Thursday, September 22, 2022
Another stupid fad in Cultural Leftism…
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Dreams and Visions vs. Practical Reality
Imagination and feeling "moves mountains"...
Practical reasoning and common sense applies itself to those things that can really be done (and appreciates the mountains where they are).
When we are without imagination and feeling we are without art, music, and dreams...
When we are without practical reasoning and common sense the real world drowns in false notions and withers upon its own foolishness.
When practical reasoning and common sense pretends to act from the heart, we get shitty art, and soulless artifacts.
When imagination and feeling pretends to act for practical purpose we get chaos, sloth, and the rise of tyranny.
Feeling inspires imagination and practical reasoning inspires common sense.
Some are for some things and some for another. The real world would cease to function without either.
...Now, pay you bills, save your money, assist those in need, and listen to a good piece of music...preferably at an art museum and, by all means, don't pretend that half of reality is invalid because you've locked yourself into illusions and self deprivation.
Saturday, September 17, 2022
The Babylon Bee is Funny…
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
The Great 21st Century Pole Shift
More and more we are reading establishment media pieces in publications like The Atlantic telling us of looming authoritarianism if Trump were to win an election again. The arguments border on the comical. For one thing, Trump already was president for four years, and in spite of constant leftist rambling about “authoritarianism,” there was nothing beyond what other presidents have done that can be remotely defined as “authoritarian.” He certainly didn’t send an armed FBI to ravage his opposition. The problem with Trump, for some, was that he’s simply conservative on major policy issues. It’s absolutely absurd that we’ve come to bow before the Jacobin alter so much that something as common sense as protecting our border has been defined as a debatable issue. Now it’s not even that. No one is permitted to even suggest that our border should be secure without being labled an extreme right wing “fascist.” A cabal of tech titans that now dominate public communication have decided that half of the political spectrum is literally no longer allowed to exist.
Amazingly, “conservative” and “liberal” are still recognizable perspectives. One can talk with a person for a few minutes on issues of the day and recognize where they stand in the conservative/liberal dichotomy. But…something strange has happened. While the divide decades ago bares similarity to the divide today, on many major policy issues there has literally been a pole shift.
Prior to the last couple of decades, the left clearly stood for “free speech.” “Liberals” were, in many ways, libertarian in outlook. They were extremely skeptical, if not openly hostile to government authority. They were certainly no champion of the FBI or CIA and it’s unlikely they would have blindly followed a command from on high to take an experimental vaccine. They were anti-war, anti-authority, and pro-“do your own thing.” Conservatives took a more paternalistic approach to public policy, in some cases guiding their worldview by traditional religious values — a trait that still exists among many in the Republican Party.
As noted before, the poles in this dichotomy are still recognizable. A conservative from the past, like one today, is inclined to be opposed to abortion and to hold patriotic views. They have no problem saying, “America First.” Until recently, most would have held respect for the FBI and CIA.
In schools of psychology, there’s an awareness of the concept of “projection.” One passionately polarizes to something or someone because they themselves are aware — on some level — of the issue in themselves. This isn’t a rock-solid law of human behavior but does offer some insight into human activity.
The left, lurching ever more extreme in their stance has come to actually adopt the stereotypical behavior of generic conservatism — an inflexibility and respect for authority, obedience, and order. It is now the left that actively seeks to block open communication, to side with a powerful central political authority and honor corrupt police-power federal institutions (they still apparently hate the local cop).
Most conservatives today, while still recognizably conservative, actively resist the encroaching authority of the “speech police” on campuses and elsewhere. While conservatism wishes to adhere to the constitutional freedoms that have been the bedrock of free society, the left now looks with derision upon virtually all established traditions and constitutional standards.
I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that “conservatives are becoming liberal and liberals are becoming conservative” but there is clearly a dynamic in play that should be noted when seeking to understand the turmoil of our time.
Both sides of the political spectrum are valid templates for appraising social/political life. Some principles work better at some times and under some conditions but regardless, there’s an instinctual tendency to ally one’s self based on personal temperament — some people are “naturally” conservative and others “naturally” liberal. Psychologist Jordan Peterson notes this when he attributes the traits of “openness” vs. “conscientiousness.” While the proverbial pendulum continues to move back and fourth, it’s obvious that the sway is more extreme in our time. Many on the left wish to actively uproot our culture, history, and way of governance. They recognize that to do so they will need to eliminate opposition, and when they hold the levers of power, to use that power to punish their perceived enemies. Political philosopher, Hannah Arendt accurately noted that it is common knowledge that the “most radical revolutionary becomes a conservative the day after the revolution.” They are currently in the middle of their “revolution” and are already exhibiting the extreme positions one may feel comfortable in imposing when they feel they’ve won. Communist countries are not noted for their openness to diverse music genres and sexual lifestyles. In that regard, they have a lot in common with radical Islam which — again generically — can be called “conservative.” Being a conservative Muslim or communist of course does not mean one favors the freedoms of a constitutional republic and capitalist economic system (an attribute of an American conservative). In this sense one must acknowledge a pronounced difference between generic conservatism and the label as it is used to describe 19th century classical liberalism — self government with limited representational authority.
The Right’s extremism in America is one of passionate resistance. We do not wish to be dragged into another “utopia” after having seen where that story has led in the past. We like the order and stability of our traditions. The left is a catalyst for social entropy and their initial desire to literally ferment chaos is only a precursor to the establishment of a very rigid tyranny (a hint of which can be seen on many college campuses).
While so many “liberals” today note their fears regarding “climate change,” they should look with equal apprehension at the political “pole shift” now occurring that will surely cause the storms of social upheaval we’ve seen before that bring suffering on a mass scale. What is presently occurring in contemporary political alignment likely won’t be fully understood until long after a wake of destruction is left to future decades. At that point, the labels we choose to describe political allegiance will have become irrelevant.
Monday, September 12, 2022
When Common Sense Meets Eloquence
Wednesday, September 07, 2022
The Leftist Worldview
Tuesday, September 06, 2022
The Pursuit of Happiness
The pursuit of happiness for a conservative is a self-directed endeavor — one seeks and works for happiness for one’s self, one’s family, friends, and immediate community.While a leftist may also pursue happiness, their motivation and goals differ considerably. For them, happiness is gained by compelling others to comply with their values and standards. In many cases such compliance needn’t even be among people one knows. In the left’s world of abstraction, “society” will gain happiness by following the dictates of their perceived betters. For conservatives, the pursuit of happiness is something one does. For an authoritarian collectivist, it is to do what one is told to do.
Consistent
Funny…
Monday, September 05, 2022
Imagine if Only One Political Philosophy Gained Absolute Unopposed authority over America
Imagine if it was a mere few decades ago. A time when the political pendulum swung between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. Within both parties, a few extremists existed but basically had little pull over the party’s popularity or policy positions. Imagine that, if any extreme position was attempted, the natural order of a critical media and public outcry stopped it in its tracks thus moderating the country’s path and maintaining the basic attributes of a free constitutional republic.
Such a world is easy to imagine because it was the world that actually existed, again, not very long ago.
Imagine back then that you were told that a few decades in the future one political party would actively seek to eliminate its opposition and implement truly extreme alterations in the very fabric of America’s system of government. Imagine that a free press has become a radically partisan mouthpiece to the ruling party’s objectives and openly sought to muzzle any views that strayed from state authority.
Imagine that a massive apparatus of state was actively allied with a party and began purging worldviews that strayed from the dogma of one political ideology, that even the military was being culled of diverse voices, philosophies, and even conventional religious belief.
Imagine SWAT teams sent the homes of opposing political staff members to prosecute for bogus process “crimes.”
Image that traditional standards of stability were openly being mocked and assaulted by powerful interests allied with government. That family, religion, and values like responsibility, patriotism and hard work were being seen as “racist” and akin to Nazism and fascism.
Imagine that the American government used its authority to implement the values and goals of powerful and wealthy international institutions that openly expressed a goal of world government closely modeled on the systems of Soviet Russia and Maoist China — with the added scheme of high tech surveillance and an open desire to “reduce the world’s population.” Imagine being told that the age of abundance was over and your family would have to succumb to a dark era of mere subsistence, and government policy was being directed to that end.
…When an individual is on the border of insanity and self destructiveness, the boundaries between imagination and reality become blurred. When the things one could once only imagine become your tangible reality, you are leaving a world of tangible observation and common sense. Some may think we have entered a dream. More astute observation knows we have entered a nightmare. When twenty to thirty percent of the population can dictate the fate of the majority, the majority better wake up.
Sunday, September 04, 2022
Saturday, September 03, 2022
The role of government personnel, from the President on down, is to serve the public…not issue commands.
Friday, September 02, 2022
Crimson coup…in its second and final year of operation.
In spite of this contrived BS, “MAGA Republicans” still support a secure border, safe cities, a prosperous free-market economy, low taxation and minimal regulation, open and free speech, our constitutional freedoms and, oh yeah
(“voter suppression”) voter ID to insure fair elections….unlike the last one.
Once again, Democrats, the party of pathological projection.
