Thursday, July 13, 2017
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
-Robert A. Heinlein
The fact that in normal life and in psychiatry, anyone who “consistently and persistently insists” on anything else contrary to physical reality is considered either confused or delusional is conveniently ignored.
Michelle Cretella, M.D.
The map is not the territory.
Alfred Korzybski
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983
Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.
James Burnham
“The fundamental question of our time is whether the west has the will to survive.”
Donald Trump at Warsaw
I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”
Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. …
The Athenians to the Melians; the Melian Dialogues.
The Hungarians acted like Poles, the Poles acted like Czechs, and the Czechs acted like swine. History’s judgment of conduct during the anti-communist uprisings of the 50’s used to be well known, and after the fall of the Soviet Empire, was accepted even by the Czechs; the point being that certain standards of nobility and swinishness were accepted throughout western civilization. In those times nearly everyone in the United States, educated or not, understood something of western civilization; when I got out of the Army and went to the University of Iowa, every incoming student was required to take two semesters of Western Civilization, which consisted of three days a week of lectures by Dr. George Mosse, plus a seminar session taught by his graduate students; one of those undergraduate seminars was taught by Dr. Mosse himself, and I worked hard to be selected for it; it was a defining time in my life, and I remember him to this day. But everyone heard his lectures, and all learned about Western Civilization.
It is, after all, from Western Principles that the left derives its criticism – now fanned to hatred – of the West; and once that universal understanding is gone, we are back to the Melian Dialogues between Democratic Athens and the neutral people of Melos. Melos was Dorian in population, and Athens required the Melians to join their league against Dorian Sparta. The Melians pleaded for neutrality; The Athenians refused. When the Melians refused to join, the Athenians attacked with overwhelming force, and when Melos surrendered the Athenians put all the adult men to death and enslaved the women and children; they then repopulated the island with Athenians. Sparta later liberated the island, restoring it to those Melians they could find, and giving any captured Athenian women and children who survived to the Melians.
The strong do as they will. The weak suffer what they must. And this is law.
It is self-evident that men and women are not equal in all respects. It is self-evident that all men are not created equal. It is self-evident that all women are not created equal. The Bible exhorts us to be kind to strangers – but not submissive to them. Western tradition tells us to act as if it were self-evident that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; those principles became the common heritage of much of the west, but they are only an assumption; we have no proof, only the observation that things work better if we accept them.
That, of course is not strictly true; there is a great history of philosophy that leads to modern Western ethics and moral principles; but the average citizen of the west does not know this, other than having a vague knowledge that those who should know can teach it to those smart and interested enough; but for practical discussion, the fundamentals of Western ethics and morals are assumed. We assume these truths to be self-evident even though it is really self evident that they are not literally true.
But like all rules contrary to observable facts, it is easy to carry them too far – and to assume that others share them when they do not.
Do any of the women who demonstrate for groups that demand Sharia Law have equal status with the Common law imagine that they will be equals under Sharia? Even if they happen to marry into Muslim Royalty there are few places where they will become First Lady; and even there, their testimony in a court of law would be inferior to a man’s. But I leave it to you to research women’s lives under Sharia. And of course it is in Muslim countries where most if present day slavery survives. But if you truly adopt cultural relativism, you have no intellectual basis for rejecting slavery. The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must.
“A small left-wing party held a protest with activists dressed as women from The Handmaid’s Tale, an American TV drama series based on a novel about a future totalitarian society, in protest over Trump’s treatment of women.”
“The fundamental question of our time is whether the west has the will to survive.” said Mr. Trump.
Or are we too busy sowing the wind?
Elected Democrat threatens Trump in Facebook rant
“Trump is a half term president, at most, especially if I ever get within 10 feet of that p—“y,” Hamann wrote in a lengthy Facebook post. A screenshot of the post, in which Hamann writes that Trump was “installed by the Russians” and seethes against the president, his supporters and Republicans more generally, was widely circulated on social media beginning Tuesday evening.
http://www.gopusa.com/?p=27083?omhide=true
This is probably a drunken rave; but some of the rants I have seen on national television by supposedly sober journalists come pretty close.
Aerospace guru explains why SpaceX reuses rockets – and it’s not to save money
http://bgr.com/2017/07/11/spacex-news-reusable-rocket-discount/
“Reusability allows a marked increase in flight rates,” Cantrell explained. “Reverse engineered financial models of SpaceX show that to reach a good strong positive cash flow, they need more than the traditional 10–12 launches per year that sized rocket has demonstrated. Reusability should easily double the amount of flights possible from a mere production and logistics standpoint.”
Well, someone is finally listening.
DARPA Neural Implant – Oath of Fealty
Jerry,
DARPA is going for the type of neural implant you imagined in your novel, “Oath of Fealty”.
“Think of it as evolution in action.”
😉
Best,
Rodger Morris
The Trump Email…
Watch the left suddenly care about emails:
<.>
Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs.
Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.
There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. The meeting took place less than a week before it was widely reported that Russian hackers had infiltrated the committee’s servers.
</>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-email-candidacy.html
And there is no evidence to suggest the Russian government hacked the DNC servers. In fact, it seems it was an inside job…. It also seems someone murdered a Democratic operative over the matter, but I guess they’re all good Americans and all is forgiven. I say “seems”
because I don’t know and since no serious investigation occurred, how can we know? But, the inside job seems more plausible than the Hollywoodesque “Russian connection”.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
There is no crime in meeting someone to hear what they have to say, and no law requires you to report hearsay to the FBI despite all the foofaraw; indeed I would think the Bureau might worry that they will get reports of hearsay threats. ”She’s going to tell you bad things about Hillary, and I think she’s connected with the Russian government where she used to be a crown prosecutor and she wants to meet you.”
Can you imagine that the Bureau wants that kind of report? Thousands of them?
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
