Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Truth Where

under the guise of relative truth, which the rulers of the times had proclaimed as absolute truth, a complete and totalitarian lie was hidden".

The lie being that truth is relative, and for that reason "mutable" as George Orwell wrote in 1984. Truth is pure proposition, it's power comes from merely being believed.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Taking Care of Your Own:- Rascism??

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Taking Care of Your Own

by Baron Bodissey

Take care of your people, get some of them fed
Hide the ones in trouble out under your bed


— Robert Hunter, from “One Thing to Try”

L’Arc de Triomphe

When I was young, my father drummed into me some of the basic principles that he hoped would guide me through the coming minefield of adulthood:

Balance your checkbook.

Shake hands with a man, but not with a woman unless she offers her hand first.

Never drive more than ten miles an hour over the speed limit.

Don’t put yourself in a position where you owe your friends money.


And, most important of all:

Take care of your own.

I understood that last one to mean that I had a responsibility to my kin and to those I cared about. Feed them, clothe them, house them, lend without hope of return, and maybe even bail them out of the slammer. The exact parameters of “taking care” were never specified — there are limits to what you are expected to do for your own, after all — but a lot is required of you.

They’re your people, and you take care of them.

And who, exactly, are “your own”?

Wife, children, mother, father, sisters, brothers — those are obvious. Grandparents, grandchildren. Maybe also uncles, aunts, first cousins, and your closest friends. Your next-door neighbor, provided he’s not a deadbeat.

Is that it, or are there more people that you have to take care of?

After I grew up and my thinking capacity matured a little, I worked out a hierarchy of caring, in the form of a series of concentric circles.

Relationships of obligation

At the center of all the circles is the one you care most about — yourself. Next comes the nuclear family, then the extended family, then the clan, then the tribe, and then the nation. Beyond the nation are the whole human race, other species, and finally the cosmos at large.

You could call these “relationships of obligation”, and your obligations form a declining gradient as they move outwards. The extended family demands less of an obligation than the nuclear family, the nation less than the tribe. Your obligation to other species is to use them as food or raw materials. To the cosmos at large you have no obligation at all.

These priorities are based in instinct, and until very recently they were reinforced by cultural practices that developed over millennia of human interaction. There’s an obvious evolutionary advantage to the arrangement — your DNA has a lot more interest in taking care of its own alleles than worrying about totally alien genes.

But the intellectual fads of the last half-century have required us to care as much about children in Bangladesh as we do our about own offspring. A landslide in Paraguay must elicit from us the same emotional response as does our teenager when he totals the family car. The unwanted pregnancy of a slum dweller in Passaic demands as much attention as that of our middle-schooler.

Why?

Why should the tribulations of distant strangers be as important as those of people near and dear to us? What requires us to care about the sufferings of faraway people whom we will never meet?

The answer is obvious: Nothing.

Neither evolutionary biology, nor tradition, nor common sense would dictate any concern for distant peoples with whom we share neither kinship, language, nor customs.

The imperative to empathize with distant alien peoples is an artifact of our times, a product of the strange and inverted moral structure that has emerged out of the wreckage of the twentieth century.
- - - - - - - - -
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You’ll notice that in my introduction above I left out any mention of God or religion. That was for two reasons.

Firstly, I respect the sensibilities of secularists and atheists among our readers, so the argument in favor of “taking care of your own” was made without reference to a Higher Power.

Secondly, an argument from a Christian perspective would run into objections based on New Testament scripture, and I prefer to deal with those separately.

So let’s consider the biblical justifications “Christian” multiculturalists use to support their positions. I’ll pick the most likely candidates.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:31)

Notice that Christ was asking us to love our neighbors. In the original context, this meant His fellow Jews — not the Greeks, nor the Romans, nor the fishermen of Lampedusa. Your neighbor, the fellow who lives over the hill from you, is the one you are required to love and watch out for. You are not responsible for the well-being of the residents of Aquitania or Cappadocia.

The modern Multiculturalist circumvents this difficulty by inventing a “global village” for us to take care of. But that wasn’t what Christ had in mind.

But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. (Matthew 5:39)

This refers only to insults. Christ was not exhorting the faithful to bare their necks to those who would kill them.

Not only that, in its original Jewish context, the turning of the left cheek to one’s adversary was in itself an insult, since the left side was considered evil or unclean. As an equivalent insult, waving to a modern Arab with your left hand is roughly analogous.

But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28)

This is probably the strongest scriptural support for modern pacifism and multilateralism. But you’ll notice that the passage is more about the believer’s internal state than it is about action in the world. It’s not a call for surrender or submission, but a call to love even those who are the most unlovable.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:14)

The key word here is “friends”. Of course, if you buy into the modern Multicultural myth, the whole world is a village and everyone is your friend.

For a change of pace, let’s consider a few passages demonstrating that Christ was not an absolute pacifist.

But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. (Luke 12:39)

Jesus expected that a householder would be watchful and not allow his house to be broken into. How could he do that if turned the other cheek to the burglar?

When the strong man, fully armed, guards his courtyard, his property is undisturbed. (Luke 11:21)

Once again, Christ expected the householder to be armed and ready to defend his premises.

But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you do not have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. (Luke 22:36)

Jesus was instructing His disciples to carry a sword with them. What did He expect them to do with it? Cut the bread for their evening meal?

No, like anyone else of His time, Christ expected that a prudent man would be armed and ready to defend himself.

The reason why Jesus never specifically dealt with self-defense and protecting one’s family is that such matters would have been part of the common culture and hardly in need of discussion. No one needed the sanction of Messiah to protect his wife and family. That was a given.

But let’s imagine, just for the sake of argument, that a not-so-bright disciple asked Jesus this question: Lord, is it right for one who believes in You to use force to defend himself and his family against those who would do them harm?

What do you think Jesus would have said?

I’m guessing that the answer would have run something like this: I tell you truly, no one who fails to take care of his own people may enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Father has given him a precious gift in his wife and children; if he cannot be trusted to protect them, how may he be trusted with the much more precious gift of eternal life?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Christianity managed to flourish for almost two thousand years in a multiplicity of cultures without entertaining the theological perversion known as Multiculturalism.

However, we have fallen into grievous times, and nowadays the leaders of mainstream Protestant denominations — not to mention the Archbishop of Canterbury — tell us that our Christian faith requires us never to use force to defend ourselves, our families, our homes, our communities, and our nations, and that we are evil and somehow racist if we do so.

Violence is deemed immoral in all circumstances, so that when a belief system that has no such compunctions appears on the horizon, good Christians are enjoined to lie down and let the barbarians roll over them. The shades of dozens of popes, millions of the faithful, and valiant martial Christians such as Charles Martel and Jan III Sobieski must be recoiling in horror at the actions of their spiritual heirs.

So what brought us to this sorry pass?

Part of the problem obviously arises from the combined collective shame of the Holocaust and the historical enslavement of black Africans. We live in a post-Christian age, and there is no secular sacrament through which we might confess and receive absolution. In order to purge the stain of these sins from our non-existent souls, we must forever renounce anything that smacks of “racism”. But the guilt persists, and the scope of the sin continues to grow, until we reach the point that taking care of our own becomes a racist act.

Caring for one’s own people and culture is thus proscribed, leaving collective self-annihilation as the only logical endpoint to this postmodern morality tale.

The process is made worse by the degraded state of modern intellectual culture. The last two or three generations have seen a coarsening of education and a steady erosion of the ability to think logically. On highly-charged topics such as racism, debate is deeply irrational, and the issues can only be reacted to, not analyzed. All stances on contentious subjects must needs be emotional, and the more emotional your responses, the more proof that you are morally correct in your position.

It doesn’t matter that the end result violates instinct, traditional ethics, prudence, and simple common sense. The pristine purity of one’s moral stance, as validated by the group, is all that counts.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So what is to be done?

How can any of us overcome the entrenched social attitudes that suck all arguments into the black hole of “racism”?

As an old hippie, my natural tendency is to resort to gonzo scripture and quote Ken Kesey:

You’re playing their game…. There’s only one thing to do…. and that’s everybody just look at it… and turn your back and say… “f**k it.”

In other words, the racism gig is only effective if you buy into it. If you refuse the assignment — if you deny the validity of the conceptual framework behind the accusation — then you can see it for the phantasm that it truly is, and it will disappear.

This could be considered cutting the Gordian knot, except that the racism charge is much flimsier than a rope. It’s gossamer, a mere cobweb in front of your face.

Brush it away, and what do you see?

Well, first of all, you’ll notice that racism is a normal aspect of human nature, and that everyone possesses it to some degree or other, whether they acknowledge it or not. It is an instinctual condition, built into our psyches by millions of years of evolution. Like many other instinctual drives — aggression, sexual desire, greed for the possessions of others, etc. — it needs to be kept under control. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

Aggression, when channeled properly, allows human communities to be strong, self-contained, and well-defended.

Sexual desire forms the basis for the most successful institution in human history, the nuclear family.

Sublimated greed becomes a drive for achievement and status, and helps improve the general welfare of the entire community.

Each of these impulses can be destructive, but when humans are socialized properly, instinctual drives become subordinate to the will of the individual, and to the common good.

And so it is with racism. When completely socialized, the instinct that manifests itself in “racism” is transformed into taking care of your own.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To take care of your own obviously implies a dedication to those people who are genetically most closely related to you. But, as anyone who has ever adopted a child from a different racial background can attest, the instinct to protect your own people is flexible, and is not solely determined by race or bloodline.

This was brought home to me a by an incident that occurred a number of years ago when I was working in the Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy, a.k.a. Northern Virginia.

Arlington, Fairfax, Springfield, and Alexandria are among the most Multicultural municipalities in the country. They are host to Vietnamese, Iranians, Hondurans, Somalis, Koreans, Nigerians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Mexicans, Afghans, Filipinos, and many other ethnicities that I can’t recall. Since the days of my youth the area has changed so radically that you can walk through virtually any strip mall and rarely encounter a native English speaker.

One night I was standing in a checkout line in Magruder’s (an upscale supermarket), and feeling very homesick for the backwoods of Central Virginia, because I was constantly surrounded by foreigners. When the man in front of me reached the cashier — a Korean woman — I noticed that he wore a military uniform.

Then when he spoke, it turned out that — thank God! — he was an American. I wanted to embrace him and thank him for rescuing me from the slough of Multicultural despond.

But it didn’t occur to me until I was walking out of the store a few minutes later that the soldier was black.

The definition of “your own” is an elastic one, and race isn’t always the deciding factor.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Once you have accepted the heretical notion that there is nothing inherently wrong with the impulse behind racism, several other categories of crime must be considered in a different light.

1.
Nepotism. The tendency of public officials to offer members of their extended family positions in government becomes completely understandable. This in no way vitiates official vigilance against nepotism — in fact, it would urge a strengthening of safeguards, since the impulse to nepotism is now seen as a universal human trait, and therefore to be expected.
2.
Corruption. Although official corruption is sometimes driven solely by pecuniary gain, more often than not it is motivated by taking care of one’s friends. Once again, the motive for such crimes becomes understandable and normal, even though prudence requires legal sanctions against its manifestations.
3.
Residential segregation. Sociological studies indicate that people of all races will naturally tend to form neighborhoods and communities that are ethnically homogeneous. This, too, can be seen as normal, and not as an injustice that has to be “corrected”.

I invite readers to discover other activities that are reviled and put beyond the pale by Multicultural orthodoxy, but which become normal and acceptable — even if civic prudence demands that we guard against them — when viewed in this light.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When you brush the cobwebs of “racism” from your eyes, you’ll notice that only white people can be racists. Arabs, Africans, Asians, American Indians, and Australian Aboriginals are never racists. There is even a theoretical framework — Critical Race Theory — which codifies this assertion. According to this Marxist dogma, only groups that are privileged within the traditional power structure can be racist; hence “brown” people are exempt from all stigma in this respect.

Common sense tells us otherwise. Anybody in the South who lives in a mixed racial community — as most of us do — is aware of racism against whites by black people. I have personally been subjected to racial antagonism and insults on the part of some of my black neighbors. But other neighbors are friends and treat us normally — like white people, they are a mixed bag when it comes to racial attitudes.

Yet black racism is rarely publicly acknowledged, especially by whites. Judging by the MSM, it doesn’t exist. The only people who discuss it are right-wing extremists and dyed-in-the-wool racists like me.

If you want proof of the strength of racial solidarity among American blacks, consider the reaction of black conservatives to the candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama. Armstrong Williams is a prominent American conservative who happens to be black. To give you an idea of his conservative credentials, he sometimes fills in on the radio for Rush Limbaugh when the latter is on vacation.

So there’s no way that Mr. Williams would support Barack Obama for President of the United States, right?

Think again:

Black conservative talk show host Armstrong Williams has never voted for a Democrat for president. That could change this year with Barack Obama as the Democratic Party’s nominee.

“I don’t necessarily like his policies; I don’t like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it,” Williams said. “I can honestly say I have no idea who I’m going to pull that lever for in November. And to me, that’s incredible.”

Just as Obama has touched black Democratic voters, he has engendered conflicting emotions among black Republicans who are far fewer in numbers…

“Among black conservatives,” Williams said, “they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him in November.”

Since Barack Obama’s political positions are obviously repugnant to him, Armstrong Williams is considering voting for the senator solely because of his race.

He’s taking care of his own.

There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a laudable motive.

But when a white person does the same thing, it’s RACISM.

Or fascism. Or Nazism. Or xenophobia. Or any one of a number of other vile ideological positions which polite (i.e. white) society deems beyond the pale.

This is the ideological fever from which we must recover. We need a strong dose of political quinine, so that we may awake cool and lucid, and realize that the raging behemoths we saw in our febrile fantasies are only hallucinations. We have nothing to fear from them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

OK, the cobwebs are gone. The racist bugbear is vanquished.

Now let’s look around and inventory the damage that a half-century of rampant Multiculturalism has done to the social and political landscape of the West.

Relationships of obligation

You’ll notice that received wisdom condemns the seven innermost relationships of obligation:

  • The self,
  • The nuclear family,
  • The extended family,
  • The clan,
  • The tribe,
  • The nation,
  • And even the human race

Only other species and the cosmos at large merit our solicitude. All concern for the other seven circles — those with whom we share the most kinship — is considered vile, racist, and humanocentic, and must be expunged from our collective psyche.

This is instructive, because the nation is the largest unit to which the instinct for “taking care of your own” is applied. Humans may display some preference for the entire species of homo sapiens, but generally speaking our instinctive preferences stop at the level of the nation, the largest group with whom we share language and cultural practices.

For the last eighty years or so, the mutant variant of Marxism known as Multiculturalism has systematically deconstructed family, tribe, clan, and nation. The entire Gramscian enterprise depends on the eradication of these institutions, and the sins of “racism” and “sexism” were devised to aid in their destruction. When none of them functions any longer, then Western Civilization will have been effectively destroyed, and the construction of the New Soviet Man — or rather, the New Multicultural Sentient Entity — may begin.

This is why it’s important from the point of view of the dominant ideological regime to destroy the impulse to take care of one’s own. If you are taking care of your own — which would accord with your natural instincts and your basic impulses as a member of a family and a community — then you cannot serve the larger cause, which is the supranational State.

Your inclination to serve your family, your community, and your nation — in that order — is not acceptable. That’s why the sin of racism was devised, so that millennia of instinctive behavior and cultural training could be eradicated.

Adolf Hitler and Bull Connor came in very handy for the Marxists who took charge of our political and cultural institutions in the wake of World War Two. The Austrian corporal and the redneck from Dixie helped disarm all the traditional redoubts of the West. Thanks to them, taking care of our own became a thought crime.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I propose a conscious, pro-active decision to overcome all these decades of indoctrination.

I propose the positive affirmation of “racism” as a natural human instinct which must be socialized and controlled, but which is not inherently evil.

I propose that we proclaim our loyalty to those closest to us: to our local communities, to our provinces and states, and to our nations. These are the entities that we hold dear, that represent what we are, and that have the only legitimate claim to our allegiance.

I propose that we refuse the poisonous taxonomies of the Left that have been foisted upon us for the last four generations. We must recover our traditions, our roots, and our heritage. Each subset of the West has its own distinct identity which it can claim as its birthright, even while recognizing the legitimacy of all the other branches. This is a true celebration of diversity.

I propose a refusal to accept the indignities and abominations that are handed out to us by our cultural betters with the intention of branding us as racists.

I propose that we draw back the drapery and expose the Man Behind the Curtain.

I propose that we take care of our own.


OpenID joeblough said...

I think that some of the confusion on these subjects derives from two conflicting facts.

On one hand, the collective, whatever collective we consider ourselves to belong to, derives its value (to us) from our own attachment to ourselves and our lives. Yet on the other hand, the whole of humanity has imagined, and taught each other from time immemorial, that the individual derives his value from the collective.

There is quite literally a world of difference between those two beliefs -- the difference between a world of tribal war, poverty and chronic oppression, and a world of freedom, wealth and ... well, relative peace.

It is a subtle difference perhaps. But a critically important one.

A paraphrase from Rand might clarify it a bit. She wrote (more or less) that the difference between a nationalist and a patriot is that the nationalist says "my country right or wrong" but the patriot says "my country because it is right".

One is unreasoning subservience to the collective for the sake of subservience to the collective, the other is deliberate loyalty born of earned respect and love.

It all comes down to a question of being a rational and civilized individual.

There is also, I detect in the thread of discussion, some confusion over the words "taking care" in "taking care of one's own". What does it mean to take care? I don't mean to be snarky. That's a sincere question.

I raise the issue because it goes to the question of values. All men may have, as BB asserts, an instinctual attraction toward their own tribe and clan. But the values asserted by that tribe and clan, and indeed the individual himself, radically affect the situation, the value of loyalty and the meaning of what it is to "take care".

Is taking care of one's own an act of subservience, or of self responsibility? It goes to a question of values. Does the collective uphold or degrade the value of the individual? Is loyalty an act of dignity or of self degradation?

Were the members of the resistance in nazi Germany traitors and ingrates? Cowards? Unfaithful people without honor? Or were they patriots? (Don't say it, I know all such situations involve a mix of people).

Are mohammedan apostates faithless, worthless individuals? What of Hirsi Ali and Walid Phares? They certainly don't display the level of fidelity that their correligionists display, demand and expect.

What of the "palistinian" mothers who encourage and celebrate the murderous suicides of their mad bomber offspring? Ia that "taking care"?

Don't we have to respect and sympathise with the mohammedan insistance of utter fidelity to their ummah?

Not so.

These seeming paradoxes disappear when one realizes that the collective derives its value from the individual, indeed the individuals that comprise it and the moral standards they uphold -- not the other way around.

Taking care has a great deal to do with defending and upholding the humanity of the people that one regards as one's own. To keep the door open to their potential enlightenment, decency and happiness. To be sure, defending their physical well being is part of that. Giving comfort is part of that. Extending "too much" forgiveness and understanding is part of it. But it all transpires within the boundaries of what it means to be fully and properly human, to be civilized, or at least decent.

I am not just talking about how it ought to be, I'm talking about how it works on the inside. And this is also why it is possible to pry people loose from their community, and why it is so important to the enemies of the west to pry the western peoples away from their traditions, nations and churches -- why it is so important to the enemies of the west to equate westerners' fidelity to their culture with racism. And why it is so easy too fool people about that.

In this context I very much like the Baron's idea that cultural loyalty is what you get when you tame and civilize brute tribal spirit.

I have some reservations about the line of reasoning, as it smacks somewhat, to my ear, of Freudianism, of which I am very skeptical.

But I think BB is really on to something of value here.

10/16/2008 4:07 AM
Blogger Afonso Henriques said...

Joeblough,

"She wrote (more or less) that the difference between a nationalist and a patriot is that the nationalist says "my country right or wrong" but the patriot says "my country because it is right"."

I honestly do not care what she wrote, I care about what "is real and the truth".

"Nationalism" evolves mainly 5 aspects:
1) A people;
2) A Homeland, that is, a Patria (from the Latin Pater+ia (Father+land) which is the root of the English word Patriot);
3) A History;
4) A Culture;
5) A Spirituality;

Now let's see what a "Patriot" is. A Patriot, "Patriota", something like, "the one who loves/vallue the home land", from the Latin "Pater+ia" plus an English suffix (or any other language's suffix), in this case "ot".

In latin languages, there is a difference between the "Patria" (Pater+ia) and the "Patriota" (Pater+ia+ota).
The "Patria" is the Homeland;
The "Patriota" (Patriot, in English) is the one who loves/vallues the Homeland.

As you can see, a Patriot is someone who cares about his land. A small but important part of Nationalism. A Patriot does not have to be a Nationalist but a Nationalist has to be a Patriot.

----------------------------------

"the nationalist says "my country right or wrong" but the patriot says "my country because it is right"."

Actually, it is exactly the opposite. A good and learned Nationalist will only become a Nationalist when he sees that those five aspects I mentioned are "right" are a good in itself and must be protected at any cost. In fact, a good Nationalist only becomes a Nationalist after recognising vallue (a great vallue, I must tell you) and "rightness" in everyone of those five main elements, or at least in a majority of those elements.

The contrary is true for the Patriot. The Patriot only vallues the Homeland. And the homeland is subordinated to the people. Yes, it is important but is less important.

For instance, we can see that the Jews have survived without homeland, but the Jews could not have survived without Jews.

We see that in certain areas of the Americas, the Natives have disapeared whether completeley or have miscegenated. Well, the Jews have also miscegenated and I do not know what those two groups think about the result, but I honestly do not believe that we would gain a lot with miscegination as Europeans. And no, I am not talking of individuals, I am talking about Human groups.

In a sense, many Communists were great Patriots but none of them was a Nationalist. Sometimes Stalin is seen as a Nationalist because he saved "Mother Russia" from the Nazi armies. But we can see that he, contrary to Hitler, did not had the Russians in great esteem. In fact, he was a Georgian.

Also, immigration starts to be a great problem, when the immigrant group starts to become a patriot. That is, after few generations, the immigrants start to love/vallue the lands they were born to. No white South African can be a Nationalist (of this new black South Africa), he can however support the State (due to various reasons) and I do not have any doubts that those who stayed are Patriots.

--------------------------------

"One is unreasoning subservience to the collective for the sake of subservience to the collective, the other is deliberate loyalty born of earned respect and love."

Untrue. "Patriotism" is something easy, its origins are at the animal level instinct, it has nothing to due with loyalty or earened respect. We could even say that some stains of Patriotism are "unreasoning subservience to the" place one was borned to "for the sake of subservience to" that place.

Nationalism on the contrary, is an all different way. "Patriotism" is just a "good citizen" medal.

----------------------------------

You have proved you know nothing about Nationalism and Patriotism and that is a shame. Especially if you are European.

If you are an American, it is different once "patriotism" has been putted in front of "nationalism" not only due to multiculturalism! You founding fathers made it clear to use the word "patriotism" a lot instead of "Nationalisn", why? Well, because there was not an American Nation (yet?) and because their acts of "patriotism" were acts of betrayal to the "English Nationalism" they should have subverted to. They were (mainly) English people who took away part of England from the crown, due to patriotism and a lack of Nationalism, and please, I do not want to debate colonialism.

Zenster
There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with ego. If you have any doubts, please read Ayn Rand's "Philosophy Who Needs It". One of the principal evils done by Politically Correct and anti-human forces is to have assassinated the character of ego. It is the first step in obliterating the sense of self-worth.

These rotters will tell you, "The only good thing you can do is something for someone else." If you do something for yourself, you are being selfish. What twaddle! How on earth will your cup ever runneth over if you are always doing things for others?

The myth of altruism has done more to kill the human ego than all the mass murderers of history. It is not selfishness that is evil but the far more prevalent sin of self-absorbtion.

The greed and ultra-materialism that plagues our modern world are a direct manifestation of self-absorbtion elevated to near-religious status
10/16/2008 10:32 AM

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Air Secure Bio-Safe Naked nonExplosive Travel

Security and Bio-Security has become a major issue in travel this century.

This is a jump ahead of making people into the lowest common denominator, so perhaps making you think, what price is freedom? having government constantly expanding. Just what Principles should your family, community, state, country, live by and I mean more than just flying issues. Why are our countries having these issues ? ? ?
Carbon foot prints are also supposedly a concern. minimal baggage.The planes will travel lighter, less fuel, per person.
People could be worked out on gender areas or family mixed sex of plane.

What cost to air line to set up plane.?
Handy disposable napkin/handkerchief if one needs to be more discreet for young guys
Why accept that people would not wear it. (it is so simple) Planes in Germany already travel naked, OK they are nudists and this is much more complex, but once thru put and number gear up efficiency should show great savings

As simple light cloth, washable or disposable be placed attached over seats.
Why do people travel carrying a paraphernalia of baggage that could be so easily acquired at their destination. clothing toothpaste shampoo?
People do a big shop up before they travel but why not buy in the country you will be travelling.
Surely if they travel and want to experience local food, culture why not the clothes and food that can be purchased there.
Even if things are imported to the country then it would more than likely have been carried much more economically such as sea transport.
Good for the countries business in supplying safe basic needs.
Opportunities shop (2nd hand clothes) and charity would be possibly as clothing could be much cheaper and available for poorer people of that country.


Less chance of hidden explosives.
No waiting, searching and checking baggage .
No more full body scanners and/or pat downsAny thing to declare? a quick pirouette. Only paper work of passport , cv camera discs laptop
Much less chance of smuggling drugs or explosives.
Much less chance of breaches of bio -security that can cost a country millions of $. in control or eradication or just the ongoing cost living with the problem.

No profiling, maybe certain types of people will not want to travel naked.
Not good for aero industry but may some groups of people we do not need would I think more than balance up the ones we would miss.

I sometimes watch "Border Security" and it is amazing the stupidity ignorance, argumentative and arrogance of people who do not declare food items that carry risk diseases, and hide them in their baggage and plead ignorance and only get slapped with a "wet bus ticket" of a fine. Also the drugs they are carrying and ongoing waste of time of step by step procedure to prove he is lying.

This way of travel would also stop "false positives", where a drug dog signals about a trace of a problem that needs further inspection. IF that person had been to a party where drugs have been used (whether or not he participated) he will not be hassled.

A full shower can be done at destination air terminal with disinfectants and foot-bathes, or even before with after standard perfumes in the mix?

Surely destination countries should be allowed to insist on this to save their own people in bio security and security of planes exploding over their country or terrorising their populations. There have been so over a dozen new exotic species/diseases (insects pathogens plants) come to NZ every year.

Save on custom staff and costs. transferred to other departments that are short of general search staff and could be more fine tuned to other areas of inspection such as containers and other imported goods.

Dare you to think of even think of more reasons.
Sure think of reasons why not, then any solutions that may work.

Harder to smuggle drugs, concentrate on body cavity searches and internal x-rays/
Some symptoms and diseases of skin would be picked up.

Fruit weed/seed insect pests will have less chance of entering.

Admittedly I can not work out a cost benefit ratio at this stage but I believe it may not be wide of the mark, and may achieve greater efficiencies.

Business and Frequent Travellers may have a problem, but that may be overcome with lockers of their personal effects at destination airports and may be discounted because of regular/air-points.
Should it only be flights to NZ?

Would other countries follow.?

Certainly in NZ interests to be first and even better if no other country follows so what is purchased in NZ by a visitor is effectively an export product (purchased by over seas funds.

If you want to fly to NZ that would be part of the decision to accept.

Sorry at the moment I have not made this into a logical and coherent structure but just seem to keep adding issues, question and answers?

The only thing other thing is that I started this with tongue in cheek, but now it is sort of worrying that it may be closer to happening as these scanners see you nude now and pat downs almost and probably will soon in the future check the actual size of your anatomy.

It seems that more people are objecting to full body scanners and pat downs, so a prior step to the above proposal is just up the shirt/dress, down the under garment all in the queue, so it is quickly done. Hopefully the ugly will balance the cute so the security system people do not need any extra money for so called fugly people. Just a matter of " no shame ". Back to the "short arm inspection". Sure would keep the queue flowing as sheeple parade on thru, certainly should be no slower than the scanner.

The security systems staff is another way of building a private "civvy" army, little bits here and there to merge up later and all being paid agents thru government legislation. Over 65000 now employed in TSA.

Is the future with cavity searches as we swallow and allow camera probes in all sorts of openings.

18th November 2010
http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20101116-31209.html
Germany scanning machines are not working on heavily clothed people so they have take off some garments. Then there are problems where there a creases or pleats on light clothing so they are still patted down and then go thru metal detectors. Sounds like very close to asking you drop all your duds(clothing)

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Peace:--More than talk and wishes

"Those who talk of peace are not necessarily the ones who create and defend it, and those who fight for it, are often the ones who most profoundly understand what it means."

Monday, September 22, 2008

Cheats Bludgers Rorters:--: Penalities Punishments Sanctions

Trust me, I'm a Swiss professor

WORLD OF SCIENCE - BOB BROCKIE
The Dominion Post | Monday, 22 September 2008
Related Links

Swiss professor Ernst Fehr is renowned for his research into warm fuzzies, fair-mindedness and punishment.


He gave groups of people money to play "public good" games that mimic life. The rules keep changing, chemicals are blown up noses, players must make selfish or selfless choices and punishments are meted out. As director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at Zurich University, the professor mixes economics with evolutionary and mathematical game theory. He is interested in how we read each other's minds and intentions and how trust develops.

Our brains produce a natural chemical, oxytocin, which triggers warm fuzzy feelings during sex or breast-feeding. Professor Fehr wanted to know if the chemical affected business deals, so tailored games in which players could choose between investing money with a trustee in return for a guaranteed small profit or striking out on their own with no holds barred and possibly making bigger profits. The rules allowed players to cheat or rip each other off. Professor Fehr then blew puffs of oxytocin up half their noses and, sure enough, the chemical made the players more trustful. If it were blown up the noses of businessmen, he thinks it would make for easier, more endurable deals.

More recently, Professor Fehr and his team investigated the early growth of fair- mindedness by offering Smarties, jellybeans and fizzers to 229 children between the ages of three and eight. They found that at age three children are inherently selfish, but by age eight most have developed a sense of fairness, sharing goodies equally. Such behaviour sets humans apart from chimpanzees, which remain selfish throughout their lives.

In other experiments, players could choose between games in which cheats and free-loaders were punished and games in which they were not. Most chose to play punishment-free games but soon learned that the games were chaotic and unsustainable. After a few rounds they saw the advantages of penalties, switched games and learned to cooperate to become trusting law-enforcers themselves. "Strong reciprocators" went to considerable personal expense to punish defectors. Their "altruistic punishment" maintained the public good.

Apart from these researches, Professor Fehr directs an institute in Vienna, is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, vice- president of the European Economic Association, edits several journals and has written books about high wages, wage rigidity, contracts and market interactions.

Professor Fehr shows that we cannot turn a blind eye to selfish cheats, bludgers and rorters. If they go unpunished, trust goes out the window and relations between parents and children, husbands and wives, neighbours, communities, corporations, and a country's institutions become chaotic.

The professor says that if we want to get along with each other we should abide by the equation:

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Respect or Not :---: Tolerating the Intolerant





www.sillybeliefs.com Respect My Religion!
Keeping religion isolated from criticism

"Blasphemer" they used to cry, often followed with the more frightening "Death to the infidel" and "Stone him". Yet now, in New Zealand at least, when the religious believe their faith has been insulted they merely implore us to "Please respect my religion". What do they mean by this plea? How should we respond?
Introduction

The Decline of Religion
Respect Our Religion
Tolerate our Religion

Introduction
In NZ and in an increasing number of countries religion has a major problem on its hands — the majority of citizens are no longer ignorant and uneducated. Science and reason has replaced religion and faith. The battles have been fought, the war is over and religion has lost. Their power gone, they can no longer force our obedience. Having their primitive stories exposed as fictions mean they can no longer even persuade us to follow them willingly. Yet religion refuses to surrender. It struggles on mortally wounded, gasping and wheezing, attacking when cornered with the only weapons it has left: denial and isolation. For the first time in history it goes off the offensive and onto the defensive, and we get the pathetic plea of "Please respect my religion".
Is this a legitimate and fair request? Should we feel obliged to back down? Definitely not, and we'll explain why this request should not only be ignored, it doesn't even make sense. This is just another bogus religious statement, a subterfuge designed to keep reason at bay while religions attempt to protect their ill-gotten assets, reinterpret their myths and brainwash a new generation of followers.
The Decline of Religion
How did religions slip from the authoritarian "Stone him" to begging "Please respect my religion"? Let's recap on the way things were and what's changed to bring about this new wimpish approach from religious believers.
For most of recorded history persuasion and force, working hand in hand, has kept religion to the forefront in most societies. Persuasion worked mainly because it was very easy for an educated, literate priesthood to convince illiterate, ignorant and superstitious peasants of anything they wished. For those that could see the flaws in the religious argument, fear persuaded most to feign belief. Fear of divine punishment if religion was true and the very real fear of how religions responded to disbelief. Religions have never been backward in resorting to torture and execution. Torture would 'convince' non-believers that religion was obviously true after all, and execution would permanently remove their negative and unwanted influence from the scene. Either way, religion held its grip on the populace with an iron fist.
Of course many intelligent people throughout history have questioned religion, but most still found themselves concurring that while obvious flaws exist, the overall premise that a god created the world must be true. They reached this conclusion because there was simply no other alternative. If a god didn't create the world and life and the amazing way it all fits together, then what did? No one could come up with an answer that made sense. And so even in recent centuries, with science on the rise, religion was still able to persuade the great majority that religion was right, with science merely verifying the details.
Then in 1859 along came Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection. For the first time in history there was an alternative explanation as to how life evolved, and it didn't need a god. More than any other, this one event was the beginning of the end for religion's hold over society. Scientists, philosophers and anyone that was never completely comfortable with the 'God did it' solution finally had an alternative answer to 'Life, the universe and everything'. Darwin's success at explaining the evolution of life gave scientists new found confidence that the universe could be explained in a naturalistic way, without resorting to gods, demons, fairies or leprechauns.
As science advanced in leaps and bounds, religion found hallowed belief after hallowed belief being debunked. Of course religion vigorously attempted to defend its position in not only its churches, but universities, schools, governments and the media, but slowly and surely religion lost its grip and scientific answers took precedence over religious ones. Science and reason effectively and conclusively demolished religious dogma. Their holy books have been shown to be fictional, their histories mythical and their explanations of natural events fanciful magic. Religion has lost the enormous power it once held and has largely been relegated to a "private and irrelevant superstition practised by a minority". While admittedly the majority still holds vague religious beliefs, only a minority still holds a literal belief in religion as practised by their ancestors. They can no longer threaten us with torture and death. Even their threat of Hell and divine retribution does nothing but raise a giggle. The universe is a completely different place to what religions would have us believe, and their silly stories about vengeful gods and talking snakes persuade few. Religions have been marginalized and what power they still appear to have is largely symbolic. They are impotent. The days of an ignorant society cowing at their feet are long gone, their proclamations are ignored and their mystical explanations laughed at.
So in the 21st century, how can religious leaders and devout believers — religion's eunuchs — ensure the survival of their faith?
With the option of force outlawed and their explanations ridiculed, religion is left fighting a rearguard action. The best they can do is attempt to retain what followers they do have by insulating their beliefs from analysis and criticism. For all their blustering about open discussion and debate, the intelligent and knowledgeable among them have rightly concluded that real debate would be disastrous for religion. While the church could easily fool ignorant and superstitious peasants, they know that if educated and open minded people are exposed to all the arguments of religion verses science, history, philosophy, ethics etc they will clearly come to realise that our origins are best described by science and not religion. That our laws are best formulated by the people and not Yahweh, Jehovah, Jesus, Allah or Shiva.
Religion's realise they need to limit the damage that science and reason is inflicting on a daily basis. If they can't convince the rest of society of their views, they need to at least to shield their followers from alternative views. But how can they prevent public commentary, the publication of books and the screening of science documentaries, comedies and movies that expose and highlight the absurdities, contradictions and falsehoods contained in their faith? How do they stop rational, intelligent people picking on them?
They appeal to our sense of fairness, of justice and of equal rights. Put simply, they ask us to respect their religion, to respect their beliefs, as they respect ours.
Respect Our Religion
But this is nothing but a scam. Nothing but the latest ploy used by religions in an attempt to prevent criticism of their beliefs. Since no one wants to feel that they are being disrespectful, rude or discourteous to someone's personally held beliefs, this demand can stop debate in its tracks. It effectively prevents us from even discussing let alone challenging, ridiculing or criticising religious beliefs. But is it a valid demand or are we simply being silenced by religious arrogance? Is this demand merely a cunning ploy to prevent us showing up religion for the silly superstition that it is?
Yes of course it is, and we'll endeavour to explain why.
To start with, here are some quotes that show this ploy in action. In NZ the two main examples of recent times (2006) are the publication of the Islamic cartoons featuring Mohammed which offended Muslims and the broadcasting of 'Bloody Mary', an episode of South Park featuring the Virgin Mary, which offended Catholics.
Protest A TV3 news item on a Muslim protest march in Auckland stated,
"The [Muslim] organisers were at pains to say this was a protest about respecting all religions, including their own".
The protestors carried banners that read:
"Stop offensive publication. Do not offend any religion."
"We Muslims respect our religion and we have to be respected as well."
A Muslim woman went on to state:
"I think it's disgusting. They should respect our religion just like we respect them."
Around the world Muslim leaders, community leaders and even Christian and Jewish leaders added their voice to the protesters, saying that while they didn't condone the violence or the threats that occurred in Europe, they did support the Muslim outrage at the disrespectful treatment of their prophet and their religion.
Roy Greenslade, a former newspaper editor in Britain was quoted as saying:
'You have to respect race, colour and creed, and that means not being gratuitously rude about religion.'
Australian newspaper 'The Age' stated that:
'The Vatican yesterday appealed for mutual respect.'
Raymond L. Flynn, National President of 'Your Catholic Voice', and Former Ambassador to the Vatican expressed his view:
'I sometimes don't agree with other peoples' religious positions either, but I respect them and don't criticize them or tell them what to do or believe…
Respect my religion as I respect yours.'
South Park The Christian outrage over the South Park episode, like the Muslim cartoons, again centred on 'respect' and others also took up their cause. A commentator on National Radio's Media Watch programme stated that religions are not getting:
'the respect they deserve'.
Even NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark commented on the problem saying,
"… but I think it is important to show religious faiths respect and tolerance… I think the critical thing is that we show respect for other people's beliefs."
A Christian web site that was protesting the screening of the South Park episode stated,
"We value and respect a New Zealander's right to hold a religious faith without condemnation."
So the general theme is: Respect the Prophet. Respect the Virgin Mary. Respect other religions. Respect all religion.
What's happening here, with conflicting faiths supporting each other? Each demanding that we not only respect their faith, but the faith of their adversaries as well?
Devout Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus etc are all utterly convinced that every religion but their own is false. Each would be ecstatic if the secular world would help them probe, analyse and convincingly debunk the false beliefs of other religions, relegating them to history. But at the same time they all realise that having eventually discredited all other religions, reason and science would turn its spotlight on them, and their foundations are just as weak and rotten as the others were. Once started, the search for the truth wouldn't stop. Science and reason would destroy all religion.
Actually much has already been lost and we believe every religion is already mortally wounded, lying in a persistent vegetative state with the ageing priests, mullahs and rabbis unwilling to pull the plug.
Realising that if they openly encourage criticism of other religions then this will eventually come back to haunt them, religions have tried to hold off their inevitable demise by forming a coalition with those that follow 'false' religions. They all recognise that free inquiry is a far greater threat to their existence than other 'false gods'. Thus the leaders of these many religions, but certainly not all their followers, have reached a fragile truce. They have agreed not to publicly challenge, ridicule or criticise the beliefs of other faiths. They have agreed to 'respect' each other's religion. They have agreed to 'respect' the lies and falsehoods of other religions, all in the name of self-preservation. But this is only the first step. The crucial step now is to stop the penetrating gaze of science and reason, thus the secular world must be convinced to abide by a treaty it was not a party to. The secular world must accept that if religions have agreed to effectively ignore each other, then science and reason must do likewise.
Sorry, but we in the secular world do not have to turn a blind eye to your silly little games. Truth knows no boundaries. Science and reason will not stop looking at religion just because religion is afraid of what it will reveal. Reason refuses to put on the blinkers that religion has provided.
This 'respect' ploy isn't new, remember the protests over the piece of art known as 'Virgin in a Condom', 'The Da Vinci Code' and even Monty Python's movie 'Life of Brian'? Christians bleating on about their right to have their religion respected. But this right is a myth. It doesn't exist. They are confusing it with their right to 'freedom of religion or belief'.
Section 13 of the NZ Bill of Rights Act states that:
'Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and hold opinions without interference.'
This guarantees them the right to believe anything they wish, but it does not promise in any way or form that the rest of us have to accept or even understand that belief, let alone respect it. They merely have the right to hold differing beliefs. We are not compelled to accept these beliefs and we most certainly don't have to respect them. I repeat, we are respecting the right to hold a belief, not the belief itself.
OK, so there is no law saying we must respect religion, but do we have a moral obligation perhaps? Is this what they mean, that some sense of fairness should cause us to respect religion? But does the demand, 'Respect our religion', even make sense? What does 'respecting' something actually mean?
My dictionary defines 'respect' as:
respect
  1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.
  2. To avoid violation of or interference with, eg respect the speed limit.
  3. To relate or refer to; concern.
For definition #1 it goes on to say that respect:
'implies appreciative, often deferential regard resulting from careful assessment'.
I believe it is correctly used in statements such as 'I respect so-and-so for the outstanding work they've done in their particular field', eg I respect Sir Edmund Hillary for his mountaineering achievements and his humanitarian work. However it is mischievously hijacked for dogmatic commands such as 'Respect your parents, Respect your elders, Respect your superiors' etc. As we all know, respect in this context must be earned. Why should a child respect a parent that abuses him? Why should we respect elders or leaders that are corrupt? Since most people know little if anything about the religious beliefs of others, there can be no respect, since there has been no 'careful assessment' of them.
Of course some people may truly believe that they have investigated and actually respect religions other than their own, but this is a naive. To have deferential regard for a belief system that insists that your belief or religion is false, your gods are false, you are deluded and you're destined for eternal torture because of your refusal to accept this, is stupid in the extreme. You can respect your own religion but you can't respect an opposing one, at most all you can do is tolerate it. More on this shortly.
'Respect all religion' they say. Not just 'our' religion but 'all' religions. But why? No doubt if I asked them if they would in turn 'respect my religion or belief', they would immediately reply with an emphatic "Yes!"
But again, why? Shouldn't any reasonable person first ask, 'What is your religion or belief?'
What if I stated that my religion was Satanic worship involving human sacrifices, or that my belief was that magic fairies told me that to reach enlightenment I must sexually abuse small children. Would they 'respect' my belief and leave me alone to abuse small children as long as I 'respected' them in turn and left them alone? One would hope that given these answers they would refuse to respect my beliefs. They would probably insist that after due consideration of my beliefs they feel that they can't respect them after all. But why do they have this right to choose whether they will respect my beliefs, while demanding I blindly respect theirs? We can't enforce respect for all beliefs because it is impossible to respect beliefs you don't agree with. Do Christians have 'respect' for Islamists who slaughter infidels according to their deeply held religious beliefs? If they do then they should be viewed with contempt, if they don't then they are hypocrites. They can't demand that we respect and refuse to criticise their religious beliefs, while they freely condemn the religious beliefs of others.
Thus one can not blindly follow demands to 'Respect the Prophet' or 'Respect our beliefs'. If this is the meaning of 'respect' adopted by these proponents, then their plea for 'respect' fails and can be ignored.
However if religious proponents merely wish to prevent criticism of their beliefs, then definition #2 has more power when it comes to preventing debate: 'To avoid violation of or interference with'. This is a blanket 'hands-off' approach. Regardless of your view, you are being told not to challenge their beliefs. You must leave them alone. To violate in this context means: 'to do harm to (property or qualities considered sacred); desecrate or defile'. Thus to make statements that suggested their sacred views were false would be to violate their beliefs. Those that claim this defence, this definition of respect, knowingly do so to prevent any challenge to their belief.
Thankfully we no longer live in the Dark Ages. Unlike the dictionary example given above, 'respect the speed limit', there is no legal requirement that states 'Respect your parents', and there is no law that states 'Respect the beliefs of others'. In fact we have just the opposite, it's called 'Free Speech'.
The third definition of respect, meaning 'in relation to' or 'in reference to' doesn't apply when used in this context so can be ignored.
So, we have three options in the way we can respond to calls of 'respect my religion':
  1. We respect their beliefs by showing deferential regard for them.
    This fails since having no knowledge of their beliefs means we have no reason to have esteem for them. In addition, gaining knowledge would still not guarantee esteem, anymore than learning about Nazis would increase our regard for their beliefs. It is possible that after due consideration some beliefs may be found worthy of our esteem, but this should change their initial claim to, 'Please examine our religion or belief'. They can't demand blind 'respect'. In this context, and in freethinking New Zealand, I will decide whether I will 'respect' something. I will not have this demand placed on me.
  2. We respect their beliefs by not violating or interfering with them, regardless of our opinion of them.
    This fails since they have no authority to make such demands. The right of 'Freedom of religion and belief' merely gives them the right to hold different beliefs, not that those beliefs should be 'off-limits' to inspection and utter rejection or ridicule if deemed appropriate. Take NAMBLA (North America Man Boy Love Association), a real group whose belief it is that sex between men and young boys is appropriate. They have the right to hold this belief, but if we accept 'respect' in this context we must not attempt to interfere with or harm this belief in any way. After all, Muslims or Christians can't insist that 'respect' should only apply to their beliefs and not the beliefs of other groups. It's all or nothing. A genuine example of 'respect' in this context is: 'respect the law'. We may or may not agree with every law, but a condition of living in society is that we will accept them, and if we refuse to 'respect' them, a legal authority will punish us. In our society religions no longer have the authority to demand 'respect', unlike the legal system, anymore than do Neo-Nazi groups or NAMBLA.
  3. The final and correct option is to realise that religious proponents have given us no good reason to blindly respect their beliefs under either definition.
We need to realise that demands to 'Respect our religion' etc are used to intimidate us, to silence us, and thus discourage analysis of their silly beliefs. A quote on the website 'About Atheism' puts it beautifully:
"They don't want my respect, they want my submission."
Tolerate our Religion
Ok, so the demand that we 'Respect their religion, belief or whatever' fails, but others may claim that what the person should really have said was that we should be more tolerant of religion. They meant 'tolerate' not 'respect'.
But does the modified request that we 'Tolerate their religion or belief' achieve their desired outcome?
My dictionary defines 'tolerate' as:
tolerate
  1. To allow without prohibiting or opposing; permit.
  2. To recognise and respect (the rights, beliefs, or practices of others).
  3. To put up with; endure; reluctant acceptance despite reservations.
Let's look at definition #2 first. If people take 'tolerate' to mean 'to recognise and respect the rights, beliefs, or practices of others', then this is just another way of saying, 'You should tolerate my religion, and by this I mean you should respect my religion'. All they've really done is redefine 'tolerate' as a synonym of 'respect', and we've already gone down that path. Religions can not demand our respect or our tolerance when it is used in this sense.
However, if by 'tolerate' one means 'to allow without prohibiting or opposing; to permit; to put up with; endure', we are again presented with a problem. As with demanding respect, who has the authority to demand that others tolerate something? One authority would be our legal system, and thus we must 'tolerate' the situation that women are allowed to vote, that homosexuals can walk among us and neo-Nazis can legally hold meetings to idolise Hitler. It matters not whether we agree or disagree with these things, we must permit them, we must put up with them, we must tolerate them. As the dictionary says, toleration in this sense means 'reluctant acceptance despite reservations'.
The only thing that we must legally tolerate about religion is the right of people to hold religious beliefs.
Do religions and other groups or organisations etc have any authority to demand that we do more than this? No. Can they demand that there is no analysis, criticism, satirising, lampooning or debating of their views? No. Thankfully religions have not had this authority for centuries, and neither do special interest groups such as Neo-Nazis, alien abductees or NAMBLA. Many religious groups, in their arrogance that only they are right, fail to realise that if this authority to demand toleration, in the sense of not challenging their beliefs, was granted to one group then it must apply to all, religious or otherwise. It's hypocritical to insist that people must tolerate your beliefs, but not those of others. If we have to tolerate Catholic views, we have to extend this courtesy to all Christian faiths, then to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and right down the line to New Age religions and Satanic worshipers. All religion, good or bad, popular or unpopular, would have to be tolerated. Then the paranormal wackos would want their beliefs tolerated. Everyone who felt picked on because they held some silly belief against all evidence would demand that society tolerated them as well.
Yes they have the legal right to hold these beliefs, we've already agreed on that, but they don't have the legal right to force us not to oppose, investigate or criticise these beliefs.
If society foolishly accepted that it must tolerate (and not oppose) all beliefs, then even objectionable fringe beliefs must be tolerated. People would have to tolerate groups that advocate slavery, racism or inequality for women or the execution of homosexuals and adulterers, likewise groups that practise female genital mutilation, child abuse and honour killings. Unfortunately there are religions and groups that still believe in all of these things. Accepting their demand that we tolerate their beliefs is little different from condoning them. We would have to agree that while barbaric and inhumane things were going on under our very noses, we wouldn't challenge or criticise them. We would agree to ignore them, to tolerate them.
But the fact is that we don't have to respect or tolerate any religious belief. If we did, slavery would still be a part of our lives, since for most of its history Christianity supported it, as did Judaism and Islam. The Bible and Koran go into considerable detail over how we should treat our slaves. Remember that when slavery in the West was finally outlawed that it was Christians who were trading in slaves and owning slaves. The American Civil War, the war that freed the slaves, saw Christian fighting Christian. Evidently slavery still existed in some Muslim countries right up to the 1950s. We refuse to tolerate Christian groups calling for the execution of homosexuals, adulterers and abortion doctors or Muslims that maintain that giving up or changing your faith is a death sentence. Even though these religious fundamentalists insist that we should at least tolerate their barbaric demands, people with any sort of decency refuse and actively oppose them. Enforcing tolerance would take away our moral right to oppose them.
People that push tolerance or respect for religious beliefs that they agree with or those that they deem harmless, while condemning and opposing those that they disagree with or find reprehensible are nothing but hypocrites. Think of Christians that say we should respect their religion, but then criticise Muslims for wanting to stone an adulteress to death, or Muslims and Jews that insult Christians by stating that Jesus wasn't the Son of God. Why can they analyse and criticise other religions but we can't? With due consideration and free will they have decided which beliefs they will tolerate and respect, which is good and proper, but when it comes to us making a decision regarding their beliefs, they refuse us the same courtesy and make the decision for us: 'Respect our religion'.



If religions didn't want me to laugh at them
Then they should Not have such silly beliefs

Rather than respect or tolerate religion we must be free to investigate, analyse, challenge, criticise, debate, satirise, lampoon, ridicule and mock any and all religious belief. We need to continue this until everyone that has the intellect to comprehend sees religion as the superstitious and dangerous nonsense that it is. We need to expose the terror that religion has evoked throughout history and that is poisoning our world once again, especially by Muslim terrorists, but also barbaric acts by Christians, Jews, Hindus and even Buddhists. We can't let our inquiry into these atrocities or even our curiosity about some silly religious claim like the virgin birth be stopped in its tracks by their demand to back off: 'Respect our religion'.
Religions correctly view science, reason and critical inquiry as instruments of their destruction, as an acid slowing eating away at their cherished beliefs, and it must not be allowed to come in contact with believers, especially those whose faith is weak, for they will be more easily persuaded to cross over to the secular 'dark side'. Religions know that many of their so-called followers lack the indoctrination and the required dullness of thought to resist reason and logic, and are seduced by the notion of thinking for themselves and living in a universe where they're not playthings of a vengeful and barbaric god.
Religions are putting up a smokescreen, a diversion, when they demand we respect their beliefs. By isolating their faith they are attempting to put their beliefs off-limits to science, reason and critical inquiry. They are trying to maintain the fog of delusion that envelops their followers. Their hope is that these god-fearing, gullible, ignorant, and usually poor and uneducated sheep will have lots of sex without contraception, preferably in the missionary position, to produce a new wave of children that can be brainwashed and mentally and physically fucked by the priesthood into continuing their crusade of ignorance. Religions have always seen childhood indoctrination as the key to their survival. They hope that by pushing the likes of 'Bible in Schools' and repackaging 'Biblical Creationism' as 'Intelligent Design' that their army of zombies will multiply until once again they're in control. But at the moment they're weak, vulnerable and ineffectual. Until their numbers swell they must stay unobtrusive and non-threatening, protecting their followers and beliefs from criticism. Gone are the days when they could force belief onto the multitudes and so new tactics are called for. Rather than instil terror, their beliefs now invoke laughter and incredulity. And so they meekly ask us, 'Please respect my religion'.
We need to realise that if groups have to demand that you respect their beliefs, rather than letting their beliefs speak for themselves, this is automatically a mark against them. If their beliefs and claims were true and just, they wouldn't need to demand that we respect or tolerate them, we would adopt them as our own.
Far better that one adopts the beliefs of science which doesn't demand respect or tolerance. On the contrary, it demands critical inquiry, debate and rejection of theories if the evidence doesn't support them. Religion should demand no less.



   05/25/12 10:03
But this is old news. Tolerance means that I tolerate your lifestyle and culture to the detriment of mine. I must not only accept what and who you are, but I must celebrate it. When there is a conflict between your culture and mine, I must acquiesce for fear of being labelled a bigot. I must accommodate you in my home while you make no effort to accommodate me and criticize my home for not being like yours. When you seek my institutions and achievements, you do so with dishonesty and guile, but consider me the bigot for wanting to preserve my culture, heritage and institutions.
I don't think this applies to only Muslim issues but to other issues recently in the news.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
- Sir Karl Popper



Islamic Respect








Authors: John L. Ateo, Jason C.
Copyright © 2008, by the 'SILLY BELIEFS' website. All rights reserved



"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
- Sir Karl Popper

Up date, 14 July 2012 Below the jump it a quick study of the Tolerance Trick

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Not Yours To Give: DAVID CROCKETT

Not Yours to Give

One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Mr. Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker --- I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this house, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.

"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and, if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.

"He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and of course, was lost.

"Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:

"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families made homeless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be one for them. The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon as it could be done.

"The next summer, when it began to be time to think about the election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part of my district in which I was more a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.

"I began: 'Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called candidates, and--'

" 'Yes, I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine. I shall not vote for you again.'

"This was a sockdolager... I begged him to tell me what was the matter.

" 'Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intended by it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I believe you to be honest....But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.'

"I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any Constitutional question.

" 'No, Colonel, there's no mistake. Though I live here in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings in Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some suffers by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?'

"Well, my friend, I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.'

" 'It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any thing and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the suffers by contributing each one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life. The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditable; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitu- tion, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution. So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch it's power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you..'

"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have opposition, and this man should go to talking, he would set others to talking, and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, for the fact is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to him: Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I did not have sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully. I have heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but what you have said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have given that vote; and if I ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot.

"He laughingly replied: 'Yes Colonel, you have sworn to that once before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that you are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around this district, you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied that it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep down opposition, and perhaps, I may exert a little influence in that way.'

"If I don't [said I] I wish I may be shot; and to convince you that I am earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I will pay for it.

" 'No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have plenty of provisions to contribute to a barbecue, and some to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is Thursday; I will see to getting up on Saturday week.. Come to my house on Friday, and we will go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear you.'

"Well, I will be here. but one thing more before I say good-bye. I must know your name.

" 'My name is Bunce.'

"Not Horatio Bunce?

" 'Yes.'

"Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before though you say you have seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad I have met you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.

"It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him before, I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.

"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before. Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept up until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government, and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life before. I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him --- no, that is not the word --- I reverence and love him more than any living man, and I go to see him two or three times a year; and I will tell you sir, if everyone who professes to be a Christian, lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.

"But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted --- at least, they all knew me. In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They gathered up around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech by saying:

"Fellow-citizens --- I present myself before you today feeling like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my view. I feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today more for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes. That I should make this acknowledgment is due to myself as well as to you. Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration only.

"I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the appropriation and then told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I closed by saying:

"And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to tell you that the most of the speech you have listened to with so much interest was simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce, convinced me of my error.

"It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is entitled to the credit for it. And now I hope he is satisfied with his convert and that he will get up here and tell you so.

"He came upon the stand and said: " 'Fellow-citizens --- It affords me great pleasure to comply with the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will faithfully perform all that he has promised you today.'

"He went down, and there went up from that crowd such a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.

"I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking then and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell you now that the remembrance of those few words spoken by such a man, and the honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the reputation I have ever made, or shall ever make, as a member of Congress.

"Now, sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday. There is one thing now to which I wish to call to your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men --- men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased --- a debt which could not be paid by money --- and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificance a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it." David Crockett was born August 17, 1786 at Limestone (Greene County), Tennessee. He died March 06, 1836 as one of the brave Southerners defending the Alamo.

Crockett had settled in Franklin County, Tennessee in 1811. He served in the Creek War under Andrew Jackson. In 1821 and 1823 he was elected to the Tennessee legislature. In 1826 and 1828 he was elected to Congress. He was defeated in 1830 for his outspoken opposition to President Jackson's Indian Bill - but was elected again in 1832.

In Washington, although his eccentricities of dress and manner excited comment, he was always popular on account of his shrewd common sense and homely wit; although generally favoring Jackson's policy, he was entirely independent and refused to vote to please any party leader.

At the end of the congressional term, he joined the Texans in the war against Mexico, and in 1836 was one of the roughly 180 men who died defending the Alamo. Tradition has it that Crockett was one of only six survivors after the Mexicans took the fort, and that he and the others were taken out and executed by firing squad.