. . . then the “.30-06 is the Old Testament version” – aepilotJim, from a Vicious Circle podcast.
I laughed out loud at that one. The topic came up because Jim just got a Garand.
UPDATE: Staghounds expands on the idea.
Tag: religion
Human Redemption Through Government
During the election campaign Michelle Obama said of her husband,
Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that. That before we can work on the problems we have, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.
I am here right now because I am married to the only person in this race who has a chance of healing this nation.
Just recently, as I noted, Al Gore said of the opponents of his AGW campaign that “From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.”
It would appear that the New York Times is still enraptured by the idea of human redemption through government Obama:
This particular photo-chop was pointed out by Van Der Leun.
Remember how Jonah Goldberg defined the word “fascism”?
Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore is defined as the enemy.
Well?
UPDATE: THIS image, via Jeff at Alphecca is a fitting addition:
He may not be painting himself that way, but the media still is.
THIS Should Get Interesting
THIS Should Get Interesting
This year’s $uperBowl®©™ ads will apparently (unless someone successfully sues to get it yanked, or CBS caves under pressure) include a message not seen before among the scantily-clad, beer-swilling, job-seeking multitudes we’re used to seeing on Game Day:
Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based Christian group led by James Dobson, is paying big bucks — perhaps $3.2 million — for a 30-second spot featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tebow and his mother, Pam.
In 1987, pregnant Pam Tebow and her husband, Bob, were in the Philippines as missionaries when she contracted dysentery. Doctors believed that the disease would result in the death of her baby and that a fruitless childbirth might kill her too.
But mother and son survived. After years of home schooling, Tim Tebow went on to become 240 pounds of All-Southeastern Conference, football-slinging whoopass with Bible verses written on his cheeks.
The point of the ad isn’t to pass a bill or defeat a candidate who believes women have a right to elective abortions, but to encourage women to “choose life” when faced with desperate options.
The reaction has already begun:
News of the ad had a predictably Pavlovian effect on the Left. Since the spot combines many of the elements that the “educated class” most detests about America — frank expressions of Christianity, pro-life advocacy, home-schoolers, football hero worship and the South — they were incensed that cash-strapped CBS would take Focus on the Family’s money.
Jehmu Greene, head of the Women’s Media Center, is leading a drive to punish CBS for airing the ad, which she claims is “sexist.”
Here’s your QotD:
A little decoding is necessary here.
In terms of Super Bowl ads, “sexist” is code for “anti-abortion.” But “sexist” does not apply to parading women around in their underpants to sell beer.
Got it?
You know, Alinski’s Rules for Radicals works no matter what side of the aisle you’re on! RTWT. Especially note this, about the recent Supreme Court Citizen’s United v. FEC decision:
The Supreme Court decision means that anyone who can get the dough together can try to influence the outcome of elections.
That’s exactly right.
Parallels
Phil at Random Nuclear Strikes links to this David Deming piece, Death of a Civilization through a chain of other blogs. Permission to reprint is given, so I shall.
Death of a Civilization
by David Deming
Over the past several years we have learned that small groups of people can engage in mass suicide. In 1978, 918 members of the Peoples’ Temple led by Jim Jones perished after drinking poisoned koolaid. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult died after drugging themselves and tieing plastic bags around their heads. Unfortunately, history also demonstrates that it is possible for an entire civilization to commit suicide by intentionally destroying the means of its subsistence.In the early nineteenth century, the British colonized Southeast Africa. The native Xhosa resisted, but suffered repeated and humiliating defeats at the hands of British military forces. The Xhosa lost their independence and their native land became an English colony. The British adopted a policy of westernizing the Xhosa. They were to be converted to Christianity, and their native culture and religion was to be wiped out. Under the stress of being confronted by a superior and irresistible technology, the Xhosa developed feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. In this climate, a prophet appeared.
In April of 1856, a fifteen-year-old girl named Nongqawuse heard a voice telling her that the Xhosa must kill all their cattle, stop cultivating their fields, and destroy their stores of grain and food. The voice insisted that the Xhosa must also get rid of their hoes, cooking pots, and every utensil necessary for the maintenance of life. Once these things were accomplished, a new day would magically dawn. Everything necessary for life would spring spontaneously from the earth. The dead would be resurrected. The blind would see and the old would have their youth restored. New food and livestock would appear in abundance, spontaneously sprouting from the earth. The British would be swept into the sea, and the Xhosa would be restored to their former glory. What was promised was nothing less than the establishment of paradise on earth.
Nongqawuse told this story to her guardian and uncle, Mhlakaza. At first, the uncle was skeptical. But he became a believer after accompanying his niece to the spot where she heard the voices. Although Mhlakaza heard nothing, he became convinced that Nongqawuse was hearing the voice of her dead father, and that the instructions must be obeyed. Mhlakaza became the chief prophet and leader of the cattle-killing movement.
News of the prophecy spread rapidly, and within a few weeks the Xhosa king, Sarhili, became a convert. He ordered the Xhosa to slaughter their cattle and, in a symbolic act, killed his favorite ox. As the hysteria widened, other Xhosa began to have visions. Some saw shadows of the resurrected dead arising from the sea, standing in rushes on the river bank, or even floating in the air. Everywhere that people looked, they found evidence to support what they desperately wanted to be true.
The believers began their work in earnest. Vast amounts of grain were taken out of storage and scattered on the ground to rot. Cattle were killed so quickly and on such an immense scale that vultures could not entirely devour the rotting flesh. The ultimate number of cattle that the Xhosa slaughtered was 400,000. After killing their livestock, the Xhosa built new, larger kraals to hold the marvelous new beasts that they anticipated would rise out of the earth. The impetus of the movement became irresistible.
The resurrection of the dead was predicted to occur on the full moon of June, 1856. Nothing happened. The chief prophet of the cattle-killing movement, Mhlakaza, moved the date to the full moon of August. But again the prophecy was not fulfilled.
The cattle-killing movement now began to enter a final, deadly phase, which its own internal logic dictated as inevitable. The failure of the prophecies was blamed on the fact that the cattle-killing had not been completed. Most believers had retained a few cattle, chiefly consisting of milk cows that provided an immediate and continuous food supply. Worse yet, there was a minority community of skeptical non-believers who refused to kill their livestock.
The fall planting season came and went. Believers threw their spades into the rivers and did not sow a single seed in the ground. By December of 1856, the Xhosa began to feel the pangs of hunger. They scoured the fields and woods for berries and roots, and attempted to eat bark stripped from trees. Mhlakaza set a new date of December 11 for the fulfillment of the prophecy. When the anticipated event did not occur, unbelievers were blamed.
The resurrection was rescheduled yet again for February 16, 1857, but the believers were again disappointed. Even this late, the average believer still had three or four head of livestock alive. The repeated failure of the prophecies could only mean that the Xhosa had failed to fulfill the necessary requirement of killing every last head of cattle. Now, they finally began to complete the killing process. Not only cattle were slaughtered, but also chickens and goats. Any viable means of sustenance had to be destroyed. Any cattle that might have escaped earlier killing were now slaughtered for food.
Serious famine began in late spring of 1857. All the food was gone. The starving population broke into stables and ate horse food. They gathered bones that had lay bleaching in the sun for years and tried to make soup. They ate grass. Maddened by hunger, some resorted to cannibalism. Weakened by starvation, family members often had to lay and watch dogs devour the corpses of their spouses and children. Those who did not die directly from hunger fell prey to disease. To the end, true believers never renounced their faith. They simply starved to death, blaming the failure of the prophecy on the doubts of non-believers.
By the end of 1858, the Xhosa population had dropped from 105,000 to 26,000. Forty to fifty-thousand people starved to death, and the rest migrated. With Xhosa civilization destroyed, the land was cleared for white settlement. The British found that those Xhosa who survived proved to be docile and useful servants. What the British Empire had been unable to accomplish in more than fifty years of aggressive colonialism, the Xhosa did to themselves in less than two years.
Western civilization now stands on the brink of repeating the experience of the Xhosa. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, Europe and North America have enjoyed the greatest prosperity ever known on earth. Life expectancy has doubled. In a little more than two hundred years, every objective measure of human welfare has increased more than in all of previous human history.
But Western Civilization is coasting on an impetus provided by our ancestors. There is scarcely anyone alive in Europe or America today who believes in the superiority of Western society. Guilt and shame hang around our necks like millstones, dragging our emasculated culture to the verge of self-immolation. Whatever faults the British Empire-builders may have had, they were certain of themselves.
Our forefathers built a technological civilization based on energy provided by carbon-based fossil fuels. Without the inexpensive and reliable energy provided by coal, oil, and gas, our civilization would quickly collapse. The prophets of global warming now want us to do precisely that.
Like the prophet Mhlakaza, Al Gore promises that if we stop using carbon-based energy, new energy technologies will magically appear. The laws of physics and chemistry will be repealed by political will power. We will achieve prosperity by destroying the very means by which prosperity is created.
While Western Civilization sits confused, crippled with self-doubt and guilt, the Chinese are rapidly building an energy-intensive technological civilization. They have 2,000 coal-fired power plants, and are currently constructing new ones at the rate of one a week. In China, more people believe in free-market economics than in the US. Our Asian friends are about to be nominated by history as the new torchbearers of human progress.
Or, as the Geek With a .45 has put it, “Entire Societies Can and Have Gone Stark Raving Batshit Fucking Insane,” and ours appears to be well on its way.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
As most of you probably know, I’m an atheist (small “a”), but not an anti-theist. The difference, boiled down, is that I don’t believe in a God or gods, and an anti-theist believes there is no God.
And anti-theists proselytize.
I don’t – but I’m not ashamed of my lack of religion, either. Today’s QotD was found at Oleg Volk’s place, and I find myself in agreement with its sentiment:
The most compelling argument for the non-existence of a concerned god is that all of the world leaders don’t fit in an ashtray. If Odin or Thor were real, I would expect more frequent targeted lightning strikes than we now observe.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
Our primary was last Tues.
I didn’t vote for Huckabee.
Somehow, the thought of trying to elect someone who has a Bible with the pages stuck together bothers me.
Michael Z. Williamson, May 14, 2008 Livejournal entry.
Sorry if that offends anyone, but the imagery of that post requires mental floss to get rid of!
On This Independence Day
On This Independence Day
I thought I’d throw a handful of M-80’s on the fire.
Doing some research for another essay, I found a transcript of a Hannity & Colmes show from 2004 that literally had my mouth hanging open. I thought I’d post the part that did that to me:
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: A teacher is being banned by his school from showing students historical documents that make any reference to God, including the Declaration of Independence. The teacher is now suing the school for discrimination, claiming he’s been singled out because he is a Christian. The school district released the following statement in response:
“The district believes that well-established constitutional principles relating to the separation of church and state must prevail. The district has not violated the constitutional rights of Mr. Williams or any other person. The district denies the allegations in the complaint and has referred the case to its attorneys.”
Joining us now from California is fifth-grade teacher Steven Williams. And from Phoenix, Arizona, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, Jordan Lorence.
Good to have you both with us.
Let me begin with you. Tell us what happened.
STEVEN WILLIAMS, FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER: Well, basically, it’s just sad to me that the separation of church and state has been just kind of warped to mean that we can’t even include some of our founding documents in the classroom.
COLMES: But what happened to you? Explain to us, explain to our audience what happened to you.
WILLIAMS: Yes. Last year, I hadn’t changed my curriculum much at all. At the beginning of last year, towards about three weeks into it, after studying the Pledge, the student asked, Mr. Williams, why do we have “under God” in the Pledge?
And, at the time, as you know, the Supreme Court was going to be hearing that case, so I thought, wow, current events as well as past events is a very appropriate topic to talk about.
COLMES: Right.
WILLIAMS: So we said, well, let’s discuss this for a little bit. After discussing it for maybe three or four minutes, got to the end of the day. And about 20 minutes after the end of school, my principal came in and said, “What are you doing talking about God in the classroom?”
And I was kind of taken aback. And, as it turns out, a parent complained immediately after that.
About a month later — and again, this doesn’t come up that much in my classroom. I think some people think that I’m trying to put these things in or talk about this all the time. — This has happened a handful of times this whole year, is what precipitated, you know, into this event.
COLMES: But what about the Declaration of Independence? Did you bring that document in?
Does the school have a right — let me go to Mr. Lorence — does the school have a right to determine what documents can or cannot be utilized by a teacher in the classroom?
JORDAN LORENCE, ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND: Well, they can. And here, in this situation, they allow teachers like Mr. Williams to bring in supplemental materials. And there are state governmental teaching guidelines that say what the objectives are that they are supposed to teach. And the Declaration of Independence clearly falls within it. He was doing nothing wrong. There was no particular ban on this.
Now, I graduated from High School in 1980, but every school I attended, to the best of my knowledge, had a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States displayed prominently in or near the main office of the school.
Where else but in California does someone come up with the ludicrous idea that the Declaration of Independence is a religious document? A little further investigation and I determined that Mr. Williams was a teacher in Cupertino, a fundamentalist Christian who liked to draw attention (I believe the term is “witness”) to his faith in class. That’s a no-no. More power to him for having his faith, but he’s there to teach history not comparative religion, and he’s certainly not there to proselytize.
Williams sued the school district, but most of his suit was dismissed:
A federal judge dismissed most of a lawsuit filed against a South Bay school district by a teacher who claimed he was banned from using excerpts from the Declaration of Independence and other historical documents in his classroom because of their references to God and Christianity.
U.S. District Judge James Ware of San Jose on Thursday dismissed three of teacher Steven Williams’ claims that Cupertino Union School District representatives violated his free-speech rights; that the district’s policy on use of supplementary materials was vague; and that his right of religious expression had been violated. But one claim remains.
“In the surviving claim, the teacher alleges that all other teachers are allowed to use similar supplemental materials while he is being restricting from using them because he is an avowed Christian,” Ware wrote in his 17-page ruling. “If he can prove that claim, it would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.”
The district issued a news release indicating it will file a motion for summary judgment, seeking dismissal of this remaining cause of action; Ware tentatively scheduled this motion to be heard in October.
Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek Elementary School in the Cupertino Union School District, sued in November, arguing a First Amendment right to teach the history of our country and its founding fathers, which includes religious, and specifically Christian, references.
The lawsuit claims principal Patricia Vidmar required Williams to submit his lesson plans and the supplemental handouts he planned to use in his classroom for review.
She then kept Williams from giving students handouts including excerpts from the Declaration of Independence with references to “God,” “Creator” and “Supreme Judge” and “George Washington’s Prayer Journal.”
(sic)and Samuel Adams’ “The Rights of the Colonists,” which includes passages excluding Roman Catholics from religious tolerance because of their “doctrines subversive of the civil government under which they live.”
In other words, this guy uses his classroom as a pulpit, and the reaction of the brain-dead administration is to prevent him from using historical documents?
Again, only in California.
They settled the lawsuit. (PDF file)
I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think?
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Happy Independence Day.
Watermelons
You know, “Green on the outside, Red on the inside.”
This is pretty interesting. Via American Digest comes two links to two connected pieces; one by author Orson Scott Card, the other, a bit lower, by Rev. Donald Sensing.
From Card’s piece, Obama’s Real Religion:
Obama is a true believer in the religion of Environmentalism.
Not the science of the environment. Where that science survives, it provides us with a vital service; and it doesn’t take any faith to believe in the findings of genuine scientists doing science properly.
No, I’m speaking of the religion. It’s not an organized religion (though the U.N. did organize the great testament of faith in the utterly unproven doctrine of human-caused global warming), but neither was the English Puritanism that it so strongly resembles.
But don’t take it from me. Take it from Freeman Dyson.
—
…in a recent review in the New York Review of Books, he wrote the following paragraphs that refer specifically to the Religion of Environmentalism:
All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming … miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific.
There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.
The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.
Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good.
The worldwide community of environmentalists — most of whom are not scientists — holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.
Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate.
Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true.
Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.
Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.
Barack Obama’s comments, however, reveal him to be in the religious-faith category. The Environmental Puritans believe that any opposition to their dogmas is heresy, and that anything that doesn’t match their vision of how humans should live is a sin.
Since their vision of how humans should live is “without making any difference in how the world would be without humans,” we are all, alas, sinners. However, some are more sinful than others, and the United States is the most sinful of all.
No, not China, because the Environmental Puritans, like the rest of the world, expect America to live by a higher standard than other nations. Fair enough — we claim to be a special nation, and so we should meet a higher standard.
Still, the Environmental Puritans agree with the ayatollahs on this one point: America is the Great Satan. And Obama echoes that view when he refers to our gasoline consumption, our eating, and our air-conditioning and heating as if they were sins for which we are accountable to the rest of the world.
RTWFT! I mean it.
I have a Freeman Dyson quote on the wall of my office. I brought it from my previous job where it hung for about ten years. It says this:
Engineering is very different from physics.
A good physicist is a man with new ideas.
A good engineer is a man who makes something that works with as few new ideas as possible.
Sexist.
But you get the point. Dyson is a physicist, and a damned bright one. He’s also quite the engineer.
Rev. Sensing takes off from Dyson’s book review in his piece Environmentalist religion explained. Here’s a couple of excerpts:
There are other religions than Judaism and Christianity, of course, but modern environmentalism was born in the West, whose cultural heritage and common languages are steeped through and through in Christian tradition, which was itself a daughter of Judaism.
The common themes of both scriptural Judaism and Christianity deal with deity, the natural world (existing first in a purity state), a corruption of the purity state (Augustine: “fall from grace,”), redemption and liberation/salvation. Then follows paradise. A prominent, though not universal, strain in both Judaism and Christianity is a looming apocalypse that in potential or in fact destroys enormous swaths of humanity.
Modern environmentalism has all these elements, with an emphasis on apocalypticism.
—
Dyson wrote that, “Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.” I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people’s lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake! Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.
So there you are. At bottom, modern environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step for environmentalism to Leninism’s successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That’s our future, minus the gulags. We hope.
Again, RTWT. Including the links.
All of this has me deeply concerned.
Why?
Back when I wrote True Believers I was not aware of Eric Hoffer and his book True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, but I was pointed to it by a comment, I got a copy and read it.
And was disturbed. Two months later I wrote Reasonable People, drawing on a lot of what I was reading in Hoffer’s book. For example:
The True Believer, being written in the immediate post-WWII years, was primarily about the mass movements of Italian and German Fascism and the rise of Communism, but Hoffer did not limit his observations. He reflected on mass movements throughout history, including the Zionist movement in pre-revolutionary Russia, the French Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, and others. He makes a point, in fact, that,
When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with any particular doctrine or program.
Which explains in a sentence the current enthusiastic crossover between the eco-movement, the gay-rights movement, the anti-war movement, the socialist movement, et al.
And:
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises, but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves — and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.
It is obvious, therefore, that, in order to succeed, a mass movement must develop at the earliest moment a compact corporate organization and a capacity to absorb and integrate all comers. It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins.
—
The milieu most favorable for the rise and propagation of mass movements is one in which a once compact corporate structure is, for one reason or another, in a state of disintegration.
—
The general rule seems to be that as one pattern of corporate cohesion weakens, conditions become ripe for the rise of a mass movement and the eventual establishment of a new and more vigorous form of compact unity.
Reasonable People was largely about “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” but it had broader application. I wrote:
What we have in America today is the result of about a hundred years of Leftist influence in American culture, best exhibited by the rise of “Transnational Progressivism” (read the whole thing) – an ideology that essentially places the blame for all iniquity around the world at the feet of a single enemy, the United States; and one group in the United States, heterosexual conservative white males. That’s rather narrow. For some it’s just “white people.” For others it’s anyone who is “conservative.” (Especially if they, themselves, are white males.) For groups outside the U.S., (and some inside it) it’s more broadly “Americans.” However defined, this group is symbolized in effigy at the present time by one individual – George W. Bush. But that won’t last forever.
Remember Hoffer’s words: “It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.” It doesn’t matter if the idea is illogical, ridiculous, or outright insane. It matters if you can mobilize the disaffected to the cause.
What we are seeing today is the coalescing of a new mass movement. There are many disaffected out there who are members of various fringe groups and organizations – the ones Dr. Santy defines as those who “hate Bush because he stands between them and the implementation of their collectivist “utopian” vision.” But the efforts of the Leftist intelligentsia and the “underclass” have splintered our culture. We are no longer “one people.” We are no longer one culture made up of many smaller, meshing cultures. We are “Red America” and “Blue America.” There is sand in the gears, and corporate cohesion is being lost. As a result there is a slowly rising tide of the disaffected, frightened of the future and looking for someone to blame and someone to promise them utopia.
Hoffer again:
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealosies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: “No…. We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.” F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: “It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.”
Meet the new Jews, and George W. Bush as Satan incarnate.
I gave very serious consideration to ending the essay right there, and probably should have.
So, where are we now? Bush is on his way out. Either Obama or McCain is on his way in. As Orson Scott Card predicts, “(I)f Obama gets the whole ignorant-of-history-and-world-affairs vote, he’ll win by a landslide.”
After doing the research for The George Orwell Daycare Center essay, you can imagine what I think is most likely.
What concerns me is that there really is a large portion of the population really ready for a mass-movement. That was obvious to me back before 2005. Right now they’re splintered, but as Hoffer notes, “It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.” The religion of environmentalism is well organized and well prepared. After all, Dyson notes that “The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.” My own grandchildren among them. We’re bombarded daily by the media. Anthropogenic Global Warming isn’t even questioned in the Legacy Media. It’s accepted as fact.
So we have the necessary framework, and the necessary population. We have the necessary target of hatred now that G.W. is on his way out. Driving around doing my errands this afternoon, I was tuned into a local weekend talk show, Inside Track. It’s run by our own local Libertarian and co-hosted by a center-Lefty. Usually interesting. Today they had a caller who was nearly apoplectic about (and I paraphrase) “300 pound Americans driving their gas-hog SUVs,” among other things.
Hey! I resemble that remark!
All we need is one “compact corporate structure” in a state of disintegration and a Charismatic Leader.
Looked around lately?
Collapsing bridges?
Fuel prices?
Food prices?
Floods?
Tornadoes?
Elections?
I understand that a lot of people believe that the Mayan calendar runs out on Dec. 21, 2012, predicting an apocalypse.
Maybe they’re on to something there.
UPDATE: Tangentially related content here.
UPDATE, 7/3: Eric S. Raymond states Why Barack Obama sets off my “Never Again!” alarms
Yup.
The Dali-Bama
The Dali-Bama
America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
This guy sees himself as our savior. When Michelle Obama said
Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.
If we can’t see ourselves in one another, we will never make those sacrifices. So I am here right now, because I am married to the only person in this race who has a chance of healing this nation.
she apparently wasn’t using metaphor.
Evidently they both believe it.
Let me quote Jonah Goldberg from Liberal Fascism again:
Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore is defined as the enemy.
—
This has been the liberal enterprise ever since: to transform a democratic republic into an enormous tribal community, to give every member of society from Key West, Florida, to Fairbanks, Alaska, that same sense of belonging – “we’re all in it together!” – that we allegedly feel in a close-knit community. The yearning for community is deep and human and decent. But these yearnings are often misplaced when channeled through the federal government and imposed across a diverse nation with a republican constitution. This was the debate at the heart of the Constitutional Convention and one that the progressives sought to settle permanently in their favor. The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good. And yet ever since the New Deal, liberals have been unable to shake this fundamental dogma that the state can be the instrument for a politics of meaning that transforms the entire nation into a village.
Be afraid, America. Be very afraid. Because I think the Dali-Bama has a good chance of beating Col. Tigh. As I said before, put them both on a stage, and the country that fixates on American Idol and America’s Next Top Model isn’t going to vote for the cadaver.
Either way, we are screwed.
UPDATE: Chris Muir weighs in:
And Dale at Mostly Cajun has something to say I think you ought to read.
OK, Who’s Telling the Truth Here?
Regarding Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the Ben Stein documentary that I referred to below, we have two conflicting stories. One, as apparently told by the documentary, is that Richard Sternberg, a staff scientist at the National Institutes of Health and (former) editor of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was responsible for the publishing of a “a pro-intelligent design article” by one Stephen C. Meyer. Meyer is referred to as “a proponent of intelligent design” by NPR, but as “director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute” by the Institute itself.
It appears that the film, according to this site “claims that Sternberg was ‘terrorized’ and that ‘his life was nearly ruined’….” Further: “The paper ignited a firestorm of controversy merely because it suggested intelligent design might be able to explain how life began.”
NPR reports:
Sternberg says his colleagues and supervisors at the Smithsonian were furious. He says — and an independent report backs him up — that colleagues accused him of fraud, saying they did not believe the Meyer article was really peer reviewed. It was.
Eventually, Sternberg filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from reprisals. The office launched an investigation. Ultimately, it could not take action, because Sternberg is not an employee of the Smithsonian.
But Sternberg says before closing the case, the special counsel, James McVay, called him with an update. “As he related to me, ‘the Smithsonian Institution’s reaction to your publishing the Meyer article was far worse than you imagined,'” Sternberg says.
McVay declined an interview. But in a letter to Sternberg, he wrote that officials at the Smithsonian worked with the National Center for Science Education — a group that opposes intelligent design — and outlined “a strategy to have you investigated and discredited.” Retaliation came in many forms, the letter said. They took away his master key and access to research materials. They spread rumors that Sternberg was not really a scientist. He has two Ph.D.’s in biology — from Binghamton University and Florida International University. In short, McVay found a hostile work environment based on religious and political discrimination.
After repeated calls and e-mails to the Smithsonian, a spokesman told NPR, “We have no public comment, and we won’t have one in the future.”
The anti-Expelled site has a different take:
Expelled doesn’t even get the paper’s subject right. The paper was not about how life began; it was about the Cambrian Explosion, which occurred about three billion years later. The greater error is claiming that the discussion of ID generated the controversy. There was an understandable outcry from members of the Biological Society of Washington over the embarrassing publication of what they recognized as poorly-written, inaccurate science in their journal. The argument presented in the Meyer paper had previously been reviewed and rejected by scientists. Seeing this shoddy science in their journal indeed “ignited a firestorm”, but not for the reasons given in Expelled. For more on why the paper was bad science, see the review published on the Panda’s Thumb blog and the review in the Palaeontological Society Newsletter.
The first question asked by BSW members was “how did this paper ever get published?” According to the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, Sternberg failed to follow proper procedure in publishing the paper: “Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.” The BSW withdrew the paper in embarrassment, emphasizing that the paper was substandard science. It commented that the society endorsed “a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml), which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity. Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.”
Though Sternberg claimed that he was the best qualified to handle the review process, science blogger Ed Brayton notes that this is not the case: (Quote omitted)
The fact that Sternberg published the Meyer paper in his second-to-last scheduled issue as editor, and that he didn’t follow normal procedure, suggests that he knew that his actions and the paper would be seen as objectionable by his fellow scientists.
It continues:
The Claim: “In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, [Sternberg’s supervisor] Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs.” (Wall Street Journal editorial, linked from Expelled website)
That is correct per the WSJ piece.
But it’s apparently not true:
The Facts
According to Coddington in a January 2005 communication, “Well prior to the publication of the Meyer article and my awareness of it, I asked him and another Research Associate to move as part of a larger and unavoidable reorganization of space involving 17 people and 20 offices. He agreed. I offered both individuals new, identical, standard Research Associate work spaces. The other accepted, but Dr. von Sternberg declined and instead requested space in an entirely different part of the Museum, which I provided, and which he currently occupies.”
The Smithsonian wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal, observing, “Dr. Sternberg’s characterization of his work conditions and treatment at the Smithsonian is incorrect. He was never denied office space, keys or access to the collections.”
In a January 30, 2006, letter responding to Sternberg’s concerns, Smithsonian Deputy Secretary & Chief Operating Officer Sheila Burke explained:
“As you know, as part of an effort to enhance security at the Museum, all researchers were asked to return their keys in 2004, and were issued coded identification badges to provide access to non-public areas. The badge you were issued, which provides general access to doors and elevators, is still operative. If you have any problems gaining access to conduct your research, however please contact the Security office at NMNH. In accordance with NMNH policy, please return your old keys as soon as possible to your sponsor, Dr. Vari.”
In short, Sternberg has turned two bits of bureaucratic minutiae affecting an entire division of the museum – a switch from keys to ID badges and a routine shuffling of office space – into a conspiracy to undermine him personally.
There’s more, and I suggest you follow the leads, but the way it appears to me is that Richard Sternberg pulled a fast one – for whatever reason – and it resulted in a firestorm of criticism that he has since blown out of proportion – with the willing assistance of the Discovery Institute.
And this isn’t one-sided, either. Watch this YouTube video of what happens when you oppose support of Intelligent Design:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQacQy1KJ9M&hl=en&w=425&h=355]
You can bet that didn’t turn up in Expelled.