No more posts here…

Alas and forsooth, my Sitemeter tells me that some are still stopping by at this blog due to my failure to report its true status on this site.  As the Romans would say, “Mea culpa.”  Or as expressed in more current vernacular, “My bad!”

As much as I like Blogger and the ability to use RefTagger here, as I explained on my final Townhall post, I was somewhat put out to discover that Google claims the copyright to the content on all blogs on Blogger.  Truly a minor point but one compelling enough at least for me to move, not back to Townhall, but to WordPress.  There the only disadvantage is the inability to use RefTagger, at least for now.  Otherwise, I have greater control of my sidebar and I own the copyright to my content.

So, without further ado, let me invite you to the new location of The Interface, where I hope to continue for quite some time.  Thank you.

But We're Still Gonna Kill You

Much has been written about the fecklessness of the current administration’s prosecution of the war on terror, and it never ceases to amaze me that the reality-challenged can maintain their position so stridently in the face of all the evidence against them. Mark Steyn shares the same incredulity as he expostulates:

…the notion that it doesn’t count as terrorism unless you’re a member of Local #437 of the Amalgamated Union of Isolated Extremists seems perverse and reductive. What did the Pantybomber have a membership card in? Well, he was president of the Islamic Society of University College, London. Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning jeep into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, had been president of the Islamic Society of Queen’s University, Belfast. Yassin Nassari, serving three years in jail for terrorism, was president of the Islamic Society of the University of Westminster. Waheed Arafat Khan, arrested in the 2006 Heathrow terror plots that led to Americans having to put their liquids and gels in those little plastic bags, was president of the Islamic Society of London Metropolitan University.
Doesn’t this sound like a bigger problem than “al-Qaeda” — whatever that is?

Oblivious to the obvious, our current “alleged” leadership continues to steer the ship of state towards the iceberg as they heed the siren call of a suicidal multiculturalism.

Aside from the highly localized Tamil terrorism of India and Sri Lanka, suicide bombing is a phenomenon entirely of Islam. The broader psychosis that manifested itself only the other day in an axe murderer breaking into a Danish cartoonist’s home to kill him because he objects to his cartoon is likewise a phenomenon of Islam. This is not to say (to go wearily through the motions) that all Muslims are potential suicide bombers and axe murderers, but it is to state the obvious — that this “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West, and its warriors are recruited in the large pool of young Muslim manpower, not in Yemen and Afghanistan so much as in Copenhagen and London.
But the president of the United States cannot say that because he is over-invested in a fantasy — that, if only that Texan moron Bush had read Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his Miranda rights and bowed as low as he did to the Saudi king, we wouldn’t have all these problems.

It is a fundamental principle that when opposing someone, knowledge of the enemy is essential. In this case, we don’t have to wonder about their goals; they tell us repeatedly, overtly and covertly. They don’t even have to bother with their doctrine of taqiyya. Our fearless leaders have blinded themselves and are slowly committing multicultural suicide, and have accepted the role of social and cultural suicide bomber, taking us all with them.

 

What to do? Pray, grab your bullhorn, aim it at your friendly neighborhood liberal, and repeat after me:

Oh, and one more thing. VOTE these idiots OUT of office so we can continue the debate without explosives!

The Peasants are Revolting

Technorati Tags: Government Liberalism

But not as revolting as the Democratic response to the Massachusetts election laden with enough liberal ideology so as to reveal in stunning clarity the putrefaction of the neural matter between their ears. Charles Krauthammer gave us a good summary commentary with an analysis of why these kinds of responses have been forthcoming (emphasis added):

Well, they understand it [Massachusetts election results] through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

[Editorial note: the definition of axiom: an accepted statement or proposition regarded as being self-evidently true; in other words, these liberals start with a priori assumptions held by faith and not based on fact or reality. Reality has a way of breaking such ill conceived bubbles.]

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.'"

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."

What it boils down to is a colossal superiority complex on the part of the current crop of Democrats in power. As Mr. Krauthammer explains (emphasis added):

Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.

Not!

This is the essence of the liberal leftist ideology. While Marxist theory says it wants to create a society in which everyone is equal, the fact of the matter is that this system still maintains a distinction between “the masses” and “the ruling class.” It’s just that, under this theory, the ruling class, the elite, are the Marxists rather than the evil capitalists because, in their minds, they are the only ones capable of leading.

Or as George Orwell so aptly put it on the final page of Animal Farm:

All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.

Put simply, the majority of the masses are, in fact, not so brain-dead as to continue to accept this drivel despite the indoctrination of the liberal education currently stock-in-trade in the public school system and the institutes of so-called higher education. As Victor Davis Hanson asks,

What's behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media and unease with experts in the Obama administration?

In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America's elites.

And after providing several recent concrete examples where liberal policy has crashed headlong into reality, he tells us clearly why (emphasis added):

There is an unfocused but growing anger in the country -- and it should come as no surprise. Nobody likes to be lectured by those claiming superior wisdom but often lacking common sense about everything from out-of-control spending and predicting the weather to dealing with enemies who are trying to kill us all.

Yeah, no kiddin’! When your theory gets destroyed by the facts, it’s time for a different theory, like maybe one that has worked in the past but was discarded as not being “progressive” enough?

Reality Strikes Again

Another liberal myth/talking point mugged by an ugly gang of facts.

From the Patriot Post:

A new study has many people eating their words, including a few journalists. Just days after The Washington Post's Rob Stein wrote a derogatory article about abstinence-only programs, a new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that such programs can in fact delay the onset of sexual activity in teens. Stein then scrambled to write a second article stating that these programs "may work."

The University of Pennsylvania studied 662 students from four public middle schools between 2001 and 2004. Students were randomly selected to attend one of the following eight-hour classes: a) abstinence only; b) safe-sex; c) a combination of the two, or d) a class with a concentration in general healthy living. The results were shocking to the liberal elites who had long disparaged abstinence. Only 33 percent of the students who had taken the abstinence-only class had engaged in sexual activity within the next two years, as opposed to the 52 percent who had attended the safe-sex class.

For its part, the Obama administration cut $170 million in abstinence education funding, while spending $114 million on other forms of pregnancy prevention education; he wants to increase that amount to $183 million. Of course, if the point is to prevent either pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, abstinence works every time it's tried.

Reference:

John B. Jemmott III, PhD; Loretta S. Jemmott, PhD, RN; Geoffrey T. Fong, PhD; Efficacy of a Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention Over 24 Months: A Randomized Controlled Trial With Young Adolescents, Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2010;164(2):152-159.

The question is, which is to be master-- that's all.

Communication relies on a certain amount of objectivity in the connection between language and reality, on the assumption of the truth of the laws of logic. Postmodern philosophy attempts to break that connection, but does so to its own detriment. Dr. Sanity provides us a good quote on this subject that confirms and clarifies (emphases added):

To the modernist, the "mask" metaphor is a recognition of the fact that words are not always to be taken literally or as directly stating a fact--that people largely use language elliptically, metaphorically, or to state falsehoods, that language can be textured with layers of meaning, and that it can be used to cover hypocrisies or to rationalize. Accordingly, unmasking means interpreting or investigating to a literal meaning or fact of the matter. The process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality.

For the postmodernist, by contrast, interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality....

For the postmodernist, language cannot be cognitive because it does not connect to reality, whether to an external nature or an underlying self. Language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. Accordingly, postmodernism recasts the nature of rhetoric. Rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition....

- Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism (Pgs 175-177)

Or as explained by Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-- that's all.”

– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Which explains this:

The “Deep Waters” of Modern Thought – Wind on the Brain!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted some Spurgeon here, and one of my favorite sources for such posted a good one a few months ago that is still applicable today. The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "Waters to Swim In," originally preached on a Thursday evening, 25 April 1872, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London. I’ve added some emphases to highlight some of the more apropos thoughts of this Prince of Preachers.

These are days of "modern thought;" as you are all aware men have become wondrously wise, and have outgrown the Scriptures. Certain unhappy children's heads are too big, and there is always a fear that it is not brain, but water on the brain; and this "modern thought" is simply a disease of wind on the brain, and likely to be a deadly one, if God does not cure the church of it.

Within the compass of the orthodox faith - within the range of the simple gospel - there is room enough for the development of every faculty, however largely gifted a man may be. No matter, though the man be a Milton in poetry, though he be a master in metaphysics, and a prince in science, if he be but pure in his poesy, accurate in his metaphysics, and honest in his science, he will find that the range of his thought needs no more space than Scripture gives him.

It has been thought by some that these persons who run off to heretical opinions are persons of great mind; believe me, brethren, it is a cheap way of making yourself to be thought so, but the men are nobodies. That is the sum of the matter.

We are satisfied with the theology of the Puritans; and we assert this day that, when we take down a volume of Puritanical theology we find in a solitary page more thinking and more learning, more Scripture, more real teaching, than in whole folios of the effusions of modern thought. Modern men would be rich if they possessed even the crumbs that fallen from the table of the Puritans. They have given us nothing new after all. A few variegated bladders they have blown, and they have burst while the blowers were admiring them; but, as for anything worth knowing, which has improved the heart, benefited the understanding, or fitted men for service in the battle of life, there have been no contributions made by this "modern thought" worth recording; whereas, the old thought of the Puritans and the Reformers, which I believe to be none other than the thought of God thought out again in man's brain and heart, is constantly giving consolation to the afflicted, furnishing strength to the weak, and guiding men's minds to behave themselves aright in the house of God and in the world at large.

There are "waters to swim in," in the Scriptures. You need not think there is no room for your imaginations there. Give the coursers their reins: you shall find enough within that book to exhaust them at their highest speed. You need not think that your memory shall have nothing to remember; if you had learnt the book through and through, and knew all its texts, you would have much to remember above that, to remember its inner meaning, and its conversations with your soul, and the mysterious power it has had over your spirit, when it has touched the strings of your nature as a master harper touches his harp strings, and has brought forth music which you knew not to be sleeping there. There is no faculty but what will find room enough in the word, if we will but obediently bring it to the service of the Lord.

A concise summary of what Spurgeon has stated with greater eloquence: “new” and “progressive” does not mean “better” and “advanced.” Truth is timeless and cross-cultural and to be found in God’s Word (John 17:17), and to the extent the “new” and “progressive” denies Truth, to that extent it is stupidity of the highest order to be disregarded. Such denial of Truth is what got us in our current mess relative to our relationship to God in the first place (Gen 3:1-5).

Religious Expression and Political Involvement – Can They Coexist?

A relatively recent post over at the Bookworm Room provides us with a good example of critical thinking and historical analysis dissecting out a leftist screed against people of faith, particularly the Christian faith, getting involved in politics and letting biblical considerations form and inform their values and thus their proposed policies. Oh the horror!


After a concise discussion of the First Amendment and the letter in which Thomas Jefferson actually coined the phrase “separation of church and state,” (which does not appear in the First Amendment despite you’re your history/sociology/leftist teacher may have told you) including giving the text of both so one can judge the validity of said discussion, the Bookworm succinctly observes (emphasis added):

It is manifestly clear from perusing both the Bill of Rights and Jefferson’s own letter that none of the Founders intended that religious people must be barred from civil participation. They can bring their values to bear in the civic arena, even if those values are religiously inspired. What they cannot do is hijack the government so that the government uses its coercive powers to force people to worship a specific faith, to interfere with a religion’s doctrine, or to punish or ostracize people for practicing a faith that the government does not sanction.

These subtleties — the difference between government controlled religion, which is bad, and a religious people whose religion informs their conduct, which is constitutionally neutral — completely eludes the anti-religious Left. They want people who enter government to check their religion at the door. They are incapable of understanding that the complete absence of religion is a religion in and of itself, with faith in government and its bureaucracy being substituted in place of faith in God and his morality.

In light of this history, i.e., the background facts and data, there follows an interesting critique of Secular Humanism from a former secular humanist, the blog author himself (herself?), using the vehicle of this hysterical (in both the senses of hyperventilating rhetoric and side slapping humor) letter from Barry Lynn, the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Instructive reading. Go take a look and arm yourself with some rationality and counterarguments should such drivel try to intrude into your sphere of influence.

Since truth is malleable to the point of nonexistence for the liberal, and feelings have been elevated to supremacy in what’s left of the liberal mind, the subtle distinctions on which such judgments are made do, indeed, elude the Leftist. And they hope you and I will be uninformed enough, and stupid enough, to believe them without challenge, especially if their “argument” amounts to emotional hyperventilation and expansive hyperbole.