"I can't believe they are doing all this for two captives," said Ali Sharara.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Middle_East/0,,2-10-2075_1969477,00.html
****
Subscribe To No Dhimmitude
Posts
All Comments
Monday, July 17, 2006
Revealing quotation of the century.
The Power to Act
Hindus are all similar to Gandhi, skinny little pacifist wise-men who don't care about the material world. They are into non-violence. They pay attention to how they breathe.... And the rest of the Death Hippie cliches that reduce people to idiot cartoons. Gandhi was a criminal, the one man over all others who made possible the crime against Humanity that is Pakistan. India and the world's population at large now suffer from Gandhi's vanities. It seems that too many of India's current political figures wish to follow in Ghandi's footsteps and further wreck any good that has come for the aftermath of Gandhi's demise.
Hindus are not pacifists. For over 12,00 years Hindus have suffered the worst treatment of any people on Earth at the hands of their Muslim conquerors.Today it's more of the same, and it is the same treatment others can expect at the hands of Muslims, as history and our current news flashes show too clearly. Hindus are not pacifists, and neither can any of us be in the face of Islamic jihad.
“Thou hast power only to act, not over the result thereof. Act thou therefore without prospect of the result and without succumbing to inaction."
Bhagavad Gita
****
Gandhi was the uber-dhimmi of the Hindu world. Our Indian friends must find a man to overpower his legacy and restore India to it's rightful greatness in this life. All nations must find their heroes now.
"Whenever virtue declines and unrighteousness rises, I manifest Myself as an embodied being. To protect the Saints and Sages, to destroy the evil-doers and to establish Dharma (righteousness), I am born from age to age."
-Bhagavad Gita 4.7 and 4.8
****
****
Too many have a sentimentalist view of Ghandi. Peace, peace, peace. And some are simply afraid for their own lives, having lost them already to fear.
"What will you do if Karna is able to kill me?" Arjuna asked Krishna.
Krishna smiled and replied, "The sun will fall, the earth shatter into a thousand fragments, and fire lose its heat before he kills you. But if he does, it is a sign that the end of the world has come. As for me, I shall kill him with my bare hands."
Mahabharata, Book Eight: Karna (P. Lal)
****
Suicidal silence of the lambs
T R JAWAHAR
As I write this, the Israeli military is relentlessly bombarding the airport of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. The reason for the rain of hell fire is the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese terror outfit, Hezbollah. So, is Israel overreacting? Apparently yes. But given the history of Islamic violence that Israel had to contend with particularly in the context of its vulnerable geography too, surrounded as it is by Islamic nations with their legendary hatred for anything Jewish, its actions reveals a stern wisdom borne out of experience: the only language Islamic terror understands is counter terror, preferably pre-emptive! Nip it in the bud, before they turn you into a corpse, which is not a possibility but an eventuality. Little surprise, therefore, that the jehadis deem Israel a tough nut to crack, a small nation of a David holding out against violent Islamist Goliaths all around.
This prelude is presented out of both frustration and inspiration; frustration because of the way Indians have been rendered sitting ducks by a combination of factors, mostly self-inflicted, to the bombs of Islamic terrorists: inspiration, because if India has the will, Israel has already shown the way. If the holding of just two soldiers warrants a war, what should be India's payback to the Islamists for the gallons of 'kafir' Indian blood that they have spilled over the years in the name of their religion? But alas, Bharat somehow still seems to love its blissful confinement to the negotiating table, even as the battlefield beckons. The 'will' to take on the terrorists is nowhere in sight and hence it is frustration that finally overwhelms inspiration, unless you are an incurable dreamer or a fan of Vijayakanth, who has killed more terrorists on screen than have our forces.
Every country in the world, even with just one incident of Islamic terror, has pulled up its socks, geared up, made its intentions clear without mincing words and followed up with concrete action, both defensive and affirmative. The US has ensured that 9/11 is not just the first, but the last strike on its soil. Britain pressed the panic button after the London bombings last July and has remorselessly secured itself to the point of criminal paranoia. The rest of Europe, after the cartoon crisis, has shed its multicultural melting pot idealisms to clam up with a strict no-nonsense attitude towards the mullah menace. But India, with the longest history of being at the receiving end of Islamist violence -- of over ten centuries from the sultans of the Middle East, to the mughals to Ghazznis, Ghoris to the current Dawoods and Jaishes and Lashkars, is in deep slumber ...secular slumber, to be precise. The medieval Muslim marauders varied from the modern versions only in the methods -- the swords and machetes have given way to guns and RDX, horseback has been replaced by faster transports and the famous Khyber pass now has numerous modern peers on a border more porous than a coffee filter for infiltrators to pour in from all sides as and when they wish. But the underlying religious zeal of all these maniacal murderers, queuing up to kill kafirs and thus secure a seat in paradise, has been preserved in its pure and pristine form ever since the onset of Islam. Non believers simply have no right to exist. Period!
The predominantly Christian West, having suddenly realised the grim portents of such a violent group driven by religious rage ...an understanding facilitated by the fact that their own faith too treats the non adherents as heathens, the biblical equivalent of koranic kafir, though not as violently but quite insidiously, for sure ... have not just hit back militarily but civilisationally too. Thus George Bush felt justified historically, when he dubbed the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq as crusades, though he beat a partial retreat for making a politically incorrect statement. Churches and clergymen all over the west are as much a part of the debate on how to handle militant Islam as are politicians, statesmen, thinkers and the media. In short, the 'free and secular' western world, wears its religion and culture like a talisman, to ward off the Jihadi threat even while flexing its muscles and delivering punches, when necessary and even when not so. But India, predominantly Hindu and targeted by the terrorists precisely for that... though we may imagine otherwise, rather unwisely... remains suspended in secular seclusion! Any association of terror with the religion of a minority is taboo even when it is glaringly apparent and any invocation of our own culture or religion is dubbed communal even when it could actually strengthen us, as a rallying point. It does not seem to occur to us that for us to be secular, we have to be alive first.
So as bombs go off in crowded places with chilling regularity, a Pavlovian spirit of slavishness, slip-shod logic and self-defeating tolerance takes grip of everyone. From the public to prime-time pundits to pen-pushers of the print to politicos, all are coy, confused and confounded about how to react. The stoic and often impotent leaders exhort the nation to be calm, as if it were raring to bark and bite like Bush, the media waxes eloquent on the country's resilience in the face of terror, forgetting that bombs or no bombs, those alive have to go to work for their daily bread, the world sheds tears and then advises restraint, a virtue they themselves have shelved in similar situations, while the killers for their part start preparing for their next brutal assault, cocksure that they can pick and choose their targets so sedated by secularism. Add to that the imposed guilt of Babri Masjid and Gujarat being drilled into the Indian psyche day in and day out by rational intellectuals amidst the masses and the media, much to the Jihadis joy. Should we not be paying an eternal price for those sins? Were not the Jihadis just lambs before that, tolerant to boot and lovers of 'kafirs'? What delusions! Really, in a country inhabited and led by mere men of straw, no provocation can truly become the last straw.
The ongoing mock show of anger against Pakistan can no longer hide our own failings. The excuses of Pakistan exporting terror to India are passe. The Jihadis here have achieved self-sufficiency on that count long back. The internalising of Islamic terror, with inaccessible pockets and even corridors inside India is a harsh reality. Here RDX is a cottage industry with a high degree of indigenisation and vast employment ops for inflammable youth, Indians for sure but Muslims first, waiting to be ignited. In short, barring announcing themselves through neon signs, the Islamic terror network is as conspicuous as an over-bearing mother-in-law! Yet, the long arm of our law remains folded, in secular deference to minority sentiments. Even when it is apparent that the so called moderates in them have no voice. Forget, crossing the LOC and pounding PoK or even PaK our authorities are politically inhibited from raiding the numerous mohallas of terror right under their own noses!
On the contrary, the rulers bend over backwards with bouquets of reservations and what not in a wishful fit of appeasement, reminiscent of a sheep's optimism when faced by wolves. Now does a nation, so committed to hara kiri, need enemies?
http://www.newstodaynet.com/point/1507ss1.htm
****
Will India commit dhimmicide? They don't have that option. The Muslims will exterminate them, one train load at a time. It's time for Hindus to fight back in the war against the Darkness. We cannot know, we can only act in faith and let the course of things come as they will once we do our best. But we cannot do nothing even if we sit doing nothing.
We want war.
Hindus are not pacifists. For over 12,00 years Hindus have suffered the worst treatment of any people on Earth at the hands of their Muslim conquerors.Today it's more of the same, and it is the same treatment others can expect at the hands of Muslims, as history and our current news flashes show too clearly. Hindus are not pacifists, and neither can any of us be in the face of Islamic jihad.“Thou hast power only to act, not over the result thereof. Act thou therefore without prospect of the result and without succumbing to inaction."
Bhagavad Gita
****
Gandhi was the uber-dhimmi of the Hindu world. Our Indian friends must find a man to overpower his legacy and restore India to it's rightful greatness in this life. All nations must find their heroes now.
"Whenever virtue declines and unrighteousness rises, I manifest Myself as an embodied being. To protect the Saints and Sages, to destroy the evil-doers and to establish Dharma (righteousness), I am born from age to age."
-Bhagavad Gita 4.7 and 4.8
****
The war we face is eternal, and this is only one battle in it. It is a battle between good and evil. The question is only which side one chooses to fight for, there being no third way but death of the soul and shame eternal.
"The Supreme Lord said: I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy. Even without your participation all the warriors standing arrayed in the opposing armies shall cease to exist.
Therefore, get up and attain glory. Conquer your enemies and enjoy a prosperous kingdom. All these (warriors) have already been destroyed by Me. You are only an instrument, O Arjuna."
Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, verses 31-33****
Too many have a sentimentalist view of Ghandi. Peace, peace, peace. And some are simply afraid for their own lives, having lost them already to fear.
"What will you do if Karna is able to kill me?" Arjuna asked Krishna.
Krishna smiled and replied, "The sun will fall, the earth shatter into a thousand fragments, and fire lose its heat before he kills you. But if he does, it is a sign that the end of the world has come. As for me, I shall kill him with my bare hands."
Mahabharata, Book Eight: Karna (P. Lal)
****
Suicidal silence of the lambs
T R JAWAHAR
As I write this, the Israeli military is relentlessly bombarding the airport of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. The reason for the rain of hell fire is the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese terror outfit, Hezbollah. So, is Israel overreacting? Apparently yes. But given the history of Islamic violence that Israel had to contend with particularly in the context of its vulnerable geography too, surrounded as it is by Islamic nations with their legendary hatred for anything Jewish, its actions reveals a stern wisdom borne out of experience: the only language Islamic terror understands is counter terror, preferably pre-emptive! Nip it in the bud, before they turn you into a corpse, which is not a possibility but an eventuality. Little surprise, therefore, that the jehadis deem Israel a tough nut to crack, a small nation of a David holding out against violent Islamist Goliaths all around.
This prelude is presented out of both frustration and inspiration; frustration because of the way Indians have been rendered sitting ducks by a combination of factors, mostly self-inflicted, to the bombs of Islamic terrorists: inspiration, because if India has the will, Israel has already shown the way. If the holding of just two soldiers warrants a war, what should be India's payback to the Islamists for the gallons of 'kafir' Indian blood that they have spilled over the years in the name of their religion? But alas, Bharat somehow still seems to love its blissful confinement to the negotiating table, even as the battlefield beckons. The 'will' to take on the terrorists is nowhere in sight and hence it is frustration that finally overwhelms inspiration, unless you are an incurable dreamer or a fan of Vijayakanth, who has killed more terrorists on screen than have our forces.
Every country in the world, even with just one incident of Islamic terror, has pulled up its socks, geared up, made its intentions clear without mincing words and followed up with concrete action, both defensive and affirmative. The US has ensured that 9/11 is not just the first, but the last strike on its soil. Britain pressed the panic button after the London bombings last July and has remorselessly secured itself to the point of criminal paranoia. The rest of Europe, after the cartoon crisis, has shed its multicultural melting pot idealisms to clam up with a strict no-nonsense attitude towards the mullah menace. But India, with the longest history of being at the receiving end of Islamist violence -- of over ten centuries from the sultans of the Middle East, to the mughals to Ghazznis, Ghoris to the current Dawoods and Jaishes and Lashkars, is in deep slumber ...secular slumber, to be precise. The medieval Muslim marauders varied from the modern versions only in the methods -- the swords and machetes have given way to guns and RDX, horseback has been replaced by faster transports and the famous Khyber pass now has numerous modern peers on a border more porous than a coffee filter for infiltrators to pour in from all sides as and when they wish. But the underlying religious zeal of all these maniacal murderers, queuing up to kill kafirs and thus secure a seat in paradise, has been preserved in its pure and pristine form ever since the onset of Islam. Non believers simply have no right to exist. Period!
The predominantly Christian West, having suddenly realised the grim portents of such a violent group driven by religious rage ...an understanding facilitated by the fact that their own faith too treats the non adherents as heathens, the biblical equivalent of koranic kafir, though not as violently but quite insidiously, for sure ... have not just hit back militarily but civilisationally too. Thus George Bush felt justified historically, when he dubbed the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq as crusades, though he beat a partial retreat for making a politically incorrect statement. Churches and clergymen all over the west are as much a part of the debate on how to handle militant Islam as are politicians, statesmen, thinkers and the media. In short, the 'free and secular' western world, wears its religion and culture like a talisman, to ward off the Jihadi threat even while flexing its muscles and delivering punches, when necessary and even when not so. But India, predominantly Hindu and targeted by the terrorists precisely for that... though we may imagine otherwise, rather unwisely... remains suspended in secular seclusion! Any association of terror with the religion of a minority is taboo even when it is glaringly apparent and any invocation of our own culture or religion is dubbed communal even when it could actually strengthen us, as a rallying point. It does not seem to occur to us that for us to be secular, we have to be alive first.
So as bombs go off in crowded places with chilling regularity, a Pavlovian spirit of slavishness, slip-shod logic and self-defeating tolerance takes grip of everyone. From the public to prime-time pundits to pen-pushers of the print to politicos, all are coy, confused and confounded about how to react. The stoic and often impotent leaders exhort the nation to be calm, as if it were raring to bark and bite like Bush, the media waxes eloquent on the country's resilience in the face of terror, forgetting that bombs or no bombs, those alive have to go to work for their daily bread, the world sheds tears and then advises restraint, a virtue they themselves have shelved in similar situations, while the killers for their part start preparing for their next brutal assault, cocksure that they can pick and choose their targets so sedated by secularism. Add to that the imposed guilt of Babri Masjid and Gujarat being drilled into the Indian psyche day in and day out by rational intellectuals amidst the masses and the media, much to the Jihadis joy. Should we not be paying an eternal price for those sins? Were not the Jihadis just lambs before that, tolerant to boot and lovers of 'kafirs'? What delusions! Really, in a country inhabited and led by mere men of straw, no provocation can truly become the last straw.
The ongoing mock show of anger against Pakistan can no longer hide our own failings. The excuses of Pakistan exporting terror to India are passe. The Jihadis here have achieved self-sufficiency on that count long back. The internalising of Islamic terror, with inaccessible pockets and even corridors inside India is a harsh reality. Here RDX is a cottage industry with a high degree of indigenisation and vast employment ops for inflammable youth, Indians for sure but Muslims first, waiting to be ignited. In short, barring announcing themselves through neon signs, the Islamic terror network is as conspicuous as an over-bearing mother-in-law! Yet, the long arm of our law remains folded, in secular deference to minority sentiments. Even when it is apparent that the so called moderates in them have no voice. Forget, crossing the LOC and pounding PoK or even PaK our authorities are politically inhibited from raiding the numerous mohallas of terror right under their own noses!
On the contrary, the rulers bend over backwards with bouquets of reservations and what not in a wishful fit of appeasement, reminiscent of a sheep's optimism when faced by wolves. Now does a nation, so committed to hara kiri, need enemies?
http://www.newstodaynet.com/point/1507ss1.htm
****
There is no end to the struggle against Islam, not here, not there. Muslims will turn to further violence till all the world is like Pakistan as Naipaul describes it:
"His world had shrunk to a hut in a crumbling village. He was prepared for even that to crumble away further, once the faith was served."
Among the Believers, Penguin: p. 89.
****
Will India commit dhimmicide? They don't have that option. The Muslims will exterminate them, one train load at a time. It's time for Hindus to fight back in the war against the Darkness. We cannot know, we can only act in faith and let the course of things come as they will once we do our best. But we cannot do nothing even if we sit doing nothing.
We want war.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Demagogues, Demiurges, and Democrats
The essay below comes from an anonymous writer who left it at an old post on the similarities between Ken Livingston and David Duke. At the time I originally posted my copy and the rest of it I made fun of Red Ken and the Grand Duke. The following piece is intelligent and wonderfully insightful. The following writer is sensitive and informed and dynamic.
I offer this as feature for the day in light of concerns we will face in our election of leaders of our budding Revolutionary movement. Our world is changing before our disbelieving eyes, and we will have to promote people to lead us. David Duke, Ken Livingston and others of their ilk will try to take over our revolution, and we must be aware of them and their games. Below, in vivid and intelligent prose, is something we must know about the nature of leaders, Left or Right:
****
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke's predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke's grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as "victims of persecution".
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman". But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as "nature" is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called "splitting". To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The "small people", the "rank and file", and the "loyal soldiers" of David Duke - his flock, his nation, and his employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.
--
Posted by Anonymous tono dhimmitude at 7/14/2006 12:26:06 AM
****
We can look at the leaders of HAMAS, Hizballah, the PLO, or any number of other groups, and there we will see variations on David Duke.
We can look at ourselves to see that we are not like the followers of David Duke. Most of us are normal people with private lives and private concerns, people who would rather have spent the past five years or so studying Socrates and Sophocles like other normal people do. Social activism comes to us not by choice but by necessity, and it sticks against our will. But here we are, and here we must remain till our work is done, for good or ill. If we must do this work, let's do it right. We do not want to become like our enemies.
I offer this as feature for the day in light of concerns we will face in our election of leaders of our budding Revolutionary movement. Our world is changing before our disbelieving eyes, and we will have to promote people to lead us. David Duke, Ken Livingston and others of their ilk will try to take over our revolution, and we must be aware of them and their games. Below, in vivid and intelligent prose, is something we must know about the nature of leaders, Left or Right:
****
David Duke is a malignant narcissist.
He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke's predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke's grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as "victims of persecution".
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman". But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as "nature" is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called "splitting". To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The "small people", the "rank and file", and the "loyal soldiers" of David Duke - his flock, his nation, and his employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.
--
Posted by Anonymous to
****
We can look at the leaders of HAMAS, Hizballah, the PLO, or any number of other groups, and there we will see variations on David Duke.
We can look at ourselves to see that we are not like the followers of David Duke. Most of us are normal people with private lives and private concerns, people who would rather have spent the past five years or so studying Socrates and Sophocles like other normal people do. Social activism comes to us not by choice but by necessity, and it sticks against our will. But here we are, and here we must remain till our work is done, for good or ill. If we must do this work, let's do it right. We do not want to become like our enemies.
Passion and Grace
I take lunch at a diner in the rough part of town daily, a dump where the roughest of the lowest shit-bags in this city go to eat. I don't bother dressing for the occasion. I show up ready for the street-side version of combat, the general approach I take to going anywhere, which now shows on my face to the point I frighten most people at a glance. And there I was with the crowd who were hanging out slurping soup out of cups, threatening each other with plastic knives, stinking, dirty, drug-addled losers and mental cases choking on the grub that's too cheap and easy to pass up if they've managed to break into someone's car and to make enough cash to satisfy their drug addiction and still have a bit left over for food. OK, the waitress is a genuine hottie. Her husband does the cooking, and he never seems to spit in it. I stay sharp, on my guard, ready for the splatter that comes when it comes, and I'm dynamite on those razor edges, ripping up the scene, living at the max of madness. Most days I eat fast, shoot the breeze with the girl, and head back to work.
After a long life of long and hard roads I eat what I can, sleep where it's more or less dry, and try to stay in one piece as I check out the wonders of the world and be thankful for this lottery winning I have, my existence. Hey! Fuckin' excellent!
I met a client, so to say, at the diner a few days ago. We sat as far as possible from the guy at the table, the one with the $6,000.00 right arm, the $7,000.00 left arm, ex-dealer who has lots of tattooed skulls on his arms, ink blots that look pretty worthless to me. His neck and cheeks we didn't get to the price of.
As I looked at my plate stuff and wondered whether to eat it with a fork or a spoon I looked up and saw my client silently saying Grace. He finished, he rolled a joint, and spit in his napkin before he mopped up his stuff with a slice of bread. The man has me beat.
I've thought about Grace for a lot of years for no apparent reason. I don't just think about it when I'm horking down some bugs or some weird looking lizard or choking on something others find edible. I don't just think about it when I'm doing the Ritz with a girl I like. I think about Grace when I'm grabbing a donought at the desk or when I'm vacantly checking out the ice-box. I don't think about the stuff I might eat, I think about the thinking about the stuff I might eat. I think about the time it takes to think about what I might eat, my appreciation of the fact that I'm alive to eat it, that the food is here and that I am here, and that I can take a moment to care. Even the low scammer I had lunch with has better sense than I. There oughta be a Law.
****
Birkat Hamazon ... known in English as the Grace After Meals (lit. "Blessing on Nourishment" ... is a set of Hebrew blessings that according to Halakha are recited after eating a meal....
Birkat Hamazon is made up of four blessings:
The first blessing, which is a blessing of thanks for the food was, according to tradition, composed by Moses in gratitude for the manna which the Jews ate in the wilderness during the Exodus from Egypt.
The second blessing, which is a blessing of thanks for the Land of Israel, is attributed to Joshua after he led the Jewish people into Israel.
The third blessing, which concerns Jerusalem, is ascribed to David (who established the capital to Jerusalem) and Solomon (who built the Temple in Jerusalem). These three blessings are required by scripture.
The fourth blessing, a blessing of thanks for God's goodness, was written by Rabban Gamliel in Yavneh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkat_Hamazon
****
My kitten jumps on my leg when he hears the can-opener turning, no matter that he just ate. I recall a cartoon of a dog looking at his master, thinking: "He feeds me, he pets me, he loves me. He must be a god." The next panel is of a cat thinking: "He feeds me, he pets me, he loves me. I must be a god."
The time is coming when, thanks to our dhimmi intelligentsia, that we will have to face horrors far worse than anything one would encounter at the diner I go to for lunch. The time is approaching that many of us will have to face men and women who will kill us and our own, and we will have to kill them if we are to survive. I've seen men defeated, seen them run away, and I've seen them captured. Those men weren't necessarily cowards. They didn't have Grace. They didn't have the Law. In defeat they were already dead. They didn't have the Spirit. Fuck 'em.
I've seen strong men go down fighting, and I don't care. They weren't mine, and I don't care.
I've seen the good die crying, and it confuses me, it upsets me, and I don't like it. I don't like it a lot. Where and when I can I make effective changes to the order of things.
****
"Acknowledge me, my Keeper."
My kitten has no sense. I play on the stereo Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and the boy is dumb and sprawling on the carpet. I breathe hot breath on his belly and he purrs. The music comes from nowhere and ends and is no more. My kitten lies on my chest and pads at my throat. I wonder if he hears the music at all.
"Lord, is it I?"
I close my eyes and I think about thinking about.
"Around Thy Tomb here sit we weeping"
I open my eyes and see a fly crawling across the sandwich I didn't bother finishing at dinner time. It sits on the plate on the table on the floor on the ground somewhere in the universe in the darkness.
I take dinner in the rough part of my life, a dump where one of the roughest of the lowest shit-bags in this city goes to sleep. I don't bother dressing for the occasion. I show up ready for the darkness and the exhaustion, the general approach I take to sleeping anywhere, which now shows on my face to the point I frighten most people at a glance. And there I am with a crowded mind slopping around thoughts in a bucket, thoughts threatening each other with worries, stinking, dirty, violent memories and mental breakdowns too cheap and easy to pass up if I've managed to break into someone's life and to make enough to satisfy my curiosity and still have a bit left over for a grim smile. OK, the Life is a genuine Mystery. The plot is a page-turner, and it never seems to turn too sour. I stay ragged, on edge, ready for the nightmare that comes when it comes, and I'm tired-out on those razor edges, ripping up the air, living at the bottom of my mind. Most days I sleep short, wake a lot, and head back to work.
After a long life of long and hard roads I think what I can, guess at where it's more or less probable, and try to stay in one piece as I check out the wonders of the world and be thankful for this lottery winning I have, my existence. Hey! Fuckin' excellent!
I had a dream, so to say, in my room a few days ago. I got as far as possible from the vision at the threshold, the dead standing there in the shadows, skulls and ink-blots, a price paid I didn't get to the price of.
As I looked at my face I looked up and saw myself silently saying "Damn!" I finished grumping, rolled over in bed, and spit in a napkin before I mopped forehead with a piece of cloth from the floor. Man, I was beat.
****
I've thought about Grace for a lot of years for no apparent reason. I don't just think about it when I'm dreaming about bugs or some weird looking lizard or being choked by someone others find friendly. I don't just think about it when I'm in bed with a girl I like. I think about it when I'm catching my breath sitting on the side of the bed or when I'm vacantly checking out the book case for some lines of poetry. I don't think about the stuff I might read, I think about the thinking about the stuff I might read. I think about the time it takes to think about what I might read, my appreciation of the fact that I'm alive to read it, that the poets are here and that I am here, and that I can take a moment to care.
The time has come now, thanks to our failure to care, that we have to face horrors far worse than anything one would encounter in my worst nightmares. The time is come when many of us will have to face men and women who will kill us and our own, and we will have to kill them if we are to survive. I see our own defeated, see them run away, and I see them captured. Those men aren't necessarily cowards. They don't have Grace. They don't have the Law. In defeat they are already dead. They didn't have the Spirit. Fuck 'em. Even my cat has better sense than they. I play the Passion.
"Lord, is it I?"
There oughta be a Law.
****
After a long life of long and hard roads I eat what I can, sleep where it's more or less dry, and try to stay in one piece as I check out the wonders of the world and be thankful for this lottery winning I have, my existence. Hey! Fuckin' excellent!
I met a client, so to say, at the diner a few days ago. We sat as far as possible from the guy at the table, the one with the $6,000.00 right arm, the $7,000.00 left arm, ex-dealer who has lots of tattooed skulls on his arms, ink blots that look pretty worthless to me. His neck and cheeks we didn't get to the price of.
As I looked at my plate stuff and wondered whether to eat it with a fork or a spoon I looked up and saw my client silently saying Grace. He finished, he rolled a joint, and spit in his napkin before he mopped up his stuff with a slice of bread. The man has me beat.
I've thought about Grace for a lot of years for no apparent reason. I don't just think about it when I'm horking down some bugs or some weird looking lizard or choking on something others find edible. I don't just think about it when I'm doing the Ritz with a girl I like. I think about Grace when I'm grabbing a donought at the desk or when I'm vacantly checking out the ice-box. I don't think about the stuff I might eat, I think about the thinking about the stuff I might eat. I think about the time it takes to think about what I might eat, my appreciation of the fact that I'm alive to eat it, that the food is here and that I am here, and that I can take a moment to care. Even the low scammer I had lunch with has better sense than I. There oughta be a Law.
****
Birkat Hamazon ... known in English as the Grace After Meals (lit. "Blessing on Nourishment" ... is a set of Hebrew blessings that according to Halakha are recited after eating a meal....
Birkat Hamazon is made up of four blessings:
The first blessing, which is a blessing of thanks for the food was, according to tradition, composed by Moses in gratitude for the manna which the Jews ate in the wilderness during the Exodus from Egypt.
The second blessing, which is a blessing of thanks for the Land of Israel, is attributed to Joshua after he led the Jewish people into Israel.
The third blessing, which concerns Jerusalem, is ascribed to David (who established the capital to Jerusalem) and Solomon (who built the Temple in Jerusalem). These three blessings are required by scripture.
The fourth blessing, a blessing of thanks for God's goodness, was written by Rabban Gamliel in Yavneh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
****
My kitten jumps on my leg when he hears the can-opener turning, no matter that he just ate. I recall a cartoon of a dog looking at his master, thinking: "He feeds me, he pets me, he loves me. He must be a god." The next panel is of a cat thinking: "He feeds me, he pets me, he loves me. I must be a god."
The time is coming when, thanks to our dhimmi intelligentsia, that we will have to face horrors far worse than anything one would encounter at the diner I go to for lunch. The time is approaching that many of us will have to face men and women who will kill us and our own, and we will have to kill them if we are to survive. I've seen men defeated, seen them run away, and I've seen them captured. Those men weren't necessarily cowards. They didn't have Grace. They didn't have the Law. In defeat they were already dead. They didn't have the Spirit. Fuck 'em.
I've seen strong men go down fighting, and I don't care. They weren't mine, and I don't care.
I've seen the good die crying, and it confuses me, it upsets me, and I don't like it. I don't like it a lot. Where and when I can I make effective changes to the order of things.
****
"Acknowledge me, my Keeper."
My kitten has no sense. I play on the stereo Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and the boy is dumb and sprawling on the carpet. I breathe hot breath on his belly and he purrs. The music comes from nowhere and ends and is no more. My kitten lies on my chest and pads at my throat. I wonder if he hears the music at all.
"Lord, is it I?"
I close my eyes and I think about thinking about.
"Around Thy Tomb here sit we weeping"
I open my eyes and see a fly crawling across the sandwich I didn't bother finishing at dinner time. It sits on the plate on the table on the floor on the ground somewhere in the universe in the darkness.
I take dinner in the rough part of my life, a dump where one of the roughest of the lowest shit-bags in this city goes to sleep. I don't bother dressing for the occasion. I show up ready for the darkness and the exhaustion, the general approach I take to sleeping anywhere, which now shows on my face to the point I frighten most people at a glance. And there I am with a crowded mind slopping around thoughts in a bucket, thoughts threatening each other with worries, stinking, dirty, violent memories and mental breakdowns too cheap and easy to pass up if I've managed to break into someone's life and to make enough to satisfy my curiosity and still have a bit left over for a grim smile. OK, the Life is a genuine Mystery. The plot is a page-turner, and it never seems to turn too sour. I stay ragged, on edge, ready for the nightmare that comes when it comes, and I'm tired-out on those razor edges, ripping up the air, living at the bottom of my mind. Most days I sleep short, wake a lot, and head back to work.
After a long life of long and hard roads I think what I can, guess at where it's more or less probable, and try to stay in one piece as I check out the wonders of the world and be thankful for this lottery winning I have, my existence. Hey! Fuckin' excellent!
I had a dream, so to say, in my room a few days ago. I got as far as possible from the vision at the threshold, the dead standing there in the shadows, skulls and ink-blots, a price paid I didn't get to the price of.
As I looked at my face I looked up and saw myself silently saying "Damn!" I finished grumping, rolled over in bed, and spit in a napkin before I mopped forehead with a piece of cloth from the floor. Man, I was beat.
****
I've thought about Grace for a lot of years for no apparent reason. I don't just think about it when I'm dreaming about bugs or some weird looking lizard or being choked by someone others find friendly. I don't just think about it when I'm in bed with a girl I like. I think about it when I'm catching my breath sitting on the side of the bed or when I'm vacantly checking out the book case for some lines of poetry. I don't think about the stuff I might read, I think about the thinking about the stuff I might read. I think about the time it takes to think about what I might read, my appreciation of the fact that I'm alive to read it, that the poets are here and that I am here, and that I can take a moment to care.
The time has come now, thanks to our failure to care, that we have to face horrors far worse than anything one would encounter in my worst nightmares. The time is come when many of us will have to face men and women who will kill us and our own, and we will have to kill them if we are to survive. I see our own defeated, see them run away, and I see them captured. Those men aren't necessarily cowards. They don't have Grace. They don't have the Law. In defeat they are already dead. They didn't have the Spirit. Fuck 'em. Even my cat has better sense than they. I play the Passion.
"Lord, is it I?"
There oughta be a Law.
****
Friday, July 14, 2006
MAWO Vancouver Death Hippies.
The whole world is watching!
The whole world is watching!
The whole world is watching!
Truepeers is organising a demonstration against the Death Hippies in Vancouver, Canada next weekend, July 21-23, 2006.
The whole world will be watching as we descend on the Death Hippies in Vancouver, Canada in the coming week to demonstrate once again that Left dhimmi fascism has an opponent, the people, the united people, the people who will crush this snakehead reactionary movement of evil that is the Left.
The whole world is watching.
We're taking it to the streets again in Vancouver to protest the death machine that is the Left.
Down!
Down!
Down!
Down with the Death Hippies!
Normally, I would not willingly put my ears in proximity to hip hop resentment. But the fact that Canadian taxpayers are being asked to sponsor - through various tax-supported institutions - this anti-western hatefest, organized by a terrorist-sympathizing group, just frightens me too much. I would like to organize a counter-demonstration.
****
Please contact Truepeers at the following blog to leave your comments and suggestions and ask for further details.
http://covenantzone.blogspot.com/2006/07/vancouver-hip-hop-festival-is-hate.html
There is a direct link here to see what the Death Hippies are planning on the surface.
http://www.mawovancouver.org/hiphop2006.html
The whole world is watching! Be there to show them we fight back! No terrorists. No appeasement. No Dhimmitude!
The whole world is watching!
The whole world is watching!
Truepeers is organising a demonstration against the Death Hippies in Vancouver, Canada next weekend, July 21-23, 2006.
The whole world will be watching as we descend on the Death Hippies in Vancouver, Canada in the coming week to demonstrate once again that Left dhimmi fascism has an opponent, the people, the united people, the people who will crush this snakehead reactionary movement of evil that is the Left.
The whole world is watching.
We're taking it to the streets again in Vancouver to protest the death machine that is the Left.
Down!
Down!
Down!
Down with the Death Hippies!
Vancouver Hip Hop Festival is Hate Festival - Protest MAWO Vancouver
A bunch of anti-American, antisemitic, hate-mongering "pacifists" - MAWO Vancouver - whose website calls, among other things, for support of the Toronto 17, and for Canada's withdrawal from Afghanistan - is next week holding an event in Vancouver - the Hip Hop Festival Against War and Occupation - that has sponsorship from the City of Richmond and the District of West Vancouver as well as several other community and academic organizations.Normally, I would not willingly put my ears in proximity to hip hop resentment. But the fact that Canadian taxpayers are being asked to sponsor - through various tax-supported institutions - this anti-western hatefest, organized by a terrorist-sympathizing group, just frightens me too much. I would like to organize a counter-demonstration.
****
Please contact Truepeers at the following blog to leave your comments and suggestions and ask for further details.
http://covenantzone.blogspot
There is a direct link here to see what the Death Hippies are planning on the surface.
http://www.mawovancouver.org
The whole world is watching! Be there to show them we fight back! No terrorists. No appeasement. No Dhimmitude!
Thursday, July 13, 2006
To Hold the Strangling Hand (3)
The price of an average house, a two bedroom one-story bungalow on a 28 foot lot in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada costs $400,000.00 plus interest at roughly 8% per year. Taxes come in at just under 50% of ones yearly income.
I have a friend who makes $50,000.00 per year as an assistant store manager. He brings home $25,000.00 per year. Over half goes to the condo mortgage.
A house in rural Arkansas on 14.5 acres of land near a lake costs $40,000.00. See house below.
To register a corporation in Liberia costs $1,000.00 and fees of little per year. To qualify as a non-resident corporation in Douglas, Isle of Man where non-resident corporations pay no tax means one must have a corporation outside Great Britain. There is zero interest payable on deposits of less than 100. million pounds sterling. Oh well.
To work and save money for a house, the cash goinginto a non-taxable acct. means it would be prudent to work in a place where taxes are low and where one might deposit cash til the house is paid in one fell swoop, or, if one were to find a place to work for $50,000.00 per year one could conceivably pay it off in two years. Such a place? Saudi Arabia.
The Muslim world takes from us without giving back anything other than what we make for them and pay them for the privilege of making for them. We make possible the oil wealth the Saudis gain for the good luck of geology. Anything we take from them is to our benefit. It is to walk away from the strangling hand of government that takes 50% of ones income in taxes and that creates nothing in exchange.
Socialism is a strangling hand. Rather than pay for the privilege of choking to death over the course of alife time one might find it better to breathe free. One might wish to take a role in ones own private life and become the agent of ones destiny. An occasion for that would be to take Saudi Arabia from those worthless nomads and keep the place as an individual private enterprise. To invade it, to conquer it, to keep it by force, to make it a place of our own and to get rich, that is the letting go of the hand of socialism. We owe the Saudis a great deal. We should happily pay them the debt we owe. And for me, once it's paid, to live in a lovely house by the lake in Arkansas.
****
Vancouver, BC - This year, Canadians start working for themselves on June 19th. According to The Fraser Institute's annual Tax Freedom Day calculations, released today, Canadians worked until June 18th to pay the total tax bill imposed on them by all levels of government.
Tax Freedom Day arrives five days earlier than in 2005, when it fell on June 24.
[....]
The Fraser Institute calculates Tax Freedom Day to provide a simple reference point about the impact of government tax collection. The Institute has been researching the comprehensive tax burden on the average family in Canada and in each of the provinces since 1977.
[....]
In 2006, the average Canadian family (with two or more individuals) earned $79,396 in income and paid a total of $36,650 in taxes. The cash income of the average Canadian family increased by 4.2 percent ($3,172) between 2005 and 2006 (Table 4). This compares to a much smaller increase of 1.4 percent ($510) in the total tax bill of the average Canadian family.
The largest increase among the myriad taxes came in the form of income taxes—up $482 for the average Canadian family. Other notable increases were in property taxes ($145) and profit taxes ($114).
[....]
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=731
****
I have a friend who makes $50,000.00 per year as an assistant store manager. He brings home $25,000.00 per year. Over half goes to the condo mortgage.
A house in rural Arkansas on 14.5 acres of land near a lake costs $40,000.00. See house below.
To register a corporation in Liberia costs $1,000.00 and fees of little per year. To qualify as a non-resident corporation in Douglas, Isle of Man where non-resident corporations pay no tax means one must have a corporation outside Great Britain. There is zero interest payable on deposits of less than 100. million pounds sterling. Oh well.
To work and save money for a house, the cash goinginto a non-taxable acct. means it would be prudent to work in a place where taxes are low and where one might deposit cash til the house is paid in one fell swoop, or, if one were to find a place to work for $50,000.00 per year one could conceivably pay it off in two years. Such a place? Saudi Arabia.
The Muslim world takes from us without giving back anything other than what we make for them and pay them for the privilege of making for them. We make possible the oil wealth the Saudis gain for the good luck of geology. Anything we take from them is to our benefit. It is to walk away from the strangling hand of government that takes 50% of ones income in taxes and that creates nothing in exchange.
Socialism is a strangling hand. Rather than pay for the privilege of choking to death over the course of alife time one might find it better to breathe free. One might wish to take a role in ones own private life and become the agent of ones destiny. An occasion for that would be to take Saudi Arabia from those worthless nomads and keep the place as an individual private enterprise. To invade it, to conquer it, to keep it by force, to make it a place of our own and to get rich, that is the letting go of the hand of socialism. We owe the Saudis a great deal. We should happily pay them the debt we owe. And for me, once it's paid, to live in a lovely house by the lake in Arkansas.
****
Vancouver, BC - This year, Canadians start working for themselves on June 19th. According to The Fraser Institute's annual Tax Freedom Day calculations, released today, Canadians worked until June 18th to pay the total tax bill imposed on them by all levels of government.
Tax Freedom Day arrives five days earlier than in 2005, when it fell on June 24.
[....]
The Fraser Institute calculates Tax Freedom Day to provide a simple reference point about the impact of government tax collection. The Institute has been researching the comprehensive tax burden on the average family in Canada and in each of the provinces since 1977.
[....]
In 2006, the average Canadian family (with two or more individuals) earned $79,396 in income and paid a total of $36,650 in taxes. The cash income of the average Canadian family increased by 4.2 percent ($3,172) between 2005 and 2006 (Table 4). This compares to a much smaller increase of 1.4 percent ($510) in the total tax bill of the average Canadian family.
The largest increase among the myriad taxes came in the form of income taxes—up $482 for the average Canadian family. Other notable increases were in property taxes ($145) and profit taxes ($114).
[....]
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca
****
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
To Hold the Strangling Hand (2)
Philosophers love wisdom, and it is their life work to understand reality and the ways of Humanity through high degrees of abstract thinking to arrive at theses that might or might not be a further path to knowledge of the good and the real.
Philosophes, on the other hand, are less abstract in their intellectual approaches to the discovery of the good and the real, tending toward the practical in governance and civility.
****
Newton's formulation of the three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation prompted many Europeans to approach all study of nature through reason and logic. The philosophes were a result of this new approach to learning who encouraged reason, knowledge and education as a way of overcoming superstition and ignorance. Philosophes Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert edited the Encyclopédie (1751-1772,) which represented the philosophe belief that everything could be known, classified and understood by man. It also questioned religious authority and criticized social injustice. They believed that the role of philosophy was to change the world, not just to discuss it.
Deism: Many philosophes rejected organized religion as a means of holding back human progress. Those philosophes critical to religion claimed that Christianity prevents humans from seeking improvement in their conditions by teaching ideas such as predestination and original sin....
Toleration: Many philosophes believed that toleration was the means to a virtuous life. They believed that toleration would combat the religious fanaticism that prevented humans from bettering their condition....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophes
****
Philosophy is divided today. Those who are classical philosophers in our time are generally Natural Scientists, those dealing in abstract if useful sciences such as physics rather than metaphysics. Today, the philosophes are those we term Social Scientists, those dealing in fields such as sociology and political science, for example. Stephen Hawkins on the one side, and Noam Chomsky on the other.
The American Founding Fathers were philosophes. They were revolutionaries and social activists. Jefferson, Paine, Franklin. They were, in the classical sense, liberals. Today's liberals are, in the classical sense, reactionaries, those who struggle against the Liberalism of the past ages. The Left is counter-revolutionary. They are the enemies of social progress. Most of today's social activists are the enemies of Humanity, struggling to restore the feudal order prior to that of the Revolutions of America, France, and Industry. They are neo-feudalists trying to turn Man back to a time when all were masters or slaves, all bound by the feudal ties of the commune and it's duties and privileges, its titles and obligations. It is a longing for the restoration of primitive fascism. The Left is the old Right. In fact, there is no difference. Most of today's philosophes are fascists.
Through the course of this blog we have looked at the origins of political fascism from the time of Plato through the Watt Tyler Rebellion and particularly from the French Revolution to our time. The common theme throughout is a fear and hatred of individuality, a rage and violence against those who are not part of the group and of those who deny the validity of group life. We see over and again a reaction against those who would be free to choose for themselves and to act for themselves in their own interest as opposed to the will of the family, the tribe, the clan, the commune, the state, the culture. We see fascism at work in all cases. From here we will again look at the philosophes of today to see the fascism of the Left in the form of social activists who would strangle Man as man in the attempt to keep him bound to the group, to the commune, to the whole.
There are homosexuals in our society. In Canada, a nation of 30 million people, they are perhaps one percent of the people. If one were to look into the influence homosexuals have on the general population's attitudes toward homosexuality, one will not be surprised to find they have inordinate influence. In fact, homosexuals are almost paramount in the mind of the nation as people of value by group identity alone. One might ask why homosexuals are so central to the life of our nations across the West. Why them and not other "victims of society"? All non-White people are victims of Western society, Whites being aggressive and unfair to those subjected to the racism of Whites, and so on. But what of White victims of Whites, of women and homosexuals? There we have it. And we extend the victimisation plan to drug addicts suffering from medical conditions, criminals suffering from poverty and lack of opportunity, and so on, and so on. None of these victims are so as individuals but only as identifiable members of oppressed groups. Individuals are themselves and responsible for themselves, but as a group they are identifiable as members of an oppressed group, a group that leaves out the qualities or lack thereof of the person as he is. No X is responsible for his behaviour if he is acting as a member of the group. All Xs are victims not of themselves but of another group, the weaker needing protection from the stronger. The point being that the group now needs activists to protect them from the onslaught of the more powerful group, and the activists needing the group from which to have a cause to fight for, to give meaning to their lives, to make money from, to gain status by being a part of and not a part of the Other, the evil oppressor group, a moral high-ground in defence of the weak. Thus we see the rise of "Identity Politics." Thus we see the rise of Social Activists. Thus we see the suffering of the Palestinian! People! and other such scums elevated to the heights of Humanity for no reason whatsoever other than the needs of the agents of social change. The philosophes of today need the homosexuals and the Palestinians and the rest for the sake of life, meaning, status, and mere cash. Here comes the Islamophobic. Start writing cheques to the agents of social change who will protect the Muslims from us.
Throughout the course of this blog we have charted the rise of Individualism throughout history as it eventually culminated in the triune revolutions of Industry, France and America. Those revolutions are the revolutions of Modernity. Those revolutions are of individuality opposed to communitarianism, of man as opposed to the herd. We've looked at the ownership of private property as one of the fundamentals of our Revolutions. Private property allows for the privacy of man's ownership of his own life as his own property. It rankles the mind of the fascist, the primitive communitarian, the herd man. Those who cannot accept man as individual act to revert man to his state of farm animal. To bind a man to a group and groups to the whole of primitivism is to manage a mass and to bind them all. One cannot control individuals such. Agents of social change are people farmers. In their binding of man to man and man to them, they are the ones who extend the helping hand that strangles all in one fist.
Fascism: "The name comes from the Latin fasces – a bundle of rods with a projecting axe, which was the symbol of authority in ancient Rome."
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/browse/glossary.html
****
Today's agents of social change are not the revolutionaries of our modern history. They are fascist philosophes. Modernity is the end of the feudal era, and the philosophes of today wish to return man to the time of communes and titles and privilege, to a time of neo-feudalism. Today's agents of social change look backward to the Golden Age to find their utopian model of the good. Whether Left or Right they look backward to a time when men were huddled together in a group, tended by the priests of awareness. These people long for the end of history, a time when there will be no change, perfection being reached and all else a lessening and decay of the perfect. these people who lead the world to the past are fascists who would bind men and rule them, if not with the axe then with guile and socialism and guilt and pseudo-religion. These people do not love wisdom for the sake of knowledge of it and its benefits to all but they love their vanities, their status, their cash, their fancy shoes and their poses struck like Mussolini on the balcony.
Our intelligentsia are fascists. Our philosophes are poseurs and dangerous to the life of Man. Our philosophes live not for abstractions of thought and morals but in a phantasy world of apocalyptic utopias of the fascist mind in which they are the gnostic priests of total control. That is as far from philosophy as one is likely to find in intellectuals, and the most frightening for us. We must stop them before they use their proxy minions to blow us up on buses or shoot us to death in the streets, kill our children in schools or blow us up in cafes and fly our planes into our buildings. To stop the agents of social change we must become agents of social change ourselves.
How many homosexuals are there in a nation? In Canada there are a few thousand, the proverbial small minority of extremists who've hi-jacked a nation of peace for their own devious ends. There are perhaps no more than 500 social activists who have transformed the Western nations and turned them into sewers of dhimmitude. 500 social activists. 500 philosophes have turned our lives and the Western world into a nightmare of dhimmitude and primitive triumph. It will take 500 philsophers to change our path again to the future.
Tear away the hand we hold as it leads us to the past. Crush the strangling hand.
Philosophes, on the other hand, are less abstract in their intellectual approaches to the discovery of the good and the real, tending toward the practical in governance and civility.
****
Newton's formulation of the three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation prompted many Europeans to approach all study of nature through reason and logic. The philosophes were a result of this new approach to learning who encouraged reason, knowledge and education as a way of overcoming superstition and ignorance. Philosophes Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert edited the Encyclopédie (1751-1772,) which represented the philosophe belief that everything could be known, classified and understood by man. It also questioned religious authority and criticized social injustice. They believed that the role of philosophy was to change the world, not just to discuss it.
Deism: Many philosophes rejected organized religion as a means of holding back human progress. Those philosophes critical to religion claimed that Christianity prevents humans from seeking improvement in their conditions by teaching ideas such as predestination and original sin....
Toleration: Many philosophes believed that toleration was the means to a virtuous life. They believed that toleration would combat the religious fanaticism that prevented humans from bettering their condition....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
****
Philosophy is divided today. Those who are classical philosophers in our time are generally Natural Scientists, those dealing in abstract if useful sciences such as physics rather than metaphysics. Today, the philosophes are those we term Social Scientists, those dealing in fields such as sociology and political science, for example. Stephen Hawkins on the one side, and Noam Chomsky on the other.
The American Founding Fathers were philosophes. They were revolutionaries and social activists. Jefferson, Paine, Franklin. They were, in the classical sense, liberals. Today's liberals are, in the classical sense, reactionaries, those who struggle against the Liberalism of the past ages. The Left is counter-revolutionary. They are the enemies of social progress. Most of today's social activists are the enemies of Humanity, struggling to restore the feudal order prior to that of the Revolutions of America, France, and Industry. They are neo-feudalists trying to turn Man back to a time when all were masters or slaves, all bound by the feudal ties of the commune and it's duties and privileges, its titles and obligations. It is a longing for the restoration of primitive fascism. The Left is the old Right. In fact, there is no difference. Most of today's philosophes are fascists.
Through the course of this blog we have looked at the origins of political fascism from the time of Plato through the Watt Tyler Rebellion and particularly from the French Revolution to our time. The common theme throughout is a fear and hatred of individuality, a rage and violence against those who are not part of the group and of those who deny the validity of group life. We see over and again a reaction against those who would be free to choose for themselves and to act for themselves in their own interest as opposed to the will of the family, the tribe, the clan, the commune, the state, the culture. We see fascism at work in all cases. From here we will again look at the philosophes of today to see the fascism of the Left in the form of social activists who would strangle Man as man in the attempt to keep him bound to the group, to the commune, to the whole.
There are homosexuals in our society. In Canada, a nation of 30 million people, they are perhaps one percent of the people. If one were to look into the influence homosexuals have on the general population's attitudes toward homosexuality, one will not be surprised to find they have inordinate influence. In fact, homosexuals are almost paramount in the mind of the nation as people of value by group identity alone. One might ask why homosexuals are so central to the life of our nations across the West. Why them and not other "victims of society"? All non-White people are victims of Western society, Whites being aggressive and unfair to those subjected to the racism of Whites, and so on. But what of White victims of Whites, of women and homosexuals? There we have it. And we extend the victimisation plan to drug addicts suffering from medical conditions, criminals suffering from poverty and lack of opportunity, and so on, and so on. None of these victims are so as individuals but only as identifiable members of oppressed groups. Individuals are themselves and responsible for themselves, but as a group they are identifiable as members of an oppressed group, a group that leaves out the qualities or lack thereof of the person as he is. No X is responsible for his behaviour if he is acting as a member of the group. All Xs are victims not of themselves but of another group, the weaker needing protection from the stronger. The point being that the group now needs activists to protect them from the onslaught of the more powerful group, and the activists needing the group from which to have a cause to fight for, to give meaning to their lives, to make money from, to gain status by being a part of and not a part of the Other, the evil oppressor group, a moral high-ground in defence of the weak. Thus we see the rise of "Identity Politics." Thus we see the rise of Social Activists. Thus we see the suffering of the Palestinian! People! and other such scums elevated to the heights of Humanity for no reason whatsoever other than the needs of the agents of social change. The philosophes of today need the homosexuals and the Palestinians and the rest for the sake of life, meaning, status, and mere cash. Here comes the Islamophobic. Start writing cheques to the agents of social change who will protect the Muslims from us.
Throughout the course of this blog we have charted the rise of Individualism throughout history as it eventually culminated in the triune revolutions of Industry, France and America. Those revolutions are the revolutions of Modernity. Those revolutions are of individuality opposed to communitarianism, of man as opposed to the herd. We've looked at the ownership of private property as one of the fundamentals of our Revolutions. Private property allows for the privacy of man's ownership of his own life as his own property. It rankles the mind of the fascist, the primitive communitarian, the herd man. Those who cannot accept man as individual act to revert man to his state of farm animal. To bind a man to a group and groups to the whole of primitivism is to manage a mass and to bind them all. One cannot control individuals such. Agents of social change are people farmers. In their binding of man to man and man to them, they are the ones who extend the helping hand that strangles all in one fist.
Fascism: "The name comes from the Latin fasces – a bundle of rods with a projecting axe, which was the symbol of authority in ancient Rome."
www.channel4.com/history
****
Today's agents of social change are not the revolutionaries of our modern history. They are fascist philosophes. Modernity is the end of the feudal era, and the philosophes of today wish to return man to the time of communes and titles and privilege, to a time of neo-feudalism. Today's agents of social change look backward to the Golden Age to find their utopian model of the good. Whether Left or Right they look backward to a time when men were huddled together in a group, tended by the priests of awareness. These people long for the end of history, a time when there will be no change, perfection being reached and all else a lessening and decay of the perfect. these people who lead the world to the past are fascists who would bind men and rule them, if not with the axe then with guile and socialism and guilt and pseudo-religion. These people do not love wisdom for the sake of knowledge of it and its benefits to all but they love their vanities, their status, their cash, their fancy shoes and their poses struck like Mussolini on the balcony.
Our intelligentsia are fascists. Our philosophes are poseurs and dangerous to the life of Man. Our philosophes live not for abstractions of thought and morals but in a phantasy world of apocalyptic utopias of the fascist mind in which they are the gnostic priests of total control. That is as far from philosophy as one is likely to find in intellectuals, and the most frightening for us. We must stop them before they use their proxy minions to blow us up on buses or shoot us to death in the streets, kill our children in schools or blow us up in cafes and fly our planes into our buildings. To stop the agents of social change we must become agents of social change ourselves.
How many homosexuals are there in a nation? In Canada there are a few thousand, the proverbial small minority of extremists who've hi-jacked a nation of peace for their own devious ends. There are perhaps no more than 500 social activists who have transformed the Western nations and turned them into sewers of dhimmitude. 500 social activists. 500 philosophes have turned our lives and the Western world into a nightmare of dhimmitude and primitive triumph. It will take 500 philsophers to change our path again to the future.
Tear away the hand we hold as it leads us to the past. Crush the strangling hand.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
To Hold the Strangling Hand.
Social activism is a recent development in Human history. It presupposes the concept of "progress" and linear history. It requires of people the very concept that there is such a thing as "change." The idea of change is not so simple as most of us would assume. Many of the finest minds in Western philosophy have argued very well that there is no such thing, that what we think of as difference from one to another is illusion or mistaken interpretation. Most non-Western religion and philosophy takes the above position. It is a hallmark of Modernity to claim that there is progress in a meaningful sense, and that people have a hand in creating and guiding it as they will. If we take for granted our concept of progress, then we cut off our understanding of the misoneism of the primitive world, those who are the current majority of the world's population and those who were, until c. 1750, roughly, everyone. We hurt ourselves in not recognising our revolutionary lives as Modernists. We few in the Western world believe in progress, and we are few indeed. The world's majority not only do not believe in the concept of Progress, they hate the idea, and when and where they can they kill those who propound it. We who live in the mind of the Modernist West not only believe in progress as obvious, but we believe it to be a good, and we believe we can make it happen faster by our own efforts. We indulge in "social activism" to make the progressive changes we demand.Let's not fall off the plank we cross here. Let's look at the difference between progress and social progress. We'll see it clearly in the differences between social engineering and development. The two are nothing of the same, and there is also the reactionary Left to factor in to this discussion to make the whole sensible, the reactionary "progressives."
Parmenides, among others, argues that there is no such thing as change. The argument is counter-intuitive but plausible. His is but one of a number of first-rate speculations on the nature of being and existence. We can look to Berkely and Nietzche for others who in one way or another disclaim the possiblity of change. We live with that concept today in many of the so-called post-modernist philosophers, those who claim cultural and moral relativism and the stasis of history, though we must accept the variants of the arguments to see it. Nevertheless, the arguments are at heart the same in that they deny change. Cycle is not progress, and unfolding is not change when it occurs outside of the subjective. The denial of change is a cornerstone of fascism.
Further, we find Plato and those who follow him in various ways who claim that there is change from the good to the degenerate, that change, such as it is, is a destruction of the perfect. We see this too clearly in the Christian Gnostic idea of the Demiurge. And we see it today in the ideologies of the Left Gnostics and dhimmi fascists who hearken back to the Golden Age of primitivism, the age of ecological haromony, for example. Things cannot get progressively better, they can only get worse if we continue as we do. We must, according to the fascists, return to the past. Of course it presupposes agency, and it does so by virtue of the Gnostic's higher awareness of the authentic. Thus we find ourselves in the grip of the Gnostic ideologue acting as agent of social change. We get social activists. We get Left dhimmi fascist reactionaries. It should be clear then that the rise of neo-feudalism and philobarbarism in the intelligentsia of the Modern West arise in reaction to our attempts to further progress. The incremental progress of the individual democrat is seen by the Left Gnostic as degeneracy, a further falling away from the Golden Age, a harm. And as agents, the Left finds fulfillment in wrecking our progress. Social change, indeed, and a turning back to the Golden Age of primitivism to be certain.
Predestination and determinism are the same coin. In both cases there is no volition and no progress. "Is" is only is. But the "elect" can find a way to guide the rest of us to higher states of being if they will. Change is a Christian concept, and reaction is one from the Christian Gnostics. We cannot allow ourselves to be confused about these trains of counter-thought.
Our Leftists, our progressives, our agents of social change, tey are reactionaries longing for a Romantic past of the Golden Age. Like it or not, they are fascists.
****
Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of an often controversial argument.
The terms activism and activist used in a political manner first appeared in the Belgian press in 1916 in connection with the Flamingant movement.1 The word "activism" is often used synonymously with protest or dissent, but activism can stem from any number of political orientations and take a wide range of forms, from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism (such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing preferred businesses), rallies and street marches, strikes, or even guerrilla tactics. In the more confrontational cases, an activist may be called a freedom fighter by some, and a terrorist by others, depending on whether the commentator supports the activist's ends.
In some cases, activism has nothing to do with protest or confrontation: for instance, some religious and feminist activists try to persuade people to change their behavior directly, rather than persuade governments to change laws; the cooperative movement seeks to build new institutions which conform to its principles, and generally does not lobby or protest politically.
[....]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
****
As the day wears on I'll try to return to this and provide further details to show the menace of the reactionary Left. Please feel free to leave commnets in the meantime.
The purpose of this essay will be to show that the Gnostic lead is the strangling hand of primitivist fascism. Please bear with me as I find time during the day to continue.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Faith
Abraham took Isaac to Mount Moriah to sacrifice the boy. It's bad enough to kill ones child, we can all imagine, but to do so even though one has no hope of another child, this child being the hope of a lifetime finally come true only to be demanded back, and worse, this very child being the link to the line of the Messiah, a link to be broken not just for the man and wife but for the whole people, then what do you do?
What do you do?
Below is a short excerpt from a philosophy professor's long letter to a student:
FEAR AND TREMBLING
By Soren Kierkegaard.
132 pages
Translated by Walter Lowrie.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974
ISNN # 0-691-01962=2
Comments and notes by Bob Corbett
February 2002
While Kierkegaard concentrates on Abraham as a man of faith, I am deeply moved by Kierkegaard's analysis of what happens in this moment of radical individualism when one suspends the universal and ethical and determines value on one's own. This is the essence. Kierkegaard is for me blinded by one and only one answer: faith in God. Most existentialists take a route much more like the one which Charles Taylor says in the issue today in our world – ours in the time of this radical subjectivity. What are we to make of it? I think Kierkegaard got it right: When it comes to value we must leave the universal (it fails us) and we must become the LONE individual who in faith – but I think in faith to one's self – must determine value and truth. And Kierkegaard is 100% right that this is no light act. Any serious person does it with fear and trembling, with dread and humility at the awesome responsibility one takes upon one's shoulder's when one does this. It is not the light and trivial play that Jason Chester complained of in his early post on Charles Taylor's analysis of modern day subjectivism, when one just evades it all by trivially saying: it's all relative. Values must be created by the "I choose" and "I shall now act." But such choices are the most awesome responsibility one has in life. They are, just as Kierkegaard says of his notion of faith in the epilogue – the higher meaning of life.
As Kierkegaard says: one may stay in the ethical, the universal and have a meaningful and satisfying life. Or one may go farther and embrace in fear and trembling and in dread and awe the faith in one's own choices, facing the terrifying possibilities of being deceived and of deceiving oneself. One makes these choices – Kierkegaard's faith and my lone human choices – in fear and trembling, in dread, awe and humility, and then takes full responsibility for those choices and the life that follows from them.
On my view, Kierkegaard just analyzes one possible way to act when one suspends the ethical and universal and enters into the world of the individual subjectivity.
http://www.webster.edu/
****
We have to confront the nature of our faith, such as it might be if it is at all. There are most who refuse to question faith at all, not believing in anything, others who refuse by believing in anything that comes along. We end up with nihilists and facsist from those postions. For the rest of us who care at all about the problem we face today we will have to decide where we act as individuals and where we act as universalists. It is essential that we understand where we stand in regard to the laws.
One of our readers, Religion of Peace, sends the following link to us. Consider the link below in terms of faith.
http://islamophobic.blogspot
****
Sunday, July 09, 2006
The Church of Dag
Although it seems I have staged another coup to commandeer Dag's blog this weekend, the truth is that Dag's been having some computer problems which are preventing him from posting. He's passed along his latest piece, however, for me to post for him. It follows below:
... Rev. Mary Joseph, pastor of Pathways, a United Church-affiliated "progressive Christian community" open to anyone interested in the thought and teachings of Jesus. "This is a fairly religious country, with a huge Christian base. But many people resent the element of judgment in fundamentalist churches." A lot of it, Joseph concurs, flows from the same severe stance on sexual matters -- abortion and homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, premarital sex and birth control -- that did so much to empty the mainstream churches in the first place. But there's another element as well, she adds: "People interested in alternative spiritual ways feel harshly judged and unwelcome too, like all those Christians who are interested in Buddhist meditation."
****
Cry me a fucking river!
I'm sure that if I got out more I'd encounter people to this day who say, "Jesus loves you." I hear all kinds of rubbish from others, and I suspect Christians will tell me more of the same in Christian cliches. The society we have made is one based on falsity of feeling and thought. That extends to religion. Why would Christians take responsibility for their own actions and their own being if others don't? Christians are inexcusable in that they should, by being Christians, know better if they know their religion.
"Jesus loves me." The point is lost on me. I think there is no point. I think the point one wishes to make is that Christians are loving, sharing-caring types who are non-judgemental, kind and nice, soft and welcoming. Good for them. But what about Jesus? What about God? What about the religion? If we need feel-good therapy, then indeed we can go to a Buddhist monastery or a New Age weekend retreat to build up our self-esteem; but religion, I think, has nothing to do with being loved, it being not about me but about God. And were I judged, harshly or not, it is religion and God at work.
I do encounter, even
in my isolation here, the phrase, "apostate church." That church might well be all about me and my sensitivities. That would be a church I know nothing about me, and one I would not care to know. The church of "Jesus Loves Dag" is a church I would call my mirror. I could like that. I am not a harsh judge of my own character. My mirror loves me. One of these days I'll even clean off the picture of Cary Grant that hangs over it. But I'm not ever going to some damned church that offers me jazz vespers and hugs at the doorway. Nor will I darken the doorway of a church that ponders " the thought and teachings of Jesus."
... Rev. Mary Joseph, pastor of Pathways, a United Church-affiliated "progressive Christian community" open to anyone interested in the thought and teachings of Jesus. "This is a fairly religious country, with a huge Christian base. But many people resent the element of judgment in fundamentalist churches." A lot of it, Joseph concurs, flows from the same severe stance on sexual matters -- abortion and homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, premarital sex and birth control -- that did so much to empty the mainstream churches in the first place. But there's another element as well, she adds: "People interested in alternative spiritual ways feel harshly judged and unwelcome too, like all those Christians who are interested in Buddhist meditation."
****
Cry me a fucking river!
I'm sure that if I got out more I'd encounter people to this day who say, "Jesus loves you." I hear all kinds of rubbish from others, and I suspect Christians will tell me more of the same in Christian cliches. The society we have made is one based on falsity of feeling and thought. That extends to religion. Why would Christians take responsibility for their own actions and their own being if others don't? Christians are inexcusable in that they should, by being Christians, know better if they know their religion.
"Jesus loves me." The point is lost on me. I think there is no point. I think the point one wishes to make is that Christians are loving, sharing-caring types who are non-judgemental, kind and nice, soft and welcoming. Good for them. But what about Jesus? What about God? What about the religion? If we need feel-good therapy, then indeed we can go to a Buddhist monastery or a New Age weekend retreat to build up our self-esteem; but religion, I think, has nothing to do with being loved, it being not about me but about God. And were I judged, harshly or not, it is religion and God at work.
I do encounter, even
in my isolation here, the phrase, "apostate church." That church might well be all about me and my sensitivities. That would be a church I know nothing about me, and one I would not care to know. The church of "Jesus Loves Dag" is a church I would call my mirror. I could like that. I am not a harsh judge of my own character. My mirror loves me. One of these days I'll even clean off the picture of Cary Grant that hangs over it. But I'm not ever going to some damned church that offers me jazz vespers and hugs at the doorway. Nor will I darken the doorway of a church that ponders " the thought and teachings of Jesus."If I want some glad-handing snake oil salesman to sell me feel-good, then I'll take up the offer from the crack dealers on the corner. Dope is all about me, and "Jesus Loves Me" is crack religion. It seems to be highly popular, in spite of the rampant atheism of our West. I'll pass on it, thanks much. Apostate that I am, I have a higher regard for religion than the apostate church-goers. I'm sure that many of them resent the element of judgment in my attitudes and responses to them. They probably don't like my severe stance on sexual matters. They might feel harshly judged and unwelcome too. I honestly don't care if Jesus loves them. I don't love them, and I don't care about that either. At a minimum, 31 per cent of the time I am unhappy merely to meet one.
The following story is probably meant to give a lift to Christians concerned that their religion is dwindling in Canada, to show that it really isn't, and that Jesus loves us all.
Peter Mullen writes of Pelagius in Faking It: The Sentimentalisation of Modern Society. I have written elsewhere in a different context on Pelagius, and will therefore refrain from further muddying these waters. Mulllen's point is well taken, regardless, and for those who wish to know more I would suggest a read through. For now, this aticle from McLean's should suffice.
****
Maclean's Poll 2006: Praise the Lord and call the psychic
The following story is probably meant to give a lift to Christians concerned that their religion is dwindling in Canada, to show that it really isn't, and that Jesus loves us all.
Peter Mullen writes of Pelagius in Faking It: The Sentimentalisation of Modern Society. I have written elsewhere in a different context on Pelagius, and will therefore refrain from further muddying these waters. Mulllen's point is well taken, regardless, and for those who wish to know more I would suggest a read through. For now, this aticle from McLean's should suffice.
****
Maclean's Poll 2006: Praise the Lord and call the psychic
It turns out God is alive and well in Canada. So are angels, heaven, and ESP
BRIAN BETHUNE
[....]
But as Bibby's series of public opinion surveys shows, a funny thing happened on the way to an atheist Canada: rumours of Christianity's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Eighty-one per cent of Canadians believe in God, and two-thirds of us that Jesus Christ is His divine son. Belief in angels, heaven and (to a lesser extent) hell, is almost as prevalent. Crunch Bibby's 2005 numbers how you will -- based on age, on weekly or monthly visits, on denomination -- and the attendance decline not only levels off but shows a turn toward growth since 2000.
[....]
Just as it was the decline in attendance among Catholics that drove down the national attendance rate, it is the recent 10 per cent increase in Catholic church-going outside Quebec that has seen those numbers turn around. The uptick makes Bibby think Canada could be in for a "significant revitalization of organized religion." Especially since research indicates that perhaps two-thirds of the 16 per cent-strong No Religion group will "re-identify" with their birth faiths as they seek rites of passage relating to marriage, children, and death.
[....]
In a result that will seem, in the post-9/11 climate, both unsurprising and somewhat alarming, 18 per cent of respondents are uneasy in the presence of a Muslim. But this is hardly evidence of the much-feared anti-Islamic backlash. Canadians save their real suspicion for born-again Christians: 31 per cent of us are unhappy merely to meet one. (Jews, presumably viewed as more of an ethnic than a religious group, disturb only five per cent of Canadians.)
It's hard to guess what images formed in respondents' minds when they were given such stereotypical labels. In the case of born-again Christians, the current U.S. administration is so deeply unpopular here -- among secular Canadians as much for its religiosity as its policies -- that the image may well have been of President George W. Bush. That in itself would have been enough to spike the negative numbers upwards. But almost 80 per cent of Canadians, according to the 2001 census, identify themselves as Christian, and that means unease about born-agains comes from within the faith as well. It's reasonable to conclude that some of the negative attitude toward fundamentalists, Christians and Muslims both, comes from hostility towards fire-and-brimstone religion. And that's never more true than when people fear a political agenda: the proposed introduction of sharia law in Ontario, for instance, or restrictions on abortion or same-sex marriage.
"That 31 per cent number doesn't surprise me at all," comments Rev. Mary Joseph, pastor of Pathways, a United Church-affiliated "progressive Christian community" open to anyone interested in the thought and teachings of Jesus. "This is a fairly religious country, with a huge Christian base. But many people resent the element of judgment in fundamentalist churches." A lot of it, Joseph concurs, flows from the same severe stance on sexual matters -- abortion and homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, premarital sex and birth control -- that did so much to empty the mainstream churches in the first place. But there's another element as well, she adds: "People interested in alternative spiritual ways feel harshly judged and unwelcome too, like all those Christians who are interested in Buddhist meditation."
... A third of us believe in astrology, and more than half (57 per cent) are fairly sure ESP exists. Two-thirds think there's life after death, more than believe in either heaven or hell. Slightly more than 31 per cent consider it likely that we can communicate with the dead, although 46 per cent think we can do so with the spirit world. It seems a glaring contradiction that the number of people who believe we can communicate with spirits is 50 per cent greater than those who think we can talk to the dead -- especially since millions of Christians pray daily to saints, all of whom are dead....
Church without religion, and religion without God. It's all about feel-good. What's the point? Church should be more than a chance to dress up and show off once a week. It should be more than a time to hear yet again that you are special and that "Jesus loves you." Church could be a place with a time to join the communion of souls to celebrate ones religion and ones small place therein without hope of salvation, let alone gaining self-esteem. To know Jesus loves you and that you are special to God is somehow to miss the point that it's unlikely you know or can know the mind of God, were such a presence possible. And there we find the mirror of the mind of man today, vacuous and vain and silly. "Jesus Loves You." How can you presume?
Unless people confront themselves as Human rather than as the centre of their own solipsistic universes we will continue to see the rise of Islam and the attendant dhimmitude of the hollow men who have nothing but the Love of Jesus to comfort them in their decay. Whether Jesus loves people is irrelevant. It's all backward.