Ideas so stupid only intellectuals can believe

A book review, and a life review, neither of which is likely to appeal to our blinkered, blinded and stupefied Left, serves us well here. But only some of us. Most people are happy to live in cave-like error, doing what others do, being normally social and conservative, even if that is a radicalist behaviour in outcome.The willing suspension of disbelief is essential to social living, for otherwise we would have no society, no art, no language, no relationships of any kind but narcissistic hedonism for a moment. Seers are a menace. Plato is right in exiling them from his Republic, if there is to be a Republic. Or, perhaps, we might rather find a golden mean between revolution and hippie conformity.

Thomas F. Bertonneau "Sigrid Undset Crosses Russia: The Remarkable Case of Back from the Future," (1942) Brussels Journal. 03 March 2009

Seeing things plain, not lying to oneself, not subscribing to the, delusions of others – these virtues, seemingly so simple, prove in life difficult to achieve and tricky to exercise. An inevitable imitative pressure assimilates people to one another so that mere opinion, received but never vetted, comes to function as a surrogate reality, in the cave-like error of which people stumble about their errands in a lurching mockery of witting behavior. The ancients worried about false or second-hand judgment (doxa) or about superstition. Modern people must grapple with ideology. The critique of ideology is the single most important exercise that an individual can undertake who wants to stand in truth and by his own lights against the conformist pressure of public opinion, or what dissenters nowadays call political correctness.

More: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3813

U B U 2 U

Even now in the middle of a very long and eccentric life I find myself sometimes wincing and grimacing over the rise of unbidden memories from random experiences that just won't go away in spite of whatever discipline I use to keep them away. Some ugly memories are scars that won't fade. One such nasty memory is of a repulsive young woman at a dance hall whose tee-shirt bore the caption: "I wouldn't wanna be you."

I can appreciate the idea of not wanting to be you. Regardless of who I might be, I'd rather be me than not. I don't want to be you. Fair enough. But I don't want you not to be you. Islam, for all its obvious faults, at least understands that no one is ever going to be the Perfect Man, he being, according to Islam, Mohammed, not to be repeated, only imitated. Islam, for all its totalitarianism, doesn't attempt to make anyone into the kind of person "we all should be." Islam settles for orthopraxy, for outward ritual behaviour. For the totalitarian Leftist, this is not enough. He not only rejects you as you but demands that you conform to his vision of the Ideal Man as you. It's one thing not to want to be me; but it is something creepy to not want me to be me. That's me The Individualist writing. I value Privacy. Muslims and the Left value Publicity. No, I wouldn't want to be you, but that's not a problem for me. It is a problem for the communitarian.

For the communitarian, the idea of Another not being a conformist in all ways, body, mind and soul, is an outrage against Nature. Communitarians, Statists, Muslims, collectivists of all sorts, they hate individuals and individualism. Usually this is of no concern to most of us. Unfortunately, there is a growing movement of middle-aged hippies in government and areas of social control, e.g our universities, who are fanatical in their drive to make all others "not themselves." We must all be One.
I'm rereading Matthew Arnold today. I read Arnold as a young man, ( not, at the time, realizing that in the doing I was preparing myself for marriage in middle-age,) from a sense of duty rather than passion. Today, for me, he raises the question of the benefits of Culture, by which he means High Culture of the mid-Victorian era. He writes of others as in need of the education they lack, an education which makes their philistine lives "hole and corner." Like most people, he doesn't like people not like himself. He writes of others: "Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come from their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?"1.

Good grief! Would I want to be a man like him? Not for all the money on Earth. Wouldn't even want to be Elvis. Nor does Arnold, for all his obnoxious snobbery, intend anyone to think others should be him or like him. In that he is ultimately far superior to the average Leftist. Arnold's snobbery begins and ends with himself. He did not kill anyone in a futile and hubristic attempt to make a New Man. Such cannot be said of the Death Hippies who today rule our many nations of Modernity, lands of Sweetness and Light, where ignorant Leftards clash on sight.

Who then is the Humanist? He who doesn't want to be you is probably fine with not being you. He who doesn't like you is probably fine with that too. It is he who doesn't want you to be you who is the man we must not tolerate. I wouldn't be someone else for all the money on Earth. Nor would I want to make another not himself even if that someone is someone I'd gladly hang from a lamp-post. People have rights, innately, and the most basic right is to be their own Lords. Sometimes others are so disgusting I can't shake the horror of the vision of them; but that's my problem, not theirs. I can live with it. Can our collectivist Culture Curators? Can we live with them?

1. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1869; rpt. revised 1933 and19 50; p. 52.

Election Night of the Living Dead

"I don't get how people can not vote for Obama. He's so inspiring. Every time I see him I think of the Foo Fighters song, "There goes my hero". That's pretty much because Obama is my hero.

I think he will make this world a better place. I'm pretty sure he will end world hunger and probably AIDS too. I just know he can do all this cause when I hear him speak I get excited on the inside."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081014094746AAd2S8M

I quoted the genius above recently for the sake of the shock value; but I didn't realize then, which I certainly do now, that the shock's on me. Unlike the thrill of the Night of the Living Dead, I'm not enjoying this zombie take-over of the land. In fact, this horror-show is really scaring me. I don't mind being scared, as a rule. I live a pretty rough life, and part of the reason I do so is because it's so scary. But that's my personal life. The nation, that's a different story. That's something far more interesting and important than my own petty doing, no matter how important my petty doings might be to me. Unfortunately, many, maybe more than half of Americans, don't see that their petty doings are no more important to the nation than mine. They seem to think they actually matter to everyone. Sorry, but no one is that important. Nope. Not me, not even you, and especially not that f*****g weasel Obama. The beauty of knowing ones one relative unimportance is in the knowing that none are much different, and that we must all go our own ways as well as we can without recourse to demagogues and demiurges. A nation of ordinary folks doing their own thing is what makes the nation so great. That's America. What we see below is from one of Dante's middling circles of Hell. Which one? Maybe the one for the self-obsessed, for gluttons and sloths and card-cheats. Here's our America. Look out, here come the zombies!

Rick Moran, "Meet the people who are going to put Obama in office." American Thinker. 15 Oct. 2008

This is really incredible. It stunned Ben Smith over at Politico where I got these quotes. It floored a GOP consultant who conducted the focus group where the people were quoted.

And it is perhaps the single most depressing thing I've read this entire campaign season:

The GOP consultant emailed Smith about a focus group he just finished conducting. Evidently, he showed a hard hitting ad on Ayers to the group and this was the email he sent:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

For the first time, I really feel scared about the future. These people are like the Germans in the election of 1933. They know what's coming but they don't care. Back then, all they cared about was that Hitler was going to give them a job and keep their lunch pails full. And stick it to the Jews. And restore Germany's "rightful place" in the world. They knew full well that Hitler would destroy the independent unions, crack down on dissent, and turn Germany from a very free country into a fascist dictatorship.

Part of this is McCain's fault. He bought into that populist crap about greedy Wall Street. Well, so as ye sow, so shall ye reap. And we're about to reap the whirlwind.

In this kind of atmosphere any kind of a government is possible. And I don't know if Obama can resist the kind of raw power these nincompoops are willing to give him. Who could?

You need a license to own a dog but any fool can vote.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/meet_the_people_who_are_going.html

I'm keen of Godwin's Law, i.e. that to call an opponent a Nazi is to lose the argument. I'm not calling Osama Barka supporters Nazis. I refer to them instead a Death Hippies, Conformity Hippies, Povertarians, Irrationalists, Communitarians, and nutters. Many of the intelligentsia in support of Osama are Left dhimmi fascists. Few are going to be Nazis. But many of the above are going to feel emotionally right at home living the nightmare that was Nazi Germany.

First they'll come for Truepeers, then they'll come for Charles-- by which point I hope to be long gone outta here, maybe in some mountain hide-away in the jungles of Paraguay, formerly but seemingly not for much longer, "The Last Place on Earth for the Worst people in the World."

****

What about Sarah Palin? She spoke to Rush Limbaugh [transcript]. Of him I know nothing. Of Sarah Palin I know this:

"So, you know, I’m going out there and I’m just simply speaking. So be it that I’m a simple talker, but I’m just going out there and letting people know the differences and how absolutely paramount it is that voters are paying attention and that voters are understanding candidates’ records, their associations, their plans for the future; instead of being kind of wrapped up into all this rhetoric of Obama’s and buying into it and not holding him accountable for the things that he’s done, the things that he’s said, his associates, and where he wants to take America."