On the subject of White Guilt, I don't have any. None. And the more you learn about the actual history of slavery, the more you learn that it is a matter of human guilt, but not White Guilt. I was surprised to read in Dinesh D'Souza's book "What's So Great About America" (great book, by the way) that one or more African countries sent delegations to America to try to keep the slave trade going.

Slavery is wrong, but the black-and-white version fed to most of us isn't by any means the whole story. There is no race culpability. There is only human culpability. And it seems that throughout most of history, slavery was just another human institution and didn't have a heck of a lot to do with racism, if it had anything to do with it at all. I think those who say that racism against blacks followed slavery – and not the other way around – are probably at least partially correct.

I'll look any black man in the eye and say "I don't owe you anything." And that's because the idea of guilt-by-race is so medieval. It's a throw-back to the caste system of Hindus where who you are as a person doesn't matter. Your state of birth, race, or whatever, determines who you are. Any true American should say "screw that" to such a notion, and I most certainly do. Don't ask for quotas. Don't ask for reparations. Ask only for equal protection under the law and common human decency and I'm there with with bells on.

I'll read your comments about Hitchens (which seem spot-on) but I won't bother reading his articles and stuff because I've pretty much written him off as an intellectual. I mean, the tired clichés of the left I left behind in Kindergarten…or at least a decade or two ago. I'm surprised such an intelligent man can't see through the cloud of his own bias. And I'm assuming he's not just pandering to his followers. I assume he's stating his own mind.

quote:

But Beck believes that politics is the problem and religion is the solution. And he was very effective in communicating that.

Eschatology. That's where it's all at. And Providence. There are people reading these events like tea leaves. That preacher I talked to today did. All that's happening now is in the bible. And, of course, every event of any magnitude that comes around is the presage for Biblical Really Bad Stuff (BRBS) or is the foreteller of the augur of the portents of BRBS.

That's what probably 50% (or more) of the Return to Honor stuff is about. And Beck isn't shy about it. He says we need to return to God in order to restore his blessings. Me, I think we need to reduce entitlements, free up the free market, adhere strictly to the Constitution, reduce taxes, reduce regulations, get rid of several cabinet-level departments, freeze Federal hiring, pass Constitutional amendments for term limits and a balanced budget, drill-baby-drill, de-regulate the health care industry completely, open mail delivery to competition, re-vamp NASA and give it a new and grand goal, and shove Saul Alinsky's book up a few people's butts. And that's just for starters.

But for many people, returning to God isn't ignoring the details. It is *the* detail, and the only one that matters, or the one that will supposedly be the catalyst for all the necessary details, some of which I listed. Okay, certainly, without a doubt some return to honor, to truth, to works/doesn't work is absolutely necessary. But I find it goes against my DNA to suppose that our metaphysical beliefs are the necessary precursor for all this stuff. Even the Founding Fathers didn't opt for a theocracy but for a very worldly and wise form of government. And then they said it would take a righteous and decent people to make it work.

And surely it does. I think we're seeing our country fall apart even now because everyone is pecking at its bones trying to get their share and caring very little about the carcass that is left behind. Remember, all these Christians (and they make up perhaps about 70% of the country or so) were responsible for voting in a Marxist-socialist House, Senate, and President. The rabid left wing is not yet a big enough faction to do it by themselves. We have brought upon our Christian selves this accumulating debt, the entitlements, and the butchering of our freedom and free market. Everyone ravenously wants their share. We may still be a highly religious people, but we have become an indecent people. And you'll forgive me if I don't see religion as the answer. I'm sort of in a "physician heal thyself" mode. Yes, I hope to god the Christians get it together enough to live at least a few of the Ten Commandments, including "Thou Shalt Not Lay Tens of Trillions of Debt upon Your Children and Grandchildren." I think that one's in there somewhere.

God, yeah, we need a return to honor. And as I say, let's make sure this is a return to the Jesus who said "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" and not the one who, for all intents and purposes, said "Give to Cuntlosi what is Cuntlosi's." That's what we have now. We have what I think is Ayn Rand's worse nightmare: "altruism" replacing capitalism, where "good intentions" remove all thought and any requirement to show results (and which also hides or ignores the harmful ones). (Thomas Sowell). That is what "white guilt" has given us. Everyone is so damn carrying. They care, like the story of the Pharisees, only that they be seen to be caring. Or they care only that "caring" gives them enough warm-fuzzies to curl their toes. Honor? Truth? Restoration? You bet. Just make sure the God you teach would fit playing a role in "Soylent Green" or "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and isn't simply Che Guevara without the hooked nose.

Oh, by the way, before bashing Hitchens, I had no idea the poor guy was dying. He's been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and is undergoing chemo... but it's spread to his lymph nodes, and his prognosis is not good. He himself says he'll be lucky to last five years.

A recent interview
he looks quite unwell.

NY Times article

Yeah that was terrible news on Hitchen's. The Hitchen's book cover they show at the beginning of that clip is a picture of him smoking.

So who watched the Terrorist-in-Chief last night speak from the Oval Office? Thank the lord it was only fifteen minutes. It was on Iraq but it seemed like he didn't speak about Iraq at all. Frankly he sounded like a rambling fool. Condescending tone. One big cliche after another. Clueless to foreign policy.

Liberty...2010.

quote:

He's been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and is undergoing chemo... but it's spread to his lymph nodes, and his prognosis is not good.

I knew he had cancer, but I didn't know the prognosis was not good. Here's hoping, praying, and wishing Brother Hitchens gets better.

Yes, I heard Obama's speech last night, Rico. Some of the words were just fine words. But I don't believe a thing this guy says. You need a little oval circle in the right hand corner of the screen with somebody translating what he is actually saying as he says it. His words are meant to hide the reality that lies underneath.

"One big cliche after another" is a good way to put it. Yes, the condescending tone. Good call. He's always got that scolding, condescending tone. And he is indeed clueless to foreign policy. He even got a good dollop of "Blame Bush" in there. What a putz.

I know this cool conservative black guy on Facebook who asked me this morning "What do I say when people call me intolerant?" The best I could think to say was:

What a great question. I probably will fail in giving any kind of a short answer. I would first tell people that "intolerant" is a word that people typically use to mean "You're a bad person." It's a smear, and there is usually no rational argument that comes along with the use of the word. The actual word itself (like so many others) has been bastardized by the left. The word "tolerance" has been so mindlessly adopted as a good thing that people actually are tolerant of intolerance (such as Islamism) because they think to not tolerate stuff is a bad thing that only bad people do. Of course, the only people who don't have to be tolerated are conservatives, which shows the deep hypocrisy of the concept as used by liberals.

The word "intolerant" (just like the word "fascist"), when used by the left, simply means "things I don't like." But as an actual dictionary word, tolerance is a good concept. It's still a good word that has a definite meaning. Some things we shouldn't tolerate such as racism, including (in my opinion) the institutionalized racism of quotas. We should not tolerate law-breakers such as illegal aliens. We should not tolerate a suicidally nutty society such as Iran getting nuclear weapons. We can agree or disagree on the particular things we think we should tolerate or not tolerate, but "tolerance" itself as used by liberals is typically just a mindless buzzword people use to mean "I'm a good guy and you're a mean person."

It's heady stuff. Imagine back in the Middle Ages where people could just point their finger at someone and declare "A witch! A witch!" This is little different than the way the word "intolerant" is thrown around these days by many.

Some things we should tolerate and other things we should not. We should be able to have an open and frank discussion about this without "intolerant" being a word that is used like an incantation. And at the bare minimum — particularly in this country founded upon freedom — we should be able to tolerate people airing different political ideas without slamming them with the mindless buzzword of "intolerance." Our country is built on the free interchange of ideas, so before we get out our witch's brew of condemnation words, we should tolerate the airing of conservative ideas, just for starters.

But conservatives are generally not tolerated by those who mindlessly throw around the word "tolerance." That is because those on the left have pre-judged what conservatism means even without having a full or even bare understanding of its ideas. Pre-judging is what "prejudice" means. And to have people mindlessly hurl the word "intolerant" when they themselves are the very definition of intolerant is a mind-barrier that mere logic will not easily penetrate.

So, in short, the word "intolerant" is now a word put into the service of those who pre-judge. And neither I nor Martin Luther King Jr. have any short and simple words for how to combat that. We should have a discussion about what kind of stuff we should tolerate and what kind of stuff we should not. But hitting each other over the head with the word "intolerant" without any clear definition, or any reasoning beyond the buzzword, is simply to do what the left is doing now with the word "racist." They are using it to try to besmirch those who simply disagree with them politically. And there seems to be an over-inflated sense of self-righteousness that comes along for the ride. Whatever tolerance truly is, that kind of heady self-righteousness is not one of its ingredients.

Maybe just have your adversaries read the above. I don't know. But I hope this helps.

Actually, that's a pussy question. Oh boo hoo, people call me intolerant. If you live your life worrying about what people call you, instead of what's true or just, sorry, you're kind of spineless.

Me, I can take being called intolerant. I can take being called a racist. Neither of which are true, so it kinda rolls off my back.

But to understand the left, and this culture, you have to first and foremost understand that most of the people engaged in discourse and debate have completely lost their minds... they not only CARE about being called names, the offense at being called names drives them. Sometimes that's the only reason they are engaged. It's almost like a drug-seeking behavior. The second thing to remember, that the left will always, always, always substitute postmodern vocabulary, simple word association, for thought.

As much as I disagreed with Hitchens in his last, terrible article... I know the guy is a thinker. Usually. He very rarely relies on simple word association to make his points. As frustratingly intellectual as the guy sounds, I have never once sat there doubting that the guy has done his homework.

That being said, a good provocateur is one who will wade in and call names, and get people lit up... somebody like Ann Coulter. She'll use humor and satire, and deploy her words in such a way that the Left has no defense. BECAUSE they're all about labels rather than issues, they always lose. I think that shit is FUN, liberal baiting is fine sport, but if you really want to engage in cogent debate and dialog, you sort of have to be a grownup.

And that means, if the name calling DOES start (and it will), you have to be able to see it for what it is, laugh it off. Lookit Beck right now when he gets all these fucktards calling him a racist. He simply demonstrates where that name calling is coming from. He shows the facts, offers up an alternative view, and it leaves the mainstream media looking like a complete pack of retards.

The left is desperate right now--and it's evidenced by Obama's speech--because nobody gives the slightest credence to what they say anymore. Obama was stiff as a 2x4 in that speech, and his motives and strategy for making the associations he made were so clear that all you can do for a speech like that is eye roll and be thankful it wasn't his typical campaign-mode razzle dazzle. But all it means is that his handlers know that doesn't play with us any more... and so he simply changed character to serious and stiff.

But what he and his marketeers don't understand is that the American People don't want yet another rewrite of Obama's character in a teleprompter script [fold hands. Look serious], we want a president WITH character. Obama never comes off as anything but a snake, and that's a direct result of habitually hiding who he is and what he believes.

I figure the best Obama has ever done on camera was when he did his comedy routine for the Press Dinner with McCain that time during the campaign. He was relaxed, funny, we were obviously seeing some of the real Barack there. If we were hiring a far left wing stand-up comic, he would have gotten the job. He would have kicked Al Franken's ass.

But the thing is, we don't want left wing comedians running the country. We're only going to be charmed so far by that.

Personally, I'm sick to death of it. I'm sick to death of all the wordplay. Sarah Palin is like the antithesis of that, she's genuine, a straight-shooter and lo and behold, even though I eye roll at some of her religious views, and some of her speech patterns... holy crap, I'd bet the farm that this chick would bend over backwards to keep America strong, and I'd trust her to do the right thing if she had power.

Obama? Please. I wouldn't trust him to get me coffee without screwing it up. For all his supposed intellectual prowess and slick TV image, he's proven time and again to be ill-equipped, untrustworthy, glib, and wrong. I mean wrong ALL THE TIME. I have friends like that. Nice enough, but jesus, every thing out of their mouths has these big errors, they get the facts wrong on everything they blather on about. They make decisions that always end up hurting themselves, their families, everything. They can't buy a round of beers without fucking it up. And they think they're the shit when it comes to being savvy.

I was just listening to Palin on Hannity's radio show. LOL. Man, I do love that woman. She was giving the "lamestream" media hell. She was calling the reporters who report as fact anonymous rumors "impotent and limp." Sign her up. Wait. I think she already is.

Regarding "intolerance," it's more than a boo-hoo point. I'm guessing this guy can handle himself. If you're a black guy, and you're a conservative, that automatically makes you an outcast in many places. This guy already shows some bravery by being black and being openly conservative.

I think the guy asked a logical question. How do you counter the disingenuous liberal arguments that amount to little more than "I know you are but what am I?" I think it's important that we can stare their BS down and throw a good argument back at them, if only to show all those "independents," "moderates," and fence-sitters what a good argument and a backbone look like. It's unlikely any argument I make is going to change the mind of a true believer. But it might help to change the minds of all those sitting on the fence. If they don't ever hear an effective counter-argument, a lot of people will simply have a mind formed by the talking points of the left.

I think growing a thick skin is a required task for anyone beyond the age of 3. We are not truly a civilized being if we can't take a little criticism and heckling. It is the savages and primitives of society who think every insult must be countered. I don't know that I gave an effective counter-argument to this guy. I've interacted with him before and he knows I'm pretty long-winded, so I don't think he was looking for a Magic Bullet. My opinion was more an analysis and something he can keep on "deep background" in regards to understanding the situation. If he was looking for a witty rejoinder (and I doubt that he was), I certainly didn't give him that. But I'll give all these black conservatives every little bit of advice and support that I can.

I love her too. Forget the iron lady, she could be our Churchill. Or more of a compliment, our next Reagan. Since Churchill lived in a culture that bows to a monarch, and we're definitely not that.

I find it pretty much ridiculous to try and give a salient answer to "I know you are but what am I?" It's a waste of time. Really the only thing to do in that situation is poke holes in the bedrock belief system, starting with their self perception, which is the thing most out of whack. And you can do that with a rhetorical crowbar, you don't need a scalpel. I'm fairly convinced that people who end up in Beavis and Butthead territory politically, are more afraid of appearing UNCOOL than they are worried about the planet, or minorities, or whatever the fuck.

You simply have to do what Coulter does, and point out how horribly uncool they are. And that's shooting fish in a barrel. Easy as pie.

It's like the Apple Faithful. Pointing out the bill of goods they've been sold like the iPhone4, or OS X, exposes them as gullible rubes. Lemmings.

To me, the cool people are always the free thinkers. The left hasn't had an original thought since Marx. Was it O'Reilly or Hannity who said that there is absolutely no one on the Left who could have gotten the turnout for the rally on the Mall that Beck did. Nobody who's done that kind of homework and honest-to (er) GOD thinking. Agree with him or not, but the guy took ideas, added what brainpower he had, and honestly and forthrightly tried to come to conclusions. He followed nobody's talking points. And thus becomes an unlikely leader. He has actual leadership, rather than followership qualities.

I'll remember the "uncool" part. I think that's a good angle. I think as Sowell and others have noted, the left is also taking the self-righteous angle, what Sowell calls "The Vision of the Anointed." They believe themselves better than others and get a grand kick out of feeling "morally anointed." You have no problem seeing that among many religious people too. So I would say find to a way to make them look uncool and morally dubious.

Doing either is a real challenge, but playfully and humorously mocking them is absolutely key. Beck's audience is huge, while Olbermann's is tiny. Rush vilifies with humor and mockery, and Air America never could get off the ground. But electorally, the left has gotten off the ground obviously controlling all two of the three branches of government. We should probably say there are now four branches with the administrative unelected bureaucracy being the fourth, and the left very nearly has majority control of that, if they don't already. They certainly have the State Department, for example.

How did the left get there when they are little more than nasty, humorless scolds? That's a good question. But ultimately, Mr. and Mrs. America voted for these twits. We need to ask them what was on their minds.

I get a kick out of Mark Levin. He's not a real big fan of Glenn Beck to put it mildly. In fact, sometimes he doesn't do real well hiding his disdain. Last night he was going on about (and remember he's half yelling this) "The founding of America was not a religious war. It was about a fight against tyranny." That, I'm pretty sure (I didn't catch the entire segment), was a shot across the bow of Beck's revival rally.

Hey, Mark, I'm in your corner. But the thing about Levin, it seems so obvious he's driven by jealousy. But he's a good guy.

quote:

So I would say find to a way to make them look uncool and morally dubious.

In my best Obi-Wan voice (the newer movies, not Alec Guinness)...

They have done that themselves.

They already ARE uncool and morally dubious. It's more like morally fractured. But they live in such a fierce reality distortion field, with their peers telling them how super awesome they are, that they FEEL cool. And we all know how important FEELINGS are to the left.

An iPhone makes people feel cool. So it's worth the exorbitant price. The thing can be a total lie, but as long as it looks cool or feels cool, the reality distortion field is holding.

Mockery and satire and humor, yes, give us a few "shields down, captain!" moments. But me, I always pound on the works/doesn't work common sense. How can you not laugh in someone's face when they start in with whiteness as a curse (all you need to do is point out that THEY are in fact white)... or what it means to help a minority (all you need to do is point out that THEY have never helped a minority, and that the left has been in charge of helping minorities for over HALF the history of this country, and they've done nothing but destroy lives).

The left is nothing but an Our Gang Comedy kind of clubhouse for fucking arrested development child-people who have completely lost the ability to see how uncool they have become. They've turned from patriots into stupid ponytail feelingsy wussies. Smugly talking about saving the planet, helping the downtrodden, the little guy... while destroying any possibility of doing that. What they're actually doing is ushering in bullshit half-a-commie culture, where we're gonna end up with a string of Hugo Chavez like tin pot dictators, and where we're gonna lose our COOLNESS... which is being a capitalist American patriot with some huevos who can stand up to terrorists and bankrupt political ideologies.

The Che shirt is a perfect example. People think it's cool. But ask them if they know what a racist turd Che was.

Beck had some footage of a faggy socialist enviro-whacko teacher who was talking about giving the United States back to the Indians. Collapsing the capitalist system and building communes for us all to live in. You could hear in his voice, with all its sibilant s's, how friggin' COOL he thought he was. The smug look he gave the camera said it all, "damn, I am the CAT'S ASS." Uh, no, no you aren't. You're a fucking idiot.

Speaking of undermining the "holier than thou" aspect of the left, I thought this was a good summing up of the leftist mindset by Selwyn Duke from his article The Envious Feminist:

quote:

People are emotional beings, often governed more by feelings than reason.  And this is never truer than with leftist people.
If you want to understand liberals, know that most of their ideology is simply a pseudo-intellectual justification for what feels right to them.  As for these feelings, the one stereotypically associated with the left is compassion, which supposedly manifests itself in mercy, charity, forgiveness and temperance.  In reality, though, a feeling that far better characterizes the left is envy.

I’m not the first to observe this.  Winston Churchill called socialism “the gospel of envy,” and this Daily Mail piece cites research showing that leftists are in fact consumed by the fault.  It is true, and it explains the real motivation behind their redistributionist tendencies: It’s not that they care so much that the poor have less.  They simply can’t stand the fact that others have more — than they do, that is.  But there is something they do want to share with their fellow man, a thing they have in abundance: misery.

The rest of the article is a pretty good skewering of feminists.

Here's another great distinction:

quote:

Another mistake is to think that anti-motherhood feminists’ attitude is merely the result of a lack of a maternal instinct.  Most women thus disposed (be it nature or nurture), and I’ve known a few, are only concerned about avoiding motherhood, not ending it.  They live and let live, and when they see a woman busily tending to a gaggle of children are only likely to chuckle and think, “Whew!  Better her than me!”  It’s much like the difference between a communal monk and a communist: One aims to purge himself of worldly desires, the other to purge the world of the desirous.  One has taken a vow of poverty, the other vows to destroy the wealthy.

Behind all that leftist "compassion" is really a desire to tear other people down. Here's another good quote:

quote:

I also realize that feminism is used by some as a vehicle through which very dark aims can be realized.  As feminist Catherine McKinnon has admitted herself, “Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in [sic] the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.”  But is this a surprise?  Envy helps drive communists as well.  It drives both feminists and communists to hate the successful.

Ayn Rand is a big believer that those on the left hate the successful. I think this is obviously so. It has nothing to do with "spreading the wealth."

That helps me to understand one of my friends/clients who is a wacko liberal. He's a very successful capitalist AND he's a supporter of the left. Now that I think about it, I think his beliefs are anger at those who have done better than he has. He has done well, but I think leftism for him is a way to exonerate himself from not having done better as well as a way to bring down a little those who have done better than him. It's an odd thing.

Europe's Guilty Conscience
by Pascal Bruckner

quote:

What is the point of our bad conscience? To purge our faults and to avoid falling back into old errors? Perhaps. But it serves mainly to justify renouncing political action. If the Old World invariably prefers guilt to responsibility, it is because the first is less burdensome; so one puts up with a guilty conscience. Our lazy despair leads us not to fight injustice but to coexist with it. We delight in tranquil impotence, and we take up residence in a peaceful hell. We allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with words of blame, a role we willingly adopt so as to be accountable to no one and to avoid taking any part in world affairs. Remorse is a mixture of good will and bad faith: a sincere desire to close old wounds and a secret wish to be left alone. Eventually, indebtedness to the dead prevails over duty to the living. Repentance makes of us a people who apologize for old crimes in order to ignore present ones.

Europe has developed a veritable fanaticism for modesty, but if it cannot preside over the destinies of the whole world, it must at least play a part, retain its special voice in favor of justice and law, and assume the political and military means to make itself heard. Penitence is finally a political choice; it is to choose an abdication that in no way immunizes us against mistakes. Fear of repeating yesterday’s errors makes us too indulgent of contemporary outrages. By preferring injustice to disorder, the Old World risks being swept away by chaos, the victim of a renunciation mistaken for wisdom.

Down on me knees in the "I'm not worthy" stance. Thomas Sowell. The Money of Fools.

Oh lordy, it moved. Brother Sowell is a thalo.netter in his, er, sou-ell.

I love how words end up getting charged one way, but end up really standing for their polar opposites, like gun control and social justice.

The guy has balls of steel:

quote:

Is the person who has spent years in school goofing off, acting up, or fighting — squandering the tens of thousands of dollars that the taxpayers have spent on his education — supposed to end up with his income aligned with that of the person who spent those same years studying to acquire knowledge and skills that would later be valuable to himself and to society at large?

Morning conservative radio guy Bryan Suits — you'd like him, he's an atheist — interviewed niece-of-Ted-Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, about her upcoming propaganda piece (aka "documentary") "The Fence" which will be appearing on HBO. Wow. The Kennedys have become stupid by birth. Seriously. Did they crossbreed with beagles at some point? Suits said "That's the first Kennedy that ever made me want to shoot myself in the head."

Dumb as a board. The documentary is apparently on tomorrow night. It's about the fence on the Mexican border.

How Obama Thinks
by Dinesh D'Souza

quote:

Morning conservative radio guy Bryan Suits — you'd like him, he's an atheist

LOL! I don't automatically like atheists, or automatically dislike religious people. I have a couple of atheist favorites (Penn Jillette, Chris Hitchens)... but I also have religious favorites, like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter.

I don't doubt that this generation of Kennedys are dumb as a palette of bricks. The idle rich and all that. Two generations of trust funds have done these kids no good. I think it happened when they lost their matriarch. I guess that role would be Caroline now, but she's nowhere near as ruthless and powerful as Rose was.

Holy crap did Glenn Beck scoop D'Souza by about a year on that one! It was like reading a summary of the Glenn Beck program. Almost plagarism on some of the points and conclusions, right down to the father stuff. Or else the points are so obvious, that everyone is getting them now.

This is one slant that I haven't heard from Beck:

quote:

Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.

I think that's pretty much on the money, but you might as well note the radical left's tendency to stack the deck in favor of ANY group they perceive as wronged or downtrodden, and muslims fit into that.

Here's where my support of the Ground Zero mosque differs from the left's: they are ass-kissing and double-standarding muslims, supporting the mosque is a kind of belly rolling. It's an affirmative action kind of game. Rigged toward a population that they are afeared of. Me, I come at it from a more rigid first-amendment stance. My point all along has been: it's a mosque. If they buy the building or pay the rent, who the hell can stop them? If you want to live in a free country, and boo hoo you don't like where these guys are putting the mosque, pipe up and use your free speech. But don't tell me the reasons for NOT wanting to put it there are anything but emotional. And sorry to say, Freedom sometimes hurts feelings. Offends sensibilities. Me, I'd rather be offended than squelch. I'd rather have a full-on victory mosque where the mosque-goers celebrate (peacefully and legally) the deaths of 3000 murdered Amercians every friggin' day, than the alternative of squelching freedom.

Because why? Because anyone building a mosque like that is subject to the same free speech backlash as anybody with any opinion. Yeah, maybe some on the left will cut the maximum slack to the mosque people, out of some silly Political Correctness... but that can't stop EVERYONE from speaking out. As long as it doesn't get violent, it's what America is all about. I guess people don't often picket houses of worship until they do something crazy... like I'm sure the Qur'an burning guy's church is loaded with protesters outside, but that's freedom in action too. We all can do it. We can picket the Church of Scientology, or the Catholic church if we want. If there's priests diddling altarboys, even with conspiracy and coverup, it comes out.

I think PREVENTING the mosque is wrong. I say fuck it... build it, and then sit back and watch the friggin' show, because there will be one. And it'll be America. I'd much rather have NOT squelched it, and live with whatever the consequences are. And yes, I've thought long and hard about that last statement. I would live with the consequences. No question.

I am such bad yuppie material. Rather than being awed by or swayed by the little yuppie attractors that the culture throws out at you like a line cast in a muddy river, I laugh at them. Sorry. It's just the way it is. And it's not cynicism so much as it is just a recognition that some people are probably shallow and stupid enough to be moved by slogans and catch phrases.

Anyway, I was in the restaurant for lunch today and it was a place that had microbrew posters all over the walls. It's a good restaurant, by the way. Well, one of the posters in the head was for a microbrew (I forget the brand) that had a tagline of "Unfiltered . . . like life." And it struck me like a Liam Neeson bolt of thunder straight out of the horrible "Clash of the Titans" hell that all these stupid slogans are like little micro-bits of therapy for the gallons of males out there who need to be convinced that their cubicle life isn't a cubicle life and that in one fell swoop they can grab a beer, imbibe the vibe, and pretend for a moment to be living the "unfiltered" life...one that they are obviously not living now or we wouldn't need all those little catch phrases like "no fear," "just do it," "unfiltered like life," etc.

Here's an article after Markle's own heart: The Architect Has No Clothes
by C. Edmund Wright