Intellectuals and Politics – NYTimes.com.

Presidents Obama and Chavez and Secretary of State Clinton are all among the throngs of politicians around the world calling for the reinstatement of ousted Honduran president Zelaya.  The rallying cry is that Zelaya is the democratically elected president and that reinstating him would restore constitutionality to Honduras.  This is not only gross patronization to the Hondurans but is also beyond stupid.

Zelaya was ousted by the military, on orders of the Supreme Court and with the Congress accepting his resignation (if he wrote it or not is not the issue, Congress no longer recognizes him as the president) and swearing in the constitutionally next in line and Zelaya ally as the new president.  Oh and also the people don’t seem too upset; in a country of 7 million, 200 have shown up to protest.

So the only way I can see of reinstating Zelaya would be to invade Honduras, kill soldiers defending their homeland from foreign aggression, arrest the Supreme Court Justices, arrest most of the members of Congress,  execute the top military brass, and install Zelaya as president and enforce his rule (his military is dead at this point so it will have to be done by foreign troops) on a population that does not want him.  And this is what is referred to as “restoring the constitutionality”.  If you know of any other way to do it feel free to comment.

This video is interesting and entertaining to say the least.  The producers certainly take a position but it is tough not to take a position on this issue; that American education is based on the Prussian model is undisputed.

“It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of intruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” – Albert Einstein

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mundane educational system… go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts.” – Frank Zappa

Via here

bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/

It really disturbs me when terms are abused and this happens often.  It is especially disturbing when those who are adversarial to the term in question use it to mean something it does not.  This means they are either ignorant or dishonest.  So this is a public service announcement for the benefit of all the adversaries of Intelligent Design out there.

Intelligent Design is not a rival to Evolution.  When you pit the two against one another, you sound stupid.  You are making either a claim from ignorance or are being dishonest.  Both discredit you and your argument.  Furthermore, intellectual dishonesty runs completely contrary to the ideals of scientific inquiry which you attack Intelligent Design for violating.  Therefore you are a hypocrit.

Young Earth Creationism is a rival to Evolution, Intelligent Design is not.  Most Intelligent Design proponents reject Evolution, but the theory itself does not.

Evolution (personified) should take no issue with Intelligent Design.  Intelligent Design (though not a direct rival) is a rejection of Modernism, with its rejection of all things super-natural.  It is not a rejection of Evolution which makes no claim with regards to the super-natural.  Lets get this right, Please!

A shirt by Threadless. Look em up!

Liberal and conservative economic models share a common flaw.  For the most part Democrats and Republicans are synonymous with liberals and conservatives but not quite.  The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans take a compromised position on economic policy.  They lean liberal or lean conservative but are unwilling to commit fully.  This is symptomatic of one or more of the following, intellectual laxity, a lack of commitment or belief in the cause, or pandering to voters which in turn shows  a lack of moral character and fortitude.  Socialists and Libertarians tend to be much more consistent in their economic policy views and carry liberal and conservative philosophy much closer to their respective logical conclusions than most members of the two major parties do.  For the sake of this article the terms “liberal” and “conservative” will refer more to the ideals of those philosophies rather than to the mostly inconsistent members of any particular party.

The thing that liberals and conservatives mutually miss or mess up in economic policy is love.  Yes that’s right, love.  I’ll start with the liberals.

Liberals tend to be concerned with the well being of the poor, which is good and loving.  So they begin on the right track but, they forget about love, and so go about it all wrong.  Liberal economic policy in a simplified form is like Robin Hood, take from the rich and give to the poor.  Because the money was not given freely, but rather forced by law, it is not charity. The rich, some of whom are very charitable, resent their money being voted out of their hands and given to the voters.  They feel that the masses have risen up and stolen from them like a pitchfork mob storming the castle.  Because it was not charity (that is, a gift), the poor begin to feel they have a right to it and thus that the rich have stolen from them.  The poor then come to resent the rich.  So liberal economic policy leads to greater mutual class resentment and less love.

Conservative economic policy focuses on what is just.  It is unjust to take a man’s private property so conservatives push for fewer taxes and freer markets.  They count on the market growing when there are fewer restrictions and generally it does.  This they reason, should help the poor in a trickle down effect.  In this model, the poor are an afterthought, not very loving.  The poor resent being an afterthought and the rich assume that the poor are poor because they are either lazy or stupid.  This is not a good way to breed love.

Charity (that is, grace) is the action of love.  Charity and love are two sides of the same coin. Where there is no love, there can be no charity, this is the problem of conservative economics.  Where there is not charity, there can be no love, this is the problem of liberal economics.  So liberals and conservatives take different paths to smothering love as much as possible.  Call me crazy.

Jiminy is the manliest of bugs.

I have written several times before on truth, the lack of it, the abuse of it, and the blatant disregard of it.  USA Today published an article and an opinion piece that should be of interest to any of my fellow lover’s of truth out there.  This is just downright infuriating.  The articles are both on the lack of truth in the political TV ads from the McCain and Obama campaigns.

If you want my concise paraphrase of both articles here it is, “Neither of the United States presidential candidates seems to have scruples about completely  misleading the American people for their own political gain and McCain is the worse of the two.” There you go.

There is so much more I could say on this.  I believe this is the inevitable result manifest, of living in the postmodern era.

The fact checking websites,  FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com were heavily cited in both the article and the opinion.  The chart below helps to demonstate how widespread the problem is.

PolitiFact.com rates candidates’ statements on a six-category scale from “true” to “pants on fire” falsehoods.

Barely true

McCain 22

Obama 14

False

McCain 23

Obama 18

Pants on fire

McCain 6

Obama 1

Source: PolitiFact.com, a joint venture of the St. Petersburg Times and CQ.

This stuff makes me want to pull my hair out and start lighting things on fire!

What a roguishly maverick character, eh?

The race for the White House is about McCain’s experience and Obama’s charisma and celebrity, or at least it was until Sarah Palin was put on the ticket.  By far the largest legitimate chink in Obama’s armor was his lack of experience.  McCain has found a way to make sure that this is not a campaign issue.  Obama can not attack McCain on his lack of celebrity without exposing the superficiality of his own campaign but McCain could use Obama’s inexperience against him, could that is until he tapped Palin to be his running mate.

Palin’s experience amounts to being governor of Alaska for a whopping 20 months.  Being governor of any state is a tough job but does that qualify you to be president?  Isn’t that like being the mayor of Denver with more parkland?  That’s good resume’ fluff if you want to be vice president of the Red Cross but we’re talking about being VP of the United States, one heartbeat from the White House!

I think Sarah Palin was chosen because McCain hopes she will be able to get people excited, that she will be a celebrity.  So, both candidates  tried to patch up their armor with their VP picks.  Its just that Biden’s experience helps Obama’s campaign and Palin’s inexperience helps Obama’s campaign.  I do give McCain some credit though, if all he wanted was a conservative Obama then he could have put Joel Osteen on the ticket.

“Never mention politics or religion, in polite conversation.”  It’s a common phrase and you heard it many times.  It is also one of the most destructive ideas of Western civilization.  Think about it for a minute, is there anything more important to discuss than politics and religion?  Religion, is what you believe, is, and politics, is what you believe should be.  Religion in this sense could also be a worldview, it could be a particular theory of metaphysics, or it could be one of the more traditional religions.  In any case, it deals with man’s relationship to God or lack there of and questions of ultimate truth and reality.  Politics deals with man’s relationships with each other.  I can think of nothing that could be more important to discuss, especially in polite conversation. 

The purpose of this proverb, (I’ll be referring to it as the pseudo-polite rule, and you’ll see why in a second) is to maintain a polite atmosphere.  The fear is that, if it’s discovered that two people in a conversation disagree with one another, then the conversation will quickly turn to bickering.  I contend that if the conversation would turn to bickering simply because there’s a disagreement, than it is not a polite conversation to begin with, only pseudo-polite.  The parties to a conversation like that never had any real respect for each other in the first place, they just didn’t have the opportunity to display their disrespect.  It is extremely foolish and immature to take the position that one can only be polite with those one agrees with.  Now, it is true that there are many foolish and immature people out there who can only be polite with those they agree with but these people are bigots, and creating a pseudo-polite environment, only enables them to continue in their bigotry.

Arguments are after all, cooperative, not competitive ventures.  The purpose of an argument is always to come to agreement.  Usually when arguing, you are seeking to convert your opponent to your point of view.  Sometimes you’re seeking compromise, but either way you’re seeking agreement.  Also, when venturing into an argument, you accept the risk that you could be the one converted.  In this way an argument is a cooperative venture.  Those who seek to “win an argument” were never in an argument in the first place, they were in a bickering match.

I don’t know when the pseudo-polite rule was invented, but I do know that through most of history, in most cultures, it was not the norm.  Perhaps it is because rhetoric is no longer taught in most schools and so people have a distorted view of argumentation and can no longer distinguish it from bickering, or perhaps it is this distorted view that led to rhetoric no longer being taught in school.  Whatever the cause, one need only look at the debates between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to see that arguing was not always equated with bickering and enmity.  These two men had extremely divergent views in both politics and religion, yet they had tremendous respect for one another and tremendous friendship. 

When the United States was in its infancy.  There was no Australian ballot.  The Australian ballot is how essentially all voting takes place in the Western world today.  It has become so common that there’s no longer any need to refer to it as the Australian ballot.  It’s simply the way voting is done.  You go into a booth and close the curtain fill out the ballot and place it in a box.  In this way, no one knows, if you voted Republican, Democrat, Whig, Socialist, or Libertarian.  We have become so concerned with the pseudo-polite rule that casting a ballot behind a shower curtain, has become a sacred right in most people’s minds.  When the US was in its infancy, ballots were cast by walking up to a table and picking up a red piece of paper or a blue piece of paper and placing it in the ballot box.  When voting, you may have turned and held up your ballot for everyone to see, you may even have had to do this on stage.  All your friends, family, and neighbors knew who you voted for and you better believe it got discussed.  This discussion is something that we have lost and I hope and pray that we can get it back.

I mentioned before that the pseudo-polite rule is one of the most destructive ideas of Western civilization, the reason for that is this.  The pseudo-polite role attempts to limit or shut down completely, argument and debate (among friends and family, at least).  Progress comes through dissent.  You can have no progress, if you have no disagreement.  If you only agree and you only speak about things you agree on then the status quo is the best you can hope for.  Progress only comes when someone says, “I think there is a better way to do this.”  That, is a disagreement. 

Furthermore, what is the point of conversation at all, if you’re only going to discuss things you agree on?  If you meet a friend for lunch and you both adhere to the pseudo-polite role, then you might as well just sit and smile at each other, because you’re not going to get anything done with conversation!  Conversation among friends like that (and they can’t really be friends if you can’t disagree) is nothing more than a mutual patting each other on the back fest!  A nation or a culture with out argument and debate is like a crab, it can only move sideways or backwards.  The nations with the most vibrant debating culture are sure to be the ones making the quickest and most rapid progress.  Get out of Pleasant Valley and stop being afraid of running into someone you might disagree with!

What is the mission of coalition troops in Iraq today?  This is a legitimate question that I would like responses to.  I’m not trying to prove a point, I’m just asking.  The removal of Saddam Hussein was a noble act and a just cause for going to war, even without WMD’s, ties to terrorism, or threats to his neighbors.  Hussein was a cruel dictator and the world is better with him gone.  I also understand the rationale behind staying to ensure fair democratic elections.  It is true that the Al Maliki government is not completely stable, but it is doubtful if it will ever be stable as long as coalition troops are there.  There is still violence in Iraq, but there can be no question that much of it is because of the presence of Western troops on Muslim soil.  The Bathists have for the most part been defeated.  Is it within the scope of the mission for the United States and Britain to prevent a civil war and Iraq?  It looks more and more like that is what they are doing.

This is from, Jihad Watch who in turn got it from, Infidel Bloggers Alliance. I never thought of the Fins as the type to back down from a fight. I always had this idea that they were rugged individualists who prided themselves on their independence. Through 700 years of foreign occupation, they were able to maintain their cultural identity and their language. Twice, they refused to back down to the Soviets and once to the Nazis. Yet today, I read that they have bent to the will of the Islamists. I don’t know what kind of rights are recognized by the Finnish government, but I had assumed that they were basic enough to include freedom of speech. I thought that was a given in the Western world. If it was, then it’s not anymore. The Islamists have accomplished what both the Red Army and the SS failed to do.

Finland sentenced blogger, Seppo Lehto to two years and seven months in prison. His crime? Defamation, inciting ethnic hatred, and inciting religious hatred. Lehto posted a video on YouTube in which he draws a pig named Mohamed popping a squat on the Koran. There is little doubt that Lehto is vile and hateful and I am not defending him, but this got him two years and seven months in a country where the maximum sentence for murder is twelve years! It appears clear to me, that Finland is afraid of the Islamists and is slowing surrendering. When will we see burqas and religious police in Helsinki?

Here is a link to the movie, you can watch it if you want to, but it is offensive. However, what he says about Mohamed being a pedophile is true, if you believe having sex with a nine year old is pedophilia. Citation from al-Hadith. I would love to get responses, especially from Fins, most especially from Muslim Fins.