Friday, October 26, 2012


FRIDAY PHILOSOPHY
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton settle their differences - 1804.

At this point in the electoral process nothing is going to change anyone's mind either way, because with very few exceptions we human beings are governed entirely by our passions and prejudices –– never by Reason.

“REASON is the but the SLAVE of PASSION” and ever more shall be so.

I have watched our once beautiful country throw away most-if-not-all of her advantages one by one in the past fifty-five years, primarily because the Public Mind has been conditioned by Master Manipulators in the Education, Entertainment, News and Information Industries –– and what may be left of Book Publishing ––– to adopt suicidal policies in the names of Fairness, Decency and Enlightened Thinking. 

We've been had, and most of us don't begin to realize it. 

The intellectual cancer emanating from The Frankfurt School through places like Berkeley, the University of Chicago and The Ivy League has metastasized to such an extent that The USA, as we have known and loved it, is now terminal –– beyond hope.

The "Pen," is, indeed, "mightier than the Sword."

The spirit of the revolution Thomas Paine’s little pamphlet helped spark has been destroyed by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Herbert Marcuse and Saul Alinsky.

Lincoln subverted the Constitution and made himself our first dictator. Later on the Industrial Revolution spawned the Labor Movement which led inevitably to The Communist Manifesto. Because of the Marxists and their filthy ilk ––- perverted mischief makers all ––  we don't know who we are anymore.
These moronic games of GOTCHA! began –– as far as I can remember –– with the unabashed reveling indulged in by the Liberal Media Establishment over Dan Quayle's POTATOE.

It's been off to the races ever since.

It amuses the hell out of me to see leftists get all huffy puffy and bent out of shape when the right wing gives them a taste of their own medicine.

Only the LEFT believe in ONE-WAY RUDENESS.

"We" on the right –– or I should say IN the right ;-) –– have been awfully slow to catch on, but now that we've finally decided that "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," you on the left are crying "FOUL!" in stentorian tones.

If all this display of mutual disingenuousness weren't so bad for the country, I'd just laugh myself silly.

If you don't like it, please try to remember who started it. It might help assuage your ire ––- a bit.
Well, Ms. Shaw Kenawe, with whom I rarely agree, but like a good deal on a personal level, even so, responded thusly:

’I don't understand what "it" you say I don't like, since my only remarks here have nothing to do with disliking.

Remember who started "it?"
We'd have to go all the way back to the Adams-Jefferson feud. That's when all this nastiness started.

Mr. Washington wanted no part of political parties. But humans are tribal, and here we are.’

Agreed, Ms. Shaw, but I for one wish we could stop ourselves from indulging in all these fake histrionics over petty nonsense –– like "potatoe," "fifty-seven states," "I did not have sex with that woman –– Ms. Lewinsky," and "the 47%," etc.

Everyone with a shred of intelligence knows these are spurious concerns that have no bearing on the economy, the shrinking value of the dollar, job availability, international trade imbalances, increasing Central Control of essentially Private Matters, increasing disregard for LIFE as the thing we should hold most sacred, Waste, Fraud, Abuse of Power on every conceivable level. Raising levels of LITERACY, FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE, comprehensive study of DISPARATE POINTS OF VIEW, encouraging appreciation of Art, Architecture, Music, Literature from a long range historical perspective, etc. etc. etc.

It's my view we need to drive "AGENDAS" of ALL kinds –– both liberal AND conservative –– from the field of Education at all levels.

If we simply showed students the world as it is and has been sans "interpretation" with a political, philosophical or religious "slant," society would benefit enormously.

Right now in my never humble opinion we're all much too busy trying to tell each other how we ought to think, and how we should be leading our lives.

The policy has generated a great deal of hatred and misunderstanding on all sides. We're all at each other's throats as much –– or more –– than ever.

Surely we should be able to appreciate each other's good points without feeling we must CAPITULATE to someone else's point of view in order to secure their good will and possible friendship.

As for Jefferson and Adams' famous feud –– and all that followed in its wake –– you're right. Proving once again that "The more things change, the more they remain the same."
I suspect, however, that such carryings on in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were more THEATRICAL than PERSONAL –– rather like the stories we hear of lawyers who've been beating each other to a bloody pulp in the courtroom going out to lunch together during the trial, or hoisting a few together at the local pub in the evening, or playing friendly rounds of golf together at the same country club, etc.

There's something deadlier –– really chilling –– about what's going on today. Because of the introduction of Marxian notions of "Class Warfare" as a legitimate moral concern and the advent of Unions acting as gangsters engaged in Thuggery, Extortion –– and sometimes even Murder –– the scene is no longer intellectual and theatrical. Instead it has become brutal and truly hateful.

And oh yes, such events as the infamous Burr-Hamilton duel certainly prove that brutality, though of a more decorous, stylized sort, was very much alive during the seemingly elegant lifestyle enjoyed by our Founders.

The veneer of Civilization has always been wafer thin and fragile as a flower, but today –– thanks to advancing "Proletarianism" for want of a better term –– it appears to be wearing away altogether.

I hate to see us lapsing into neo-barbarism touted as "egalitarianism."

~ FreeThinke

22 comments:

  1. FT,
    Before mass communication came along -- television, recently followed by the Internet -- the devolving of which you are speaking in this post was creeping along.

    Now the devolution is galloping!

    Recently, Obama referred to Romney as "a bullshitter." Forget whether or not that appellation is accurate. My point is that now Obama has set a verbal example that will echo throughout our nation's classrooms in all sorts of contexts.

    As a whole, Americans have abandoned reasoning and reasoned discourse. We have been reduced to screamers who can hear nobody else's voice except for our own. Well, I supposed that Americans can hear any voices that support entrenched positions. But Americans cannot seems to hear voices of dissent without becoming apoplectic.

    Duck often says, "We are a sorry people." I think that we are indeed a sorry people, but likely not sorry in the same way that Duck means.

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  2. Very well stated as always, FT. You've provided much to think about.

    We are in a sorry state, and I too blame the education system. Going away from the classics, and classical Greek and Roman thought, Middle Ages Scholasticism and Enlightenment thinkers has left us unable to think, analyze, debate and cogently state a position.

    We are becoming Idiocracy.

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  3. AOW, I hadn't heard that name calling from Obama. Scarborough said something about something being said that was too awful to repeat on the show, so I assume that was it. As if similar name calling and bullshit doesn't occur on a daily basis on MSNBC.

    FT, you've stated the case very powerfully and eloquently. Pertaining to your post I just recently found a video: "Agenda: Grinding America Down" which is well worth watching if one has the time.

    https://vimeo.com/52009124

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  4. Thank you, Waylon, for TWO welcome gifts. ;-)

    I'll investigate the video later today -- might even post it if feasible.

    Thanks again,

    FT

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  5. The educational system may be the original cause of the downhill slide of civility, but you'd have to change it, the media, and the internet to correct the situation, just about an impossible task. Ah, for a return to the days of true statesmen!

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  6. There can be no "beauty" in that which knows no limits...

    ...as "politics" is now the transcendent element in American life.

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  7. I think we can thank the 60's student movement for that, from the 1962 Port Huron Statement (Student's for a Democratic Society)

    In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in several root principles:

    that decision-making of basic social consequence be carried on by public groupings;

    that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations;

    that politics has the function of bringing people out of isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life;

    that the political order should serve to clarify problems in a way instrumental to their solution; it should provide outlets for the expression of personal grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be organized so as to illuminate choices and facilities the attainment of goals; channels should be commonly available to related men to knowledge and to power so that private problems -- from bad recreation facilities to personal alienation -- are formulated as general issues.


    And so what was formerly the private sphere was brought into the public sphere and placed under a microscope of the panopticon.

    Argus, we barely knew ye. It's time for Hermes to begin his song, again.

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  8. The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

    --- Blaise Pascal

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  9. Only the LEFT believe in ONE-WAY RUDENESS.
    ---

    Utter nonsense.

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  10. "If we simply showed students the world as it is ..."

    -------
    Absolutely impossible.

    The photo realists tackled that question. Give them a study.

    Photography is the worst culprit. You make the camera lie all the time.

    Or I give you the task of deciding how to produce a strictly objective documentary. Please reference something like Fred Wiseman's Belfast, Maine as study material. Pay close attention to the assembly line sequence in the fish packing plant.

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  11. Since you bring up unions and class warfare


    An excellent article detailing the job creation myth that Mittens is pushing.
    It can't be condensed down to a sound bite so the prevailing media can't use it. But it's quite revealing of what Mittens has planned for the marks.

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  12. Surely we should be able to appreciate each other's good points without feeling we must CAPITULATE to someone else's point of view in order to secure their good will and possible friendship.
    -------------------

    Well it can be done. I think AOW and I feel a certain amount of mutual good will despite radical differences that cannot merge.

    Now just how much tolerance is possible in the political sphere before certain beliefs become unacceptably invasive is a problem.
    The rub is that neither of us believes they advocate positions that are inimical to the others well being.

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  13. Calm down, Ducky. Instead of slagging Romney about "letting Detroit go bankrupt" you should be happy to know that the bailout of General Motors has been a huge boon to China. Not that Detroit is a thriving metropolis today since the bailout, as far as I know weeds are still growing on the roads and streets.

    Here's the inside dope right from the horse's ass, Dan Ackerson, the head honcho of what could now be called "the new and improved China Motors". Not sure how the American taxpayer feels about the idea that "Obama is dead and General Motors is alive" since China is the bigger beneficiary.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvl5Gan69Wo

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  14. Did you read the article?

    It slogs Mittens for making a huge profit on the bailout while he talks out of the side of his mouth to the fringe right suckers.

    Does a god job of putting to rest the asinine idea that people like Governor Olympics are job creators.

    VOTE ROMNEY: He made the bobsleds run on time.

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  15. The video also shows that some of Romney's political donors (John Paulson, etc) made huge profits from the bailout. So no news that isn't old news from The Nation, I guess.

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  16. No Waylon, Romney profited DIRECTLY.
    Not through political donation.

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  17. I'm not sure I understand what agitates you more, Ducky, individuals who hover like vultures over failing companies and with inside knowledge profit because they knew the company would be "saved", or the hypocrisy of the "saviors" who pretend they saved a company by stiffing those who actually had invested in the debt of the company and should have had first claim to any asset value that could have been realized in a bankruptcy.

    Seems like both happened here in the auto bailout. some insider billionaire "players" put their money down early and recognized a personal profit because the government stepped in. Then as the above video shows the saved company has gone to China and the CEO asserts that going there is such a good thing for the company, but doesn't say anything about how the company is doing in the homeland of the taxpayers who supposedly "saved" the company or anything about the Chinese taking over other parts of GM in Michigan.

    To me there is something despicable with both parties whether crony capitalists or state run corporate welfare bums.

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  18. Waylon,
    Obama called Mitt Romney a bullshitter in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

    Today brings THIS at President Obama's America Forward! Tour: Romney in a dunce cap. Not sure who created that graphic, but it's up on the web at the moment.

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  19. Duck,
    I try to listen to the views of others. I may reject those views, but I DO consider them.

    And just think! I'm one of those brought up under a strictly Calvinistic educational program in a small private school (through high school). Some of what I learned in that private school was of value, and some was not. I say the same about college at a state university.

    Such is life: a lot to sort through. In the end, we need to be able to rest at night. Know what I mean?

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  20. Well, AOW, we need to find a way for sides to talk to each other or we are going to rip this country apart.

    I'm familiar with areas were liberals are hunted for sport and fail to see how it helps. It is very tough for me to give ground because I don't see the right willing to give anything.
    Not that my crew is beyond the barbed invective.

    The political process has lost its mind. It may be beyond reasonable repair.

    I'd rather be know through my photography.

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