Being: The Rashomon Effect

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/a-different-kind-of-theory-of-everything

Being is a slippery yet important thing.

The Rashomon Effect is how things look different from different perspectives -- often REALLY different when the things are complex, people with different perspectives are looking at them, etc. A simple way to get an idea of it is to stare at this Necker cube and Rubin vase a bit.  Both the interpretations of each are "real".

We might think of physics as "cut and dried", however there are many mysteries, one of which is this.

“One of the amazing characteristics of nature is this variety of interpretational schemes,”  ( Feynman). What’s more, this multifariousness applies only to the true laws of nature—it doesn’t work if the laws are misstated. “If you modify the laws much, you find you can only write them in fewer ways,”. Feynman again: . “I always found that mysterious, and I do not know the reason why it is that the correct laws of physics are expressible in such a tremendous variety of ways. They seem to be able to get through several wickets at the same time.”

Even as physicists work to understand the material content of the universe—the properties of particles, the nature of the big bang, the origins of dark matter and dark energy—their work is shadowed by this Rashomon effect, which raises metaphysical questions about the meaning of physics and the nature of reality. Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, is one of today’s leading theoreticians. “The miraculous shape-shifting property of the laws is the single most amazing thing I know about them,” he told me, this past fall. It “must be a huge clue to the nature of the ultimate truth.”

"They seem to be able to get through several wickets at the same time" where "wicket" is a small gate. One of my favorite ways of thinking about this is the "Many Worlds" interpretation. In this view, each "observation" results in a "fork" of the universe the observation is made in where that universe now takes two paths that have the same history up to the observation, but in one (in the common wave/particle example) a wave is observed, in the other a particle is observed. This is one way to get to the 10¹⁰ universes.

The two universes vary by only that observation to begin the "fork" -- however the level of "observation", or "decision" that might cause a fork is unknown.

A Thousand Small Sanities

https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Small-Sanities-Adventure-Liberalism/dp/154169936X

I was recommended this book by a friend associated with a small left Lutheran (ELCA) college. I wasn't very far into it before I thought of Bill Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" .. I imagine unsuspecting parents sending youth off to a school that they think is "Christian" only to find them returning as godless atheists worshipping pleasure and self -- the book puts up as "heroic"  adultery, cohabitation, atheism, and homosexuality ... or anything new that comes along that trips their trigger.

I'm a traditional liberal -- certainly people have a right to any manner of idea they want to have, and even to proselytize such beliefs. I just fervently wish that anyone who even marginally maintains any sort of even remotely Christian belief would realize that there is no need to waste time at a supposedly faith based university exposing them to more atheist, relativist, materialist, hedonist, etc views. They get LOTS of that from the general culture!

The title and subtitle tell your this is not in any way an objective book  -- if "liberalism" is "sane", then conservatism must be "insane", and if "liberalism" is "moral" ... (in it's own estimation of course), than those who are not of the "liberal faith" are "immoral".

On page 232 we find: "Liberal tolerance includes tolerance of non-liberals and anti-liberals as long as they accept the rules of pluralism." (as the book clearly states, those are admittedly muddled "rules" that are ever changing, so beware! -- one best stay very current on what is "sane", lest you be declared insane.

Your only defense is to bow at the "liberal" altar de jour -- Trump was fine for the left as long as he was one of their team! Oh, the book is a reaction to Trump, seeded with the standard gratuitous criticisms. In the universe inhabited by this author, the thought that there might be a "sane" other side just as disgusted with Obama would be impossible -- certainly, by definition, those people would be INSANE!

So why were the adulterous lovers Mill and Taylor "moral"? On page 12 we read:" What they were is realists - radicals of the real, determined to live in the world even as they altered it". In simpler terms. the "liberal" form of "morality" ... "If it feels good, do it" -- and as it becomes more "advanced", force others to celebrate the "morality" which you feel.

The main point of the book is that "liberalism" is a forever changing, but always the best "muddle" -- his "aways true/just/factual/moral" and ever "advancing" defense of liberalism reminded me of the movie "The Blob", or very much like "The Borg" on STNG -- you WILL be assimilated!

Reagan said it best: "A liberal will defend your right to agree with them to your dying breath".

So how are we to begin to "know" what the ever changing "liberal rules" are? On page 27 we see: "And that (Montaigne quote) meant we had to base our social behavior on compassion, skepticism, and uncertainty rather than on dogma, justice and utopianism." Got that? -- in short, no fixed rules.

The "compassion" is interesting -- based on the actions of today's "liberals", that means forcing other people to transfer their earnings to the "less fortunate" -- or just less successful relative to the liberal ever evolving standard of "enough", which conveniently is never reached.

"Compassion" and "sympathy" are themes of the book. On page 37, we see of Hume -- "He saw, and showed the sharp limits of reason--and the power of sympathy, rather than either reason or faith, to make humankind one".  Later on that page, "Sympathy lets us turn ideas into emotion".

On page 39 we see why Hume is especially dear to the author -- "have little patience only till I have the pleasure of seeing the churches shut up, and the clergy sent about their business".

"Sympathy" for me, but not for thee.

On page 51, we see the attempted cleavage of "liberals" from "left activism" (although the "heroes" of the author are the radicals) -- so allowing freedom of speech by purchasing ads, and the electoral college are declared "not worth saving" by the hard left, the authors unicorn "liberals" think it is acceptable to "get there slowly" ... but nevertheless, inevitably!

Page 72, "Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order" ... a Montaigne type skeptic might ask, "and how is that working out?" We see rising suicide rates, declining lifespans, addiction, hopelessness and mass shootings, all of which were declining or non-existent under tired old Christian culture as late as "1960".

On page 238, "Liberalism isn't a political theory applied to life. It's what we know about life applied to political theory." Nice claim, however given the previous discussion of page 72, is that a truthful claim? Eric Fromm says in "The Sane Society":

"We find then that the countries in Europe which are among the most democratic, peaceful and prosperous ones, and the United States, the most prosperous country in the world, show the most severe symptoms of mental disturbance."

And this was in 1956! Fromm for one would say that we "know" very little about "life". Wikipedia says: There is currently no consensus regarding the definition of life. One popular definition is that organisms that maintain homeostasis are composed of cells, have a life cycle, metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, reproduce, and evolve. However, several other definitions have been proposed, and there are some borderline cases of life, such as viruses or viroids.
Given that, how can one claim to "know about life"? I'd assume, in the same way as pretty much all "liberalism" posits, it is "whatever the most "powerful" (most votes, most scientists polled, etc) think, or even feel it is -- and thus "know".

Page 81, we see a core of the liberal faith -- "These values are rooted in a simple idea about human capacity - a moral idea about the source of meaning in the human imagination. This just means that people make up their values, they aren't handed down from the past or on high. This humanist ideal is what inspects and animates liberalism with moral energy."

Translation -- man makes it up his own morality as he goes along, and he declares it to be "very good". Niche figured this out long ago -- God is dead, so might is right.

From 184-190, Gopnik goes from the Mill definition of free speech. -- "unless the speaker is actually ready to cut your throat, you have to let him work his jaw". To applauding a Canadian court ruling preventing a Christian from passing out pamphlets critical of homosexuality, to saying that while "suppression of free speech on campus is alarming to "liberals"", to "real though the problem of civil liberties on campuses might be, it is infinitely less concerning than the power of corporate speech or the daily presence of hate speech from the highest source of power directed against threatened groups".

My "highest source of power is God". The Bible says; "If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them." ... or Rom 1:22-32. Both God and Nature abhor homosexuality (it isn't adaptive ... doesn't reproduce, the holy grail of evolution).

So clearly, although I'm sure he meant Trump, and recognizes not at all my higher power, Gopnik would seem required to see the Bible as "hate speech" -- and the definition of what "hate speech" would be whatever he sees "liberal" orthodoxy saying it is at this "advanced time". (stay tuned ... no doubt it will "advance")

I love his heartfelt defense of one of his huge heroes, Red Emma Goldman, on page 160; "Throughout her life she never compromised either the purity of her anarchist, sensualist and libertarian principles in the face of left-wing totalitarianism". So much for the "reality based" theme of supposed "liberalism" -- what it really means is "my view wins" ... always, no matter what it actually turns out to result in.

p 319, "But few ideas could be more fatuous than that secular ideals are really just as religious as religious ideals.". hmm other than the idea that "religion" is what you hold to be the highest value, and secularism holds itself to be "the highest value". Or maybe he just doesn't understand the definition of "fatuous"?

And on what basis would that statement have merit? Well, the same basis as all metaphysical claims -- "belief". At the base, one either believes that there is some metaphysical standard, or there isn't. If God exists, and he has declared standards for us to follow, then there IS a standard. If not, then NO STANDARDS beyond might is right! For a more complete discussion of what is "fatuous".

There has been a lot of ink wasted on trying to "prove" the "liberal / progressive / humanist" faith (of any given moment -- it's "strong point" is it's constant "evolution". What used to be Western civilization was based on Christianity. The fervent hope of the left was that you can just pull the foundation of Christianity out from under it and things would still be fine. (so why don't they look "fine"?)

Nietzsche covered this topic very well -- and seeing this shallow book being proffered for review by impressionable youth with little comprehension of the depth of the danger, it is good to be living deep in fly over country!

Godless Tribal Life and Death

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/02/magazine/why-they-kill-their-newborns.html

New York now allows infanticide and the passage of the law has been duly celebrated by the left. The top link points to a deeply scientistic article from '97 that ought to be kept around, here is a summary from near it's end.

So how do you provide grounds for outlawing neonaticide? The facts don't make it easy. Some philosophers suggest that people intuitively see neonates as so similar to older babies that you couldn't allow neonaticide without coarsening the way people treat children and other people in general. Again, the facts say otherwise. Studies in both modern and hunter-gatherer societies have found that neonaticidal women don't kill anyone but their newborns, and when they give birth later under better conditions, they can be devoted, loving mothers.

Ah "the facts" ... you know, "statistics say", "studies say". I found this excerpt to be prophetic;

Full personhood is often not automatically granted at birth, as we see in our rituals of christening and the Jewish bris. And yet the recent neonaticides still seem puzzling. These are middle-class girls whose babies would have been kept far from starvation by the girls' parents or by any of thousands of eager adoptive couples. But our emotions, fashioned by the slow hand of natural selection, respond to the signals of the long-vanished tribal environment in which we spent 99 percent of our evolutionary history.

The "invisible hand" of amoral evolution, whose only possible morality is exactly the same as the "morality" of Science ... "what works", "might is right", "the fittest survive". Science provides "the facts" ... it sets up the experiments or studies and Science decides what are "legitimate questions". "Truth" is a "repeatable experiment".

Strange though, the article was written in 1997 and the scientific minded author assumed that tribalism was "long gone"! Yet, in less than 20 years, BOistan has moved back to being a completely tribal state. The Governor of Virginia agreed with the 1997 article from the left one week, then an old picture of him was found wearing blackface a week later. The R tribe is very angry about killing babies. The D tribe is fine with baby killing, however the blackface was enough to momentarily label him an R before they went back to their usual practice of just not putting a party label on a badly behaving D (CNN)!

What would the "Scientific Facts" say about the morality of wearing blackface in 1984? See "the facts" don't support any sanctions against infanticide, so we ought not have them. What does Science tell us about wearing blackface, supposedly in a Michael Jackson dance contest? Does the fact that Michael Jackson attempted to LIGHTEN his complexion and enjoyed having sleepovers with underage kids affect the "morality"? 

What one would think would be completely obvious at this point is that tribalism is a natural behavior of humans, and the largest single thing that allowed us to rise above it was religion, with the grand champion religion being Christianity, one of the foundations of Western civilization. Some of us older people are still vaguely aware of Western civilization, and I know, ULTRA amazing, are still believing practicing Christians! 

As late as the late '90s, one would have to have journeyed to Borneo, Paupa New Guinea, or the deep jungles of the Amazon to observe humans in their natural tribal state. Now we can watch congresswomen dress all in white and synchronize their actions like native women in the jungle on live national TV as they assume that they are doing something that the rest of their tribe will be impressed by! 

Without transcendence, usually provided to the masses by religion, humans operate in the way their genes tell them to. "Education" about "facts" does nothing with emotions, and as even science is increasingly aware, our "reason" is largely used to explain our emotions. We are rationalizing rather than reational creatures. 

Infanticide, genocide, slavery, the use of might to vanquish and even exterminate the weak -- all are exemplary of homo sapiens in our natural state, and Civilization / Culture was the UNnatural "cultivation" that allowed us to be more than "natural humans". We gave that up though ... so we could more like the "very flower of  humanity" as Star Trek explored in "Mirror, Mirror". 

12 Rules To Live By, An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan B Peterson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/jordan-peterson-new-york-times-hostility/

This is the first book (other than the Bible) that I've read and then just turned around and read it again. As the linked review indicates, for a practicing Christian or Jew, a lot of what Peterson covers is pretty basic, but for many modern secularists, it is a bit like Dr Strange discovering that maybe they missed a couple things on their way to their assumed total intellectual victory party.

If you are not a reader, then this video covers the high points of the book quite well. 

The message is very old and very simple -- MEANING is what is important to human life rather than "happiness", which is at best fleeting. What the meaning of your life is to be is the one great question posed by the universe(the Holy Spirit for Christians, Satan for others) to each of us (see "Man's Search for Meaning"). Once we find that meaning we have RESPONSIBILITY to be TRUE to it! 

Meaning, responsibility and truth (the wisdom triad), rather than happiness, rights and tribalism (the leftist triad). Simple, but extremely powerful for lives worth living vs lives ended in despair -- too often by their own hand.

Peterson is an engaging author and speaker, so there is really no excuse to not hear what he says. Yes, of course he has been politicized, only because EVERYTHING is part of a zero sum tribal political game in the failed "liberal" West. From a traditional rendering of knowledge however, there is nothing political about him. He is as basic as Socrates, Jesus or Buddha -- What is the good? How are we to know it? How are we to practice it? How might we live our lives? Is this all there is?

My favorite quote from the NR review linked above ... 

And so, as the secular Left pressed up against the church, it looked behind and saw the flames in its own camp. Peterson held the match, but the kindling was all around him. It’s not that men (and many women) failed to adjust to the new gender ideologies, it’s that the new gender ideologies too often fail to reckon with our deepest human longings and fail to recognize our fundamental human nature. As Peterson writes in 12 Rules, “We cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls.”

What kind of a world might we live in if the small phenomenon that is Jordan Peterson grows and matures? Perhaps one where a majority finally accepts that we are not soulless automatons! Perhaps one rich with meaning and truthful relationships!

A worthy prayer!

Jordan Peterson and Dr Oz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscPHmLWo-M

One of the best 2+ hours I've spent in a long time ... 

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!

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".

The Burden Of Tribal Proof

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/571021/?__twitter_impression=true

The linked article continues the thread covered here, how the "burden of proof" in BOistan has completely shifted for those who are not members of "The Party" (TP-D). When you are not a member of TP in good standing, you are presumed guilty.

The most basic fact of humanity is that we are ALL guilty of original sin at a minium, a cosmic failure worthy of an eternal death sentance without the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ. Dealing with this problem which we all share determines the fate of our eternal soul -- it is a problem that really will still matter to us in 100 years, a 1000 years, or 10¹⁰⁰ (a "google").

For earthy charges made from one sinner to another, the burden of proof has always been on the accuser since ancient times for obvious reasons. Proving a negative is notoriously hard -- PROVE that Earth has never been visited by aliens from space. Prove that you never did "x". Much like the right of self-defense, it is a basic human right.

Until the advent of BOistan that is! -- now the burden of proof is on the accused, and it is proudly trumpeted from the headlines of mainstream news rather than some backwater of internet fever swamps or academia.

The Coddling Of The American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/09/universities-and-the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/

I linked to a review rather than the book this time. I L O V E D the book! I consider it the 2nd important book of the year after "Suicide of the West" both are critical ... if you are more left / academic, read this one, otherwise Suicide if you can only do one, BUT, you kinda owe it to yourself to read them both!

They coin the term "safetyism" and they use the well known peanut allergy example. To oversimplify, it young kids get peanut exposure when infants, SOME (a small number) will have a reaction that is concerning but not life threatening. HOWEVER, by being "safe", we have RADICALLY increased the number of children with very serious peanut allergies , so a LARGER number is exposed to severe reactions up to and including death. By "trying to be safe" we create a larger problem.

This is one of the problems of mans greater ability to "take action" -- preventing forest fires is similar. We prevent them for a long time, and then when one breaks out, it is catastophic. Many of the plants in certain ecosystems REQUIRE regular fire in order for their seeds to germinate!

There is quite a long list of these sorts of issues ... the book "The Black Swan" and "Unfragile" are referenced in "coddling", and cover these issues in more detail.

For the really politically ideological, on page 216 the authors find it necessary to testify that "neither of us has ever voted for a Republican for congress or the presidency"! Essentially, one author is an avowed centrist, the other identifies as "left" -- a "centrist" in BOistan acedemia is a rare rare thing all on it's own! What they want to have is NOT a "political book" -- their purpose is the save the university along with a few young lives from depression, anxiety, addiction and suicide.

I STRONGLY recommend this book! In summary, it's points that resonated with me are:

1. We are greatly harming our young by preventing them from learning through normal youthful errors and social development through "free play". We don't know if this is even "recoverable" -- we strongly need to get kids out playing with each other and away from the screens! 
2. The universities are teaching three great untruths ... 1. That which does not kill you makes you weaker 2. Always trust your feelings 3. Life is a battle between good people and evil people  ... the picture below shows a nice chart from page 263 with these untruths and the proper ancient wisdom to answer them. 
3. Chapter 2 is devoted to how the great untruths lead to living life via "emotional reasoning" -- I feel anxious, therefore something must be happening "out there" that justifies my anxiety! (Always trust your feelings). This is what is known in psychology as a "cognitive distortion", and the very successful treatment approach of "Cognitive Behavioural Therapy" has been devoted to rooting out these thinking errors 
4. If we are to have a prayer of recovery, nearly ALL of our universities need to sign up for something like "The Chicago Statement"  the FOUNDATION of a university is free expression, civil dialogue, ability to air ALL points of view, ESPECAILLY those that are not popular and even abhorrent to groups of people. Words ARE NOT violence! We need to get over that great untruth! 

There is no doing a book like this justice in a short blog post. READ IT! If you really can’t, this Atlantic article gives the jist. The following picture is a great summary of a core of the book.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

Democratic Socialism, A Cuban American Explains

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2018/08/28/democrat-family-escaped-socialism-ocasio-cortez-worries-me-column/1106307002/

This column by the son of Cuban immigrants is worth the time. I think this paragraph gives us a look at the only "benefit" of "Democratic Socialism" ...

Like those of yesteryear, today’s socialists believe the government should nationalize major industries, propose eliminating private ownership of companies, and reject profits. In other words, democratic socialism is a lot like the system my family fled, except its proponents promise to be nicer when seizing your business.

What I disagree with the columnist on is that what "Democratic Socialism" really is would be "Democratic Fascism" ... Hitler with a smiley face. This is well covered in Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism". 

Today's millenials are ripe for fascism ... certainly not students of history, very easily taken in by the slick pitch about "greatest good for the greatest number", no theological of philosophical grounding.  Lambs to the slaughter.

No Virtue To Signal

Virtue & Democracy -- The People We Deserve | National Review:

I've been blogging for 13 years now and thinking critically (meaning reading history, philosophy and theology) rather than buying into the "flavor of the day" from ANY news source ... left or right for 40years. I have no need to virtue signal -- I have no virtue, I am the most filthy of sinners, completely unworthy of the mercy that I pray and believe that Jesus Christ bestows on me without the least shred of merit.

In the "80's", I believed that our society had been heavily damaged by the "sick sixties", and if we merely saw the error of our ways since then, we would return to a virtuous society. Now I know it is MUCH deeper than that ... William of Occam, the Reformation, the "Enlightenment", the advance of technology (ease, mass communication, birth control, etc) and a few other things ALLOWED (not "caused") the decline of not only America, but "Western civilization" in it's entirety.

To talk of "school shootings" or "gun control" is like a 95 year old terminal cancer patient seeking treatment for acne compared to what the fact of mass shootings, massive addiction, massive death by overdose/suicide, and the utter hopelessness that most of the population of our broken excuse for a "cutlure / civilization" are experiencing . It is COMPLETELY meaningless given our plight. I covered the idiocy of concern for shootings after Vegas. Just look at FB -- lots of virtue signalling from many ... signifying exactly nothing except "this is my tribe, please agree with me, lots of people in my tribe agreeing with me gives my life the illusion of meaning".

As I posted on one friends FB lament, in 1974 when I graduated HS, we took our guns to school to go hunting after school or to work on them in shop. The idea of a "school shooting" was just as far from our minds as the idea of "texting" ... it simply didn't exist. M-16's however DID exist -- guys used the full auto versions in "Nam" and some of them started hunting with the semi-auto versions of them because they were light and accurate, and since the body mass of a deer is pretty much exactly like a person, they were of course great deer guns.

"Made for one purpose only" is one of the zanier lines out there relative to guns. It is true that guns are single purpose items ... they are built to send projectiles downrange as accurately as possible. The VAST bulk of projectiles hit PAPER or some similar sort of target, because that is what they are used for. The best comparison for me is golf -- correct, nobody NEEDS to have multi-thousand dollar clubs to put a white ball in a hole on a field, but humans OFTEN do MANY things that nobody "needs" to do. Here is Robin Williams on the sense of golf (many f-bomb warning)

Oh, "but golf balls don't kill people" ... but certainly they do, and no doubt clubs are used as weapons, carts crash, etc, etc. If it were not so sad it would be extremely ironic that it was William of Occam that declared that objects have no inherent purpose / meaning as in being "sacred", but are rather mere objects with any meaning only assigned by man -- "nominalism".

The fetishization of guns is a pretty good proof that something in the nature of man wants to imbdue objects with purpose and meaning.

So our lives are FILLED with all sorts of things that we "don't need", many of which are even explicitly harmful (like cigarettes).  However, we DO need to feel virtuous as part of our human nature, so thousands of people signalling their virtue on FB by declaring that "nobody NEEDS an "assault rifle"", when probably 1% of them could tell you what the difference between an "AR" and some other gun was. The answer is of course "nothing but style". I have a nasty looking "black gun", a .223 Bushmaster, and a nice wooden stock Remington 742 Woodsmaster 30-06. I can put a 30 round magazine in either one of them and shoot those rounds as fast as I can pull the trigger, because they are semi-auto.

I'm not much in the shop, but given a not too huge amount of time, if I need to convert 5 or 10 round mags into 30, 60 or whatever, I can ... however the time would likely be better spent working on mag change dexterity which with even a klutzy guy like me a medium level of skill can pretty much make magazine size moot -- "wait till he changes mags then rush him" is wishful thinking if the shooter is even moderately skilled at a mag change.

Short of ceasing to honor the 2nd amendment (which just makes it REALLY clear that there are no "laws" in BOistan), or actually repealing it -- legal, but unlikely, all the virtue signalling about "Assault Weapons" is just virtue signalling. Preventing car companies from putting "SS" (Super Sport) on ttheir cars ... or wide tires, or dual exhausts, etc because "it makes them seem like Race Cars" is of similar use.

"This highlights the problem with capitalism. As Irving Kristol observed in one of his greatest works, “When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness,” there is a difference between a “free society” and a “just” or “bourgeois” society. The Founders worked on the assumption that the people themselves would be the guardians of virtue, probity, norms, and even public safety in their own communities. And, as Kristol notes, for the first century or two of capitalism’s existence, it was largely synonymous with a just/bourgeois society."

In the 20th century, we did away with "just" step by step until we ended up with a mass of individuals with no idea of right or wrong ... and even less of the eternal consequences of "wrong".

Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Hate

https://www.newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/socialism-as-a-hate-crime-9746

Good article. As I've said a thousand times if I've said it once, why is it that even though the nominal "fascists" in Hitler's Germany called themselves "National Socialists", nobody believes them??? They were complete amatuers at killing compared to our "friends" (at least NPR's friends) the Communists, easily responsible for over 100 million deaths, and likely as many as 250 million!

“in sum, the communists probably have murdered something like 110 million, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987. Of course the total itself is shocking. It is several times the thirty-eight million battle-dead that have been killed in all this century’s international and domestic wars. Yet the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone—one communist country—well surpasses this cost of war.”

I think this meme is helpful ...

In theory, the GOAL of the USSR, Cuba, China, North Korea, etc is "Communism" ... no private ownership of ANYTHING, all owned by "the collective". Socialism is what one gets when the idea is government control of the economy with a big safety net until the economy fails and it can no longer be paid for. Then you get Venezuala, and to some degree USSR (thus the ending), North Korea and Cuba.

While Churchill called Russia a "Riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma", China is at least as inscrutable. Of all the modern states, it is really more Fascist than anything -- strongly nationalistic, lots of government deals and control of supposedly "private" companies that indeed have some level of autonomy. That is the core of Fascism ... some big players make a lot of money, investors ostensively "own" companies, people own real estate, cars, etc, yet the CALL themselves "Communist".

It also sounds like in China the main mark of Socialism ... the massive "safely net" is threadbare at best. China is too interested in getting wealthy -- something either Communists or Socialists at least claim to eschew. The thing they DON'T eschew is POWER ... so if they get it, they KEEP IT!

Socialist policies, moreover, are always going to fail because it is impossible for central planners efficiently to allocate capital, goods, and services across a large economy. Socialism, after all, was always a political doctrine and never a plausible economic theory. When there arose shortages of food or housing or military equipment—when socialist policies failed—leaders were faced with a choice of admitting failure and abandoning the socialist path or doubling down on their policies and preserving their power. It was in their nature to choose the latter course, and thus to press forward with more extreme measures, which typically involved the identification of scapegoats and counter-revolutionary elements as causes of failure. From here it was but a few steps to the catastrophic outcomes described above: show trials, terror famines, mass starvation, cultural revolutions, “killing fields,” and democide.

To some extent, the whole class of "isms" ... Communism, Socialism, Fascism, are death worship ideologies that discount human creativity, ingenuity, and growth. ("The Creator" is not somebody they worship) They are about dividing up a basically fixed pie, and inevitably create an increasingly powerful central government that forces adherence to a set of economic rules "for the good of all". Naturally, the "dear leader", central bureaucracy and military have to be a good deal more "equal" than the rest of the population. The elite goes about "preserving their power" to the detriment of the many.

Much as in "Avengers Infinity Wars", half the population may need to die "for the good of all", ALL depends on your meaning of ALL, and for the elite, the "all" is very small!

The answer to why Socialism is not a "hate crime" is that in a godless entropic accidental universe, killing even 9/10ths of the people may well be judged to be "the good" by "the few".  To the extent that anyone even thinks or cares about such an abstract concept in a cult of meaningless universal death -- the cult of "secular humanism".

Words, Haidt, Violence

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/07/why-its-a-bad-idea-to-tell-students-words-are-violence/533970/

Jonathan is "height" not "hate", but I'm old and never tire of the irony -- he is a brilliant scientist that so far just refuses to knuckle under to the rule of "The Party" (TP-D), and thus just keeps stating the obvious very well. He closes with this:

The conflation of words with violence is not a new or progressive idea invented on college campuses in the last two years. It is an ancient and regressive idea. Americans should all be troubled that it is becoming popular again—especially on college campuses, where it least belongs.

As I continue to point out, "progressive" is actually "regressive" ... unlimited government, restrictive speech, fundamentalist shunning of people you disagree with, etc are not "new" in any way at all ... they are very very old. Traditional liberalism and free market capitalism are still "new" (since like 1700), and they are like your house. Without constant attention, they fall aparty. (see "Suicide of the West").

As there is now a relative avalanche of books and articles are pointing out, "progressives" have led us to a very bad place of moral confusion, loss of meaning, broken families, addiction, suicide, and yes ... as this article covers, the certain threat of violence and even some early "shots fired" on our campuses ... the place that ought to MOST respect complete freedom of speech!

The right to provoke, offend, and shock lies at the core of the First Amendment. This is particularly so on college campuses. Intellectual advancement has traditionally progressed through discord and dissent, as a diversity of views ensures that ideas survive because they are correct, not because they are popular. Colleges and universities—sheltered from the currents of popular opinion by tradition, geography, tenure and monetary endowments—have historically fostered that exchange. But that role in our society will not survive if certain points of view may be declared beyond the pale.

As is made clear in "God and Man at Yale" and "The Closing of the American Mind", the left was all for "freedom of speech" as long as it was anti-American typically pro-Communist left wing speech. Back then, they were in the minority, and certainly not in control of any national political party like TP. That has changed now, so their temporary allegiance to "free speech" is over ... the only left wing "value" is POWER ... all others are just tools!

The article is well worth the (short) read -- as nearly anything by Haidt seems to be.

Comte To Hillary, The Real Goals

https://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/secret-religion-american-left-jonah-goldberg/

This column is a good example of why I love Jonah Goldberg's writing -- he has a broad expanse of knowledge, AND he is able to apply it to the world at hand.

I won't do a bunch of quotes, just one, which is actually a quote from Jonah's book, "Liberal Fascism" about Herbert Croly, one of the demigods of early 20th century liberalism:

Croly was a quiet man who’d grown up with noisy parents. His mother was one of America’s first female syndicated columnists and a dedicated “feminist.” His father was a successful journalist and editor whose friends dubbed him “The Great Suggester.” Their home was something of a “European island in New York,” according to one historian. The most interesting thing about the senior Croly — if by “interesting” you mean really loopy — was his obsession with Auguste Comte, a semimystical French philosopher whose biggest claim to fame was his coinage of the word “sociology.” Comte argued that humanity progressed in three stages and that in the final stage mankind would throw off Christianity and replace it with a new “religion of humanity,” which married religious fervor to science and reason — even to the extent of making “saints” out of such figures as Shakespeare, Dante, and Frederick the Great. Comte believed that the age of mass industrialization and technocracy would pluck the human mind from the metaphysical realm for good, ushering in an age where pragmatic managers would improve the plight of all based upon man-made morality. He anointed himself the high priest of this atheistic, secular faith, which he called positivism. The elder Croly made his Greenwich Village home into a positivist temple where he held religious ceremonies for select guests, whom he would try to convert. In 1869 young Herbert became the first and probably last American to be christened in Comte’s religion.

As I have mentioned ad nauseum, "liberalism" and "progressivism" are RELIGIONS and their faith is in experts, science and the perfectability of the human.

It's a worthy read!

Evicted : Poverty and Profit In the American City

https://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447459

The subject book by Mathew Desmond is way way longer than it needs to be unless you have REALLY lived a very sheltered life. Being amoung the poorest Americans trying to rent appartments and stay in a rental in American cities is not "the good life" to say the least -- I suspect all of us knew that. The repetitive struggles went on long enough so it just causes compassion fatigue.

The book chooses to follow a series of people through the squalor, massive inconvienience and dehumanization of that sort of life ... Arleen, the Hinkstons, Larraine, etc. One of the landlords covered is "Tobin", who is the owner of a very low quality trailer park and makes a high income (like $400K) by essentially renting a concrete pad and making the low income people keep the usually rotting away trailer up. I'd say a trailer court owner is only nominally a "slum lord". The other pair of landlords followed are Shereena and Quentin -- African Americans who on paper have a "high net worth", but who actually make very little money due to all the costs of trying to keep their slum level properties rentable, and collecting rents from people with very little in the way of assets.

There are a host of "bad guys" in the book, and really no "good guys". All levels of government ... local, state, federal, police, judges, HHS, HUD, etc, etc come in as slow, inefficient, underfunded, and having all sorts of unintended consequences for basically all of their many and various programs -- the sheriffs force people out because of too many 911 calls to a property, they assist with eviction, most of the various agencies are either reject or rubber stamp. As I've observed many times, "the govnernment" can't care for you ... it MAY "send you a check" in one form or another, but "it" MUST be a faceless bureaucracy with lots of layers, people, agencies, policies, programs, forms, rules, etc -- it is simply too large (enough just the "local" city government) to be anything else.

The author plays it pretty straight up until he gets to the epilogue on page 293 ... "a different kind of society is possible, and solutions are within our collective reach. But those solutions depend on how we answer a single question: do we believe that a right to a decent home is part of what it means to be an American?".

The basic question there again is what country is "America"? In America, there was a written Constitution, and it CLEARLY did NOT include a "right to a "decent" home". Partially because the definition of a "decent home" is very very difficult to arrive at for starters. Say if you are a single mom ... if you keep having more and more kids, does that mean that the square footage of a "decent home" keeps going up? Also, one of the values of America was private property -- the wealth of the nation was created because people got to keep the vast majority of what they earned. The money to create this right has to be taken by force from somebody else who is earning it.

One of the things I appreciated about the authors honesty in the book -- on page 214, we find that Crystal, one of the people followed has an IQ of "about 70" ... which would make her inelligeable for the US military (minimum 85). If you want to consider a sobering fact, consider that in 1959, below 85 would have classified you as "retarded". Since there is a lot of stigma associated with mental retardation however, we have LOWERED the threshold in the face of a society that demands increasing cognitive ability, so "70" is now that threshold. Alomst certainly, the "housing" that Crystal needed was a "group home", or some other sort of hopefully compassionate environment. However, in our zeal for "mainstreaming" and "reducing stigma", Crystal was on the street turning tricks.

The world view of the author is displayed very well on page 293.

There are winners and losers. There are losers because there are winners. "Every condition exists" Martin Luther King once wrote, "simply because someone profits by it's existence.This economic exploitation is chrystalized in the slum"

Only in a zero sum world, and that is not the one that we live in. Bill Gates or Steve Jobs creating new compaines and making billions of dollars CREATED wealth -- not just for them, but for tens of thousands of employees, suppliers, retailers, etc. More importantly, they created VALUE -- something that billions of people wanted and made use of to create all sorts of other useful and entertaining things.

One old adage is to "follow the money" ...

Here’s one way to follow the money in the United States: look past the Washington Monument and the Capitol to the D.C. suburbs. Half of the richest counties in America are roughly an hour away from the capital.

One would not know it from this book, but poverty in the US has DECLINED since 1960 ... and yes, it has been urbanized.

As a result, many of the nation’s biggest counties by population had high poverty rates in 2010, though that was not the case in 1960. Twelve of today’s most populous counties had poverty rates above the national average in 2010, including Los Angeles, Cook (Chicago) in Illinois, Maricopa (Phoenix) in Arizona, Kings (Brooklyn) in New York, and Dallas. In 1960, eight of these 12 counties had poverty rates below the national average. Another three had poverty rates above the national average in both 1960 and 2010: Bexar (San Antonio) in Texas, Miami-Dade in Florida, and New York (Manhattan). And one county, Broward (Ft. Lauderdale) in Florida, had a poverty rate that was above the national average in 1960 but dipped below the average by 2010. 

It’s worth noting that as the geography of poverty-stricken areas has shifted, the nation’s official poverty rate has declined over the past half-century, from 22.1% in 1960 to 14.5% in 2013, according to Census Bureau data.

The first point to be made is that King is right that "profits" or "rent seeking", DOES matter, but not quite as much as he thought. First of all, there will AWAYS be a "bottom 10%", and unlike Lake Woeboegone, all of our children really can't be above average!

Secondly, there is no magical suspension of human nature when people move into government employment. They STILL want to improve their personal and family situation -- they want to have a better more secure position, higher salary, nicer home, etc -- it is just as true for the government sector as the private sector, and as the government sector has gained more and more power, they have increasingly succeeded in gaining as evidenced by the richest couties and the fact that government employees on average do better than private sector employees.

While the author of the book certainly believes it is a tale that proves that simply that more government money will "solve" this problem (as he likely believes it could solve ANY problem). In the 3rd from the last paragraph he declares what he really believes about economics ... "Each year we SPEND three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost in total on homeowner benefits like mortgauge interest deduction and capital gains exlusion".

The government produces nothing. All it's funds arrive because they are TAKEN from someone or increasingly from future generations through massive debt. If the government was to switch to a flat tax or a consumption tax, rather than using tax policy to incent and disincent behaviors, the entire discussion of what is SPENDING would be totally clear. The only universe in which tax deductions is "government spending" is a universe in which government is God, and all assets and income are the governments -- it only deigns to let various people retain any income or assets at it's pleasure.

Venezuala is a great recent example of how well that works. When we believe that we have a "right" to our physical and even recreational "needs", we believe that others have a "responsibility" to work to cash the checks on those "rights". That is the essence of corruption -- "taking without making". The lives followed in this book should be adequate evidence as to what this philosophy creates -- hopelessness, amorality, addiction, despair. The author would tell you that "the material circumstance makes the man".

Spirit or material? If you believe in only material, then you likely agree with the assessment of this author, and likely "felt the Bern" in 2016. Please read this and consider the day after "the Bern" burns down the remaining wreckage of what was once America.

Suicide Of The West, Jonah Goldberg

https://www.amazon.com/Suicide-West-Tribalism-Nationalism-Destroying/dp/1101904933

The subject book is subtitled "How the rebirth of tribalism, populism, nationalism, and identiypolitics is destroying American democracy". My title for the book would be "Letting the miracle of liberal democracy and capitalism fall apart for lack of care".

The short short summary of the book is that in 17-1800 the combination of certain thinkers (Locke, Adam Smith, etc)  created what Goldberg calls "the miracle" of liberal democracy and capitalism which resulted in the greatest improvement of the human condition in all of human history.

"...liberalism -- by which I mean not partisan Democrats or progressives, but the original Enlightenment-based understanding of natural rights and limited governmen -- and capitalism".  

"Liberalism, by enforcing the rule of law and recognizing the rights of everybody, especially property rights, makes trade easier, and trade makes liberalism more desireable.

The Miracle comes out of this worldview. It is the product of a bourgeois revolution, an eighteenth-century midle-class ideology of merit, industriousness, innovation, contracts, and rights. Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of peoples lives. It has only a single fatal flaw: It doesn't FEEL like it".  

The book contends that liberal democracy and capitalism are not "natural" -- if they were, they would have shown up earlier and more widely. When they DID show up was in England (by accident) and in America (by choice). Like your home or your car, they are not of nature, so without constant vigilance, they are "corrupted" ... meaning the natural process of decay and putrification. It is the thesis of the book that sometime around "1900", we started to assume that the mechanisms that provided the seemingly never ending cornucopia of wealth were "natural", or in themselves "rights" as in thinking we have the RIGHT to have lots of economic goods and freedom without having to work at the underlying system that creates those things.

Chapter 5 gives the key insight in my mind ...

"The history of political philosophy is really the history of the of the stories we tell ouselves about ourselves. The two most important creation myths of the modern West were told by Locke and Rosseau. They are in constant battle with each other to this very day, and as of this writing, Rouseau is winning". 

"...Locke believed in the sovereignty of the individutal and that we are "captains of ourselves". Rosseau aruged that the group was more important than the individual and the "general will" was superior to the solitary conscience. Man is sinful according to Lock, a noble savage according to Rosseau. Our rights come from God, not government declares Locke. No, we surender our individual rights to the judgement of the sovereign, replies Rosseau. Lock says that the rights of property and to the fruits of our labors is the keystone of a free and just order. Rosseau says that property is the original sin of civilization and, in a just society, property must be mentioned by the sovereign for the good of the whole community ..."

And so it goes. Chapter 5 is an important chapter for understanding where "The Miracle" came from, and why it is in mortal danger.  The Miracle is largely the temporary triumph of reason over emotion in the specific form of liberal democracy and capitalism, but since it is emotion, not reason, that is natural and dominant in humans, when we forget the "why" of the system that got us here, the system is certain to fail. (I wrote on this a lot in the old blog, a good example is here).

Jonah is a "#NeverTrump" person, so I was glad I hadn't taken a drink when I read on page 316:

"The imperial arrogance of progressive social engineers and social justice warriors had earned an apocaylyptic backlash so powerful that even clear-eyed conservatives that recognized Trump's dishonesty and demagoguery couldn't resist it. Indeed, as much as I hold Trump in contempt, I am still compelled to admit that, if my vote would have decided the election, I probably would have voted for him."

Jonah is an intellectual ... I'm not sure he has ever claimed to have a practical bone in his body.  So, even though HE also realized that Trump was better than the alternative, he talked and spilled lots of ink against Trump, likely swaying at least 100's of K of people on the right to not vote, vote libertarian, etc. Nobody has to be "taken in" by any "dishonesty, demagoguery, poor personal morals, etc" to realize that any sort of restoration, while still EXCEEDINGLY unlikely, was just totally beyond the pale if Hillary won and turned the SCOTUS to a full legislate from the bench on anything and everything 100% of the time. Christians would not only be baking cakes for gays, we would be well on the road to being lion treats in the DC colluseum!

The book is WELL worth the reading time -- I've covered a lot of the ground he covers before, but he is a smarter and better writer. The conversion of the US "government" into an all inclusive and intrusive unconstitutional "state" that has become an unelected 4th branch, the Adminstrative Sate, that combines the legislative power of the purse/making laws, executive, and judicial all in one branch that only reports to The Democrat Party ("The Party" TP-D) is well covered.

The loss of meaning in life because of the loss of "the little platoon" ... the buffer organizations of church, local civic organizations, BOY Scouts, extended, and even nuclear family, leaves atomic individuals with nothing for meaning but consumption and distraction.

On page 302 is a great aside about Phil Graham talking to a crowd and saying "my policies are based on the assumption that nobody loves our children as much as my wife and I do".

A woman in the crowd yelled out "I love your kids as much as you do!".

Graham responded; "Oh really. What are their names?"

The point is that the State can promise you a lot, but it actually can't even care about you, let alone "love you" ... at best, you are a NUMBER to the faceless Administrative State, and what they primarily care about is increasing their own power.

It pprovides an excellent summary on what I have blogged on for years. A highly recommended read!

Inside The Atheist Mind, Anthony DeStefano

https://www.amazon.com/inside-atheist-mind/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ainside%20the%20atheist%20mind

The subject book is an easy and fast read that covers a lot of the same ground that I've covered before in a somewhat more nasty (although not as nasty as "The God Delusion", or "The End of Faith") ... DeStefano doesn't want to do away with atheists, he just wants to talk about what he sees as their thinking.

He is concerned that "Christians have been too nice", although that is pretty much what Christ requires of practicing Christians, so it can't really be seen as unexpected.

His chapters focus on key aspects he sees atheists as presenting -- arrogance, ignorance, ruthlessness, intolerance, shallowness, cowardice, death worship, faithfulness, and malevolence. Essentially, "human nature" -- which is precisely what one would expect from people who are proud of having no higher standards than naturall, non-redeemed human nature!

You might be surprised that he sees athesists as faithful -- I see them that way as well. FAITH is the foundation of human life ... faith in your next breath, faith that the universe is rational, faith that your basic model of thought (world view) is at least not insane, faith that there is actually some reality rather than just a one of "matrix" of some sort where maybe you are all there is (or if you are a Solipist, faith that you ARE the only existing mind!).

The core of atheist faith is on page 121, "They believe that organization came out of chaos, that life came out of lifenessness, that consciousness came out of unconsciousness, that reason came out of irrationality".

None of those beliefs can be proven -- nor can it be proven that an eternal, just, ordered, intelligent and loving creator built a universe with order, life, consciousness, reason and love (echos of his nature). Both are matters of faith, and always will be until we meet God, or will be until the lights go out on humanity if there isn't a God.

It is an easy and sometimes guilty pleasure sort of a book, but it is quite shallow. I'd very much recommend "The Reason For God" instead.