Coming as both do, from the anti-modern German Idealism based on the musings of Swiss-French agitator Rousseau, the Left versus Right dichotomy is highly artificial and arbitrary, and post World War II a means used by the Left to differentiate from their opponents.

For example the Left (or Young) and Right Hegelians differed and fell out over in the acceptance of the role played by religion within the state. What sets Communism apart from Fascism and National Socialism is argued to be public versus private property, but the prestigious Von Mises Institute has successfully argued that - since private property was up for confiscation by the all powerful state at any time - private property existed only nominally in Nazi Germany and the Socialist Republic of Italy.

The far Left keep emphasizing the Fascist nature of their opponents in an effort to put some distance between themselves and their own resort to thuggism. In so far as it's attributable to psychology, it's a clear case of projection. The fact is, on the philosophical level Left and Rightism belong to one and the same group of ideologies that developed from anti-modernism. The new Leftist brown shirts are no mystery.

The false dichotomy has fathered the erroneous reasoning that since the Marxist Left catered for the proletariat, the Socialist Right must be a party of and for the elite. This cannot be the case. But it is true that throughout, both have been violently attacking the middle class and bourgeois values. And barely noticed, they still do. And that's your main marker to watch out for!

For more read the compilation in "The Dystopia of Paradise." Here's the Fjordman story:

The Brussels Journal: "To the Readers of Little Green Footballs"

(...) Also in Sweden, Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA), a group that supposedly fights against "racists," openly brag about numerous physical attacks against persons with their full name and address published on their website. How come AFA gets away with their violent, extra-legal activities for years without being stopped by the authorities? Is it possible that the political elites find them to be a useful tool against dissidents who criticize mass immigration?

The thugs of AFA in the spring of 2008 destroyed the car of a 90-year-old woman and wrote "nasse" (Nazi) on top of it. As it turned out, they picked the wrong car, but who cares? It's all for a "good cause."Leading national newspaper Aftonbladet has close ideological ties to the Social Democrats, the country's dominant party for most of the past (...) >>>


- Filed on Articles in "The Assault of the New Storm Troopers" -

Too Good to Pass Up: Live Pomo Lingo

It was bound to happen sooner rather than later. Resistance is futile! In the B. Barack Obama campaign we find a real live example of the Postmodern attitude towards speech (sound waves may be weapons), truth and ethics (there is no 'wrong', just 'being different'), and the push towards the redistribution of speech rights (early on in the campaign I was told by an Obama team member to shut it about Dutch 'fasc' politician Geert Wilders - the latter a universal Leftist predicate for any random opponent).

Instead of rallying on bicycles in Obama support - as the Athenian Democrats saw fit last Sunday - we should be sincerely worried that the world's top job may well fall into the hands of pomo - if only because these psychotics from birth divorced themselves from reality and have since cut any remaining ties to orthodoxy (in the literal sense of 'uprightness') they might ever have had.

- Caption: Islamic Thinkers focus our thoughts on a Muslim take-over, but that is premature on their part; it might just as well be replaced with the Cuban, Venezuelan or Iranian colours; come to think of it - while we are at it - why not Kim's, in a good cause? -

Besides the pomo connection there's another very disturbing cross current: black liberation theology coming straight out of Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (1961) call to bloody revolution.

Dr Sam Holliday of the Armiger Cromwell Center - a regular contributor to these pages - yesterday forwarded following noteworthy commentary:

On 20 March 08 I wrote we need "to recognize how black liberation theology has replaced traditional Christian teaching in many churches and how the 'Afrocentric' agenda shapes what is taught in black studies programs of our universities."

The addresses by Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the NAACP on 27 Apr 08 and at the National Press Club on 28 Apr 08 illustrate black liberation theology. They also illustrate black separatism and postmodern thought. Here are my opinions on this public relations blitz. These presentations are well researched, carefully crafted and skillfully delivered illustrations of how to deceive, deflect and manipulate. They are about Wright's ego, pride, and self importance--not about the "black church", or about the unity and common good of our nation, or even about Obama's candidacy.

The Jesus of whom Wright speaks is not Jesus the redeemer who died for mankind's sins, but Jesus the liberator of the oppressed. This idea originated with the revolutionary Frantz Fanon and was developed by Marxist elements within the Catholic Church of Latin America. It was officially rejected and harshly admonished by Pope John Paul II. For Wright traditional Christianity is flawed, but he claims true religion can be found in the "black faith tradition".

Wright questions the United States as one indivisible nation--he favors diversity and multiculturalism. He turns patriotism upside down by stressing the failings of the United States rather than a willingness to sacrifice, by placing global interests over national interests. In his addresses he makes no reference to love, support, and defense of the United States. Rather he argues against those policies and actions of the United States government that he considers unfair, unjust, or oppressive of the disadvantaged.

He clearly sees change in accordance with black liberation theology as "progress" toward a Utopian world of equals built on the ashes of the modern era of Western culture. He seeks the deconstruction of the concepts and institutions associated with traditional Western culture. He wants subjectivity to replace objectivity--which he considers illusions created by white men to maintain their power and exploit the disadvantaged.

His emphasis on language and linguistics is typical of postmodernists for whom language concerning interpersonal relations is a way to manipulate. He seeks to change attitudes, values, and norms through language in order to achieve a "turn"--a major paradigm shift--in Western culture. His addresses illustrate how a demagogue can use cherished values to advance his own interests and agenda.

One of the merits of freedom of speech is that it allows others to make better judgments. On 29 Apr 08 Obama condemned what Rev. Wright said at the National Press Club. There is no way of knowing if this is just a necessary political move, even though he agrees with many of Wright's views. It remains to be seen if people will make the correct judgments about the threat to the security of the United States from black liberation theology, black separatism, and postmodern thought.

Dr. Sam Holliday, Director Armiger Cromwell Center


Update:

Dr Sanity: "OBAMA 'S MORAL RELATIVE [ISM]"

"Crazy Uncle"? I suspect that the Reverend Wright is Obama's true moral relative. (...) >>>


Related: "Postmodernism: Rhetoric, Tactics and Attitude"

The Anti-Modernism of the Counter-Enlightenment

The idea of the creation of a personalised universe, or rather a personal version of the universe originates with Protagoras (Greek: Πρωtaγόρaς, ca. 490-420 BC), who said "man is the measure of all things", he meant individual man, rather than mankind.

The sophists of the rough, second generation, notably Trasymachus, a character in Plato's Republic, put that notion of subjectivism to good use. In classical Greece the sophists used language, not in the service of truth or the transfer of information, but as a strategy for political point-scoring. The sophists held that justice is in the interest of the stronger: might makes right.

Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks in "Explaining Postmodernism" claims that "postmoderns - coming after two millennia of Christianity and two centuries of social theory - simply reverse that claim: Subjectivism and relativism are true, except that the postmodernists are on the side of the weaker and historically-oppressed groups. Justice, contrary to Trasymachus, is the interest of the weaker."

Contemporary postmoderns have harnessed this form of political correctness to today's version of the class struggle, the dialectic, a tool to perpetuate into eternity the struggle of the 'oppressed' minorities against the 'fake tolerance' of the 'power structure'. The latter should not be understood as 'whoever is in power', but rather 'whoever is in power, other than us'.

Althought we have not always seen it for what it was, during the last two and a half centuries or so the fruits of reason have been pitted in an existential dog fight with the reactionary forces of anti-realism. The movement in generally termed 'the Counter-Enlightenment', to underscore the culture's fundamental rejection of the Enlightenment.

In his ground-breaking book Hicks posits two theses: that the failure of epistemology (philosophy's study of human knowledge) made postmodernism possible; and that the failure of Socialism made postmodernism necessary. As Rousseau, Kant and Hegel were for church authority, the postmoderns are for collectivism: their raison d'être is a desperate 'rationalization' for holding on to a rejected system.

The emergence of the Counter-Enlightenment represents the turning point of the age of reason. The era between 1780 and 1815 was a defining period in modernism, as Anglo-American and German culture split into respectively the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment.

The former began in England, and was picked up by the French. But Roussseau's followers wrested the Enlightenment inspired revolution away from John Locke's (1632 -1704) followers. This quote is from Locke's 2nd Treatise §3:

"In order to preserve the public good, the central function of government must be the protection of private property ..."

... compare that to Rousseau:

"For the creation of a society of 'common will', the people need only accept the dictates of the state" ...

... here Rousseau was advocating what became later known as Communism.

The French Revolution turned it into the Jacobin Reign of Terror, the particularly bloody, third and last episode. The Germans thereafter, already suspicious of the culture of reason, began a counter movement in an effort to rescue religion from what they saw as the onslaught of reason. When the Enlightened French despot, Napoleon Bonaparte jumped into the vacuum left by the Reign of Terror and conquered Europe, the still largely feudal German states knew for sure what the age of reason had wrought.

The reaction was a counter movement by a brand of collectivist philosophers and intellectuals - politically on the Left as well as on the Right, some religious, later on also atheists - with a number of themes in common: Jean-Jacques Rousseau inspired "anti-individualism, the need for strong government, the view that religion is a state matter (whether to promote or suppress it), the view that education is a process of socialisation, ambivalence about science and technology, and strong themes of group conflict, violence and war.

Hicks: "Left and Right have often divided bitterly over which themes have priority and over how they should be applied. Yet, for all of their differences, both have consistently recognised a common enemy: Liberal capitalism, with its individualism, its limited government, its separation of church and state, its fairly constant view that education is not primarily a matter of political socialisation, and its persistent Whiggish optimism about prospects for peaceful trade and cooperation between members of all nations and groups. (...) the collectivist Right and Left are united in their major goals and in identifying the opposition."

"By the early twentieth century (...) the dominant issues for most continental political thinkers were not whether liberal capitalism was a viable option - but rather exactly when it would collapse - and whether Left or Right collectivism had the best claim to being the Socialism of the future. The defeat of the collectivist Right in World War II then meant that the Left was on its own to carry the Socialist mantle forward."

"Accordingly, when the Left ran into its major disasters as the twentieth century progressed, understanding its fundamental commonality with the collectivist Right helps to explain why in its desperation the Left has often adopted ''Fascistic'' tactics."

Another fateful innovation was set in by the counter movement. As had been the logic during the long period of Church authority over arts and science, all modern mainstream Enlightenment thinkers had accomodated the new advances in science and mathematics into Christian belief. Defying Aristotlean wisdom, human nature, as well as Hume's Law - the confusion of 'is' with 'ought' - the Counter-Enlightenment philosophers following Rousseau, Kant and Hegel - even the atheists - reversed this orthodoxy.

Instead - perhaps even subconsciously or by implication - they developed political models, which reflected religious ideals, the re-creation of paradises on earth, perhaps in an effort to fill the void left by Ancients Regimes. These political models sought to mirror the heavens, on the basis of 'as above, so below', macrocosm - microcosm: the ideal society. The tenets of the Enlightenment were abandoned and replaced by opposing principles: realism made way for Idea-lism, and individualism for collectivism; emotions, intuition and Revelation were adopted as sources of knowledge rather than reason and experience, social theories replaced liberal capitalist theory.

Universal Enlightenment values were applied, but were limited to specific themes. In these themes God was replaced by whatever fitted the theme: nationalists replaced God with the nation, state adolators deified the state, Socialists society, etcetera. We'll return to that after having a look up close at the main, early protagonists of the Counter-Enlightement drama.

- Filed on Articles in "The Dystopia of Paradise", cat. Postmodernism -