Life After Google, George Guilder

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/10/01/life-after-google-blockchain-book-review/

I continue my new policy of leaving the "detailed review" to the professional reviewer from the link, and ONLY do my "personal flavor" here. The NR review does an excellent job, just read it to get a fuller concept of the book.

If you are a watcher vs a reader, you can get a flavor here.

I'm reminded of how fun a read Guilder is -- ultra intelligent, witty, sometimes snarky, and very connected to the personalities of those shaping life after Google -- toward the end of the book, he gets a little too enamoured with the personalities for my taste.

I was most struck with the prominence of Peter Thiel ("Zero to One") in the coming age. His 1517 Fund is named after the year Luther put up his thesis because Theil sees the modern university system as the secular replacement for the pre-reformation Catholic Church. His Theil Foundation is looking to help young out of the modern orthodoxy of "Wokeism". 

One of the topics covered in the book is Blockchain.

So what’s the answer? Gilder is clear and unequivocal: Blockchain is the future, not just because it will protect user data but because it will allow every user safe and immediate access to that data. It will usher in a world beyond Google.

To understand how, it’s useful to have a basic grasp of how blockchain technology works. Essentially, information in a blockchain exists as a shared — and continually reconciled — database. The block­chain database isn’t stored in any single location; no centralized version of the information exists (as it does in Google’s Dalles data center) for a hacker to penetrate. Instead, it’s hosted by millions of computers simultaneously, like a spreadsheet duplicated across an entire network whose data are constantly updated and accessible to anyone on the network.

The other ((totally unexpected) item that floored me was the very cogent discussion of consciousness vs randomness -- an example from page 300: "By referring back to their own brains which they don't really understand, the AI scientists plunge directly into the self-referential Godel perplex. By using their own minds and consciousness to deny the significance of consciousness in minds, they refute themselves. As Turing concluded, they need an "oracle"-- s source of intelligence outside the system itself..."

Perhaps it turns out that Laplace has "a need for that hypothesis" (God) after all!

On page 103, he is even more explicit: "Creation is an entropic process of a higher consciousness echoed by human consciousness. This higher consciousness, which throughout human history we have found convenient to call God, endows human creators with the space to originate surprising things. This is the mirrored room of cosmic thought, reflective intelligence. Consciousness precedes creation, the word precedes the flesh."

The book is exciting, invigorating and inspirational, while being entertaining. It just doesn't get much better than that!

Jeff Foxworthy on the Bible

Worth a watch ...

The Tribes Of The Rich and White

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/politics-race-white-tribalism.html

David Brooks is what counts as a "conservative" at the NY Times ... he voted for Obama twice, so he is a rich white leftist in terms of his article, a "Progressive Activist".

The report, “Hidden Tribes,” breaks Americans into seven groups, from left to right, with names like Traditional Liberals, Moderates, Politically Disengaged and so on. It won’t surprise you to learn that the most active groups are on the extremes — Progressive Activists on the left (8 percent of Americans) and Devoted Conservatives on the right (6 percent).

These two groups are the richest of all the groups. They are the whitest of the groups. Their members have among the highest education levels, and they report high levels of personal security.

His biggest takeaway from this particluar survey is:

You could say that tribalism is the fruit of privilege. People with more stresses in their lives necessarily pay less attention to politics. People with college degrees are more likely to describe their ideology as central to their identity. They are much more likely to derive moral meaning from their label, more likely to affiliate with a herd based on their label and more likely to vote on the party line.

Brooks the intellectual seems to miss that tribalism is NATURAL, it is wired into ALL of us. He could read Amy Chua, "Political Tribes and the Fall of Nations" to get a better handle on that.

On page 40-41 she does a good job of quickly covering the basic science that we already know -- "our brains are hardwired to identify, value, and individualize in-group members, while outgroup members are processed as interchangeable members of a general social category". 

"Humans aren't just a little tribal. We're VERY tribal and it distorts the way we think and feel". 

"The key to ethnic identity is that it is built around the idea of shared blood; ... For most human beings, the family is primal".

The BASIS that we select our tribe may vary, but there are really only two hopes for rising above tribalism, religion or education. Brooks is saying that "education fails" ... although he likely doesn't know what he has said. His second big takeaway is ...

My second big takeaway from the report is that ideas really do drive history. Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives organize around coherent philosophical narratives. These narratives aren’t visions of a just society. They are narratives of menace — about who needs to be exorcised from society. 

Historically, FAITH drove Western history, specifically, Christian faith. I'd argue that it is still faith driving history -- it is just that the tribal faith of both the rich white segments he talks about is no longer a transcendent religious faith grounded in classic historical and SHARED cultural heritage. As he says in his own roundabout way, the "Progressive Activists" want to destroy what is left of "America", and the "Devoted Conservatives" want to preserve it -- so they don't get along.

What he fails to notice is that without Christianity, all the other groups are tribal as well -- their tribe choice may not be as "well thought out" as Brooks seems to think, but that just shows he doesn't understand tribalism. Tribalism **IS** for humans, it is WIRED IN, like sweet/sour, hot/cold, pretty/ugly ... it is "pre-thought", it is emotional / spiritual.

What the "better" educated are able to do is more clearly ARTICULATE their tribalism in an attempt to call it "correct thinking about the world".

Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen

For the non-academic, "liberalism" here is classical liberalism -- individual rights (especially property), government at the consent of the people, and freedom of economic activity (often capitalism).

This book is so important I'm including a negative review -- from of all places, National Review!

Now, I am not sure the higher purpose that religion offers its adherents can ever be replaced by any other human enterprise. Nor do I discount religion’s positive contributions to the building of community, or to the development of our culture. I am just not convinced that there was ever a way for religiosity to have fully survived Charles Darwin. Even if secularization is in some ways undesirable, it is at least partly inevitable. Most of Europe, for one, has renounced Christianity. Deneen mourns the death of God, and understandably so, but as a political theorist in modern society he cannot just assume that the strength of organized religion can be easily regenerated. He must grapple with, rather than just complain about, the rise of secularism. And his inability to cope with it, ironically enough, serves to demonstrate the wisdom of liberalism — for part of liberalism’s genius is that its pluralistic capacity to foster freedom of association can incorporate atheists and people of faith into the same body politic.

And then a "less negative" review from David Brooks of the NY Times!

When your argument is that the only remaining "ism" after Communism, Socialism, and Fascism have failed many times is ALSO a failure, it is not all that surprising that pretty much everyone in the modern intellectual elite would have a lot of negative things to say about your thesis.

NR shows it's true colors by siding with godless atheism as a "value" of the liberal project, and Brooks vacuously points out that something so old can't possibly be wrong ...

Deneen’s book is valuable because it focuses on today’s central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order. Nonetheless, he is wrong. Liberal democracy has had a pretty good run for 300 years. If the problem were really in the roots, wouldn’t it have shown up before now?

I think if Brooks read just a little closer, even in his own review, he would see his problem ...

The problem, Deneen argues, started at the beginning. Greek and medieval philosophies valued liberty, but they understood that before a person could help govern society, he had to be able to govern himself. People had to be habituated in virtue by institutions they didn’t choose — family, religion, community, social norms.

  While liberalism was far from perfect in basic construction, the fact that up until maybe "1930 or 1940", "culture" at least in the US still involved the CULTIVATION (root of "culture") of the basic virtues of governing yourself as Buckley expertly pointed out in "God And Man at Yale". Unfortunately NR, founded by Buckley has obviously strayed from this key quote from that work ...

"The duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level".

Without the transcendent foundation of Christianity, a country like what America was is impossible -- Buckley saw that in 1950, Reagan saw that in the '80s, and by 2008, such knowledge was all but gone -- which is why Rod Dreher outlines "The Benedict Option".

NR may find that Nietzsche was right and god is dead ... however, God doesn't agree, and that is far more important. Nietzsche is well dead, NR is showing definite signs. Evolution is MECHANISM -- it is a HOW, not a cause. To the extent it operates, it operates in a universe that it did not create, and it operates because of underlying principles in that universe that were not created by evolution.

If I write a program you like and you say, WAIT! You used C++! (a programming language, "mechanism"), therefore you do not exist! You would be using the same argument as "Darwin disproves God).

Whatever science "proves" (and it can only EVER prove by induction), the fact remains that for the vast majority of "common people", "the rank and file", Faith and Hope found in religion and family is the only way to a decent life in THIS world. For those of us that believe, the life in this world is only the preseason for the next, but for the purposes of this book, we are dealing with the here vs hereafter.

Shorn of the deepest ties to family (nuclear as well as extended), place, community, region, religion, and culture, and deeply shaped to believe that these forms of association are limits upon their autonomy, deracinated humans seek belonging and self-definition through the only legitimate form of organization remaining available to them: the state. Nisbet saw the rise of fascism and communism as the predictable consequence of the liberal attack upon smaller associations and communities.

("deracinate" -- remove from native environment and/or culture) Once both social and economic "liberalism" have "freed" you from all your "obligations" save to the State, you find that the State is never going to be able to love you or even "care" about you, since it MUST, (by definition) consider you a 100% interchangeable "citizen", "consumer", "taxpayer", etc. that is to be treated "equally".

Our “community” was now to consist of countless fellow humans who shared an abstract allegiance to a political entity that would assuage all of our loneliness, alienation, and isolation. It would provide for our wants and needs; all it asked in return was complete devotion to the state and the elimination of any allegiance to any other intermediary entity. 

Say that when you discover that you are completely alone with only a cold uncaring state as a constant companion, you decide to make some friends of your fellow "citizens". Remember the root of "culture" so gleefully fled and then destroyed was "cultivation" -- both you and they needed to have an actual culture to CULTIVATE what it means to be the sort of human that can have meaningful relationships with other humans.

These three cornerstones of human experience—nature, time and place—form the basis of culture, and liberalism’s success is premised upon their uprooting and replacement with facsimiles that bear the same names.

So now you realize that you truly NEED to relate to other HUMANS in order to live, but you find that both you and your peers are not humans of the sort that relate, but rather deracinated "individuals". The problem has cartoon simplicity!

Finally, we find we are really "all on the same side" to the extent we lost our transcendent faith. We are one big "liberal tribe" mistakenly thinking we are "left and right"! Each a generic greedy, self-centered consuming pure creature, shorn of anything "higher" than the self save the all encompassing state!

People who are “uncultivated” in the consumption of both food and sex, Aristotle observed, are the most vicious of creatures, literally consuming other humans to slake their base and untutored appetites. Far from being understood as opposites of human nature, customs and manners were understood to be derived from, governed by, and necessary to the realization of human nature. 

Since we are now mostly atomic individuals who are proud of **OURSELVES**, we choose our vaunted "identity" -- through what we consume, where we live, where we go to school, our sexuality, our degrees, our tats,  .... always our "own creation", or more accurately, the creation of a godless state and godless corporate marketing tricking us to the false belief of our "independence".

The book ends with the following ...

After a five hundred–year philosophical experiment that has now run its course, the way is clear to building anew and better. The greatest proof of human freedom today lies in our ability to imagine, and build, liberty after liberalism.

I STRONGLY recommend reading this fairly short work. Almost certainly it will make you uncomfortable no matter what your political, religious, or philisophical stripe. Which for me is one of the most important things a book can do -- because only through pain can there be growth!

The fact "both sides" hate it is an awfully good recommendation!

Lie To Me ... Again

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/24/kornackis_fractured_fairy_tale_of_the_gop_138439.html

Kinda got to watch this first to get the mood right!

Some of the reason for the current animosity between left and right is simple propaganda -- false, but incendiary, as the aged calumny of "Nixon's Southern Strategy" as racist, and a continuation of this theme through Reagan.

In his new book, MSNBC political correspondent Steve Kornacki attempts to put the current state of America’s uncivil politics in historical context. He does so, naturally, by blaming Republicans. To get a sense of how objective he is in his outlook -- and rigorous in his research -- the reader only need know that Kornacki repeats the same untruth about Reagan that Hillary Clinton put in in her tedious 512-page alibi published last year. Clinton and Kornacki both wrote that Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Miss.

Nixon's "Southern Strategy" was the realization that since Republicans had finally beaten back Jim Crow in the South  (R Senate 27 yes, 6 no Vs D 46 yes, 21 no, with similar in the House), the South would likely vote with the party that most aligned with their values outside of Jim Crow -- in 100 years, they had somewhat fogiven Republicans for winning the Civil War, or as they refer to it still sometimes, "The War of Northern Agression". 

The article covers well how easily disproved the Reagan racist start to his campaign charge is, as well as covering how uneccessary it is to read a tribal book on tribalism that in keeping with it's own motif says "the other tribe did it!". 

Trump Is An Average American

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-real-reason-they-hate-trump-1540148467?fbclid=IwAR1UqPJecmUHVDb8B_h0bcT8DJtWJ606oAIFVJ9y7SQFLybFW9BMR8Me5Ls

Great article, just go read it. In our hearts, we all know we are filthy rotten sinners -- the issue is usually just "about what explicitly". For the average joe, we have our vices, our bad language, we didn't do our homework or well in school, we might be lazy, etc; For the elites, we know we are snobs, we revel in our pride, yet secretly know how naked we are no matter our degrees, wealth, supposed sophistication. As Earnst Becker put it in "Denial of Death"...

“On the highest throne in the world, man sits on his arse. Usually this epigram makes people laugh because it seems to reclaim the world from artificial pride and snobbery and to bring things back to egalitarian values. But if we push the observation even further and say men sit not only on their arse, but over a warm and fuming pile of their own excrement - the joke is no longer funny. The tragedy of man’s dualism, his ludicrous situation, becomes too real.”

Here is a teaser from the article ... just go read it!

The difference between citizens who hate Mr. Trump and those who can live with him—whether they love or merely tolerate him—comes down to their views of the typical American: the farmer, factory hand, auto mechanic, machinist, teamster, shop owner, clerk, software engineer, infantryman, truck driver, housewife. The leftist intellectuals I know say they dislike such people insofar as they tend to be conservative Republicans.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama know their real sins. They know how appalling such people are, with their stupid guns and loathsome churches. They have no money or permanent grievances to make them interesting and no Twitter followers to speak of. They skip Davos every year and watch Fox News. Not even the very best has the dazzling brilliance of a Chuck Schumer, not to mention a Michelle Obama. In truth they are dumb as sheep.

In short, the elites seek to convince many "typical Americans", largely those who dearly want to be "moral" in the sense of "popular elite approval", that being "holier than Trump" is a great way to signal their "virtue". They may or may not be practicing Christians, and they may or may not have any understanding of what it means to be  "moral" in the sense of what the liveral elite tell them is "moral", but they feel that by claiming to hate Trump, they have some sort of "superiority".

The coastal elites and elite mainstream however have nothing but contempt for them anyway -- but naturally, they know if they can defeat "Trump", they are defeating the only remaining strain of what was "typical America" -- people that understood that the Constitution meant LIMITED government, not an all encomassing adminstrative or deep state.

To many who retain some allegiance to the America that was, it also meant family, community, and the worship of God who was MUCH higher than government -- and of course much much higher than Trump and all temporary holders of the imperfect position of President -- as BO, W, and Slick Willie were before him.

 And best of all, the article is by David Gelertner!

Spartacus Gay #METOO

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/whataboutmetoo.php

Rick Moran writes at PJ Media: “A gay man who describes himself as a liberal Democrat is accusing New Jersey Senator Cory Booker of sexually assaulting him in 2014…The man, who wishes to remain anonymous for now, penned a lengthy open letter that was posted on Twitter. In the letter he describes the assault that occurred in a bathroom following a meeting at his workplace, where the two met.” Moran links to the letter posted here on Twitter. As Moran puts it, the letter “goes into excruciating detail.”

"Justice" works in mysterious ways, especially if your version of "justice" relies on a belief that the accuser is always to be trusted and the accused is "guilty" unless they can somehow "prove" a negative!

I await the unlikely event of Booker being held to the same standard as Kavenaugh, Judge Moore, or others on the right.

Betomania, TP On Their Own

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/25/beto-orourkes-false-claim-he-did-not-try-leave-scene-dwi/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5090bd76539d

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-wilhelm-heather-beto-orouke-ted-cruz-1021-story.html

Unsurprisingly, it looks like "Beto" with his $38 million war chest is going to lose big.

Mr. O’Rourke announced Friday that he had raised over $38 million in the last three months alone, a staggering sum for a statewide race and the most of any Senate candidate in history. But a new poll completed Thursday night by The New York Times Upshot and Siena College indicated that Mr. Cruz now leads Mr. O’Rourke by eight percentage points, 51 percent to 43 percent, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.6 points.

It turns out that "Beto" (Bob) , while a common Hispanic nickname, has not even 1/1,024th Hispanic blood in him -- although lots of people THINK he is Hispanic, something that Ted Cruz actually IS -- 1/2 Cuban descent from his father.

Beto also has a drunk driving arrest in his past, which he tried to "run" away from. "Run" would be a misnomer, since he was so drunk he could hardly walk. He lied about running away in a debate and the WaPol article above gives him 4 Pinnocios after giving lots of creedence to how it "might seem true to HIM".

O’Rourke was so drunk that he could barely get out of the car without falling, so perhaps he would not have gotten far — or he was simply confused. Perhaps in his memory, O’Rourke believes he did not try to leave. But, given his blood alcohol content at the time of the crash, O’Rourke’s memory 20 years after the fact is not nearly as credible as the police reports written just hours after the crash. Even if one is inclined to dismiss police reports as riddled with errors, it is the one contemporary record we have. 

O’Rourke could have dodged the question during the debate or he could have said his memory of the night is not clear. Instead, he chose to dispute the factual record. We also believe in second chances, and O’Rourke should revise his answer if given another opportunity. In the meantime, he earns Four Pinocchios.

They certainly believe in 2nd, 3rd, or 40th chances for DEMOCRATS! For Republicans, well, we just saw with Kavenaugh, any 35 year old assertion against you with no corroboration is as good as a conviction, and 35 years of exemplary life are not evidence of a "2nd chance". For Republicans, the WaPo / TP standard is "One accusal and DONE"!

The middle linked article has this "remarkable" in a sane universe quote ...

Of the countless head-scratching elements of the O’Rourke phenomenon, one wins handily as the head-scratchingest of all: A troubling percentage of the Betomaniacs I have met in Texas moved here after fleeing places ruined by Beto’s favored policies. These locales are often expensive, increasingly dysfunctional, wildly overregulated and inevitably run by Democrats. Why does no one seem to make this connection? I don’t know! One hero in Austin has taken to posting stickers around town featuring an image of a giant locust, paired with the following text: “I MIGRATED TO A THRIVING TEXAS FROM A LEFTIST (NIGHTMARE) AND NOW I’M VOTING FOR BETO FOR SENATE.” (The posters feature a word much worse than “nightmare,” which I’m not reprinting because I run a PG-13 column here.)

I had to flee one of the high tax, high cost of living, job losing economies of CA, OR, IL, etc and move to Texas -- but hey, "consistency is not an issue"! My favorite polices destroyed my own home! Let's see if the same policies have the same effect here!

Yes, as a fat guy, this DOES align with how I deal with food -- "Hey, I lost some weight! Let's have some high calorie food to celebrate!" The IDEA of democracy was that we would have more sense on such things when it came to voting, but since we live in a world that has sworn off cause and effect,  many of us clearly don't ! 

Can Tribalists Be Sane?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/opinion/the-american-civil-war-part-ii.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

I've always found Thomas Friedman to have a rather "flat" view of the world -- he has been driving in the left ditch for so long that anything but the view from that ditch seems "insane" to him. I found this paragraph to be completely telling ...

This also feels worse than the divisions over Vietnam and civil rights because there were three huge forces holding us together back then that are missing today: a growing middle class, the Cold War and a sane Republican Party.

Well, no ... The NY Times of that day thought Goldwater was definitely INsane, and naturally they were happy -- they held giant majorities in Congress, had the White House, and a SCOTUS that was headed to make baby killing a liberal sacrament! They didn't like Republicans then either -- they were just certain that the left was WINNING as they have been up to Trump! (with a little time for self-reflection under Reagan, and then Gingerich)

As the article makes clear, "The Party" (TP-D) feels strongly that the only viable "solution" is unconditional surrender of anyone that doesn't align with their views 100%. To whit, the comment on Kavenaugh:

And nothing is sacred. Brett Kavanaugh defended himself the other day with the kind of nasty partisan attacks and ugly conspiracy theories that you’d expect only from a talk radio host — never from a would-be justice of the Supreme Court. Who can expect fairness from him now?

Even the generally far left "Politifact" finds the supposedly "worst" of the Kavenaugh statement to be very questionable as being as "politically biased" as the NY Times, TP, and the general TP media want to make it to be. "What goes around DOES eventually come around" -- it is a matter of faith in pretty much all religions, karma in Bhuddism, reap what you sow" in Christianity.

Maybe the most ironic thing though is that since we have religious wiring in our brains, it is actually impossible for humans to have "nothing sacred". Throw out God, and the positions of your own tribe become "sacred" ... so he is wrong on that as well.

So we have become Tribal, and who is to blame? Surprise surprise, only the "right"!

It would be easy to blame both sides equally for this shift, noted Ornstein, but it is just not true. After the end of the Cold War, he said, “tribal politics were introduced by Newt Gingrich when he came to Congress 40 years ago,” and then perfected by Mitch McConnell during the Barack Obama presidency, when McConnell declared his intention to use his G.O.P. Senate caucus to make Obama fail as a strategy for getting Republicans back in power.

 Yea, right. Watergate was tribal, the attacks on Reagan were tribal, Borking was tribal, Clarence Thomas confirmation was tribal, Plame was tribal and Kavenaugh as well as the whole "resistance" is totally transparently tribal.

It may be accurate to say that Newt gave the D's some pause when congress went back to Republican hands for the first time in 50 years in '94, but only in the mind of the left is the opposition winning an election something that has to be treated as a social crisis!

BTW, McConnell made his statement during the runup to the 2010 midterms, NOT "at the start of BO's first term as D's, BO himself and the media (but I repeat myself) continually lie to us about. When you are the dominant party, lying is quite effective, since most people don't catch you at it. Good thing we aren't hearing any D's or media talk about trying to make Trump a failure if they can win the midterms, right? That would be the same as McConnel's supposed egregious tribal sin! Talk about #fakemedia!

The roots of Tribalism go back at least to the early 1900s, when "progressiveism", scientism and historicism took over from Christian escatology as the "right side of history", and the idea of respecting a written Constitution became dangerously reactionary from the POV of  "Progressives".

As this secular faith become the power based faith of the intelligencia, things like "love your neighbor", "the golden rule", "love your enemies", "the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God" were replaced by faith in science and the doctrine above. Once Christianity was a transcendent faith shared by something like 80-90% of the population -- simple belief in the Golden Rule would have ruled out the Kavenaugh debacle. Nobody would want what was done to Kavenaugh to be done to themselves or those they love.

Oh, you think they were concerned about Ford? Notice the news lately?

There is still a spark of remaining Christian values on the right, but yes, Trump is certainly evidence that tribalism is winning on the right as well as the left. In human terms, tribalism is VERY sane -- it is completely natural. Do all you can so that your tribe wins and if possible exterminate the other tribe -- they are "evil and insane" after all!

Chrisianity on the other hand is "crazy" in human terms -- love even your enemies is positively INhuman! In fact, as we are finding out now, even kindness to your neighbor if they are not completely of your tribe is insane to the human mind. Might is right, your tribe is always right, and the OTHER tribe is completely insane -- that is human "wisdom" as preached by Friedman.

"Sanity" is definitely in the eye of the beholder -- in the tribal world, Friedman is correct that "Republicans are insane" from his POV. Clearly Trump finds Democrats to be insane. As we descend away from the transcendent truth of Christianity, sanity will be defined in human tribal terms and the only way to be "sane" and survive as a tribe is to WIN BABY WIN!

Welcome to the world without Christ -- a world where the other side can be given no quarter and must be destroyed -- as Hillary says:

“You cannot be civil with a political party,” she explained, “that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” She added that if Democrats retake a house of Congress, well, then, “that’s when civility can start again.

I suspect that Friedman agrees -- as long as the left is in power, they will be certain to operate with THEIR brand of "civility"! TRIBAL "civilty" -- we win, and we exterminate you if we can. Perfectly sane in the natural world, "Red in tooth and claw" (Tennyson)

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final law

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

The Liberal Mind

http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/2013/05/02/kenneth-minogues-the-liberal-mind-at-50-2/

I covered this fine where back in 2005 and and thankful that I've had the time to fill in some of my lost knowledge since then. If you follow the link above you will see that I've linked to yet another review of this fine work, one from the 50th anniversary of the book in 2013. The book is just a little younger than me.

The "liberalism" used here is Lockean liberalism -- government based on the consent of the people, AND, the individual being the "master of all things", AND, "representing political life as the struggle by which men make their society rational, just, and capable of affording opportunities for EVERYONE to develop his own potential", AND peace, tolerance, equality, "modern" ... essentially "utopia"!

"... Liberalism has come more and more to see politics simply as a technical activity like any other". In programming, we used to mutter after being treated to some grand vision by a high level manager or software "architect" that all that was left was a "small matter of programming" -- typically as in a millions of lines including some yet to be invented sleights of hand, but never mind, "the brilliant ones" had set our course!

The "engine" of liberalism is meliorism -- the faith that everything is "getting better every day, better in every way". Faith is faith, so things like the election of Trump can be a bit of test for the liberal meliorist faith, but never mind -- they will win the midterms, impeach Kavenaugh, Thomas, Trump and Pence, Pelosi will be president and they will appoint and approve 3 liberal judges, declare thoughts not aligned with the theirs to be Constitutional Treason, kill all those guilty of those thoughts and things will be perfrect from then on!

Think I'm joking? Page 134 ... The "real question" in liberal terms is "wether the social order actually serves our needs"?  Naturally of course it is THEIR "needs" which count, since they have defined themselves to be the most "moral".

Around 101 and 102 there is a good discussion of meliorism;

"Meliorism is, then, a way of discriminating between activities according to how effectively they produce rsults in which we happen to be interested. The various doctrines to which it gives rise are really tangental to meliorism itself; and at the center lies the metaphor of "building"."

I am reminded of Don Henley ...  wow, they have cracked down on at least SOME songs available on Youtube!

A little later on page 102 is "The conversion of a majority point of view into a monolithic one lies behind most versions of meliorism". Liberalsim -- "ideas so good they must be mandatory"!

In the age of mass marketing, "education" done by left wing unionists from K-MS and PHD along with total media control as well as "polling" that shows whatever you want the answer to be, just how hard is it for the dominant left culture to make a "point of view" a "majority one"???

Page 99 goes through the philosophical sleight of hand to turn virtually everything into a "human need" ... at least for "generic man", the object of all of liberalisms "goodness".

"A great mistake has been to imagine that an ideology consists of a set of answers to neutral questions, where in fact it consists in the questions!"

In many ways, liberalism is somewhat the "forbidden fruit" of Genisis. We have all sampled it -- we like the individual freedom to pursue our "happiness", and the idea of "equal opportunity" sounds "just". As in all things of this world, the devil is in the details. Eden, the promised land, utopia, shangrila, eldorado, etc always seem "just in our grasp" -- "if only".

I'll close with this quote from 178 ...

"Whenever men have in recent history attempted to snatch a political salvation, it is truth which has always been the first casualty, since, of all the causes of human turmoil, facts are the most obvious, and therefore first to be suppressed. The more we dream of utopia, the less we can bear to face our imperfections".

Thirty Years of Rush

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/what-a-rush.php&source=gmail&ust=1539041717483000&usg=AFQjCNFFQmX_U7JdAvVTbA4hNbdIjo7vDw

When I graduated college and went to work for IBM in 1978, I was a Democrat. What else would I be? I wasn't filthy rich or a NE Ivy League snob! The Democrats were the party of "working Americans"!

It was Jimmuh Carter that got me finally looking around to find some thought beyond his "Malise Speech" ... "the world is out of oil,  put on a sweater, shut off your Christmas lights, drive 55, and accept that America's best days are behind her". He was closer to right than I imagined then -- yes, Reagan brought us back in the '80s, and Trump has re-lit the engines for a bit now, but one can't help but escape the sense that the oppression of BOism is going to return in the not too distant future.

Starting in the late '80s, Rush Limbaugh showed up on radio, a direct response to Reagan's repeal of the "Fairness Doctrine" -- the idea that Deep State Democrats ought to decide what was "proper speech"!

One thing that needs to be remembered in this happy occasion, though, is that Rush Limbaugh was only made possible by the Reagan Administration’s repeal of the so-called “fairness doctrine,” which required “equal time” for “opposing viewpoints,” which meant in practice that conservatives existed on short rations in electronic media. There was some sentiment on the left to bring back the “fairness doctrine” under Bill Clinton, and everyone understood it was really a proposal for a “Hush Rush” regulation, and it died quickly. But rest assured that if the left gets back in power again, they will propose a new “fairness doctrine” whose intent will be to shut down Rush and Fox News.

The USSR eventually ended because the could no longer suppress free speech and maintain a remotely viable economy. No question, the folks on the left will continue to try to silence Talk Radio, Fox News, conservative voices on campus, on social media, and anywhere they can. The left can only keep being the left with more and more powerful centralized government with greater control over your whole life. They will seek to destroy and even criminalize those that don't kneel before their ideology -- Brett Kavenaugh has just a recent example. 

Actual diverse thought and true freedom of speech -- of ideas that are in disagreement with "The Party" (TP-D) will ALWAYS be costly -- in reputation, treasure and sometimes your life! 

The Left Trusts Trump Supporters

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/trump-comes-to-rochester.php

My wife and I tried to get in to see Trump in Rochester Thursday night -- we didn't, but it was an amazing experience anyway. The BIG observation is that Black women, Muslim women and frail white women and men in pussy hats don't actually believe the nasty things they say about Trump supporters. Exhibit A ...

Would you go to N Minneapolis and walk around happy and confident with a sign reading "ALL Lives Matter! I Support the Police! ??? I wouldn't, because I would consider it to be provocation, and I would be unsurprised if the local residents responded violently. I actually would not blame them all that much -- I'm invading their turf with a provocotive message after all. 

The attitude of the leftist protestors last night was much like that of preschooler teasing a dog through a fence or poking some animal in a cage -- primitive, giddy, unserious, "it's a game and we know that we are safe". On one hand, I'm extremely proud of the Trump crowd -- as we all know, the odds that many of them are Christian are pretty high, and they fully displayed it as lefties waded out into the crowd yelling obscenities, showing signs with obscenities, and naturally belittleing the President any way they could. The media loves to report to us every time Trump "mocks somebody" -- right after which they do an article on how he is crazy, stupid, looks funny and is pretty much "Hitler". 

My mind goes back to the VERY moderate and reasoned Tea Party "demonstrators" (like the description hardly fits)  in 2010 -- specific messages like "Cut the Debt", "Smaller Government", "Follow the Constitution", etc, No profanity, virtually nothing about Obama beyond maybe "We DID build this!", or "Bitterly and HAPPILY Clinging to Bible and guns!". Naturally, the Tea Party was maligned as RACIST ... and sexist, homophobic, backward, stupid white men, DANGEROUS!, etc. 

We have become tribal, but it is obvious that our tribes are very much not "the same"!

How crazy and violent will the left need to get before they awake the sleeping giant of the right? Standing in the MASSIVE crowd trying to get in to see Trump last night, I'm wondering if they have not already accomplished their task? 

Certainly we all now know that the left has no interest in such arcane morality as "The Golden Rule" --  nobody would want what has been done to Kavenaugh and his family done to them or those they love. We can of course never know "for sure" what happened between two people 35 years ago, but we CERTAINLY know WHY what has happened to Kavenaugh NOW has happened! Ford decided that she wanted to smear Kavenaugh and prevent him from gaining the SCOTUS! Wether it is made up out of completely whole cloth, or she saw him "behaving badly" (in her judgement) at some party once, or exactly what, we can't know -- but since nobody corroborates her story, reasonable people must conclude that what she says happened did not -- at least if "reasonable people" assumes the presumption of innocence. If it doesn't, then "reason" really doesn't mean much. 

Certainly anyone with some semblance of "reason" remaining understands that when you go up against "The Party" (TP-D), there is no presumption of innocence and the burden of proof is on whomever is not of the party. It is also important to know that even if whatever infraction you are accused of -- say a remark, or a look deemed to be sexist, racist, homophobic, etc, there is absolutely NO REDEMPTION. If you are a member of TP in good standing, any "infractions" are unlikely to even be of interest (Ted Kennedy, Slick Willie, Hildebeast, BO, etc) however if there is ANY interest, time redeems TP members in a matter of weeks. 

For example ... 

Oh, and if they call you a "rapist", any response on your part means you "lack judical temprament"! Oh please! 

Cultural Twilight

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/30/epitaph-for-a-dying-culture/

A great one be Victor Davis Hason, better to just read it than my weak musings.

So everything from Facebook and Twitter censorship to politically recalibrating the order of Google searches serves the larger collective “good.” Even ancient ideas of wealth and poverty fade before our current ideology. If riches are used for social change, even if cynically and for careerist and self-interested reasons, then how they were obtained or otherwise used is irrelevant; if not, then they are proof of greed in their acquisition. Multibillionaire George Soros might be a wanted felon in France or have attempted to break the Bank of England and thereby ruin small depositors. But his wealth is welcomed because he invests a small percentage of it in progressive causes and thereby purchases his own progressive insurance and protection. As did the Catholic Church in the Dark Ages of yore, the Progressive Church now sells indulgences.

Man never lives by bread alone -- he always lives by faith, the question is just "in what"? The reason is that Christ's yoke is light is that besides being Divine and loaded with Grace, it is "not of this world". Taking on the yoke of Christ puts this world in it's right perspective -- temporal, passing away, and certainly passing away QUICKLY for us all, easily seen by those of us over 60!

Your faith, your religion -- or ideology permeates your life. If it is of this world, then you will merely be tribal as man has been and continues to be since his createion. "Progressiveism" is the secular church, and as we see in the Kavenaough hearings, it permeates our culture making largely bad men like Teddy Kennedy, George Soros or Bill Clinton, to be "good" in the eyes of the left, while making me like Kavenaugh, Clarence Thomas, or even W and HW Bush to be "bad" because the left requires it.

Much better to just read it and likely weep a little. America is long gone because as Hanson covers, culture trumps politics. Our dominant culture is totally of the BOistani tribe.