NO POSTINGS TODAY…..I AM OUT OF TOWN….RSK
This headline annoyed me:https://www.dailywire.com/news/british-parliament-unloads-on-biden-biden-may-have-condemned-the-world-to-chinese-domination-in-future
British Parliament Unloads On Biden: ‘Biden May Have Condemned The World To Chinese Domination In Future’
Really??? After their disgusting and cowardly surrender of Hong Kong, leaving thousands of freedom loving citizens to the “mercies” of the Communist government of China.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2021/08/the-mischaracterisation-of-conservatism/
“An inheritance drawing on unique concepts such as the inherent dignity of the person, equality and freedom for all, popular sovereignty, free will and a commitment to social justice and the common good. An inheritance that has evolved over thousands of years that must be nurtured, conserved and never taken for granted.”
B. Yeats in his poem the Second Coming writes “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. While written in 1919, soon after the death and disillusionment of the First World War and the Easter Uprising in Dublin, Yeats’ lines also describe the world of today: a time of radical change where established institutions and long-held beliefs are misrepresented as conservative, elitist and characterised by inequality and injustice. A time where the most grievous crimes one can commit are to question the need for radical change while arguing there is much in the past worth celebrating.
Instead of being seen as beneficial or worthwhile societies, like Australia they are condemned as inherently racist, sexist, heteronormative and guilty of oppressing and marginalising ‘the other’. Western civilisation, instead of being valued even as its faults are acknowledged, is attacked as ‘Eurocentric’ and riven with ‘white supremacism’. At universities in England academics argue European science that grew out of the Enlightenment can never be “objective and apolitical”, that it is guilty of being “a fundamental contributor to European imperialism”. Across the English-speaking world academics and radicalised students argue a curriculum based on a liberal view of education reinforces capitalist hierarchies and that it must be “de-colonised” to ensure the disadvantaged and oppressed are no longer marginalised and ignored.
Inspired by neo-Marxist-inspired critical theory, cultural-left activists argue the way forward is to reject the past and to embrace their brave new world — a socialist utopia, as summed up by the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce, where “all contradictions have been solved” and where “there is a perfect harmony between virtue and happiness”. As Del Noce details, such radical calls for “total revolution” can be traced to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx and their desire to generate a future “in which nothing resembles the old history”. Ignored, since the time French revolutionaries took to the streets promising liberty, equality and fraternity, is the subsequent reign of terror epitomised by Madame Guillotine. Every violent revolution since has ended in the imprisonment, torture, starvation and death of countless millions.
De Noce writes, as a result of denying “the very idea of virtue in the traditional sense”, one is left with “every cruelty and every violation of the moral order for the (supposed) sake of future happiness”. Or, as noted by Pope John Paul
When people think they possess the secret of a perfect organization that makes evil impossible, they also think they can use any means, including violence and deceit, in order to bring that organization into being. Politics then becomes a ‘secular religion’ which operates under the illusion of creating paradise in this world.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/29/joe-manchin-is-a-fake/
I have a number of friends who are excited about the impending results of the Arizona election audit. I also have a little knowledge of what’s going on there, though perhaps not much beyond what is available to the average American. What I tell my friends is: Don’t get your hopes up.
My home state of Connecticut had a Republican governor in recent memory and, not long before that, no state income tax. In the 2010 gubernatorial election, Democrat Dan Malloy was trailing Republican Tom Foley statewide, even as the counting seemed to be wrapping up. But then—shazam!—a bag of uncounted ballots was “found” in McLevy Hall. As the Connecticut Post reported at the time, “Even as Foley’s campaign demanded the ballots be taken by State Police to Hartford for counting by a neutral authority, city officials insisted the existence of the ballots previously had been disclosed and that Bridgeport election workers would count them Thursday night.”
They were still counting in Bridgeport three days after the election. They eventually came up with enough votes in that single city to erase Foley’s statewide lead. Malloy was declared the winner, and Connecticut has been an uncontestable blue state ever since.
Any of this sound familiar?
The problem with a careful audit of the ballots is that most vote fraud has been sanctioned by state law. In Georgia, for example, a consent decree signed by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger changed the process of signature verification so that when an official notices a mismatch he now has to consult with two other officials and they have to agree by a two-out-of-three vote that the signature doesn’t match. Then they have to put their names in writing to record their appraisal of the matter and they mail the voter in question a provisional ballot, giving him an opportunity to “cure” the mismatch. In practice, therefore, signature verification never happens.
And of course, once a ballot has been separated from its envelope—as they all have been by now—there is no way to reconnect the two, even if auditors find a suspicious signature. Which means there is no way to cure the fraudulent vote itself. That is why mail-in voting is such a bonanza for fraud, and why the Democrats have worked so hard to make it the norm. The toxic Voting Rights Lab was proud to note in a recent report that only two-thirds of voters cast their ballots on Election Day in 2016, and in 2020, only one third voted on election day. So we’re told.
No posting until June 10…rsk
https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/01/granting-value-to-the-world/
By making happiness incompatible with man’s essence, Schopenhauer found himself deaf to Goethe’s wisdom: “If you want to delight in life, then you must grant value to the world.”
In the great contest to be the world’s gloomiest philosopher, there are many high-ranking competitors.
I won’t say that philosophers have cornered the market on gloominess. There are other walks of life that have always been abundantly supplied with people who can find a cloud in any silver lining.
But as a group, philosophers can give anyone a run for his money.
It is true that the sage Zarathustra is said to have been born laughing. And Aristotle seems to have been a happy, well-adjusted family man.
There are other cheerful chaps (interestingly, all great philosophers in history have been male) scattered here and there.
Some people will find it odd to find Thomas Aquinas on the list of those with a sunny disposition. But anyone who was so plump that he had to have a semi-circle cut out of the refectory table cannot have been too gloomy.
Then there was the great Nicholas of Cusa, the 15th century German cardinal, statesman, scientist, philosopher. He was a world-affirming fellow, as was proved by his having endowed a monastery with a vineyard for its perpetual support. Someone told me it is still going strong, 500 years later, though I haven’t checked up on that.
That Gloomy Philosophy
BACK ON APRIL 27, 2021
https://reason.com/2021/04/23/senate-passes-anti-asian-hate-crimes-bill-that-doesnt-prohibit-discrimination-in-college-admissions/
The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that purportedly combats anti-Asian hate on Thursday. The vote was 94–1.
The bill would create a new position within the Justice Department to review anti-Asian hate crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also requires the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on preventing anti-Asian discrimination.
“There has been a dramatic increase in hate crimes and violence against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders,” the bill asserts. (It explicitly names the Atlanta spa killings as an example of this, though it’s not actually clear the shooter was motivated by anti-Asian animus.)
The lone dissenter on the vote was Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo).
“As a former prosecutor, my view is it’s dangerous to simply give the federal government open-ended authority to define a whole new class of federal hate crime incidents,” said Hawley in a statement.
He has a point, though this bill is not particularly vast or sweeping. The stronger argument against the bill is that it does nothing to address one of the most obvious—and odious—forms of anti-Asian discrimination: college admissions.
Many elite colleges, public universities, and even selective high schools explicitly discriminate against Asian applicants in order to artificially tinker with the racial makeup of the campus population. This means that Asian students whose grades and test scores would have gained them admission had they been white, black, or Hispanic are routinely turned away. Contrary to popular belief, the biggest beneficiaries of these schemes are often white students.
Courts have generally held that race-based admissions do not violate civil rights law if they are very narrowly tailored. But Congress could explicitly require educational institutions that receive federal dollars to cease discriminating against Asian applicants. (They could even call it an antiracist initiative.)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) proposed an amendment to the bill along these lines, but it was defeated in a close vote: 48–49. Thus the version that passed the Senate aims to tackle anti-Asian hatred, but is silent on perhaps the most common and systemic form of anti-Asian bigotry in the U.S.
