Category: Uncategorized

A friend of mine at a large technology company is looking for input with regards to digital music. As I am a fan of bleeding edge technology and digital music (Psykosonik actually recorded most of its first CD digitally on its Ensoniq keyboards before going into the studio), I enthusiastically agreed to help him out.

The Digital Music Survey is only ten questions and takes about a minute to click through. Nothing prying and they don’t even ask for your email address, just stuff on the order of how many PCs you have and is your network wired or wireless.

Anyhow, if you ever wanted the product people to listen up, here’s your chance. I can’t speak for most tech companies, but I know the execs at this one actually pay attention to these things.

Desert Cat casts righteous aspersions: What is with all the pathetic whining in the Northeast? It’s fifteen degrees below zero in Portland, Maine and the governor has declared a “state of emergency”?! WTF?!

Pussies!

The last winter I spent in Minnesota, it was thirty degrees below zero every single frickin’ morning for almost two weeks straight. Geez people!

I remember that winter. I also remember going out running in sweats cut off at the knee when it was 15 below. Not because I was trying to prove anything, just because that’s what you do in Minnesota. The only thing that was tough was the way that the condensation from your breath would freeze on your eyelashes, and every now and then you’d have to rub it off with the back of your gloves.

Michael Jackson’s biggest defender writes: A book by Robin Warshaw, I Never Called It Rape, cites a study of 6,000 college students at 32 colleges and universities. They reported: 1 in 4 college women has been a victim of rape or of an attempted rape. 84 percent knew their attacker. 42 percent told no one about the assault, and only 5 percent reported it to the police. 98 percent of rapes were men assaulting women. 75 percent of the men and at least 55 percent of the women involved in acquaintance rapes had been drinking and/or taking drugs before the attack. (Other statistics report this figure is closer to 90 percent.)

Picture Val Kilmer coughing. In Top Gun. You know what I mean.

Such precise science too! 55 percent. Or 90 percent. Whatever.

What a load of victimological garbage. By the “rape” standard used here, I’ve been raped by a woman. Several women, in fact, as on more than one occasion, I was subjected to uninvited sexual contact initiated without my consent while I was incapacited by alchohol. -SOB- Hold me Ralph!

Boo-freaking-hoo. I’ll bet 1 in 4 college men have been a victim of such “rape” too. We didn’t call it rape either. Of course, the reason it isn’t called that, or reported or prosecuted, for that matter, is because it isn’t rape. It’s called irresponsible sex.

Next week’s column is in… and it may help explain why General Clark is doing what appears to be his best Jekyll-and-Hyde act. You have to wonder, though. Even if you’ve somehow managed to forget taking an explicit position on something that isn’t exactly minor, shouldn’t there be someone in your campaign to poke you in the ribs and remind you before you go and say the exact opposite?

Ralph Wiley writes: Why am I going with Manning and McNabb, two quarterbacks, when the AFC lost Super Bowls for a decade straight-plus in the ’80s and ’90s by depending strictly on quarterbacks like Marino, Elway and Kelly, while the NFC was depending on Lawrence Taylor and Ronnie Lott? It’s only because of how they have been personally attacked. It would be justice, I think, for them to beat the odds, as I see it.

Then again, the estimable Mr. Wiley went 4-0 last weekend, while I went 1-3. So, it might make more sense to listen to his intuition than my logic. Still, I am incredulous that he would tar all of us who believe that McNabb is overrated as “wink-wink bigots”, “the vast majority that are susceptible to being beak-fed from the talons of the great conversative birds of prey”. If my opinion is indicative of racial bigotry, then why on earth have I been championing Daunte Culpepper as a more worthy star in Donovan McNabb’s despite all season? I mean, Daunte is many things, but Caucasian he is not. I will, of course, freely admit to being biased towards the NFC Central Division – okay NFC North – in general and the Minnesota Vikings in particular, but I also believe that the main reason McNabb is overrated is because of a sports media bias towards the NFC East.

I seriously think there’s something wrong with the guy. Every soldier I know who has had any exposure to him despises him. He’s the walking image of David Hackworth’s “perfumed prince”. As Ann Coulter points out today, Clinton fired him, he almost managed to lose a war to Yugoslavia, and he can’t keep his story straight to save his life.

On the upside, he is a handsome man. Which, by current standards, makes him electable. I don’t know why we don’t simply have done with it and run Brad Pitt against Harrison Ford for the amusement of the masses. It’s not like either actor could possibly screw things up any worse than putting a globalist UN-worshipper like Clark in office.

Even the angry little sausage that is Howard Dean would be much better for the country.

JM writes: You state that your Christian Libertarianism is not compatible with Calvinistic theology. You are simply wrong. Although I am not a Calvinist, I do tend very strongly towards a Reformed view of the will. And although I have never proclaimed myself to be a libertarian I am not at all hostile to the philosophy.Where you slip up is in your suggestion that the Reformed or Calvinist view denies man all freedom and that when he acts he is compelled to act. This is simply false. Man is free to do exactly and whatever he wills (within the bounds of logic and physics); but his will is to do evil and do it consistently.

Calvin himself says in Book 2, Chapter 2, Section 7 of The Institutes:”In this way, then, man is said to have free will, not because he has a free choice of good and evil, but because he acts voluntarily, and not by compulsion. This is perfectly true: but why should so small a matter have been dignified with so proud a title? An admirable freedom! that man is not forced to be the servant of sin, while he is, however, ejthelodou’lo (a voluntary slave); his will being bound by the fetters of sin.” Calvin did not deny that man has a free will in the sense that he is not compelled to act. He did deny man the freedom to choose between good and evil, not because he is externally restrained from choosing good, but because he has already chosen evil! He corrupted himself and willfully became the slave of sin.

If I’m wrong, I’m glad to hear it. If Calvinists are down with de facto free will, great. That’s not at all what I’ve generally heard from Calvinists in the past, but that signifies nothing as I’ve heard plenty of nonsense from Marxists who’ve never read Marx too. If what JM is saying is accurate – and I have no reason to believe that it isn’t – then this intellectual tradition is fully compatible with Christian libertarianism too. God does not compel ergo we do not compel, unless it is absolutely necessary because fundamental rights granted by God are being violated. The big tent! Only platonists, collectivists and those more concerned about the specks in others’ eyes need not apply.

Mark comments: I, as one of the indoctrinated (now recovered), still have many friends and relatives who are so repulsed by anything Republican and/or Christian that they would literally vote to have themselves exterminated, rather than vote conservative…. Fortunately, I think it’s turning around. Myself and many of my friends, mainly due to exposure from talk radio and sites like WND, are doing the proverbial forehead-slap saying “What the hell was I thinking?”

I’ll say this Vox. I’ve switched teams. The secular elites had their shot and they blew it because they have no regard for truth, economic or otherwise. I, as a Jew, would rather live in a nation teeming with evangelical Christians than in the nation that the leftists would produce. Six years ago, I never would have made, nor even remotely entertained, such a statement.

Mark’s comments are significant, and demontrate precisely was why I was wondering what percentage of Jews supported the National Socialists prior to their coming to power. Contrary to what most people think, the NASDAP was not a single issue party, and for all their open judenhassen, the Final Solution was not their first idea with regards to handling “the Jewish question” nor was it even under discussion for most of the party’s history. Read their Munich Manfesto; except for the Versailles Treaty references it reads like the 2000 Democratic Partly platform.

It is ironic, of course, that Jew should turn to the intellectual left, since collectivist philosophies have literally and repeatedly been the death of them. Given that conservatives have not supported the divine right of kings for at least 200 years – longer than the Republican party has existed – it seems a little strange to hold them responsible for what happened five hundred years ago in Spain and other medieval kingdoms. Such collective historical guilt assignation would justify the medieval Christian prejudice against them for killing Jesus, after all. Which, as a Christian, I abjure, since Jesus Christ’s very intention was to be a sacrifice for Man.

Anyhow, Mark’s comments may prove the power of the media and academic institutions, but they also show that the Internet and publications like WorldNetDaily and the many blogs of the blogosphere are changing things. If there is one lesson from history that is dependable, it is that the status quo never persists. And if Jews can be Christian Democrats (as in Europe), they can certainly be Christian libertarians.

I think Pieter’s comments are perceptive too. I have to admit, I fail to see why Jews often get bent out of shape when Christians refer to their “false” religion and try to convert them. A solid quarter of my friends think my religion is false and occasionally try to “convert” me to their atheist or agnostic point of view. It doesn’t bother me in the least. Actually, “false” would be putting it nicely. “Fairy tales”, “imitative agrarian myth” and “stupid s—” would be more par for the course.

No problems, actually, except that BlogSpeak is down and possibly out for a while. We’ll give Haloscan a whirl and see how that goes.

The Evangelical Outpost writes: When it comes to Christian libertarianism, though, I’m a bit baffled. Its not that I dont think that Christians can be libertarian. In fact, I think that by applying Christian ethics to the political philosophy it would solve many of the criticisms I have with the libertarian position. Im just a bit vague on how Christian thought is applied to libertarianism in order to transform it into a unique political stance. (Im assuming, of course, that the term Christian isnt simply being used as a generic modifier.)Id be interested in hearing the thoughts of those who apply this label to their own beliefs. In particular, Im curious to know how it differs from conservatism and/or liberalism.

The important thing to understand first is that although the term “Christian libertarian” is a political term, the philosophy has strong roots in conventional Christian theology. Christian libertarianism is derived from the postulate that God places a strong inherent value on free will. Since God, who has infinite power, elects not to use such power to control individual behavior, humans and human law should do likewise in imitation of the Divine, drawing a firm line at where one individual’s behavior exerts a direct and inarguable effect on another individual.

It is thus contrary to the Calvinist theology, but is also distinct from the conservative tradition in that it rejects the notion that moral behavior can be instilled in a society through legal force. Christian libertarians recognize that not even the most totalitarian state has been successful in imposing moral behavior on its citizens, and therefore insist that the forces of social ostracism and free association must be utilized for such purposes instead. We also reject the notion that legality is synonymous with morality, and insist that the State play no role whatsoever in matters of religion, marriage or financial well-being. Conservatives recognize that state-imposed distribution is not charity, they do not, however, recognize that state-imposed moral behavior is not morality, it is nothing more than fear. Which, we are told, does not come from God.

Christian libertarianism is different from conventional Libertarianism in that it is not purely utilitarian, but shares some of the same roots in Natural Law as conservativism. For example, it does not equivocate on abortion, but steadfastly opposes it as an infringement upon the right to life of the unborn child. In short, it recognizes the importance of moral law, but sees this on the order of a natural law such as the law of gravity, not a basis for societal law enforced by the state.

To be sure, there are verses which suggest that the earthly authorities have been given their authority by God. However, it is worth noting that the apostles, who surely understood the Gospel better than we do, were constantly in trouble with the law, and indeed, most of them were executed by the legal authorities, as was Jesus Christ himself. This would seem to support the notion that earthly law and moral law are not one and the same.

Needless to say, Christian libertarianism has very little sympathy for left-liberalism, which elevates the State to earthly godhood.