The Culture War Moves to Twitter

A recent discourse in 140 miniblog positions on the peculiarities of the world we live in, resulted in a challenge from an unknown entity in the Twitter universe of what turned out to be a postmodern, self-confessed 'scientist'. His alma mater or field of work remains unknown to this day, but his bio sports such ethical pursuits as animal rights, humanism, consciousness research, evolution, cosmology, agnosticism, vegetar., portuguese coffee, science, and writing.

The first tweet pressed upon me the blessings of the state and of pomo dogma in regard of  morality and ethics. Didn't I know that religion has no monopoly on morality, and was I not aware that such tenets are simply subjective group conventions - a consensus on the norm if you will - and that the state as a neutral arbiter should put a ban on all religious manifestations and expunge it from the public domain? A diatribe on how  religion usurped morality from the societal domain ensued (the divorce between the secular and the sacred has been at least since Plato's time).

But here comes the full view on the Leftist mindset in its full, dictatorial glory: "It's the duty of lawmakers to regulate the behavior of people" (which is a marked deterioration on the view that it's the duty of politicians to offer hope and consolation). This point of view explains why so many - primarily in the Obama administration - are meisters in public manipulation at the perceptional level (e.g. Cass Sunstein and his Nudge). In this flat, two dimensional world this is the main level of consciousness (for a proper understanding read also "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors").

"In democracies the average morality (to be understood as something akin to etiquette) is reflected in the law" (which is presumably why the US Constitution is a living and breathing document): truth has made place for fleeting 'norm' or 'consensus'. E.g. if the consensus has it, that children can have sex from the age of 12, then so be it. Once the law says it's okay, hey presto, having sex with children as of the age of 12 is no longer immoral. Here we have in a word, why 'consensus' is taking such a central place in the relativist narrative: it is the moral arbiter. In dictatorships the tyrant dictates law which equals morality: Corporal Hitler would have been proud!

Since years of rubbing shoulders with relativists and subjectivists has as yet to result in any fruitful interaction - and isn't likely to yield any in the foreseeable future - I tried to shake the challenger off with a few generalities about time constraints. As said, fruitless. Their dogma and self-righteousness compels them to attack objective thinkers whenever and wherever they may find them. More importantly, what really set him off were my claims in defense of Christian ethics against the onslaughts of n oxymoron: a liberal, moral dictatorship. That could not stand!

Another exposé on the nature of morality as a group subjectivity, hit my In Box the next day, pressing upon me what is in essence the fascist narrative of polylogism. It enabled Nazi theory to see the fate of the German people as separate from other nations. But in the present case it's religious groups that may engage in whatever backward and appalling practice their faith may proscribe, as long as they don't hurt other people outside their tribe, or God forbid, animals. Apart of that, religions should have no longer have 'privileges' other than, say filatellist associations or boy scouts.

And was I aware, that apes and primates are actually very moral animals? And how could I say, that free will is at its root?! Free will is but an illusion in which humans are inherently caught up and is as futile as my claim that morality is about a choice between good and evil! I should know that  morality consists in the conscience ... (eh?) And since his morality isn't mine, how dare I claim my morality - what advances life is good, what abrogates it is bad - is objective! Death can be very beneficial to those suffering from it (life, that is).

Subjectivists live in a universe of their own making - quite literally. They are the masters of that universe but everyone else is a Narcissist! There's nothing you can tell them that makes any sense. See, they aren't seekers of truth, but ideologues with an agenda who interprete the world as it fits their narrative.

Free will must be torn out by the root, otherwise there won't be any victims fueling their dialectic world: a place propelled progressively forward by the struggle between the oppressors and their inequal victim groups (vintage Hegel and Marx, the essence of progressivism).

The state must usurp the place of God at the center of the universe. If the Government is the moral arbiter between unequal groups that are forever at each others throats, it renders them like children, for always dependent on the Government for goodies and hope of peace.

Animals on the other hand, must be fitted with a sense of morality if they are to claim any rights! Since in this approach morality is 'social convention', I suppose you could call it 'morality' of sorts. At least admits in animals this doesn't involve a conscious choice. Expect apes on trial next, for the murder of smaller animals! Just like in the Middle Ages when a pig was famously put on trial.

Truth and reality do not exist. Good and evil do not exist. The lie does not exist. There's just fleeting, temporary perception. Morality is state-mediated consensus.

Through the falsehoods at the root of their thinking, the result is ever the opposite of what they claim to achieve. "We love culture so much", one shrieked once, "that we think retaining ones culture should be a human right!" And they proceeded to throw them in the great multicultural witch's cauldron, and out came Balkan balls and sectarian goulash!

Higher education now produces no specimen of humanity, other than the one whose reality we just peeked into. The divide between the two philosophies on the nature of the universe and human thought is now so huge and so fundamental, that it's hard to think of one subject where the two aren't at the very opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. If anything, the gap is widening ever further.

The subjective side has now amassed all ingredients the fascists and National Socialists had at their disposal, save a sense of personal victimhood and a culture of militarism: pragmatism, group subjectivism (polylogism), passion and emotions as cognitive tools (anti reason), collectivism, a denial of truth and objective reality, the negation of good and evil, law equals morality, anti capitalism and anti individualism, and a end-justifies-the-means mindset.

In "The New Totalitarianism That Dares Not Speak it's Name" we introduced Professor Ernest Sternberg's publication, "Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For" into the mix of arguments. It is an investigation into the merging of Leftism and Islam. Sternberg explains that the Left has largely refrained from serious violence because they see their religious terrorist comrades as proxies. The target is evidently Western cultureas a whole, with the United States and Israel as the primary targets.

The onslaught continues.

Update

Obama has said Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization for killing innocent civilians racist, because they do not advance the careers of blacks in the ranks of the terrorist organization. Is it any wonder we're dog's breakfast! Morality, anyone?

Related

- "Why Multiculturalism Is Racist and Evil"
- "The Power of Ideas"
- "2009: Reintroducing Class Justice"
- "The New Totalitarianism That Dares Not Speak it's Name"

Relativist Foreign Policy and the Free Gaza Propflot (update)

This wasn't a one off, but a new tactic in assymetrical warfare toolkit - or should that be warfare under the guise of humanitarian aid? Lebanon is now preparing to send propflots, only they are no longer propaganda tools, but covert warfare. Here's the collection point on Articles.

Al Manar TV: "“Flotilla Assault Marks the Beginning of the End for Israel”"

June 6, 2010

There was a time in human history, not that long ago actually but it seems like eons now, that the ideal state of mind when judging others, was to be as objective as possible. The notion is built on the idea that all men are created equal and all are to be judged by the same moral standard. It is symbolized in the statue of Lady Justice, weighing her cases blindfolded.

A murder is a murder no matter who committed it, whoever the victim, and whatever the circumstances; the idea being that men are judged by the contents of their character, not by the color of their skin, or social class.

That's no longer the case. When the Left embraced relativism, it accepted with it, it's nasty little sibling, subjectivism. So, whereas one murderer gets life for killing a human being, another is getting away with a few years, depending on the circumstances and the history of the persons involved.

Where social classes have largely disappeared from most Western societies, other victim groups have been created to keep the social warfare alive. It's done on the basis of the dialectic of oppressors versus oppressed, or postmodern varieties thereof. Persons are judged and treated according to the victim group they stem from. It happens to also nicely pave the way for the apartheid of Sharia law, one law for the natives, another for Muslims - that is, as a first stage to total submission.

Some liberals like to think of themselves as non judgmental, but that moral neutrality is a myth. We discriminate all of the time, but no longer based on an objective standard of ethics, but by different standards depending on whom we are judging: we are guilty of practicing the hypocrisy of reversed discrimination.

The same is true in international relations. One commentator on a post on the shocking events in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean this week, assures us Israel is held by higher standards than the Palestinians, because they are a liberal democracy, not the usual Middle Eastern hellhole ruled by a dictator.

How evil and unjust that double standard is, can be measured by its effect: in Western culture it is responsible for the 'down with us' syndrome, effectively foisting upon ourselves a handicap, not unlike fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. And that is just to make it fair, because the other feller is only half our size. Yet we stand idly by when two thugs are bashing each others heads in, since neither seems to know any better. (In the civil world - thank Heaven - they still end up in prison, maybe.)

If you project that on to the world of international relations we end up precisely where we are today: with Israel condemned for defending itself, and the thugocracy of Iran getting away with enough fissile material to produce two nuclear bombs. How's that for a debilitating effect of subjectivism?

Caroline Glick describes the objectives of the Red-Green (Left and Islam) coalition as follows:

It seeks to delegitimize Israel's right to exist and it seeks to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself. If these aims are met, Israel's destruction will become an historic inevitability.

Far from advancing the peace process, the result of this effort is the destruction of the state of Israel, which is rationalized in any sort of way: it is racist because it is Jewish, yet the country consists of Jews, Christians and Muslims which are treated as equals before the law. But Muslim countries on the other hand are backward dictatorships, so their discrimination against women and religions other than Islam, do not matter because they're held to lower standards.

Muslim countries have never had any intention of tolerating the liberal democracy the size of a postage stamp in the midst of its conquered lands. On top of that, they have now managed to get the Western postmodern Left on its side in a Red-Green fascist coalition; the brew is toxic in the extreme.

A commentator in the US has made it be known that ... of course the aid convoy was a ruse to cover the real objective: breaking the blockade of Gaza so that heaven knows what may be brought into the port. There's nothing illegal about the blockade and what's more, it's sheer common sense. Only subjectivists go to the point of requiring entire countries and cultures to commit suicide in order to be considered ethical.

Time and again, whatever patches of land the Iraelis restored to the Palestinians, it always became a launching pad for violence and terror. They have no reason to trust the Palestinians with whatever concession in the name of the unspeakable 'peace process". The hellhole of Gaza itself is a case in point.

At first, in the relativist's reasoning, there's no moral difference between the Israelis and the Palestinians: both have an equal right to exist and resist. Initially it makes no difference that Israel is a liberal democracy that treats all equal before the law and the Palestinians have proven themselves time and again the pit of moral depravity. They then move over to the other side and call for Israel's destruction.

Welcome to the upside down, inside out world of moral subjectivism applied to diplomacy and international relations.

Related

- Washington Post: "Those troublesome Jews", by Charles Krauthammer

Naema's Treasure Trove

The Pakistani-British-Dutch author Naema Tahir is a gem!

Dutch being her second or even third language, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she chooses her words carefully. Some of her truths are truly gems, which she couples to a few noteworthy contradictions

Naema has had a Catholic education. It's clear she has insight into Aristotlean (non-contradictory) philosophy, possibly through the scholasticism of  St. Thomas van Aquinas on which that is based.

She has read the Bible from cover to cover and clearly appreciates its teachings. She has also read the Koran in Arabic, a language she has no command of. It is therefore unclear in how far she's been influenced by Islamic thought.

Praiseworthy in relativist times is her logical orthodoxy. She builds her sentences very carefully and uses hierarchy in argumentation. Get this:

The problem of multiculturalism is the equivalence of cultures. 

There aren't that many people who have are on to that. The loose definition of multiculturalism propagated by its proponents, is that of a society made up by multiple cultures. This has the added advantage that it can be presented as accomplished fact (it's already upon us, get used to it!). But if that were the case, the result would be 'melting pot', which regrettably it is not.

The result of multiculturalism is balkanization and sectarianism. Advocates and propagandists fondly call it 'archipelago'. The composing cultures are clustered in imaginary islets in an ocean of moral neutrality that made up by the state.

That defines the relationship between the citizen and the Government: the citizen loses his sovereignty and becomes something in the order of a ward of state. It's a form of collectivism that is contrary to democratic values. And amorality is a fiction in the minds of relativist thinkers: only a sociopath can be said to be morally neutral.

Naema is right: the essence of multiculturalism is the moral equivalence of all cultures: from the finest Jeffersonian republican to the vilest cannibal. This is an illusion held by Leftist, wishful thinkers. The war on reality is based on the makeability of Utopia, whereas it ignores reality as it is. We'll see in a minute why this more than a little misguided.

Naema is a universalist. It is also in that respect that she clashes with the multicultis. They have chopped up humanity in inequal group identities, that must be compensated in rights and privileges for their perceived inequality. But direct action is still discrimination, in reverse.

Universalism on the other hand is based on individual equality. Here we see that Leftist thought, far from propagating equality, is actually rooted in unequal collectivism.

And again the Left is furnishing the state with a quality it does not have: the doling out and redistribution of rights. But those rights are already inherent in man, endowed either by God or by nature. This is why they are inalienable. But what the State giveth, the State can taketh away.

Even better, these are in essence negative rights, governmental 'no go areas'. If granted by the State, these are by definition no longer human rights.

Naema concludes from universalism that Islam is subordinate, since it teaches gender inequality. I sincerely hope she'll get round some time to reading the Koran in a familiar language, but so much is clear, she's on a collision course.

These pearls of wisdom are accompanied by the Koh-i-noor for postmodern, mentally confused human beings.

As a girl she liked sports, but her parents prohibited this. Apparently physical exertion can be detrimental to ones chastity. The Catholic school respected the parents' wishes and gave Naema dispensation from swimming and gymnastics.

But now she wishes the school would have supported her. This just goes to show that giving in to regressive practices in Islam, is actually supporting the forces of darkness. A child can understand this. Give your support to moderate Muslims and true progressives, not to the beard men and their backward notions.

Of course banning the burqa may result in some men keeping their wives indoors. So be it. Some values are simply absolute. In this type of ethics 'a little pregnant' doesn't exist. Just like you can't negotiate with Hitler or Pol Pot how many victims would be acceptable and what would be over the top. Free human beings do not keep slaves, period!

We are in Naema's debt for reminding us of our values; with the onslaught of relativism we tend to forget what in essence makes us who we are. Human equality and individual freedom are not negotiable, ever. Everything else stems from it.

Related

- "Racism"
- "Socialist Causes Explained"
- "The Dialectics"
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "In Defense of Liberty"

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.

912DC: Which New America, Which New World?

This memorable day, September 12, 2009 thousands and thousands of Americans - a coalition of grassroots, non-partisan movement of ordinary citizens - will be descending upon the capital of their nation, Washington D.C. They will be protesting against the covert sea-change revolution called "change" that is taking place in their country. Few outside the US may know it, but all is not well in the land since We the People was replaced with Hope&Change.

The conceptless label "change" probably originates in the relativist, progressivist philosophy of Pragmatism, but it certainly appears on the terminology index of Neuro Linguistic Programming (or Hypnosis 2.0). NLP is a rather hip, unscientific discipline used primarily in alternative therapies, the counselling industry and in the world of motivational training and coaching.

The Left embraced it as a great opportunity to manipulate others into conforming with their ethics program (the aim justifies the means!). Political correctness is but one branch of that school. Other applications of NLP are less obvious.


The all powerful Cass Sunstein, Obama's Regulatory Czar (since confirmed: 57-40) and author of NLP copybook "The Nudge", has hugely contributed to Obama's "voodoo" campaign (do go to the nudge blog for further ideas, suggestions and interactivity). The "hope&change" brand label may have been his baby, or the King of Astroturf's, David Axelrod. It is beside the point.

If "change" is to become a concept in lieu of a nominal label meaning "transition", it needs further specification: what is the status quo and what is the final goal; how is it reached and why is it desirable? Nobody offered specifics and nobody asked. An entire nation was seduced by a brand label presented by an elegant young black man with a smooth-working teleprompter.

America is no ordinary nation either but the sole country on the face of the earth based on a philosophy! Guess what "change" means for a nation that embodies individualism and personal autonomy? America may not be perfect in practice (who is?), but it is only based upon the best idea conceived by man since the Epiphany of the great Constantine?

Ayn Rand teaches us this about ethics: most choices in every day life play out in a spectrum of greys, but in times of moral stress clear choices become an imperative: good and evil become a zero sum game in which evil has nothing to contribute to the good and good has nothing to gain from evil: every compromise becomes a concession to and the negotiator an accomplice of evil. 

Increasingly Americans (and others as well) shall be facing the stark choice, not between the status quo or change, but more basically answer the question if their country is based on a philosophy that reflects human nature, or if they will follow into the footsteps of the Utopists that have gone before us, and whose legacies are filling the history books.

Much as opponents will spin and portray the protestors - often middle aged novices to bull horns and placards - as mobs of racist mercenaries of corporate interests, anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear will recognize the fairness of their goals and merits. Accusations uttered by the opponents are already sounding shrill and are becoming ever giving subject of ridicule.
Few people understand the momentous nature of the brink on which humanity currently stands. But these Americans are the vanguard of a groundswell waking up to reality! Will individual rights and freedom prevail, or do we follow the enslavers who lure us with tales of victimhood and entitlement - ficticious injury to be redressed solely by a  increasingly fascististic state, a vicious alignment of corporatism in the service of total government?


Related:

- Today on The Lighthouse: ""A New America", the Movie"

Updating throughout:

- Twitcaps: live #912dc pics
- Covertress: "Photos (and vids) From 9/12 Tea Party in DC"
- YouTube: "912 DC by Frank Strategies"
- Fox News Livestream
- YouTube: "Demint "More Comfortable" At Tea Party Than Congress"
- YouTube: "Tea Partyers Drown Out CNN Reporter During Live Report"
- Fox News: "Sensus Bureau Severs Ties With ACORN"
- Politico: "A march today, but is it a movement?

Live Tweet Stream:



Post 912 Updates:

- Jeff Head.com: "912: America Awakes in 2009" (great pix: here's one)
- Conservative Feminist: "Up to 2 Million March on Washington DC to protest Spending and Policy – Largest Protest In DC History"
- Mail Online (UK): "Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama's spending in 'tea-party' demonstration"

Related sites:

- The 912 Project official site
- Glenn Beck's 912 Project
- The Tea Party Express Official Tour Blog
- American Liberty Alliance

Twitter's Finest Hour, the SMS's Worst

The MSM's effort - like CNN's - to uphold the perception of balanced reporting is simply pathetic!  As if it's a case of two equal choices! They are actively legitimizing Ahmadinejad's most outrageous extremism: the price of the position that all views are equally valid (except the West's, which is uniquely evil).  It renders the postmodernist helpless in the face of perdition. Poor world, that is in their hands!

While initially there wasn't much to choose between the two candidates  (Mousavi's history (link in German) is no more enlightened than Ahmadinejad's), it has become quite obvious after the rigged election that supporting the latter is an affirmation of the status quo, i.e. the continuation of theofascism, holocaust denial, rabid antisemitism, oppression in every sense of the word, diplomatic deceit, Shia Islamic supremacism, and in all likelihood, nuclear war!

Apparently the uprising doesn't fit conveniently the O Team's agenda for parley either. Yesterday we saw there are three main excuses making the rounds for their fence-dwelling.  The main one is "not to provide the regime with a justification to point the finger at the West for instigating the revolt". But the mullahs will do that in any case! And so what! Mousavi may not be the epitomy of liberty, far from it, but regime change may be a good start to get out of the current nuclear collision course!

The Democratic Party likes to be seen walking the path of righteousness, expressing feigned moral outrage at the drop of a hat, but it would have suited the illustrous O'Team to unreservedly side with liberty, than to suspend judgment on the basis of a false concern and a blatantly erroneous philosophy.

In the latest news it's reported that we're heading towards crunch time in Tehran! Today the streets have been quite, but tomorrow main opposition leaders and students are expected again out in force. The Beardman in Chief fired a shot across the bow today, signalling an end to toleration. 

In the American position in the situation, John McCain today criticized the Obama administration for its refusal to speak out in support of the protesters. The huge contrast in philosophical persuasion has not been this plain since Obama came to power! The House condemned the crackdown.



Died today: Ralf Dahrendorf (photo)

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

Values Worth Fighting For

Related:

- "The Brutal History of Rights"

The Conservative Moral Capitalist March

The official website ... make it happen!

The Odds Against Principles,Truth and Integrity

More here

Politics Without a Moral Compass

Dutch MP Geert Wilders filed a formal complaint against the Labour Govt of Gordon Brown yesterday with the Asylum and Migration Tribunal. Wilders was barred from entering the UK last month, fearing his presence might interfere in some way with the island nation's communal harmony. Wilders will be appraised of the first hearing date within 28 days.

How do the followers of multiculturalism - the notion that every culture is equally valid - deal with African atrocities that are the result of primitive superstition? One thinks of the truly horrific treatment of and by witches and the slaughter of albinos, killed for the magical attributes of their body parts? How does the Prime Directive hold up in the face of so much primitive anti-humanism?

The infalsifiable and irrational belief in multiculturalism (read here why it is Fascist and evil) deals with such cases by classifying them as "part of the intractable contradictions that are inherent in life". Case closed. No, says Pope. I am my brother's keeper!

Yahoo!News: "Pope condemns sorcery, urges Angolans to reach out"

Speaking of the Pope, viewers of Dutch television are once again subjected to the dishonest public debate about the Church leader and his stance on condoms. In orthodox Postmodernism the 'logic' is running basically as follows: AIDS kills - condoms kill AIDS - the Pope forbids condoms - the Pope is a murderer.

The difference between the two positions lays in what constitutes sex. To the Pope this is a matter of free will, to be exercised between two people of the opposite sex within the sanctity of marriage with a view to procreation. In theory this position is foolproof as far as the prevention of AIDS is concerned.

To Postmodernists sex is more or less the opposite. It is a mere pastime and everyone's basic human right, to be exercised at any time, in unspecified circumstances, between more or less consenting cretins. But more importantly, in consideration that "the natural urge is stronger than ourselves" it is located outside the province of free will.

This brings the discussion back to the very basic question: does man have free will? To Postmodernism it is absolutely vital that this question is answered negatively, or the entire, carefully crafted edifice of fallacies hangs by a thread! It is the prime underpinning of Darwinism, Kantian ethics, Leftist sociology and psychology, multiculturalism, and every other ism that upholds the absence of objective morality.

The Left (and Postmodern Right), when vowing to bring rubber profylactics to Africa by the jumbo load, dismiss the fact the condoms also constitute a license for promiscuous behavior, which in turn - together with its 13% unreliability rating even in Western circumstances (!) - entails a considerable risk as far as AIDS prevention is concerned.

The question arises, who is subordinating human life to dogma here? Whose position is in conformity to reason, and whose isn't?

There was a time not that long ago when Westerners knew precisely which political system is in accordance with human nature, and which suppress it. Just after World War II elementary schools taught students that the problem was situated in ideals about the total state. Prime examples of evil systems were Communism, National Socialism (Nazism) and Fascism. This was, so was explained, because total states use individuals as mere pawns to serve the whole.

When Ronald Reagan in the 80s of the last century coined the term The Evil Empire, everyone understood accurately that he was referring to the evil suppression of dissenting individuals in the Soviet Union. When fanatical students during the Iranian Islamo-Marxist Revolution kept the American Embassy and its 52 diplomats hostage over the course of 444 days, no one in the West had any doubt that this was a prime display of wickedness.

All this did not apply to the fringes the Postmodern Left. Granted, Nazism and Fascism were seen as the epitomy of evil but any Leftist equivalent - from Marxism-Lenism to the Asian agrarianism of Mao and Pol Pot - have been defended by some to this very day: the theory of collectivism is good, but it's the operatives who perhaps have made a few mistakes in implementing an otherwise morally superior theory.

Ignoring the corpses piling up, amongst those unrepentant apologists is the clique of former 'domestic' terrorist and member of the Weather Underground, Professor Bill Ayers.

Enough has been said and written during the run up of the US Presidential elections about Barack H. Obama, his prior connections to those far Left radicals and their (neo) totalitarian, authoritarian tendencies. So there is no surprise if overtures to evil regimes, such as Iran and its proxy Syria, do not register on the compass of the Obama administration on the no-no side of ethics. On the contrary!

European politicians have long been relativized, as a matter of fact, ever since the Utopian collectivist one-human-race end-games were sketched by German philosophers Kant and Hegel some two centuries ago. Firmly on the positive side of the ethics compass registers wheeling and dealing, the striving for transnational union with the rapists of human rights, those fanatics who perpetrate all manner of violations, ranging from the violent oppression of women, to the murder of homosexuals to the repression of religious and ethnic minorities.

Rather predictably the Obama overtures are already being dismissed by Iran, and rewarded with blackmail in the case of Syria. That's what you get when dealing with thugs! Ask Neville Chamberlain. Who's to say what's next? A Kim Jong-il generated test, as Joe Biden famously suggested there might be?

Stop Blaming Capitalism!

- Yaron Brook's Call to Action - March 2009 (Part 1 of 2)


- Yaron Brook's Call to Action - March 2009 (Part 2 of 2)


- Yaron Brook on Sacrifice


- Yaron Brook on Glenn Beck


More video material of the Ayn Rand Institute.

The Evolution from Value to Non Value

For reasons we shall see shortly many people today have lost track of the meaning of the word 'value'.

It means simply - within an ethical system - something worthy of pursuit and effort to keep it.

In the relativist Marxist dialectic and its frame of ethics, morality became a social construct of the Oppressors - i.e. the bourgeoisie. Middle class values became synonymous with the concept itself.

Like the entire field of ethics came to be defined in accordance with the Kantian ethics system, and 'morals' are understood as limited to sexual behavior, for entire swathes of Westerners 'value' currently means 'suspect middle class decency', usually slightly false and hypocrite. Value became a non value.

Pop culture consists almost entirely of non values, and even anti values. No one pursues health hazards, ugly things, refuse, dilapidated buildings, rags, music as a loose jumble of unrelated sound waves, ditto in literature (word salads), faecal art, urinals, and anything else skatological. In short, that which in real life we need to get away from as soon as possible because it's, well ... worthless -- valueless.

Postmodern art and culture tries to sell us refuse - non values - as if they were a value, something worth pursuing and keeping ... in effect, anti values.

The entire edifice of Left and Right collectivist ethics, is based on a fallacy (not reality as it is, but as it should be, according to their false ideologies) and the subterfuge, that aims to persuade us that what we see in front of us, is an illusion and thus unworthy of pursuit.

The consequence is the upside down, relativist world we live in today: in which our senses are said to be deceiving us and man is thus incapable of knowing anything (epistemological nihilism); black is white from a certain point of view and true (subjectivism); that reality will cease to exist at the moment of our death because it is 'thought that creates reality'.

Much has been said about the parallels of the Weimar Republic in the German interbellum, and the present times. In reference to values this is most certainly true: the same postmodern non and anti values in art and culture, and in society rampant relativism, sexual deviasion and permissiveness, and an obsession with death and the gruesome.

Yesterday Dutch TV aired an interview with a young Muslim woman who was in the Turkish Airlines plane crash at Amsterdam airport this week. The interviewers, who never hesitate to brutally deride and ridicule Christian believers, softly-softly pushed her on her beliefs and the Muslim approach to the afterlife.

She explained that in Islam our earthly life is not something worthy of great pursuit, and that real life, is the afterlife. It is in the unity with Allah that true life begins. While the same thought has certainly crossed the minds of many Jews and Christians, for a very good reason the basic credo has always been the absoluteness of the sanctity of life. This is but one basic aspect why the three faiths of the book are not "all the same".

Any other inference that may be drawn from that premise for the moment aside, it is obvious that to her and her co-religionists death is clearly a value, while life is not. Now, answer the question, why would anyone devise a thought system that makes death a worthy pursuit?

The conclusion is justified that two and half millennia worth of civilization is currently under attack by some form of nihilism, on some level or other: ethically, epistemologically, metaphysically, culturally, ideologically, politically, you name it!

Hampered by idealistic collectivists who are naive enough to have put their money on a happy, post Christian and post racial global cumbaya, and caught in a pincer between on the one hand, nihilistic postmoderns who lost their belief in anything, hell bent on tearing down the rest of humanity with the demise of their morally bankrupt ideals; and on the other hand the Islamic collective of the Ummah that is obsessed and in the throngs of a fanatical death cult.

Boy, are we knee-deep in skatological goo ...

Digest of the European Papers

Following digests were torn from the English language version of German meta newspaper digest Signandsight, the 'feuilletons' of Perlentaucher. Common thread in the week that was: the intractabilities of undefined morality.

This is fun! Here's one not getting half way in addressing the problem: the liberal "fear to give offense" is a major error of identification. Relativist philosophy and the postmodern dialectic are as far removed from the fear to offend as Marx is from dinner etiquette. Permanently reserving opinion on what's between The Jewel's dust sheets, it's really too bad this exquisite cover design will never see the light of day!

Perlentaucher 06.01.2009

It is twenty years since the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie. In an article orginially published in Spiked, British author Kenan Malik takes western liberals to task for their tendency to treat anything Islam-related with kid gloves. As in the case of Sherry Jones' novel "The Jewel of Medina", which Random House America pulled out of circulation although no Muslim had expressed objections to it. "The lesson of the Rushdie Affair that has never been learnt is that liberals have made their own monsters. It is the liberal fear of giving offence that has helped create a culture in which people take offence so easily." And he dispenses with the multicultural myth that the Rushdie Affair was about religion; it was all about politics: "Hardline Islamist groups used Rushdie's book to try to win political concessions. It subsequently became an issue in Britain as it turned into a weapon in the faction fights between various Islamic groups.

Take this as a stark contrast, highlighting the difference between immorality and amorality. It's lost on Mr Stark because he has no way of knowing:

Der Tagesspiegel 06.01.2009

Legendary US crime writer Donald Westlake alias Richard Stark died on New Year's Eve. In a final conversation with Dennis Scheck he explains the difference between American and French crime writing. "When an American crime novelist writes about a bank robber, the thief will want the stolen cash to pay for a desperately-needed operation for some little girl in a wheelchair. The French crime writer, on the other hand, will write about a bank robber because he robs banks. Which is why I take it as a compliment when people say I write like a Frenchman."

And talking of ethics, here's what you do when you run an orchestra made up of sworn enemies. You take the neutral position and pretend that a compromise is possible between good and evil (much like say, being a bit pregnant):

Der Tagesspiegel 07.01.2009

What can Brahms or Beethoven say about the current conflict in Gaza? Daniel Barenboim talks to Christine Lemke-Matwey about his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. "What should they say? What they always say or never say. It would be fatal to instrumentalise their music. But it is important that the orchestra takes a stand. And this is why we are showing the world that even in war it is possible to communicate with one another. And we will also be releasing a statement saying that the musicians in the orchestra have deep differences in opinion about who is to blame for what is happening in Gaza. We will not attempt to hide these differences which are extremely strong and go back a long way. When it's a matter of life and death, it is wrong to gloss things over."

Here are more edifying morsels covering the week from Germany.

The Roots of the Unholy Alliance (redux)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Filed on Articles in "Transnational Bankruptcy" -

Hurray! It's the Weekend of Capitalism!

Say what you will, call him names! A lame duck, yes mistakes have been made, the rules of laissez-faire capitalism were violated, but right now it is he who stands between prosperity through free market principles, and the forces of Statism, who wish to reduce the financial sector to a tragic shadow of its former self, a mere government utility!

While experts in the US are still trying to figure out what happened, some Europeans already knew before the event: it's capitalism, stupid! Isn't the cause of crime, the law? Now is the time for the coup of state, let the ax fall on the evil system!

- Caption: "Sunriser II", by Bobbie Carlyle -

Here are two opinions: one by the most underestimated US President in history, George W. Bush - and an article by Objectivists Yaron Brook and Don Watkins on the Op-Ed page of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: a urgent plea for the separation of Economy and State. Europeans are urged to take note of a field virtually unknown to them. But first, the news:

CNN: "Bush ready to defend free-market principles during summit"

(...) President Bush signaled that he's ready to defend Western-style capitalism and free-market principles during what will be one of his last appearances on the world stage. (...) As leaders of the world's 20 largest economies, dubbed the G-20, gather in Washington, some European leaders are pushing for global financial regulation. (...) >>>

Wall Street Journal: "The Surest Path Back to Prosperity - 'If you seek economic growth, social justice and human dignity, the free-market system is the way to go'," by George W. Bush

As we have seen in recent months, financial turmoil anywhere in the world affects economies everywhere in the world. And so this weekend I'm going to host a Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy with leaders from developed and developing nations that account for nearly 90% of the world economy. The leaders attending this weekend's meeting agree on a clear purpose -- to address the current crisis, and to lay the foundation for reforms that will help prevent a similar crisis in the future. (...) the actions taken by the U.S. and other nations are having an impact. Credit markets are beginning to thaw. Businesses are gaining access to essential short-term financing. A measure of stability is returning to financial systems.

- Caption: "Refuge" by Perrin Sparks -

(...) we must recognize that government intervention is not a cure-all. For example, some blame the crisis on insufficient regulation of the American mortgage market. But many European countries had much more extensive regulations, and still experienced problems almost identical to our own. History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, it is too much government involvement in the market.

We saw this in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because these firms were chartered by the U.S. Congress, many believed they were backed by the full faith and credit of the U. S. government. Investors put huge amounts of money into Fannie and Freddie, which they used to build up irresponsibly large portfolios of mortgage-backed securities. When the housing market declined, these securities, of course, plummeted in value. It took a taxpayer-funded rescue to keep Fannie and Freddie from collapsing in a way that would have devastated the global financial system.

- Caption: "We the Living", by Nick Gaetano -

There is a clear lesson: Our aim should not be more government -- it should be smarter government. All this leads to the most important principle that should guide our work: While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today's problems is sustained economic growth. And the surest path to that growth is free markets and free people.

In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right equate the free-enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure. It's true this crisis included failures -- by lenders and borrowers and financial firms, and by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free-market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems, make reforms, and move forward with the free-market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people all across the globe. (...)

Nations that pursued other models have experienced devastating results. Soviet communism starved millions, bankrupted an empire, and collapsed as decisively as the Berlin Wall. Cuba, once known for its vast fields of cane, is now forced to ration sugar. While Iran sits atop giant oil reserves, its people cannot put enough gasoline in their cars.

The record is unmistakable: If you seek economic growth, social justice and human dignity, the free-market system is the way to go. It would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success. (...) >>>

Give Bush a buzz z

- Caption: "The Anchorage" by Bryan Larsen -

Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights: "Stop Blaming Capitalism for Government Failures", by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Speaking of the financial crisis, French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently said, “Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.” Sarkozy was echoing the views of many, including president-elect Obama, who assume that the financial crisis was caused by free markets--by “unbridled greed” unleashed by decades of deregulation and a “hands off” approach to the economy. And given this premise, the solution, they say, is obvious. To solve this crisis and prevent another one, we need a heavy dose of Uncle Sam’s elixir: government intervention. (...)

But while capitalism may be a convenient scapegoat, it did not cause any of these problems. Indeed, whatever one wishes to call the unruly mixture of freedom and government controls that made up our economic and political system during the last three decades, one cannot call it capitalism. (...) Take a step back.

- Caption: "Lunch Break" by Quent Cordair -

In the lead up to the “Reagan Revolution,” the explosive growth of government during the ’60s and ’70s had left the American economy in disarray. A crushing tax burden, runaway inflation, brutal unemployment, and economic stagnation had Americans looking for an alternative. That’s what Reagan offered, denouncing big government and promising a new “morning in America.” (...) Bush Jr., often laughably called a champion of free markets, presided over massive new governmental controls like Sarbanes-Oxley and massive new welfare programs like the prescription drug benefit.

None of this is consistent with capitalism. (...) The government’s job under capitalism is single but crucial: to protect individual rights from violation by force or fraud. America came closest to this system in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result was an unprecedented explosion of wealth creation and consequent rise in the standard of living. Even now, when the fading remnants of capitalism are badly crippled by endless controls, we see that the freest countries--those which retain the most capitalist elements--have the highest standard of living.

Why then should capitalism take the blame today--when capitalism doesn’t even exist? (...) Consider the current crisis (...) the driving force is clearly government intervention: the Fed keeping interest rates below the rate of inflation, thus encouraging people to borrow and providing the impetus for a housing bubble; the Community Reinvestment Act, which forces banks to lend money to low-income and poor-credit households; the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with government-guaranteed debt leading to artificially low mortgage rates and the illusion that the financial instruments created by bundling them are low risk; government-licensed rating agencies, which gave AAA ratings to mortgage-backed securities, creating a false sense of confidence; deposit insurance and the “too big to fail” doctrine, whose bailout promises have created huge distortions in incentives and risk-taking throughout the financial system; and so on. In the face of this long list, who can say with a straight face that the housing and financial markets were frontiers of “cowboy capitalism”? (...)

- Caption: "Cityscape Texture Study II", by Bryan Larsen -

This is just the latest example of a pattern that has been going on since the rise of capitalism: capitalism is blamed for the ills of government intervention--and then even more government intervention is proposed as the cure. The Great Depression? Despite massive evidence that the Federal Reserve’s and other government policies were responsible for the crash and the inability of the economy to recover, it was laissez-faire that was blamed. Consequently, in the aftermath, the government’s power over the economy was not curtailed but dramatically expanded. Or what about the energy crisis of the 1970s? (...)It’s time to stop blaming capitalism for the sins of government intervention, and give true laissez-faire a chance. Now that would be a change we could believe in. >>>

Wall Street Journal have a touching short documentary on the Great Depression up on their video archive ...



Art in this post by the Quent Cordair Fine Art Gallery for Romantic Realism

Update: Soeren Kern has the semi pan-European position ... they propose to rule the world by committee ... take note of this: "today’s European leaders are about as interested in solving global problems as was Otto von Bismarck, who devoted his life to empire-building and the practice of Realpolitik. Today’s European leaders are trying not only to revive the Roman Empire in the form of a unified Europe, but they are also seeking to rebalance global power in such a way that places Europe at the top of the international pecking order" ... read it all:

The Brussels Journal: "Europe Is Obama’s First ‘Global Test’"



- Filed in "The Ethics of Capitalism" -