Category: Uncategorized

The “discredited” campaign

The New York Times unintentionally recognizes the legitimacy of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign:

Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now, making things worse, he has failed to convincingly repudiate racist remarks that were published under his name for years — or the enthusiastic support he is getting from racist groups.

I find it extremely encouraging that both the Democratic and Republican establishments are training their biggest guns on Ron Paul while simultaneously attempting to play down the results of the Iowa caucuses. They never would have bothered to do so if Paul’s message was not resonating with Americans across the political and ideological divides. We are learning a lot here as a result of the various reactions to the Paul campaign, whether it is the willingness of Republicans to play the race card about which they so often complain, the remarkable extent to which Newt Gingrich is big government moderate rather than the conservative flamethrower he feigned to be in 1994, and the way in which many Republicans who pretend to revere the Constitution do not, in fact, harbor any real respect for it at all.

In short, Ron Paul has successfully opened the eyes of millions of Americans to the corruption and anti-conservate, anti-constitutional ideology of the Republican Party. This is the first step in helping them understand that the Republicans and Democrats are merely two barely distinguishable factions in the one party that has ruled America for over a century.

It is also interesting to note the Communist-style ideological lockstep demanded by Republicans. In the same way that some readers here cannot understand that I permit commenters here to post comments they find offensive without that permission indicating my position on the matter – even though they know I disgree with, but permit, their own comments – the demands that Paul denounce any of his supporters reveals a fundamentally totalitarian mindset of the sort that has pervaded the conservative media since William F. Buckley was seduced by the Wilsonian neocons.

One thing I found particularly informative in this regard was John Hinderaker’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. I’ve known that the former Hindrocket of the Northern Alliance Radio Show was an ideologically squishy political creature since appearing on that show, and his endorsement of Mitt Romney is the full flowering of what has historically been known as “growth”.

The “anybody but Romney” mentality that grips many Republicans is, in my view, illogical. It led them to embrace Rick Perry, who turned out to be unable to articulate a conservative thought; Newt Gingrich, whose record is far more checkered than Romney’s; Ron Paul, whose foreign policy views–indistinguishable from those of the far left–and forays into racial intolerance make him unfit to be president; and Michele Bachmann, whom I like very much, but who is more qualified to be a rabble-rouser than a chief executive.

It is deeply amusing indeed to see Hindrocket assert that Paul’s foreign policy views are “indistinguishable from those of the far left” on the very day that the New York Times is publishing an editorial that could easily bear his byline, given the remarkably similar language; for example, Hinderaker says Paul is “unfit” versus the NTY’s “discredited”. And Hinderaker’s statement about Paul’s foreign policy is astonishingly deceitful, as far left foreign policy is not the least bit isolationist, but is the exact same world revolution approach that is presently favored by Hinderaker and the Republican establishment, only its focus is world socialist revolution rather than world democratic revolution.

And Hinderaker is as wrong about Romney’s ability to beat Obama as all the usual suspects in the conservative media were wrong about McCain’s ability to win in 2008. John Hawkins list seven reasons why Romney’s supposed electability is a myth. I’ll add another reason: after the way he is being treated by the Republican Party establishment and the way the Tea Party-elected House Republicans have proven themselves to be the same fiscally irresponsible rollover Republicans their historical predecessors were, Ron Paul has absolutely no reason not to run in the general election as a third party candidate, ideally as the endorsed candidate of the Constitution and Libertarian Parties.

I very much hope he will do so. As the Bush family has taught us, better an openly declared enemy in power than a false and fraudulent “friend”.

Christmas and decline

Sometimes, I wonder if perhaps I am being too negative about the way in which the historical and economic patterns I see appear to be playing out. It’s not as if I spend all my time preparing for disaster, in fact, most of my professional activity is still predicated on the idea that some form of recessionary muddle-through will take place.

And then one encounters these responses of various young adults to their Christmas presents and realize that societal collapse may not be as probable as it is desirable.

One could hardly damn America in a more devastating and conclusive manner than to point out that this is what we have done with our historical freedom

On the gaming front

Spacebunny gave me Battlefield 3 and a PS/3 for Christmas, which was awesome. And speaking as a Level 70 COD:MW2 PC player, I have to say that B3 on the PS/3 really rocks. The giant maps are so much more interesting and the teamplay design is much better than in COD, although I’m disappointed that the Commander mode was omitted. There also appear to be fewer cheats and so forth in evidence; certainly the kill stats are far less lopsided.

I was tracking an enemy tank about 250 meters away and tagged the driver when he exited, then managed to suppress a pair of snipers in a building 300 meters off long enough to permit a teammate they were pinning down to make his escape. I picked off one sniper, then thought I was finished when someone rushed into the building I was in. But it was just a support guy on my team who’d noticed my position and was dropping off extra ammo. So, I reloaded, waited a little longer, then nailed the second sniper. I’m only level three and my twitch reflexes are long gone, but I try to pull my own weight.

Now I have to figure out how to drive and pilot vehicles without crashing them….

Mailvox: undermining atheism

These emails tend to illustrate the effectiveness of refusing to permit atheists to make their evangelical claims unchallenged. I particularly appreciated the first email, as it highlights the importance of shattering the false intellectual pride that holds so many young and psychologically immature atheists entrapped. One man writes some encouraging words about the breaking of a spell:

I wanted to personally thank you for the impact you’ve had on my life. This was the first time in several years that I celebrated the holiday by worshipping Christ. Your debate with Luke broke the pseudo-intellectual spell that atheism/agnosticism held over me, introduced me to a sophisticated Christian theology, and helped to reconnect me with my faith. The unwelcome eviscerations of an AWCA found their way to a young man whose ego desperately needed a disemboweling. In a delicious twist of irony that Tolkien himself would have appreciated, your indifference towards my salvation has made all the difference towards achieving it. With the amount of hate mail that you must receive, sometimes it’s nice to know that your words do inspire. I’m truly grateful.

A lawyer reading TIA writes with a related question:

After coming across atheist trolls in the comments section of a CNN article, I was disturbed by militant atheism and its assertions after reading more about it. Writings from individuals such as Gregory Paul caused me trouble with my faith, so I bought your book, The Irrational Atheist, as a Christmas present to myself. I am enjoying your book – it’s entertaining and useful for strengthening my faith since I don’t have a lot of time to both read the claims of New Atheists and methodically consider them. I thank you very much for your work for packaging an analysis of their works into one book.

If you would indulge a question, I would appreciate it. While at Barnes and Noble, I decided to look for New Atheist works to quickly peruse and get a feel for them. While there, I encountered a book from Sam Harris called The Moral Landscape where Harris claims that science can determine morality.

My question is this: I am on page 66 of The Irrational Atheist, and, given Harris’ new book, I am curious as to what you would add to or subtract from the following statement: “The second possibility is that they genuinely believe science leads ineluctably toward certain moral conclusions. Although the careless reader could be convinced of this by a judicious selection of quotes, both Dawkins and Dennett specifically deny this to be possible and even Harris only dares to base his moral appeals on reason, not science.”

I would simply add what I have already written about The Moral Landscape, which is to say that Harris is correctly attempting to provide atheism with a science-based case for rational materialist morality. Without any form of universal warrant, rational materialism remains a barren and psychologically vacant philosophy that lacks emotional appeal as well as even the smallest modicum of moral authority. Harris understands this, which is why he wrote the book in a futile effort to provide a basis for both. I would also note that this attempt does not change the quoted sentence from TIA in the slightest, as Harris not only fails to begin making his case, and as anyone who has actually read the book will know, does not even claim to have done so but merely argues that such a case might one day be made.

But I’m not the only one undermining atheism; I have considerable help from within the godless citadel itself. In this very interesting review from danieljc, we can observe that Mount Chapter Four appears to have struck again!

I decided to give this book a chance seeing as how passionately anti-atheist the author is, I wanted to see if the author could muster up any reasonable arguments for his position. With an open-mind, I proceeded reading the first few chapters….and then I closed the book. The quality of the writing is abhorrent and haughty, not to mention unjustifiably egotistic since the author does not offer any reasonable argument for his position. The author goes on in hopeless drivel with repeated digressions attacking Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens that are almost all ad hominem. There was not an instance of reading this pathetic book where I felt my mind changing for the better, even worse I felt as if I was reading Christian right-wing propaganda. I tried to be as unbiased as I possibly could reading this, but the sheer amount of deceit and misrepresentations of facts forced me to close it for fear of vomiting my lunch if I read just another sentence. This is vile, contemptible nonsense ladies and gentlemen, this book adequately personifies everything that is wrong with the United States of America. This anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-reason, movement that marches under the banner of the Christian right. I tried to stay neutral, tried to stay balanced, but this book as forced me to take a side, the opposite side of whatever loathsome position this author seeks to uphold.

It is easy to see the deceit that is so habitual for many evangelical atheists, which ironically enough, is the very weakness that makes them so easy for the informed theist to defeat them in debate. This is precisely why I have repeatedly pointed out that one MUST assume they are lying snakes until it is demonstrated otherwise; that review is a beautiful attempt of the utterly shameless manner in which so many atheists attempt to deceive.

The amusing thing is that the book doesn’t pretend to be more than a critique of the fallacious arguments presented by the five atheists mentioned, and even if one wants to argue, however unconvincingly, that the critiques are flawed and the arguments are correct, one cannot possibly claim that any of the critiques rely upon ad hominem attacks. These “reviews” are not actual reviews, they are merely thinly disguised efforts to prevent people from actually reading the book and discovering how feeble the atheist arguments presented by the various New Atheists happen to be.

As the more intelligent atheists will recognize, this tactic is very counterproductive from an evangelical perspective, because if the effort is unsuccessful, the subsequent discovery that the book is not as it is described only underlines the popular sentiment that atheists are immoral, dishonest, and completely untrustworthy. This is not fair to the individual atheist who is intellectually honest and personally reliable, but is the inevitable consequence of the tendency of many atheists to rely upon attempted emotional manipulation rather than reasonable intellectual disputation.

Failing to note the obvious

In which Jennifer Rubin somehow manages to realize that the decline of California is her fault, and the fault of millions of others like her:

When my parents announced they were uprooting the Glazer family from a cozy suburb of Philadelphia, as 5 million people did from eastern and midwestern towns between 1950 and 1980, the news was met with a mixture of awe (“California…” they would breathlessly whisper) and bewilderment (“But what is there?”). The very act of migrating by plane was itself somewhat grand. In the years before airline deregulation, one dressed up to fly, as if sailing on an ocean liner, and at prices not all that much lower than an ocean voyage’s. And yet those we were leaving behind acted as though we were traveling by caravan, leaving civilization and going into the wilderness.

In a real sense, even in 1968, California was the wilderness. If the cost of air travel was prohibitive for a family of modest means, they usually drove, and from the flatness of the Midwest they found themselves left speechless by the vision of the Rocky Mountains​, rugged coastlines, wide beaches, and empty space they knew only from the movies. Like emigrants leaving the old country in the 19th century, they often arrived friendless and unaccustomed to the habits of their new environment. Public transportation was in scarce supply; instead there were gleaming freeways with five lanes on each side. Tie and jacket? More and more restaurants didn’t care. Informality pervaded dress and speech at a time when, back east, adults still commonly addressed acquaintances as Mister and Missus….

Forty-two years after I arrived in California, the very notion of an affordable, happy-go-lucky, optimistic, and “golden” state seems otherworldly. Its financial condition resembles Greece’s. Self-dealing and political scandals involving public-sector unions have become commonplace not only in Sacramento but also in cities from Mexico to Oregon.

The lack of self-awareness here borders on the astounding. Phrased in less sentimental terms, Rubin is simply decribing how millions of newcomers to California moved there, were unaccustomed to the habits of their new environment, and therefore changed them. They supported more immigration from even further afar because, after all, they were immigrants too and obviously it couldn’t possibly be the case that they could be a problem. And now they don’t like the changes that they caused. How very surprising.

It’s all a bit ironic from my perspective, given that my grandparents were native Californians. They left right around the time that the current set of “Californians” who are now lamenting the decline of California arrived.

Redefining reality

One thing we see here again and again, primarily from evangelical atheists, but not infrequently from other ideologues of various strains, is redefining clearly defined, well-understood terms in order to protect their subjective reality from the objective one. Thus, we see absurdities such as an atheist state redefined as “religious” state while a state with an official state church is redefined as “secular” and so forth.

Now, we’re seeing a similar concept, which is basically the progressive language which Orwell described as Newspeak, being utilized in the financial world:

“China’s biggest provincial borrowers are deferring payment on their loans just two months after the country’s regulator said some local government companies would be allowed to do so….Hunan Provincial Expressway Construction Group is delaying payment on 3.11 billion yuan in interest, documents governing the securities show this month. Guangdong Provincial Communications Group Co, the second-largest debtor, is following suit. So are two others among the biggest 11 debtors, for a total of 30.16 billion yuan, according to bond prospectuses from 55 local authorities that have raised money in capital markets since the beginning of November.” So not even two months in and companies are already becoming serial defaulters, pardon, “loan payment deferrers?” And China is supposed to bail out the world? Ironically, in a world in which can kicking is now an art form, China will show everyone just how it is done, by effectively upturning the capital structure and saying that paying interest is, well, optional.

These sorts of linguistic gymnastics and redefinitions are going to serve the financial world little better than it has the argumentative atheists. It might fool a few of the more gullible for a short period of time, but sooner or later, objective reality will reassert itself. Unless the name of the game is simply to buy a little more time in order to allow the responsible parties to prepare for the consequences, this strikes me rather as an NFL team calling a timeout it doesn’t have in a futile attempt to buy time.

The short life of the Fourth Reich

Have you ever noticed that those who say failure is not an option and refuse to consider any backup plans almost inevitably end up failing? Applying that principle, what can one now conclude about the Euro?

The reason is that in Europe, the mere admission that Plan B is a possibility, apparently set off a chain of events that makes Plan B an inevitability: “…officials there feared that releasing the information could fuel further doubts and instability in the euro zone.”

And so Europe is left to fend on its own, with the mere mention of the possibility of failure being completely ignored, as the mere contemplation of failure is not only no longer an option, but apparently an outright admission of defeat. Needless to say, the fact that European banks have no way to hedge anything any more, CDS trading having been killed, thank you ISDA, and now supervisory bodies themselves telling banks to not even consider Plan B, is enough reason why the LTRO will be an abysmal failure.

Because one does not need to be a rocket scientist to realize that when everyone is telling you that even Plan B is improper, then it is all too clear there is absolutely no Plan Whatever.

Game Over for the Euro would appear to be fast approaching, even faster than I had expected. The Fourth Reich looks to be even shorter-lived than the Third One.

Merry Christmas

On this Christmas Eve, one of the great unreported stories throughout what we used to call Christendom is the persecution of Christians around the world. In Egypt, the “Arab Spring” is going so swimmingly that Copts are already fleeing Egypt and, for those Christians that remain, Midnight Mass has to be held in the daylight for security reasons. In Iraq, midnight services have been canceled entirely for fear of bloodshed, part of the remorseless de-Christianizing that has been going on, quite shamefully, under an American imperium.
– Mark Steyn, Silent Night, December 24, 2011

The secular War on Christmas throughout the West presently serves as a lightweight bookend for the religious War on Christians throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East. In the West, the persecution is still petty, tentative, and small-minded, elsewhere, it is purposeful, murderous and systematic. One cannot equate the banning of Merry Christmas wishes by elected politicians to the banning of Christians from holding elected office, or pretend that atheists co-opting public parks in order to promote nasty anti-holiday messages is the equivalent of violent attacks on Christian church celebrants.

But if the actions are different, the motivations stem from the same source, which is the desire to eliminate Christianity from the world. This is not a new desire; it was already hundreds of years old when the Emperor Diocletian issued the first of his four “Edicts against the Christians” in the year 303. Like the Western anti-Christians, Diocletian did not initially intend for there to be any bloodshed, but hoped that political and legal pressure would be sufficient to cause Christians to apostatize, but his hopes were dashed by the stalwart faith of the empire’s Christians. His fourth Edict, therefore, demanded summary execution of all men, women, and children who were unwilling to offer sacrifice to any of the pagan gods.

Secular culture is no more intrinsically tolerant than Diocletian. Those who consciously adhere to “secular values” understand that they are fundamentally different than, and inherently opposed to, Christian values. While far too many Christians and non-Christians alike believe that it is still possible to arrange society in such a manner that secular values are given primacy in the public while still respecting Christian values in private, both ancient and recent history indicate otherwise. This is particularly true in any society with an activist government that uses fiscal policy and administrative law as tools for social engineering.

Many of the accomplishments of Christendom are being unwound, often by the unworthy heirs of Christendom itself. The increasingly secular British people bitterly complain about the continental subjugation of their once-independent isle even as they simultaneously continue to support the societal secularization that made that subjugation possible. Slaves are being bought and sold in numbers that have not been seen since William Wilberforce led the evangelical charge against the slave trade. As the concepts of individual rights and human liberty arose under Christendom, it is both logically and empirically apparent that they will decline in tandem with the decline of Christianity across the West.

And yet, Christians need have no fear for the future of their faith in the coming years. The Church has survived every persecution, every attempt to stamp it out for nearly two thousand years. It will survive the current secular assault just as it survived the historical Soviet assault. Kim Jong-Il is dead, while the Christians struggling to survive in the concentration camps he established throughout North Korea have not only outlived him, but celebrate the birth of their Lord and Savior today. We pray that their faith will be rewarded and their suffering will be eased; may they pray that our faith will survive our wealth and comfort.

The Truth is. It does not depend upon one man, or seven billion men, women, and children, acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord. All the powers and principalities of the world will exert their fury in vain, all the Gates of Hell will announce their lethal edicts to no avail, as they have already been defeated by the birth of the boy child who is called King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas, and may God bless us all, every one.

A Christmas present from the OC

The Original Cyberpunk has a gift for everyone with a Kindle. It’s available for the next five days, so check it out!

Two stories by award-winning science fiction writer Bruce Bethke, packaged back-to-back in a special “hit single” ebook with cover art by “Girl Genius” co-creator Phil Foglio. “Jimi Plays Dead” is the Nebula-nominated story of the guitarist who will do anything to sound just like Hendrix, while “Buck Turner and The Spud From Space” is, according to the author, at least partially absolutely true.

Mailvox: catastrophe is clarifying

In which Ashley Miller and I exchange email on the matter. She responded to my email thusly:

Thank you for your very polite e-mail.

The point of my article was to say for that people like me — people for whom secular values, gay rights, and abortion are important issues – Ron Paul is a bad choice.

For people like you, who believe the country is going to implode economically and therefore, relatively reasonably, don’t care so much about the other issues, Ron Paul may well be an excellent choice. And I agree that it isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing, I have no respect for either party.

It’s just that I don’t think that the country is going to implode. And I don’t think a man who thinks it’s OK for states to take away my rights so long as the federal government doesn’t is libertarian or worth supporting.

Thank you,
Ashley

In response to which, I wrote the following:

Dear Miss Miller,

I completely agree with you. If you don’t think the country is in any significant economic peril, and most people admittedly don’t, then there is no reason you should support Ron Paul if you disagree strongly with his social positions. I would simply encourage you to keep an open mind about him if your perception of the economic situation changes.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter if you favor government support for the poor or for foreign invasions, if the government has no money, it can’t do anything at all.

Best regards,
Vox

Now, contrast with this the barrage of pointless venting she received in response to her original piece. While I don’t agree with her posting the contact information and IP addresses of those who attacked her, I don’t agree with the over-the-top vituperation either.* It’s neither necessary nor productive; if one recalls that the woman isn’t even aware that the US and global economies are in a frighteningly parlous state, then what are the chances that she has correctly analyzed other socio-political issues, or is even capable of doing so?

I treat the likes of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and PZ Myers harshly because they claim to be intellectually and academically superior, when it is readily apparent and easily demonstrable that they are not. I treat the various anklebiters harshly because their aggressive behavior and incivility demand it. But someone who is a graduate student, who is doing no more than expressing her opinion, however ignorant, fallacious, and stupid it might be, on her own blog is not simply not acting in an offensive manner.

I know I’m not going to convince someone like Miss Miller that a libertarian like Ron Paul merits support from those who disagree with him on social grounds because she is not going to be able to recognize that her concerns about Paul enforcing his own social perspective in an authoritarian manner stems from her own psychological projection. Nor do I have any interest in repeating myself and attempting to convince her of the current economic state, not when I have already published a book on the subject. But it is quite possible to convince her that IF her perception of the economy is incorrect, THEN Paul merits not only another look, but outright support since in that case Paul would be correct and her position would clearly have been shown to be false. Catastrophe is clarifying, and some will never see clearly until forced to do so by events.

This isn’t about being patient, it is about being civil and understanding that even the strongest, most thoughtless brick wall has cracks that the reality of nature can eventually exploit and utilize to bring down.

As for those who think a few nasty emails prove anything at all about Ron Paul or his supporters, I have more than one hundred times that many that would suffice to “prove” the same thing about Obama supporters, Bush supporters, atheists, Muslims, scientists, feminists, and so forth.

*I would encourage Miss Miller to remove the contact information. I’ve received hundreds of threats like those and worse for more than 10 years of writing op/ed and have never seen any benefit to me or anyone else in publicizing the personal information of those attacking me. Once you start writing on controversial topics in public, you can expect to be targeted by those who disagree with you and there is nothing to be gained from exacerbating the situation.