Kevin O-no-not-again

Mark Steyn's ability to make me laugh even while delivering a devastating blow to pompous idiocy is legendary. Consider this extract about Cameron's duplicity in governing, i.e. the ability to say nothing in lots and lots of words (Oakeshott anyone!), and then consider the local similarities as exhibited by Kevin O-no-not-again?

 Occasionally, the realities of electoral politics oblige the village's denizens to dissemble to the barbarians beyond, as in David Cameron's current pledge of a referendum on EU membership sometime after his reelection, which is intended to staunch defections to UKIP by seizing the nuanced ground of pretending that he's not entirely opposed to adopting the position of conceding the prospect of admitting the possibility of potentially considering the theoretical option of exploring the hypothetical scenario of discussing in a roundabout way Britain's leaving the EU. He doesn't mean it, of course, but he has to toss a bone out there from time to time.

Squatters wrongs

An uncomfortable truth expressed in an uncompromising way, especially the part about squatters:

As (non-believer) John Gray, formerly of the London School of Economics, wrote in his 2007 book Straw Dogs: humanists are simply Christians in disguise. If there is no God, there is no basis for human dignity and human exceptionalism. Humanism is the creed of those who have “given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational belief in humans”.

The truth is, many Europeans are squatters living in a house built on Judeo-Christian foundations -- but they don’t want to pay the rent.

Proof in the pudding

Do you believe in the basic goodness of humanity? Consider this:

“This ground-breaking work revealed just how immoral we have become as a nation. Anecdotally, of course, we read about that every day in the news. But this book was based on extensive surveying where the respondents were guaranteed anonymity.

“One of the findings is related to greed. Pastor R. Kent Hughes writes about the disturbing results to an intriguing question the respondents were asked: ‘The survey…posed the question, ‘What are you willing to do for $10 million?’

“Hughes reports, ‘Twenty-five percent would abandon their families, 23 percent would become a prostitute for a week, and 7 percent would kill a stranger. Think of it. In a gathering of 100 Americans, there are seven who would consider killing you if the price was right. In 1,000 there are seventy.’ Gulp.”
 

This is of course referring to research carried out in the USA but I would posit that it would not be so different in Australia. In fact I would argue that the entire Western world has degenerated to a level just short of barbaric, but then I don't believe in the essential 'goodness' of human nature.

Was it Chesterton who said something to the effect that the doctrine of original sin was one of the easiest to prove; just study history.

Yep. Gulp alright. And until we get to the point where we can truly say that we too would do such things if the circumstances were right, we are not yet candidates for the gospel. Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous. We are all sinners, although most of us won’t admit to this.

But until we do, we cannot become recipients of the marvellous grace of God as manifest at Calvary. Two truths must forever go together here, as John Newton once said: “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior.”

art no, vandalism yes!

Graffiti combines an expression of moral autism: "The graffiti vandal combines the moral instincts of a two-year-old with the physical capacities of an adult: when he sees a “spot” that he wants to “mark,” he simply takes it", with animalistic scent marking:

Graffiti is the bane of cities. A neighborhood that has succumbed to graffiti telegraphs to the world that social and parental control there has broken down. Potential customers shun graffiti-ridden commercial strips if they can; so do most merchants, fearing shoplifting and robberies. Law-abiding residents avoid graffiti-blighted public parks, driven away by the spirit-killing ugliness of graffiti as much as by its criminality.

.... “If I woke up one morning and found that my home had become the site of ‘street art,’ would I be delighted by this windfall or furious at the assault on my property? Would I call the Art Historical Society to register this addition to my home, or the cops and a painting service?” In case the answer is not obvious, let’s listen to the taggers themselves. “I’ve never written on my own house,” says Gonzalez. “And I wouldn’t like it if someone else did it on my house.” Mesa finds my question about whether he would tolerate graffiti on his home silly. “Why would you want to f*** up your own area?” he asks me. “That’s why you go out and mess up other people’s cities.”

A marvellous essay on the blight of graffiti vandalism can be found @
http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_2_vandalism.html

The Misanthropic principle

To the 'accomodationists' who think that they can make a deal with the devil, think again:

Matthew J. Franck also weighs into what is at stake here. In a lengthy article he clearly demonstrates that when homosexual marriage rights are granted, that of necessity will dampen religious rights and diminish freedom. He is worth quoting at length:

“Churches and other religious organizations are major employers. They operate schools, universities, hospitals, hospices, and clinics; social service agencies, retirement homes, eldercare and childcare facilities, food pantries, and soup kitchens; and other charitable ministries of every kind. They employ teachers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, counselors and clinicians, caregivers, food-service workers, housekeeping and grounds staff, even pool lifeguards. These religious ministries typically present themselves as equal opportunity employers, and they mean it.

“Can they continue to do so in the redefined-marriage legal regime? If a church ministry hires someone in a same-sex marriage, or employs someone who enters such a marriage; or if it declines to hire such a person, or treats him or her adversely if already employed—in any of these scenarios there is trouble ahead, if federal, state, or local employment law considers it wrongful discrimination to treat persons in same-sex marriages differently from men and women in marriages.

Education too will be in jeopardy: “And on the subject of universities and schools, consider the matter of the accreditation of higher-ed programs and whole institutions, and the control of curriculum in primary and secondary education. Already we can see individual degree programs compelled by accrediting bodies, in fields such as counseling, to conform themselves to the transformed understanding of marriage and sexuality, as some religiously dissenting students have discovered to their cost.

“Whole colleges and universities are themselves accredited by regional private accrediting associations—and the accreditors are in turn accredited by the US Department of Education, and recognized by the DOE as authoritative regarding which institutions grant valid degrees and enroll students eligible for federal aid of various kinds. If and when the regional accreditors and the DOE decide that the norm of ‘respect’ for same-sex marriage must pervade higher education, which religious colleges and universities will keep standing firm in the winds that will blow?”

“The ‘ministerial exception’ to employment discrimination law, affirmed 9-0 by the Supreme Court in the Hosanna-Tabor case in January 2012, will be no protection at all, since there is no way to shoehorn all these roles and functions into that exceptions category, no matter how broadly ‘minister’ is defined. But to date, there is no state that has seen fit to accommodate the religious conscience even of avowedly religious ministries in this respect, let alone the consciences of religious persons doing business in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors.

“Or consider public accommodations law, which can cover equal access to healthcare services, marriage and family counseling, daycare, adoption services, as well as religious schools and universities that are open to taking students of every faith or none at all. Churches and other religious bodies are among the largest providers of health, social service, and educational opportunities, but they understandably consider themselves obliged to provide them in keeping with the moral dictates of their faith.”

He concludes, “The transformation of the law to redefine the meaning of marriage will be bad for marriage, bad for children, and very bad indeed for those people of faith who want to maintain their faith’s teaching on marriage, in their religious institutions and in their work. The preservation of meaningful religious liberty, it turns out, is inseparable from the preservation, in our legal order, of the truth about marriage. They stand or fall together.”

If homosexuals were once the object of intolerance, the exact opposite is now the case. The oppressed have become the oppressor, and those who dare to stand in their way had better watch out. As Michael Brown rightly states, “Today, those who have come out of the closet are trying to put their ideological opponents into the closet; those preaching tolerance have become the most intolerant; those calling for inclusion are now the most exclusionary; those celebrating diversity demand absolute uniformity.”
 

Ultimately the State always wins. When these 'laws' pass into the legal system of the country they will create chaos amongst those of a religious mindset (except the 'religion of peace' which somehow manages to evade all manner of legislative compromises) the result of this chaos will inevitably be the closure of many heretofore helpful and socially necessary institutions.

Into the vacuum will enter 'mother government' taking up the slack, employing those whose desperation will force them to compromise their beliefs and attaching countless more onto the public teat, thus ensuring their enslavement for generations to come. Thus big government becomes a bloated Leviathan and the individual decreases.

Are people so blind that they cannot see the evidences of such a future that exist in plain site within the ongoing failures of every society built on the collective mindset.

It is a bold move on the part of the ruling/political/intellectual elite to plunge the free world back into an era where numerically few 'aristocrats' are served by the indentured majority...the only problem is that human nature being what it is, the only sure-fire future will be one of constant and perpetual 'tribal' warfare and only one who wins is the one who cares nothing for humanity.

A 'humane' cause whose end result is inhumanity.

mice or men

A truly frightening sentence which also serves as a kick up the a***.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
 

This is the quote that Muehlenberg uses as the punchline to his article about the 'holocaust' of our day, the abortion apocalypse.
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2013/06/17/we-just-sit-back-and-let-it-happen/
We should not, we cannot stand by idly and do nothing, we must not because as we do so our spirits are shrivelling.
Forget that it is the 'right' of a woman to choose...what is more fundamental than the right of the unborn (even born in many cases) baby to live?

When you support the right to choose over the right to live beware the looming idealogue.

On a moral level there can be no debate, on a utilitarian level surely life outweighs comfort and as a matter of conscience I believe that even the participant men (and here I refer to real men; i.e. those who accept responsibility, all others are mere mice) who are compliant/complacent are affected, I know because I was.

Barbarians within the culture

The illusion that drives the lumpentelligentsia, idealists, activists, the chattering classes and the general dogsbody-left-wing-morons remains the same; that is the idea that big government is the most benign and therefore best way to remake society into a one-world utopia where everybody loves everybody else (re: John Lennon's 'Imagine') where there is no 'religion dividing people' and there are no 'bosses' (evil capitalism) and therefore no poor or abused people. Note this response by an idealistic dupe in this excerpt and the realist Senator's logical gibe:

...former Texas Senator Phil Gramm was participating in a Senate hearing on socialized medicine, and the witness there explained that government would best take care of people. Senator Gramm gently demurred and said, “I care more about my family than anyone else does.” And this wide-eyed witness said, “Oh no, Senator. I care as much about your children.” Senator Gramm smiled and said, “Really? What are their names?”

The same spirit that drove Babel resides in the breasts of such dreamers.

Unfortunately history reflects the absurdity of this dream because history is a living record of how people who dreams such dreams are the first to fall victim to those whose only desire is to dominate.
Freedom is such a delicate flower. Capitalism is a potentially cruel system in the wrong hands but it is also the best system humans have devised that benefits the majority.
Democracy is flawed but infinitely better than alternative political systems:

It is precisely because economic freedom and opportunity outperform centralized planning and regulation that so many millions have risked everything for a chance at the American dream.

Fifty-five years ago, my father fled Cuba, where he had been imprisoned and tortured—including having his teeth kicked out—as a teenager. Today my father is a pastor in Dallas. When he landed in Austin, Texas, in 1957, he was 18. He couldn’t speak a word of English. He had $100 sewn into his underwear. He went and got a job washing dishes and made 50 cents an hour. He worked seven days a week and paid his way through the University of Texas, and then he got a job, and then he went on to start a small business.

Unfortunately history also reflects that when Utopian dreamers gain the upper hand within the culture forming institutions of their society's it is not long before the dominators usurp them and twist the heretofore beneficial systems into methods of plunder and pillage. And this plundering and pillaging might not necessarily take the form used by Attila the Hun, indeed take note of the way the Labor party of NSW plundered that economy and you witness a new type of barbarian at the city gates.

In 1976, Margaret Thatcher delivered her “Britain Awake” speech. In it, she said: “There are moments in our history when we have to make a fundamental choice. This is one such moment, a moment when our choice will determine the life or death of our kind of society and the future of our children. Let’s ensure that our children will have cause to rejoice that we did not forsake their freedom.”

If we don’t fight to preserve our liberty, we will lose it.

Sesquipedalianism unleashed

Auberon Waugh invented the phrase "the chattering classes" and kudos to him for that.
Theodore (the sagacious) Dalrymple coined the similar in meaning but far more vituperative word 'lumpenintelligentsia'; which I find deliciously descriptive and worthy of repeated use albeit with a minor amendment to: 'lumpentelligentsia'.

By using the suffix 'en' to replace the 'in' I believe the word flows more easily off the tongue (so to speak) without sacrificing the meaning or the power of the moderated venom.
Perhaps I should acknowledge a touch of  Deconstructionist sleight-of-hand (which I generally despise), because the changing of spelling allows me to appropriate it a little more personally.

comments anyone!

Philosophical contortions

Do we live in an upside down world or what? Good is bad, bad is good, up is down, down is up, black is white, white is black, evil is moral, morality is evil and the list goes on. Read this and crack up that Russia is acting as the moral country while America truly becomes the 'great satan' it has long been accused of being by the extremists.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/media-howl-as-russia-protects-its-children-from-gay-propaganda

Under & Uber

I cannot help but pass on these marvelous little snippets of Dalrymple's erudition because they so accurately describe my own feelings towards the subjects he so eloquently eviscerates. this one concerns the graffitti artist (a true oxymoron) Banksy:

Of course, Banksy, as a spoiled child of a consumer society in which real shortage is unthinkable, has all the unexamined anticapitalist prejudices of the lumpenintelligentsia to whom he appeals.

.....Banksy’s attitude toward authority and property rights is the standard hostility of the lumpenintelligentsia. Here he is particularly hypocritical because, while maintaining that pose of hostility, he employs lawyers, owns private companies, and is reputed to be highly authoritarian in his dealings with his associates. Inside every rebel, goes the saying, there’s a dictator trying to get out.
 

.....Nor is there any awareness on Banksy’s part that the very hostility to authority and indifference to property rights that he lauds, which is now so widespread in Britain, might have played some part in the brutalization of British life.
 

..... Banksy’s little jokes can be damaging in their effect, as Wall and Piece attests only too clearly. Banksy painted the words DESIGNATED GRAFFITI AREA in an official-looking way on three whitewashed walls in elegant areas of London, and they were shortly covered with the horrible and idiotic graffiti that usually targets only concrete walls and tunnels. Banksy argues that all public space should be available for self-expression by the people, forgetting that the majority of the people may want to express themselves by leaving elegant blank walls elegantly blank. But then, they are only people, not the people, a crucial distinction in Banksy’s mind.
 

....Despite his wit, Banksy’s sensibility is both conventional and adolescent. Evidence of his conformism is that all his targets are easy and of the sort chosen by the lumpenintelligentsia (which does not, again, mean that they are necessarily unworthy). For Banksy, it is always “four legs good, two legs bad”: a simplistic worldview in which the common people, as defined by their authenticity, opposition to authority, lack of respect for property rights, and indifference to high culture, can do no wrong, while the rest, inauthentic, law-abiding or themselves in authority, careful of their own property and respectful of others’, and cultured in the traditional sense, can do no right and are either fools or oppressors.

This worldview is that of the eternal adolescent, ever eager to shock the grown-ups with his supposedly contrary views, cleverly and uncompromisingly expressed. Truth comes a distant second to effect. When Banksy said, one Christmas, “At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity—the lies, the corruption, the abuse,” he was not so much enunciating a truth as establishing his credentials as a fearless iconoclast; though it would obviously be far more iconoclastic in certain circles (those in which he moves, for example) to have said something more truthful and less adolescent.
 

....Leys says that the true philistine is not he who does not care to discriminate between the good and the bad, but he who discriminates and chooses the bad. Banksy is such a philistine, and his talent is not an extenuating but an aggravating circumstance. 

Undercurrents

The wisdom of Theodore Dalrymple:

What these cases show is that it is not Islam that makes young converts violent; it is the violence within them that causes them to convert to Islam. The religion, in its most bloodthirsty form, supplies all their psychological needs and channels their anger into a supposedly higher purpose. It gives them moral license to act upon their rage; for, like many in our society, they do not realize that anger is not self-justifying, that one is not necessarily right because one is angry, and that in any case even justified anger does not entail a license to act violently. The hacking to death of Lee Rigby on a street in Woolwich tells us as much about the society that we have created, or allowed to develop, as it does about radical Islam preached by fat, middle-aged clerics.

Lawfare in the air

Tally Ho! the hunting season has begun. Gird your loins of forgiveness in preparation for a barrage of hate:

Yes, it is the gay mafia doing their thing again. Consider these five recent cases of tolerance in action. They come from the US, the UK, and Europe. Beginning in Colorado, we have yet another case of a Christian cake-maker being dragged to the courts for standing up for conscience:

“A gay couple is pursuing a discrimination complaint against a Colorado bakery, saying the business refused them a wedding cake to honor their Massachusetts ceremony, and alleging that the owners have a history of turning away same-sex couples. As more states move to legalize same-sex marriage and civil unions, the case highlights a growing tension between gay rights advocates and supporters of religious freedom….

“Mullins, 28, and Craig, 33, filed the discrimination complaint against Phillips after visiting his business in suburban Denver last summer. After a few minutes looking at pictures of different cakes, the couple said Phillips told them he wouldn’t make one for them when he found out it was to celebrate their wedding in Colorado after they got married in Massachusetts. Phillips has said making a wedding cake for gay couples would violate his Christian religious beliefs, according to the complaint.”

The second case involves an army soldier who was actually disciplined for serving Chick-Fil-A at his promotion party: “A U.S. Army serviceman has been reprimanded for serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at a party celebrating his promotion to master sergeant. The unidentified soldier was investigated, reprimanded, threatened with judicial action, and given a bad efficiency report after sending invitations that read, ‘In honor of my promotion and in honor of the Defense of Marriage Act, I’m serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at my promotion party,’ according to the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty….

.... Yep that is the essence of it all: a group which demands that everyone in the world show them tolerance refuses to extend tolerance to anyone else. This is just how they operate. They have declared an all out war on anyone and anything which stands in their way.

Welcome to the future

This article is a must read and gives an important perspective on the whys and how's behind the 'social experiments' of the 1960's and how they have come home to roost in the 21st Century.

http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2013/6/the-social-ravages-of-sixties-philosophy

The commetariat are also becoming more aware in retrospect of the influence of the Neo-Marxists (Gramsci, Alinsky, Soros et al) behind some of today's movements as a result of the 'long march through the institutions'.

In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.  Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti - Al Capone's second-in-command - gave Alinsky clout on the street.

What these 'useful idiots' seem oblivious too is the similar if somewhat more devastating paradigm shift that is happening with regards to Islam.

 

 

 

Congenital incoherency

This extract takes the (erudite) cake in explaining the philosophical myopia experienced by members of the leftard machine:

 Ms Thomas notwithstanding being on the left side of the Labor Party, and therefore being congenitally oblivious to consequences and the demonstrable experience of failure after failure,
 

I love it.

Decline

An unfortunately accurate observation made in the American press:

Or to put it another way: That was before many mainstream Christians embraced another religion — leftism, the most dynamic religion of the last hundred years. Leftism has influenced Western societies far more deeply than Christianity has since the beginning of the 20th century. And leftism has influenced far more Christians (and Jews) than Christianity (or Judaism) has influenced leftists.
 

Is this truly a 'Christian' response?
 http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350710/opposing-god-bless-america-dennis-prager

Fruit & nuts

Exclusive: Islamic students declare the founder of their cult religion to be a fruit:

The atheist society at a British university freshers fair recently pinned the name 'Mohammed' to a pineapple on their stall. It is worth stating at this juncture that Mohammed – whatever else he looked like, if he existed – almost certainly looked nothing like a pineapple. Nevertheless, the incident led the local Muslim student society to brand not just the student but the pineapple itself 'Islamophobic'. The atheists were issued with the un-improvable line. 'Either the pineapple goes, or you do'. But the pineapple could not go, so the atheists did. This may have been the world's first fruit-based accusation of Islamophobia. But it will not be the last.

Un reason

Melanie Philips states the fundamental problem with political correctness; that is PC ideologues shut down any reasonable discussion about anything that is deemed ideologically 'impure' and they usually shut it down by means of attacking the person (ad hominem) rather than the argument.

Instead, any honest acknowledgement of the problem brings forth the instant denunciation of sexism, which seeks to shut down discussion by substituting insult for argument. On Planet PC, after all, you are not allowed to deviate even one iota from the sole approved line.

 

This is why it is becoming so difficult to express an opinion in today's world. The PC line is that you must accept what your 'masters' tell you is true and not what you believe to be so. Unfortunately many (if not most) of our children have been 'educated' (indoctrinated) to believe this is the way the world works.

Thus our society's corpse thrashes about in its death throes.

Hang in there Adam.

Have you had questions about why the slur 'ape' handed out to Adam Goodes by a 13 yo girl was in fact a 'racist' comment as the media hype would have us believe it was. Here is an article that might answer some questions for you.
http://creation.com/afl-adam-goodes-ape-racism

PoMo-poo

One of the 'benefits' post modernism has brought to Western Society:

But leave it to the militants to not just seek to deconstruct society, but seek to deconstruct truth and biology as well. After all, when you are pushing a radical agenda, you can’t let mere trifles like truth and biology get in your way.
 

UPDATE 8.6.13
'Stormin Norman' Giesler has come up with a witty title for a lecture tour, and one that I believe carries a weighty truth along with it: Logic; the Great vaccination against Post Modernism.
It is a truism that we are going to unpack over the coming weeks in our 'aplogetics fellowship'...all welcome.

Guffaws and loons

I had to re blog this 'prophetic' insight because it exemplifies the wrongheaded, wishful thinking of so many psuedo-socialist idealists in this country. It is so inaccurate it is hilarious and the comments at the end of the original blog are spectacular, definitely worth a read.

Steve Biddulph in the Sydney Morning Herald, 2007:

In a way that seems unthinkable to us now, 2007 may mark the end of the Liberal Party itself… Centrist governments cover all the bases, and conservative politics has begun to wither away…

Despite the widespread belief after years of cynical politics that politicians are all the same, Rudd and Gillard are not in power for power’s sake. I am willing to stake my 30 years as a psychologist on this, but I think many observers have also come to this conclusion. Kevin and Julia, as Australia already calls them, want to make this country a better place for the people in it. In the coming times of deprivation, they have the value systems that will be needed to care for the sudden rise in poverty, stress, and need. They also have the unity…
The Greens will emerge as the new opposition, though this will take probably two election cycles. By the 2010 election, 20 per cent will vote Green, simply because peak oil and climate catastrophe will have proven them right, and thinking people will see the need for austerity now for our children’s tomorrow. The Liberal Party will be lucky to attract 30 per cent, which is the habitual, rusted-on portion of the community that thinks greed is good.
By 2014, we will have a struggle between a new left and right - Labor and Green - and the issue will be simply how green…
The big lie of Liberal supremacy was economic management… A party based on self interest may evaporate along with our rivers and lakes, and have no role to play in a world where we co-operate or die.http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/i_hope_steve_biddulph_is_a_better_psychologist_than_political_analyst/

I particularly loved this commentary:

“By 2014, we will have a struggle between a new left and right - Labor and Green - and the issue will be who gets the front seat in the Tarago…” Fixed.

Konrad (Reply)

 

It gave me a hearty laugh to start the day.

Chosen

This is a truth to muse on:

But Moses was also a prophet, the greatest and most authoritative of all. He was a man of vision. He heard and spoke the word of God. His influence is incalculable. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, in a manuscript discovered after his death:

 ... an astonishing and truly unique spectacle is to see an expatriated people, who have had neither place nor land for nearly two thousand years ... a scattered people, dispersed over the world, enslaved, persecuted, scorned by all nations, nonetheless preserving its characteristics, its laws, its customs, its patriotic love of the early social union, when all ties with it seem broken. The Jews provide us with an astonishing spectacle: the laws of Numa, Lycurgus, Solon are dead; the very much older laws of Moses are still alive. Athens, Sparta, Rome have perished and no longer have children left on earth; Zion, destroyed, has not lost its children.

 

Defeater beliefs

If you believe that the idea of 'thought crimes' lies only within the pages of Orwell's 1984, then think again.

In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, thoughtcrime is the criminal act of holding unspoken beliefs or doubts that oppose or question the ruling party. In the book, the government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects. To entertain unacceptable thought is known as crimethink in Newspeak, the ideologically purified dialect of the party.^[1] In the book, Winston Smith, the main character, writes in his diary: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death." There is also a "ministry of love" which is actually the place of torture for people who commit any type of crime, including thoughtcrime.

The idea and its fulfilment is alive and well in the education departments around the 'Western (is there any such thing anymore?) World'.
Consider this excellent article on the methodology used to 'educate' such criminal behaviour out of our children (pardon me; your children! I am homeschooling mine).
A small excerpt:

That is to say, in the current moral grammar of progressivism, it is an offense against society to think about guns without hating or fearing them -- just as it is an offense to think about Western history without the Marxist context of systemic oppression, to think of female modesty without its radical feminist critique, or to think of wealth without simultaneously thinking of greed. Thus, just as with these other notions, entertaining the idea of guns in an innocuous way is indecent, immoral, and warrants one's removal from the collective.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/kindergarten_and_the_kafkaesque.html#ixzz2VPYOraFH

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Boo hoo.

If you are seeking a compelling symbol representing the collapse of a civilisation into a snivelling, sycophantic, superficial, snot-nosed surrender to infantile emotionalism, it has now been exemplified by Madame Tussuad's One Direction waxworks which has caused such an outpouring of sentiment that the museum has hired a 'tissue attendant' to manage the 'crisis'.
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/tissue-attendant-hired-for-hysterical-one-direction-fans-at-madame-tussauds/story-e6frfn09-1226658350062

Good Lord, if ever there was case for excessive wailing, then the current state of Western civilisation certainly gives due cause for such an event.

The critique is the point

In this erudite if somewhat loquacious review of Baz Lurhmann's Great Gatsby I think the critic Ronan Wright has opined correctly in his peroration but has not realised that his dismissal is in fact the unconscious point of the movie.

It stands as a poignant symbol for the Post-modern age as created by the ideal Post-modern director...superficial, technologically inflated, razzle-dazzle masking a nihilistic desolation leading to a spiritual desperation dulled only by excessive behaviours; in short a perfect summation of our age which T S Eliot captured so presciently during the early stages of the 20th century in his poem The Hollow Men.

..............................................................................................................

There's lots of froth and bubble in Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of this American classic, but not much soul.

The Great Gatsby
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Tobey Maguire
143 minutes
Master of CG carnival-camp Baz Luhrmann, director of Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge and vaudevillian, brings his hallmark pyrotechnic pomp to bear in this nauseating adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classically American story of wonder and lust.
Tobey Maguire (star of Spiderman) is Nick Carroway, an aspiring writer lured to the lethargy of perpetual promiscuity by socialite cousin Daisy Buchannan (Carey Mulligan) and her high society husband Tom (Joel Edgerton). Bewitched and bewildered by the enigmatic Gatsby, whose lavish parties are the toast of Manhattan, Carroway becomes the focus of the mysterious millionaire’s attention and a pivotal player in an intriguing game of cat and mouse. As the summer progresses, the enthusiasm of Carroway’s bedazzled bachelor turns to bitter disappointment and the seduction of what Fitzgerald called the “incorruptible dream” of a half-imagined happiness is confronted with a malignant materialism.
Though entirely unnecessary given its timeless themes and universal scope, Luhrmann uses every trick in the bag to bring Gatsby bang up-to-date, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the material in the hope of leaving his mark on a literary monument. A scintillating soundtrack composed by rapper Sean Carter (aka Jay- Z) combines old-school cool with trendy tunes from Lana Del Rey with a brief sampling of Alicia Keyes’ iconic R&B anthem ‘Empire State of Mind’. The synthesis of the score with the subject material illustrates the salient symbiosis of the modern age, from 1925 to 2013, for the post-modern observer. As people and places evolve, our motivations remain the same.
Leonardo DiCaprio is perfect as the archetypal aspirant to the American dream rudely awakened to a living nightmare of habitual hedonism and neo-noir nihilism. In utter contrast to his role as a pitiless plantation owner in Quentin Tarantino’s controversial Western slavery epic Django Unchained, DiCaprio channels the blond-haired, blue-eyed innocence of his Titanic days as Jay Gatsby, a hopeful man hopelessly enslaved to sentiment.
Beneath the skin-deep superficialities of this lurid adaptation is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring classic. The Great Gatsby reverse-engineers the spirit of frothy frivolity characteristic of the novel’s 1920s New York, and repackages it as a retro-reboot with 21st century street cred and a hip-hop soul.
As adaptations go it’s a glossy, well-acted advertisement for Fitzgerald’s novel and its greatest merit is compelling viewers to read the book. Classic screen adaptations, like Hitchcock interpretation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, add a dimension to the source material that only cinema can muster, daring the audience to imagine something better.
But in The Great Gatsby the novel’s core ideas occasionally pierce through the fog of the film’s glitzy effects and theatrical set-pieces but are inevitably reduced by Luhrmann to the residue of Fitzgerald’s genius and a lingering lament to what might have been.
Verdict: Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby swaps heart and soul for sensory overload and up-market melodrama, the brilliance of Fitzgerald’s idea glimpsed in a caricature of something more profound.
Ronan Wright blogs about films from Belfast at Filmplicity.

Softly, softly

A difficult moral/cultural/theological issue sensitively articulated:

“Courage is far too rare in many Christian circles. This explains the surrender of so many denominations, seminaries, and churches to the homosexual agenda. But no surrender on this issue would have been possible, if the authority of Scripture had not already been undermined.”

He goes on to say that we need courage and compassion – truth and love. And of course this compassion and love must be biblical – not worldly. “Liberal churches have redefined compassion to mean that the church changes its message to meet modern demands.

“They argue that to tell a homosexual he is a sinner is uncompassionate and intolerant. This is like arguing that a physician is intolerant because he tells a patient she has cancer. But, in the culture of political correctness, this argument holds a powerful attraction. Biblical Christians know that compassion requires telling the truth, and refusing to call sin something sinless. To hide or deny the sinfulness of sin is to lie, and there is no compassion in such a deadly deception.

“True compassion demands speaking the truth in love–and there is the problem. Far too often, our courage is more evident than our compassion. In far too many cases, the options seem reduced to these–liberal churches preaching love without truth, and conservative churches preaching truth without love.”

He concludes, “We sin if we call homosexuality something other than sin. We also sin if we act as if this sin cannot be forgiven. We cannot settle for truth without love nor love without truth. The Gospel settles the issue once and for all. This great moral crisis is a Gospel crisis.

Maggie's dis!

Consensus, the magic word that gives politically correct bureaucrats a psychic frisson...and Maggie Thatchers view:

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes but to which no one objects. It is the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved merely because one cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause could have been fought and won under the banner, “I stand for consensus”?
 

Way to go Mrs. Thatcher, what a brobdinagian pity politicians like her are so few and far between. 

Food for thought

Nick Cater's book 'The lucky Culture' sounds like a book worth acquiring. The following is a short excerpt from a Quadrant article by Kieth Windshuttle about the book:

No other country held egalitarian values in such high regard. Australians instinctively understood the American metaphor of log cabin to White House: its abounding optimism and democratic embrace are common to both nations:

In the Australian version, however, the pauper-to-president narrative is turned on its head: Rooster one day, feather duster the next. Told this way, it is less a story of inspiration than one of caution; it is not an ode to Redemption, but a parable of the Fall. Yet it is no less powerful a statement of the egalitarian promise: everybody deserves a fair go, what happens next is entirely up to them.

Ever since he discovered these qualities, however, Cater has witnessed a growing threat to their survival from the emergence of a new social class. Like most other Western countries since the 1960s, Australia invested heavily in higher education. And while the investment paid off in terms of a better-educated workforce with a sophisticated approach to solving problems in science and technology, the enlarged educated cohort brought unintended consequences in its train. The members of the new class gradually undermined the egalitarian ethos by assuming their own moral and intellectual superiority to the less-educated.
With traditional religion in decline, the educated elite morphed into a priestly caste, with its own secular evangelicalism proclaiming new moral absolutes. It identified new interest groups and, through mass moral exhortations, public apologies and persecution of any outspoken dissidents, enforced a rigid code of manners and beliefs on its members. The outcome was groupthink, or in Cater’s words: “the generations who departed on personal journeys of intellectual discovery returned agreeing about practically everything”.
This is not to say the new elite’s opinions are static. In fact, its groupthink is always a work in progress. Its members are wedded to change, or “reform”, as they insist on calling it. They see change as the natural condition of society and have a keen eye for causes worthy of their support. If causes are in short supply, they can always conjure up pseudo-reforms like gay marriage, which came from nowhere in 2010 to be the burning issue du jour by 2012. Moreover, their ultimate inspiration is the international human rights industry, the source of an almost limitless supply of issues and campaigns to underpin their moral outlook. As a result, Cater says, the divide between the elite and the rest has become the dominant fault line in our cultural, political and social landscape.
Much of this analysis will be familiar to anyone following contemporary political or cultural debate. The influence of the tertiary-educated “new class” on media, politics and the arts has been discussed for almost as long as Cater has been here. But his chapters that update its latest manifestations in the ABC, the universities and Australia’s nine (yes, nine) human rights commissions, not only confirm his case but are often very funny.

Liars in science

For those who believe that a 'fact' is true just because a white cloaked 'scientific expert' says that it is, please read this article.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/not_with_a_bang_but_a_whimper
There are as many scientific charlatans as there are second-car motor car sales charlatans, human nature being what it is. In fact I would assert that 'scientifically speaking'(empiricism), the history of mankind gives the lie to Rousseau's repudiation of original sin upon which much of post-modern thought is based.