What is your responsibility in the accusations of others? Roy E. Moore and you

The climate of sexual assault accusations is heating up, spreading out from Hollywood to sweep the nation. Almost as worrisome as the accusations themselves, are the ways that people accept, or reject them. While many of the accusations seem to be true, and some even admitted to, almost certainly some are false - how are we to respond when, absent a confession of guilt, we cannot know whether they are true or not? How are we who know none of the parties involved, to respond to them, without any substantial evidence to support either the charges, or the denials? How about when the accusations involve leaders in the community, whose decisions may have far reaching affects upon our lives, and as in the case of the former Alabama Supreme Court Justice, and current candidate for senator, Roy E. Moore, upon the entire nation?

At this point, the only thing we can know, is that we do not know enough; and yet, whether as voters or interested political spectators, we know that we do need to make some sort of judgment upon them. That's a very unsettling position to be in.

It seems to me, that about all we can do is choose to respond to the charges responsibly, or irresponsibly. That begins with the understanding that even if we carefully examine the little we do know, and come to a very reasonable, responsible, conclusion about the accusations, we could easily see the next 'Breaking News!' report prove us to be entirely wrong.

That's a given, and it should be front and center in our minds.

We are not, and cannot be, omniscient. But we can be responsible in our thinking, and to be Response-Able in matters such as this, is to accept that what we must tentatively conclude, without all the facts being known, is less important than how we come to that conclusion. We can't be sure that our conclusions will be correct, but we can be sure that we've done our best in forming them, and if I properly go about coming to the wrong conclusion, I'll be much more able to accept my error, than if I irresponsibly happen upon the 'right' conclusion, with zero basis for doing so. First and foremost, we should not pretend to know, what we do not and cannot know, about the accused, or the accuser, no matter what our personal feelings towards any of the parties might be. Judge what we can, and no further.

Given all of that, it's probably best to begin with the charges themselves - from both sides. For instance:

• If the charges are true, they are disgusting abuses of trust and power, and violations of the law. Obviously such a person who would engage in such things, is not someone I'd want as a Judge, or in political office.
• If the charges are not true, they too are disgusting abuses of trust and power, and are themselves violations of the law. Obviously such persons should not be able to influence who will hold judicial or political office.

As heinous as the charges are against Moore, if they are untrue, and made to falsely change the minds of millions of voters, that too is a heinous act, an intimate assault upon the body politic. But with nothing to go on but the charges being made, who made them, who they were made against, and who is presenting them to us, for anyone to make definitive statements upon what they cannot know to be true - pro or con - strikes me as the height of irresponsibility. And for the smugger than thou, who seek cover for their thinly formed personal conclusions, in the fact that we as individuals, are not bound by the rules of the law:

"...Now, I've had far too many people shouting, 'Guilty until proven innocent!' at me over my comments on this issue, as if they're too dumb to know that the second half of that phrase is 'in a court of law.' Not to blow your mind here, but I'm actually not a court of law, and I'm allowed to believe whatever I want ' and personally, I believe that Roy Moore was a predator with a penchant for teenage girls...."

We are not ourselves courts of law, and are not bound to the rules a court is, that's true enough, as far as it goes, but the fact is that it doesn't go very far at all. Do we really bear no responsibility to evaluate the charges being bandied about? What the seriousness of the charges do require me to do, is to make what judgments that I reasonably can - and to acknowledge what I reasonably cannot - without blathering on about either the charges, or my personal beliefs about them, or how you 'just knew!' them to be true or false.

I'm a father of a teenage daughter, I've some pretty strong feelings about the nature of the charges that've been made, but what kind of opinion can be formed upon no better basis, than your own feelings about the charges themselves? The judicial rules of evidence and judgment of our laws, are founded upon the realization that we don't know what really happened in a case, and that our judgments can be wrong, which is why courts have rules to follow in presenting and evaluating evidence and testimony - does the fact that we are not courts, mean that we shouldn't hold our opinions to similar standards?

There are several options open to us here, and hopefully you will hold yourself to some standard, as you decided whether you will:

1. Accept that 'the seriousness of the charges' are such that we should assume that he is guilty until we have reasons to believe that he is innocent.
2. Assume that multiple accusers of a similar age who're making vaguely similar charges, qualifies as sufficient reason to presume his guilt.
3. Consider whether the charges are supported by the accused's personal record, habits and behavior?
4. Consider whether the accusers personal record, habits and behavior, supports the credibility of the charges being made?
5. We can presume his guilt, or innocence, based upon the politics of:
   a- his political party and your feelings towards that.
   b- of those making the charges.
   c- of those promoting the charges.

So let's take a stab at weighing those options.

Regarding #1, simply because of the fact that I am not myself a court of law or bound to its rules, does not excuse me to presume that the charges are true, without having anything more to go on than the seriousness of the charges themselves. That is the height of intellectual irresponsibility. You're not thinking, you're gossiping.

#2, the sheer number of charges made do not lend credibility to the charges themselves. What with my being in my 50's, I very clearly recall the Day-care sex-abuse hysteria charges of the 1980's, when charges of sexual child abuse at day care centers, spread like wildfire across the nation, charges which were ultimately proven by and large to be false, but charges which nevertheless destroyed the lives and livelihood of numerous people. There is a striking similarity between the national mood now, and the Day Care hysteria back then, and we should not ignore that such moods and their attendant hype, are ripe for abuse. Especially so, as the charges that have been made by the accusers in this case, are not the same charges - the other two accusers, while their age was inappropriate for his alleged attentions, they did not charge him with 'taking liberties' with them.

As for #3, do the charges fit with the accused's character and history? If the charges were made against someone with the personal history of a Harvey Weinstein, or a Bill Clinton, they'd gain credibility on account of their own history, as such behavior of abuse and disregard for the person of another, are habits that stick with lech's, pedophiles, or serial abusers, who tend to be repeat offenders, and increasingly bold ones at that. Does Moore have a record of taking advantage of, and abusing, younger women? At this point in time, I'm unaware of it. His own life lived, to the best of our current knowledge, has to be given some weight against the credibility of the charges.

Similarly with #4, does the accusers personal record, habits and behavior, support the credibility of the charges being made? Supposedly, the primary accuser has a less than impressive personal history, divorced three times, filed bankruptcy three times, allegedly has history of making similar accusations against clergymen. That does not mean that the accusations are not true, but her personal history doesn't lend credibility to them - and that is all that we have to go on at this point.

As for the political aspects of the charges, with #5a above, presuming the guilt or innocence of charges, based upon the politics of the person charged, is relevant only if the charges are relevant to their politics. For instance, if a Social Justice Warrior were charged with beating someone on the basis of their political beliefs ( i.e. "Punch a nazi!"), their own political beliefs would argue towards their guilt, rather than their innocence. But when the charges have no particular relevance to their politics one way or another - and sexual misconduct is very much a bi-partisan matter - then their, Moore's politics, should not be swaying our conclusions, one way or another.

As for #5b, presuming the guilt or innocence of the charges, based upon the politics of the person making the charges, as with #3, is relevant only if the charges are relevant to their politics. And while matters of sexual misconduct are a bi-partisan matter, making charges of sexual misconduct in order to further a political agenda, is hardly unheard of. Anita Hill's foul accusations against Clarence Thomas, come to mind. However, in this case, the primary accuser doesn't seem to have an ideological ax to grind, and while one of the other accusers does have a history in Democrat politics, it doesn't amount to much. For myself, I'd say that, in and of itself, on this point, the accusers politics it's a wash with me, neither bolstering or undermining, the charges.

However, the matter doesn't come through the wash free of stains. For instance, if the charges are true, why did the accusers, especially the main accuser, not come forward earlier? If not as a young teenager, then at least when Moore began to gain prominence, 10 years later, when she, as an adult, supposedly told her mother? If the charges were true, she should have come forward with them then, and every day, month, and year she delayed, IMHO, eats away at their credibility, especially given the fact that she has waited until, not just Moore's Senatorial campaign, but for the very end of it, to come forward. The other accusers did not come forward on their own, they were found, and encouraged to make their charges public, by a reporter. For myself, that leads me to at least somewhat discount the credibility of the charges, on the basis of the charges alone.

As for #5c, presuming the guilt or innocence of the charges, based upon the politics of those promoting the charges, as with #4b, is relevant only if the presumed effect of making such charges are relevant to their politics. Interestingly enough, one of the authors of the Washington Post article, Ms. McCrummen, has a rather checkered history of running afoul of the law, as well as journalistically engaging in political witch hunts, as this article from 2011 indicates,

"...Although a careful read of the story shows that there is no substantiation for the allegations of racism, Ms. McCrummen, the Post, and MSNBC have held a non-stop witch hunt, accusing Mr. Perry of everything under the sun. So, let’s examine the author using the same journalistic standards practiced by the Washington Post.

Ms. McCrummen has a rather interesting criminal history herself, as public criminal records in multiple states stretching across 4 time zones have shown...."

Such histories do not lend to the creditability of either the charges, or of those promoting them.

And of course, Roy E. Moore's candidacy can hardly be said to be of no consequence to the politics of our day, for the Washington Post (who opposes Moore), or for the Left, or even for the Right. Charges such as this, at this point in time in an election, is very much in line with what has often been excused as 'justified resistance' by such people as those at The Washington Post.... not to mention the McCain/McConnel wing of the establishment GOP.

So to sum it up:

1. I cannot responsibly credit these charges, at this point in time, on the basis of charges alone.
2. I cannot credit, or discredit, the charges based upon the politics of the accused.
3. There is little reason to question the charges being made, based upon the politics of the accusers - but there is reason to question the decades that have passed in their silence, and the timing involved in making them public now.
4. The reputation of the accused, his extremely high target value in opposition research over the last decade or so, and the absence of similar charges over the forty years since the incident was alleged to have happened, weigh in Moores' favor, and against the accusations.
5. The nature and history of those who sought out these charges, and promoted them (Ms. McCrummen and the Washington Post at the top), do not lend credibility to the charges.

When I add all of this up, in the context of what we know at this point in time, it argues towards a presumption of innocence for Roy E. Moore, rather than presuming his guilt because of the 'gravity of the charges' alone.

And of course, I could be wrong, and given reason to judge differently, I will.

I know very little about Roy E. Moore, and what I do know, I've had mixed opinions about. I know even less about his accusers, but I've some knowledge of the politically utility of salacious charges, being promoted at the last minute ('October Surprise!') by political foes, in the crucial final days of a political campaign, and until I know more, I'm not going to let the emotional nature and severity of the charges, be what most influences my judgment.

I also know that those who eagerly accept charges against others, to show how 'even minded' they are, turn my stomach. As does those who morally preen themselves in a pretentious presumption of the guilt of others, while having no solid reasons for presuming it ("predator!"); and of course the of the GOP's John McCain and Mitt Romney, who routinely, eagerly, and willfully, throw in with any charges of moral condemnation upon the likes of Moore, in order to ingratiate themselves with the media and the wider 'moral community', disgust me to no end.

If you've decided that you know the guilt or innocence of someone in a case you know next to nothing about... you've said more about you, than him. The eagerness to attack those who are just too different from your own ideologically cock sure 'truth', has been gaining in popularity on 'the Right' (especially as seen in the reflexively ("It's a cult!") statements of both the Uber-Trump'rs, and the NeverTrump'rs), to the point that the accusations, and the eagerness to accept them, and promote them, IMHO turns such accusations into self incriminating accusations against themselves.

As such evidence of irresponsibility piles up, it does not bode well for this nation.

The wrong lessons learned again: Revisiting the St. Charles GOP social media kerfuffle.

It's late, this will be quick and short (I hope). I went to the St. Charles GOP 'Central Committee' meeting this evening, with just a few questions in mind. One, to see who it was that made the remarks the weekend of the CPAC STL and to see if it was only the comments that were foolish and unintentionally provocative, or if it was the person who made them that was foolish. Second, I wanted to see if the St. Charles GOP approved of individual members making editorial comments in their name, upon hotly debated issues, and if not, then third, to see if they would require an apology for the slight given to the committee by the person speaking in their name, and to all of those he spoke to, and attempted to speak for.

St. Charles GOP Central Committee Chair, Jon Bennett

Well I saw who it was that made the comments, the committee chairmen, Jon Bennett. And as I watched him pepper his comments as chairmen of the committee, with

• "Because I can",
• "Because I said so",
• "If you don't like it, too bad, I don't care"

, he came off, not too surprisingly, as frustrated, cornered and scared... which partially answered my first question.

He made every attempt possible to brush past the Facebook/Twitter issue (which was the reason for the crowd in the room) and not have it addressed, bristling at any hint at all that he might have acted foolishly. And it was only after a couple false starts where other committee members motioned for audience participation, and then seconded despite him, that anyone else had a chance to engage in the matter. He clearly would have preferred to 'move on' without acknowledgment or resolution.

Be all of that as it may, clearly, the members of the committee, displeased with the negative attention his comments had garnered them, decided to adopt a new media policy, but as it still allowed individuals to post their personal comments under the St. Charles GOP banner, it will still (or so their reading of it seemed, I haven't seen the actual policy) require the committee to meet later on and vote on countering any inflammatory ones. Oh, they also expect those who are allowed to post, to add their initials to their posts, when they're making any comments that express a personal opinion.

Guys, really? I kind of assumed that that was what the policy already was... that's the solution? Why would that result in anything different than what already happened? I doubt he'll realize next time, that he's stuck his foot in everyone else's mouth, any sooner than he did this time. He still thinks he acted 'with transparency', saying that

"I quickly identified myself"

, well, if 10 or so comments and insults on Facebook and Twitter later is quickly, ok, sure. But maybe if they set their page up with page moderators posting in their names on the page, maybe that would help make it clear?

Possibly a problem...
During his comments upon their social media policy, Bennett actually remarked that,

"I don't get Twitter, or care about it at all."

, apparently not grasping that that might not be the best basis for an effective policy directed towards building a larger social media following. And people wonder why the GOP (as opposed to Grassroots) lags behind in social media.

Along the same lines, he seemed unaware that his several attempts to move past the issue without allowing comments from the committee or the audience, saying:

"I'm done with this subject, if you don't like it, I don't care."

, might also be a tactical policy more likely to limit the effectiveness of GOP outreach, than to expand it. Neither was his grab for sympathy and justification for his manner very effective, when he said:

'I've... personally received... threatening email and phone calls, so I don't want to hear it from anyone!'

Any of us who've been in the fray, even on the edges, for the last few years, have had some share in both of those. And I've seen some of Dana's email... I'll guarantee you that his little flurry of poison pen messages don't stack up to a single afternoon's worth of hers.

For him to have posted his personal opinion under the banner of the St. Charles GOP, putting Dana down, accusing her of taking money to divide the party, and implicitly accusing everyone else who might agree with any part of her position, was itself extremely divisive, putting both words and silence into the mouths of those who otherwise thought to see themselves as being aligned with the St Charles GOP.

To put forth under the name of the St. Charles GOP, the idea that disagreement is bad, that one particular side of a hotly contested debate is the one that all must either agree with or else be considered 'ill-informed' , was itself highly 'divisive'. Worst of all, to do that under the misguided notion of promoting (demanding) party unity, was downright boneheaded.

That seemed to be an issue he couldn't grasp. He kept asking me if someone with millions of listeners, who called for 'defunding the GOP, isn't that divisive?!'; the issue isn't whether or not such a thing is divisive, the issue is that an individual can put their personal opinion out there without it being an issue. But putting your own personal opinion out there under the banner of representing the entire organization - that's a problem. THAT is not only divisive, but wrong and destructive to the aims of that entire organization.

The simple solution to this kerfuffle, one that should have followed within hours, would have been to acknowledge that he unintentionally put the GOP's foot in it, say he's sorry, and be done with it.

But nope, that's not gonna happen. The committee might stand up to him in the future, but not now, and there are certainly no apologies coming from either him, or from the committee, not while he's chairing it.

Learning the wrong lesson again
But one abrasive person is really not the issue, or at least it shouldn't be.  There was a far worse lesson that those present seemed to be taking from this, which was that disagreement and argument were bad and should be avoided at all costs. Several people commented to the effect that::

"If you feel angry, wait till the morning before posting."

, to which all nodded sagely.

Sorry, no. Not the case, not reality, and certainly not the social media world the rest of us are living in today, and which the GOP is being left further and further behind in.

But worse, that's the wrong approach for a conservative party which claims to be a party of principles.

To be a party of principles and ideas means, must mean, that there will be disagreement and much argument over how to implement those principles which everyone holds. It is only through discussion, sometimes, often even, heated discussion, that good plans are finally found. For those who think the Founders were of one mind with never a raised voice or dissent to be heard, they haven't looked into the matter much.

Yes, threats and insults are over the line and should be condemned, but disagreement, even angry disagreement, is not itself divisive. A party that seeks to be a party of principle is going to have to realize that there will be much disagreement and discussion, and that it cannot, and should not be avoided. Their greatest strength is to embrace that and to forcefully proclaim those ideas and their principles wider meaning and application (which is precisely what thrilled so many of us when Sen's Cruz, Paul & Lee took to the senate floor with them the previous week).

The Party leader's job is not to tell people what to think or shove them into line - that sort of 'unity' is only weakness - but to moderate the discussion, to do their part to provide a framework for that discussion and to keep it moving along, so that decisions can be made. Only then can a unified effort can be found and taken a stand upon. And note: It will NEVER be a decision which all agree with, but principled people understand that; they don't want blind obedience, they simply want the opportunity for a fair and full hearing.

That is not divisive.

Argument and disagreement are not divisive. Those are the natural, and proper, results of adults attempting to implement principles in particular situations.

Preventing discussion, argument and disagreement, attempting to co-opt the agreement of others, discounting and denouncing disagreement, THAT is divisive.

As I tried to point out during my few moments to comment last night, I'm all for disagreement and discussion, no problem there, but as individuals. The St. Charles GOP banner should be used for making unified statements, or for prompting principled discussion.

Had Bennett simply posted, as the St. Charles GOP, something like:

• "Disagreement over Senate strategy - do you support Sen. Cruz or Sen. Blunt?"

, he could then have, under his own name, legitimately, endorsed Blunt's position and disagreed with Cruz's, and of course even have questioned Dana Loesch's assessment of the issue. That's disagreement and debate, that draws people to the discussion, rather than repelling them, and the last person that would have taken personal offense to a good argument would have been Dana Loesch.

But to attempt to put words, or silence, into the mouths of others... that's never going to end well.

But hey, the Central Committee is thinking of boosting GOP popularity by having a band for the next Lincoln Days event.

I'm sure that'll bring unity and turn things around.

Here’s one message conservatives do need to hear

From my second post on The Bell News"Here’s one message conservatives do need to hear"

There was only one undeniable issue in the last election, one issue that was the true cause of Obama winning, and the effects of it are to be found, not in what conservatives did or think they need(ed) to do, but in what it is that they think they are, and in what the nation thinksit is. The most obvious fact about the election was not that Romney lost because 10-15% fewer conservatives showed up to vote (or voted 3rd party), though that appears to be true, or that people when given a choice between a Leftie, and a Leftie-lite, chose the more authentic option, which is also to some extent true; those aren’t the true causes, and neither is whatever else you want to throw in regarding fraud, media spin, etc – those are all simply demographers noise.

The real issue, the true reason why Romney lost, was that given a choice of the policies represented by Obama and the Democrat party he leads,  more than 50% of the populace lacked a sufficient level of understanding of what America is and what its constitution means, is, and requires, to enable them to recoil in horror at the prospect of those policies becoming reality, hissing “No friggin’ way I can allow that – no friggin’ way I can vote for that!‘

That is the real issue, and the only issue of substance worth thinking about.

If you think your culture, or your memory of it, is attractive to the youth’… er… Millennials .. or appeals to the Hispanic… er… Lat… hell with it… to anyone, then you might want to check out these two articles, one  from NRO’s Kevin D. Williamson, his post “Risk, Relativism, and Resources”  & the other from Bill Hennessy, his post on “This is why I feel sorry for Millennials“. As Conservatives, we tend to think that our ideas are naturally attractive, I mean, who could possibly have a problem with having the liberty to blaze your own trail, making it on your own, etc. – that’s what America’s all about! Well guess what, not everyone seeks to take the risks that it takes to live that kind of life, and many, if not most, feel that a system which enables such risk taking, threatens those who prefer a life of safety and comfort.

Conservatism, the revolutionary ideals of classical liberalism that our Founders fought for, are not a threat to those who want a life of comfort and safety, but they won’t think so, not without  understanding them better, anyway. And not without your understanding them well enough to explain why your ideas are not a threat to the happiness they wish to pursue.

The problem is that our culture is no longer united in believing that, and that means it isn’t there to back you up.

Once the culture has been fragmented, as ours has, once a culture has reached the point where it is more likely to be referenced in mockery, than with respect, or in many cases may simply be ‘gone’ from people’s minds entirely (and thanks to our schools, that is pretty much the case), then it can no longer be referenced by people as an authoritative and substantiated word on an issue – the tank is empty – what it once had to say to the culture at large, is no longer there in their minds to be referenced in an argument, especially not in a political one.

If you try to pursue policies that seem conservative, without grounding them in the truths that conservatism springs from, what you will get will bear a striking resemblance to what John Boehner & Mitch McConnel have been demonstrating to the nation over the last couple months: Political spin on the half shell.

Conservatism, in the United States of America, is supposed to conserve the radical, revolutionary and only authentically new philosophical & political ideas of the last thousand years, ideas which were broadly understood at the time of our Founding Fathers – if neither the culture nor the people within it understand those ideas any longer, then your message will be received by them as the empty slogan it has no other means of being; without the necessary understanding – yours, theirs, or both – that it requires.

That message isn’t something you can ‘reach out’ with, if those being reached out to don’t already have some agreed upon understanding of it, it becomes simply ‘messaging’, spin – and to their ears, words spun in opposition to them.

I hate to break it to you guys, but Conservatism is not a bumper sticker movement, it is not a Gadsen flag movement, it is not an ‘appeal to the youth’… er… Millennials .. or ‘appeal to the Hispanic… er… Latinos, oh excuse me, ulllateennn-Ohhhs’ or an appeal to any goddamn other issue related movement. Messaging is fine and all when everyone understands what the message refers to, but once that is gone, it is no longer helpful.

The entire set of assumptions, of beliefs and ideas, preferences likes that conservatism typically depends upon, aka Culture, needs to be reestablished, before we can refer to them in a way that will again lend its weight to an argument.

• “Liberty will enable you to live your own life”, is a winning argument. ‘Liberty will enable you to live like Ozzie & Harriet‘ is not, not if that culture was raised on Family Guy.
• “Family values” are not a winning message to people raised in divorced, remarried, redivorced & reblended households. That culture reference isn’t there between their ears, and the cultural clutter conservatives typically try to prop their message up with, is weighing their message down.

A friend who was at a statewide conservative gathering with me last month, later said to me,

“…. many people don’t really have a consistent philosophy behind what they believe … in other words, they might believe the right things, but they don’t know why. Which is kind of the job of culture. We can’t all be intellectuals. Some of us got jobs.”

Which is exactly the case, and which is why culture, and respect for it, is so important (and why the left has been attacking it for so long) – it conveys the best understanding of the best of those the culture has produced, sparing every person, as it should, from having to do the due diligence of understanding every point themselves (Descartes, J.S.Mill, and other idiots aside, it is NOT sensible or even possible to doubt everything (see In Praise of Prejudice )).

Culture is a reflection of who you are and want to be, and represents the accepted answers to arguments most people likely don’t want to bother delving into. Except in rare instances, you cannot use your cultural example to win an argument against another’s cultural example, because a cultural reference is not a means of discussing an issue, but of answering one.

Cultures are not (and cannot be) won or defeated by means of being preached or imposed (short of total war), but only by means of people in one culture wanting to emulate that of the other. The attractiveness, the sense of something being worth emulating, is the only means of cultural change. It is how ours was changed out from underneath us, and if you don’t understand that, you are not going to be much of a help it righting it.

Are you, as a conservative, conveying your message in a way that anyone who isn’t a conservative, would like to emulate?

Conservatism is not the same thing as your favorite old movies or music, it isn’t allegiance to a party, or even your oh so consistent support of this political option or that one. Conservatism is, and only is, the response that is made by those possessing a particular set of ideas and their understanding; and that understanding, together with a basic knowledge of how they’ve played out in the history of mankind, together with a sense of why it is right that they should (hello to the Arts), such a person becomes one who chooses those choices which command a further respect for their fellow man and for the liberty of all; such a person recognizes their shared nature and Rights which ‘self-evidently‘ leads to those policies, and so seeks to conserve them.

Without that, you get people seeking the power of using networking to advance their causes – nullification, secession, Fed Marriage laws, ‘moderating’ the 2nd amendment… If you get your wish, that people become more effective and efficient in pushing what they want, without understanding what and why they should… we’ll just get the mirror image of what the left is selling… Power, which by any other name, would smell the same.

So… what?
So reach in, identify the core, the essentials that DO appeal to anyone and everyone, jettison everything else, and get on with it!

Don’t change your message – unburden it. ‘Liberty will enable you to live your own life‘, is the right message, it is a winning argument, and if you, and many others go about living a life worth living, others will notice it, and they will seek to emulate it, but not because you messaged your lifestyle or political opinions to them strategically, but because you live them in a way that others would like their own lives to reflect.

You cannot, if you are a conservative, expect to use the law as a means of changing a culture (unless your purpose is to corrode and destroy that culture), but that doesn’t mean that the principles of law (liberty), kept to their essentials, can’t be used to bridge the cultural differences we have, they can. There is no reason why security seeking and risk averse people who find themselves on the left today, can’t find security and safety under conservative ideas as well – it is in fact the only place they can – because those principles Are beneficial to any rational culture, and because those who find themselves within the other cultures can see them as being valuable and worthy of emulation and promotion (if the noise doesn’t keep them away) – that is why people have traditionally come to America.

Today we need to transmit that same sense to the people born in America, so that they will seek to become Americans as well, as did their forefathers.

For you part, present something worth paying attention to, without warding people off with your own personal preferences, and people will pay attention to it. In spite of themselves. The Truth that’s discovered from within, can lead to questions that will change a culture, even your own, from the inside out.

We all know that ‘the Truth is out there‘, find it, bring it in, make it yours, and it’ll spread…  Ring the Bell!

Please read the original posting here: "Here’s one message conservatives do need to hear"

A New Year’s Message: Stop ‘reaching out’ and start reaching in

From my first post at The Bell News:

Since the November election, in conservative gatherings, large and small, in the media and one on one, I’ve heard one consistent point that everyone seems to agree upon; not addressing what the problem with the election was, or how to solve it, but addressing instead what it is that we need to fix (no, I’m not sure how the two are not one and the same either), that being: our ‘Messaging’.

That, and, of course, that we need to ‘reach out’.

Strategically.

We’ve got to fine tune our ‘messaging’, we need to ‘craft’ our messages so as to appeal to the women, and to the mex…(‘wait, they don’t like being called that’) the Hisp… (‘wait, I hear they don’t like being called that either‘)… ullLahteeeenOHhhesss (‘I think they like that), and the Youth… (‘wait, I hear kids today don’t like that) the ‘millenials’ … etc.,etc.,etc.

For 2013 everyone wants to ‘reach out’… ok, fine. Towards what? To accomplish what? With what?

I’ve heard from all quarters, that we need to stop studying and talking about that old Founding Fathers stuff, and concentrate on newer and more popular strategies, winning strategies, no less! Those are sure to help us to reach out! Right?

You betcha!

Well, I’ve got my same old question. How are you going to reach out to anyone, when you don’t really know what it is you believe, and what it is you are for? How? Even among grassroots conservatives at a state wide gathering last month, I saw little evidence for their understanding of what they are for… or maybe I should rephrase that – everyone knew what they were for, but few seemed to understand why they should be for those positions.

The prospects at that point for strategically reaching out and communicating the value of those positions to those who don’t believe as you do… are somewhat limited.What is it, do you suppose, that they would be able to ‘strategize’ about?

Conservatives like to talk about the Constitution, but then in the same breath that they are voicing the importance of a nation united under the rule of law, I listened to them bandying about ideas of pursuing single state nullification, enthusing about such things as a ’10th Amendment process’ (process?!) and of how some states have pushed to nullify this or that national law, and we need to too! (If you don’t see the problem there, you probably have a severely irony deficient diet, take two John Adams and call me in the morning).

And on top of not being able to effectively reach out even amongst ourselves, these same conservatives seem to want to to ‘reach out’ to people who ARE different from them, to entice the Mex…Hisp…ulateenohs, the Yout… Millenials, and democrats too!, with the message of ‘be more like Ozzie & Harriet‘, or some other cultural memory … and they expect to succeed in that by by phrasing it more… strategically?

Well, if you’re going to ‘reach out’, you’d best check that what you are seen to be reaching out from, is more attractive than repulsive. Reaching out with “Hey, I really like Cinco de Mayo, vote GOP & be more like Ozzie & Harriet, si? I really love the beer & salsa and btw, vote republican!“, ain’t gonna work out too well for you.

If you want clever slogans, those slogans have to refer to something, something that everyone knows or knows they should know… if you simply reduce your positions to meaningless slogans, then the competition who is offering meaningless slogans plusbenefits, will win.

As they have been.

I tried putting my two cents in at that meeting, that it’s not a matter of making a message more timely, but more timeless. That you can’t appeal to people by ‘reaching out’ to them, when those you’re competing with are reaching out with goodies… that they have to be made to understand your message themselves and see for themselves why it is important to their lives, or fuhgedaboudit. I got a few nods… but the conversation went right back to the need to craft a more appealing message, which is about all I’ve been hearing ever since.

Fine, you want a message? Here you go:

• If you want to communicate a message, first make sure that you understand it.
• If you want us to support candidates, try promoting, and supporting, candidates who actually understand our message, and who are willing and able to articulate it and defend it.

Short of that… please, if you have to make your ‘message’ more appealing to this or that group, or more timely, then you don’t have a message that’s worth their time to listen to. Any message that doesn’t measure up to that, is folly, fad and, in the last analysis, failure, andthat is the only message you will succeed in communicating… which is the message that I intend to press in these pages in the year 2013.

So, please, before you reach out, first reach in. Reach in to find your principles and work on understand them first, you have to understand what it is that you believe and why, before you can communicate a worthwhile message about it – note: that doesn’t mean that I think you don’t know what positions you favor, believe me, we all know you do; what it means is that if you want to sell others on their value, then you need to understand the ideas behind those positions you support, you have to reach in to understand what they mean. I’m sorry it takes time, that’s the way it is. Deal with it. It’s a new year. Welcome.

The fact is, that if you can’t show how those positions you support today, flow from the same ideas that led to those truly radical ideas our Founders expressed (note: Not the quotes Adams & Jefferson might have made, but why they made them), in the likes of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (as proposed), then… you might begin to grasp why it is that conservatism, as a political movement, has failed in the last few presidential elections. No one believes your message – including most of those you elect to legislate it.

Reach in to understand why you are who you are, and believe what you do, demonstrate it in your actions, communicate it in that way to your fellows, consistently, and you may again foster a movement worth reaching for.

That’s the long ball game we are engaged in now, not necessarily to win this or that election (though that too), but to win the hearts and minds of the future.

Please read the original posting here: "A New Year's Message: Stop 'reaching out' and start reaching in"

Han Solo intuitively knew, what John Locke deeply understood, and which the 47% find unbearable to hear

Han Solo intuitively knew, what John Locke deeply understood, and which the 47% (and more) find unbearable to even hear.

So... to hear it noised about lately, especially by 'modern conservatives' (Jumbo Shrimp), culture is not important to politics.

Really.

Pardon me for having a little philosophical fun with the idea, but if that's true, why are they so damn hard to separate?

For something that's not so important, it's really amazing how impossible it is to separate even the lightest matters of modern day 'culture' from anything and everything else you might know, or wish you didn't know, about the deepest roots of our political concepts and their day to day application. Even in something as seemingly 'separate' as the 2012 political scene, 1970's sci-fi movies, and 17th century English philosophers, they are in fact so deeply intertwined, that the attempt to separate them, will enmesh you even more deeply, drawing you even deeper into the reach of 16th century English philosophers and 4th century BC Athenians to boot.

For instance, in a story from last week, George Lucas sold the rights to his Star Wars movies to Disney, and in the article is a reference to who shot first between Greedo & Han Solo. If that doesn't ring any bells for you, try Googling "Han shot first!", and your browser will groan under the weight of hits.

There ya go, you need look no further for the poppiest of pop culture, tying into the roots of our political philosophy, and our current electorate. Wha...? You didn't catch that? Ok, lemme fill in the details for you.

What 'Han shot first!' is all about, is a scene from the first Star Wars movie, where one of the heroes, Han Solo, demonstrated that he intuitively knew in his bones, what philosopher John Locke deeply understood (as did our Founders who followed him), and which a minimum of 47% of our 2012 electorate find to be a truth so unbearable to their entire being, that they will go to great lengths to obfuscate and obliterate any and all connections between them.

Which Reality must find deeply amusing.

Obi-Wan-Locke

May the Force of Culture be with you
George Lucas, circa 1970's, when making Star Wars, was following his understanding of Myth, of the Hero and the heroes quest, as illustrated by his friend & mentor Joseph Campbell and his writings such as the Power of Myth, and as such he found himself portraying within Star Wars, some very deep mythopoetic truths to a generation that the entire 1960's and the rest of the 1970's had been working so hard to obliterate.

I saw Star Wars the first time when I was just shy of 16 yrs old, and it was exhilarating. Not because the writing and acting and directing were top notch, they weren't (far from it), but because for the first time in ages, here were heroes fighting villains, here was Good opposing Evil, because it was evil... and winning! For a generation whose T.V. & movies had been taken over by anti-heroes, or, as with Clint Eastwood movies, the disillusioned once-heroes, who fought on only out of habit, not for any belief in what was right - Star Wars was an awakening!

The particular scene which ties pop culture to history, and to our politics and the 'relevance' of today, is the Star Wars Cantina scene, where Han, when confronted by a gun brandishing Greedo, stealthily draws his own blaster from under the table, and shoots first, without warning, killing Greedo, without the least qualm or regret or concern over its 'fairness'.

As directed by the Mythologist persona of George Lucas, circa 1970's, Han illustrated a clear and vital truth, a truth which John Locke, circa 1689, spent a sizable amount of ink in reasoning through, justifying and defending, and which the 47%, circa today, not to mention a sizable number of the remaining 53% of our electorate... find to be an inconvenient truth, at best, and highly disquieting.

That understanding which, not without flaws, was what John Locke expressed in the second of his Two Treatises of Government [1691], when he said, in describing the several states of war that exist between peoples, that

"...he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life..."

and that,

"§ 18. This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i. e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it."

That, which the previous 11 chapters of Book 1, and the two previous chapters of Book 2, were required for Locke to make his point in prose and discourse - and all of that was wordlessly communicated by Han Solo pulling his blaster out under the table and putting a fine point on his punchline "I'll bet you have", and killed Greedo.

That scene made perfect mythic sense, because it expressed a deep and vital truth, the same truth which Locke was able to establish and elaborate upon philosophically .. but oh what a can of worms it was for the leftist ideologue which Lucas became, because that truth - the wrongness, if not downright evil, of using power to force others to comply with your wishes - is a central core of the timelessness of conservatism.

George Lucas the ideologist, and no doubt a great many of his friends, found this scene and what it demonstrated (you'll often see Han's original actions described as those of 'a cold blooded killer' - and Greedo? Like the Palestinians, his aggression goes unmentioned), to be an unbearable truth, perilous to their every position and claim, and so in the 1997 release, despite two decades of viewers having seen the original movie where Han clearly shoots the first (and only) shot, Lucas actually went back and doctored his movie, not only to enhance it with new special effects, but to cleanse it of inconvenient truths.

For as every leftist knows, the 'bad' guy, must be given every opportunity, and then some, to make other choices, even at the risk of 'the good', and so Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic crew altered the film to make Greedo shoot first, though, luckily for Han, missing him from a distance of 2 or 3 feet, so that Han Solo finally had the 'moral high ground', not to mention the 'fairness', needed to legitimately return fire and kill Greedo.

The idea of a pre-emptive strike by 'the good' upon 'the bad'... that was something that was intolerable enough by the 1990's... can you imagine how Lucas & friends felt about it after George Bush made the scene? brrrughhh!. The problem for them, is that when you try and force Art & Myth to serve ideology, you wage war upon what is good and true.

What the character, the mythos of Han Solo conveyed in that brief scene, of pulling his blaster out under the table and blasting Greedo, casually, without deliberation or concern or regret, in that one moment it gave lasting form to a truth which reasoned understanding requires volumes of careful conceptualization through a supporting philosophy in justice, ethics, rights and more.

The power of Art and of Culture, is that through such scenes and tales, the essence of elaborate philosophies can be distilled and conveyed and their wealth spread around to the entire population, without their even realizing it. I've said before, with only a bit of my tongue in my cheek, that Star Wars was what made Reagan possible, that without the revival of the deeply American spirit of Good opposing Evil, and that it should, and could win, then Jimmy Carter might have held on to power and pushed through those programs which, instead. had to wait another 40yrs for Obama to do.

Art, Myth, Religion, do have the power to do that; which is just one reason why they are so important, and why conservatives ignore them at their great, great peril, to dismiss such things as 'trivial', is lunacy. It's often difficult for people like me, who are so quick to recommend and defend heavier works like Aristotle & Locke and so forth, to admit that Western Culture probably owes a far greater debt to those distilled concentrations of the truths they expand upon. We The People are given concentrated doses of cultural understanding through such 'light' material such as Nursery Rhymes, Aesop's Fables, and popular myths such as the Wild West Westerns or their cousins such as Star Wars.

You don't understand the Power!
 And of course with Luke & Han promoting the Light side of The Force of culture, We The People are given equally strong doses from The Dark Side, especially in our time, through the glories of easy victim-hood, class envy, injected through music, gratuitous sex, drugs, etc., which, as Yoda would say, isn't stronger, but is "Quicker, easier, more seductive", and if not countered, will carry the day - for while the Light Side requires a conceptual understanding that takes time to build (the role of Education), you can feel the power of The Dark Side immediately, in your physical senses & perceptions.

You've no doubt heard, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. George Lucas, faced with the 'unfortunate' truth he spread around the world through his blockbuster, and which was in glaring opposition to his own political beliefs, used his own power over his movies, to, very George Orwell like, attempt to erase it. But Lucas'd act of hiding the truth, actually illustrates another truth from his own movies, transforming himself into Darth Vader, the technological terror and embodiment of exerting Power over Truth, with his Ends justifying any and all of his Means.

In Lucas's attempt to use his power to alter and dispense with the mythic truth his original work portrayed, he draws us back even further in time to Sir Francis Bacon, or at least to the phrase popularly attributed to him, that

"Knowledge is Power"

which has it mostly wrong. What Bacon actually said, was that,

"II. The unassisted hand and the understanding left to itself possess but little power. "

and,

"III. Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect; for nature is only subdued by submission, and that which in contemplative philosophy corresponds with the cause in practical science becomes the rule."

George Lucas illustrates the line "since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect" quite well. And more importantly, Bacon said what is anathema to all things leftist, in the Arts, in Economics, in Politics, that,

"Now the empire of man over things is founded on the arts and sciences alone, for nature is only to be commanded by obeying her."

Knowledge is not Power, Power results from knowledge and your adherence to it. Those who seek knowledge in order to gain power over what is true, inevitably corrupt the knowledge they think they've acquired.

They tend, as did George Lucas, to make elaborate pretexts for doing what they want, not because it was right, but because it was easy. For what those for whom the 'Ends justify the Means' implicitly grasp, graspingly, is that in thinking that 'knowledge is power', they conclude that having power over knowledge, will create even more power for them. Conveniently forgetting that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The truth is that power is a side effect, a disquieting one, of attaining knowledge. Power is something, a troublesome something, which those with considerable knowledge, find themselves to have been made unwilling custodians of. And worst of all, if you do not make the constant effort of seeing to it that your power conforms to your knowledge which is kept serving what is Good, Beautiful and True, rather than the other way around, it will consume you.

I can imagine Lucas in a time traveling sequence, going back to face his 1970's self, the skinny child who was the father of his now bloated older man, and saying,

"Lucas, you are my father!"

And 1970's Lucas would doubtless, gazing on the twisted and evil countenance of himself using power to obliterate truth, would wail,

"Noooooo!!!!!!!!!!!"

Poetic Justice incarnate.

There is something which art & story can convey in a slightest detail of pose or illustration, convey it to anyone watching in a fraction of a moment, which sums up a knowledge that requires volumes of understanding to approach. It is why Shelly, riffing on Plato, said that

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".

, and why Aristotle called Poetry a greater truth than history,

"...It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen- what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular...."

Art conveys Truth, and the understanding of it, in such a way that it fills the receiver with unexpected, and unlooked for, power, the power to choose how to act - which is a very different thing from the power to choose how others must act.

George Lucas couldn't bear the idea that the Truth he illustrated in Star Wars was in complete opposition to his political positions, and he used the power his movies brought him, to try and eliminate it.

What he may or may not have also actually grasped, was that that Truth, which Locke provided the knowledge necessary for supporting an understanding of, applied not only to such obvious things as the justness of pre-emptive war, but in opposition to anyone who seeks to use power over others, for their own purposes.

The leftist ideals he promotes, advocating using the power of the state to impose upon the few, to force them to live as he sees fit, and to take what does not belong to them, in order to spread the wealth around to those many who have not earned it, but want it, the 47% (which includes many of the most wealthy among us, such as George Lucas), have put themselves into a state, which John Locke clearly understood to be, an act of war upon the rest of us, and with all that is Good, Beautiful and True as well, and which even the most seemingly lightweight aspects of culture, are the great transmitters of.

And people like Lucas, Obama, Democrats and not a few Republicans, find that thought, the idea that Culture is vital to politics, to be simply unbearable; or as Luke might say,

"nnnNNNOOOOOoooo....!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Eclipsing Justice

So, did you see the eclipse yesterday? No, no, no... not the intriguing but irrelevant light show in the sky, I mean the dark show that played out on our city streets by the Occupy movement, now protesting NATO, the one where the light of civilization was being eclipsed by the savage hordes of our educated populace?


This one (see pic to right), did you see that? Those were some seriously 'peaceful' activities from the Occupy movement, weren't they? How many people, I wonder, did it occur to, that most of those throwing rocks and bottles for peace... were either college students or college graduates? Doesn't that seem odd? Shouldn't that seem odd?

Where do you suppose they learned such violent ideas about peace?

Did you see the OWS members being arrested for making bombs? Arrested for planning to express their views with Molotov cocktails? Arrested for planning to blow up bridges? Arrested for plotting to blow up President Obama's house and the Mayor's mansion? Have you heard any of their catchy chanting? Lovely and uplifting tunes such as:

"1-2-3-4-No War but Class War! Eat the Rich!"

And how about their peace mongering manners and dress? Capped off with surrounding, attacking and stabbing, the Police?

Do you, from time to time, wonder how these people, these mostly well off American youth, managed to become infected with the ideas which transformed them into those kinds of people?

These ideas they are agitating for, after all, in their minds at least, are about their ideas of Justice.

What is that?

They tell themselves that in using govt power to improve our lives and make life more 'fair', that they are pursuing a greater form of good than is made possible under our nation's constitution, than is possible to be obtained through individuals making their own choices in life. The occupiers believe that their good is better served by telling you what to do, rather than through you living your own life in liberty and pursuing happiness; that the state mandated market is more just than what is possible through the Free Market and its pesky demands for individual rights and property rights protected by law.

These educated mobs truly want to cast that all aside in order to promote 'Democracy!' and Social Justice! But their standards of justice, are ones which, by our traditional western and American standards, are the height of injustice... so where did their barbaric ideas come from?

Seriously.

Think about this as well, when you hear them chant about how they love 'Democracy' - that they think that lawless violence is the way to achieve peace and fairness... do you think that their idea of democracy is the same as your idea of it? Or are you also one of those who thinks that our nation was founded upon principles of 'Democracy'? Wrong. Don't feel too bad though, most of our school's textbooks say just that. What they don't say about Democracy, is what the... majority... of our Founders said about Democracy, as expressed by Madison ,

“…a pure Democracy, by which I mean, a Society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.”[emphasis mine]

Our Founding Fathers knew their history, and they knew philosophy, and they knew that 'Democracy' inevitably meant demagogues agitating the mob to the point where 51% of the people could choose to sacrifice 49% of the people. And while that fits in just fine with the chanting of the mobs in Chicago, that doesn't fit in with our American ideas of individual Rights and Liberty and Justice for all. Our Founding Fathers understood that an individuals Property Rights were vital to the protection of all of their Individual Rights,

"The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive the people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty". (Arthur Lee of Virginia 1775).

Where did our fellows, your children, get the idea that Individual Property Rights is an evil? Aside from Marx, I mean, who said,

"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. "

, because Marx understood that Property Rights were a barrier to the kind of total power he wanted the state to have. But how, in the United States of America, did Marx's ideas of 'justice' get into American kids heads as their idea of Justice?


Our Virtual 'Education'
The answer is that they got their ideas from School, of course. It is through our schools that the occupiers are made, and it is through schools that these ideas are pushed onto the next generation, in ever larger numbers than the one preceding it. Our children are  taught, not explicitly perhaps, but most definitely by implication, that power, that wise and caring leaders using force, is the path to fairness and peace. And they are taught these pernicious notions, not as ideas to be understood, but as beliefs to be accepted, without question, and they are taught that questioning them is wrong, very wrong.

A case in point this last week, from a student in a high school 'Social Studies' class who recently captured the scene of their teacher demanding, in a very belligerent manner (listen to the OWS crowds chants, see if you can hear the same melody), that he accept her political beliefs,

"The teacher yells -- literally yells -- that Obama is “due the respect that every other president is due … Listen,” she continues, “let me tell you something, you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom.” She yells over the student repeatedly, and yells at him that it's disrespect for him to even debate about Romney and Obama."

This student had been trying to tell his parents about this situation at school, but they were sure he was exaggerating, so,

"... the student had asked his friend to record the discussion to "prove to his parents what he has been trying to tell them for some time. The teacher in this video has a long history of pushing a liberal agenda, by shouting down students. She is very intolerant of other points of view that she does not share. The atmosphere at this school is not very conducive to opposing views.""

Virtual Philosophy = Actual Misosophy
The peoples of the Occupier movements of course come from some of our classrooms (some is all it takes, it doesn't require many bad apples to ruin bunches of defenseless students), and some of those classrooms are taught by teachers who have learned that teaching means indoctrinating students with 'the right ideas', or 'outcomes', and they learn that notion from some of their college classrooms.

Courtesy of Academia (the Irony runs so deep), one philosophy department is now making it possible for you to see a favorite method for how this dastardly deed is done, online. You can now catch a glimpse of how these ideas are taught, how these choices - to be violent or to be violated - are made to seem to be the only choices there are to choose from, you can actually see how students, students in Ethics classes, supposedly devoted to understanding what is right and what is wrong behavior, are being taught that force and sacrifice 'for the greater good' is how justice must be done.

Are these ideas something that's likely to have been discussed in depth? No, exactly the opposite. Most in depth discussions would cause the sorts of notions that are put forth as ideas, such as this, to collapse under their own lack of weight - they truly are meaningless. Instead these issues involve arbitrary situations, with no fundamental principles to rest upon (Surprise!), thrown at you with the expectation that you will make a 'decision', with little or no basis for making it. Translation: Do what is the politically correct thing to do. These are usually passed on through hit & run survey courses in the humanities & philosophy classes (the shallower the better and easier they are to be dogmatized) and they teach their students that questions of right and wrong are to be determined by unresolvable issues made in an emergency situation, such as in the leftists favorite scenario, an overloaded lifeboat.

Soon, it has been announced, these weightless ideas will be able to be wafted through the open minds of even more people, and with much less effort, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, requiring only nominal input from professors of philosophy, and some serious effort by programmers (again, the irony...) so as to make a virtual education indoctrination available on online to all.

These Philosophy professors (keep in mind that 'Philosophy' means 'Lover of Wisdom'), at an American university, are developing a 'Virtual Socrates' program, designed to engage students in a 'virtual dialog', that is supposed to be like "an interactive exercise to try to replicate the classroom experience online", which I'm sure it will do a bang up job of... right down to manipulating the students into situations where they have no choices, no chance to think, no alternatives, but those forced upon them by their sophistic (those who manipulate ideas to achieve predetermined conclusions) professors - the very sorts of people that the real Socrates battled and eventually lost his life to - thanks to a democratic majority vote.

This article tells of the new wonders of Virtual Philosophy

"Some assume that online education is not a suitable medium for courses that rely on the Socratic Method. But the philosophy professors at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro are skeptical.

Oh... how I'd like to churn out a few pages on just that ... but I'll spare you. You're welcome. Moving on...

The Greensboro philosophy department, which already offers online versions of eight of its courses, has adapted two additional ones, including a “capstone” seminar, for the Web. Pending the approval of the university system’s general administration, the new courses would make it possible to earn an undergraduate philosophy degree from Greensboro without setting foot on its campus.

That would make philosophy the first department at Greensboro’s undergraduate college to offer a fully online degree.

"That might strike some observers as odd, given philosophy’s reputation as a discipline that relies on classroom exchanges and whose pedagogical model has hardly changed since ancient Greece. But philosophy and technology are more closely linked than some might assume, says Gary Rosenkrantz, the chair of the department.

“It’s not as ironic as it seems if you reflect on the fact that computers -- both hardware and software -- derive from logicians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” says Rosenkrantz. Threads of inquiry that use the “if-then” protocol of formal logic are the “foundation of both the computer chip and basic computer software functions,” he says."

If you've been reading my posts, you know just how nauseatingly true that last part is... but again, I'll spare you a rehashing of it, because there is more than enough here to be seen with your own eyes in this single demo, to rant on about.

The online demo is complete with an actor portraying the Greek Father of Philosophy, 'socrates', dressed  in a roman toga no less, and wearing a laurel wreath on his head - if you're not struck by the error there, it's a little like presenting Ben Franklin as wearing an Armani three piece suit while talking on an iPhone in Russia, which is the sort of foul-up I'd expect to see on Saturday Night Live, but not in a presentation by the philosophy dept of a university. On top of that we're given a socrates who mugs, rolls his eyes and shakes his body at you, even pulls his toga over his head in horror, if you dare to click any of the replies that the programmers were doing their best to program out of you.

This is seriously sick stuff, and it is being put across with a straight face, as an innovative approach to something they like to call 'education'. But beneath the awful appearances, lies some truly evil material, and it is a perfect example of how students are fed the bilge which they are taught to think of as thinking about 'justice' and 'ethics', and result in violence, which is the only way they can play out in real life.

Here's the content of one of the slides:

The Lifeboat Problem You are on a lifeboat with 11 people (including you) aboard. The water surrounding the lifeboat is freezing such that no one can survive in the water. There is no rescue ship in sight and worse yet, the lifeboat is sinking. You then notice there is a sign posted on the lifeboat that reads "Capacity 10 normal sized persons." Looking around you notice 10 normal sized persons and one 400 pound man. No one wants to jump out of the boat and if nothing is done it will sink leaving all 11 to die. Would you:

• A. Push the 400 pound man out of the boat to save everyone else. (Achieving the greater good.)
• B. Refuse to push the 400 pound man or anyone else out of the boat and hope for a miracle.
• C. Denounce the person who presented this scenario as an exercise in philosophy, as a fiendish fraud and a misosopher.

Yes, "C" is my wishful addition to the options, but you can bet your bottom dollar that no such option will be presented to your children, instead they will be told that those are their only options, that these are real world examples of 'Ethical choices'.

These supposedly ethical issues, are presented with little context, in situations which forbid contemplation or discussion, without covering any of the concepts involved and with arbitrary options which you cannot question, all of which is presented in order to railroad you into situations where you CANNOT make an intelligent decision... do you get that? You cannot make an intelligent decision with this scenario and these options, and that is exactly their point - you are simply expected to Act, for the moment... pragmatically, with no regard for fundamental principles, with the expectation that you will have no choice but to 'choose' the politically correct thing to do. Go to this page, click on the options that you know are not politically correct, and you will see 'socrates' grimace at you, even hide his face from view, until you just 'get' the right ideas into your head as being the ones you should 'choose'.

If you are interested in doing what is Right, if you are interested in discovering what the meaning of justice is, and how society should be organized so as to exemplify it every day, you do NOT learn to understand it through a an emergency crisis situation, a situation which, by definition, has to be decided and acted upon without thoughtful deliberation.

In the Lifeboat dilemma, as with all emergency scenarios, life itself must be made paramount, and all the secondary issues which are required to support it in everyday living, must be pared away, tossed away, in order to preserve the most life possible. It is, literally, "Women & Children first!", there is no time to consider whether or not one person has led a good and just life, and another a one of debauchery and crime, that goes out the window as those with the breath of life are equal by virtue of that as life itself become the standard, and quantity becomes the goal. The contemplation of life, liberty, property, justice, happiness have no place in a life or death scenario... and that is EXACTLY what the leftist wants to make as the standard for every day life, because they want to throw overboard any and all considerations of Quality - principles of philosophy, law, justice, liberty, must be discarded in their ideal utopia, in favor of quantities of breathing bodies - their quality of life held as irrelevant - and the requirements of living a quality life over the long term, which leads you back to principles, are to be discarded.

You, YOU, and by 'you' they mean them, are to be given god-like, life or death power over the actual you.

What these lessons teach has nothing to do with Ethics or with Justice; those principles require the careful use of deliberative Reasoning, informed with a thorough knowledge of the concepts which they are derived from, in order to discover govt's role in ordering society so that men can live and deal justly with their fellow man. Instead, the purpose of these lessons is to prevent the students from ever arriving at the actual concept of Justice - something the real Socrates would have been driven nearly to the point of madness over. And btw, the real Socrates was no flaccid & flabby priss, such as the actor portrays in the 'Virtual Socrates', the real Socrates was a stone cutter and a veteran of war, he was a man whose battles, in hand to hand warfare, were legendary. He understood well the differences between action and reflection, between sophistry and wisdom, and he spent his life in conversation, seeking to understand the concepts of Justice, and Injustice, which these misosophers defame so despicably. The notion that these put up jobs could be considered in any way as legitimate attempts to teach ethics or justice, would have been, and is, obscene.

These 'lifeboat ethics' are the antithesis to educating students about Justice, but they aren't new, only more visible as of late, as are the results of having be taught ethics from them. I noted in a post on "Teaching Justice at Harvard... Not!" a few years ago, how a popular Professor of Law, an authority on Ethics, was using just this type of scenario, 'lifeboat ethics' to 'teach' his classes with, and each one filled with hundreds of students:

The express purpose of such a scenario, is to put the student into a situation where he has no time to think, and must just react, in order to 'do the right thing'. Somehow.

Look at that again.

A philosophy course, an introduction to philosophy, the study of wisdom, and in this case focused upon the central point of the jewel of Justice, which seeks to resolve issues into what it is good to do and what is wrong to do... dealing with the highest concepts and truths, requiring the most deliberate and refined practice of reasoning... and as an example of entering into this, the most concentrated form of thinking, of reasoning upon vital life changing issues, we are given, as the introduction, your 'first impression' which you never get a second chance to make, and as the choice made for setting the tone for the entire course, is chosen, chosen, a situation designed "to put the student into a situation where he has no time to think".

Where, I want to ask, is the Justice in that? He then rolls on with questions of Marxist derivation, and anti-justice thinkers such as Rawls… the students rapt attention at the entertaining philosophical vivisectionist at work upon them… horrifying.

This is very much representative of the 'teaching' professors employ in philosophy classes today.

There is nothing good that can come of this, and you can seen in Chicago how nothing good is coming from those who have likely been taught with just these 'lessons'. Precisely because these sorts of lessons have been allowed to be drilled into the brains of America's youth, there is no way left for us to find a 'middle ground' with which to co-exist with these people - they have been indoctrinated with the lesson of Lifeboat Ethics, that Justice and Ethics are simply 'Kill or be Killed!', and that it is only a matter of deciding who is to be given the power to make those decisions. The lesson finally learned is that Power! is the path to their conception of Peace, and that Power must be seized through power - Power to the People! No War but Class War! Eat the Rich! Sound familiar? Gotta give em credit, the occupiers are practicing what they were taught to.

What I worry about most lately, is that we are being maneuvered into a situation, similar to a hundred and fifty years ago, where there will be no room left to find a reasonable alternative to action. I pointed out in a recent post, that:

...Conservative positions will always be perceived as a threat, and for at least two reasons.

• First, your principles are a reminder that there are consequences for all that we do, which is an affront to everything they want, and everything they want to believe.
• Secondly, your claim to such principles and rights, are barriers which are keeping them from what they want, in just the same way that the Constitution is a barrier to the power to ‘provide’ the universal healthcare they so dearly want.

Read that lifeboat scenario above, to you see any room for principle? Any mention of it? Worse, if you take that 'ethics' track from the start to finish, it deliberately seeks to draw out your principles, and then after the above scenario, no matter which option you choose, show you that your principles are in conflict with whichever choice you make, the inescapable conclusion being that principles as such are useless, and that all such important decisions must be made 'pragmatically', on the range of the moment. It is intended to teach you that Right and Wrong are childish fantasies. These scenarios are taught to inculcate the 'answers' that there are only two options available to you.

1. to eat your neighbor
2. to be eaten by your neighbor

The conclusion that must be drawn from those options, by any person with the ability to count to three twice in a row, is that you'd better use whatever force you can, in order to secure what you think is fair, before the Other guy does... IOW, someone will have to choose which neighbor is to be eaten, first, for the greater good.

What the educated Occupier just knows they Ought to do
For an example of how someone educated in these types of these ideas believes that they ought to be put into action, this article gives a glimpse into how one of the occupiers arrested recently for plotting bombings, a college student at a New Hampshire community college, thought his ethics demanded he ought to behave:

He posts against perceived “authoritarian control” and states he would “rather die for a cause than live a life that is worthless”. When Anonymous targeted Oakland officials in revenge for what they perceived as bad treatment of Occupiers in Oakland and released personal information on the internet on the officials, Chase’s comment was “Eat it dirty pigs!” He notes his arrests at Occupy Miami and in D.C.. One of his Facebook friends asks him what is the purpose of Occupy, to which he responds, “Revolution, disent”[sic].

The two most striking comments include a threat against the Miami police:

Jared Chase Miami has the most crooked cops in the country. We should execute them before they do something well regret.

That is the only sort of justice which Lifeboat Ethics can produce in action, in real life; a demonstration of how 'Virtual Philosophy' means 'Actual Misosophy' (Hatred of Wisdom).

Look around America - what you see is what your modern ideas of education, of 'useful' and 'pragmatic' education, of turning the primary purpose of going to college, into getting a good paying job, has brought you to. Parents, fellows, there are no skills that can compensate for the loss of liberty, and there is no liberty that can be had if you don't first how to employ Right and Wrong in your own life. Such an 'education' can only deliver us to the cultural loss of the concept of justice, loss of the self; that is the popular understanding that this form of 'education' is bringing us to.

I was reminded this weekend of an essay by the great Richard Mitchell. He stirred the pot up as "The Underground Grammarian" in the 70's & 80's, doing his best to alert us to what the 'educationistas' were bringing our way. This from his book on Educationism, The Leaning Tower of Babel, opens with a quote by Lenin who's giving advice on how to deal with those who disagree with the Party - see if it rings any bells for you,

"'Why should we bother to reply to Kautski? He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply. There's no end to that. It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautski is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything.' - Nikolai Lenin

... Lenin's bolshevism and American educationism have so much in common.

"Give me four years to teach the children,'' said Lenin, "and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.'' He wasn't talking about reading, writing, and arithmetic. He wanted only enough of such skills so that the workers could puzzle out their quotas and so that a housebroken bureaucracy could get on with the business of rural electrification. Our educationists call it basic minimum competency, and they hope that we'll settle for it as soon as they can cook up some way of convincing us that they can provide it. For Lenin, as for our educationists, to "teach the children'' is to "adjust'' them into some ideology."

His books & articles are online at this site (which I highly recommended), if anything they are even more relevant today, with our "Education Reform!" mantras for Basic Minimum Competency, No Child Left Behind, Common Core Curriculum, Competitive Skills, Data Driven Education, Educational Choice through private Charter Schools!(which have to follow federal govt rules and guidelines - wow, bet that'll  show some real entrepreneurial initiative, eh?!)... Lenin would smile and Marx would chortle. Mitchel is worth a read, especially if you are one of those who thinks that the purpose of an education is to get a good paying job, because soon enough, due to just that form of educationism which has already reformed, or deformed, our nation into its current shape, there may, perhaps sometime soon, be no good paying jobs left.

At that point it will only remain to be decided who is to be on the menu for dinner.

Oh, and if that doesn't trouble you, you might want to recall that Obama defined 'The Rich' down from his previous campaign's high of those who 'were paid' over $250k, to being any household making above $100k.

Bon Apetite