The rational voice that the Left is trying to silence:



Read: WSJ.com - 'Feigned Outrage Based on a False Narrative'

The Next Step

I think many believe that C. S. Lewis suffered some sort of impairment in the late 1940's (largely blamed on what is, in reality, a rather insignificant argument with Elizabeth Anscombe), after he wrote Miracles, a belief I used to somewhat buy in to, but am now no longer convinced of. They assume that, because Lewis was once largely preoccupied with more philosophical writing, when he turned to Narnia in the 1950's he somehow "stepped down." But given the whole arc of Lewis's work, I am inclined to believe he simply moved in a new direction. Writing was kind of a compulsion for Lewis, and his most popular books were written in his spare time (the only books that he really considered "work" were his scholarly publications).

Not only this, but if one really looks at the progression of Miracles (1947), a largely imaginative literature seems to logically "come next." For the aforementioned book begins with much logical rigor, and ends in a sort of epic tone. One might say the book represents, in brief, his lifelong intellectual progression. By the end of the book, Reason and Imagination have suffered a kind of fusion, Fact and Myth have become One. This is one of the very fundamental truths of the Christian faith: the Incarnation--God become Man--which is, to our human perception, the grand instance of Myth become Fact. As Chesterton put it, throughout history, philosophy and religion were like parallel rivers, but when Christianity came, those two rivers merged and became one river: from then on, Reason and Imagination would unite under the spectre of Faith, and serve one ultimate purpose rather than two distinct purposes.

But it would be a drastic mistake to think that Lewis only wrote (as they call them) "children's stories" from 1950 until his death. This was the era of some of his most enjoyable writing, including his autobiography (which in itself has a lot of philosophy), other works of fiction, and some of his best scholarly writing (e.g., Studies in Words, The Discarded Image). As for the latter, one could most certainly consider his death "untimely" when considering these later books on literature; i.e., had he lived another ten years--another five years--we might have half a dozen more great books on old books which, like the ones he did write, put contemporary literary scholarship to shame.

Private Eye

"The detective is one who looks, who listens, who moves through this morass of objects and events in search of the thought, the idea that will pull all these things together and make sense of them. In effect, the writer and the detective are interchangeable. The reader sees the world through the detective's eyes, experiencing the proliferation of its details as if for the first time. He has become awake to the things around him, as if they might speak to him, as if, because of the attentiveness he now brings to them, they might begin to carry a meaning other than the simple fact of their existence. Private eye. The term held a triple meaning for Quinn. Not only was it the letter 'i', standing for 'investigator', it was 'I' in the upper case, the tiny life-bud buried in the body of the breathing self. At the same time, it was also the physical eye of the writer, the eye of the man who looks out from himself into the world and demands that the world reveal itself to him."

+ Paul Auster, City of Glass

Torture

Every week, nay everyday, you will hear it from some pundit, some celebrity, some politician: "Torture is wrong. It goes against the very ideals of this country."

But where and when did that become the case? Are they referring to the 8th Amendment, which reads:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted."

But our Constitution was not written as some sort of pamphlet to be distributed throughout the nations as some vague abstract "ideal" that the whole world ought to follow: it was written to restrict the capabilities of the government to persecute its citizens.

The 8th Amendment, in principle, cannot apply to enemy combatants. The 8th Amendment only applies in local and federal law enforcement. It has nothing to do with national threats or national security. That, at least, is how it seems to me.

But then we have the third Geneva Convention to deal with, which I will deal with in my next segment. I think that when they who say "it's against all we believe in" come out with that mantra, they do not really have the Constitution in mind: they have in mind the global humanitarian ordinances set out by the Geneva Conventions. That is all find and good: but we must remember that the Geneva Conventions are not our Constitution. In this segment I merely wanted to make clear that there is nothing per se un-Constitutional about the use of cruel and unusual punishment toward enemy combatants, traitors, and spies (though, of course, there may be in the case of Geneva statutes). That is to say, there is no violation of "our ideals", as they call them, when it comes to hostile extraction of intelligence from a sworn enemy of state.

And another thing: torture has been going on for years without presidential knowledge or consent, and no matter what anyone says, it will keep going on. Ultimately such musings as these are pointless because those in the deepest levels of the intelligence services, the Pentagon, and who knows what else, stick to tried and true methods, and at the very least aren't so goddam naive.

The Cold War

Progression and the need to become completely dominant is built right into the very fibre of Communism. That is why I do not think the Cold War is over, at least not in a general sense. The Soviets may not be the primary enemy anymore (though some think that the KGB is still behind it, which fits, given their long track record of successful deceptions), but Communism is still the enemy of every free society.

The fact that many do not see the abhorrent Left leaning bias in the media is proof of the power of the infiltration and wide distribution of Communist ideas into the general population. The fact that so many people do not see the president as dangerous is another proof. Communists work by patient, subtle, strategic moves, like a chessmaster. They know the deceptive uses of distraction. Today, for instance, everyone is so worried about the anti-pandemic "swine flu" the fact that the government is initiating their new control over the banking industry seems like an irrelevancy to most. Karl Marx laughs in his grave.

The problem with, and the glory of, Communism is its fundamental belief that good and evil don't exist, and, even if they did exist, wouldn't matter. Eternal Fatalists, they believe that they could not stop the progression to Communism even if they wanted to. Free will is excluded from the outset for a dialectical materialist. This belief enables them to justify nearly any action in the name of the "Greater Good," an unrealized, and unrealistic, future ideal.

I just hope that something radically changes in politics before we start in with the gulag camps.

Never waste a Good Crisis

That was what the president's chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, said to the media right around the beginning of this year. He was, at that time, referring to the economy. His logic was that, no matter how the economy got messed up, may as well use the opportunity to enact whatever policies we deem necessary for Our Idea of Government in the name of Saving the Nation from Economitastrophe. And hence we have the government intruding on private business at a largely unprecedented level. I'm taking bets on how long until it all goes totally Communist and the KGB throws a parade....

The "swine flu" is no exception. Did "the government" cause or "let happen" this merely new strain of influenza? Of course not. But this administration is going to use it to the advantage of pushing their Leftist agenda. In reality the H1N1 virus is just one more garden variety variation of the many forms of influenza already going about everywhere all the time. The difference is that for this particular strain they do not have a vaccine yet because it is "new." But it is not the "Killer" the media is making it out to be. See, for instance:

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/05/02/siegel_swine_flu_h1n1/

As a matter of fact, tens of thousands of people died from influenza in 2006:

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=47469

But who remembers that? And why don't they?

In any case, mass hysteria weakens the immune system. So don't give in.

Contemporary Deceptions

If you do not talk, you are strange.

If you do talk, you are condemned.

If you have the wrong attitude, you are ostracized.

If you have the right attitude, you are a clone.

If you describe a state of affairs, you are paranoid.

If you go with the flow, you are a flake.

If you are young, you are inexperienced.

If you are old, you are behind the times.

If you are practical, you are not imaginative enough.

If you are brilliant, you are narrow-minded.

If you are an idiot, people will elect you president.

Solid Ground

While watching a film with one of my favorite actors--certainly not the kind of film I would have watched were it not for this actor (though my purpose here has nothing to do with the actor or the film)--I began to wonder, of his character, "Why does he care? This hocus-pocus that he's chasing, why doesn't he just let it alone? Why does he have to know?" Then I remembered something: the character was once a detective. And that pretty much solves the riddle. For asking why a detective has to "get the straight" is like asking why a philosopher--the old, the true philosopher who follows, not Kant and Hegel, not Russell and Carnap, but Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle--it is like asking a philosopher why he seeks the truth. The answer is in his very nature. If you were to ask Socrates, "Why, O bald-headed, pug-nosed Athenian, why do you seek Truth?" "Why," Socrates would answer, "because it is true!" Similarly, he who has "detectiveness" in his nature will seek the story, the explanation for whatever event he finds himself in, simply because that's what a detective does. Not only does he try to unravel mystery, he is in fact a mystery to himself: he does not know why he does what he does--it is satisfying enough just to know that it's what he's supposed to do. The philosopher must not ask "why truth?"--he must seek it. The detective must not ask "why the facts?"--he must find them. Either must stand on the solid ground of his existence, must presuppose it, so that he may realize and acquire what remains to be found.

It becomes necessary, in all reasoning, to stand on solid ground at some point. One cannot go on explaining forever, because eventually explanation itself will be called in to question; inquiry will try to step outside of itself and ask what inquiry is, but, because it made that detachment, has lost the very ability to inquire. First causes, absolute truths--they exist. They must necessarily exist. They are the ground of all reason, of all discourse. On a journey, if I have no point of origin, I do not know how far I have come; I could not really call it a journey either. If where I am is not predicated on where I was, where I am means nothing. If words are detached from their origins in reality, they lost all meaning.

I'll probably talk about this more later on. Suffice it to say, relativism, in all its forms, is the epitome of bullshittery.

More idiocies

I saw a poster at the school yesterday being toted by some moronic looking undergraduate labelling Obama as our "New War Criminal in Chief." And then today I read that the leader of some pacifist veterans thinks Obama a bigger "war criminal" than Bush.

Do these people think we have no enemies? I know one thing: no matter who you are, if you do anything involving the military, you're a war criminal. To the pacifists, "war criminal" is a redundancy.

While I disagree with nearly every action Obama has taken, the one thing I do think he has the right idea about is in trying to find new strategies to defeat Islamist terrorism. But I don't think that this is something Bush wasn't doing.

Oh, but hell. I'm so "biased" anyway. I'm the type that believes the sole function, the only conceivably justifiable function, of government is to protect its citizens from foreign aggression.