The Court of the Virgin Queen

Down it goes

2005-08-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Tom Cruise and his bizarre behavior doesn't interest me too much, but I'm quite fascinated by the so-called public backlash against his "ignorant statements" regarding antidepressants. I can't turn on the news even now without hearing something about it from another indignant psycho-mom who claims that without them she too would have thrown her baby against the wall in a postpartum rage. Since more than half the country is probably popping Prozac or Ritalin or any number of psychotropic medications at any given moment, I can see why everyone is so sensitive about being told something that could lower their self esteem!

A high school kid I know recently broke up with his girlfriend, and the normal sadness that accompanied this was immediately interpreted as clinical depression by his parents and they strongly urged him to go to the doctor and get "diagnosed." We are at a point in this country where any kind of negative emotional state --- negative being defined as anything that interferes with our ability to be good little consumers --- is provocation for the family doctor to whip out the prescription pad for large doses of mind-altering substances. Antidepressants are for people who are so profoundly depressed that no other method can shake them out of it and who are in imminent danger of commiting suicide; while this was their original intent, it is now used to treat inferior personality traits from shyness in children to "unnatural" moodiness and introspection. Psychiatrists pathologize normal mood states and call them diseases, the only cure for which are drugs.

"Social anxiety disorder" didn't exist a few years ago, but drug companies and shrinks needed a wider market for their cash cows and they took it upon themselves to invent it. Social anxiety disorder is nothing more than severe awkwardness, shyness, and being hyper self-aware. It is no longer acceptable in our ever-increasing state of social conformity that some people simply aren't richly endowed in all areas. Some people just don't have great social skills, and perhaps one percent of all of those people have a level of anxiety that could begin to approach the realm of complete abnormality. Sadness over a specific event, or even generalized existential angst, is not depression in the clinical sense. I am not condemning antidepressants for those who are severely incapacitated by otherwise incurable depression, but I happen to know a ton of psychologists (I live in a Jewish suburb after all) and most of them are clearly hacks --- they do not posess the subtle interpersonal skills to help someone out of a bad state and thus they are far more comfortable numbing their patients than trying to cure them. In fact, many psychologists and psychiatrists I know proudly announce that they take such drugs themselves, a sure sign that their intuition and judgement have been altered to the point that they cannot really help anyone with difficult problems anymore.

Tom Cruise was further castigated for saying that "excercise and vitamins" will cure mental imbalances. That is mostly crazy Scientology talking (one would be hard pressed to cure schizophrenia with jogging and good nutrition), but for milder emotional states its a perfectly reasonable assertion supported by reputable medical studies --- in fact, several of them reported that daily walking improved mild-to-moderate depression better than a placebo pill and just as effectively as an antidepressent! Getting your blood flowing and your muscles pumping releases natural endorphins and can re-adjust one's perceptions considerably, yet one is hard pressed to find any mental health worker who will recommend this first to someone complaining of depression. They are worried about getting sued by the family if the person commits suicide, so they get them on antidepressants regardless of whether it is really warranted in their particular situation.

Anecdotally I can say that I knew dozens of peers over the years who were forced or heavily pressured by their families to take medication for various problems, most within the normal range of adolescent ailments that resolve on their own. Acting out at school and refusing to adhere to a curfew is diagnosed as "Oppositional-Defiant Disorder" (yes, that's a real "disorder"). Sadness over a dog dying, a relationship ending, or simple moodiness is diagosed as depression or bi-polar disorder. Shyness is social anxiety disorder. Kids with mediocre intelligence have "learning disabilities" because rich parents can't stand the thought that their precious darlings aren't geniuses (no one is just slow anymore). Very often the drugging that takes place is due to parental hysteria over their child not performing in school the way they want them to, and they can't think of any other solution. The supreme value is to get them functional and compliant again without adressing any of the underlying problems that their child might be going through, including spiritual and intellectual crises that simply cannot be medicated for.

People going through psychotic episodes need psychotropic drugs, as do the severely depressed and those with crippling OCD and other problems which cannot be dealt with through any other therapeutic method. For those people, medication is a godsend and can truly help them recover their lives. However, the vast majority of people taking these drugs are merely covering up normal problems that they can't figure out how to deal with --- and why should they know, when the entire focus of the mental health field is to discredit methods that they don't get as handsomely reimbursed for as Prozac?

CAFTA's cold chill

2005-08-02T16:58:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else feel the icy chill of doom down the back of their necks when they read this? I knew Bush would sign it, but that doesn't make seeing my own president cede American sovereignty to a bunch of banana republics any easier. I am now convinced that there are sinister and well-planned reasons behind his refusal to deal with the millions of illegal aliens streaming through our undefended borders, his criticism of the Minutemen, and now the signing of this "trade bill." This cannot be simple stupidity or blundering --- Dubya is a sharp fellow. He is now in the process of literally destroying the country (a country without borders ceases to exist or to have any freedom), and Republicans seem to be in cahoots for the most part. The repercussions from CAFTA may not be felt immediately, but there sure as heck ought to be some serious ones from the voting citizenry. It will be interesting to see how many people will be able to recognize the danger --- I'm guessing almost none, judging from the non-blogosphere coverage of this story.

And that is why I am joining the Minutemen on their next project at the Canadian border, but a stone's throw from Boston. There's nothing else for a private citizen to do at the moment short of armed revolt . . . and I have the feeling that wouldn't be too successful at the moment.

2005-08-01T15:27:00.000-05:00

Daily posting shall resume on Tuesday, August 2nd. Urgent matters of diplomacy have kept me from my Court but will soon be resolved. Think not that I have forgotten you.

PATRIOT prophecy

2005-07-29T08:18:00.000-05:00

After opening Robert Anton Wilson's 1974 Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy to a random page, I discovered this scene:

The intercom buzzed.

"A man is here from the FBI," Miss Karrig said nervously.

The agent, whose name was Tobias Knight, had a walrus mustache and a cheery eye; nobody ever looked less threatening. Dr. Dashwood still regarded him with a wary respect, as a large and dangerous mammal. This was the normal attitude since the 1983 Anti-Crime, Anti-Subversion Omnibus bill had entitled the Bureau to conduct random wiretapping on all citizens rather than just on known criminals and subversives. ("If we only watch the already recognized enemies of society, who knows what hidden monkey business might be festering in dark places to rise up and stab us in the back like a snake in the grass?")

One of Mr. Wilson's acid trips clearly gave him a peak into the universe next door of America circa 2005. I wonder when PATRIOT Act III will be introduced? In my younger and more naive years I was enthusiastically for the original Act, but I have since realized that it is a very bad idea to make those things legal. I want the CIA and FBI to be wiretapping everyone they think is in any way connected to terrorism, I want them indefinitely detaining people, and I certainly want them assassinating foreign leaders and domestic threats . . . . In secret. That way, if an innocent citizen is unjustly targeted or harmed by these agencies there can be some legal recourse for them. Clandestine activities should never be codified or made "legal" because it makes us look like ninnies ( in addition to being totally un-Constitutional). Trust me, Israel doesn't have a PATRIOT Act but the Mossad manages to take care of business beautifully nevertheless.

One Lie, One Truth

2005-07-25T02:35:00.000-05:00

After less than twenty-four hours of my truth experiment, I gained some insight into the more subtle motivations for lying.

I did not go the entire two days without uttering a falsehood. When someone called me that I didn't want to speak to, I said I was busy although I was not --- the rest are in that vein, and boring to recount. What was of interest, however, were the lies that I wanted to tell but did not. These fell almost entirely into the category of hyperbole or narrative-style fabrication when relating stories to people --- a common enough tendency among those who like to write and read fiction! When asked how my day was, the immediate urge was to recount a mundane event that had actually happened and transform it into a Quirky Anecdote with a few choice details that had never transpired. I held back, but it made me aware of how natural it is for everyone to do such things. Why do people lie? The simple reasons are to escape punishment, to gain something without having to work for it, and to boost one's status in the eyes of a coveted group or individual. These answers all have some validity, but they are ultimately shallow and do not explain the real origins of the desire to lie.

I have met a few pathological liars in my day. These are the skilled fabricators who can spin Quirky Anecdotes, Handy Excuses, and Heart-Wrenching Tales Of Abuse And Persecution while looking one straight in the eye and feeling no qualms whatsoever. It is now apparent to me that such people, in addition to whatever concrete explanations can be given by psychologists, are suffering a unique spiritual ailment which often remains totally unconscious (and thus extremely dangerous). Liars cannot be trusted, but in the end it is not because they don't tell the truth to those around them --- it is because they are deeply unstable at the psychic level and are using lying to achieve a particularly flashy brand of self-destruction.

Such a person is incapable of seeing those around him as human beings, and thus will not operate in the same way as his targets. These types can go undetected for very long periods simply because most people are normal and expect that others think like them; there are few people who can stand to look into a man's eyes and realize that he regards them as little more than an object to be manipulated for his own benefit. The pathological liar can spin endless fabrications with startling rapidity and a nearly superhuman ability to keep track of the resulting web of deception in spite of occasional slip-ups. They often lie about things they don't even "need" to lie about, right down to what they had for breakfast. Since the lies of normal people are to gain an advantage or avoid punishment, we can assume that a pathological personality is merely a more extreme version of this. What does he gain --- and more importantly what does he escape --- by telling someone he had toast when he really had waffles?

When someone lies to you, they are quite simply playing G-d. They are in possession of the truth and they withhold it from you deliberately, almost erotically. Power is an aphrodisiac, and what greater power is there than to change someone's perception of reality? Think about the awesome power of this type of lie: with each false word images are being formed in the mind of the listener which never occurred --- their understanding of life will be altered on some level even if they suspect the story may not be true. These small lies are seductive and intimate acts by which the liar gains access to the soul and psyche of the listener, a privilege usually reserved for lovers and friends. It is an assertion of control over their interior landscape, which is why it is such a serious transgression. To commit the Quirky Anecdote lie is to say to oneself, with a falsely pragmatic sense of grim acceptance, that life is dull and un-cinematic. Why not rewrite the script for an unsuspecting audience member and experience the thrill of a well-written plot through their eyes? To tell the painstaking truth about the small details is to admit that one has precisely no control over those small details, or indeed most things that happened to one during the day. Lying is always about control: of the reality of others and (less successfully) over one's own reality.

By playing G-d with our little dalliances in deception, we are symbolically acting out our anxiety that G-d is not performing the same service for us. For the liar, the act is cathartic, his own Greek drama that allows him to feel what he otherwise cannot --- empathy. While it would seem that the liar has a malicious attitude towards his target, in reality he is heavily identifying with and idealizing the person he is deceiving. He is having a fantasy of himself as the innocent soul. In his warped sense of things, he is now the loving G-d whose careful control of the innocent's perceptions is the coveted proof that He exists.

The lies we tell to exert control over our surroundings are an attempt by the mind to deal with the staggering question of free will: is G-d in control, or are we? Are we masters of our reality or are we pawns afloat in a coldly random universe? The pathological liar is a parody of the normal process of probing the nature of reality, and his spiritual distress is so great that this constant "reality adjustment" becomes compulsive. What he longs for in his heart of hearts is the ultimate release of control: to know G-d and to be protected and loved by Him. And thus (happy human perversity!) he hides this humiliating desire by doing the opposite, and tries to over-control the reality of others like a tyrannical emperor.

There are endless amounts of lies to be told, and even more ways to attempt to justify them. The fact of the matter is that at root there is but one lie: that we are alone and bereft of ultimate meaning. All deception originates from this painful delusion as a means of compensation. When one comes to G-d, the original shock of the veil being lifted imprints on one's heart and continues to unfold throughout one's life, and at some point it hits home that Truth is not something we can own and manipulate for all the myriad purposes we scramble to invent. If G-d is real, then every word that comes out of our mouths has total and complete meaning. The most mundane action or sensation becomes a vehicle for bringing holiness into the world, and the power to communicate given to human beings becomes a tool to be used in the most exacting manner possible.

When we communicate honestly, we are giving the listener the privacy of his own psyche instead of invading it with our existential projections and personal demons. Only by giving up pathological control over others can we attain true mastery of ourselves, because someone who is anxious over the state of their soul cannot truly be in charge of his actions no matter how powerful he is. When the neurotic attachment to control is finally relinquished, we regain the free will that we feared losing so much. In this context, telling the truth becomes a radical declaration of belief rather than a reflexive habit based on the childhood fear of societal censure if a lie is discovered. Since G-d's existence was revealed to humanity through the Word, we are given the imperative to take the utmost care that our own words are being used for their highest purpose.

Untangling the web

2005-07-23T16:38:00.000-05:00

Do you lie?

I certainly do. If you're like most people, "innocent white lies" flow out of your mouth so easily that they are hardly noticeable. Others, while not outright malicious, can hardly be attributed to noble incentives: lying to get out of work, lying to get out of an odious social obligation, and lying to just not deal with something that you would otherwise be forced to get done right away (i.e. procrastination). While some lies of omission are merely the polite thing to do to save someone's feelings, small acts of deception definitely add up.

As a spiritual/psychological experiment, I am going to attempt to go 48 hours without telling a single lie, white or otherwise. Many people that I speak to insist to me that they cannot feel anything spiritual no matter what they try (praying, going to church or synagogue, giving charity). What I have discovered is that it is not the overtly sinful acts which most sap our subtle powers of discernment, but the small and insidious ways in which we turn from G-d in our daily lives. Think of the effort that goes into even the smallest lie --- one has to work ten times as hard and expend actual effort to maintain it. If all of these small acts were consciously turned in another direction, imagine how much more mental energy one would have for more "lofty" things!

I will be reporting on the results of my experiment. I invite you to try it, gentle reader --- the only rule is that one may not use the excuse of "telling the truth" to say sadistic things to people.

Just a flesh wound, not dead yet!

2005-07-19T00:52:00.000-05:00

Blogger has been eating all of my posts these last few days, neither saving drafts nor publishing my myriad efforts. Quite vexing. More frequent and profound thoughts to come once lab duties are dispensed with over the next few days.

This guy is rather interesting. He's the one who said that hundreds of corpses have been raised from the dead through prayer in Africa and that massive conversions are sweeping the planet. Trust me, I'd be quite thrilled if anything except Islam were really engulfing the globe. However, I have a bit of an issue with the whole raised-from-the-dead thing (especially when it is supposed to be happening in large numbers). Although I believe miracles can and do happen, current miracles require a somewhat higher burden of proof for me since so many things can be faked and there are so many con-men out there. I'd like to hear thoughts on this topic from those more knowledgeable about it than me --- people I know offline are about evenly split on this guy and whether he's even slightly for real.

Speaking of which, I am currently making a study of the 613 mitzvot that I'm expected to follow. It's like OCD on a cosmic level! That sounds like a whopping number, but quite a bit less so if one realizes that many of them cannot be performed since the Temple no longer exists. And plenty of others don't come up very often (like having to marry your brother's widow or how to make a leper ritually pure).

I defy anyone to take a look at #309 without getting the good kind of chills . . . sounds quite familiar, doesn't it?

Sheep, Wolves, War, Deception

2005-07-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

This can happen billions of times, and liberals will still fail to get it: most terrorists aren't poor desperate anti-social people but well-respected community members who easily seem kind, intelligent, and peaceful while planning death on a large scale for the naive Westerners around them.

Here's what the Globe had to say of the main London bomber:

Khan was a much-respected teacher's aide who worked with special needs students and ran a breakfast program for poor children. He married into a prominent family; his mother-in-law was honored by Queen Elizabeth II for her charitable work. He was the father of a young daughter and had another child on the way.

As long as this continues to happen, there is no other solution but to deport every last one of them. I don't care how many "nice Muslims" you know ---- you have absolutely NO way of knowing if they are really nice. This guy volunteered to help troubled children and was (like all of them, it's a characteristic trait) soft-spoken and "gentle." Face it: the Koran encourages Muslims to lie and use deception to attain their goal of making the entire world Dar Al-Islam (the House of Islam). Until this end is achieved, the non-Muslim parts of the planet are Dar Al-Harb --- The House of War, a fair-game battlefield where one can kill innocent men, women and children because they are infidels trying to hold back the tide of Islamic domination.

The yuppie dream turns into a nightmare . . .

2005-07-11T23:31:00.000-05:00

It's too expensive to be used en masse now, but these new early-pregnancy home gender tests are the first step in what will be a huge cultural battle. Watch how fast liberals will condemn the newest reproductive technologies like this one if they lead to more abortions of female fetuses. Watch them move at light-speed to ban abortion when the "gay gene" is found and everyone starts running tests to find out if they're carrying a homosexual child and basing their decision to keep the baby on it. Watch Marxist minority activists freak out when rich black yuppie couples start aborting fetuses with extremely dark skin in lieu of trying again for a lighter version. It's going to be hilarious.

The technology behind this gender test is truly remarkable and has many applications beyond this simple one --- it instantly detects the presence of fetal cells in the mother's blood (which oddly enough cross the placenta and become noticeable mere hours after conception) and if there is a Y chromosome in them it is obviously a boy and if not it is a girl. Tumors and other diseases produce their own signature, hostile cells and mutated DNA and theoretically this test could be broadened into an all-purpose diagnostic tool that would save lives.

I support a woman's right to an early abortion --- very early, preferably in the first month --- and I further think that the issue should be decided by individual states (ie Roe should be overturned because it was a badly-argued and sleazily constructed ruling, not because abortion should be illegal everywhere). I do not think that the issue should be approached in a hysterical manner, but I can already tell that technology like the above is going to set off a tizzy as the main supporters of abortion experience extreme cognitive dissonance and thus will be forced to change their position. Supporting individual choice as a blanket concept is one thing, but supporting specific choices like aborting a fetus because it will be obese is a pretty large leap and you really can't put specific bans on those things. Either you can get an abortion before a certain time in the pregnancy for any reason, or you cannot get one at all --- the liberals will follow their instincts to regulate everything and will make contradictory laws like "no aborting homosexual fetuses."

If you think the culture wars are hot now, get your tickets for the three-ring circus up ahead.

GTA: Boston ( I wish)

2005-07-09T23:56:00.000-05:00

I have played GTA Vice City until my eyes were practically falling out. I did the same with San Andreas --- neither of them turned me into a violent criminal. I can't stand when sanctimonious twits decide to "investigate" games to find hidden content. Yeah, take all the fun out of it why don't you?

Easter eggs were made to be found. They were NOT made with meaningless ratings in mind. Video games don't make anyone violent, but it is pretty obvious that if someone is already troubled, excessive gaming can make it worse. Big deal --- they could just as easily read a violent book or listen to violent music or make their very own animated clips of stick figures stabbing each other. I happen to relish stabbing prostitutes, shooting cops, ferrying drugs about town and grabbing people out of their cars and then stealing them. Thanks to the fine makers of Grand Theft Auto, I can do those things in the privacy of my own home and improve my hand-eye coordination at the same time.

Females are worse drivers than men, on average. This has to do with all those tired evolutionary facts about different spatial abilities and so on --- however, women would vastly improve their driving abilities if they played video games every day. Whatever you do though, do NOT play this game, because you WILL lose your sanity completely in a matter of hours. Only the Japanese could have invented a game thats so innocuously, gently absurd that you don't notice your white-devil brain cells slowly melting away.

Why London Will Be A Lesson Unheeded

2005-07-07T10:01:00.000-05:00

The terror attack on the London subway that killed upwards of 33 people this morning is a wake-up call that no one is going to heed, in England or here in America. Terrorist attacks like this are nearly impossible to prevent unless one decides to turn one's society into a Big Brother environment where all movements of citizens are tracked. However, the further reason why attacks like this cannot (really WILL not) be prevented is that no one is willing to do what is necessary: massive police raids on mosques (prior to their permanent shut-down and the jailing of militant Muslim leaders, who are ubiquitous in London) and a complete stop to all Islamic immigration.

Truthfully, there is really no solution that is humane but to expel them all. Mass slaughter of Muslims is rather bad PR, and isn't necessary. However, just wait for the conspicuous silence of British Muslims about this attack --- there will not be giant marches protesting this "hijacking of Islam," nor will the imams be preaching love and tolerance from their pulpits (maybe a few token words if the press is there). To say that Muslims have failed to police their own is not even an applicable phrase, since they are simply doing the kinds of things that devout Muslims do if they read their Koran and revere Mohammed, the most blood-thirsty of all the "prophets." There are no "moderate Muslims" because Islam does not allow for either moderation or self-criticisms. Moderate Muslims are the fantasy of liberal Westerners who think that Muslims have similar psychological makeups to them. They do not, because an entire religious movement that supports suicide as a means of political expression and believes that the only acceptable universe is one under Sharia law is quite alien to the Western mind.

They can live here for 20 years, seeming perfectly friendly, kind, dignified, and moderate ---- and still be able to murder their friends and neighbors when the time comes. Radical Muslims are the problem, and the rest of them are even worse since they quietly support the actions of the others or give them money and succor. They are intent, as a civilization, on taking us over and bringing all progress to a screeching halt (and then dragging the planet back to a Stone-Age Utopia). They have infiltrated every level of our free and open societies and we are defenseless because of political correctness. At a minimum, British and American authorities should be raiding and shutting down every mosque they can find until thorough investigations have been done, but the only long-term solution is to relocate all of them to some country in the middle of nowhere so that they can have their precious Sharia society without the inflaming presence of infidels and women who dare to show their face in public.

This will not happen, of course, and thus we are going to be destroyed from the inside --- think about it for a minute. If they were in control of any of the Western countries they have infiltrated (any of them: "Palestinians," British Muslims, American Muslims, European Muslims) they would certainly not be showing politically correct attitudes towards Christians, Jews, and atheists. I do not wish to live in a society that ran in such a way as to keep control over the Muslim population, and thus they must be kicked out. I really, really don't care if you came here to escape persecution (so you say) or to study at our colleges --- your entire group has failed to show any evidence of being able to integrate into normal society or to live in harmony with those you disagree with.

The West has been crippled by its own civility and white guilt, and we are going to pay the price. The only blood that will be running in the streets will be our own.

Of suicide and apostasy

2005-07-05T20:36:00.000-05:00

The United Church of Christ has voted at their biennial synod to endorse gay marriage (and they would have also divested from Israel if no one had protested but instead they made a deceptive "compromise" which in effect does the same thing).

It is not often that you see a church commit such a public act of suicide, but then again there is a first time for everything. This is the first major Protestant denomination in America to officially endorse full marriage rights fo gays, and they will not be the last.

You can preach tolerance and love for homosexuals and call yourself a Christian. You can denounce physical violence against homosexuals and call yourself a Christian. You can even endorse civil unions and call yourself a Christian. However, the minute you assert --- or continue to support a church that asserts --- that there is such a thing as a "marriage" between two men or two women, you have ceased to be a Christian.

Royal Review: War of the Worlds

2005-06-30T23:50:00.000-05:00

Lest you all think I am obsessed with finding political subtexts in movies and cannot enjoy them like a normal person, I will say straight off that War of the Worlds was phenomenally well-done and a blast to watch. You will be on the edge of your seat and panting with adrenaline surges for the entire movie, without so much as a five-second breather. Tom Cruise doesn't have a lot of range, but what he can do he does better than anyone and he is in top form here: he's wild-eyed, funny, sympathetic, and has a magnetic physical presence. The visual effects are startling and original and are not just stuck in to get a cheap "whoa, man" out of the audience --- they build genuine terror and suspense and add real emotional resonance to the story. Because it's Spielberg we just expect technical excellence as a matter of course, but this is an extremely difficult story to do well (there are a million ways he could have blown it in terms of plot pacing and visuals) and he deserves recognition and massive ticket sales for this effort.

* * *

Now for the analysis. While the above praise is true, the underlying theme of the movie is pretty disturbing. Its core message is: Americans cannot and should not fight terrorism and it is futile to even try. Most reviews have commented on the various "allusions" to September 11th, but I think allusion is much too mild a word --- the whole movie is supposed to be a pointed social commentary/allegory about 9/11 and America's response to terrorism. The details to support this are obvious:

1. The aliens were "planted here a long time ago" and "they've been planning this for a million years." Say it with me, children: S-L-E-E-P-E-R C-E-L-L-S!

2. The clothing from the vaporized humans floats to the ground, a visual that is supposed to remind you of the people who jumped out of the towers rather than be burned alive. Also, many of the remains from 9/11 could never be found because they'd all been turned to ashes . . . like the ashes that coat Tom Cruise's face.

3. Several shots of message boards looking for missing or lost family members, accompanied by photographs. Exactly what NYC was plastered with for days and weeks after the attack happened.

4. The church gets split down the middle and destroyed by the emerging aliens. Can't you hear the echo of all the pundits saying "Americans' faith has been SHATTERED by this tragedy! Many are questioning how G-d could let this happen!" after the round-the-clock news coverage on the non-cable channels ended around September 20th?

Tom Cruise plays the hero and thus you are made to sympathize with him, but he is entirely passive and is only trying to survive. He is too stunned to care that aliens are taking over Earth, and the only thing he can muster any energy for is thinking about his own family. The only person in the movie who wants to fight back against the invasion is portrayed as a creepy, irrational lunatic who also seems like a child molester! As soon as lines like "we can't let them have America! This is our land, we need to organize an underground army and fight these bastards! They must have some weakness no matter how strong they seem" started coming out of his mouth I knew that his character would be offed --- and he was, but not before almost getting Ray and his annoying daughter killed with his craaaaaazy bloodlust. The only other armed person in the movie is an immoral man who uses the gun to steal Ray's car and incite a riot over who gets to ride in it.

Ray does use violence eventually, but in typical liberal fashion it is only after he is personally affected (Dakota Fanning gets snatched by marauding aliens). Only after he loses someone close to him can he even contemplate taking action, and the script writers only allowed him to fight the enemy after making a big emotional stand for his cute little moppet in order to justify it.

I felt a genuine thrill when the American fighter jets streaked across the sky and started doing battle with the enemy. I thought "that's right, motherf***ers!" and was happy the movie was finally starting in earnest --- however, the army was ineffective and all of the battle scenes are de-emphasized except to show them getting slaughtered and seeming like bull-headed morons for even trying. The greatest disappointment of the movie was when Ray takes a long look at a statue of a Revolutionary War hero in Boston and notices that the strange bloody vines are dying. I immediately hoped that Spielberg had changed the story and that iron (or whatever the statue was made of) was what was killing the vines and Ray would invent a weapon using it to kill the aliens. That, of course, would have been far too patriotic an idea ---- as it turns out, the big panning shot that focuses on the statue is a red herring that makes you realize what a jingoistic and rote idiot you are for wanting something like that to happen!

Don't fight terrorism. Don't even try. It can't be fought, and if we ignore it, it will probably go away on its own through a combination of factors that are all out of our control. This seems to be what the movie is saying, and this is further demonstrated by the fact that the American army is shown to be cruel (they bypass the desperate people who want a ride and scream "you have room on that truck for me!) and thick-skulled (their fighting is completely in vain and they can't manage to do things right, the only time they down an alien is after they've already been weakened). The movie also clearly labels those who want to fight terrorism and have traditional American sensibilities --- like wanting to form a militia to rid themselves of an invader and otherwise be action-oriented and creative --- as very dangerous people who must be stopped at all costs, lest they get all the poor regular folks killed who are just trying to survive.

This does not make it a bad movie, and on the contrary it is worth seeing and you will emerge from the theater in a state of drained, vaguely elated stupor.

ONE brain cell among the lot of them

2005-06-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Anyone who feels like throwing a grenade at their TV every time they see those sanctimonious and weirdly communistic black-and-white commercials for that "ONE" anti-poverty organization will be happy to know (in that really wrong and juvenile way) that several of my intrepid readers have signed that website's "declaration to wipe out world poverty with pop music concerts" with the name Fuk Yuahl --- and claim to be working on persuading others to do so en masse. I do not endorse this because then it pads their numbers and no one will really check the names anyway . . . But I understand the impulse to vandalize or otherwise mock this campaign. Just another pseudo-socialist ego-fest for celebrities to feel relevant and get free publicity while raising money that will probably go to some African dictator.

They even have their very own trendy sign of idiocy merchandise. Perhaps the Mark is already among us . . .

Zombies and angels

2005-06-29T22:27:00.000-05:00

If you haven't heard about the zombie dogs by now, you are either dead or have no internet connection (which can feel like the same thing). I should probably be slightly creeped out by this innovation, but I can't muster anything but mild wonder--- anything that revives a creature with normal brain function after clinical death doesn't truly qualify as a zombie-making technique. The article didn't mention the dogs turning evil and developing a taste for human flesh, so I am going to cautiously say that this is a positive thing.

Someone I know fell into an icy lake as a child and was revived with no ill effects after being dead and frozen for almost half an hour. What people often fail to realize is that modern medicine does not have a foolproof way of deciding when someone is truly dead --- is it when the heart stops beating? Is it when the brain is silent and free of electrical activity? Is it when someone can't be revived by extraordinary means? Since we have no way of knowing the exact moment of death, sometimes the boundaries can be pushed in quite miraculous ways.

I absolve myself of all responsibility for my lack of posting lately, as it is entirely Vox's fault. I've been reading The War in Heaven at breakneck speed in between lab duties and I will be posting a book review soon.

Well Spent

2005-06-28T14:55:00.000-05:00

Thank you to the latest anonymous donor! Your five dollars was gobbled up by Massachusetts public transportation, a beast of ravenous appetite and dubious goals (the Big Dig is hard at work eating my tax money as we speak). When the lab I am working in invents a Trek-style beaming device to get me to and from work, I shall duly take down the Amazon donation box.

The Boston Janjaweed

2005-06-25T11:13:00.000-05:00

Today's Boston Globe carried this scintillating column from the former President of Botswana, detailing what should be done about "the situation" in Sudan. As is usual for anyone writing about Sudan in the mainstream media, he not once manages to make any reference to Muslims, who are in fact the instigators and perpetrators of the horrors that are occurring there. Apparently his solution is to increase the number of "international monitors" (otherwise known as helpless sitting ducks with no power). I fired off this e-mail to the editor which will most likely not be printed:

To the Editor:

Ketumile Masire's column, "Africans Must Save Africa" (op ed, June 25), is an unwitting illustration of why no one is willing to do something effective about Sudan. What no one is willing to say is that this is a vicious civil war funded by radical Islamists who cannot tolerate the presence of non-Muslims in their country, so they are slaughtering and raping the offending infidels. Not once in his column does he mention the words "radical Islam" or "fundamentalist." The only thing that would stop the slaughter is armed troops doing battle with the Janjaweed, but European countries cannot send troops without inflaming their own increasingly militant Muslim populations.

While Masire is correct that African leaders must be integral in stopping this genocide, he does a disservice to the victims in Sudan by referring to the two sides as "contending warriors." This makes them sound equal, when in fact the nearly defenseless non-Muslim Sudanese are being preyed upon by a government-backed Islamic army. If we continue not to mention the elephant in the room because of political correctness, more Sudanese Africans will be slaughtered. The entire world must respond, and Muslims world-wide must unreservedly denounce this government's actions.

Sincerely,

Not-My-Real-Name-Because-There's-a-Huge-Mosque-in-My-Town

Of course, it is clear that no Muslims have or will denounce this because they are in quiet (or not-so-quiet) agreement with the barbarians now enjoying a pleasant jihad against innocent tribespeople with no opposition. Any Muslims who think this is wrong will not dare to speak out from fear of their peers, who have a real penchant for murdering dissenters and "traitors." I just had to put that in so that there might be a slim chance of them publishing it.

America cannot and should not expend resources and risk lives in Sudan, but I regard it as the responsibility of the European countries to do something, although it is clear they never will. They, not we, were the ones who colonized Africa and profited from it, and as they are not currently involved in two wars at the same time I think they can get off their lazy duffs and do something.

You see, in this situation two liberal sacred cows are at war with each other and it is making them confused and uncomfortable. Liberal Platitude #1: Black and brown people are good. We are guilty of doing bad things to black and brown people, so we should help them by any means necessary. Liberal Platitude #2: Islam is a religion of peace! Muslims aren't terrorists! Any time the West goes to war with Muslims it is an exact recreation of the Crusades, which are the fault of Christianity! Their heads are spinning with cognitive dissonance. In this case, though, Muslims are the ones in a position to wreak havoc on Western countries and thus they are going to lean towards Platitude #2 in order to appease them and save their own hides.

Are you dying of thirst?

2005-06-23T23:45:00.000-05:00

I shouldn't be so euphoric over something that is in such an early stage of development, but I am. You see, Constant Reader, I have been reading up on the Free State Project due to my impotent anger over the Supreme Court decision to trash my G-d-given property rights. I admit that prior to today, I was mostly ignorant of this project, having only heard it mentioned in passing on Jay Severin's radio show and Vox's web site. For the last few hours I have been reading their site and researching New Hampshire. When the "Porcupines" (as they call themselves) were trying to decide on which state to pick for this undertaking, someone put together a list of 101 Reasons to Move To New Hampshire. I defy anyone to read through that fascinating document and tell me with a straight face that they do not feel a mysterious and overwhelming pull towards the Granite State.

Actually, it isn't so mysterious: New Hampshire has the lowest taxes in the nation, the most transparent state government, a low crime rate, respect for the Second Amendment (which I suspect has something to do with the former), gorgeous natural landscapes, and town-meeting Colonial-style government. It is has the only state Constitution in the nation that legally enshrines the right of the citizens to rebel if the government becomes corrupt. No seat belt laws. No helmet laws. No sales tax. No senators named Clinton or Kennedy.

Oh, and a kick-ass state motto: Live Free or Die!

Living in Massachusetts has its good points (for historical junkies you just can't do better than this place), but every time I visit the Freedom Trail in Boston or eat an ice cream at Faneuil Hall I am painfully reminded that my state has drifted as far as possible away from the principles it once proudly fought for. Everything is taxed to the max, the local town governments are often more-than-averagely corrupt and indebted to the teacher's unions, and as an additional embarrassment we produced both John Kerry and the first legal gay marriage in the country.

Nothing is as good as it seems, but in this case I am hoping that the positives outweigh the negatives. I am considering going to the Porcupine Festival up there in late July. This raging thirst for some real freedom must be slaked --- perhaps New Hampshire is just the long cool draught that I've been looking for.

After cooling down a little bit . . . .

2005-06-23T13:26:00.000-05:00

I refuse to believe that nothing can be done.

Hippie-style protesting is fun and gives a venue for immediate venting of anger, but usually it comes to nothing (even if there is violence). Think of how many millions of people protested Gulf War II before it began, all over the world--- all that screaming, yelling, streaking, and giant puppetry was utterly, completely useless.

The only realistic thing I can imagine that would effectively overturn the Supreme Court decision to negate fundamental property rights is to wait for the next seizure of an individual's land for the use of a private company, and then get some hot-shot conservative lawyer and/or Constitutionalist think-tank to take up the case and flog it in the media. Take it all the way through the court system starting at the most local level. Build up a lot of public support and outrage over this and maybe it could reach a point where they would feel enough pressure to reverse the ruling.

Who would be a good lawyer? What would be some good groups or think-tanks or publications to support this kind of stunt?

Oligarchy and Mobocracy come alive!

2005-06-23T12:04:00.000-05:00

Those who dismiss people who want to rein in the power of the Supreme Court as right-wing extremists have just gotten a nasty wake-up call. That means that if your community decides to put a shopping mall on your farm or house, they can force you off for the benefit of a private party. This isn't like razing a house to build a highway. This isn't like taking farmland to build a water treatment plant for a city. This is Wal-Mart laying foundation over your garden because your local officials deem that you are getting in the way of the "general good." For once Sandra was on the right side of an issue with her dissent!

Our government has just declared that the inalienable right to own property is now subject to the whims of the mob and those who have more money and power than you.

I will find a way to protest this. Put on your thinking caps, kids.

If you think of it during the day . . .

2005-06-22T15:52:00.000-05:00

My good friend Robert Werner is off to Air Force boot camp at Ellsworth, South Dakota for the next month. Pray that he makes it through in good health --- Jews are obligated to add in the ancient phrase "and G-d forbid he die of heatstroke!"

Thanks.

Confusion, Delusion, and the Search for the Holy Grail

2005-06-21T05:59:00.000-05:00

American society is frequently described by liberals as being too sexually repressed, and by conservatives as being sexually immoral and amoral. From what I have observed among the newest up-and-coming citizens (the 16-22 set), both sides are completely correct in ways that neither fully realize.

The mainstream media talks about teenage and young-adult sexuality in two standard modes, both equally silly and psychologically shallow --- you have the faux-serious soft-porn"20/20" news segments about rampant oral sex among middle-schoolers with pompous commentary from some "adolescent sex therapist expert" and general hand-wringing over how the young'uns are hooking up like monkeys in a zoo, and then you have the shoulder-shrugging liberals who advocate for better sex-ed in school because kids are "going to do it anyway" due to the totally inescapable and all-powerful influence of the Big Bad Media.

[If you are offended by sexual topics, Constant Reader, feel free to stop here.]

A typical conversation among average, secular females in the 16-22 age group will involve extensive details about who one has hooked up with (that's a casual sexual encounter ranging from kissing to intercourse for all you people who missed the 60's, 70's and 90's). However, they almost never supply certain crucial facts, and I always ask them the same simple question: "So, how did that feel?"

Stunned, shocked silence. A puzzled expression from the girl who was describing her adventures. The other girls look at me as if I am from another planet and are vaguely scandalized. A typical reply from the queried one will be a hesitant and confused "uh . . . I dunno. It felt ok, I guess. Yeah." It usually becomes apparent through more questioning that her sexual encounter afforded her little or no physical pleasure and 99% of the time did not result in the Cosmo Magazine Holy Grail. With a bit more coaxing, she will typically admit to never having experienced an orgasm either alone or with her various partners.

What is wrong with this picture?

If asked, these girls will say unequivocally that premarital sex is morally acceptable and that to believe otherwise is prudish and old-fashioned. Any religious person would describe their behavior as sexually immodest. And yet, a bizarre form of prudishness and modesty remains --- in the form of not experiencing the kind of wild abandon and sexual pleasure that a worldview not constricted by traditional values should supposedly yield. They still take on the typically-feminine submissive attitude towards males and do not expect pleasure, because frankly it is not their top concern. They care what the guy thinks of them and if he is having a good time, because they remain emotionally vulnerable --- something which ties in quite directly with their inability to enjoy what they are doing with him.

“Why are you doing that if you’re not feeling anything?” is the question that no one is asking these girls. Religious people tend to think it is scandalous to ask in the first place, and it makes liberals sweat to think that their marvelous social freedom isn’t resulting in their supposed goals. I have asked girls this question many times, and it makes them quite uncomfortable. They have no idea why they are doing these things, and they certainly don’t espouse any kind of traditional feminism that might explain their motivations (at least in their own minds). Saying things like “how about next time you have him do X to you before you even think about doing Y to him, and if X doesn’t work, try Z” makes it quite clear they are not comfortable taking on a dominant or assertive role during sex, and they have neither the courage nor the will to speak up. They remain intensely prudish when talking about actual sexual things despite their constant chatter on the peripheral concerns of the topic.

Real sexuality remains terrifying for the majority of them. They have left behind traditional values but their natures refuse to let them fully acclimate to the new attitudes, and thus they are stuck in a dismal limbo of uncertainty and frustration without the slightest idea of how they got there or what they ought to do about it. Since they no longer have any context for understanding sexuality, their main strategy for coping is to make themselves numb to it by engaging in acts that make them feel nothing and reduce it all to a casual handshake. It is neither the repression of sexuality for the means of elevating it, nor is it an actual indulgence in true pleasure --- the respective goals of the religious and secular camps. The average female has more emotion bound up in sexuality than the average male, and that means the average female will remain incapable of really enjoying being a libertine. Thus, going in the secular direction of making everything more casual will not result in the ultimate goal of unbridled pleasure for the typical female.

This is the worst possible combination of Puritanism and excess --- young women are too paralyzed to enjoy their sexuality while at the same time having lots of sexual contacts for dubious reasons. Despite millions of magazine articles about how to have them, I have met few young women who approach "achieving" orgasms as a sport. Sexual knowledge of any real significance remains woefully lacking despite all the gyrating booty on MTV. Truthfully, many of them seem not to care at all if they are enjoying a sexual encounter as long as they are having one that they can dissect with their friends later (while males can be accused of this as well, they typically enjoy what they are doing).

The religious conservatives equate media images of barely-clad bodies in advertising with sexual immorality and the over-sexualization of the culture. Feminists and other far-left types equate this with sexism, and the fact is that both have missed the mark when it comes to what this all means. The fact is that Americans are not at all obsessed with sex, but merely the image of it, and the saturation of our visual universe with shallow mock-ups of the act only belie our discomfort with sexuality. We are trying very hard to convince ourselves that we’re so cool and modern that we can have sexual images everywhere and have it be normal. Sex is the new wallpaper, and instead of being titillating or scandalous is has merely become incredibly boring (at least visually). How many people even bother to notice such ads and television shows anymore?

When you make something ubiquitous, it loses both its value and its allure. When you make something casual, you numb yourself to its intensity. When you remove any framework for viewing something in, you become uncertain and insecure in your dealings with it.

Of course, this all looks different once a person has found G-d. It takes time, effort, and discipline to re-learn sex as something that isn’t purely recreational and a power trip over others. That does not mean going back to some uptight model where you see sex solely as a method of procreation, to be done guiltily and quickly to get it over with! I know that the Christian view on sex can vary widely according to sect and country (and I would be happy to hear some input from my readers), but my scholarly inquiries into orthodox Judaism’s view of it have been instructive and fascinating.

Everyone knows that Judaism only sanctions sex within a monogamous marriage, but far fewer people know just how concerned they are about making sex holy and enjoyable for all concerned. Every time I hear people clucking their tongues about how patriarchal and repressive Orthodoxy is, I have to laugh --- thousands of years before the word “feminism” was invented, Jews declared sexual pleasure a wife’s right and a husband’s duty. According to the ancient marriage contract (which survives today but with far less literal language), a husband must provide food, clothing, and satisfying sexual relations to his wife and is legally prohibited from reducing the quantity or quality of any of these things. It is forbidden to force your wife to have sex, and it is forbidden for either spouse to withhold sex as a punishment --- either action results in an automatic divorce (with monetary punishment for the offending person) because holiness and trust have departed from the relationship. The Talmud (which was written down in medieval times!) says that “to have intercourse with one’s wife without foreplay is cruel” and that one “should use soft words and caresses to arouse her.”

There is an entire subset of ritual law regarding sex between husband and wife which is still practiced today, and although it seems bizarre at first, the benefits of it become apparent with further investigation: taharat ha’mishpaha (the laws of family purity). This basically means that for the duration of a woman’s menstrual period and for seven full days after it ends, the couple must abstain from sexual contact; this period of separation ends when she immerses in a ritual bath called the mikvah. When I read the classical commentaries on these laws, which were written thousands of years ago, I was positively shocked to hear how “modern” they were. These laws have many purposes, some important ones being: 1. So that the couple must build an emotional and intellectual connection apart from their physical attraction, 2. So that the man does not come to think of his wife as a slave or a piece of property only there for his enjoyment, 3. To keep the spark of passion alive by forcing the two to yearn for each other periodically, and 4. To give each partner an official “break” so that neither will feel inadequate if they have differing levels of libido.

Contrast this structured system, with its legal protections and rules to ensure the sexual and emotional well-being of wives, with the haphazard and frequently miserable sexual encounters of the girls mentioned above. When you control your basic urges and give them a proper outlet, they are made holy and are ultimately more pleasurable to experience. This is not an idea that finds much of a mainstream audience these days because people are mistakenly convinced that religion offers only insufferable restrictions and that to restrict sexuality is to deny that it exists.

It is apparent to perceptive observers that “the media” and all objectionable themes found therein are not the cause of immoral sexual behavior among young people but a symptom of a very bizarre cultural relationship to sexuality that embraces the most backwards aspects of religion and secular humanism. There is no “middle ground” between humanism and real religion (humanism just steals the warm-and-fuzzy stuff from monotheism and leaves out the responsibility and Divine origin), nor does there need to be in this case. People --- especially young people --- simply need to be exposed to the idea that religion has a sane, exciting, and psychologically acute solution to the problems that sex without structure often presents. That might be the only thing that will put those annoying and clueless sex therapist "experts" out of business for good.

Once again, money solves nothing

2005-06-20T00:08:00.000-05:00

***Update*** The link to the article works now, go and read it --- rather shocking. And for those who are not well-aquainted with the AIDS activist subculture, anyone making a film that "blames the victim" and puts any responsibility on Africans is definitely doing something difficult and worthy of praise.

* * *

If you've got a strong stomach, take a look at this article about a brave film maker who is daring to challenge the incredibly dangerous sexual attitudes among Africans that are continuing to undermine any efforts by Western countries to help with the AIDS epidemic.

I am completely opposed to the Bush administration's donation of billions of dollars in "AIDS relief" to Africa. While it is possible he actually believes that it is his Christian duty to help the poor and desperate, it is clear that the main motivation for this groveling act was to try and appease the global outcry against American "arrogance" and "cruelty." Here's some old news, Mr. President: whatever America does right will never be enough to quiet the moaning and groaning of impotent Third-Worlders and cowardly Europeans. I've heard activists frequently deride Bush's 15 billion dollar contribution as "too little" (after all, that's only a fraction of our resources!) and they claim that the money is worse than useless because they have dared to insist that abstinence is a good way to prevent AIDS.

In the first place, spending billions to provide medication for promiscuous people with an incurable disease just might be the worst idea I have ever heard --- you are only keeping them alive so that they can spread the illness to others. Every pill paid for by a guilty Western country is also a death warrant for any number of currently uninfected Africans. It is only prolonging what is inevitable at this point in history, not to mention the fact that if they don't take their medicine on time (something that is quite a problem in rural areas of Africa) it is very possible that entirely drug-resistant and mutated forms of the virus might emerge and hop across the Atlantic.

I see no reason to help people who refuse to take any responsibility for their actions or their culture. American feminists who get upset about golf courses and glass ceilings would do well to investigate the conditions under which vast numbers of African women live --- cultural misogyny is widespread and real, manifesting in the actions of men on a daily basis. We're talking about frequent infidelity involving unprotected sex with prostitutes and G-d knows what else, men who couldn't care less about infecting their wives with AIDS. Women spread AIDS too, but it is much harder for a woman to give it to a man than vice versa, and thus it is male behaviour that will have to change the most.

If we spend a single penny on medication or condom distribution, we are spending too much. Condoms might reduce the infection rate a bit (although many African males refuse to wear them due to their contempt for women and their own willful fatalism), but they will not address the underlying problems which are fueling this epidemic.

I see no real solution for this problem except massive, continent-wide conversion to Christianity, to tell the truth. Sex is too immediate a pleasure and an escape from misery to get people to abstain from it for purely material reasons --- people have to believe that there is a higher reason. Evangelical and Catholic missionaries are making some good headway, but a focused campaign would probably have amazing results as well --- if fewer Christians went there to encourage condom use or to exhort people to take their medicine or to help with concrete relief efforts and instead focused exclusively on conversion, that would ultimately have the greater impact. Virginity until marriage must become the ideal, even if it is not the norm for a long time. They can't continue on with their current culture and habits and expect to escape the brutality of natural selection.

The Armada is launched

2005-06-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

Thank you to the three mysterious --- and in some cases not-so-mysterious --- donors who have given the War Chest its initial infusion of Spanish gold. They have been Knighted and in some cases have been made Earls (here's looking at you, Lord Robert). Your contributions are most appreciated and have so far paid for a multitude of train tickets!

O the Insanity

2005-06-18T11:45:00.000-05:00

I overheard two women on the train this morning discussing how the man guilty of murdering his 9 children (all conceived through incest) should not be put in jail but treated for his mental problems --- needless to say they were both social workers. This got me to thinking about how over-used the insanity defense is, and how far it has gone from its original purpose. In this case they did the right thing and found him guilty, but we will see what kind of sentence is actually meted out. The oldest legal precedent for it that I could find seemed to be a ruling by an ancient Jewish court that if someone commits suicide, they should be given a normal burial with full mourning and prayers because if they were not in their right mind at the time then it could not properly be deemed a suicide! That doesn't surprise me, but what does is my thoughts about this case. I no longer think our current death penalty is an acceptable solution, but my preferred alternative --- a long, miserable life filled with pain and just enough food and medical care not to croak prematurely --- is not feasible either. I used to say let the victim's family or friends decide what to do with the murderer and leave it up to them, but according to that case many of his (surviving) family members still support him and wouldn't harm him if given the chance . . .

The Classic Advance Excuse

2005-06-15T19:16:00.000-05:00

If you observe a liberal and a conservative arguing about anything, there is a variable length of time before the inevitable threshold is crossed: the liberal will make a reference to Vietnam or the conservative will make a reference to WWII. In years past, before my debating methods were better-honed, I found myself in this situation countless times and have noticed that a distinct mini-argument often develops at this point. Namely, the more liberal person will make a statement to the effect of "no one knows what they would do in an extreme situation like that" and goes on to say that historical comparisons are useless because we "can't judge" what our actions would be in any situation past or future.

Mark my words --- anyone who asserts that we can't know what we'd do in a given situation is making an advance exuse for why they will do the wrong and cowardly thing.

We can set our will and our actions along a distinct path which will increase the likelihood that we will do the right thing when the time comes to make a difficult decision. The best way to teach young people how to think both morally and analytically is to have them discuss hypothetical situations and then discuss what they would do. A prepared mind is one that will not automatically take the path of least resistence.

Christian Libertarianism during WWII

2005-06-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

These past few days have been spent celebrating Shavuot (to commemorate receiving the Torah), most notably by staying up all night studying! It's a joyous but solemn holiday, and I attended an all-night session at a local synagogue where there was a showing of a very interesting mini-documentary called Weapons of the Spirit. I know --- it's hard to get excited about Holocaust documentaries because there are so freaking many of them by now, but this one is very unusual because it is more about Christian Libertarianism than about World War II or anti-semitism.

The documentary was made by a French Jew who was saved as a child, hidden by the residents of a tiny rural French village called Le Chambon during the worst years of the Nazi occupation. He interviews the residents (this was made in the 1980's so most of them were still alive but quite old) about why they had risked their lives to save these people, and inevitably the answer was that they did not trust any government to do the right thing, and thus they had a Christian responsibility to extend sanctuary to them! They were a bunch of stubborn Huguenots who had faced a lot of persecution themselves over the years and were a people suspicious of any kind of organized authority. Their pastor didn't tell them to hide Jews in their houses at great risk to their own lives, and neither did their mayor or anyone else --- in fact, they did not regard their pastor as having any great authority over them either. They met in their homes to read their Bibles just as they had before the war, taking personal responsibility for every action they did and cared for no one else's opinion but G-d's. There was no central organization of their efforts, no secret meetings. Nearly everyone in Le Chambon decided of their own free will that the right thing to do was to resist the Vichy government and apply the Christian principles that their ancestors had fought so hard to preserve. They were individualists and natural libertarians, and thus insulated from the kind of cowardly groupthink that got the rest of Europe into such trouble in the first place.

Anyone who thinks libertarianism encourages people to be socially irresponsible and not care about their fellow man ought to see this video --- and everyone else as well.

The real reason they shouldn't worry

2005-06-12T22:42:00.000-05:00

An English professor at Northwestern University explains why Democrats shouldn't fret about those ignant Red-Staters outbreeding them:

I don't need to have kids to create mini-me voters: I get classrooms full of other people's kids, most already of voting age. And I'm not alone. As right-wing hysterics have recently noticed, universities in America are dominated by lefties like me. I suspect the main reason for this is that most academics I know are willing to forego making a big pile of money in order to, you know, think for a living.

Liberal soul-searching after losing the election has apparently gotten to the point where they are starting to worry about this (which will then spawn more articles like this one furiously rationalizing why they don't have to worry about it). What is most telling about the column, though, is the fact that he proudly proclaims that he has had a vasectomy and is in his 40's with no kids. Apparently it isn't a problem for liberals to abort most of their kids or not have them in the first place, since the few drooling retards that make it out of the more benighted territories will still have to rely on blue-state universities for their higher schooling and will thus remain ripe for re-education.

Not to fear, liberal friends! When demographics make you irrelevant you will have the comfort of knowing that the Republicans are intent on pushing 95% of your agenda and will continue to cede the last shreds of America's sovereignty almost as quickly as you could have yourselves!

Why the word "counter-intuitive" exists:

2005-06-11T15:38:00.000-05:00

The common wisdom these days is that if you are going to chance a marriage with the divorce rate hovering around 50%, it would be better to live with the person first in order to find out whether you two are compatible. Just today another one of my female friends called me to tell me about her plans to move in with her boyfriend after graduation, and she was shocked to hear what I had to say to her. Well, the results are in, and cohabitation results in higher divorce rates than if the couple never lived together. Cohabiting couples who later marry and do not divorce also report significantly lower quality-of-life ratings and are generally less satisfied with their relationship even years after the marriage.

I have several close friends in their early 20's who are engaged and thinking about living with their future spouses before the wedding, and without fail they have all gotten angry at me for mentioning this well-researched information. They think I am making a moral judgment about pre-marital sex or am being overly pessimistic --- the truth is that these studies also found the same results even for couples who had sex long before the wedding but never lived together. In other words, even secular people with a busy sex life benefit from never having lived with an unmarried partner before they get married for the first time. While cohabiting does not automatically doom a marriage to failure (it may be a preferable situation for some people depending on circumstances), it is clear that the attitude among my friends is that they want to "try out" a serious relationship and "see where it goes" rather than being able to commit themselves right off the bat. It is this one-foot-in, one-foot-out mentality that undermines cohabiting couples and often delays them from marrying at all, a situation in many ways comparable to being a "terminal MA" in a Ph.d. program!

If nothing is reserved for marriage but the most prosaic and mundane aspects of life (actually sharing your money and having power-of-attorney over your spouse), I can see why many young men would prefer not to enter into a contract that might financially damage them. This isn't simply "why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free," because it is quite common for people to have sex before marriage --- if even the challenges and pleasures of sharing a house are indulged in before the relationship is made official it would certainly sap the average person's will to go through the time-consuming and expensive rituals of legal marriage.

While I find it encouraging that certain of my peers are joining in the backlash against meaningless relationships that is supposedly normal among the college-age set, they are obviously not immune to the relativistic thrust of our culture if they are allowing their decisions about such an important issue to be influenced by it. Being enmeshed in mainstream culture destroys the ability of even very intelligent people to be able to see what will be the results of their actions. What this means for the marriages of Generation Y is shortly going to become apparent for all to see.

War Chest Now Active

2005-06-11T15:06:00.000-05:00

I am not in favor of sketchy e-begging (hey, you never know how many of those sick kids actually have cancer). However, I will be starting a full time, unpaid slave-labor internship at my university's neuroscience and behavioral research lab on June 15th; now that I am trying to be a Good Person transportation is quite expensive. In the Long Long Ago I had all sorts of elaborate methods of dodging train conductors, hopping turnstiles in the subway, and generally stealing from the city in any way I could! For law-abiding citizens, taking the train and subway round trip from my just-outside-Boston locale to my school costs 12 dollars a day. If anyone feels like contributing a dollar or two via the Amazon Honor System, it would be immensely appreciated.

2005-06-08T04:33:00.000-05:00

My precious laptop experienced major frying and dying a couple of days ago and has just come back to me, safe and sound --- my lack of of a computer had resulted in a dearth of blogging this past week and shall resume within 24 hours. Stay tuned!

True Lies

2005-06-01T12:33:00.000-05:00

Some people are naturally excellent liars and some people naturally feel very uncomfortable with telling lies --- some people would rather die than do so. Reality can seem very dull when you don't believe that anything exists higher than oneself, so the temptation to "make life more interesting" by exercising some creative license over it can be very great at times.

I happened to come across a fascinating book by a guy named Telushkin about how various traditions regard lying. Number one on my list of insufferable morons on just about any topic is the philosopher Kant, and he doesn't fail to deliver here: according to him, one should not ever lie in any situation. In the essay On The Supposed Right To Tell Lies From Benevolent Motives he specifically posits the example of your friend hiding from a murderer in your house --- if the murderer comes round to inquire about his location, you have to tell him where your friend is! Kant then goes on to explain that this person has no moral responsibility for the murder of the innocent person, and he even condemns the person who saved the man's life by lying about where he was! Kant was a typical sadist who used the truth as a battering ram.

As everyone knows, St. Augustine preached that to tell any lie was a terrible sin for it condemned your soul to everlasting torment. I admire the Christian willingness to be a martyr for absolute truth, but I find the practical implications of that to be untenable. I believe that G-d values (righteous) life more than a rigid adherence to the truth, because otherwise this gives a distinct advantage to evil people.

The Jewish perspective on truth and lies interests me much more, because this is the tradition I am trying to get deeper into. In my readings of the Talmud on this subject (the Talmud is the commentary on the Old Testament and contains hair-splitting ethical/moral discussions on just about every possible situation) I can find numerous examples where they reach the conclusion that white lies to save someone's feelings are permissible and recommended. It is also very clear that we are commanded to lie if it saves your or someone else's life (although not a lie that saves your own life at the obvious expense of many others). They even claim that G-d himself bent the truth in order to preserve marital harmony and save His messenger's life: He does not repeat to Abraham that Sarah called him "so old" when she learned that she was to bear a child in order to preserve his ego. He also advises Samuel to lie about his intended purpose when he goes to anoint David as the King instead of Saul, since He knew that otherwise Samuel would be killed.

For what would you lie? Would you deny your faith to save your life? Would you lie to save others?

Women's Boxing

2005-05-31T17:51:00.000-05:00

On CNN a few nights ago I saw the most bizarre story about Katie Dallam, the female boxer whose one professional fight left her brain-injured and almost dead a few years back. The story was trying to make her sound heroic for getting injured and then "recovering" enough to paint scary abstract expressionist paintings. Frankly, I think women's boxing has to be one of the worst sports ever, because women's bodies simply are not designed to take the same kind of punishment as men. Women are more likely to sustain fatal or devastating injuries during matches, and there are so few women in boxing that they can't find enough people to properly match fighters --- that's a recipe for trouble. I don't really understand why it's legal (well, for that matter I don't think highly of men's boxing but at least they are less likely to be paralyzed in the ring).

What I like even less than women in the ring are fake news stories glorifying stupid choices that somehow didn't kill the person who made them. When Million Dollar Baby came out, there were stories all over the media of such "heroics" involving female athletes who got injured --- did they not see the movie and get the message? It's just not realistic to expect female athletes in dangerous sports (physical ones like boxing or football, this excludes people like Danica Patrick and those who participate in non-contact sports) to experience far worse outcomes than men. Political correctness hurts people in all sorts of ways, but in this case it is quite dramatically real.

Bane Goes to War

2005-05-29T23:47:00.000-05:00

Thrillingly, Bane has summed up my exact position on the War on Drugs --- and with a lot more authority and color than I could, since I have never done any drugs and thus have no street cred on the issue.

However, there IS a relevant comparison between alcohol, cigarettes, and harder drugs (but it isn't what the pro-drug wusses always say).

Think about it: it is illegal for kids to buy cigarettes or alcohol until they are 18 and 21, but how easy is it for them to get their hands on it by paying an older friend to legally buy it or to get a fake ID? I hear people say "make all drugs legal but not allow those under 18 to buy them." If heroin, marijuana and meth are sold over the counter like cigarettes, it will be insanely easy for them to get an older friend/homeless person to buy it for them. It will be as simple to try heroine at age 12 as cigarettes are now. Marijuana use especially at a young age harms the developing brain and can have profound, lifelong effects which are subtle and hard to pinpoint. This would result in a general decline of American IQ and willpower . . . Which is obviously the goal of those who are rabidly against the war on drugs and wish to legalize everything.

The Shift

2005-05-29T22:44:00.000-05:00

It is interesting how one's concept of prayer changes over time. As children, G-d is like the parent that we expect all things of, and we can get angry at Him for not making things work out in the way that we think is fitting. Praying is often along the lines of "please make X happen" or "please make X not happen" and can be a form of whining and pleading. Although children are naturally spiritual in a certain sense, they are not mature and their idea of what and who G-d is will generally be pretty one-dimensional.

There was a long period in my life when I thought prayer was ridiculous. It seemed like no more than talking to oneself in a worried way, desperately trying to get a feeling of control over one's surroundings and fooling oneself into thinking that someone heard. Of course, that was partially correct --- when we continue to pray like children, expecting a magical fix from the Almighty for a bad grade or a missed parking spot or even something serious (like saving the life of a loved one), we *are* talking to ourselves. Such "prayer" is nothing but narcissistic and masturbatory thought which focuses obsessively on the little problems in our lives that are giving us feelings of discomfort. In moments like that, egotism clouds our minds and we are not connecting with what is Divine (even if we think we are!). I think that much of the disillusionment and bitterness among teenagers and young adults about the issue of prayer and whether G-d exists has to do with the fact that they have outgrown the child's way of praying but have not yet hit upon the true meaning of prayer as adults.

The shift is profound. Instead of a little voice in one's head that pleads, demands, begs, or whines at G-d to "DO SOMETHING! Make X happen! Make X not happen! If you do, I'll be good, I promise," it is a moment of meditative awareness that embodies the desire for clarity and right action.

The prayer becomes: "give me the strength to change what must be changed, and give me the fortitude and humility to accept what I cannot."

Or: "Let me recognize evil. Let me not be seduced by it. Let my vision be clear to see my path"

Or it might simply be intense gratitude that does not have a personal focus. In a way, that is the truest prayer and this impulse forms the majority of the ones that Jews say during the day. The most observant have certain ones that they say right after waking, before eating, before going to sleep, and many points in-between --- the idea being that little moments of conscious awareness are what break up the day and make it more than a series of mundane actions.

Praying does not mean one is hoping for a magical fix (although miracles are a different story). It is a desire for connection which is less egoic and completely natural, going beyond verbalized thoughts in one's conscious mind. It is a realignment that sends a powerful charge through one's body and soul, a tapping-in to our original source which takes effort and practice to do consistently. Prayer can be a comforting delusion, or it can completely transform your day-to-day existence, and the opportunity for going from either category into the other is present at every moment.

What money can't buy

2005-05-29T10:54:00.001-05:00

You may or may not remember the millionaire who in 1991 pledged to send every child of an underperforming inner-city school to a four-year college with his own money if they graduated. He promised all 69 second-graders that he would provide money for teacher training, academic summer camps, counseling, and SAT prep in order to be able to take advantage of his generous offer. This was in Cambridge, Boston, in one of the worst schools in the city --- and those kids all should have received their college diplomas this year. There was a fascinating follow up story in the Boston Globe today detailing the actual results of the program:

Of 69 kids, only 4 have graduated form four-year colleges on time. Those that have graduated barely squeaked by. Many dropped out of college or never took advantage of the offer at all. Some went to jail, some become teenage mothers, and more of them tried technical schools and either dropped out or ended up with a low-paying job that doesn't even require their degrees.

This completely disproves the perpetual whine of liberal educators across the country that if only there were more money the kids would do better! These children had private money thrown at them, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of teacher training and counseling and guaranteed college tuition, and they still failed. No amount of money will result in success if the attitudes of the people involve stay the same. There are rare individuals who rise above even the worst circumstances, but for the majority of people it is their family and their culture that form their core values in life. These kids belong to cultures that don't value education and have extremely low expectations in life --- that is why most of them didn't take advantage of this incredible opportunity.

Several people emailed me this story saying how depressing it was and how demoralized it made them. It had quite the opposite effect on me. If money were the salve against all failure, that would mean that those without it haven't got a prayer; this experiment shows that money is utterly irrelevant to who goes forward in life. It means that with the right attitude, one can go further than your culture and your family have taught you --- free will still reigns, in other words, which is the concept most loathed by the socialist hacks who run public education. In this country, if you are dirt-poor and ambitious you will be able to go to a top college with everything paid for! Those institutions are drooling at the prospect of helping an ambitious minority student from a terrible school system who got good grades --- in fact, they will get accepted over white suburban kids with a privileged background.

There is no escaping the fact that internal change must come before external change. It has never worked any other way. Consciousness of one's destiny is the only route to a better life, and there is no one on Earth that can do that for you.

Google's Adsense Fascism

2005-05-27T12:31:00.000-05:00

Being a penniless student, one of my constant readers advised me to check out Google's Adsense program to see if my site would be approved and perhaps make a few dollars. I didn't investigate very thoroughly, just put in my application and waited for a response --- I got one all right.

My site was rejected. I quote from the email: "We regret that you are not able to participate in the Google Adsense program due to the racially insensitive material located on your website." Supposedly real humans review the sites under consideration, but I'm sure that only means people scanning for incendiary terms like "libertarian" and "Christian" combined with words like "black" and "Muslim." I can only assume this is because of the Nelson Mandela post, which I can't recall being racially insensitive (unless you consider decrying the high murder rate of South Africans to be racist). As it turns out, according to Google's guidelines you not only can't be "racially insensitive" but you also cannot condone or encourage the sale of firearms or ammunition, nor can you "advocate against any individual, group, or organization"!

Always be suspicious of organizations looking to ban even the mere mention of a legal product (guns and tobacco in this case). I knew that Google was left-wing (they aided the Chinese communist government in censoring the internet search results accessible to Chinese citizens) but I was still a bit surprised by this blatantly pc refusal. I used to think the anti-Google crowd was a bunch of crackpots, but there are signs that the huge power and influence they have is going to be channeled towards advancing a left-wing agenda --- recall the news story about the political ads a few weeks ago.

Mandela's Legacy of Violence

2005-05-24T13:39:00.000-05:00

Nelson Mandela is one of the most despicable men on the face of the planet.

I can't stand when people praise him as a great leader. South Africa has become a cesspool of violence, rape, and corruption under his leadership and his successors --- they let thousands of criminals out of jail and then let them run the government. Notice that in that CNN article they editorialize and tell us that the poor behavior of black men is due entirely to the apartheid system. Life has gotten worse for South Africa's blacks (not to mention for the whites in Johannesburg, which now has one of the worst street crime problems in the world) after apartheid, not better.

I don't care who faints when I say so, but whenever I hear some fuzzy-headed guilty white person praising Mandela and acting like he's comparable to Ghandi (who isn't the saint he's been made out to be, but that is another post) and Jesus I tell them pointe-blank why he is a criminal (as well as his wife, who murdered a 14-year-old boy because she thought he was an informer). He's also extremely anti-Semitic and frequently compares Israel to the apartheid system, which is typical of leftist black "leaders" in general.

Hackdom and Pretty Sentences

2005-05-22T10:18:00.000-05:00

I sweet-talked my way into an "Advanced Writing Workshop" for next year and am furiously scrambling to complete my 30-page short story required for entry. I swore that I would never attend any seminars, workshops, or classes about creative writing --- I was convinced that they turn out hacks by the truckload and domesticated the style of anyone attending them in a serious state of mind.

Then college happened. I found myself working a full-time job and taking seven courses while commuting back and forth, and suddenly most of my free time was spent sleeping. I used to write for pleasure quite often in previous years (mostly as I was ditching school and not doing any homework, but that's another story), and I figure the best way to make room for it in the fall is to have it right in my schedule. I intend to ignore the professor entirely. What I loathe is when professors expect the hacks to edit each other's work, as though that could possibly improve anybody's creative writing!

Some changes that might be of interest to others have happened: namely, now that I am far happier in a personal sense, my writing has improved markedly. Like many young would-be authors, I was under the Romantic delusion that to produce great (or merely good) art required a tortured soul and a tumultuous or nonexistent love life. I have found that adverse life conditions tend to produce stories and themes which are ultimately quite adolescent, even if the sentences are artfully constructed. It has also taken me until age 19 to figure out that artfully-constructed sentences do not a masterpiece make! How many current editors and English professors are all "working on a novel" filled with nice sentences that don't add up to anything worth publishing, even just to make money? I'd put the number quite high, and I am determined not to fall into that category as the years progress.

Eventually you figure out that the only way to escape hackdom is to keep plugging along and producing as much as possible, and eventually something might be worth it. That and only having pretty sentences that actually advance the plot instead of buttering the ego of the writer!

What they don't tell you at Planned Parenthood

2005-05-20T11:42:00.000-05:00

I wasn't going to talk about this today, but a friend told me to check out Farah just now and am not at all surprised by the cover-up regarding the link between breast cancer and abortion. How much clearer could it be that radical feminists and "women's health activists" care more about their worthless careers and jobs than about actual women besides themselves? They want to ensure that women keep getting abortions and being diagnosed with breast cancer so that they can keep lobbying for more money from the government, and they will ruthlessly manipulate the truth in order to keep the status quo afloat.

Years before I heard about any official concerns about this, it seemed to me that suddenly stopping a pregnancy would be a shock to the body due to the extensive hormonal and physical changes that begin immediately at the very moment of conception. Since breast cells begin to increase in number and undergo changes even very early on in preparation for feeding the infant, it makes perfect sense that some of those cells would become "confused" by the sudden cessation of hormones and continue to grow into a tumor. The cellular stage has been set for uncontrolled growth, and this is not the case with miscarriages --- the body is naturally aborting the fetus because of some kind of problem, causing the breast cells to return to normal at a gradual pace. And I realized this back when I was far more radical about abortion than I am now!

It shows how weak the radical pro-choice side is when they have to twist science and language in order to shore up their shaky position.

Lucas: Unredeemed

2005-05-19T02:46:00.000-05:00

I was going to gather my thoughts on Jesus and the nature of redemption, but I'm afraid that will be impossible until I stop laughing. I just saw the new Star Wars movie. If it is possible for me to "spoil" it for you, stop reading now. The whole theater was laughing at all the "sad" scenes. It was that atrocious --- and these were the diehard fans who were dressed up as Luke and Darth Vader and various wookies and ewoks.

Where to begin? Should I start with the pouting, one-mooded Anakin who couldn't menace his way out a paper bag? How about the total darth (uh, I mean dearth) of chemistry between Anakin and Padme, the woman he went to the Dark Side for? How about Obi-wan riding my class pet from third grade instead of a totally available hovercraft with weapons? How about the Russian-accented robot-creature who can't gain an advantage even with four lightsabers? Or perhaps Yoda going E.T. on us and flying off in a little spaceship complete with trailing ray of colored light? I don't think that quite begins to cover it.

Yes, the political subtext was obvious and clumsy (I think Palpatine was even supposed to resemble Bush physically!) but Lucas was trying to fit in so many confusing and contradictory messages that the total effect was not very profound. Hormone-addled Padme chirps "this war has been caused by a failure to listen!" and Palpatine explains to Anakin that one must be able to use the Dark Side in order to get things done (using violence, I'm guessing). Bushatine's evil protege even slaughters little jedi kiddles: three guesses which young men in uniform they could be a parallel to . . .

I did learn something tonight, though. Apparently being pregnant with twins results in a belly that only looks like a gentle swell (the after-effects of a really good Thanksgiving dinner perhaps). Padme was two months pregnant in the first scene, then six (in the same week), then nine, and then in the final scenes was back down to about five months pregnant. In one scene towards the end where she is boarding the ship to go save her pouting pretty-boy, she is clearly seen to have a totally flat stomach (not to mention that she runs towards Anakin like an agile gazelle upon landing). Her death scene is so woodenly acted that the audience was hooting with derision.

On the bright side, some cretin who couldn't get a good seat pulled the fire alarm so that everyone would have to leave and then come back in --- the adrenaline that got me pumped with enhanced the few fun parts of the movie (most of them involving Yoda riding wookies and doing some kick-ass chi gung). Hysterical laughter and audible groans throughout the entire movie from the audience.

Thoughts on redemption soon to come.

***Update***

I totally forgot to mention that nearly all the last scenes were stolen directly from Lord of the Rings --- that was a bastardized Rivendell with few adjustments. The worst atrocity, however, was Padme's funeral. It not only looked EXACTLY like the scene from Return of the King when the elves were walking through the forest to leave Middle Earth, but came complete with Natalie Portman made up to look exactly like Arwen in every detail (the lighting and color scheme, the dress, the makeup, the hair length). Oh, and after giving birth to her Thanksgiving dinner she suddenly had a hugely pregnant belly clearly visible in the coffin, for the first time in the entire movie! Maybe it was an unconscious homage to Peter Jackson, a far superior filmmaker whose ego doesn't prevent him from producing a watchable and meaningful movie.

The Intelligently Designed Classroom

2005-05-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

I have been reading up on what most papers are calling the "mock trial" in Kansas between the creationists/Intelligent Designers and the evolutionists, and it strikes me as strange that most of the scientists who support evolution are so threatened by the idea of opening up debate about the origin of life. The fact that they feel threatened is clear from the way they are attacking the "hicks" and "rubes" and "fundamentalists" who dare to insist that skepticism about everything is at the heart of scientific inquiry. I'm sure there are quite a few creationists and ID-ers who simply feel as threatened by atheist scientists as the scientists are by them, but the essential issue here should really be: should philosophy, religion, and true curiosity have a place in the teaching of science?

Far too often, high school science classes focus on teaching only basic facts and memorizing them without encouraging real thought about the issues --- if it can't be tested in a multiple-choice format, then why bother? I am not saying to abandon rote memorization of basic facts, which is necessary, only pointing out that the "why" questions are given short shrift. We know how bacteria colonies form, but why do they form the way they do? We know that tumors redirect blood vessels to supply their self-destructive growth, but why does cancer arise in the first place? How are we going to produce first-rate scientists if mundane facts are focused on to the exclusion of all mystery and intellectual hunger for real answers?

The ideal classroom for students of normal ability and self-motivation is one where the concrete facts are willingly memorized and learned at home with their books, and the classroom is where the over-arching themes and Big Questions are debated in a lively and engaging atmosphere. Ok, so I needed the Krebs cycle and the dark reactions explained to me three times by the professor before I could keep them straight --- difficult material should be gone over in class but the easy stuff can certainly be skipped in favor of more interesting discussions. If one is willing to be honest and not just eager to mark their pathetically small territory for professionally expedient reasons, one must admit that science, philosophy, art, literature, and religion are not alien species to each other.

When talking about religion and philosophy in a science class is a sin and merely questioning a well-accepted tenet of biology is heretical, science loses its claim on objectivity and logic entirely.

Morons: The New Class of People in Need of Hate Crime Laws

2005-05-09T12:53:00.000-05:00

Gee, who woulda thunk it? As I am shocked to report, it turns out that Miss Star Athlete and Gay/Straight Alliance leader was solely responsible for the many incidents of "gay hate crimes" at her high school. Maybe she was worried that the school had gotten too tolerant and no one was paying her little indoctrination organization any attention anymore. She even pelted herself with eggs and vandalized her own car! My oh my, this young lady certainly has a dogged work ethic --- she is a perfect example of the shiny, perky, passionately thick-skulled and morally blank automatons that are so praised in public schools. I'm sure she felt that she was doing a service to her community by "raising awareness" about homophobia.

If I were a gay student at that school I would be pelting her with rotten eggs and keying her car until it was a pile of metallic dust: "Officer, I swear it wasn't me this time!" Somehow I don't think I'd be in danger of being caught.

Rrrrroshin Fatalism and Lincoln's Tyranny

2005-05-07T22:26:00.000-05:00

This post began as a short comment on Nate's May 5th "Great Emancipator" blog entry, in which I opened up a can of worms by defending Lincoln against some well-read detractors who were correctly stating that the Lincoln of popular imagination is vastly different than the actual facts of his presidency. I soon realized that in order to articulate my actual position on the entire topic of secession, I needed to state my position on historical criticism . . . and thus on time itself. I find it impossible to look at this merely on the political level. The Civil War is quite the metaphysical battlefield!

I have never found it profitable to spend time criticizing "bad" historical events in the sense of wishing they hadn't happened, because that would mess up the entire sequence of events leading up to the current reality we live in and might erase some much larger good results that were unintended consequences. People tend to use the Holocaust as an (annoyingly) obvious example in such debates because it so blatantly "shouldn't have happened" --- but the truth is that no, I can never say I wish it hadn't happened, because then Israel likely wouldn't exist (and innumerable other things as well).

Perhaps this is my intractable Russian fatalism talking, but I feel that all events did and do happen for a Divine reason and that if one believes in G-d one cannot be deeply convicted of the "wrongness" of any past event. In the moral and political and short-term sense we can judge any particular action in history as wrong, but that is only so that we may make wise choices in the present. However, we cannot say in the cosmic sense that any action was wrong unless we wish to say that G-d Himself was "wrong" to allow human beings the free will to do something evil and immoral. Was it morally repugnant, evil, and callous of the Romans to crucify Jesus? Without a doubt. Should it have happened exactly as it did? Of course . . . otherwise that whole idea of salvation goes out the window. You can't judge one action as wrong if you are not prepared to judge every moment flowing from that event as well, right up until the moment you finish reading this sentence.

It was wrong of Lincoln to violate the free contract of the States by not letting the Confederacy leave. It was wrong of him to suspend habeas corpus and imprison people for disagreeing with him. It was immoral of him to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to pursue a twisted vision of centralized power which still haunts our bloated Federal government today. I am exceedingly glad that he did each and every one of those wrong things.

If Massachusetts decided to secede tomorrow, I would move to Texas and say good riddance --- and I would raise a riot if the feds tried to violently prevent them from seceding. Saying that I don't judge past events to be "cosmically wrong" on the ultimate level does not by any means result in a passive and fatalistic attitude in the present. We must work to fix what is broken in this flawed physical plane of reality --- and part of that is being grateful that we have the opportunity to do so.

Stronger than any lingering irrational Russian tendencies is my belief in the principle of Tikun Olam: it is our job to repair the world, and it is spiritual work of the highest level --- and there is no room for spiritual growth in a perfect world.

Freedom, Drama, and Freaky Fetishes

2005-05-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

In college-educated circles in the Northeast, coolness tends to correlate with either A: how many fashionable activist causes one involves oneself in (preferably by wearing inane rubber bands or ribbons that proclaim one's devotion) or B: how many dysfunctions and perversions one can claim allegiance with or affliction by (ie abusive or divorced parents, being gay or bisexual, having "interesting" sexual fetishes). There is a distinct quality that people like this have in common, and while some of the alarmist conservatives I know would call it "being jaded," it is not --- rather it's a complete and utter apathy which is unconsciously designed shield them from frightening things like reality.

It is almost impossible to shock college students. No sexual act has gone undone, no murderous regime has not been praised, no fashion statement is anything other than derivative of previous shocking things --- however, there is one thing that can make their jaws drop to the floor in utter horror and disbelief.

"I believe in G-d."

There you have it: the one irrational fetish they won't accept.

Try this sometime, it is really quite amusing. Others have noticed this reaction, but I have seen few people explore the true reasons behind their inability to be shocked and their ever-increasing acceptance of deviant sexual acts. The real reasons have to do with drama, because that is something human beings instinctively crave --- for what kept our ancestors alive besides food and water if not the stories told around the fire after a long day of hunting and gathering? These kids have been trained into seeking an endless stream of seemingly shocking and "radical" stimuli, only to discover that it has numbed them utterly. Yet when someone comes along and quietly asserts that they believe in an underlying meaning to all of existence, THAT causes them to gasp . . .

Anyone who has read the Bible knows that there is no greater drama to be found anywhere, and that Truth is both scary and exciting. Secular liberal culture has a distinct lack of fire, everything having descended into a gigantic mushy ball of gray platitudes --- they instinctively avoid anything dramatic because people make an unconscious connection between truly gripping stories and meaning. The best way to keep people from being dissatisfied with the pathetic version of freedom and excitement offered by a worldview saturated in political correctness and liberal "enlightenment" is to destroy their ability to recognize drama and to render everything the same dull shade of gray. It is this more than any particular vile attitude impressionable young people might imbibe during their college years that is so dangerous, because it risks permanently inoculating them against experiencing the longing, passion, and energy that lets people value freedom and truth --- both personally and politically.

The science of grace

2005-05-03T18:56:00.000-05:00

Reading about this man who suddenly recovered from severe brain damage after ten years took my breath away. Just a few short years ago I was the fiercest pro-euthanasia believer you could find --- my position was basically that if someone's IQ had been impacted in any way, if they were inconveniencing their families, if they were "gross to look at" and made disturbing gestures, they should be given a painless injection and good riddance.

There are probably many people who feel that way but are too tactful to say it (I was quite brash about it and gave people conniptions on a regular basis!). What seemed like tough acceptance of reality at the time is now revealed to be nothing more than arrogance, and if you really think about it arrogance is rooted in fear. Deep down, there is no one who truly wishes to believe that the universe is a meaningless place that runs with the cold efficiency of a machine --- and the fear that we are not worthy of anything more only hardens our hearts further. What happened to this man is truly miraculous and serves as another quiet demonstration of the limits of our current scientific understanding.

The human brain, and the consciousness that arises from its dense and amazingly dynamic matrix of electrical connections, is utterly beyond our ability to recreate. Science is the poetry of the physical, but in truth there's no such thing as a discrete physical realm: we are empty space and energy bound together by forces we can describe but cannot explain. The Kabbalah tells us that every person is holy because flesh is merely the trapped light of G-d's overwhelming presence, and the Tanya (one of the main Kabbalistic texts) describes prayer and meditation as releasing those "sparks" back to Him --- science has only now caught up with this idea in realizing that our nervous systems are literally powered by non-concrete electrical impulses!

Sometimes the exquisitely delicate wiring of our physical bodies is suddenly aligned with the light of the Divine, and we are visited by a mercurial creature called grace. Sometimes we receive the gift of consciousness even after it appears to have been taken from us forever. Sometimes people wake up from decades-long comas asking to speak to their wife.

Attention All Poseur Musicians: Wearing A Cowboy Hat As You Trash America Officially Constitutes Messing With Texas

2005-05-03T11:40:00.000-05:00

Last night I was studying for my biochem exam with Jay Leno on in the background, and I suddenly heard screeching coming from my TV. I looked up and saw a scrawny, bug-eyed, apoplectic emo-loser in a cowboy hat yelling obscenely stupid lyrics about President Bush and strumming a guitar in loose imitation of music. The audience was cheering and hooting like mad, so I googled the lyrics and discovered that this gifted boy is none other than Conor Oberst: Rock The Vote activist extraordinaire. My anger faded into amusement, however, as I read his official reaction to Bush's re-election from MTV.com: "I ran the gauntlet of emotions following the election . . . first disbelief and wanting to wake up, then devastation and anger, fear and then just sadness."

I have many issues with Bush right now, but it always warms the cockles of my heart to think of all the angry energy deluded people like Oberst threw into keeping him from being re-elected and who are now astonished and outraged that America (outside of Leno's audience) doesn't care one whit how many artistic tantrums they throw.

Sheri illustrates how the Big Lie is swallowed by nice people with misguided intentions:

2005-05-02T18:18:00.000-05:00

I honestly think the school system was in the right to begin with. It is the school's responsiblity to introduce children to the lives they will be moving into as adults. As children, the current "young adult" generation was introduced conceptually to single parent homes, living with relatives, and adoption. At the time, these were uncommon at best, but still realities. Now they are far more common, so no one realizes how odd they seemed as teaching topics. The new single parent household is the samesex household. I will, right now, clarify that I do NOT support the explanation of divergent sexualities to young children, but I DO advocate young children's introduction to the concept that some kids DO have two mommies or daddies. Even in cases of heterosexual partners that can come to pass. This man should have been, and may have been, given his chance to know the extent of the material and have a say in its teaching, but the school had a responsibility to incorporate it.

Ah, the "society's going to hell so we better educate kids about it to increase their sensitivity to their increasing numbers of dysfunctional peers" argument. While Miss Sheri makes some superficial allowances for the father's autonomy, notice that she places the responsibility for producing an "adult" fit for living in the modern world nearly entirely on the school system rather than the parent. Social workers make their living perpetuating that notion. Any teacher who believes the classroom isn't the place for politically charged issues like homosexuality has been drummed out of the profession. It is a supremely ludicrous notion that socially undesirable trends should be explained to young children just because they are happening --- should we tell kindergarteners about childhood sexual abuse too, since that happens to some kids?

Oh wait --- they already do. As a former public school inmate myself, I remember sitting through endless sanctimonious and deliberately titillating (in that serious-but-so-icky-it's-fascinating way) "presentations" about rape, sexual abuse, and how to not let adults "touch you in the wrong way." Just normal preventative maintenance I suppose, considering how much sexual abuse is at the hands of teachers and/or fellow classmates.

Presenting families in which there are two daddies or two mommies (which I can say with confidence is far less than 1% of all school children's home situations) does amount to teaching about deviant sexuality, even if you don't go into graphic description about what Heather's two mommies do to each other after Heather goes to sleep. Schools have a responsibility to foster an environment where academic learning can happen, and that means no tolerance for meanness and teasing --- and under this umbrella falls every deviant situation that could be affecting a child's life.

It is totally unecesarry to teach kids about different family systems (is that an academic topic? is this going to be on the SAT's?). An atmosphere of respect, good character, and strong discipline would largely prevent any child from getting teased, whether it is for having two daddies or a divorced mommy and daddy or a harelip! However, it is at this point utterly impossible to shield one's child from constant Soviet-style "re-education" in public schools, which starts at the kindergarten level and possibly before. There is no strong discipline and no expectation that kids can learn anything real, and thus they take up the day with endless lessons on diversity and perversion.

This has been the agenda of homosexuals for decades --- whine so loudly and so often that beleaguered parents and educators get tired of hearing about it and figure they need to clue in the kids about this brand-new socially-acceptable trend.

Speak of the Devil

2005-05-02T14:16:00.000-05:00

How ironic that I just read Ms. Sommer's article (via Vox) --- and not a minute after I finished reading, a perky and bespectacled girl in a Che shirt sauntered over to my row of the computer lab and asked me to sign a petition to get rid of a prominent school official. I asked her why. Apparently he did not express enough enthusiam about the feminist campus group's plans to stage a "Take Back the Night" campaign. Note that he allowed them to do it, but he wasn't gushing with happiness --- they want him gone, because he *also* didn't express proper enthusiam this past Valentines day when the same group staged a production of the Vagina Monologues! For those of you who don't know, Take Back the Night is an exceedingly vulgar sob-fest where women gather to share their stories of being hurt by Big Bad Men (not to mention covering the campus with huge posters that have disgusting and graphic descriptions of child abuse to "publicize" the "issue"!).

I told Miss Che Shirt that I was not going to support her position. Big blank stare.

I am immediately going to start a counter-petition. The Chancellor might actually have to deal with flak for not gushingly embracing this retarded group's machinations! The fact that he allowed it in the first place is pretty bad, but fascist intimidation because of *facial expressions and tone of voice* is far worse.

A typical day in the life of a Massachusetts schoolchild

2005-04-30T14:30:00.000-05:00

Beware, all ye who enter Lexington public schools --- your five-year-old children WILL be indoctrinated in accepting homosexuality and we WILL arrest any parent who peacefully refuses to leave the building until some answers are had!

This man is shocked, SHOCKED that he has no control over what his child is being taught at public school.

2005-04-30T13:09:00.000-05:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Slavery and Freedom

2005-04-30T11:42:00.000-05:00

Pesach (Passover) comes to an end very soon, and this year has been the first that I have actually observed it. No bread or chametz (leavened foods) for eight entire days. Many of my non-Jewish friends --- and plenty of my secular non-observant Jewish ones! --- thought I was insane to do this. As Marya (born-again) said to me: "why would you celebrate a holiday of freedom by eating like a slave? Doesn't that make the entire thing focused on food, which is so concrete and fleshly?" I tried to explain to her the striking change that has come over me because of my observance this year.

Throughout the entire year, we celebrate our freedom and have food in abundance. Thoughts of food and other joys of the flesh usually occupy one's mind a huge percentage of the time, leaving little room for real connection to G-d. By deliberately forsaking the kind of food that makes us feel most comforted, we make space inside our minds for more interesting experiences. We must remember that all of us can become slaves again in an instant, transported back to Egypt in chains in the blink of an eye: as soon as we fall asleep, as soon as we let ourselves become transfixed by egotistical concerns, we are lost. We make the choice every moment whether to live our lives for G-d or for the path of selfish desire.

Pesach is an intense period of time where we reflect on the nature of slavery and freedom, because the Jewish people were not fit to enter the Promised Land until they had purged their slave consciousness completely. G-d brought His children out of Egypt not to free them so that they could follow every caprice that fell into their brains, but to receive the Revelation of Torah and bring monotheism the world. Every year, we take eight days out of our normal, comfortable existence to re-experience the rawness, terror, and ecstasy of that experience.

Well lookee here, she just done R-U-N-O-F-T!

2005-04-30T10:26:00.000-05:00

Two days ago, my friends gasped in horror at my callousness as I dismissed the latest Elizabeth-Smart-Laci-Peterson-esque dissapearance as a hoax. One look at those big crazy eyes (and her less-than-impressive fiance) I knew she had just gotten cold feet and ran away.

I contend that it is usually possible to determine someone's sanity by the look in their eyes. As windows to the soul, there is a noticeable crazy energy that makes itself apparent in someone who is mentally unstable.

It makes me want to strangle this moron --- do we really want the public yawning with boredom and cynicism at every report of a rape, kidnapping, or assault? People like her damage the credibility of all people that actually have terrible things happen to them.

If you made the punishment worse than the crime, it wouldn't happen. How about a blanket ten years in ail for falsely reporting a felony? I have a funny feeling these things wouldn't happen so much . . .

2005-04-28T19:56:00.000-05:00

Currently typing up a 20-pager on American Identity --- melting pot metaphor, I shall not use thee!--- for gaytarded English 102. When this baby is in the bag I will be able to update on a regular basis on topics of interest.

2005-04-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

This brief scare about a plane entering the no-fly zone around the White House reminds me of how right after the attacks at the World Trade Center all these angry liberals were saying "Bush is such a coward! He's hiding in a bunker somewhere instead of being out on the street with the PEOPLE!" And this was before we knew exactly what was going on --- and they were certainly trying to kill him. Believe me, if any of them were the President on 9/11 they either would have fainted from terror or stayed cowering in an undisclosed location for the rest of their natural lives.

2005-04-26T18:10:00.000-05:00

It begins!