Some goodies below…. See J.D. Tuccille’s article below on the “less state regulations/more state regulations” positions of this year’s candidates for US president/VP. Good points on politicians with no business experience campaigning to run/ruin major economies, versus the value of candidates with business experience. Interesting comment included from US Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern, after he was involved with a business venture and became truly “woke” about that. So also, the leader of the Communist faction of Mitterrand’s 1980 coalition of socialists/communists became really woke after ruining the French economy with typical collectivist nationalization projects. They had the sense to back off their nationalization projects and he then concluded, “We must respect business as the creator of wealth in a society”. Well, holy shit, eh.
Again, I refer to the US situation because it is so illustrative of major issues/trends in all our Western, formerly liberal democracy, societies.
Topics added to bottom of this opening section:
The Gutfeld panel comments on the new totalitarianism that Michael Shellenberger warns below is “accelerating” as governments of what we thought were “liberal democracies”- i.e. Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, etc.- are clamping down on freedom of speech and criminalizing the online comments of people who dissent from state-approved narratives.
And Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn do a new discussion of “weird” shaming, a new propaganda tool to kowtow independents and dissenters back into the conformity of the consensus group.
And a new one from Bob Brinsmead on how Hellenism shaped the Christ myth of Paul, taking the focus off the teachings of the man Jesus to re-orient focus to Paul’s new theory about the man- i.e. the Greek God or Christ myth that Paul created to explain the man, that was entirely opposite to the actual teachings of Jesus. This illustrates why I consider Brinsmead one of the finest theological minds on the planet.
Also, some added inserts from scholar, and solid empiricist, Thomas Sowell. His “test of the facts” approach that expose the fallacies in many assumptions about race, elite arrogance in “social engineering” approaches, and other issues.
This site will continue to probe varied sources of research on the great meta-narratives that have shaped human behavior and societies across history, including today, and what are the outcomes of those narratives. The ideas/ideals that constitute our narratives are the themes that guide our lives. They shape how we think, how we feel, they motivate us, and they influence how we respond and act in our lives. They matter in the ordinary and mundane of daily life- how we treat one another.
This is all about what it means to be human. What are the ideals of freedom, equality, inclusion, basic human rights, and most critical- What does love really mean?
“Where there is no authentic freedom, there is no authentic love”, Bob Brinsmead.
Now let’s probe more of the “evil triad” of inherited impulses- (1) the impulse to tribalism (cosmic dualism expressed in human divides among people), (2) the impulse to domination (the elite domination of commoners), and (3) the impulse to the punitive destruction of differing others.
Intro to a summary of Arthur Herman’s history of the “two approaches to organizing human societies across history”… Wendell Krossa
Richard Landes points out in “Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience” that the “elite versus commoners” divide has been the notable tribal divide and struggle of humanity across history, elites dominating commoners that across history have endlessly resisted and fought for their freedom from domination. “Elites” being the people in societies who give vent to their impulse to dominate others and appear unaware of the destructive nature of that unleashed domination impulse on the well-being of others below them. Does that speak perhaps to the element of “psychopathy” in the makeup of those wanting to dominate- as in not caring about the harm they do to others?
Personal control of one’s personal decisions and life is critical to human well-being, to have full self-determination over one’s personal life story. The freedom and right to create a unique life story and make a unique contribution to life on one’s own terms, as long as free people do no harm to others (the basic Libertarian principle that the most fundamental responsibility of government is to protect citizens from assault, whether foreign or domestic).
As Bob Brinsmead says about the freedom to determine one’s life, “Where there is no authentic freedom there is no authentic love. Freedom and love are inseparable”.
Collectivism, in all it’s varieties, has always been about elite domination and control of commoners, despite collectivist elites claiming that they are dominating the collective and controlling the resources of societies “for the people”. Socialists/collectivists, motivated by the belief that private property is the greatest evil in society, set about using state powers to “nationalize sectors of economies or entire economies”- i.e. coercively appropriating “the means of production” in order to operate the economy, again as they claim, “on behalf of the people… for the people”.
My statement: “Always about elite domination”- Because centralization of power away from people and into the hands of collectivist elites always harms people while benefiting elites.
Again, Arthur Herman’s summary of Plato’s, and all, collectivisms:
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”
And, as noted before, the claim to “compassion for oppressed” in the use of collectivist policies that end up harming people, exposes the “psychopathology of left-wing compassion/authoritarianism”.
Here’s the meat of the issue of domination/control– its about love and human meaning, and God (ultimate ideals) and stuff.
The primitive societal divide of “elites dominating commoners” has again erupted and pushed itself to the fore. This pathology has moved to prominence throughout all sectors of our societies. As varied commentators have noted, the ongoing exposure of elite manipulation behind the scenes (Taibbi, Shellenberger and others on the “Deep State”) pops the elite-promoted illusion that we are living in authentic liberal democracies and that democratic elections matter.
And as good commentators like Glen Greenwald and others have noted, it’s not so much the “left vs right” divide that is critical, a societal divide that elites use to get commoners fighting among themselves and divert attention from their power-mongering shenanigans. Today’s critical societal tribal divide, as always before, is more about the “elite versus commoners” thing.
Though elites prefer to dominate more from the background (like the Cali cartel leaders in “Narcos”- Netflix), good journalists like Michael Shellenberger (Public) and Matt Taibbi (Substack), and others, have done incredible research and exposed how elites today are using state agencies, programs, and policies to express and enforce their domination impulse on societies and less concerned to hide what they are doing. The stunner in the mix is that some of the worst of this surging elite totalitarianism is coming from within Western liberal democracies. It is coming from fellow citizens, not from the demonized “Commies” in foreign states, though that element is also in the mix. Elites, formerly more secretive in dominating from the background, have now unashamedly come out of the closet with their societal domination policies and programs.
Elite domination and control of citizenry is an absolute violation of liberalism, democracy, and freedom, and hence, a total violation of love, our most fundamental human identifying marker.
Insert: Black scholar Thomas Sowell (respected economist, historian, social commentator, and Classic Liberal) on the arrogance of elites (academics, politicians, media people) who believe that they should run the lives of lesser people through social engineering projects. He is in academia and is stunned at how his fellow academics actually believe in their superiority over commoners.
The interviewer tries to dismiss Sowell as a “conspiracy theorist” for exposing these arrogant social engineering programs in higher education, media, etc. Now that is not even questioned- i.e. the corruption of higher education, media, and state agencies by elites pushing a new totalitarianism. Sowell was ahead of his time.
As Sowell says, “It’s not conspiracy”. The people in these institutions could be sealed off from one another and they would go into rooms and come out with the same programs because they accept the same assumptions. They accept the same assumptions because “they are exempted from the test of facts”. His test? Show me how people are better off from having listened to these intellectuals?
The interviewer exposes himself in responding, “There is no groupthink in these institutions”. Sowell- “There is”. He says that a survey of Stanford, for example, found not one Republican in the departments there. And for example, George Will at the New York Times, is an exception.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1sMSk_R8I
Continuing…
We are all disrespectfully subjected to a profound mental distortion and delusion when elitists frame their approach as “compassion”, claiming that they are fighting a righteous battle for oppressed people who are suffering under evil oppressors. In collectivist versions that generally refers to successful free market property owners. In that distorted narrative, successful property owners (those most skilled and successful in creating wealth and jobs) are framed as selfish and greedy in a zero-sum world (i.e. the Ecological Footprint fallacy of “limited resources”). Less successful property owners are more generally framed as an entire class of “victims” of the successful, thereby inciting resentment.
And yes, the element of corruption from selfishness and greed is also present everywhere in all classes, but that is not the dominant explanation of the inequalities in societies that collectivists build their narrative on and use to validate their destructive policy solutions. More important is how all sectors of societies are doing in terms of progress and well-being.
An insert to fill out the picture: As William Watson shows- There is good inequality, bad inequality, and benign inequality and we need to recognize the difference.
“Inequality: Good, Bad, and Benign: A one-size-fits-all approach to inequality dodges moral distinctions about wealth that concern for true fairness requires we make”, William Watson, Nov. 30, 2015
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/william-watson-inequality-good-bad-and-benign
The Watson article begins: “William Watson explains how a one-size-fits-all approach to inequality, as the French economist Thomas Piketty prefers, dodges moral distinctions about wealth that concern for true fairness requires we make.
“The current global furore over inequality is fuelled in large part by the assumption that all inequality is bad. It isn’t. Good inequality occurs when the economic virtues are rewarded: thrift, industry, invention, innovation, initiative, and so on. Bad inequality occurs when people prosper from morally dubious or even illegal actions or from some unfair advantage they have contrived for themselves or conspired with others, often through governments, to acquire. There is also inequality that is neutral, benign. Neither intrinsically good nor bad, it arises as a by-product of events most of us find unobjectionable, such as changing birth rates, marriage patterns, or divorce laws.
Watson notes that theft is not part of the regular on return on capital. Hence, if we do as Piketty concludes that “we should impose a global, progressive, and comprehensive tax on all concentrations of wealth without worrying overly how they came to be…. if we do as he recommends and tax as if it were stolen goods wealth that may have resulted from and might indeed have been a necessary inducement to the entrepreneurship that is this “absolutely indispensable force for economic development,” how do we avoid putting economic development at least potentially at risk?”
Watson notes further that this “one-size-fits-all approach violates fairness: “A policy blind to wealth’s origin is also blind to justice, including social justice.”
And I would argue this distortion of the inequal outcomes of wealth creation, the treating of all successful entrepreneurs as thieves through “tax the rich” approaches, has nothing to do with social justice but is a profound distortion of social justice, fairness, and compassion.
Watson urges us to “Re-think our view of those whose achievement does lead to profits” and reminds us that we already have policies “to fight poverty, restrict privilege, and encourage opportunity”.
He also notes that “in most places the poor have not been getting poorer.” In fact, the decline in absolute poverty worldwide over past decades has been “stunning”…
My point re the Watson arguments on inequality: The fundamental assumptions and framings of narratives by collectivist elites (i.e. “rich bad, poor good”, “rich=evil oppressor, poor=virtuous oppressed”, etc.) are false assumptions but they validate the collectivist narrative and the collectivist elite’s crusade to take power from citizens in order to coercively enact their approach of taking control of all property for redistribution, and of course, out of “compassion” for oppressed people.
The outcome is the denial of individual freedom for commoners, with elites and their state bureaucracies taking control of resources and economies. And that has inevitably and repeatedly ruined entire societies and their environments. (Illustrations- former Soviet Union, today’s Venezuela- See historical evidence in Kristian Niemietz’s “Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”.)
Moving back on topic re elite domination and control of the lives of commoners…
Despite claims to the contrary, there is no authentic compassion in the collectivist approach. Collectivist elites claim to be fighters for oppressed people but then enact policies that subvert the freedom and independence of common citizens, ruining lives and impoverishing populations with excessive state intervention and control. Hence, the conclusion of some that the compassion of left-wing collectivists is better understood in terms of “narcissistic virtue signaling”.
The removal of freedom and control from commoners in our liberal democracies is commonly accomplished through excessive and coercive state taxation and regulations. That removes the individual’s choice over how to dispense personal property and places that choice in the hands of state elites and state bureaucrats- i.e. Plato’s “enlightened Rulers” who believe they know what is best for all others.
Collectivist policies now have more than a century-long history of destroying the lives of the commoners who they claim to serve “with compassion”.
Elite use of state power to coercively implement their policies is more correctly understood in terms of “the psychopathology of leftwing compassion”. That claim to “noble cause” motivation is buttressed with a hodge podge of features from such things as the “hero’s quest”, Zoroastrian tribal dualism, etc. Ideas/ideals that affirm to dominating elites that they are acting righteously in a battle against evil when they take control of other’s property, when they intervene to nationalize economies.
Collectivist elites validate the confiscation of all property by framing their narrative with distorting pejoratives of imagined enemies they must fight and conquer- “evil property owners oppressing workers or the poor”. The simple-minded demonization of successful people as evil oppressors, i.e. those most skilled at creating wealth and jobs for all workers. The buttressing claim here is that confiscation and redistribution of private property then benefits all of society. Elites claim that it must be done “for the people, for the greater or common good”.
The old dualism of the “rich capitalist owners vs workers” is also undermined by the fact that most workers today possess the freedom and right to invest in the stock market, whether directly/privately or via a company retirement plan, and other investment plans. That gives all members of societies access to the biggest and best companies.
This exposes the fallacy of the rich vs poor dualism as two distinct and non-overlapping classes in eternal opposition to one another. Even the poorest of workers are free and have the right to buy shares in big corporations. And they lose that freedom and right when anti-business state elites overtax those corporations thereby harming the profits that could be earned by the poorest members of societies. (And this is not to deny that there exists the elements of greed and corruption that must be exposed and corrected in all areas.)
This insert (Point? Note how government interference in business undermines productivity gains thereby undercutting improving pay and living standards for all workers):
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jon-hartley-trudeau-should-listen-to-elon-musk-on-productivity
“Raising productivity is essential to improving pay and living standards, especially for those earning below the median income. Productivity is intimately connected to poverty alleviation as such productivity gains often lead to better paying jobs. Excessive government often stands in the way of such gains either through excessive regulation, taxation, and spending that can crowd out private sector activity….
“Regulations in Canada, the European Union, and even the U.S. have become increasingly burdensome.”
Continuing from above on the deformities of elite compassion…
This is a caution to both sides of our political/societal divides of the danger of validating and giving expression to the domination impulse and then using state power to enact policies/programs against the wishes of common people (against individual freedom and rights as per Classic Liberalism). Most egregious is to also add insult to injury by deluding ourselves that our actions are for the common good or “for the people”. The outcomes of actions reveal if they were good for people or not (Sowell’s the “test of facts”). And socialist approaches that centralize power and control in collectivist elites have never produced good outcomes for populations. Again, that “over a century” of evidence of outcomes as Niemietz details in his research on the 24 socialist experiments in “Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”. Most recently, resource-rich Venezuela reduced to poverty and chaos.
And yes, acknowledging the nuance and complexity of all things in life, we recognize the presence of government leaders with integrity who do exercise state power according to Classic liberal principles and laws. And that is validated when policies and programs are enacted by politicians based on the free choice of a majority of citizens who have assented, through democratic elections, to support such state programs. Those policies and programs can then be considered part of the “social contract”- i.e. for example, populations agreeing to some level of taxation to support programs that benefit all citizens or benefit less fortunate sectors of populations.
And a comment on how ‘leaders’ should view their role:
If you are someone who has achieved a position in the upper stratum of some society hierarchy or government hierarchy, embrace the safeguard of making yourself intensely aware of Classic Liberal principles, institutions, and systems of law that disperse power back to citizens, that keep your own powerholder/domination impulses in check and orient you to “service to citizens” below you. You know, pushing back against and breaking up this destructive “elites dominating commoners” thing.
We do this generally in our liberal democracies by limiting government size- i.e. limiting bureaucracies and programs that suck property assets away from citizens to be redistributed by elites and bureaucrats who believe they know better than commoners how to disperse money. Yes, taxation was a central issue in Magna Carta- elites not taking property from commoners without their free, uncoerced approval.
The protection of commoner’s freedom (that’s all us citizens as contrasted with elite powerholders) requires active checking and countering of the impulse of elites and bureaucrats to use the two most damaging mechanisms of intervention, domination, and control of commoners- i.e. regulations and taxation. We pushback against these two and then, in the opposite direction, we actively disperse power by limiting the size of government, by instituting mechanisms, laws, policies to decrease the freedom-destroying interventions of excessive taxation and regulation.
Note the interesting discussion of the optimal size of government as a proportion of GDP expenditure in William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”, a discourse on the four main institutions that make a society prosperous and successful (i.e. property rights, a system of law that protects private contracts, a rational approach to understanding life as contrasted with a religious approach, and communications and transportation infrastructure that enables free contact and free trade).
The ideas/ideals that incite and validate the unleashing of the domination impulse that then destroys human freedom with control over the lives of others. Wendell Krossa
I repeatedly appeal to the good reasoning of the military guy regarding the eruption of the ISIS crusade around 2014. He said that you can tamp down such violence with military force but if you don’t go after the inciting and validating ideas then such violence will continue to erupt and ruin societies. You can win battles but lose the longer historical war.
This is why I try to understand the human use of guiding ideas/ideals/beliefs across history, notably as they have incited and validated mass-harm/death movements, both religious and “secular/ideological”.
Good research on this has been presented, for example, in Arthur Herman’s “The Cave and The Light”, on how the ideas of Plato and Aristotle have continued to influence subsequent generations across history. We similarly see human behavior being shaped by beliefs in Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”. So also we see how ideas/beliefs influenced Marxism, Nazism, and are now shaping environmental alarmism (i.e. in the historical research of Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, and David Redles, among others).
Psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo further add to our understanding of how ideas/beliefs impact human personality and societies.
This leads me to probe for the most fundamental and influential of all ideas/beliefs in our narratives, the “mother of all” ideas/ideals, the meta or master beliefs, the archetypes that critically shape all others.
And that leads me right to the Christ of Paul for its exceptionally dominant position in Western consciousness and civilization as the overarching archetype of all archetypes- i.e. the ultimate model, ideal, pattern, standard, epitome, prime example, etc.
I repeat what psychologist Harold Ellens warned about- that the features of “the Master Story of Western civilization” have had a profound influence on us for two millennia, notably the feature of violence in God, i.e. that if your God uses violence to solve problems then so may you.
The point Ellens makes about God using violence to destroy enemies, as a model for human violence, so also I would make the same point regarding the impulse to dominate. If your God or Christ dominates, then so may you.
Quoting again from Lotufo’s book “Cruel God, Kind God”
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation, Thessalonians, etc.)….
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’…
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
The same point (how our images of the divine shape our behavior) may be made in relation to the impulse to dominate.
For two millennia the Christ of Paul has been the ultimate archetype of domination in Western civilization. Paul repeatedly, in his New Testament letters, refers to him as “Lord” and urges that everything and everyone must be made subject to and obedient to his Lord Christ. He adds threats of punishment and destruction to all who refuse to submit and obey his Lord, as for example in 2 Thessalonians.
Paul endlessly proclaims his Jesus Christ as Lord and calls for submission in human relationships as the flip side of affirming domination. He bases his call for submission on what he believes is the unquestionable divine pattern. See, for example, his call for domination/submission forms of human relating (again, based on a divine model) in his advice for women to submit to their husbands just as the husbands must submit to Christ as Lord.
Ephesians 5: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.”
Paul also calls for all members of his churches to submit to government authorities as appointed by God to dominate citizens (letter to the Romans and epistle of Peter). He even demands slaves to submit to their masters in Ephesians 6, based again on the ideal of submission to Christ as Lord. Another example of “human behavior based on a similar divine pattern”.
Other New Testament illustrations from Paul’s letters of affirming domination as the divine ideal:
Ephesians 1: “That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.”
Philippians:
“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
“And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control”.
1 Timothy 6:
“Keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time-God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever”.
James 4: “Submit to God.”
1 Peter:
“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority…
“Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand-with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him”.
John then takes the divine ideal of domination to ultimate reach in his “Revelation”:
“He shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are shattered”.
Notably, Revelation 19: “On his robe and on his thigh, he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” And so on.
The Christ of Paul is presented as the ultimate dominating reality ever imagined by human minds, one destined to rule the entire cosmos and all in it, for eternity. There is no more extreme expression of the highest idealization of the impulse to dominate than in Paul’s Christ.
And then, buried in this same book (the New Testament) that idealizes domination as a divine reality to be replicated by people, we find the “stunning new theology of Jesus” that overthrew the entire complex of bad ideas clustered around past views of deity- i.e. ideas of original paradise, human ruin of paradise, life subsequently declining toward something worse, toward apocalyptic ending, the divine demand for sacrifice/payment and for purging of evil from the world, and promise of restored paradise or millennial utopia.
Jesus most notably overthrew the cohering Center itself- i.e. the belief in a God that held the old complex of mythical themes together. Historical Jesus, in particular, rejected the idea of divine domination as a model for human domination. He stated bluntly that domination was pagan, primitive behavior. Inhumane.
Note Matthew 20:25-27:
“Jesus called (his friends) together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve”.
He stated that true greatness was to serve others, not lord over them. And if, as many believe, that Jesus represented God and the greatness and glory of God, then he also revealed in the above teaching that deity was not about domination but about service. Kind of a real big “Wow”, eh. God is not a dominating King, Lord, Ruler, as per primitive mythology, but exists down at the street level with common humanity, not overwhelming or overruling individual human freedom and rights, but, as authentic Love, God obviously respects human freedom and choice and equality.
Jesus would have had nothing to do with Paul’s dominating “Lord Christ”.
Insert:
This insight from Historical Jesus on the inhumanity of dominating others is so revolutionary and liberating that it deserves a bit more “yack attack” comment (my wife’s description of talking too much about something). Its about the ideals that people create to validate our worst inherited impulses.
Marinate your mind a bit more on this stunning revolutionary insight. That God has always been a street-level reality, a true commoner. God has never been a King, Lord, Ruler, the validating colleague of human society elites- i.e. originally shaman and priests setting themselves above fellow tribe members as the specially enlightened and anointed ones who claimed to know the secrets of the invisible realms, and hence would tell others about the nature of deity and what deity demanded of humanity.
That elite arrogance led eventually to the centralized temples of early states (the special houses of the priesthoods, set up on ziggurats to illustrate superiority in the community) where priests in those early collectives demanded that all crops and animals be brought for redistribution, and took the best cuts of meat and food for themselves, before redistributing the crumbs to the commoners.
Like that priest (urban myth?), who climbed a tower to get closer to God. He pleaded, “God where are you? And God replied, “I am down here among my people”.
“King Jesus”, “Lord Jesus”, and similar elitist titles, are the distorting fictions of elitist minds and thinking, elites seeking validation for the evil impulse to dominate others. And that impulse to dominate is never more egregious than when framed as some form of “compassion for commoners”.
God has always been a commoner God, a true believer that “where there is no freedom for everyone there is no true love”.
So yes, God is love, love in the sense of true respect for the freedom, equality, self-determination of every person. A true Classic Liberal, and democrat.
So be aware of this history-long human tradition of basing our behavior on similar divine beliefs that validate our behavior- i.e. that incite, guide, and affirm our behavior. Be very careful about the nature of the beliefs that you use to validate your behavior, the nature of the policies, institutions, and programs that you advocate and promote, noting their impacts on real people. If you hold and advocate anything that affirms domination over others, to their detriment (i.e. harming them with loss of freedom, choice, personal control), then you have no divine authority to validate such domination.
If you identify and present yourself publicly as compassionate, on “the good side against evil”, then be aware of the ideas that you employ as your ideals and note carefully the outcomes of the policies that you promote, especially their impacts on average people. Be fully aware of such because we have a long history now, for example, of the evidence of collectivist elitism and crusades as profoundly destructive of basic human freedoms and rights. It’s not pretty and certainly not human.
Once again, “Where there is no authentic freedom, there is no authentic love. These two are inseparable”, Bob Brinsmead.
Concluding notes:
Arthur Herman has traced the history of collectivism from Plato and his ideas, and how Plato’s vision has descended down through history and the impact on our lives and societies even today. Kristian Niemietz then shows with extensive evidence how collectivism has repeatedly ruined societies through the 24 socialist experiments of the last century or so. All of the collectivist crusades failed spectacularly yet socialism still remains highly popular despite the evidence of harm and failure.
It fails the “test of facts” (Thomas Sowell).
Note also Paul’s Christ myth that embodied the ideal of domination. There is no true compassion in the idealizing of that primitive and damaging feature. Recognizing this helps explain the psychopathology of such versions of compassion.
Post to a discussion group: Aaron Rodger’s ayahuasca experience and his struggle with no self-worth or acceptance…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl6w8tXbJaY&t=151s
The way that Aaron Rodgers expressed his feelings of unworthiness was so refreshing in its honesty of how we do not love ourselves, how we feel our imperfection intensely and even at times we feel ourselves to be frauds (“imposter syndrome”), so imperfect and unlovable. We are too harsh on ourselves, putting ourselves down. After listening to Rodgers, I read the chapter 8 of Ken Ring’s ‘Lessons From The Light” on the lesson of self-acceptance, that we are all loved intensely by God, loved beyond comprehension… and related to that, we are essentially good, every one of us…
These links have some comments on Ring’s book and chapter 8.
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc798940/m2/1/high_res_d/vol19-no2-115.pdf
Quotes from Ring:
“Of all the teachings in the world, the greatest is love. And of all the lessons of the NDE, none is greater than the importance, indeed the primacy of love. And what the NDE teaches about love is that everything is love, and is made of love, and comes from love.”
Peggy Holloday’s NDE: The Light told me everything was love… literally everything”.
Ring: “Since we are part of everything, we, too, are conceived in and by love. Love, therefore, is our true nature. And yet, why do so many of us fail to experience this love in our lives and even come to feel so unlovingly toward ourselves?… What keeps us so estranged from the essence of what we are?
“The Light does not judge. It loves.”
Holloday: “The Light loved everyone equally without any conditions… We didn’t have to believe or do certain things to be loved. We already were and are. No matter what.”
Another NDE: “(The Light) was warm, it was radiant, it was peaceful, it was accepting, it was forgiving, it was completely nonjudgmental, and it gave me a sense of total security the likes of which I had never known… It was perfection. It was total, unconditional love.”
Ring says that people having NDEs are loved infinitely by the Light… “They are ultimately okay as they are, and always have been… What a liberation from the tyranny of your own judgmental self… when the judgmental self is stripped away to reveal one’s underlying essential being.”
He notes that people having NDEs are delivered from the bondage of other’s opinions about them, free to be themselves.
“The absolute and unconditional love of the Light reveals the essence of the individual’s true self.”
This article is interesting for its account of the damage done to a generation of children and young people from climate alarmism. The authors are wrong that climate change itself is to be blamed for the distress that children and young people are suffering. It is the exaggeration of natural climate change to apocalyptic scale and the related panic-mongering that we are facing a “climate crisis” that is causing the mental and emotional distress in children and young people. It is the distorting narrative of climate alarmists and the related irresponsible generation of apocalyptic-scale hysteria that is mainly to blame for harming a generation of youth with “climate anxiety”.
I reject their conclusions that climate is “human caused” and hence we need to “take action”, as in Net Zero decarbonization that is destroying our societies and the future of children and young people. And while it was not the authors intention, this is a powerful rebuke to alarmists and their apocalyptic narratives that are ruining the lives of upcoming generations with unnecessary and unscientific apocalypticism.
The study correlates the distress of children/youth to “government’s failure to act” and it would have been more valuable if it had related the suffering caused to children over climate change as significantly a consequence of irresponsible alarmist panic-mongering over natural climate change.
The quotes I have posted below are selected to point generally to the problem of harmful anxiety in children and youth and how prominent such anxiety is among them, and not in any way to affirm the overall alarmist assumptions and arguments of this report.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext
“The Lancet, Planetary Health, Volume 5, Issue 12, E863-E873, December 2021
“Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey”, Caroline Hickman, Elizabeth Marks, Panu Pihkala, Susan Clayton, Eric Lewandowski, Elouise Mayall.
“Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally…
“We surveyed 10 000 children and young people (aged 16–25 years) in ten countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and the USA; 1000 participants per country)….
They present their findings:
“Respondents across all countries were worried about climate change (59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried). More than 50% reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. More than 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change (e.g. 75% said that they think the future is frightening and 83% said that they think people have failed to take care of the planet)….
And implications:
“Qualitative research has found that many children have pessimistic views of climate futures. Interviews conducted with children in various countries between 2016 and 2021 found intense forms of climate and eco-anxiety….
Their concluding comments:
“According to our study, children and young people in countries around the world report climate anxiety and other distressing emotions and thoughts about climate change that impact their daily lives…. A large proportion of children and young people around the world report emotional distress and a wide range of painful, complex emotions (sad, afraid, angry, powerless, helpless, guilty, ashamed, despair, hurt, grief, and depressed). Similarly, large numbers report experiencing some functional impact and have pessimistic beliefs about the future… These results reinforce findings of earlier empirical research and expand on previous findings by showing the extensive, global nature of this distress, as well as its impact on functioning.”
My point: Shame on adults for irresponsibly terrorizing and traumatizing children over natural climate change and climate-related events that have shown no increase in severity or frequency, and even decrease. As the best climate scientists on the planet have stated- “There is no climate crisis”. And hence, no need “for action” such as taxing carbon or decarbonizing our societies. We do best in adapting to whatever natural climate change throws at us, just as we have successfully done in the past.
And this on Boomers and next generation response, also noting the impact on young people from climate alarmism hysteria.
“Boomers have left the economy in tatters, driving youth to the right” Joel Kitkin (National Post), Aug. 16, 2024
“Like counterparts around the world, Canada’s youth are struggling, victims of a weak economy and a rising cost of living crisis. Whereas boomers rode an unprecedented wave of prosperity and higher living standards, younger Canadians, particularly those under 30 , are now more pessimistic about the future than older generations…
“Young people are further disheartened by the often-hysterical predictions of climate disaster. The majority of young people in forty countries, according to a Lancet study , see the planet as doomed by climate change. A recent study of Canadian college students found 80 per cent claiming it effects their mental health, and half say they feel this every day.”
Deregulation advocacy from the best at it
Just before the 1 hour and 40 minute mark in the video (link below), Elon Musk makes excellent points on the critical need for processes/mechanisms to deregulate our state agencies and overall societies because rules and regulations just build up and choke business and life, and everything becomes illegal and nothing can get done because there is the constant buildup of regulations and laws.
He argues for more efficiency, something he has accomplished successfully in his businesses, cutting excessive red-tape, streamlining processes. Give the man this job in government- to deregulate government and life. Constructing endless rules and regulations is the busybody thing of moralizing bureaucrats and elites, to intervene, meddle in, and try to control others with laws and regulations, to coerce people to live according to their views. Sure, some basic regulations embody wisdom from past experience and help present generations to avoid varied dangers. But then the process of accreting endless regulatory barnacles goes way beyond common sense. As Musk says, related to medical discoveries, things that could be approved and passed in months, take years or never get done.
Yes, “harp” on Elon (his term for his comments).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzWjFzRMQNA
Musk says that he is not right wing, after all he supported Obama, he makes electric cars, and he has been a moderate leftist all his life. But he sees the danger in Biden/Harris taking the country far left and how dangerous that is. He notes that Kamala Harris’s Dad is a Marxist economist and that is how she was brought up. He believes that America is in danger and he believes Trump is resisting that leftist threat, so he supports him. He calls on fellow moderate leftists to support Trump.
As he says- Most Americans want safe and clean cities, secure borders, sensible government spending, respect in the judicial system, stop the lawfare against political opponents, deregulation, and exciting projects for a hopeful future. He says he is not against the oil and gas industry because they keep civilization going now. They should not be vilified. He says these are not right-wing positions but just common sense. Musk recounts the gang of thugs who beat up a police officer in New York and were immediately let out, given free tickets to California, and that was the law in New York. Typical of Democratic progressive run cities.
He makes a good point, saying, “I am liberal, and yes we want to have empathy for the criminals but we must also have empathy for victims or it is ‘shallow empathy’”. And if you don’t incarcerate the violent person, they are going to hurt others. As he says, there is lack of empathy for victims and too much for criminals. So, let’s have “deep empathy” for all, not shallow empathy just for criminals.
I would add the psychopathology of left-wing compassion here that frames criminals as “oppressed” so all get unlimited sympathy, while victims belong to the oppressor class so there is no sympathy for them as “evil”. The mindless tribal dualism that is now common to left-wing thinking.
And if you believe Harris’s smear that this Musk/Trump interview was just “self-obsessed rich guys” then listen at the 2-hour mark (around there) as Trump explains why he ran again…. There is nothing of “self-obsessed” in that motivation.
Below are some response posts to the interview…
Note for example this by “user-iv6pp6iy8j”
“I used to be a Marxist. I had joined an activist group in Boston at the Marxist Library in Cambridge. I protested Trump’s presidency in 2016. I went to the women’s march with a sign that I painted a uterus on it. I had a framed print of Batman punching Trump in the face on my living room wall. I even had reusable pads with his face on them. I was as liberal as they come, I truly hated him. I woke up after COVID hit, I felt embarrassed that I was so easily brainwashed and emotionally controlled. I ended up voting for Trump in 2020 and I’m going to vote for him again this election… and for the record, I love his tweets.”
And this from “martanewlife9674”
“Former liberal here – I had a rude awakening in 2020-21. I’ll be voting for Trump!”
A true journalist warning of the dangerous authoritarianism across the Western world, this from the Free Press editors
“Our Friend Douglas Murray: We know that nothing will stop our columnist from truth-telling. The more they try to intimidate him, the more they prove him right”, the Editors, Aug. 12, 2024
https://www.thefp.com/p/our-friend-douglas-murray
Who’s your “threat to democracy”? Ah, projection…. Again and again and again….
“When the left comes for Elon Musk, they come for all of us”, Adam Pankratz (National Post), Aug., 2024
“Thierry Breton, Internal Market Commissioner for the European Union. In a letter sent and published on X, Breton publicly threatened Musk with repercussions for, at that time, his future hosting of Trump and the content which may end up being contained in said interview….
“It is revelatory once again of the disturbing willingness of too many left leaning governments to make use of state tools to limit freedom, while at the same time caterwauling about the dangers of the far-right….
“In the United States, the endless cries about Trump turning the United States into a “far-right” dictatorship are similarly shrill. But, as Andrew Sullivan noted in a interview with UnHerd entitled “What I got wrong about Trump,” his worst fears of what Trump would do when elected in 2016 never materialized. This is of course not to say that Sullivan supports Trump; he clearly does not and calls him “deranged” in the interview. But upon taking a step back, he realized he had been caught up in the somewhat hysterical thinking of the time. And indeed, during Trump’s time in office, many of the worst and most corrosive effects on American life came from the cancelling left.
“As Thierry Breton most recently demonstrated, there is a very unhealthy desire for control in governments and bureaucracies.”
Few things illustrate the insanity of hysteria over something good than the media panic-mongering over melting ice/glaciers. Imagine, misunderstanding and misrepresenting of the beneficial outcomes of a slight warming (i.e. melting ice) in a world where, still, every year 10 times more people die from cold than die from warmth (Lancet study, 2015). But now here in the article below we have similar handwringing doomsterism over the loss of deserts, another beneficial outcome of warming. Ah, the power of an alarmist narrative to blind the eco-cultic mind.
Good to remember that for most of the history of life (the Phanerozoic of the last 500-plus million years) there has been no ice on Earth and temperatures were on average 3-6 degrees C warmer. With CO2 in the multiple thousands of ppm. It was a lush green world.
“Global Greening Becomes so Obvious That Climate Alarmists Start Arguing We Need to “Save the Deserts”!” Chris Morrison (Daily Sceptic), July 21, 2024
“The world is ‘greening’ at an astonishing and rapidly growing rate and deserts are shrinking almost everywhere you look. All due, it seems, to a natural rise in carbon ‘plant food’ dioxide, not forgetting the small annual 4% portion contributed by humans burning hydrocarbons…. A recent article in Yale Environment 360 states that rather than shrivelling and dying, vegetation is growing faster and deserts are retreating.
“In fact, many scientists now think that this process will continue to accelerate into the future. According to the Yale article, CO2 is “fast-tracking” photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilizes vegetation growth in even some of the driest places, observes Yale….
“Perhaps it is not surprising that the Yale article tries to rain a little on the greening parade with a dose of climate gloom. Greening created by agricultural irrigation of fields can “obliterate arid-land ecosystems”. But this surely is human-caused and nothing to do with a changing climate. “Save the deserts” may not be a popular environmental message, “but arid eco-systems matter”, continues Yale. Of course, there will be many who point out that if a few scorpions have to up sticks to make way for the better nutrition of millions of African children, this is a small price to pay…
“None of these findings should be a great surprise. CO2 levels have been much higher in the past going back 600 million years. Plants thrive at levels three times higher than current atmospheric CO2 and the near denudation amounts of the last few million years. During the last glacial period up to around 12,000 years ago, levels of atmospheric CO2 dropped to such dangerously low levels that plant – and human – life was severely threated. Even with the small recovery we have seen in the recent past, plants grow larger and utilise existing water resources much more efficiently. This recovery of CO2 levels in the atmosphere holds out hope for higher food resources in many parts of the world that suffer from periodic famines.”
Freedom, equality, basic human rights in Canada? Not so much now. A Black warning
“The Charter is dead- Jordan Peterson’s forced re-education proves it”, Conrad Black (National Post), Aug.17, 2024
Quotes:
“The refusal of the Supreme Court of Canada to hear the appeal of Jordan Peterson against the outrageous aggregation of injustices that have been inflicted upon him by academic and professional authorities and the lower courts neatly completes the self-exposure of the bankruptcy of our system of protection of civil rights — everyone’s civil rights….
Black notes that Peterson “was accused of violating the group rights of militant gender activists at the University of Toronto” because he refused their demands to address them with their gender terms as that would violate his constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression.
“The administration of the university wavered and waffled, declined to support the professor, and warned him he risked facing the rigours of a Human Rights inquisition….
“Following that precedent, the College of Psychologists of Ontario that is the governing body of licensed psychologists in Ontario, responded to receiving a handful of complaints about utterances expressed by Peterson on the Internet…
Black says that the governing body of the psychological profession put “the nonsensical complaints of a miniscule number of people… ahead of (Peterson’s) same constitutionally entrenched but in fact worthless and meaningless right of self-expression…
“This fact alone indicates how deficient Canada has become in the protection of the rights of its citizens… The Charter is obviously now inoperative, and no one in this country should be under the slightest illusion that their rights of self-expression will be defended against any collective faddish or fringe opinion…
“In the case of Jordan Peterson, his freedom of expression counts for nothing in the face of churlish and self-righteous students or even a few frequenters of the Internet…
“If we do not act now on our rights and duties as citizens… we will cease to be a functioning democracy at approximately the same speed as our decline in comparative prosperity. More than four centuries of Canadians have believed that our destiny was more distinguished than this. The time is coming soon when we must prove that they were right.”
“We are the most propagandized people in the world and we don’t know it”, leftist Jimmy Dore. “I no longer believe anything media or government tell us,” Dr. Drew Pinsky.
“Every Leading Large Language Model Leans Left Politically”, Ross Pomeroy (RealClearScience), Aug. 17, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/17/every-leading-large-language-model-leans-left-politically/
“Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrating into everyday life – as chatbots, digital assistants, and internet search guides, for example. These artificial intelligence (AI) systems – which consume large amounts of text data to learn associations – can create all sorts of written material when prompted and can ably converse with users. LLMs’ growing power and omnipresence mean that they exert increasing influence on society and culture….
“AI researcher David Rozado of Otago Polytechnic and Heterodox Academy administered 11 different political orientation tests to 24 of the leading LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT 3.5, GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Twitter’s Grok. He found that they invariably lean slightly left politically.
““The homogeneity of test results across LLMs developed by a wide variety of organizations is noteworthy,” Rozado commented.””
Disclaimer, qualifier: Parsing the “Liberal/conservative, collectivist/individualist, etc.…” classifications as a jumping off stage for other points. What am I? Wendell Krossa
I am not conservative (spent a few years in my youth caught up in my family’s Christian conservatism). I am fiercely independent and Classic Liberal, an advocate for liberal democracy. But I get, as varied former liberals/Democrats (now more “independent”) have noted, that many of their liberal/Democratic colleagues have become “highly illiberal” as in pro-war, pro-censorship of opponents, pro-criminalization of opponents, anti-free speech (extending “hate speech” categories through “concept creep” to include the speech of opponents), and pro-collectivism/socialism, etc. While conservatives, to the contrary and in general, have significantly taken up defense of Classic Liberal principles and policies (in reaction to the shift of liberals/Democrats to far-left collectivism?).
Significant numbers of US liberals/Democrats have shifted toward far-left Woke DEI-Progressivism that fronts for a resurging Marxism/collectivism with its simple-minded tribal dualism that divides all humanity into two opposing groups of “victims/victimizers, oppressed/oppressors”. The traditional Marxist group identity markers still apply- i.e. “wealthy property owners as evil, and less successful workers and peasants as virtuous victims under the wealthy”. These identity markers are still present in far-left group categorization or classification.
But in addition, there are new markers for grouping people that are racial and this stems from the contemporary obsessive racialization of everything as in “Woke Racism” (John McWhorter) and its new racial segregation policies. You belong to the virtuous oppressed if you are brown or black. And you belong to the oppressors if you are white, Asian, or Jew. No matter your individual character, beliefs, and behavior as per Martin Luther King’s vision of a colorblind society.
Former liberals/Democrats, who have shifted to now more independent status (i.e. Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Joe Rogan, etc.), have noted that Classic Liberalism is now being defended and promoted more by conservatives in a “great switcheroo” (Glen Greenwald’s term?) that emerged publicly over the last decade or so. This was paired at the same time with the rejection of Classic liberal principles and institutions by former liberals/Democrats, notably in the US situation.
I find that sources like the National Post (leaning conservative) generally do a good job presenting Classic Liberal principles, institutions, and systems of laws, as do many other conservative forums. Advocating for the freedom and rights of all individuals, for equality in meritocracy as contrasted with the “equity of outcomes” advocated by Woke Progressivism that is governed by far-left DEI ideas and principles.
DEI takes up the French Revolution’s push for states to include equal outcomes as essential to government obligation and function, contrary to the US revolution that protected equal opportunity for all citizens. See, for example, former Socialist Joshua Muravchik’s history of this in “Heaven On Earth”.
As a life-long “old school liberal” (since the mid-70s), I eventually got over my former acquiescence to my side’s smearing of conservatives as right wing or “far-right” dangerous nutcases, similar to contemporary smearing of “populism” as “far-right extremism”, etc. Long ago, I set aside the tribal stereotyping/demonizing of opponents and started to listen to conservatives and found a more nuanced, complex, and diverse set of views among them than that caricatured by fellow liberals/Democrats. And yes, the caution against extremist elements in the mix applies to the right just as it applies to the left also.
But enough interjections. To return to my point above- I have long believed that if you are going to campaign for office to run a large economy where millions of people need jobs and the creation of wealth essential to improve their lives, then it is critical that you have experience in actually running a business. And if you have no business experience, then it is essential that you have a good grasp of Classic Liberal ideas, principles, institutions, systems of law, and practises that focus on maintaining the freedom of all individuals and protect their personal property rights/contract rights.
That protection and promotion of individual freedom and rights then unleashes human motivation to improve life. It unleashes and protects individual human ingenuity to create goods and services that improve life, and that extends beyond the individual creator to many others also. And that is how economies and entire populations are lifted to higher levels of prosperity and well-being. Additionally, the creation of wealth in general enables societies to better care for the environment, among other good outcomes.
This is evident from the past few centuries as billions have been lifted out of poverty (this trend continues) and the wealthiest societies are then enabled to take the best care of their environments. The proof is presented, for example, in “Ecological Kuznets Curve” research, now known as “Environmental Transition” research (i.e. see, among others, Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”).
This post to a discussion group (Wendell Krossa):
“My feelings on over-regulation and excessive taxation by business-ignorant politicians relates to Democrat George McGovern’s experience quoted in Tuccille’s article below. Too many people campaigning for political positions have no experience of actually running a business and will inevitably only make a mess of things as they are guided too often by leftist ideas/ideals. They are well-intentioned people (i.e. help the poor, coercively tax and then redistribute other’s money), but with such collectivist ideals they have repeatedly mucked up major economies, entirely. Read all about it, for example, in “Socialism: The failed idea that never dies” by Kristian Niemietz. Well-intentioned people are often the most dangerous people, causing immense suffering for all, including to those they claim to help (i.e. the “psychopathology of left-wing compassion”).
“Harris’s Deep State Democrats are oblivious to harms of over-regulation”, J.D. Tuccille (National Post), Aug. 18,2024.
Quotes:
“The United States… has one major party that generally venerates government and elevates it over other sectors of society, and another more prone to (often situational) skepticism of the coercive state and of those who spend their lives doing its work….
“Pew Research in a recent survey : “Democrats and Democratic leaners hold consistently favourable views of all 16 agencies asked about. Republicans and GOP leaners express more unfavourable than favourable views for 11 of the 16 agencies.”
“polling by Gallup last fall found that 78 per cent of Republicans believe government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses… 75 per cent of Democrats believe government should do more…
“The contrast between the two parties can be seen in stark terms in the resumes of the two presidential and vice-presidential tickets.”
Tuccille notes that Trump and Vance both have private sector/business experience in producing wealth and job creation and how this is “mugged away (taxation is theft by another name) to fund all other sectors”. But Harris and Walz have no business experience.
Tuccille continues: “There must be some value to working on the receiving end of the various regulations and taxes government officials foist on society rather than spending one’s career brainstorming more rules without ever suffering the consequences.”
He recounts the experience of former US Senator and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern who later wrote a column about the challenges that he faced when investing in business after his work in government.
McGovern said, “In retrospect, I … wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day,” he wrote. He bemoaned “federal, state and local rules” passed with seemingly good intentions but little thought to the burdens and costs they imposed.
“The lack of private sector stints in the career timelines of Harris and Walz means that, like pre-hotel McGovern, they’ve never had to worry about what it’s like to suffer the policies of a large and intrusive government….”
Tuccille concludes: “Not only does power corrupt, but it does so quickly.” And he warns that both parties are “shifting in more authoritarian directions. But one of these parties will prevail, and it will carry along its attitudes towards government and the private sector.”
Added notes:
I would add here the experience of the leader of the Communist party in Mitterrand’s 1980 coalition of socialists and communists that won the French election back then. They, as all collectivists do, began to nationalize sectors of the French economy (taking control of the means of production- “for the people”). And, as with all such collectivist experiments and approaches, that resulted in the devastation of the French economy within a year. They had the sense to pull back, realizing the damage they were causing.
Then, amazingly, the leader of the Communist faction in Mitterrand’s coalition (further to the left) admitted, “We must respect business as the creator of wealth in a society”. Sheesh, eh. Yeah, if you want the wealth creation, that you can then tax and redistribute to fund all your programs, then leave business alone to do what it does best- create wealth for all.
Try to understand and recognize that protecting the freedom and rights of individuals unleashes human creativity to improve life. That is up to individual citizens who know how to create wealth and jobs. Government elites and bureaucrats are not responsible for wealth and job creation and have a solid historical record of hindering such individual creativity and clogging up societies with their endlessly multiplying rules/regulations and excessive taxation to redistribute.
Another: In a poke at “bothsideism” Tuccille notes…
“America’s bipartisan slide into authoritarianism: Both sides feed off each other. By attributing evil characteristics and motives to their enemies, partisans justify ever-hardening positions”, J. D. Tuccille (National Post), Feb. 11, 2024
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/americas-bipartisan-slide-into-authoritarianism
On the episode of Greg Gutfeld in the link below (for some reason access is now blocked), they play a video that shows roving groups of police during the Covid lockdowns in Minneapolis, Minnesota under Tim Walz, the new VP candidate for Democrats. That is a preview illustrating what happens when you do not constrain human impulses with Classic liberal institutions and systems of law that protect citizens from such state abuse. Without those restraints you give people room to unleash the ugliest of their impulses to dominate and abuse others. We saw these little local dictators come out all across societies during Covid hysteria.
As the police supervisor in the video clip shouts to his officers with paint ball rifles- “Hit them”. Just because some residents were standing on their porch during the Covid insanity. One of the women was hit in the lower abdomen and complained of the pain. It was just like the roving gangs in the apocalyptic Purge movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZFCJZpE0Mg
Around the 21-minute mark they play the video of rioting in Minneapolis during Covid. The rioters were allowed to burn and destroy businesses. Later, they show a large group of cops, gang-like, walking down the center of a street through a residential neighborhood. The cops noticed someone standing well off the street on their porch after the 8 pm curfew. On their supervisor’s order, the cops shot at the residents with paint balls that were painful, forcing the loitering citizens inside. This illustrates exactly Michael Shellenberger’s article recently on these authoritarians who let violent criminals go free but then target innocent citizens for silly infractions- “anarcho-tyranny”.
At the 23-minute mark of the video, libertarian Kat Timpf says regarding the snitch line that Walz set up- “I am still not over that”. Meaning that she was really stunned, pissed, and terrified that the government made us all stay inside, even if relatives died and our businesses were shut down. She says that there has been no accountability for that. “How are we not terrified they won’t do it again?”, she asks.
She says, regarding the cops shooting paint balls to drive residents off their porches- “If we had heard of that, or saw that before Covid, we would think that was a sick joke”. But it’s not a joke. It actually happened. “It’s insane”, she adds.
Other guests note that the video of cops out shooting paint balls at citizens was like a scene from the apocalyptic movies- “Purge”, where roving gangs terrorize citizens, forcing them to hide. Another guest, a resident of Minnesota, adds that she interviewed a woman who spent 3 months in jail for just trying to keep her business open. She had a food store and was harassed and charged until forced to shut down. At the same time, Walz let strip clubs and other “essential” businesses continue operating. Panel regular Tyrus says that Minnesota under Walz is a preview of America under him.
This from Michael Shellenberger
“The Transition To Totalitarianism Is Accelerating: X closes Brazil office fearing arrests, Britain imprisons individuals for social media posts, and US censors are re-grouping”, Michael Shellenberger, Aug. 17, 2024
https://www.public.news/p/the-transition-to-totalitarianism
“Around the world, the crackdown on free speech is accelerating… the architects of the Censorship Industrial Complex are raising money for Kamala Harris in hopes of re-imposing government censorship on social media platforms after she wins…
“These events are connected. Starmer, Harris, and Lula have all embraced the first and most important step toward totalitarianism, which is censorship…
“I don’t think the labels of communist or fascist accurately describe the systems that Starmer, Harris, and Lula are creating. In some ways, those three leaders are drawing upon elements of both totalitarian systems…
Shellenberger notes that mainstream media are relentlessly attacking Elon Musk as “a threat to democracy” because he allows freedom of speech on X. Shellenberger, and others, regularly trace the relationships between the intelligence agencies, their propaganda arms in mainstream media, and the elites of cooperating countries that are trying to criminalize and silence courage dissenters against their totalitarianism.
“Reporting by Public and others has uncovered collaboration between intelligence agencies in all three nations.
“Media disinformation that populism poses a threat to democracy has increased the public’s support for online censorship….
“This is what the global transition to totalitarianism looks like. Big businesses, left-wing governments, and the legacy news media have made clear that they cannot tolerate free speech online. They grew accustomed to controlling public opinion first through the legacy media and then through Facebook, Google, and Twitter.”
Shellenberger concludes that “the desire for total control is the central characteristic of the totalitarianism that is presently emerging from elites at the corporate and political levels around the world.
“In addition to pushing censorship, these leaders and global elites are seeking to overturn liberal democracies and impose a radically different system of illiberal rule in the Western world. Rather than meritocracy and equal justice for all, elites are seeking to impose a Woke racialist hierarchy that gives preferential treatment to some groups and prejudicial treatment to other groups supposedly based on historic oppression.”
Taibbi and Kirn discuss America This Week:
“America This Week, August 16, 2024: “Press Renounces Itself For the Party: News media declares: candidates don’t need to answer our questions. Plus, “Eve’s Diary,” by Mark Twain”, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn.
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-august-cad
This presents more commentary on media propagandizing us, politics, and general social trends from two of the best who, at times, communicate at poetical levels.
This episode is good on the new leftist propaganda technique of “weird-checking”, where people (independent spirits, dissenters) are framed as being “weird”, and the shaming that pushes people back into collectives. “Weird” shaming plays on the impulse to belong, to not be the outsider. “How can I feel more comfortable in the herd?” Shaming into conformity and consensus.
Kirn: “This is a kind of McCarthyism really that is behavioral rather than political.”
“So, conformity’s back, joyous conformity if possible, and brought to you by the people who criticized endlessly when I was growing up, in countless books, novels, and sociological treatises, the dire, dreadful, dull conformity of the 1950s. But they’ve turned it on its head, and now not being weird is cool supposedly. The opposite of cool is cool.”
Taibbi and Kirn regularly expose the absolute failure of today’s media to be independent, to be the 4th Estate that speaks truth to power. The corruption of the news media has been complete and profound- “The press has a strange job now, which is to agree in all instances with power. It has never been less oppositional.”
They state that the smear of “weird” is the new term to enforce conformity (added to “racist, Nazi, fascist, Russian disinformation agent, far-right, etc.”). “The ‘threat to our democracy’ rap against Trump, seems to have largely evaporated and now what he threatens is a reign of weirdness”.
They say that the new “weird-checking” propaganda tool is not spontaneous or organic as presented. It has roots in previous planning and social research.
Here’s a taste of their discussion:
“Walter Kirn: The one thing I’ll say is that we remember that Tim Walz introduced this concept on the campaign trail. He started the, “JD Vance and Trump are weird,” thing. And then this article comes out just a couple of days ago revealing that weird checking is a thing. And I couldn’t help but wonder if Walz was the point man for the introduction of this tool. His seemingly offhand comment, not offhand at all, but actually cooked up at the Center for an Informed Public. And it’s amazing over the last few years how often you’ll see a phenomena in society that you think is organic or just something that spontaneously arose and then you find out no, there are papers that were written on it at some think tank or research institute.
“Matt Taibbi: Like three years ago or something like that, they’ve been working on it in a lab ever since. That is scary and I think that’s what this campaign is going to come down to. The techniques on one side clearly were very well-thought-out. They’re going on in places that have teams of people who are looking at all kinds of data and are testing constantly. And then on the other side, what does the, “Come on,” look like? There was a pretty funny example this week of what sales looks like in the Trump world.
They also cover the Stephen Colbert thing that exposed the closed bubble that he is enclosed within, that renders him out of touch with common people:
“Kirn: “So it’s always startling to see opinion in the wild and I think it is threatening probably to the powers that be. But in this instance, it’s unclear to me what happened. Colbert said, “Well, CNN is objective, but we know CNN is objective,” and he said it very sincerely. He said it earnestly. Obviously, he wasn’t prepared for what happened, that’s clear, but the audience thought he was … They either went, “That’s ridiculous” and laughed or they thought he was joking and laughed. Because having been on these late-night shows, the audience sees itself as part of the show and wants to please, wants to please the host. And I think the audience might’ve thought they were giving Colbert some love for dry humor and then they found out they’d erred. He found out he’d misread things.
“The original Colbert show was specifically a parody of exactly what he is right now.”
This from Bob Brinsmead on how Hellenism shaped the Christ myth of Paul, taking the focus off the teachings of the man to re-orient focus to the new Greek God- Christ- that Paul created out of the man. This illustrates why I consider Brinsmead one of the finest theological minds on the planet.
“It meant taking the focus away from the teachings of the messenger and putting all the focus on to the person of the messenger”, Bob Brinsmead.
Prelude: The Hellenist faction of the Jesus movement forged an amazing myth to unite Jew and Greek that was more appealing to the Greek than the Jew. In the end the myth became the religion of the Greco-Roman world- Christianity.
The main body of Bob’s essay:
I am currently writing (based on the research of scholars) how the Jesus movement developed post-Easter by forming two groups. The first group were the original Aramaic-speaking Jews (James, the apostles, etc.) in the Jerusalem church. These were known as the Hebrews – quite conservative Jews. The other group were the Jewish Hellenists or Greek-speaking Jewish converts. (See Acts 6:1) It is a fascinating history.
There was friction between the two groups from the start. For a background on this, one needs to understand the impact of Hellenism in Jewish history. The Hellenist Jews were influenced by Greek language, philosophy, culture and religion. This was a force within Judaism for two to three hundred years just as there was a Persian influence on Judaism before that- bringing Aramaic and Zoroastrian ideas into Judaism to create the astonishing era of Jewish apocalyptic (books of Daniel, Enoch, Maccabees, etc.).
So with Hellenism there were even greater influences with Greek philosophy, Greek culture, Greek ideas, all impacting within Judaism. The conservative Jews, including the conservative Jerusalem church or synagogue of the Nazarenes, were not comfortable with the Hellenists and were not comfortable with the more radical evangelism of Stephen the Hellenist. And so the Jerusalem group kept their distance from Stephen, kept clear of the persecution which followed, and were not personally impacted by the persecution crusade of Saul of Tarsus which was directed at the Hellenists to whom he was finally reconciled. But in one respect Paul was already a Hellenist by birth, education and background as well as a Pharisee- a conflicted kind of person in that respect.
Oh yes, with Hellenism came the Septuagint version of the OT, which Paul used exclusively. Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenist Jewish philosopher, the most prominent Jewish writer in Paul’s age. The Hellenist converts of the Jesus movement fled to Antioch to escape persecution, and there acquired the label of Christians because of their distinctive and original focus on the beginnings of a Christology, which was all Greek (excuse the pun) to James and Co. at Jerusalem. The bottom line is that Antioch and not Jerusalem was the cradle of the Christian Church. Antioch only managed to overtake or hijack the Jesus movement that began in Jerusalem under the leadership of James after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans which ended the dominant role of the Jerusalem church in 70 CE.
The Christ movement which began at Antioch never really blossomed until after the death of both James and Paul in the 60’s. When they both died around the same time, James was a towering figure in the Jesus movement and Paul was almost down and out. “All in Asia have deserted me…”, he wailed just before his death. The truth is that Paul and James, or Jerusalem and Antioch, really did put on a very serious Punch and Judy show- and the author of the book of Acts and others tried to write this conflict out of the story despite leaving traces of blood all over the floor, so to speak.
What I have done in my journey since I wrote my three-part farewell to Adventism 40-plus years ago (i.e. 1844 Re-examined, Judged by the Gospel, Sabbatarianism Re-examined) is to do what I did in respect to Adventism. I delved into the early history of how the 1844 sausage was made from 1833 to 1857, or from William Miller to James White, ending with his “Investigative Judgment” and “Sabbatarian-Mark of the Beast” eschatology. When I understood every step of how this Adventist sausage was made, I did not want to eat it anymore. I finally got to do this same process with Christology. I have looked into the whole process of how the sausage was made over a period of 400 years, from Antioch to Chalcedon in 451 CE, seeing how, with a certain amount of Greek or Hellenist influence, the theologians of the church built the edifice, how each Creed developed from the Apostles Creed, to the Nicene Creed and then on to the anti- Arian Creed of Athanasius plus Chalcedon in 451 CE.
At Nicene, with the Emperor Constantine presiding, (that was even before the edifice was complete), the church was ready to support the Emperor’s edict to kill anyone who questioned a single point of the Nicene Creed. The faith worth dying for had become the faith worth killing for, in many centuries to come.
When one sees how the sausage is made, one loses an appetite for it.
What am I left with? I am left with what the apostolic church at Jerusalem was left with- no Christology at all, no doctrine of a blood atonement, no virgin birth, no divinity of Jesus… just his teachings! In the words of Burton Mack, it is neither possible or even necessary to know anything very much about the person called Jesus except what he taught. He was, on this account, a great Messenger from God because, like any good messenger, he did not make himself the message or centre of attention. But he did have a new doctrine of God and what it meant to live in his kingdom in the here and now. He taught that God is not in some other place more than the Abba Father is in this place, and that the Father will not be more present in some future apocalyptic time more than the Father is present in this present time.
There is no Apocalyptic event to look for. There is no sacrifice needed to bring to the compassionate Father (Jesus died as a prophet, not as a sacrifice). The messenger did not teach people to put their faith in him or to laud him. There is no “good master” stuff or Lord, Lord stuff with this messenger of the Father. God forbid. There is no worshiping the messenger who simply wanted people to do what he said instead of making some big deal out of who he was supposed to be. That pissed him off big time. No good ambassador will do otherwise.
Human beings, however, can become too smart by half. But at least the Hellenists were smart enough to see that if you wanted to conquer the Greco-Roman world with a new religion, you would have to have something more exciting than the wisdom sayings of a Jew about whom so little was known. There was as much antisemitism then as now. It would be far easier to turn this Jewish prophet into a Gentile god with all the bells and whistles (titles and status) of a Greek god. And at least one born of a woman whom you could say was impregnated after the manner of any Greek legend.
So it was that the Hellenists at Antioch reached out to speculate on something that seemed more potent than the mere teachings of Jesus and to give him a title, a status and a CV of enough impressive Greek-like miracles to transcend a mere Jewish messiah. And they gave him the more illustrious Greek word “Christ” as a title. This meant taking one small step for the Hellenists at Antioch but one giant step for human history. It meant taking the focus away from the teachings of the messenger and putting all the focus on to the person of the messenger. It was and is simply a human tendency to do that. Mack dares to call this as forming “the cult of Christ”.
The so-called Hebrews in the apostolic church in Jerusalem led by James, the brother of Jesus, never had a Christology and never went down that 400-year road of developing one. The question is now starting to be asked all over the Christian world, whether this 400-year road of developing a Christology has turned out to be a 2,000-year detour away from the real vision of Jesus. This cloud has a very bright side. In our present global village, it has become embarrassing to suggest to all and sundry that our Christ is bigger and better than any of your avatars. And it is beginning to dawn on Christians that the historical Jesus would not have liked any of this chest-thumping- “I am the greatest” antics.
After all, he did utter some very contrary and revolutionary things about what greatness really means. And on the other hand, we are left with a Jesus who was never a Christian anyway but whose words can reach the heart of people from any religious background and become an enormous human uniting force that is not driven by any institutional church.