Archive for the ‘Isms’ Category
Generosity Of Spirit
Thursday, December 18th, 2008How often do we do something, say something, share something–not because we will get something in return, but just because we want to give a gift? If there is one trait we value in other people, it’s generosity of spirit. These are the forgiving types. They really truly listen to you, even when you’re telling the same story again. These people emanate kindness. You just want to be around them.
I’ve known a couple people like this. Their goodness just came from some authentic place from within. They have a certain decency. One of these people died this last year from cancer. I didn’t write about him. I just couldn’t. I’ve been too ticked off about it. He was one of the good ones. Sweet-natured, loving and giving. Everyone loved and admired him. I’ve come to believe that the old idea that only the good die young may well be right. (In that case, I can expect to live for a very long time.)
I guess I bring up the whole “generosity of the spirit” thing because it is particularly important during times of economic difficulty to find that generous place–for ourselves. When we live miserly, withholding, stingy lives, we tend to draw that sort of energy into our lives, too. It isn’t about money, either. It is possible to have this spirit with lots of money–Old Ebeneezer Scrooge, right? And it is possible to be generous, charitable, with next to nothing.
It’s something that I’d like more of in myself. I would like to be more genuine and possess the expansive kindness that makes other people feel good about themselves. Too many people and experiences are just difficult and mean, I don’t want to contribute to that world and make another person’s day diminished by my own smallness.
So, in honor of Mark, rather than focus on his passing, I want to focus on what he brought to this world and emulate it. There are too few people like Mark. Maybe he was innately good. I don’t know. But I suspect he had to work to be loving and kind and make choices to be generous like everyone else does. I think he made those choices so often, it became a habit, a way of life, his character. He touched many lives with his generosity of spirit and is proof that good guys do win.
“Little Marxists”
Monday, December 15th, 2008Dr. Helen answers a question from a librarian/teacher about goose-stepping 4th graders and how to help kids get properly educated about such things as capitalism versus socialism.
In our kids’ school, the Third Grade project is starting a business, paying more rent for better space (the front classrooms), choosing partners, a product to sell, marketing it, etc. Well guess what? There’s much gnashing of teeth when a kid picks a slouch for a partner. There’s agony (even though the teachers try to spin it positively as our “civic duty”) when the teacher comes and collects the taxes from hard earned bucks. It’s a nice learning experience all the way around.
What would be an even better solution in my opinion is to create a socialist week, in all it’s mediocre glory. So everyone works as a group, makes a crappy product that no one wants to buy, two kids do all the work, but all the kids get the same pay and the government takes 80% of their income. Then, a kid decides he’s hurt his toe and can’t work but gets the same pay. If they work harder they only get a C.
If kids got to experience both capitalism and socialism, they’d make the right choice because socialism is inherently unfair, rewards failure, and is a disincentive to achievement and production. Kids are hardwired for fairness. They get it.
While I know education is important, I think how a kid is raised is even more important. A dull-witted parent emphasizing self-esteem over honest achievement will destroy the best school lessons. And a parent who emphasizes hard work and morality will inoculate against soft-headed ideas rooted in post-modern and Marxist philosophies.
Team sports help because there’s winners and losers. Individual sports help because there is only achievement. Getting a job during High School helps a kid manage his energy and money.
Marxism has to be taught and indoctrinated because it goes against natural law. It is antithetical to how men are wired and ignores basic psychology. Marxism sounds great on paper and stinks in real life. It feels good to believe in collective everything, but it falls flat in practice. That’s why any training about these philosophies needs to be taken out of the realm of theory and into real life.
Get a kid on a ball field or court and he’ll learn the concepts of talent, hard work and winners and losers pretty quickly. Let him makes some money and then have the government take half to spend how they see fit, and he’ll understand why excessive taxation is a disincentive.
Real life cures Marxists.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews and the Houston Chronicle
Defending Evil
Saturday, December 13th, 2008In a post-modern world where no one is right and no one is wrong, it doesn’t surprise me that the Smarty Pants Set defend evil doers (via Dr. Helen) over those the evil doers harm. To condemn evil action would be to discriminate against something, and for a leftist it’s the discriminating that’s the crime. Crime happens theoretically, externally and as a result of another injustice that is no fault of the evil doer. S/he the victim too. We’re all victims!
Tigerhawk says this:
While this is no doubt true to a certain extent, it is far from the entire story. There has been an intellectual class for thousands of years. Sympathy with criminals has been one of its touchstone issues only for a couple of generations (which is why the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” was so funny). Why the change? I think it is because it has recently (as in the last 60 years) become popular among intellectuals to identify social rather than individual causes for pathology. If poor people, unwed mothers, and drug abusers are the victims of social conditions rather than of their own poor individual choices, then it must also be true that muggers, rapists, and stick-up men are victims, too. Either way, this thinking goes, it is society that causes the problem. Well, if that is true then calling for more individual “responsibility” will not do a damned thing. Social problems call for social — meaning statist — solutions. It is all very convenient for people who want government even more involved in the lives of Americans.
It’s a win-win. Evil is good. Societal solutions are key. Government grows. It’s a socialists paradise and excuse for the intellectuals to control you, the average victim.
Global Warming Frozen In Bad Data
Thursday, December 11th, 2008From the Washington Times:
Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover. Their rationale for continuing a lost cause is that weather events in the short term are not necessarily related to long-term climatic trends. But these are the same people who screamed at us each year that ordinary weather events such as high temperatures or hurricanes were undeniable evidence of imminent doom.
Now that global warming is over, politicians are finally ready to enact dubious solutions to a non-existent problem. In Britain, Parliament is intrepidly forging ahead with a bold new plan to cool the climate, even as London experienced its first October snowfall since 1934 and Ireland went through the coldest October in the last 70 years.
This is an absurd spectacle. Our advanced civilization is being systematically mismanaged by technologically illiterate lawyers responding to political pressures from irrational fanatics. Would someone please tell these people it is impossible to overturn the laws of thermodynamics?
We cannot improve our economy by artificially forcing people to use expensive, unreliable and inefficient energy sources.
From the U.S. Senate committee on Environment:
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.
“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.
The problem with this nonsense is that people will believe nothing and therefore everything in the future. Everybody is lying, therefore there is no objective truth.
Climate scientists risk losing all credibility. Science in general will be a victim. Just as the Catholic church lost believers over their collusion with abominable sinning caused loss of faith generally in religious institutions.
H/T High Plains Blogger, my friend from Twitter
Cross-posted at RightWingNews.com
Islam Orthodoxy Fuels Islamofascist Action
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008About a year ago, maybe two now, time flies, we got in a fender bender and the man who drove the tow-truck was from the Middle East somewhere. I took a leap and said to him, “Asalam Alakum” or roughly “peace be unto you” (a fairly universal greeting) in Arabic. He was delighted. Asked how much Arabic I knew and started freely talking. Within two minutes, he was decrying “the Jews” and spewing venom in casual tones. He would be considered a moderate Muslim.
*******
What a person believes fuels a person’s actions. That’s true for everyone.
If a person believes that children are chattel, she will abuse them.
If a person believes that Jews are the source of all mankind’s ills, he will not have a problem killing them. (And might actually believe he’s doing the world a favor.)
If a person believes that terrorism is justified, he will give money to organizations that fund terrorism.
If a person believes that fraternizing with unbelievers taints you, you will kill the person to remain clean and honorable.
If a person believes that women are not human, he can do anything to any woman for any reason without recourse.
This list goes on and on and on. There are peaceful Muslims, many of them. They need to speak out, admit that Mohammed was off about many things, and reform their religion or denounce it outright.
It is the ideology that fuels the action. And it’s the ideology that is the problem.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
Evan Sayet On Liberalism
Friday, December 5th, 2008Hi all! I know you can’t watch videos at work and I know this video is long. Still, you need to watch this. And for my liberal friends, please watch this too.
“The modern liberal has opted to become indiscriminate.”
“They reject rational thought as a hate crime.”
“They are incapable of rationally criticizing their own thought.”
H/T Black and Right
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
Mumbai Victims Tortured
Sunday, November 30th, 2008Via InfidelsAreCool who says “evil pure and simple”:
Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: “It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim’s body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,” he said.
Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,” one doctor said.
The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,” he said.
Corroborating the doctors’ claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. “During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis,” an IB source said.
What? Terrorists don’t follow the Geneva Conventions? Who woulda thunk it.
More here.
Conservatives And The Environment And The Middle Class–UPDATED
Monday, November 24th, 2008At Pajama’s today, I wrote an article about the conflict between the economy and the environment and that when the two crises compete, the economy wins. It is not an either/or problem, of course. It is possible and important, I believe, for conservatives to have a cohesive message and coherent policy regarding the environment. Currently, we have neither.
The Left has both won and lost the environmental argument. (More by Patrick Ruffini on Leftist ideas that are old.) They’ve won in that most people now are convinced there’s a problem. They’ve lost in that the solutions are more stringent than a Pentecostal’s sin list. So, people pay lip service to the environmental problem, do what little they can and tune out. This is a an opportunity for conservatives.
The fact is, there are many conservatives deeply concerned about how to care for and protect the environment while addressing the economic and human concerns. Tied into this issue is a general lack of restraint and a corpulent life-style now in America symbolized by our big waist-lines and mind-numbing debt top to bottom. Conservatives are for personal responsibility and grown-up thinking and discipline. Caring for the environment in concrete ways conforms to that thinking.
Part of the problem with this issue is that it’s not simple in the same way that stem cell research isn’t simple. Complex theories don’t make for simple policy solutions. That doesn’t mean the Left has a complex solution. They have simple logos and simple solutions: “Hurting the environment is bad” is simple. Do conservatives have a simple response? Can the argument be reframed right now, especially, while the economy struggles and there’s a tension between expensive pie-in-the-sky solutions and reality? Will “waste not, want not” sell right now?
Another problem is that conservatives are against regulation and government interference and nanny-statism. How can government policy encourage responsible behavior without seeming coercive and take away rights or economic freedom? I’m not a smoker, but I bristle at the punitive government behavior on legal activity. To me, that means tax breaks and lots of press for things considered good behavior. What good behavior do conservatives want to encourage? Well, why not tax breaks for efficient everything–hot water heaters, windows, etc. But again, these retrofits take money, money that people don’t have right now.
I’m seeing problems as I write this and think out loud. The “right” solution means identifying the real problem. With the science so shoddy, good luck figuring out what the best solution is for fill-in-the-blank environmental issue. The problem, of course, is that the Left accepts this shoddy science on faith and crafts punitive public policy. The Right must answer, every, single, time. And we must be preemptive.
The Left has co-opted the environmental message and managed to irritate a lot of people in the process. The Right can do better. The key will be to simplify the message and make it relevant to economic realities. And another thing before I’m done babbling. I think the environment will retreat as an issue should the economy continue it’s slide. The Right doesn’t need to end up being a day late and a dollar short on an environmental message only to miss the more important message that has been their traditional strength–the economy and changing the American culture of debt. In fact, part of what undid McCain was his seeming irrelevance. He was holding environmental talks, extolled the fundamentals of the economy and sounded seriously out of touch.
Conservatives need to remember that citizens expect the Left to be fou-fou about the details and expect the Right to be solid on the big picture. We lost the big picture in the last election, played to our weaknesses and forgot our strengths.
James Joyner has more.
UPDATED:
The Left has become somewhat of a caricature:
Latest Pajama’s Media Article: Environmentalism Is A Luxury
Monday, November 24th, 2008My latest Pajama’s Media article is up over there and I hope you’ll read it. It’s nothing you’ve read here or elsewhere…yet. Fresh new content.
The environmental movement is outrageous for a simple reason: it is discriminatory. That’s right. In order to be fully immersed in it, you have to have the money to do so. It is like the country club congregation church of yore that these people tend to loathe. And it is as repugnant to be preached at by lushly-funded church-going folk who have never known a moment of want as it is to be preached at by Gaia-worshiping folk who have never known a moment of want. When people need jobs, being preached at to use plastic, no paper, no plastic, no paper, gets old.
Here is a snippet from the article:
It was with interest that I followed Robert Scoble’s tweets from China. He reported choking smog and horrendous pollution that was the side effect of making the cheap consumer electronics we Americans used to enjoy buying before the current economic downturn. Scoble also reported that the Chinese are making strides to make environmentally friendly factories.
Environmentally friendly factories are all to the good and not exclusive of human concerns. Without money flowing to buy products, there will be no factories. Environmentally friendly ones will be as out of business as polluting ones.
This begs the question: Does anyone not want to care for the environment? I put the environmental grandstanding in the same category as torture. Who the heck is for torture? No one. And who is for destroying the environment? No one. The question gets murkier when survival is at stake. If a person must choose, and sometimes leaders must choose, between survival and the ideal, sometimes an ethically challenging decision must be made because the higher value is the value of life. More on that in a bit.
The environmental movement depends not only on excessive moralizing and the same sort of mother guilt that keeps therapists everywhere in steady employment, but also suspect data. Just this week, data from NASA which came from Russia turned out to be false. John Hindraker says, “As the scientific evidence continues to accumulate, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘global warming’ hysteria is based on a combination of bad science and fraud.” It turns out that the climate is getting colder.
There’s a lot more over there and I hope you’ll go read it and leave your thoughts.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News and The Houston Chronicle
Dr. Melissa
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