Nothing to do with Islam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUhUAa3y4rE

Recession? Depression?

I got a joke in the mail today:

A friend of mine just started his own business, making landmines that look like prayer mats. It’s doing well. He says prophets are going through the roof.

For Dessert: Baked Alaskan.

Rino Murkowski Freeze-out.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/08/alaskan-senator-lisa-murkoski-set-to-concede-calls-press-conference/

Yes, Alex, for $500.00, "What is a Thanatocracy?"

Jeopardy.

"But there is a part of me that thinks I’m seeing a new kind of human community come into being that I don’t want to face and that I don’t have a name for. A city where murder, violence, kidnapping, torture, robbery and extortion are the economy. This is a new kind of city."

New!? Leave it to a leftard not to know. Good lord. It is the nature of all cities till the rise of Modernity, the thanatocracy.

Cities are not traditionally places of freedom and independence for the average individual. They are areas of central political organisation and military encampments. To a lesser extent they are centres of trade, commerce, and finance. Cities are distribution hubs. Marx writes of cities as parasitical because they take in food and other goods from the surrounding agricultural areas and seem to give back little, which is a "physical fallacy." It lingers. Cities are distribution points for gathering in and sending out, i.e. they are marketplaces. But that is all secondary at best: cities are centres of political power, places where men of power gather to make decisions regarding the rule of the land. In a world of strength as moral, of "might makes right," cities are the central power of what we call the fasces. A fasces is a symbol from Roman times of a military power, e.g. and axe, wrapped round with reeds, the symbol being of a central power around which the masses are bound. It is appropriate for all authoritarian communalist organisation, particularly pre-Modern cities.

Cities in the pre-Modern world are not free, free in the sense of free trade, unless they have a royal charter. They are areas open to plunder and destruction by superior forces, not necessarily outsiders. The tax-man cometh. He cometh with a sword. A city is a place of power and indiscriminate violence against the lower orders, those who have no property rights, which is to say, those who are not citizens in a very narrow sense. Pre-Modern cities are places where the majority are prey to any passing privileged and entitled being. You have, they take. You resist, they kill you. Life, nasty, brutish, and short. That's the way it was, and that is the way it is in most places, though today's Mexican Ciudad Juarez is an extreme example in the world. It's not much different from the usual state of early times. Today's drug-dealing police force is little different from Ottoman Janissaries, as one example among numerous. Those who don't et this are those who think all cultures are equal and adaptive, i.e. culturally relative. Anti-Americans and antiModernists don't have a clue. This is what the world used to be everywhere. It takes a leftist to miss it and to blame revolutionary America for the usual state of things.

Jeremy Gantz, "Inside the World’s Deadliest City," In These Times. 30 August 2010.

Beyond the violence, what surprised you most about [Ciudad] Juárez, [Mexico] during your time there?

Charles Bowden: That it keeps functioning. This is a city that’s had 25 percent of housing abandoned. Had at least 40 percent of its businesses slam their doors shut. That has lost at least 100,000 jobs. That has had an explosion of violence, and there are still about one million people that get out of bed every morning and try to go about a normal life. I have said the city is dying, because by any logical standards it is. But there is a part of me that thinks I’m seeing a new kind of human community come into being that I don’t want to face and that I don’t have a name for. A city where murder, violence, kidnapping, torture, robbery and extortion are the economy. This is a new kind of city.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/6329/inside_the_worlds_deadliest_city

People who sentimentalise the past as a golden age of happy peasants living close to nature in a state of bliss with families and friends are maniacs or fools or fascists. Without Modernity, all of the world will revert to a state like Ciudad Juarez, and it will be just like the world has always been: a death camp surrounded by the dying.

Cross Purposes

This came in the mail without a link. I'll try to get more information. Till then, see what you think.

If they can build a Mosque at ground zero without the ACLU objecting, why can't we put a cross in our yard. See how many and who objects to that. Bob

A small cross - A powerful message


What about this idea?

__________________________________________________________

When driving to, from, and through Frankenmuth , Michigan , I'm always intrigued with the many small simple crosses in the front yards of the homes we pass by.

Those crosses are a statement of support for Frankenmuth's Christian foundation.

Two years ago an atheist living there complained about two crosses on a bridge in town. He requested that they be removed and the town removed them.

He then decided that, since he was so successful with that, the city shield should also be changed since it had on it, along with other symbols, a heart with a cross inside signifying the city's Lutheran beginnings.

At that point, the residents decided they had had enough. Hundreds of residents made their opinions known by placing small crosses in their front yards.

Seeing this quiet but powerful statement from the community, the man removed his complaint. Those simple crosses remain in those front yards today.

After passing those crosses for two years, it finally hit me that a small cross in millions of front yards across our country could provide a powerful and inspiring message for all Americans passing them every day.

I think it might be time to take this idea across America . We have an administration that says "we are not a Christian nation" and everywhere you look the ACLU and others are trying to remove from our history and current lives any reference to God, prayer, or the fact that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

Our administration can't bring themselves to talk about "radical Muslims or Islamic terrorists" for fear of offending them, but they can talk about Americans "clinging to their guns and their religion", or insinuate that our own military troops coming home from service overseas might turn into terrorists.

The majority of Americans are Christians, why are we letting this happen to us?

IT''S TIME TO STAND UP AND MAKE A STATEMENT. A SMALL QUIET BUT POWERFUL STATEMENT.
IF YOU AGREE, PLACE A SMALL WHITE CROSS IN YOUR FRONT YARD OR GARDEN FOR ALL TO SEE THAT THEY ARE NOT ALONE.

It would be a beautiful thing to see crosses all across America .

Please pass this along.
Encourage all you know to stand for America 's Judeo-Christian heritage and our religious freedom.

God Bless America !

Yoiks! It's Oiks!

I write frequently and in-depth on the topics of oikos, the root word of both oeco-logy and oeco-nomics. Now I see I have some serious competition from Roger Scruton. Nice work.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: “the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours.’ ” What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left. [...]

There is one important difference between the American oik and his European counterpart. American patriotism is not a blood-and-soil nationalism but an allegiance to a country based in an idea of enlightened universalism. Thus our oiks masquerade as–and may even believe themselves to be–superpatriots, more loyal to American principles than the vast majority of Americans, whom they denounce as “un-American” for feeling an attachment to their actual country as opposed to a collection of abstractions.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/hating-your-countrymen-is-the-new-patriotism-101750143.html#ixzz0y9o3bUSv

For all of you breathless as you wait for me to finish my magnum opus, A Genealogy of Left Dhimmi Fascism, which includes three chapters of special interest here, Oikos I, Oikos II, and Oikos III, you will be pleased to know that they are written and are awaiting the completion of the final chapter of this work, chapter seven, Gnosis, now in the middle of section II of three, before I leave this wonderful nation of Canada for some place to sit to type and revise said opus. Oikos is coming.

Now, don't you go waiting for the movie. You know it's not going to be as good as the book.

He's sort of a god....

The law prof. says: "For the first time in my adult life, I am really worried."


http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/08/we-are-in-really-deep-trouble.html

Angry middle-aged White guy fire-bombs Dem. office

If you're curious why Newsweek Magazine was sold for a dollar, which is less than the cover price of one copy of said mag-rag, this might give some indication of just how worthless is a mainstream media product in general:

Chad Garrison, Daily RFT.com, 18 Aug. 2010

St. Louis police have arrested a 50-year-old white man in connection to the bizarre firebombing early yesterday of Congressman Russ Carnahan's campaign headquarters.

[....]

Police aren't releasing the man's name until charges are officially filed. No motive was given for the attack, though one could suspect that the perpetrator is not a fan of the congressman. Given what we know of him -- 50, white, angry -- he certainly fits the demographics of a Tea Party member.

Perhaps, he joined his fellow "patriots" earlier this year when they burned Carnahan's photo in effigy or placed a coffin on the sidewalk outside his home. On second thought, maybe he's not a Tea Party member. Firebombing your opponent's office seems a little too, um, sane for that group.

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/08/man_arrested_for_firebombing_russ_carnahans_campaign_office.php

What really happened? For that we must look not to the msm but to a blog:

VANDAL WHO FIREBOMBED CARNAHAN’S OFFICE IDENTIFIED – He’s a Dem Operative & Disgruntled Employee …Update: Carnahan Confesses

Jim Hoft, August 25, 2010.

Last Tuesday August 17, 2010, Rep. Russ Carnahan’s office was reportedly vandalized and “firebombed” at 2 AM in the morning. Hours later police arrested a suspect for the crime and held him for several hours.

Of course, when the “firebombing” was reported local leftists blamed the tea party activists.

Then things got really weird. The police released the suspect and the Carnahan camp went silent. Carnahan employees were seen dumping documents into a dumpster but refused to to talk to reporters. There was a complete blackout on information.

Now we know why. The suspect was reportedly a disgruntled progressive activist employed by Russ Carnahan. An unnamed source familiar with the case released the information. Suspect Chris Powers reportedly was upset because he did not get paid so he firebombed the Carnahan finance offices at 2 in the morning.

What a complete shock.

Who'll waste a dollar to buy the New York Times?

Oh, gee, look at this:

Man held without bail in NYC cab driver stabbing

By TOM HAYS
Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) -- A college student who did volunteer work in Afghanistan was charged Wednesday with using a folding tool to slash the neck and face of a New York City taxi driver after the driver said he is Muslim.

[....]

Enright volunteered for Intersections International, a group that promotes interfaith dialogue and has supported a controversial proposed mosque near ground zero.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CABBIE_STABBED?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

Supports Ground Zero mosque by slashing a Muslim's throat. I get it. He's a secret Tea Partier hiding secretly under cover. Yeah, no one will ever figure this one out but me, right?

Man's search for meaning

I'm still writing the book I started thinking about back when I began my blog, No Dhimmitude, back in 2004. I'm writing the final chapter (seven) in three parts, the first of which is near completion now. When finish this chapter I will turn to writing a conclusion, a short but difficult task. In that I will look at a disparate group of thinkers, ranging from V.I. Lenin, Georges Sorel and Sigmund Freud to Viktor Frankl, among others. Below is a bit on Frankl.

Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were "decent" Nazi guards and "indecent" prisoners, most notably the kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain.

His concluding passage in Part One describes the psychological reaction of the inmates to their liberation, which he separates into three stages. The first is depersonalization—a period of readjustment, in which a prisoner gradually returns to the world. Initially, the liberated prisoners are so numb that they are unable to understand what freedom means, or to emotionally respond to it. Part of them believes that it is an illusion or a dream that will be taken away from them. In their first foray outside their former prison, the prisoners realized that they could not comprehend pleasure. Flowers and the reality of the freedom they had dreamed about for years were all surreal, unable to be grasped in their depersonalization.

The body is the first element to break out of this stage, responding by voracious eating and sleeping. Only after the partial replenishing of the body is the mind finally able to respond, as “feeling suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it” (111).

This begins the second stage, in which there is a danger of deformation. As the intense pressure on the mind is released, mental health can be endangered. Frankl uses the analogy of a diver suddenly released from his pressure chamber. He recounts the story of a decent friend who became immediately obsessed with dispensing the same violence in judgment of his abusers that they had inflicted on him.

Upon returning home, the prisoners had to struggle with two fundamental experiences which could also damage their mental health: bitterness and disillusionment. The last stage is bitterness at the lack of responsiveness of the world outside—a “superficiality and lack of feeling...so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing human beings any more” (113). Worse was disillusionment, which was the discovery that suffering does not end, that the longed-for happiness will not come. This was the experience of those who – like Frankl – returned home to discover that no one awaited them. The hope that had sustained them throughout their time in the concentration camp was now gone. Frankl cites this experience as the most difficult to overcome.

As time passed, however, the prisoner's experience in a concentration camp finally became nothing but a remembered nightmare. What is more, he knows that he has nothing left to fear any more, "except his God".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

What about those who have no meaning for themselves, who find life a terrible experience they wish to end, bringing horror to those around them? We can look at a couple of kids, boys from Colorado, as examples:

A personality profile of Eric Harris, based on journal entries and personal communication, suggested behavior patterns consistent with a "malignant narcissism ... (with) pathological narcissism, antisocial features, paranoid traits, and unconstrained aggression".[26] The report notes that such a profile should not be construed as a direct psychiatric diagnosis, which is based on face-to-face interviews, formal psychological testing, and collection of collateral information.

Dylan Klebold's role in the shooting had him surrounded in mystery for some time. In his journal, Klebold wrote about his view that he and Harris were god-like and more highly evolved than every other human being. His secret journal, however, records self-loathing and suicidal intentions. Although both had difficulty controlling their anger, Klebold's anger had led to his being more prone to serious trouble than Harris. Klebold was well known to swear at teachers and fight with his boss at Blackjack Pizza. After their arrest, which both recorded as the most traumatic thing the two had ever experienced, Klebold wrote a letter to Harris, saying how they would have so much fun getting revenge and killing cops, and how his wrath from the January arrest would be god-like. On the day of the massacre, Klebold wore a black T-shirt which had the word "WRATH" printed in red.[6] It was speculated that revenge for the arrest was another possible motive for the attack, and that the pair planned on having a massive gun battle with police during the shooting. Klebold also wrote that life was no fun without a little death, and that he would like to spend the last moments of his life in nerve-wracking twists of murder and bloodshed. He concluded by saying that he would kill himself afterward in order to leave the world that he hated and go to a better place.

One official report suggested that Harris was a clinical psychopath and Klebold was a depressive. Investigators believe that their mental illnesses may have been the underlying cause for their rampage. This report suggested that all of the reasons the boys gave for the shooting were justifications in order to present themselves as killers with a cause.[10]

Some of the home recorded videos, called "The Basement Tapes", have been withheld from the public by the police. Harris and Klebold reportedly discussed their motives for the attacks in these videos and gave instructions in bomb making. Police cite the reason for withholding these tapes as an effort to prevent them from becoming "call-to-arms" and "how-to" videos that could inspire copycat killers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold

I write often of "decent" people. I think I can thank Frankl for that. Too, "that suffering does not end, that the longed-for happiness will not come."

How do we cope with it? I'll turn at some point later to Freud for a few lines, not particularly comforting. Till then, life is good enough for the likes of me and my kind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HZ5f5pFD5w

Pamela Geller has an opinion.

Pamela Geller is upset that someone has held a rally against the Ground Zero mosque. Robert Spencer writes at Jihad Watch of the rally:

For the record, neither Pamela Geller nor I were at this clearly poorly organized and ill-conceived protest yesterday. Neither of us had anything to do with organizing it or planning it in any way. Geller declares:"... I have no idea what this rally is. I have no idea who these people are. I have no idea who organized this rally. Clearly, whoever organized this was careless, unprepared, shooting from the hip and harmful to the cause of freedom and compassion. I wasn't even in the state, nor did I know anything about this half-assed effort.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/08/all-ground-zero-mosque-foes-look-alike-max-blumenthal-attacks-pamela-geller-for-protest-she-had-noth.html

That's just fine. If Geller wants to distance herself from a rally she had nothing to do with, it's right and proper that she do so in public. She is a private individual with a right to protect herself from false accusations of being associated with people she is not associated with. Beyond that, who cares what Pamela Geller thinks? Her friends do. Rightly so. Others? I don't think anyone cares what she says. Rightly so.

Geller writes above:

I have no idea what this rally is. I have no idea who these people are. I have no idea who organized this rally. Clearly, whoever organized this was careless, unprepared, shooting from the hip and harmful to the cause of freedom and compassion.

I'm sure that most Americans have no idea who Pamela Geller is, and if they did, I'm sure most would see her as yet one more America with an opinion with just as much right to express it as any other. Beyond that, unless people have some private concern for Geller's opinions, all she has is opinion, good or bad, but not anything anyone has to pay attention to just because her name is Pamela Geller.

I too have no idea what this rally is. So what? If people want to have a rally, they'll have a rally. If Geller thinks it makes her look bad, that's entirely up to her to feel about it as she will, and for her friends to sympathise with her if they care to. If those who organised this rally are indeed "careless, unprepared, shooting from the hip, and cetera, that's their right, as it's Geller's right to express her opinion of them and for others to decide as they will. The point is, Geller in not anyone any more important here than anyone else. Others might well not be well-prepared, and such is the way of it. Geller can say what she likes. So can others. It all comes to much the same thing.

The hack cited at the link above is out of line. He's a different story.

But to criticise "the masses" for having a rally Geller doesn't approve of is not interesting to anyone else but her and her friends. If there are a million rallies, and if Geller disapproves of all of them, Geller's disapproval is not important. What is important is that there be rallies of citizens, whether Geller likes them or not, and for whatever reason. Geller is not responsible for other people's rallies, and they are not responsible for the things she does. She is very likely thankful for that.