THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

Killing The Old Gray Lady

The militant self-righteousness of the New York Times sticks a finger down the throat of Americans.  The Times personnel remind me of those goddammed goody-goodies in grammar school who always stayed the teachers' pets by tattling on everyone else.  Tattling national security secrets, however, goes big time--really big time.  And, the Times has a HUGE HISTORY of perfidy.

Regarding the publication of the financial intelligence, the Times used poor judgement, at best.  At worst, well, that story has not yet been fully told.  Nevertheless, the Right are after Times' blood, while the Left try to take the moral high ground, much like the grammar school teachers' pets.  Threats of investigations and legislation have gone from lahars to pyroclastic flows against the Times, other journalistic outlets, and, of course, those who did the leaking.

Not much of this reaches our level, out here in fly-over country, down at the grass roots.  Yet--we have the most powerful weapon of all, if we choose to use it.

ISRAELIS: Go, go, go!

I don't hear much of the usual crap from the media about what Israel is doing in Gaza.  Why, I do not know.  The anti-Israel crowd seems tireless--but not here.

How much is enough?  When do even the densest catch on?

The Spoonful of Sugar ...

Leave it to the New York Times to serve a valuable function. As it has so many times recently and in the past few decades, it serves as a meter, call it a cultural thermometer, if you want, which demonstrates just what shape the culture is in--in terms of dominant ideas. Today is no exception: eminent domain.

Spot On: WEW on Marx

The Left love Marx.  No matter how flawed Marx has been proven to be, say 110+%, the Left cannot give him up.  The trouble is that they try to infect susceptible youth into buying Marx whole cloth as well.  Good old Dr. Walter E. Williams kicks Marx's butt, in a most enjoyable way, and this is offered for those whose minds have not yet ossified.

Historical tidbits

By Walter E. Williams

Jun 21, 2006

Karl Marx is the hero of some labor union leaders and civil rights organizations, including those who organized the recent protest against proposed immigration legislation. It's easy to be a Marxist if you haven't read his writings. Most people agree that Marx's predictions about capitalism turned out to be dead wrong.

What most people don't know is that Marx was an out and out racist and anti-Semite.

More Proof That Past Is Prologue

Why do we post quotations now and then?  It is not just because we like to read good stuff from important people, although we do.  The reason is simply to reconnect you, the reader, with our past.  As has often been said, past is prologue.  The mess we are in today has been a long time coming, and only some of it is "by accident."

These are among the best quotes being recycled:

"The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow."
-- Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865), 16th US President
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Abraham.Lincoln.Quote.4147


"It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to
commence tyranny in the nursery."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
(1804-1881), British Prime Minister
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Benjamin.Disraeli.Quote.3902

Evidence that our current mess came from conscious decisions:

"The sovereignty fetish is still so strong in the public mind,
that there would appear to be little chance of winning popular assent to
American membership in anything approaching a super-state organization.
Much will depend on the kind of approach which is used in further
popular education."
-- Council on Foreign Relations
Source: "American Public Opinion and Postwar Security Commitments", 1944
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Council.on.Foreign.Relations.Quote.1C63

Finally, from the Where Have We Heard This Before Department:

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence -- moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artifically kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers -- or should I say nurses? -- will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men."
-- C. S. Lewis
(1898-1963), British novelist
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/C..S..Lewis.Quote.B211

ACTION REQUESTED: Utter Dysfunction at the United Nations (Guest blog)

The following was posted as a comment to our moving-to-a-new-address announcement at the old Sixth Column site. As a comment, it may be missed, even though it is big. It offers too much to risk being missed, so we are making it a full blog.

The statement indicates that it was written by "...a concerned group of current and former UN employees," and at the end of this statement is person and address to contact. It urges action today on our parts to contact our representatives and senators, not to "reform" the UN, were that possible, but to: "Ask your Senators and Congressman to create a NEW organization that can lead the world well into the 21st Century."

Read it and pass it along. We despise the United Nations because we see it for the evil that it is. Let's starve it of funds, kick it out of the USA, end our membership. IF we join some new conglomerate of nations, let us capitalize on the horrible errors in principle and in fact involved with the UN.

We Are Here Now!

In our previous post, we said that we would be blogging on the old site for The New Enlightenment while we were planning to move by the end of the month.  STOP THE PRESSES.  BREAKING NEWS!

As of today, 17 June 2006, we are blogging on this, the new site, for The New Enlightenment, and we are no longer blogging on the old.  We bit the bullet and made an "executive decision."  TypePad is our new home. 

Over the next couple of weeks or so, we will move any blogs not previously transferred here.  Then we will shut down the old site.

By the way, we have a new email address which is on the banner of this site.

You could have made book on it.

Any number of news sources have been carrying this story, and we picked the New York Times version solely out of its being handy when we were ready to write.

June 14, 2006, Study Finds Huge Fraud in the Wake of Hurricanes , By ERIC LIPTON

"WASHINGTON, June 13 — As much as $1.4 billion in government disaster aid to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — nearly a quarter of the total — went to bogus or undeserving victims, a new Congressional investigation concludes...the fraud-prevention system at the Federal Emergency Management Agency was woefully inadequate.

The improper or fraudulent payments went to a dizzying array of con artists or other undeserving recipients, according to the analysis by the Government Accountability Office, which is set to announce its findings at a hearing Wednesday. "

This is just another example of what happens when citizens default on their responsibility to run their own government. The power to tax and to print money give those who can tap into that power as much of a sense of entitlement as those on the receiving end of their handouts. The givers feel entitled to give. What they are giving is not theirs to give. It is ours. We have allowed them to do all of this without our permission.

Such things have happened legion times in our history and will continue to happen as long as citizens take a passive role with their own government. That passivity includes surrendering to some deterministic notion that nothing can be done because it is all out of our hands now. Such attitudes guarantee the same old bad outcome.

FEMA became the penny in the fuse box. It denied access to private help groups while it dumped your money as though there were no tomorrow. Private groups get swindled, of course, but the percentages strongly favor their accountability. No such thing exists for government. The penny in the fuse box overloaded the wiring, and we got exactly what could have been predicted, and was.

Here is something to chew on. Why should the federal government be able to mint and coin money? Secondly, why should there be a Federal Reserve system? Both concentrate money into the hands of those least able to manage it without succumbing to the narcotic of power. Private management would still require very careful oversight by citizens, but it could keep this primary source of power from lawmakers and bureaucrats, except as we want them to have it. As long as we are out of the box, why not abolish the IRS and federal taxation? Can't succeed?

Get out of the box.

The kind of thinking we need to go back uphill

Anyone who thinks American culture has not been in freefall for a long time must qualify as the most unobservant human being of all. To follow are snippets of the kind of thinking we must restore in order to restore our great nation.

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition), Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 10:419.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

-- Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President 1816 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.1BDE

Gather Ye Victims Unto This New Disorder

Back in the 1970s, those in the "mental health" field often pronounced that everyone was mentally ill--it was just a matter of degree. Sychophants at the feet of these gurus all nodded in agreement. Not a one recognized that the concept of "mental illness" had been totally destroyed by making it apply to everyone, thus no one.

Since then, we have seen the perfidious growth of "victimosis": "We are all victims; it is just a matter of deciding what is victimizing one." Such "experts" began turning every negative behavior into a disease. Many formed 12-Step groups for the victims to come and share the slings and arrows of their fates.

Yesterday, news broadcasts announced, uncritically, that psychiatrists have found a new disease: intermittent explosive disorder. It has been given the catch acronym of "I.E.D." With a single article, 16 million new victims were added to the rolls.

Of course, as victims, they cannot be held responsible for road rage and its sequelae, or anything else they do. Can they?

When you see everyone's everything turned into a disease and those people turned into helpless victims, you see the motivation behind victimosis. Thanks to postmodernism, that motivation has succeeded in ablating personal responsibility in many people. "I can't help it," or "Don't blame me--I couldn't help it." The fault must lie outside the individual and lie in social and environmental factors. Society must compensate the victims.

This is the same stale Marxism, warmed over and served as though it is something fresh and useful.

We are responsible for our actions, all of them, all of the time. How do I know? Reality told me so.