YOU ARE INSANE, THE COMPUTER SAYS SO!

Wow....Some truly scary stuff is being promulgated in the press these days. Some years back Chuck Colson wrote about the day when Christianity is going to be viewed as a mental deficiency or an aberration from the 'norm'. I remember being shaken by his insight because the way he explained it it made perfect sense in an abstract sort of way. The roots of this idea are found in evolutionary psychology and its impetus behind the Utopian philosophy that regards human beings a ciphers that can be moulded and manipulated, tinkered with and retooled, all to fit the visions of the social planners, or our 'betters' as many would like to think of themselves...the Titans, those 'born to rule' etc, etc.

What brings me to these sombre thoughts you ask? An article in the latest Review Magazine [issue 441, Nov 2016] I picked up when dropping off an entry to an exhibition.Allow me to quote from the article by Jessica Paterson:

"A study published in Current Biology demonstrated that there were structural differences in the brains of students with different political attitudes. Students with conservative political beliefs had an enlarged amygdala. On the other hand, students that tended towards liberalism (in the American sense) had more grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that enables us to effectively process complex information. This is also the part of the brain that helps to regulate our response to an emotional event or emotional information....or as Darwin puts it; "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge."

Now I have to ask: which would you rather be? 

Ignorant and emotionally incontinent, with their..."brains literally paralysed by fear" (the theory behind why people are voting for Trump), or in charge of your responses, able to process complex information and in complete control of your universe.

Actual anecdotal experience of course sings a completely different tune, but Hey, lets not let facts get in the way of a good theory...after all; to identify another very powerful 'progressive' meme...isn't global warming all about what the computer models tell us and not about reality?

QUIXOTES RAINBOW

In the new world order we see Leftist 'debaters' (an oxymoron?) focusing on their opponents moral or physical failures rather than rebutting the argument itself. This is a common 'escape mechanism' for anyone who lacks either the facts or the skills to carry an argument. 

In today's 'intellectual' climate of fearing to say, do or even appear to be thinking the 'wrong thing' most debates have degenerated into 'softly softly' mass general agreements usually focusing on how devilish the 'conservative' elements of society are. Incidentally very rarely are the maligned 'conservative bogeymen/women' ever invited to these 'debates' nor are they given much opportunity to defend the conservative position within the bulk of the mainstream media who are almost entirely in thrall to the so-called 'progressive' will, somewhat reminiscent of The Pravda in the now defunct USSR.

Talk about falling through the rabbit hole!

'Progressive' perspective's have held sway for about 50 years now, and because the Gramscian moles and Alinskyite parasites have been so successful in their 'long walk through the institutions', shaping the worldviews of those at the helms of; Politics, Constitutional Law, Education, Commerce, Media, Religion and Entertainment.....they believe they have won the culture war.

In truth perhaps they have.

When one looks at late modern (post modern?) society there is little to admire other than the amazing technological and medical advances made upon the shoulders of ground breaking discoveries from the past. Unfortunately without a moral imperative many of theses so-called advances are being used in ways that monsters of the past such as Mengele and Heydrich would have drooled over.

There are some indications however that Joe&Jane McOrdinary are beginning to emerge from their entertainment induced, rip van twinkle. The internet has played some part in this 'awakening' and it is because of this that the Tech giants are attempting to self-censor the net. Recent examples of Google and Facebook censoring conservative views have been brought out into the open and this trend will only get worse if the 'ordinary citizen' remains apathetic. But the greatest obstacle that the champions of the Left are facing is that they have grown flabby and unskilled in meaningful debate.

Most people of the left whom I encounter and who are willing to debate, descend very rapidly into the realm of insult and derision because they simply have no answers nor do they employ logic; in fact many do not even believe in logic, preferring to hold to a religious 'faith' position that requires them to believe that everything is a 'social construct', including presumably their belief that everything is a 'social construct'.

Mark Steyn is a skilled debater (possibly because he is usually outnumbered and as a conservative believes in the principles of logic) who in the 2016 Munk debates in Canada, humiliated his opponents whose putrid responses to his uncomfortable observations about the perils of mass immigration, were to sneer and attempt to belittle him. Neither worked:

To some audience members Steyn dwelt excessively on the sexual crimes we’ve all read about in Cologne, Hamburg, Malmö and elsewhere. So it apparently seemed to Arbour and Schama, because they mocked Steyn for it in their rebuttals. Arbour sneered at both Steyn and Farage as “newborn feminists” (she got a laugh), while Schama disgraced himself with “I’m just struck by how obsessed with sex these two guys are, actually. It’s a bit sad, really.” (That got a very big laugh.) I took one look at Steyn’s glowering face after that remark — Schama will regret having said it to his dying day, I know it — and I kind of felt sorry for those two liberals, because I knew what was coming.

Steyn slowly rose and riposted, in a tone of withering contempt, “I wasn’t going to do funny stuff. I was going to be deadly serious. (But) I’m slightly amazed at Simon’s ability to get big laughs on gang rape.” Vigorous applause. He went on, “Mme Arbour scoffs at the ‘newfound feminists.’ I’m not much of a feminist, but I draw the line at a three year old … and a seven year old getting raped.” Vigorous applause.
I think that was the moment those of the audience who did change their minds got it. The pro side was happy to talk about “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” because they’re abstract images, which liberals like. The words were fresh and meaningful then, but today merely a nostalgic homage to a 19th century immigration adventure with no deep similarities to today’s situation. They’re feel-good words but that shouldn’t make the poet who wrote them in 1883 the author of global refugee legislation in 2016. When Arbour and Schama didn’t like the opposition’s message — no images, just descriptions they interpreted as racist — they chose to shoot the messenger with ridicule, a debating error and an intellectually dishonest strategy.

A civilized culture, which takes centuries of painstaking collaborative work to create, can be easily destroyed, and quickly. This is a reality conservatives understand, but liberals, consumed by guilt for past collective sins, and morally disarmed before the Other, choose to ignore. The Munk debate illuminated this important distinction, and for a change, realism won. [Barbara Kay, When Mark Steyn Struck Back]

I am not sure that we can do much to 'save' our rapidly collapsing civilisation, but then the course of human destiny was always to follow a downward trajectory, just as everything in science upholds the second law of thermodynamics; entropy.

Perhaps the best we can hope for and work towards would be that like salt on meat we can delay the decay, for to believe that we can stop it altogether is at best a Quixotian tilt at rainbow coloured windmills.

TO SEE OR NOT TO SEE THAT IS THE QUESTION!

In today's emerging, new world order the main stream press no longer even attempts to reflect objectivity. The moral quagmire personified by Hillary Clinton; the lies, murders, treasonous behaviour, political incompetence, the attacks on Bill's mistresses...it is all treated as: "move along, nothing to see here".

And yet Trump daring to indulge in some locker room talk (as odious as it is it is not a fraction of the actually destructive behaviour by the Clinton's) and the sky falls in. 

The hypocrisy and the danger to our culture (as ruined and broken as it is, it is still preferable to every known 'other') is staggering. The main stream press are blatantly antagonistic towards Joe&Jane McOrdinary. Given the ideology's espoused by many of them I suspect that they are (either unconsciously, naively or just to stupid to realise otherwise) fifth columnists dedicated to our civilisational collapse and are therefore my enemy.

Brent Bozell of Townhall ruminates on the disgusting behaviour of liberals (in America Liberal is different to Liberal in Aussie...although the two are beginning to conflate) in Hollywood and the lack of bad press regarding it (just imagine if Trump were to say the same thing!)"

"On Oct. 19, Madonna even introduced liberal comedian Amy Schumer at Madison Square Garden this way: "One more thing before I introduce this genius of comedy. If you vote for Hillary Clinton, I will give you a blow job, OK?" As if that gutter talk wasn't bad enough, she promised, "I'm good" at it, "I take my time. I have a lot of eye contact," and worse.

This woman is 58 and still perpetually making herself the worst rebuke of her holy namesake.

Have you ever noticed that liberal celebrities can say or do anything in support of the liberals, and it never seems to backfire in the "objective" press?

SMALL GOVERNMENT; YES!

Take note my fellow Australians who believe that the answer lies in stronger government!

"Venezuelans are now suffering the perilous nature of authoritarian rule, brought on by the fact that they voted for people who espoused this notion that an all-powerful government could enact social change. All they got was starvation, looting, crime, and economic torpor.

STINKY PRESS

Hillary Clinton has has the stink of corruption hanging over her every utterance. Trump is a fool and a bully but there is not even one tenth the level of corruption surrounding him that dogs her every footstep. And a real problem for Western culture is that now a great majority of the main-stream-media are a part of the problem:

The Project Vertias videos exposed a corrupt political machine journalists would have been proud to expose in the past. The Wikileaks emails pulled back the curtain on why that didn’t happen – journalists are in on it. I can’t pretend otherwise, and I have no choice but to oppose it.

NO DISSENSION ALLOWED

So you think that same sex marriage is not going to affect you and its all about 'equality' so why not?

Do you really believe that the activists are interested in marriage...the same activists who a mere three years ago spoke out AGAINST marriage as a 'bourgeois institution':

During the discussion, Dow acknowledged that the gay movement's support for same-sex marriage has been a recent development. He added that gays have "gone from quite a radical critique of the whole institution of marriage" to support for same-sex marriage in just 10 years.
And herein lies the problem. Australia is a socially conservative nation. In 2002 the radical Australian-born gay activist Peter Tatchell opposed the very concept of "the nuclear family", depicting it as a bourgeois institution. Yet earlier this year he condemned Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott for not supporting same-sex marriage. [G Henderson, Sydney Morning Herald]

No; they are interested only in finding a legal wedge to force everyone to adhere to their worldview.

Its has begun with the bakers and will end only when everyone is forced to toe the official line...we will not be allowed to 'believe' anything that differs from 'official' dictates.....welcome to the Brave New World of 1984:

"The Christian owners of a Northern Ireland bakery have lost their appeal against a ruling that their refusal to make a "gay cake" was discriminatory.
Appeal court judges said that, under law, the bakers were not allowed to provide a service only to people who agreed with their religious beliefs.
Two years ago, the family-run firm refused to make a cake iced with the slogan: "Support Gay Marriage".
The order was placed at its Belfast shop by gay rights activist Gareth Lee." [BBC News Northern Ireland]

and..................

The university said the refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns when asked would be discrimination.
“These laws are the first laws that I’ve seen that require people under the threat of legal punishment to employ certain words, to speak a certain way, instead of merely limiting what they’re allowed to say,” Peterson said. “So the law’s put words into our mouths.”  [A. Artuso]

CONCEPTUAL ECHO CHAMBER

An interesting perspective by Theodore on the use of 'experts' in court cases...it also provides an insight into how being surrounded by like minded people can lead to an 'echo chamber' thus exposing the vaunted (and over-utilised in certain circles) phrase: "93% of experts agree" to being just what it really is...pompous balderdash:

" If I were seeking experts, I should not choose the most eminent men in their field. This is for two reasons. The first is that, being so eminent, that have often grown unused to having their opinion challenged. Not all are like this, naturally, but many are. They suffer from what a student friend of mine, now an eminent professor himself, called a hardening of the concepts." (T. Dalrymple)

HUMANITY IS SIGNIFICANT!

Many Green fanatics these days hold extreme views about the future of the world. Consider this quote from Paul Ehrlich's book 'the Population Bomb' published during the 60's 'revolution' of 'peace and love':

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate."

Completely overstated as it turns out but who in the lame-stream-media would point that out: (BTW in 2011 Ehrlich was quoted as saying that his book was too 'optimistic'...so not only not acknowledging his error but adding to it...sheer arrogance!).

However such catastrophic views of how humanity is damaging 'nature'(aka Gaia) are neither new nor are they liable to ever go away. Consider the current 'global warming' scare which strangely enough once again involves humanity acting in destructive ways towards Gaia.

One of the triggers for me writing this short article was a report yesterday on how an animal 'rights' advocate looks at humanity:

Australian Seabird Rescue spokeswoman Rochelle Ferris, quoted in an ABC News report on a protest against shark nets on NSW’s far north coast, Sunday:

The question we’re facing here is whether wildlife is more important than human life, and I’m conflicted over the answer to that myself.

A major contributor to 'modern' Green ideology is the Norwegian philosopher, and creepy ‘mystic' Arne Naess. In 1973 he claimed that the then 'science' of ecology was faulty because it looked at the world from a human perspective, and argued that:

"..... the human species has the same ‘intrinsic value’ as a bacterium or an earthworm."

Interestingly, my youngest son and I stumbled upon some fascinating mythology whilst researching for a school project of his. It concerns one of the origin myths of ancient China and a 'creator' named Pangu. Like many ancient myths it is quite stimulating and imaginative but of particular relevance was the perspective on humanity; i.e. that humans were created from the parasites found on Pangu's body, lice, maggots, fleas...in other words humans are parasites on the body of the earth

After another 18,000 years Pangu died, his body forming the various parts of the earth, and the parasites on his body forming humans.

At the risk of invoking 'godwins law' I feel it necessary to point out that it was an overt 'green' fanaticism that drove many of the Nazi Party's most destructive ideologies:

But environmentalist ideology was not an accidental, optional-extra to National Socialism. As we shall see, green ideas were at the core of Nazi thinking. The German Volk and Nazi movements marched beneath the banners of ‘Nature’ and the ‘organic’.(http://www.martindurkin.com/blogs/nazi-greens-inconvenient-history)

 I am not saying that humanity is blameless and never trashes nature. I am fully cognisant of the destructive potential within human beings in fact I even have a worldview that points to the inevitability of such behaviour. But I am also a believer in 'common grace' and that many human beings have dedicated their lives to helping and transmogrifying nature in beautiful and beneficent ways. Culture plays a significant part in this equation and I do not believe that all cultures are equal in this respect...such a worldview is ridiculous and illogical because it carries within in itself a contradictory bias.

What I do hope to say rather forcefully however, is that human beings are valuable. They are important. They are noble, and they are made in the image of a marvellously creative and beneficent God and are the pinnacle of His creation, which makes them significant even in their folly.

GOAD THE GOAT

 A somewhat amusing yet no doubt teeth grinding (to certain people groups) article in the Taki magazine:

When did “masculinity” become a dirty word? And is “toxic masculinity” sort of the crack cocaine version of it?
According to some femsplainers, “toxic masculinity” is actually harmful to men, but just as the idea that “patriarchy” is harmful to men, this is a horridly flimsy lie and and a transparent excuse for women to nakedly seize social power. We are told that patriarchy—rather than testosterone—mangles men into remorseless murder machines and that men would fare much better if they simply grew the hell up and succumbed to feminism’s salmon-scented wiles. These estrogen-addled illogicians would have us believe that men somehow unfairly benefit from patriarchy while it kills them left and right.
We are told that masculinity has no roots in biology and is merely a social construct. It’s a miracle that all these “social constructs” happened to be constructed almost identically throughout every culture in history.
We are told that in order to protect their famously delicate egos, men must resort to homicidal and suicidal public displays of strength and brutality. Anyone who speaks of the “fragile male ego” has apparently never encountered a female ego.
For those who are willing to concede even a smidgen of biology in determining gender roles, we are sternly warned that testosterone is an evil demonic elixir responsible for 80% of all violent crime. We are never told, because it would be too embarrassing for feminists and their perpetually bewildered gelded boy-ponies, that the sort of fearless risk-taking behavior that testosterone induces may also be responsible for the fact that men account for 94.5% of commercial patents, because the only possible reason for that lopsided stat is obviously sexism, which comes to us via patriarchy, which originates in toxic masculinity.
This is anti-male blood libel posing as justice. Just as these types reduce all of white history to the Holocaust and slave ownership, these Haters of All Things Male would like to distill everything male into one endlessly troglodytic cavalcade of rape and murder. Why, it’s as if all of the technological gadgets they use to demean men weren’t designed by men, and it certainly isn’t true that nearly all of the technological infrastructure they use to endlessly slander maleness was built with the sweat and blood of male laborers.
They claim that patriarchy and toxic masculinity cause men to cut off their emotions, but the moment that men sincerely try to express any emotional pain, they are derided as tiny-dicked man-babies whose “male tears” are cause for endless sadistic joy.
Since it is clearly feminism—rather than patriarchy or “toxic masculinity”—that robs men of their humanity and mocks even the slightest display of male emotion, it is fair to surmise there may be a heaping helping of psychological projection going on here.
This is why the peddlers of such idiotic notions as “toxic masculinity” are loath to discuss the many-tentacled manifestations of loathsomely destructive behavior by modern entitled females who see “sexism” as a sin the fairer sex is incapable of committing.

http://takimag.com/article/reclaiming_toxic_masculinity_jim_goad/print#ixzz4NyIyNWnz

COPYRIGHTING INJUSTICE

And now for a spoonful of entrepreneurial Social Justice Warriors:

But when there isn’t nearly enough racism to justify the “social justice” contingent’s pre-booked outrage, on which their status depends, what are they supposed to do? Well, being pious, righteous beings, they make some up. And by some, I mean lots (http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2013/12/because-lying-and-resenting-is-what-angels-do.html.) And so we find student “activists,” self-imagined heroes, whose preferred form of heroism entails sending anonymous racial threats to their equally brown classmates and making their own nooseshttp://fox6now.com/2012/02/06/student-on-uw-parkside-hit-list-admits-to-hoax/, and educators who daub racial slurs on their own cars, before slashing their own tyres, much to the bewilderment of onlookers https://issuu.com/chuckwalla1022/docs/kerri_dunn_coverage.

If these sad sacks would only turn their ideas into products the market could value, the world might actually benefit...as it currently exists these phoneys are indeed the 'Panguian' parasitical bugs hanging off the taxpayers teet.

A REASONABLE LIST

This (non-exhaustive) list of competing motivations between the classical ideal and a (post)Modern intellectual position is culled from an erudite essay by Eric Voegelin entitled:  On the Classics, and reflects on the emasculated approach by most ‘institutes of Higher Learning’ in the Western world towards the teaching and learning of Classical studies. 

I find the list rather compelling though I have prefaced it with a verse from another ‘classical’ source of greater importance (IMO) than every other one written since the beginning of time and motivated by the Platonic idea that reason and logic have their source in Reason and Logic, i.e. The LOGOS!

Proverbs 16:9 In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps

The effort of the Greeks to arrive at an understanding of their humanity has culminated in the Platonic-Aristotelian creation of philosophy as the science of the nature of man. Even more than with the Sophistic of their times the results are in conflict with the contemporary climate of opinion. I shall enumerate some principal points of disagreement:

1. Classic: There is a nature of man, a definite structure of existence that puts limits on perfectibility.
Modern: The nature of man can be changed, either through historical evolution or through revolutionary action, so that a perfect realm of freedom can be established in history.
2. Classic: Philosophy is the endeavor to advance from opinion (doxa) about the order of man and society to science (episteme); the philosopher is not a philodoxer.
Modern: No science in such matters is possible, only opinion; everybody is entitled to his opinions; we have a pluralist society.
3. Classic: Society is man written large.
Modern: Man is society written small.
4. Classic: Man exists in erotic tension toward the divine ground of his existence.
Modern: He doesn’t; for I don’t; and I’m the measure of man.
5. Classic: Man is disturbed by the question of the ground; by nature he is a questioner (aporein) and seeker (zetein) for the whence, the where to, and the why of his existence; he will raise the question: Why is there something, why not nothing?
Modern: Such questions are otiose (Comte); don’t ask them, be a socialist man (Marx); questions to which the sciences of world-immanent things can give no answer are senseless, they areScheinprobleme (neopositivism).
6. Classic: The feeling of existential unrest, the desire to know, the feeling of being moved to question, the questioning and seeking itself, the direction of the questioning toward the ground that moves to be sought, the recognition of the divine ground as the mover, are the experiential complex, the pathos, in which the reality of divine-human participation (metalepis) becomes luminous. The exploration of the metaleptic reality, of the Platonic metaxy, as well as the articulation of the exploratory action through language symbols, in Plato’s case of his Myths, are the central concern of the philosopher’s efforts.
Modern: The modern responses to this central issue change with the “climate of opinion.”

 In Locke the metaleptic reality and its noetic analysis is transformed into the acceptance of certain “common opinions” which still bear an intelligible relation to the experience from which they derive. The reduction of reality to opinion, however, is not deliberate; Locke is already so deeply involved in the climate of opinion that his awareness for the destruction of philosophy through, the transition from episteme to doxa is dulled. Cf. Willey’s presentation of the Lockean case.

Hegel, on the contrary, is acutely aware of what he is doing when he replaces the metaleptic reality of Plato and Aristotle by his state of alienation as the experiential basis for the construction of his speculative system. He makes it explicitly his program to overcome philosophy by the dialectics of a self-reflective alienated consciousness. 

In the twentieth century, the “climate of opinion” has advanced to the tactics of the “silent treatment.” In a case like Sartre’s, metaleptic reality is simply ignored. Existence has the character of meaningless facticité; its endowment with meaning is left to the free choice of man. The choice of a meaning for existence falls with preference on the opinion of totalitarian regimes who engage in mass-murder, like the Stalinist; the preference has been elaborated with particular care by Merleau-Ponty. The tactics of the “silent treatment,” especially employed after the Second World War by the “liberation rabble,” however, make it difficult to decide in individual cases, whether the counterposition to metaleptic reality is deliberate, or whether thelibido domimndi is running amok in a climate of opinion that is taken for granted, without questioning, as ultimate reality. On the whole, I have the impression, that the consciousness of a counterposition is distinctly less alive than it still was at the time of Hegel. Philosophical illiteracy has progressed so far that the experiential core of philosophizing has disappeared below the horizon and is not even recognized as such when it appears in philosophers like Bergson. The deculturation process has eclipsed it so thoroughly by opinion that sometimes one hesitates to speak even of an indifference toward it.
7. Classic: Education is the art of periagoge, of turning around (Plato).
Modern: Education is the art of adjusting people so solidly to the climate of opinion prevalent at the time that they feel no “desire to know.” Education is the art of preventing people from acquiring knowledge that would enable them to articulate the questions of existence. Education is the art of pressuring young people into a state of alienation that will result in either quiet despair or aggressive militancy.
8. Classic: The process in which metaleptic reality becomes conscious and noeticaIIy articulate is the process in which the nature of man becomes luminous to itself as the life of reason. Man is the zoon noun echon.


Modern: Reason is instrumental reason. There is no such thing as a noetic rationality of man.
9. Classic: Through the life of reason (bios theoretikos) man realizes his freedom.
Modern: Plato and Aristotle were fascists. The life of reason is a fascist enterprise.
The enumeration is not even remotely exhaustive. Everybody can supplement it with juicy items gleaned from opinion literature and the mass media, from conversations with colleagues and students. Still, they make it clear what Whitehead meant when he stated that modern philosophy has been ruined.

UNCONSCIOUS MENDACITY

Steve Taylor sort of nails the zeitgeist:

Therefore, the single most important mind-control technique is what Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Hunter calls “the narrative”:

The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s so powerful because it’s unconscious. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide “These are the lies we tell today.” No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they have chosen to live their lives.

For instance, consider the question of why blacks tend to get shot by the cops more than Asians do. The simplest, most Occamite answer is: for the same reason blacks get shot by other blacks so much—on average, African-Americans are more violent than Asian-Americans.

The overwhelming abundance of social-science data supports that view. But that’s definitely not part of the narrative. Instead, as Hillary instructs us, we must subscribe to fashionable conspiracy theories of “implicit bias” and “systemic racism.”
Hillary, in effect, is running for president on a dumbed-down version of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 best-seller Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, which advised going with your gut reactions, except when they are factually wrong or politically incorrect.

http://takimag.com/article/from_orwell_to_gladwell_and_back_steve_sailer/print#ixzz4Ng0i17Y4

MISSING THE TARGET

It is vital to view issues in perspective, Mark Steyn so obviously does. Many of us waste our time arguing for a position that is clearly not the true 'front' of the battle.

He correctly identify's that in the case of 'our' Australian Human Rights Commission, the battle is not between whatever issue the AHRC deems unacceptable but the fact that this 'commission' exists in the first place:

The likes of [Race Discrimination] commissar Soutphommasane are not interested in a debate with you; they’re interested in eliminating you from the debate, banishing you from public discourse, and shrivelling that discourse to the ever tighter bounds of a state ideology.

DESPICABLE CULTURAL QUISLINGS

A fitting sobriquet for despicable parasites:

This is complemented by another component, which involves the collapse of the culture that sustains the civilization, usually involving the treason of the intellectual and political elites. These become cultural quislings, turning their backs on the very culture that sustains them in their privilege, proudly declaring themselves enemies of their own civilization, and working actively to undermine it, effectively handing over control to the aggressive invaders.

The paradigm for this intellectual treason was established by the Comintern nearly a century ago, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, when Lenin decided that the new Soviet Union slave state would only survive if it was able to foment revolution in the West and could mobilize the intelligentsia to achieve this. The poisonous message these intellectuals were to carry, an ideological contagion, was enunciated vividly by the leading French communist ideologue, Louis Aragon, in 1925:

“We will destroy this civilization that you cherish … Western world, you are condemned to death … We will awaken everywhere the germs of confusion and malaise. We are the agitators of the mind … those who will always hold out our hands to the enemy.”

This treasonous, self-lacerating, and nihilistic worldview is now institutionalized throughout Western academia and it has an ideological stranglehold over political activism, as we see in Australia with the Green-Left. These academics and activists live in a parallel universe where the source of all evil in the world is their own society, in which they posture as reluctantly privileged rebels. Consequently, as Pascal Bruckner observes in The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism (2010), “nowadays all it takes to attack Europe is a bit of conformism” to the all-pervasive hatred of the West that constitutes the intellectual monoculture of our society.

Truly it is time for a 'spring clean'.

HISTORY & REASON

As one who has been passionate about education for many years, and in that passion have been frustrated, blocked and blessed in equal proportion, I am paradoxically depressed and elated all at once.

Depressed when I read and observe how effectively neo-Marxist thinking has impacted Western society and knowing history as I do, I realise what is in store for the majority.

Elated when I reflect on the fact that there appears to be something of an awakening taking place in the West:

So, there is hope that we can end the Millennial/Generation Z’s tryst with far left politics, with more job opportunities and educations programs from VOC that shows the catastrophe that occurs when these government run out of money, which always happens. If they thought debt and no job was bad, how about no electricity, no food, no medicine, no emergency services—a complete societal collapse from this dalliance with the left wing. I wonder if there’s a country where all of this is happening right now after promising people free stuff. Oh wait; that would be Venezuela, where things are so bad due to their experiment with 21st Century Socialism that a scraped knee could mean death thanks for shortages of about pretty much everything.

However, and herein lies the rub, I am not sure if this realisation of consequences is too little too late nor whether or not the spiritual component is strong enough (interestingly the Christian world is very 'advanced' in its ignorance of history, politics and reality in general...perhaps because many of the self-appointed 'leaders' are often ignorant, sclerotic, real-world agoraphobes  or are so compromised in their doctrinal beliefs that they may well be referred to as wolves amongst the sheep).

And fundamentally I believe that unless the core of this belated 'revival' is spiritual, it is doomed to fail. Why? Simply because history teaches us that people need more to life than mere prosperity..... they need a reason to live.

MADNESS PERSONIFIED

America's education has long been on the downward path, as has the Australian system, not least because of the Marxist nature of teacher unions. Even knowing that the following results from a recent survey in America boggle the brain, but I am sure that similar, if not worse results would be apparent if the survey were to take place in Australia:

"The Victims Of Communism Memorial Foundation did a poll about Millennial attitudes for far left using YouGov and found that one-third of them believe George W. Bush killed more people than Joseph Stalin. I would say it could be due to an overdose of MSNBC viewing, but that network doesn’t rally have an audience, especially when compared to Fox News and CNN. Seventy-five percent don’t know that communist governments have murdered more than 100 million people."

Our most precious 'inheritance' (excuse the irreverent term) our children, have been brainwashed and starved of true knowledge in the elites attempt to control the population, just as they did in communist Russia, China, Cambodia, Nth Korea, Cuba, etc etc....and look where those countries have ended up.

I have been reading a fascinating account of the History of Australia and of its profound moral and legal underpinnings. I have been made aware of beginnings and motivations I was completely unaware of as are millions of Aussies young and not-so-young because of the interminable brainwashing that has been undertaken by schools, universities and the media, most effectively the ABC. Aussies like American's are ignorant of their 'roots' and many are falsely ashamed of their heritages not because of the truth of that past, but because of the lies that they have been force fed since childhood. 

Did you know for example that Australia is the only continent in the world never to have had legalised slavery.....? That is something to be rejoiced about, yet what are we bombarded with on a daily basis...'invasion day', the Australian 'gulag' ad nauseam...all fabrications and distortions of truth shamelessly pushed by the anarchists seeking to bring down the culture of this marvellous country so that they can replace it with the hideous version of that which has kept large parts of the world in misery and servitude BUT HAS AFFORDED THE RULERS LUXURY AND POWER! 

That is what driving these sick few, these madmen (and women, actually often women!) to bring about the transformation of our current system, but the truly astounding thing about it all is that these same fools are so ignorant of history that they cannot see that the very forces that they are trying to unleash in order to seize power, are the very forces that will devour them when (if) it happens...just as Robespierre became a victim of the revolution he headed and the 'intellectuals' became the victims of the Russian, the Chinese, the Cambodian, and all of the other Marxist revolutions on earth. 

Mad Fools! Isn't the definition of madness doing the same thing over and over and each time expecting a different result?

MOCKERS OF VIRTUE

Little did Edmund Burke know that when he wrote this on reflection of the revolutions he had witnessed, the American, the French, the Industrial it would really only reach its apotheosis of reality at the end of  sexual/cultural revolution of the 1960's. I fear that we have entered into the final chapter:

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprize, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

VACUUM, SCHMACKUUM!

I love to read and the internet has opened up a vast storehouse of material to indulge this passion, though of course within every cornucopia there exists a dark side, which in this case is that the more I read the more depressed I become.

Why?

Because I observe how quickly the world is degenerating into madness. I see how formerly rational people will believe in almost anything other than a benevolent and gracious God because to do the latter would mean becoming responsible to someone greater than ourselves...and for an increasing amount of human beings there is no one greater than themselves. Unfortunately because nature abhors a vacuum when the belief in a creator goes out the back door; belief in anything/everything comes roaring in the front door.

This is all comic-book stuff. Believe any of it and you will believe anything. But people do. Welcome to godless credulity; to the age of science fiction made real. It has a prosaic side to it too. Global warming (GW) is the example, par excellence.

The symptoms of a belief in GW are everywhere to be seen as the worship of wind and sun totems. These, for some, fill the yawning gap, which belief in God might have previously occupied. People from every land and their governments have not only embraced a tenuous scientific theory that burning fossil fuels will bring catastrophe to the human race but, bizarrely, and against all reason, that it is possible to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar farms and, at the same time, preserve the prosperity that fossil fuels have brought to large swathes of humanity since the industrial revolution.
Something is going on to make otherwise sane and sensible people believe this kind of thing.

There also exists a peculiar victim-hood zeitgeist within Western thinking which divides victims and perpetrators into tribal, racial or gender ghettos. The ruling oligarchy has not only succeeded in delineating these differences but they have also set up our society in such a way as to prevent these disparate groups from ever reaching some form of reconciliation, thus fermenting social chaos, which is in many ways the intent of this new 'elite' whose playbook can be traced back to the oft stated aims of Marxist agitators such as Gramsci and Alinksy with Labor's Fabianist philosophy thrown in for good measure.

Welcome to the Hotel California!

THINKPOL UNLEASHED!

Welcome to our brave new world where Orwellian [rather than Huxleyian] thought policing is the standard and enforced norm. ThinkPol is being resourced and strengthened, and the Pol ('scuse the pun) Pottian 're-education' centres (currently called universities) are taking up the much needed task of re-orienting the public's attitudes towards the correct and proper perspectives according to their ruling masters.

...the Michigan Daily:

The university is piloting a culture training programme for students that will ultimately include the entire freshman class in five years. The training will require a preliminary assessment to evaluate the students’ cultural sensitivity levels.
WrongThought™ will be detected. Worldviews will be harmonised. Intrusive condescension will be the norm.
Participants will receive a unique training programme based on assessment results targeting specific areas for cultural development. At the end, students must take a follow-up assessment and receive a certificate for completion.
The university’s “strategic plan” for “diversity, equity and inclusion” tells us that the political correction on offer is “increasingly in demand… among employers,” and that “the ultimate goal” is to subject “all incoming students” to this or similar corrective processing. The document also boasts of encouraging “many voices.” Though as the stated object is to “shift cultural perspectives” and to “adapt” any behaviour deemed insufficiently sensitive and therefore improper, readers may wonder whether diversity of opinion will be the ultimate result.

GAIAN A'TREE'CITIES

Oh dear, the latest act of financial suicide from the Gaians...or the madness that is Green ideology...forgive me; religious orthodoxy from the god aka Gaia:

"ANN ARBOR – The University of Michigan has begun the process of relocating one 200-year-old oak tree in the way of a campus renovation project – a pricey, green-friendly effort expected to cost the university as much as $400,000 on a campus that is already home to an estimated 16,000 trees.

News this week of the tree relocation came as students were also reminded of another financial burden – their tuition was ratcheted up for this school year, Provost Martha Pollack told students in a recent email. Student fees and room and board costs were also increased.

As for the 65-foot-tall oak tree, it’s not something the vast majority of students have traditionally gathered around over the decades. It’s not known to be a spot for marriage proposals, or a hang-out for tree huggers. Students don’t gather around it and sing Kumbaya.

“It’s just a tree,” one University of Michigan alumnus told The College Fix."