I had absolutely nothing to complain about in regards to food where I was. Gargantuan portions of Turkey (oops…I mean chicken), mashed potatoes (with gravy), and stuffing is all I ask. Screw the carbs. Besides, carbs have gotten a bad rap. But that said, I'm coming to your house next year, liberals or no liberals. The way your clan did the food sounds like the very essence of Thanksgiving. And yes, indeedie, struggling and pulling together is another pure essence of Thanksgiving. That's what the Pilgrims and early Americans did. There were no bailouts from the government forthcoming. If you wanted something, you had to make it yourself and work hard for it by relying on your talents and the good will and perserverence of others. The greatest gift from the backward-looking socialists may be to make us all poor and thus to appreciate the important things in life for it should be noted – nay, it must be noted – that the Utopia the left longs for has never made them or anyone else happy.

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We all agreed we were broke, and that we'd forego Christmas gifts this year, except maybe small stuff for the kids.

There's nothing decent the left can't exploit. One of these is our desire to live a more down-to-earth life. There's an aspect to that of all this "green" stuff. Well, it's often an appeal rather than a reality. And when you know that they're pushing this "green" stuff in order to "spread the wealth," Marxist-style, from nations built rich on freedom and industry to those mired in poverty -- often for grasping methods of the past or, like Cuba and North Korea, holding to backward system of the present. What the world needs now is freedom, not socialism, and certainly not socialism sneaking in under the dishonest cloak of "green." Oh, what a mess. When well-meaning and wholesome emotions are gamed and played, it's a true disservice to people.

That said (and you just knew I had to say it), people have always longed for something deeper and truer than just the latest societal fads and fashion. One of those things is family. I have to leave in a moment (with family...eyeroll) so I'm gonna get cut off short here, but the left has been trying to destroy the family for decades now. Both family and religion are two of the biggest impediments to the state becoming the central pillar of our lives. We may not all believe in the same god, or god at all, and some of us may have quite screwy and dysfunctional families, but that ain't nuttin' compared with the screwy dysfunction being thrown at us by Pelosi and Company. God bless each and every one of us. "God" can mean a lot of things (obviously). But one of the things it means for me is a thumb in the eye of the heathen Marxist-socialists. Oh, I may not believe in the Christian god, but I do believe in thumbing my nose at Marxists. I can perhaps half understand Brother Newt's move to Catholicism. Our culture and the very threads of our society is under attack by the Marxist-socialists. Perhaps Newt used the Klink Principle. I may not know what the right answer is, but I know the Marxist-socialists will have the wrong one.

Amen, brother Brad.

I think it's that Marxism is a religion substitute, without the freedom, without the separation of church and state. And that makes it subversive and dangerous.

But if you ask a liberal, they won't say that their aim is to wreck the family... and yet that's EXACTLY what's happening thanks to them. They won't say that their aim is to destroy education... and yet that's EXACTLY what's happening thanks to them. They won't say they want a weak national defense... and yet--well, you see where I'm going.

The disconnect between leftist progressive intention, and reality/policy is 180°. There is no better way to do the OPPOSITE of what you say, than to vote these guys into office.

I mean, name anything. You want to help disabled people? The Americans with disabilities act has done nothing but destroy the lives of Americans with disabilities. Want to help minorities? Affirmative action has done nothing but separate and sub-culturize and make people miserable.

Gun control does nothing but give criminals the upper hand, and disadvantage the law abiding.

The proof is right before our eyes regarding what works, and what doesn't work with governance. And I don't think there's anything, er, the left has done right. They've bolloxed everything they've touched.

Now you may hate Bush, he may have been somewhat of a dummy... but he didn't do everything wrong. He actually did some things very right. He actually was tough but fair... he actually balanced executive power with civil liberties, in the face of extreme emergencies.

The economy fell apart thanks to him making a lefthand turn into Bailoutville. I don't begrudge him a dollar for the war deficit. But Bush should be accountable for meat-tenderizing the muscular American economy for the incoming administration who are now the bailout kings.

A recipe made for disaster is climate change hysteria, socialism, and cap-and-trade. Here is pretty much the scariest-ass article I've read in days: uh-oh

Not good. I hear knocking from the inside on the crypt of George Orwell. The globe is warming... the globe has always been warming.

The whole idea of "cutting carbon emissions" when natural life processes INCLUDE carbon emissions, is something we need to take seriously. The government controlling our carbon emissions is like the equivalent of the church trying to control sex.

Full disclosure, I come from one of those families that was physically quite competent (no shortage of food to eat, roof over our heads, safe environs, etc.) but that was emotionally and spiritually a Loony Toonsville. So, believe me, I understand the Marxist-socialist narcissitic, girly, Princess-and-the-pea self-indulgent Utopian impulse to quest for Nirvanic familial perfection and nurturance. It's just that, for whatever reason, I look for that through other means than the state. And I'm not stupid or gullible enough to think that because my family life wasn't perfect that therefore Nancy Pelosi & Company can plan a better one for me. They can't, even if that was their true motive, which it isn't. So, long story short, although my life hasn't been perfect, I'm not therefore automatically for the destruction of the family unit. But that, in a nutshell, is the Marxist vibe. If you've been touched by imperfection, then you are driven by anger and revenge (and not just sensible and moderate reform) and have the rude impulse to destroy that which has dared muss a hair on your pretty little head. Obama and his ilk are taking revenge on a society that they see as responsible for the world's suffering. It's all ginned-up and amplified narcissistic bashing. It's holding everything up to the harsh perfection of the untainted visions inside their heads. They begin at the starting point that it is an affront to them personally that life isn't a bed of roses. It's the ultimate in narcissistic self-indulgent frivolousness.

But the message that the family is no longer important has gotten a lot of traction in this culture. Now, don't get me wrong, I do understand the theoretical argument that one good parent is better than two bad ones. Fine. But dishonest leftists make a living at taking small exceptions and trying to prove the rule with them. The fact is, most of the time two parents (even two quite mediocre ones) are far better than one good parent. A child, especially boys, need a father. To understand this, look at the rate of illegitimacy, crime, and one-parent families in the black community that the Democrats have so "helped" these last few decades. The left really does have it out for the family and for men in particular. Both are an impediment to state control.

And, indeed, the economic realities of today are that, by and large, women don't need men to get by. But regarding families, I think it's been a disaster to think that therefore you could translate this into women not needing men at all. Children do much better with two parents and the statistics on this are indisputable. No, that doesn't mean passing laws not allowing people to get divorces, but it should mean an eyes-wide-open reassessment of the many Federal and state policies we have that undermine families and do little but transfer what used to be the function of the family to a function of the state. Basically, Big Government comes in on the apron strings of this uber-feminist cultural idea that we don't need men, and we don't need two-parent families. And that suits the man-hating (or freedom-hating) Big Government types just fine. It suits their purposes. They have yet another means of pretending at compassion while doing little more than getting government's hooks into us deeper and making us ever more dependent on them.

Perhaps it's too bad that most of the people making this point immediately state that you also need GEE-zuz. As far as I'm concerned, conservative principles don't need Jesus to make sense. But the inability or unwillingness of conservatives to make this point has basically been another George Bush-like surrender to the leftists. Surely our only choice isn't between Jesus and Karl Marx.

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The government controlling our carbon emissions is like the equivalent of the church trying to control sex.

That's refrigerator-worthy material.

I had kind of a screwed up family myself. My parents were very young, and split when I was 7. My parents never really got the memo that when you have kids, everything ceases to be about you, and becomes about child rearing.

I had no doubt growing up that my mom LOVED me, but she was a complete hippy fuckup when it came to being responsible for anything. Consequently, we always seemed to be on the verge of total collapse as a family. Many times we didn't have enough to eat, adequate clothing, and safe environs. It was more like three kids in an apartment fending for themselves, than it was a responsible parent and two children.

Stability came more from my grandparents, and other adult role models. And from living by my own wits. But I was a truant and a rebel, a withdrawn and solitary kid, living pretty much largely without adult supervision. Suspicious and cynical about authority, because the system had really failed our little family. What saved me were a few good teachers, an early work ethic, and a love of reading and art... mostly as a result of comic books. But I'll tell you this, if either reading or art was a social activity, rather than solitary pursuits, I would never have took to learning, and would have amounted to squat.

By the time my parents got their own shit together, and matured somewhat, my Dad had remarried with more children, to whom he was a doting and wonderful father. But I was more or less ready to strike off on my own at that point.

My mom has always needed a lot of care and support. She never really found personal worth or strength after the divorce. Despite being a hard worker, she's never made her own way totally. She was kind of passed around as a dependent to whoever would care for her. Now that's pretty much me and my sis, and the government. Without government aid, medicare and social security, we wouldn't be able to afford to have her live in a place of her own. My sister and I would be trading her back and forth between us. But she's the poster girl for the brainwashing that the left does on citizens. She's definitely a product of the victim culture. Has never seen herself as anything but. And it manifests with both Baby Jesusism AND leftism. Then she actually became disabled, and that's made it even worse.

When I was working my way through college, I was supporting my mother. You know the cliche of parents sending money to college kids, for me it was the opposite... I was sending my mom an allowance. I took out student loans and got grants not only to pay for my education, but to keep my mother from being thrown out on the street.

And what sucks, is that things were going pretty well, business was good... until the economy tanked and Obama got elected. Now I'm having flashbacks of the tough times. But at least my mother is taken care of by the culture that created her situation. She will never starve, will never lack medical care, and won't be thrown out into the mean streets. Me, on the other hand, somebody who's NOT on the dole... my situation is scarier. No work? Tough titties, I don't pay rent and have to fish for my dinner. And my industry is totally dependent on an economy that ain't in the shitter. People don't hire designers when they can't even make payroll.

It's interesting to hear about every life story, including yours. Each story is full of potholes and roadblocks. And, god damn it, it's all George Bush's fault. That bastard. Or it's nobody's fault. Or it's our fault. I'm not sure. But our mythologies and religions (including Environmental Wackoism) is an attempt to put it all into context, to make a story out of it that makes some sense. But I like what John Walton said about existence: Life is a sacred mystery. I think it is inherently a mystery, and that we find life, meaning, love, and all that sort of stuff as well, it can indeed be sacred. I think, too, that it is sometimes a scary mystery. Sometimes a wonderful one. And all I'm doing is stating the bleedin' obvious. I've done my searching for god and came up empty. Reality doesn't quite fit into our often rather b-rate stories and myths. I'm reading a book right now (I'm a glutton for punishment, I know) called "The Shack." It's like a schmaltzy episode out of "Touched by an Angel," but a friend of mine came in the other day and said it was the best thing since sliced bread. He said it was so good, he told his pastor that they should use it as a replacement for the bible. Knowing that I was probably walking into New Age kooksville territory, I just had to find out what this book was about, being the armchair cultural anthropologist that I am. Basically this book (I'm about halfway through it) is about the retelling of basic gist of the bible and Jesus. This guy loses his 10-year-old daughter to a serial killer and he later goes back to The Shack where her bloody dress was found. They never did find a body.

Well, this guy ends up basically having breakfast with God (an ethnic black woman), The Holy Spirit (an ethnic Asian woman), and Jesus (a decidedly hook-nosed Jesus Jewish ethnic character). The dad who lost the daughter is, of course, not a "wise latino" or anything of the sort. He's just a stupid white man. I knew I was in trouble with this book when in the first 10 pages it specifically made a glowing mention of Bill Moyers. The double-whammy was when this father walks into The Shack carrying a gun and God takes the gun from him and holds it at arm's length like it was toxic waste or something. He (capital "H") can't stand the sight of it. Yep. More leftist New Age dribble. But I'm going to stay with this book for the single purpose of understanding the mythology of our times that is even now unfolding, including the "green" revolution and global warming. This book also includes the myth of the Wise Latino (the noble savage, basically) and the Original-Sin White Male. All these myths -- and more -- are wending their way through our culture and it's interesting to see them being retold in a book, one that one enthusiast thought would be a proper substitute for the bible. When my friend said this, I pretty much knew exactly what I was getting myself into.

I'm a humanist in that I think mythology is an old story for an old time. I'm a Artistic Humanist in that I think that through art, through creativity, through the wonder of beauty, and through the wonder of invention, we can know incredible aspects of this universe. It's directly taking part in just whatever the hell is going on. The Big Bang creates gas. Gas creates stars. Stars form into galaxies. Man creates iPods, the Mona Lisa, the airplane, and other wonders as well. Yes, I know that some say that they get in touch with the deepest aspects of reality through their religions. Perhaps so. But if they are based on unsubstantiated stories, is this really revering existence? Although I bust your chops all the time regarding humanism, this is mainly in the context of not being a useful idiot for the left who is ought to expunge any kind of allegiances people have that they can't own and control. And the day Brother Hitches writes a book that states, correctly, that Environmental Wackoism is the biggest threat to humanity, not Jesus, then I'l regain my respect for his sort of "humanism." But I have very little for those who are but tools of the left, whether they know it or not.

Life is indeed a sacred mystery, and quite a bitch as well much of the time. Right now we've been going through about 2-1/2 weeks of a complete "will we ever have work again?" dry spell. I will get no sympathy from you, and expect none. I know you guys back there have had it even worse, and for much, much longer. Strange thing is, the shopping malls around here are absolutely crammed. I'd like George Will to re-rack his column, or at least revisit the subject later. Are people binge spending? Are they trying to buy their way out of malaise? Is this one last splurge before Little Tommy has to start wearing his shoes a little longer before buying a new pair. Or is it all denial of what's happening? Perhaps there are just a whole lot of people out there who have money, and I'm just not one of them. I don't know. But my overall point -- and I do think I have one -- is that life just slaps us down into the chute on top of a brahma bull and then the gate opens. Quite literally, in many parts of the world, that's just how bad it is. But it's like that for all of us to some extent. And life doesn't seem to particularly care if you makes sense of it at all or reverence it. It just keep rolling along....steamrolling over quite a few in the process.

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Well, this guy ends up basically having breakfast with God (an ethnic black woman), The Holy Spirit (an ethnic Asian woman), and Jesus (a decidedly hook-nosed Jesus Jewish ethnic character).

My eyes rolled onto my lap and looked up at me with that "how could brad do this to us?" look. lol.

I think Hitchens has pretty much stated that the bullshit that spawns BOTH environmental whackoism and other religions are part of the same threat, namely, making shit into religions instead of trying to involve and listen to reason and the rational mind.

Nearly every criticism of reason and humanism you mount, is a religified bizarro opposite of those exact things.

I simply think reason is both HARDER and easier to call up than people think. I mean sometimes, it's just common sense. And nobody has that anymore. It's an emotionalized, irrational culture in many ways. Very girly. Very girly on the rag. And girl on the rag reason ain't reason 'tall.

And some of it is scientific and rational... which requires some actual logic and education. And not girl on the rag, leftist, touchy-feely irrational me me me education. No, rather at least some contact with history, the facts, the state of human knowledge to date.

Leftists read Hitchens the way the Obama administration reads statistics, or NUMBERS from the congressional budget office. They cherry pick the things that buttress doctrine or agenda, and nothing more.

Likewise, you can hear some things about Hitchens, and put 2 + 2 together with the way his quite rational discourse is deployed by the left, and criticize him for being a leftist mouthpiece. But I think that misses it.

As long as you a) don't read the guy, and b) make the mistake of judging him on things he ISN'T saying, you miss out on some very deft and accurate rhetoric. Very logical. Almost unassailably logical. Cutting right to the black heart of the kool-aid mind and exposing it. While never once, I might add, standing on a platform that would dare to impede any kind of religious freedom, the way the religious mind attempts to impede the freedom of non, or un-believers.

In his book, he didn't just dare to criticize religion. He dismantled it with reason. He debunked everything that needed to be debunked, put it in its place. The only place it should be operating from in a secular and humanist society: as subordinate to reason and rational thought. Not erased, not removed from history or study, no bonfire of religious texts... but simply held up to information and evidence we have now about nature, the world, and science, and put in PERSPECTIVE.

I don't think it's too much to ask that people who choose the path of faith, if they want to be members of this secular society, cannot and should not use religion to squelch or remove the civil liberties of believers in OTHER religions, or no religion.

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Nearly every criticism of reason and humanism you mount, is a religified bizarro opposite of those exact things.

One aspect of "humanism" is that (like identifying oneself as an atheist) is little more than just another rah-rah group label for "our team." It's another tribal affiliation. I often hear "humanism" said with about the same intent and effect as "I'm a member of XXX religion." If humanism holds "reason" as a mythological thing and doesn't actually engage in it, and it doesn't understand and acknowledge the limitations of reason, then "humanism" becomes just another "ism." That's one reason I have no desire to declare myself a "secular humanist." First off, what does that really mean? There are about as many meanings as there are people who declare themselves as such.

"Humanism" as you describe is way too full of itself, in my opinion. Humanism seems to think that by the application of "reason" that all the answers in life come magically flowing down. But such "reason" ignores the basic factional or tribal nature of human beings and the therefore quite squishy self-serving understandings of just what is "reasonable." What Hitchens calls "reason" I often just outright laugh at. When "reason" is held up as the be-all, end-all, self-evident way to be, it's just another religious-type affiliation. Real life produces no such easy answer as the mere application of reason. Reason is just one of many influences and tools.

Whether to plants squash or tomatoes is not something that "reason" can have much say in. So much of life is just preference. So much of life is the battle between one faction and another for political power and control. What does "reason" say we should do between the Palistinians and Israelis? Compared to "reason," simply having an ethic of not murdering busloads of school children in the furtherance of your cause is something quite beyond mere "reason." There are so many dimensions to life, it's tempting to try to condense it all down to either "reason" or "god's will." But life does not accommodate such simplistic explanations.

And you're right, I'll have to take the time to read one of his latest books. It's just that I don't expect to discover much new and probably already agree with his general criticisms of religion. I'll be on the Hitchens bandwagon once more as soon as he starts criticizing the real and imminent threats to our freedom instead of bashing around completely easy and harmless targets like Christianity. Or, if he was brave and honest, he might do like Robert Spencer does and note that the religion that we should be afraid of is Islam. If he has done so, then fine.

I'm about at my eyeroll limit reading "The Shack." The whole reason why there is violence and suffering in the world is because, and I quote "When you chose independence over relationship, you became a danger to each other....authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want."

Soooo.....being independent is our problem. So whose "authority" do we abide by in order to get into a "relationship"? And why isn't this authority (no doubt made up of religious dogma telling us what to do) not the same old "strong use to make others conform to what they want?" This book is a series of vexingly mixed up ideas such as this. Not only that, there is appeal after appeal to what could only be called a communist ideal. I'll use the small "c" in this case, but it's only a small leap to a preference for large "C" Communism. This stuff, even besides the mythology, is such claptrap. And yet a friend of mine was full of high enthusiasm and religious vigor for this stuff. I'd have to quote much more to show the Communist strain, but it's very very clear in this book. It's that ancient appeal to utopia with the means being that if we'd only give up our selfish pursuits for power, wealth, etc., then we'd have heaven on earth. But the one question that returns again and again to such ideas is, Who gets to decide who is being selfish, who is trying for more than their fair share, and what the "righteous and fair" pursuits of an individual should be and why? And it always and forever will come down to this inherent fact: Either the individual is choosing such things for himself or some coercive authority above him is doing it for him. And if men really were angels, we could indeed bow and submit to that authority knowing that they have our best interests at heart. But one look at just the health care scam and the global warming scam lets you know this is rarely the case. The very ADVANCE of human kind has been to put aside our childish notions to submit to and trust those who have wrapped themselves up in the veneer of supposedly sacred and elite authority, whether talking the Pope or Obama.

Not all of religion or Christianity is of this communist vibe, but in my experience quite a lot of it is. I wonder if Brother Hitchens is aware that not nearly all of the religious in this country fit the handy stereotype of fundamentalist Christians? Many are all-out ushering in the new Marxist-socialist attempt at earthly utopia via shitting on the individual and longing for the grand "unity" of strong leaders and overarching and lofty goals. A lot of Catholics have become quite communistically liberal, not certainly including Brother Phil who I always respected for resisting that ill wind. But it is a strong wind, both inside and outside of religion. A book like this shows (at least to me) the quite religious aspects implicit in the "secular" life as lived by many people. I may piss some off more by questioning their loony propensity for loving all things supposedly "green" than I would questioning whether or not Jesus Christ really is the Redeemer. There's one aspect to safe, calm, moderate, non-violent, peaceful established religion that I do agree with. *If* man has a religious aspect to his nature (and I think it is clear that he does), there's something to be said for at least studying spirituality through established methods rather than the willy-nilly gobbledygook in things such as "The Shack," although I'm the first to admit my preference for freelancing in this regard. But what an eyeroller of a book.

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I don't think it's too much to ask that people who choose the path of faith, if they want to be members of this secular society, cannot and should not use religion to squelch or remove the civil liberties of believers in OTHER religions, or no religion.

"Aha!" the human mind reasons. "If modern people have come to think this then let's sneak our kool-aid ideas into society by specifically not using the word 'religion.' We'll simply call it 'social justice,' 'equality,' 'environmental awareness' or some other such thing."

And that's exactly what has been done. When we equate "reason" with "not religious," we let all kinds of gunk slip in the back door. It's a standard rope-a-dope distraction tactic of the left. It's also another rope-a-dope tactic to suppose that the "secular" is in the stratosphere of human thought from which it can be declared what is to be and not to be in society, of who and what is to be preeminent. That's just falling prey to someone else's power game. But religion is on an equal plane with government, just a difference sphere of influence, at least in the American style. But in the totalitarian "secular humanist" style, the ivory tower elite declares from on high what is and what is not. That's probably my biggest disagreement with the Hitchens type. I do not easily ascribe to this kind of elitism. Should we be a theocracy in America? No. But it's a real rot to our free society to suppose that because we have a non-religious government that therefore the "secular" holds some magical and superior place, including all those "secular" policies so highly touted by the "secular" types, such as global warming, socialized medicine, and what not. The task, I think, for the New America Patriot is to respect the separation of church and state that we have but to also understand that this separation does not then automatically mean that the Harvard ivory tower geeks get free run of the place and that they have the superior morals and thought. History shows this is laughably not the case.

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I often hear "humanism" said with about the same intent and effect as "I'm a member of XXX religion." If humanism holds "reason" as a mythological thing and doesn't actually engage in it, and it doesn't understand and acknowledge the limitations of reason, then "humanism" becomes just another "ism."

Yeah, I guess. Except you can't then turn around and NOT embrace reason, and instead embrace some sort of irrational Kool-Aid and just CALL it reason. Reason has to stand the TEST of reason and logic. If it doesn't, then it's a scam. It's the same bullshit. Or worse. If you get shit like, OK, the obvious reasonable answer is, kill all the jews... and nobody goes, HUH? WHAT? Then they're not operating on reason.

Reason isn't CONSENSUS. There's consensus on global warming, and no reason. There was consensus on voting in Obama, but again, it had little to do with reason.

Reason is really the thing that helps us know the difference. It's what provides the skepticism of alternate terms for religion like "social justice" or other trickery.

Again, reason has a simple TEST... if, for example, it quacks like religion, erodes civil liberties like religion, squelches like religion, then it's actually REASON that tells us that it's a religion.

What you're talking about with reason being an ISM is a cultural process where anything can become DOGMATIC. Quite true. And yet I'd argue that throwing the word "reason" around without HAVING reason is what you fear. Not reason itself. You know what we're back to here? The old argument of ours that words are weapons. Where I say they ain't and you say they are.

This is more about the vocabulary word "reason" or "religion" or "secular"... this is about the IDEA of reason, its practice and outcomes.

Same with the other words. The charge goes beyond the noun. And doesn't disappear when you try to game the vocabulary. If it does, you're being duped. Tricked.

I grant you that this is EXACTLY the way the left works. It tries to hide true intent behind false. It tries to shift vocabulary (Orwell, 1984) when the cultural associations with whatever word reach a threshold that goes against their agenda. Example: "War on Terror" "Global Warming"... you start to lose arguments, you change the vocabulary and then hope people are morons.

This has nothing to do with reason. Or it does, in an oblique way... namely, the con men who UNDERSTAND the way vocabulary works, and see the patterns of society, use their reason to find ways to manipulate people they consider chimps. They may arrive at their strategies logically, using reason. i.e., well, people have fallen for this before, it's logical that they will do so again.

This is correct. But the evil outcome is not the fault of reason. It's the fault of the elitist attitude. Reason, and the truth, don't always shed the best light on humanity and its intentions. It's like being SMART. A serial killer is SMART, they can read people and use observation and avoid prosecution by knowing how forensics work. They can in many ways be operating with a sort of rational, almost scientific logic. If I do this, the cops will be misdirected, and so forth. But underlying it all is total fucking insanity. There are key areas, like conscience and morality, where reason totally breaks down. Like, it's OK to kill people for my own sexual jollies. That's the HUH? WHAT? Moment that shows you that reason is not operating consistently, or where it counts.

I'm pretty sure that's a feature of human nature. Even with a genius like Sir Issac Newton, you had a guy who could write totally reasoned, scientific mathematical proofs, but then you'd get... "OK, excuse me now, while through the power of Alchemy, I magically turn lead into gold!" HUH? WHAT?

Thalo: a man who values reason, logic, rational thought. Er, until you put a wedge of warm brie in front of him, whereupon he completely loses his mind. His reason tells him it's a sick number of calories, he'd be nuts to eat more than a morsel. HEY! Where'd it go? HUH? WHAT?

We have a constant battle with our rational mind. But we have ways in which we are easily manipulated. Somebody who is mature, rational, reasonable, can suddenly start masturbating like a teenager if you show them certain porn. But that's not the rational mind at work. That's the other mind.

Smart, evil con-men are like the pornographers. They know how to push buttons, get people to deny their rational minds at key decision making moments. I don't care if you're Issac Newton... if somebody knows you're an Alchemy retard, they can show you some gold, and promise you this or that, and get you to deny reason. Manipulate you.

So it ain't just being smart. It's being smart and SKEPTICAL. Knowing how the cons work. Knowing where your own weaknesses, and irrational stuff is. Knowing where the chinks in your own armor are. The truly rational human knows they're not above being gamed. And I think Hitchens is a guy like that. I think you and I and the thalo.net guys are like that. We operate at a high level of rational mind, but we know we're not perfect, and that you can't be all rational all the time. Not even Spock is.

But we're good at blowing up some of the clearer con jobs. Those like advertising and politics.

I think the Harvard Ivory Tower politics, like much of the left, uses only so much reason as to advance its own agendas. But the use of reason is more cunning than logical and dispassionate reason. All we really need to do is find their HUH? WHAT? key, and we expose where they diverge from reason. I mean, that's what we DO. We can spot an "end justifies the means" scenario a mile off. That's what a con IS. It says individuals (other than you) don't matter, and that you'll lie, cheat, steal, to get what YOU want. You'll use every trick in the book, you'll try to make it sound logical, you'll say it's for people's own good...

but the outcome will reveal what your HUH? WHAT? shit was.

With Obama, it all boils down to elitism, and robbing from other elites who believe differently. Think Henry VIII and the Catholic church. Robbing the monasteries. Behind it all was he wanted to divorce some chicks. It snowballed into taking all the church's money and killing a bunch of them.

The Obama administration is the pinnacle of a big pyramid scheme with the Ivory Tower Elites at the top. Then an elaborate long con underneath redistributing token wealth to chimps, but REALLY funneling the major wealth right to them. If they could get away with stealing only their opponents' wealth, they'd do that. Luckily, our founders created a system of government--using reason-- where they are pretty much doomed to fail.

quote:

So it ain't just being smart. It's being smart and SKEPTICAL.

Michael Savage had some very fine words to say about that tonight. He says that science used to be all about being a skeptic. That was a core part of the process. But this whole global warming scam has turned that idea on its head. I hear Richard Feynman rolling over in his grave. Whatever reason is, what it is not is what's going on with this whole global warming scam. I'm not sure what you want to call it. It has elements of a religion. It has elements of Orwell and fascism. It has elements of outright crime and fraud. What it isn't is science. It's taking science and holding it hostage to politics and pie-in-the-sky kool-aid "visions" of the Smarty Pants People, the ones who want to rule over us and will try to do so under any pretense.

I was thinking about this last night. I think reason is one of the many things in our Batman utility belt for building and maintaining the kind of civilization that we Westerners take for granted. Along with reason there is the moral element. It matters what we put our reason in service of. Reason, I say, is a process. It's like an engine in a car. But where you point that car is a factor of other things, including the moral or ethical dimension. Along with the moral element there needs to be a foundation of clearly-articulated and thought-out high ideals which are based upon sound principles, noble goals, and real-world experience. Someone did a survey and it was pointed out that only 8% of people serving in the Obama Administration have private sector experience, compared to about 58% for Reagan. That's a real disconnect. Oh, these leftist are full of high ideals, but they are disconnected from both noble goals and real-world experience. But surely there is reason galore behind their cold calculations of how to screw us all.

I suppose in the end, I would say the one-word for the world I prefer to live in is a "sane" world. But since we can't have that, the best we can do is to have one in which our irrationality is safely vented. But these are particularly crazy times. They are not yet the worst of times. History is full of far more horrible stuff than we're facing now. But what makes our times so crazy is that we know better. We have clear and unambiguous evidence of what works regarding politics and economics, and yet one party is running off half-cocked. Make that full-cocked. But I actually talked to a black person today who was bemoaning Big Government. Wow. I was impressed. There's hope yet.

I picked up this book of quotes at the library the other day, and it has some good ones:

"None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." -- Milton

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the craps—no, but the kind of man the country turns out." – Emerson

"Marxist is as Marxist does." – Forest Gump. Maybe. I'm doing that last one from memory.

Just sharing a bit of stuff bounced off of someone else's remarks elsewhere:

***God’s ability to use an individual to speak truth the community is neither enhanced nor hindered by number of letters after one’s name, how much is in one’s bank account, or which set of genitalia one has.***

Arguably one of the greatest threats to our freedom (religious freedom, political freedom, or social freedom) is what they call the "administrative state." [See this interesting article by Ronald Pestritto: The Birth of the Administrative State.]

The idea that there are specially-excempted and specially-ordained experts is likely as old as humanity. Where there is power to be had, people will rush in to fill it and then claim the everlasting right to that power. But anyone who has ever been to the dentist, the auto repair shop, or a doctor knows that expertise is extremely important. Those letters after one's name are no guarantee of anything, but they do show a process of learning, if the accreditation process is one of integrity. (Not a mail-order PhD, for example.)

The idea arises: If one can have expertise in tooth-pulling, can one have expertise in the area generally defined as "spirituality"? That's where it gets trickier because we've just made a leap into an area that is an inherently subjective and personal. We are all our own patient to a great extent when it comes to what we think about reality itself. Oh, humanity has been very good at devising top-down hierarchies for such things, but the ideas themselves have resonance and importance primarily inside of the human head and inside the human heart. No expert can definitively tell me how I should think about god any more than an expert can tell me that I should prefer Rembrandt rather than van Gogh.

But for those who equate religion with getting one's Afterlife Ticket punched through dedication, commitment, obedience, and observance, that is an entirely other thing. Then hierarchies matter. Then the accreditation letters after the name do indeed matter. But if those with the letters consider themselves guides, rather than having ownership of us, then those letters can be of use like they would be in choosing a doctor. No one should be disqualified for being smart and experienced. It's just that in the field of spirituality (and quite arguably in politics as well), the normal somewhat ego-based attributes of status, rank, reputation, and expertise do not necessarily apply. A doctor doesn't (or shouldn't) consider himself a better person because he has specialized knowledge in the field of medicine. But in the area of spirituality (because we're dealing with supposedly Ultimate Concerns), it's very tempting to think that one is closer to God, thus has the authority of God, and thus can speak for God. That's heady stuff. And I think it is quite arguable that in the humble one will find a much better and brighter light about Ultimate Concerns.

I think there is a very good congruence between the idea of egalitarian (non expert-based) government and non expert-based spirituality. We can too easily over-rate the letters and undervalue real-world experience. What tends to happen when supposed expertise is given disproportionate value (and it usually is because this is a function of the experts self-reinforcing each other...note that our Pravda-like mainstream media also considers themselves experts, not necessarily reporters) is that we fall into a class-based way of thinking. The experts are our betters, and we just need to shut up and listen to them. As the ego and power flows to the the experts through this process, they become ever more remote and distant to the nuts-and-bolts workings of life itself which are the things that tend to give a person character and wisdom. Getting a Nobel Prize for accomplishing nothing at all may raise your status as an expert in the eyes of other back-slapping experts, but it doesn't have much purchase in actual reality. We have politicians in DC right now making huge decisions on our economy when they may have rarely, if ever, worked a job outside of government. So it can be in the spiritual fields as well. Those letters behind the name are all well and good, but the letters behind people's names that generally aren't given much credit (especially by the ivory tower experts) are "LE" — life experience. Such a thing can produce amazing wisdom in people.

Perhaps, in the end, the message is that people are inherently capable of handling the spiritual part of their lives (or their government) to a very large extent unless we turn this process into one of self-serving "experts" and everybody else. We can too easily rob people of their confidence and retard the development of their own expertise. But if the expert functions as a teacher and/or good listener then, to my mind, that is a good thing to be.

People can live up to, or down to, the expectations we place on them. Why tell people from the get-go that they are less than some other person, especially regarding something as personal as spirituality? (Neither is this a good idea regarding government where we are supposedly a self-governing people, not one of rulers and serfs.) We can see people as "works in progress" where the end result is either a very cramped image of who we think they should be because we know better, or where the end result is mostly contained within themselves and we aid with the expression of that. But we are likely not doing anyone much of a favor by flaunting letters and supposed expertise, whether talking spirituality or politics. Instead, I think we do people a great service when we help to develop their capabilities rather than, in many subtle and sneaky ways, make them more and more dependent on us.

Brothel about made me just about spit out a lung today.

I'm normally a parking lot Nazi. We have people from a neighboring apartment complex who try to park in our lot all the time. It's a constant battle. We've towed more than a few cars in our time, but we usually give a warning first. Anyway, this one truck was sitting in the lot all day. It was due. But it had a Dept. of Defense sticker on it so I usually cut those guys a little slack. So I did. But had the car been there tomorrow, we would have had it towed.

Anyway, about 15 minutes ago this older lady pulls into the parking lot and a man in his mid 20's gets out of the car and walks over to the truck. I went outside and basically said, "Hey. Just to let you know in the future, we usually tow cars without warning." Anyway, the guy tells me that he had gone out with some friends the night before and got severely drunk and had to be driven home. There's probably more to the story than that, but none of my business. But he was a very clean-cut guy and it was a very expensive and fairly new truck. He was very apologetically and thanked me sincerely for not towing him and then I went back inside the office.

Brothel then asked me about what he had said. I told him that he had told me that he had gotten pretty drunk the night before. Brothel, unbeknownst to me, had scoped out the vehicle himself earlier and then said to me, "Well, that's pretty good for a guy who has a bunch of church books in his front seat." That's when the lung nearly escaped my lips. I wasn't braced for the laugh. Another slice of life.

Why women now prefer Johnny Depp to Sean Connery
British women now prefer feminine looking men over their more rugged counterparts because they no longer need to worry about the survival of the fittest, new research suggests.
by Richard Alleyne

quote:

The researchers at the University of Aberdeen came to the conclusion after studying the preferences of 4500 women from 30 different countries.

They found a direct correlation between the quality of health care and the choice of male.

In countries with better health care, the more likely women would pick a feminine looking man and visa versa.

The result was that in Sweden, which had the best health care, most women (68 per cent) preferred feminine looking men.

In contrast in Brazil, which had the worst health care, the majority of women (55 per cent) preferred masculine men.

"The results suggests that as health care improves, more masculine men fall out of favour," said the lead author and psychologist Dr Lisa DeBruine.

"That could be why feminine looking movie stars like Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom are popular now compared with the likes of Clark Gable and Sean Connery in the past."

Interesting article. But, first off, caution must be exercised. If it were true that women are actually choosing more feminine-looking men it would mean there are a pile of lonely, unattached masculine men out there, and I don't think that is the case at all. What women answer in some survey often doesn't reflect what they actually do. And we're probably talking more about fashion, hair styles, and other superficial things that go to make men more feminine looking while the actual physical traits remain the same.

I have long been a huge proponent of the idea that men are being wussified. But it takes tens of thousand of years for actual genetic change of that magnitude to occur in a population, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of years. But there can be no doubt that through dress, habit, affectations, speech (I've been talking for a long time now about the girl-i-fied accent that young men in particular often adopt), and political/social views that men are being wussified.

But *why* women may prefer a wussified man is still an idea up for grabs. I doubt it has much to do with health care, per se, since what is often called "better" health care in places such as Europe is just socialized medicine where it is technically free but where the quantity and quality is almost always less than one gets in the United States. But it would be extremely unusual if there were not cultural changes in the behavior of women as the state replaces the husband as a provider of material resources and security.

And why men should want to be wussified is another interesting question. It is well documented that there is a war against masculinity going on in our Western culture. Why this should be is yet another question, but let's assume for the sake of argument that it is so. Men, ever the opportunistic competitors for the affections of women, are certainly capable of rapid cultural change in regards to attracting women and fulfilling their wishes. If, for whatever reason, women prefer wussified men, men can and will respond in kind.

But that this state of affairs exists at all (and I think it does) goes to show that women play a huge role in sexual selection and always have. It is probably technically true that women have tended to choose less masculine men, starting probably well over a million years ago. In the human species the size difference is relatively small between men and women, especially compared to other species. If you look at a male gorilla and a female gorilla, there is a huge difference in size. Certainly the competition between males helps determine physical traits (as does the need to fend off predators), but the peacock's tail, for instance, is thought to be almost completely the result of female tastes. And so it is arguable that in the human species that, for whatever reason this turned out to be advantageous for the woman and her offspring, less massive and therefore less masculine males tended to be chosen by the females.

quote:

"Marxist is as Marxist does." – Forest Gump. Maybe. I'm doing that last one from memory.

Bwhahahaha! That was a good one.

An interesting point in your post above:

quote:

The idea arises: If one can have expertise in tooth-pulling, can one have expertise in the area generally defined as "spirituality"? That's where it gets trickier because we've just made a leap into an area that is an inherently subjective and personal.

The same can be said of being a LEADER. In fact, some of the worst leaders in this country have the most practice and experience in governance.

The point I'd make to challenge this line of discourse is this: There are GOOD dentists, and there are dentists who are butchers. Simply going to dental school, and being a practicing dentist, even being accredited, doesn't necessarily make you excellent. And there's technical skill, and a great chairside manner, both are quantifiable and contribute to an overall sense of whether a dentist is good at his craft or not.

At most, BEING a dentist gives you some specialized knowledge that the layman doesn't have. But that's like saying people who've read Karl Marx in college, and who call themselves MARXISTS are ready to wield those teachings in the world. We have no sense of whether they are EXPERT Marxists, we only know their chosen path.

It's what you DO with your specialized knowledge that matters. I can call myself a fly fisherman. But until I catch fish, I'm a dilettante.

Now, when you get into esoterica, and metaphysics... and religion, disciplines where there's only a fuzzy idea of where your specialized knowledge comes from, it's very difficult to judge things like effectiveness and quality. What makes a priest a good priest? Or an imam a good imam? It's not enough to have read the bible or the qur'an. We often expect our "spiritual" types to lead by example, and we judge whether they live by their principles.

So why oh why don't we do that for Marxists? Since when have you met a marxist lefty who redistributes their OWN wealth? Right.

In our current political climate, even with the friggin' PRESS in the bag for them, these fucktards can't keep their own story straight. They're constantly being caught in lies and hypocrisy. Obama's own words sink him more than O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Rush combined.

It's the same thing that happens when a religious right wing nut gets caught blowing guys in public toilets, or living some other tawdry double life. You go: THIS guy claims to have moral superiority over ME? THIS guy is trying to explain to me right from wrong? Puh-leez.

Now, I've met Christians who walk the walk. They are rare. Too rare. But I'll tell you what. The one thing they have in common is a good and honest sense of their own fallibility. And they're more involved with living a life according to their own principles, than telling people what to do. My buddy the pastor is a good pastor. Why? Because he doesn't sermonize in terms of presuming to tell people how to behave. Which is the OPPOSITE of a smug slick guy like Osteen. My buddy will give his opinions, he'll try to interpret scripture, he'll hash out spiritual dilemmas with his "flock"... but he doesn't give ANSWERS. Why? Because he doesn't know them. The most he will do is tell people what HE has faith in. And he'll follow that up with "and I don't have a speck of evidence to back this up... it's just a feeling."

That's more truthful and powerful, and I'd argue SPIRITUAL, than most clergymen could even hope for. Having a knowledge of scripture is like having a knowledge of Star Wars. It's trivia. Before a Star Wars fan could BECOME something like a jedi knight, they'd have to do more than be able to recite the lines from all the movies.

That's how we need to deal with Leadership, Specialized knowledge, spirituality... even ART! I have plenty of specialized knowledge. The question is, whether I have talent, ability, and whether my work is good when judged on its merits. I'm certainly free to call myself an artist. But the world at large, my audience will be the true judge of that. At least of whether I'm good or not.

The worst judge of whether President Obama is a good leader or not, is himself. The American People grade his performance as commander in chief. And at this point, I'm giving him an F-

quote:

Now, I've met Christians who walk the walk. They are rare. Too rare. But I'll tell you what. The one thing they have in common is a good and honest sense of their own fallibility. And they're more involved with living a life according to their own principles, than telling people what to do. My buddy the pastor is a good pastor. Why? Because he doesn't sermonize in terms of presuming to tell people how to behave. Which is the OPPOSITE of a smug slick guy like Osteen. My buddy will give his opinions, he'll try to interpret scripture, he'll hash out spiritual dilemmas with his "flock"... but he doesn't give ANSWERS. Why? Because he doesn't know them. The most he will do is tell people what HE has faith in. And he'll follow that up with "and I don't have a speck of evidence to back this up... it's just a feeling."

That's more truthful and powerful, and I'd argue SPIRITUAL, than most clergymen could even hope for. Having a knowledge of scripture is like having a knowledge of Star Wars. It's trivia. Before a Star Wars fan could BECOME something like a jedi knight, they'd have to do more than be able to recite the lines from all the movies.

Older brothel is a wee bit like that. Not real preachy, per se, at least in day-to-day activities.

But there's little doubt in my mind that you've absolutely nailed it. So much about spirituality is about pretending to be a Jedi. And I really connect with your idea of what one does with one's specialized knowledge, the difference between an armchair quarterback like me and someone who actually, say, writes a book (although as I tell my friends, I tend to write a chapter every day somewhere).

But who doesn't like the idea of being a chosen people? Hands? Okay, maybe you, but not that many others. I think it's a deep part of human nature to want to be "special." That's why a lot of yutes pick up with "social" causes of one kind or another, no matter how loopy, and often no matter how destructive. And quite a few of those causes are counter-productive and harmful to the people they purport to be helping. That this should be the case is easily explained: people are often more consumed with the desire to feel special (and being seen by others as being special) than actually being special in a way that is anything other than a pleasing delusion.

That's why I have respect for Francis of Assisi. I may not believe all that he believed, but he lived his beliefs. It wasn't just armchair theoretical. He didn't just sit back and consider himself the specially anointed, nor was his "specialness" simply one based on ritual (which adds a little kinetic action to the Jedi beliefs and makes it seem like you're doing something more than just engaging in Jedi mind tricks). He got his hands dirty. He washed the feet of the lepers. He gave stuff to the poor. And, perhaps more important, because he was doing tangible things other than just the voodoo of ritual, his entire craft, if you will, wasn't about going around hitting other people with the magic stick of "I'm special." That's how cults work. Nobody is really doing anything special other than engaging in the fantasy that they are all special. And this becomes a game and a cause unto itself. In such a circumstance, those with, say, a gift for gab, who have charisma, or who are just particularly good liars become the leaders of these kinds of movements. It's all about playing Jedi rather than being a Jedi.

Right. St. Francis, we assume, wasn't in it for the aggrandizement of the myth of St. Francis, although that certainly happened. A life dedicated to service is unique enough that there's a political SLANT to that, which is renown.

The fact is, Saints and Martyrs became world famous. Lived on in tales, like Jedi. Seemed like the sicker your death, or the more you sacrificed or self-mortified, the greater your reward in this life (and presumably the next).

Christ, after all, laid it ALL on the line. And we're still talking about him.

George Washington laid it on the line. He was the real deal. Who can claim that kind of dedication and honor nowadays? Cuntosi? Smugbama?

There is a difference between giving some change to a bum, and devoting your life to helping the poor. As I've said many, many times. I'd settle for just ONE democrat to help ONE poor person in some way other than lip service. For some reason other than political gain.

Remember that scene in the Godfather where Johnny Fontaine breaks down, and Don Vito gives him the "You can act like a man" speech?

quote:

"Oh Godfather, I don't know what to do...
You can act like a man! What's the matter with you? Is this how you've turned out? A Hollywood finocchio who cries like a woman?"

glossary:
finocchio = fag

quote:

The fact is, Saints and Martyrs became world famous. Lived on in tales, like Jedi. Seemed like the sicker your death, or the more you sacrificed or self-mortified, the greater your reward in this life (and presumably the next).

Speaking of bones and martyrs, one of the truly marvelous series is the "Cadfael" series starring Derek Jacobi. If you get a chance, queue up the episode titled "A Morbid Taste for Bones" or "The Holy Thief." These are two of the better episodes and you will no doubt come away with a keen affection for the crafty old Cadfael who is religious, but not a holy thief by any means. He's got just a bit of Penn & Teller in him. Just a bit. It's fun to see him eyeroll at some of this "relics" stuff. Priceless.

Yeah, a great scene from "The Godfather." Ouch. You're almost embarrassed for the guy.