The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard

https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Conspiracy-Rediscovering-Hidden-Life/dp/0060693339

This humbling work, subtitled "Rediscovering our hidden life in God", OUGHT to make a profound change in me -- as is always the case, the reality of that will depend on the DOING not just on the reading.

The book opens with the example of a fighter pilot flying at night who pulled back on the controls for a steep ascent and immediately hit the ground. They were flying upside down and were not aware of it.

The theme of the book is that we moderns are flying upside down and don't know it. As Tolstoy discovered to his dismay, we think that "particles and progress" are reality,  and "spirit" is fantasy, but in fact, the opposite is true.

"The mantle of intellectual meaningless shrouds every aspect of our common life. Events, things and "information" flood over us, overwhelming us, disorienting us with threats and possibilities we for the most part have no idea what to do about". 

Christianity has largely been reduced to a "consumer product".

"... the only thing made essential on the right wing of theology is forgiveness of the individuals sins. On the left it is the removal of social or structural evils."   

"A Christian is either one who is ready to die and face judgement or one who has an identifiable commitment to love and justice in society. That's it. 

The pointing out of problems is always relatively "fun" for we humans -- we love to point out the failings of others, systems, world views, etc -- and this is where the conviction descends on me personally.

"We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one. It is what we are suited to. Thus Paul, from his profound grasp of human existence counsels us, " To fill your mind with the visible "flesh" is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace".  

"To belong is a vital need based in the nature of being human. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is is withering to the human soul."

And we know it to be true, as we feel it profoundly. My "excuse" has been that obviously our modern society is contemptuous of Christians, so it is "only fair" that we are contemptuous in return. Only our soul knows that is wrong. We are to be like Christ, who hung on the cross AFTER going through a scourging that few survived, and being jeered and spit upon by the masses. And what did he do? He said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".

But we who have tasted of the blood of forgiveness DO know what we do -- if we let the shame of our contempt for those who are contemptuous of us well up within us. It is much like "the dark side" in Star Wars.

So what are we to do?

"Intensive internalization of the Kingdom order through the written word, and learning from the Living Word establishes good epidermal responses of thought, feeling and action. And these in turn integrate us into the flow of Gods eternal reign. We really come to think and believe differently and that changes everything."

The book gives some introduction to the path of becoming a disciple of Christ. It is not an easy path, nor is it a "required" path -- but it IS the goal. Either here or in eternity, if we believe, we WILL be his disciples and reign with him forever.

For those of us who are not premillennialists, eternity is NOW -- the kingdom of God is HERE, and has been since Jesus began his ministry! Christ offers us the way through the gospels and the sermon on the mount to begin that reign in this life -- through meditation on his word and prayer.

As you might guess, this could easily be one of my longer and less reachable blogs if I was to get into the depths of what Willard expertly covers. Instead, I'll just touch on one basic point -- the fact that this IS God's universe, and the fear of God is STILL the beginning of wisdom, even though in the present day, the entire system is intended to declare it foolishness in the extreme.  (p 231)

But if this actually is God's universe, the lords of knowledge have made what is surely the greatest mistake in history. Believing the world is flat or the moon is made of cheese is nothing compared to their mistake. To believe that the lords of knowledge are right on the other hand, is to omit the spiritual God and the spiritual life from the literally real. It is to make them to be illusions; and two or more centuries of "advanced thinking" have been devoted to showing that they are illusions. So the battle to identify our universe as God's and our existence as part of his creation must go on. We cannot stand aside. And in training people to "hear and do", we must take an open, intelligent, and loving stand on these fundamental matters. 

I've covered this topic many times in a number of different ways in this blog -- my base assertion is that "epistemology", a part of philosophy must be understood to even begin the discussion. Another strange twist is to ponder with Elon Musk, the idea we are "simulated".  For extra credit, there is consideration of the odds of us being here if the universe is "godless".  I totally agree with Willard, to be a disciple of Christ, we must have rock solid understanding that God is creator and be able to show that faith to be at least as "reasonable" as any other faith on human origins.

A profound and discerning work. Will my level of condemnation in this blog drop? I pray it does ... there is no question that this book convicted me.

A Little Scott Adams Background

How Dilbert’s Scott Adams Got Hypnotized by Trump - Bloomberg:

Pay no attention to the title -- Bloomberg hates Trump, so if someone supports Trump, then SOMETHING happened to them ... "hypnotized" is as good as anything. The article doesn't tell you where Adams is "clearly wrong" -- you are supposed to know he is wrong, HE SUPPORTS TRUMP!

It sounds like Adams is pretty much an amoral wealthy eccentric that believes in "skills portfolios" vs having a single world class skill. He happened to predict Trump's victory ahead of everyone else -- which could well be dumb luck apropos of nothing. However, listening to people who make CORRECT predictions once in awhile vs listening to the MSM which made WRONG predictions doesn't seem completely insane to me.

Obviously the author of the article feels that the pieces that add up to Scott Adams are "bad", because they somehow enable him to approve of Trump ... which is clearly beyond the pale.

Not a bad read if you have any interest in Adams or Dilbert.

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Learning Lawlessness

Trump’s Opponents Use Sanctuary Cities & Leaks to Foster Lawlessness | National Review:

A good column that covers the litany of leftward optional "laws" from nullifying perfectly legal presidential orders in the courts, to Lois Lerner, to "sanctuary cities", to leaking phone conversations of an incoming administration, etc.

It closes with the conclusion that I've reached long ago -- when for "The Party", there is NO LAW! BOistan is very much like one of the countries named below. It remains to be seen if who the current "El Presidente" is makes any difference.

There is one common denominator in all these instances of attempted legal nullification: the liberal belief that laws should “progress” to reflect the supposedly superior political agenda of the Left. And if laws don’t progress? Then they can be safely ignored. But when the law is what we say it is, or what we want it to be, there is no law. And when there is no law, there is not much left but something resembling Russia, Somalia, or Venezuela.

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Baseless Claims And Spying

Did Obama Spy on Trump? | RealClearPolitics:

It is a documented FACT that all of the conversations of Trump and his associates were recorded -- because ALL conversations over US phone / data lines are recorded!

In case you want another source, here is the "Electronic Freedom Foundation"

"Secret government documents, published by the media in 2013, confirm the NSA obtains full copies of everything that is carried along major domestic fiber optic cable networks."

Since ALL of our communications are digital these days, that is ALL. Here is the key paragraph from the linked article.

Thus, in 2016, when Trump says the surveillance of him took place, Obama needed only to ask the NSA for a transcript of Trump's telephone conversations to be prepared from the digital versions that the NSA already possessed. Because the NSA has the digital version of every telephone call made to, from and within the U.S. since 2005, if President Obama last year wanted transcripts of Trump's calls made at any time, the NSA would have been duty-bound to provide them, just as it would be required to provide transcripts of Obama's calls today if President Trump wanted them.

I disagree that the NSA would currently provide the information to Trump ... at least not without leaking that they provided it and that Trump is misusing the security apparatus of BOistan. I believe the Administrative/Deep State (ADS) is the last (and arguably the most important) Democrat held part of the US government. The ADS may or may not be the "enemy of the people", but it is certainly the enemy of Trump! (and Republicans)

So Trump needs "evidence" to make the claim that BO spied on him. The FBI is investigating Trump for possibly having "connections to Russia". EVERYONE ought to have this video locked in their brain!

So did the FBI investigate Obama? In 2013 he WELCOMED the Russian proposal to get more involved in Syria. I assume the FBI has LOTS of tapes from conversations between BO and his surrogates on the topic of Russia, "Red Lines" and Syria! Why were none of those "leaked"?

Hillary, Podesta and the DNC set up insecure servers and they were hacked. The PROBLEMS came from:

1. Hillary clearly stated there was nothing secret on her server (because it was illegal for there to be anything classified on the server) -- there were at least 10's, if not hundreds of documents found to be classified on the server AFTER Hillary had made multiple illegal attempts to "wipe" it. For anyone else, this was JAIL TIME for a FELONY!
   
2. The problem with what was leaked was THE CONTENT for the DNC and Podesta. It proved they rigged the primary for Hillary, cheated on the debates, that the "Clinton Fund" was a quid pro quo "diving for dollars" for the Clintons, and a bunch of other seedy stuff. 

Did "the Russians" even do the hacking? If the MSM had covered the latest Wikileaks dump of CIA capability, pretty much nobody would be thinking that any more.

One of the most interesting disclosures concerns how the CIA can cover its tracks by leaving electronic trails suggesting the hacking is being done in different places — notably, in Russia. In fact, according to WikiLeaks, there’s an entire department dedicated to this. Its job is to “misdirect attribution” by leaving false fingerprints. If you’ve been at all skeptical about the recent levels of Russia-related hysteria, promoted heavily by U.S. intelligence agencies, alarm bells are probably going off in your head.

So BO directly tells the Russian ambassador in '12 that he is going to "have more flexibility after the election". Gee ... Did he know he was going to win? Maybe the Russians were helping him. Why not? Is this the sort of accusatory stream that only runs one way? What "evidence" did anyone have about Trump INFLUENCING the supposed "hacking" prior to the eavesdropping on the phone conversations -- which BTW didn't provide any evidence of "collusion" either.

And what would "collusion" be? "I'll have more flexibility to work with you after the election"?

WHOMEVER did the hacking and leaking of Hillary, her staff and the DNC, it was the result of:

1. Either their illegal servers, or their insanely poorly protected servers.
   
2. The ISSUE was about what was ON the servers and in the emails -- that they had classified documents on private servers, shook down campaign contributors and rigged their own primary for starters.  

In the case of Trump however, he and his incoming administration were using phone lines that OUGHT to not have been tapped -- or even if you are OK with the government recording all the calls and emails that flow, should not have been EXPOSED -- the leaks were from THIS country, and in the BO administration / Administrative Sate. Were there to be any sort of even handed treatment here, the PROBLEM (according to the media and the D's) would be the SOURCE OF THE LEAKS, not the CONTENT. BO DEFINITELY relaxed classified restrictions, basically encouraging "leaks", and the source is the NY Times.

As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators — including the Senate Intelligence Committee, which in early January announced an inquiry into Russian efforts to influence the election.

The "blaming the Russians" for "manipulation" is blaming their (supposed) intelligence gathering -- we are supposed to pay no attention to the content of what was leaked in those cases. 

In the Trump case, there has been NO CONTENT beyond "they talked", and that "looks bad" -- to Democrats, the left, and cranks like McCain. 

So where was that standard when the video above was happening? 

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Titanic Vs Largest Cruise Ship

Titanic Vs Oasis of the Seas | Malcolm Oliver's WaterWorld:

Appropo of nothing ... "ships got bigger".




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The Dark Rigidity of Tribes

An Insider's View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America | Alternet:

Way too loing for the point it makes -- the red state fundamentalist tribe isn't going to change it's views, even though from a coastal elite's views, everything it believes is wrong.

Naturally the coastal elites views are all "scientific,  correct, etc" -- so there is no need to "understand anyone" -- coastal elites right, red states wrong, poor, racist etc. "Deplorable" summarizes it pretty well.

I'm wondering if food and fuel transfers from red states to blue states suddenly stopped, and all the red oriented "stupid" (from the column authors POV) truckers stopped moving stuff around, how long Mr "correct" would need to be without food and power before being smart was deemed less important than being fed?

I found this to be a pretty good summary of the whole deal ...

When a 2,700-year-old book that was written by uneducated, pre-scientific people, subject to translation innumerable times, and edited with political and economic pressures from popes and kings, is given higher intellectual authority than facts arrived at from a rigorous, self-critical, constantly re-evaluating system that can and does correct mistakes, no amount of understanding, respect or evidence is going to change their minds and assuage their fears.

Yes indeed. That "2700 year old book" along with some Greek philosophy that is a mere 2,350 or so old, plus a few other pieces of wisdom that are centures old built the civilization that was once smart enough to know that without transcendent values, humans return to fundamentalist tribal factions that are so rigid that there is no ground for discussion -- the author of the column seems to grasp the sound of his left tribe "clapping" quite well.

If there are no transcendent values, then obviously might is right. No doubt Mr elite is confident in his team / tribe. They are "right" after all!

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Race vs Civilization, Steve King

Rep. Steve King says his ‘somebody else’s babies’ tweet isn’t ‘about race.’ Except with King, it’s almost always about race. - The Washington Post:

The linked article is a dedicated attempt to mark Steve King as a "racist", and therefore silence his voice, or at least make it "bad". The chief offending comment for this attempt is "our civilization can't be restored with “somebody else's babies”" ... but they dig some other comments out as well.

First of all, what is "our civilization"? I'd argue it is WESTERN civilization ... Greek, Roman, Christian, Enlightenment, Reformation, etc. Assuming THAT is what he means, what is "somebody else's babies"?

To me that would mean babies from people that don't share that civilization -- they aren't Christian, don't know about Greece, Rome, etc -- or at least don't subscribe to what at least once were the tenets of Western civilization -- free speech, private property, rule of law, ordered universe understandable by man (science), etc

Creatures can carry on their SPECIES and differences in the species -- like race, merely by propagation of genetic material. That however is not supposed to be a "civilization", or even a "culture". Humans want to pass on their culture / civilization to their children -- or at least the ones not in dying cultures and civilizations wanted to.

One of the other "racist" things he said was “The idea that every culture is equal is not objectively true,”. Obviously, it is racist to claim that there are value differences between cultures. The Nazi culture would be equal to the San Francisco hipster culture, which is equal to the culture in deeply red Emmetsburg IA where I spent the weekend, and also equal to a culture of cannibals in Borneo. To not agree with that is simply "racist" -- or maybe "culturalist"?

Here is what Thomas Sowell has to say on the topic (in a great column BTW). "There is no economic determinism. People choose what to spend their money on, and what to spend their time on. Cultures differ." Sowell is an intellectual giant who happens to be black ... so it isn't as important for the WaPo to lable him "racist" for having the same view as King.

We know that, much like climate change, this racist label is not up for "debate", because ... well, because we have been TOLD !

King's influence on the Republican Party and American culture writ large is something to be debated. But whether King's comments are about race is not up for debate.

In the world view of the WaPo, race and civilization or culture are totally equivalent, and thus, obviously totally EQUAL ... as in Nazi, Hipster and Cannibal culture being equal.

Our betters are so intelligent it is hard to imagine why a bunch of hick Emmetsburg IA folks would disagree with them and vote for King and Trump! The gall! And AFTER they have been TOLD!


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Carefully Taught To Hate The Past

George W. Bush Gave Us Donald Trump. Now He Wants To Be Forgiven. | The Huffington Post: 

The title is a play on "You've got to be carefully taught" from the musical "South Pacific". 

You've got to be taughtTo hate and fear, you've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught
To be afraid of people
Whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught.

My belief (and world views are ALWAYS "beliefs" vs "facts") is that we are spiritual beings living  in a created universe with a purpose defined by a loving God, who have an eternal future in the loving presence of God and fellow believers through the death and sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. 

To the extent that I can understand the world view of the authors of the top linked column, it is "We live in a randomly evolved universe with no inherent meaning but that which we will into being by some process which will evolve in the future to be "better" by some unknown standard". I'll label that "Secular Humanist" (SH). 

To some extent, up to say "1950-60", America and even Europe still somewhat followed my world view. Since then, we have been increasingly following the SH world view, and according to the author of the column, the results so far, well, suck. The worldview of Western civilization put men on the moon, the worldview of SH has a lot of trouble identifying men, but it has put them in women's bathrooms. 

"Hazy nostalgia for George W. Bush carries broader risks. If Bush really wasn’t so bad, then Trump is more of a dramatic switch from ages past than he’s already been judged. His administration is a comet carrying alien life, as opposed to the edge of a continuum stretching back through decades of Democratic and Republican misrule. Normalizing Bush weakens our already weak grip on history, making it that much harder to see how today’s political harvest was also cultivated by the administrations of Clinton, who signed NAFTA and unleashed Wall Street, and Obama, who continued the Wall Street bailouts and allowed 90 percent of wealth creation during his tenure to accrue to the top 1 percent.

If Bush had never been president, or an execution-happy Texas governor, he might be a great buddy to talk baseball with. Even now, despite everything, it’s possible to empathize with his anguished conscience and maybe grant him whatever fleeting solace he finds in his paints and his bubble baths. But that’s really between him, his minister and his therapist. The country cannot afford any more sentimentalized politics."

They included Nixon in the column as well, and I'm quite certain they could go back for all of US and western history, the Founders, the Reformation, and Enlightenment, DaVinci, Augustine, Christ, Plato, Abraham, etc and point out that it ALL sucked! And we can't afford any sentiment about it -- the past SUCKED ... ergo the future is so bright we need to wear shades by comparison -- except for this nasty current "Trump bump" in the road ... and of course all the crap that preceded it.

Now that we are clear on that, let me make a couple comments.

First, you actually DON'T have to be "carefully taught" to prefer same and dislike different, which can be fanned into "hate" by things like wars, flying planes into buildings, losing your job, others voting for Trump, or reading articles like the linked.

We are born preferring "like" over things, creatures and people that are different, unfamiliar, strange, etc. I'd call it the way God created us -- evolution would just say "it has generally led to survival". What you DO have to be carefully taught is to love your enemies, which Christ teaches and clearly SHs do not.

We are also born with a built in natural affection for our parents and our "kin" as in blood relatives, even shoestring ones. Somewhere in that set of "good feelings well met" is the draw of our "tribe", "homeland", etc. Things like love, and yes that awful "sentiment" are also a part of us (in my world view), even MORE wired into our spiritual selves than our physical. Ideas that SHs find completely abhorrent like  "love your father and your mother", "love of God and country",  are part of that "sentiment" that is "unaffordable".

So you DO have to be VERY carefully taught to hate your past, your country, your civilization, your system of government, your parents, your relatives and people that voted for Trump. The linked column is an attempt at our old friend the INVERSION -- the place where Satan lives. It is an article that asks you to believe the OPPOSITE of what built Western civilization, and therefore tear it down and start over.

The SH world view has been being taught nearly exclusively in this country since at least the '50's (see  "God and Man at Yale") and it has flowered into increasingly mainstream embrace, especially among the "millennials" of views like the linked column. One of the features of the SH worldview is that it tends to lead to not having children. While there is the vague promise of "a better future SOMEHOW", the SH message coupled with the inductive "proofs" of science ( It worked great the last X times in a row!) is hard for them to sink their teeth into -- as evidenced above, even "The One", BO, turned out to be just one more failure, that like W and Slick before him led to the horror of Trump. Thousands of years of world history and all just crap! (well, except for that article I'm sure -- perhaps THAT is what mankind was leading up to, thus providing the "hope" to bring new life into the world).

Somehow, once you throw out sentiment, hope, love, etc tend to leave the now declared to be spiritless body with them. Oh, and "forgiveness" and "redemption" -- as evidenced in the column, certainly there is no room for those in the clear eyed SH view of reality.

And that folks, in one relatively short column and a few extra words is a class of world views.

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The TP Coup

A Liberal Coup Is In Progress | Power Line:

My view is that this is not new -- the coup completed sometime in BO's second term and this is BOistan -- no law, no Consitution, no morals, nothing but warfare for raw power, currently being fought in the streets, the judiciary and the Administrative State.

The battle lines are clearly drawn. What Watson has done has nothing to do with the law. It is a partisan coup, and must be resisted.

Welcome to the fight John (Hinderaker) ...

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TP Slavery Update

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-kellyanne-conway-pelosi-kass-0308-20170307-column.html

"The Party" (TP-D) is forever the party of slavery -- they have just changed the columns on their plantation. Totalitarian control over a few million blacks was once enough, but now they enslave tens of millions on their thought plantation where independent thought is struck down immediately, and if you truly point out what they are up to, their fury is unleashed. 

This is most obvious in their fake support for women, minorities and gays. There are their favorite "affirmative groups", but ONLY in so far as their individula members are fully enslaved in the doctrine of TP! 

Today's exhibit, Kelly Ann Conway because she kneeled on a couch to get her legs out of the way of a picture. 

Comparing Conway to Lewinsky was intentional. And like Tapper said, disgusting.
In this, it is very much like attacks on conservative African-American men, who are demeaned as Uncle Toms. 

There was not much in the way of official Democratic condemnation of Richmond. And little public outrage in the media. 

But what if you're a woman and you don't buy the liberal Democratic politics?
You shall be shamed. 

First comes the mockery that stings like a whip, like a scarlet letter, followed by a relative, partisan silence and a media silence. 

People understand this, particularly the young, who fear shaming.
And it teaches a much more profound lesson to young conservative women about political fealty than do liberal marches and women's strikes and public theater. 

What does it say? 

It says kneel and pledge fealty, or be shamed. 

That's what it says.

It isn't just women -- gays if anything feel the lash even harder. Peter Theil happens to be gay and a Trump supporter. Something that doesn't wash at all with the TP slave holders ... so he is now the target of regualr protests. 

The message is very clear. If you are part of a TP "protected group", you are "protected" ONLY so long as you remain on your knees to the dictatates of TP! You can be "protected" or free -- but NOT both! 

Sadly, it is even worse than that. The law of TP is that those that fail to bow need to be shunned!

IP Camera ... Alien, Angel, Artifact?

3:44AM March 22, Arlo security cam watching safe in my basement. "My best guess" is "somehow" it is a boxelder bug. There is a small "dropping artifact" on the right side of frame, then the "phenomenon" blooms out of the center of screen into a brightly lighted winged apparition coming toward the camera.

The camera is IR, I'm guessing that the "wing flapping bloom" is somehow reflective off the boxelder bug at close range. There appears to be another "drop" just after the "apparition", which could be another bug.

BTW, I really like the camera ... VERY easy to set up, "FREE" (so far) cloud storage of a reasonable number of motion captures. So, other than the booby traps, the fact you are on video might be worth consideration.

Why Are CEOs Progressive? (They Are)

Corporate Leaders: Progressive Activists, Not Conservative Villains | National Review:

Basically, two reasons:

For one thing, conservatives are cheap dates. You do not have to convince the readers of National Review or Republicans in Valparaiso that American business is in general a force for good in the world. But if you are, e.g., Exxon, you might feel the need to convince certain people, young and idealistic and maybe a little stupid in spite of their expensive educations, that you are not so bad after all, and that you are spending mucho shmundo “turning algae into biofuel,” in the words of one Exxon advertisement, and combating malaria and doing other nice things. All of that is true, and Exxon makes sure people know it. The professional activists may sneer and scoff, but they are not the audience.

We all know this. Since conservatives by and large believe in a power that transcends poltics (religion), and do not in fact hold the oppositiion to be evil (the Christian ones are supposed to love even the STRONG opposition that declares themselves "enemies". Thus:

The same asymmetry characterizes the so-called social issues. The Left will see to it that Brendan Eich is driven out of his position at Mozilla for donating to an organization opposed to gay marriage, but the Right will not see to it that Tim Cook is driven out of his position for supporting gay marriage. 

The left actually gets a pound of flesh from those who dare oppose them -- the right tends to assume that "God will settle up such accounts in his own good time".

The other big reason is because "like still likes like".

And that is significant, because a great deal of corporate activism is CEO-driven rather than shareholder-driven or directly rooted in the business interests of the firm. Like Wall Street bankers, who may not like their tax bills or Dodd-Frank but who tend in the main to be socially liberal Democrats, the CEOs of major U.S. corporations are, among other things, members of a discrete class. The graduates of ten colleges accounted for nearly half of the Fortune 500 CEOs in 2012; one in seven of them went to one school: Harvard. A handful of metros in California, Texas, and New York account for a third of Fortune 1000 headquarters — and there are 17 Fortune 1000 companies in one zip code in Houston. Unsurprisingly, people with similar backgrounds, similar experiences, and similar occupations tend to see the world in a similar way.

So again, we live in a "down the rabbit hole looking glass world" where one of the chief boogeymen of the left (corporations) is actaully run by folks that are lefties and lavishly support the left. As maybe a few more folks are realizing these days, in BOistan, it is pretty much ALL fake!







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Tolerance, Apathy, Aristotle

The following quote has shown up in a number of internet memes ... mostly conservative, so it has been roundly claimed to NOT be from Aristotle in lefty quarters.

According to this site https://probaway.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/philosophers-squared-aristotle/, it is.

"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society."

So assuming that the quote is NOT from Aristotle, does that make it false? My take on reading it would be that if somebody has a strong belief in their culture / country / society, they would feel that it is "good, exceptional, just, important, positive, etc", and therefore not be apathetic, and would thus not be likely to simply "tolerate" views that were not aligned with that society / culture that they believe in. They would seek to challenge those views and arrive at what they see as the truth. 

In other words, the statement seems tautalogically true to me. If one stated that "Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying man", again, it seems tatualogically true -- if someone is dying, they are likely to tolerate a lot, and be apathetic about a lot. 

Conversely, "Tolerance and apathy are the first virtues of a strong successful man" seems clearly false at least in ancient times. Are not strong and successful men confident in their values and energetic rather than apathetic?

As men go, so goes society. 

In the cases where I've seen lefties get all bent out of shape about this quote it is obvious that they are NEITHER "tolerant" nor "apathetic" ... they are down right bent out of shape that "tolerance" would have ANYTHING bad said about it, and are thus completely INtolerant of anyone questioning tolerance. And they are excited about it. 

Which makes sense -- they came very close, or possibly succeeded in killing America and creating a new society of BOistan ... tribal, immoral (in the old sense of morals), non-competitive, declining economically, oriented toward leveled distribution of wealth vs the creation of wealth, etc. 

AND, they are very EXCITED for the prospects of that society, so they are NOT "apathetic". 

This seems so clear to me that it defies discussion. In general, they seem to want to go to great lengths to claim that Aristotle DID NOT make the statement that I believe to be tautalogically true. Do lefties respect Aristotle? It seems very doubtful many know anything about him. The idea of the left is that nearly anyone on the street today is more intelligent / wise / smart / etc than Aristotle, since we have "progressed" and will continue to as long as we continue to "be progressive". 

Naturally, if you are progressive, you can't have a "society / culture" because those things require values that are fixed over time and "progressivism" (regressivism) says that the latest thing thought up is BOUND to be superior because of all our added "knowledge / wisdom / smarts / etc". In the left view, BOistan is but a stepping stone to a less stable, less "moral" (old sense), less success oriented, more levelled future which is in turn is but a stepping stone to the next stage in valueless "progressiveism". 

AND THAT IS PROGRESS! 

Steele Nails Liberal Corruption

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2017/03/06/the_exhaustion_of_american_liberalism_404255.html

This is one of those "read it all and just understand" columns, so just go do it. (the link is a double bump off Real Clear because of WSJ paywall vagaries).

I've weakly attempted cover this issue, but the genius of Shelby Steele as well as the moral authority of a black man on the topic makes a much stronger case than I am able to.  I pray he is right -- the rise of Trump means the end of this sorry chapter in our history. Creating a morally bankrupt nation where young black men kill each other by the thousands every year while our children are taiught to hate their own nation has produced nothing but destruction and despair.

Let’s stipulate that, given our history, this liberalism is understandable. But American liberalism never acknowledged that it was about white esteem rather than minority accomplishment. Four thousand shootings in Chicago last year, and the mayor announces that his will be a sanctuary city. This is moral esteem over reality; the self-congratulation of idealism. Liberalism is exhausted because it has become a corruption.

Just in case you don't follow my advice and go read it (it is not long), there is this important point.

It is also the heart and soul of contemporary liberalism. This liberalism is the politics given to us by white guilt, and it shares white guilt’s central corruption. It is not real liberalism, in the classic sense. It is a mock liberalism. Freedom is not its raison d’être; moral authority is.

I grew up with this. It is religious fundamentalism ... the kind that gets you "shunned". The kind that doesn't let you visit some people because they are "worldly".  It is the "safe spaces" and the
"I can't talk to them anymore, they voted for Trump" of today.  It is the politics that makes me cry.

Russians or BO?

Trump's Wiretap Claims: What We Know and What We Don't | The Weekly Standard:

We live in largely separate echo chambers of media narratives, but Trump is breaking down those walls and causing general discomfort to most people in their comfy chambers hearing the narratives they expect with all the appropriate spin they also expect. Last weekend, Trump tweeted the obvious -- in order to gather all this supposed "information", the BO administration must have been investigating the Trump campaign -- Watergate where the FBI, NSA, CIA play the role of the "Plumbers".

The picture IS of an actual NY Times front page, but if you go off to Snopes, they will "explain" that the article has nothing to do with wiretapping of Trump ... so much for skimming NY Times headlines for "information" ... a headline in the NY Times stating Trump was wiretapped should NOT be construed to be "evidence" that he was wiretapped. So much for using the NY Times as a "source".

The right wing media got all wrapped around the axle about the Times "changing the headline" in the digital issue -- but in fact they just used a different headline when they put it up to digital originially -- a version of "a man accused of killing three men and a dog produces the dog alive" ... only in this case, he maybe comes up with a dead dog and the three men show up in court to testify that he murdered them. We have arrived at surrealism.

The Administrative State was clearly (and probably still is) investigating Trump -- otherwise we would not have all the "leaks". Either BO told them to, allowed them to, or was incompetent and simply had no clue about a major misuse of government power. He should be jailed -- ideally, he should be executed (slowly), but justice is so rare.


The following from this excellent article.

In short, the media and Democrats have been playing with fire for months. The use of law-enforcement and national-security assets to investigate one’s political opponents during a heated election campaign has always been a potentially explosive story. Let’s not kid ourselves: If the roles were reversed, and a Republican administration had investigated officials tied to the campaign of the Democrats’ nominee, we would be drowning in a sea of Watergate 2.0 coverage.

And all of a sudden, the Russian Narrative appears to have gone "poof". I suspect that the NY Times, WaPo, NPR, Nancy Pelosi, etc just realized when they saw the Trump tweets, that they don't officially have a single branch of government under "The Party" (TP-D) control. The Republicans CAN run an investigation of "Why was the BO administration or the Administrative State that they are supposed to be responsible for, investigating the opposition campaign?".

They looked around and decided, that BO and Hildebeast could just as well be targets as Trump and his administration -- and in fact, Trump is in the WH and Republicans are in both houses of Congress. Sure, TP still DOES own the Administrative State (AS) and the big media, but their "ownership" of the AS is supposed to be a "secret" -- it can be fully open when they own the White House, because in THEORY the president is supposed to be in charge of the AS, and **IS** when the president is TP. When the president is not TP, the AS needs to fake like it is under his executive authority!

I'd argue that the biggest challenge that Trump faces if he really does want to "Make America Great Again" is to put the ultimate control of the AS back under CONGRESS -- supposedly that is where their "law powers" are delegated from, since it is CONGRESS that can make law as well as control funding.

Trump ought to be able to hire and fire AS personnel at will, raise or lower their salaries, cut their benefits, etc. If they want to do things to cause him embarrassment or ignore his directives, he ought to be able to fire them just as Reagan fired PATCO. He is the CEO ... the alphabet government is supposed to be under his executive authority, with powers only delegated to them from congress.

I've been shocked this week to see how quickly the whole MSM has shut up about Russia!  If this continues, I think we can be certain that BO in fact either ordered Trump tapped, or looked the other way as it happened, and the tweets hit a bit too close to the bone -- TP really doesn't want to see BO in prison.

Let's get the SCOTUS firmly switched, the AS defanged, and THEN maybe see if BO can't be put behind bars where he has belonged since he destroyed the health system and lied to the American people about how we could "keep our healthcare". I wonder if he would still wag his finger the same way behind bars?

Imagine a sample BO interview from prison.

"I am the greatest president to ever be in prison. Just today, I was telling some guards about how I know more about prison than any prisoner in history, I know more about being a guard than they do, I am simply smarter, smoother and better in all respects than even the warden. I should be warden ... I'm certain he agrees, I just need to explain it to him better. I've been explaining how to make this a better prison -- I know I have a lot to do, but I work hard and I simply think more and more deeply than anyone I've ever met. I know I will be remembered as I have said that I will be. I'm glad you gave me this chance to explain how great I am doing here and how I will continue to be the kind of success that only I can possibly be!"

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