Quick note to John Hanks Look closer.

Ludditism about the computer is anachronistic by about 20 years.  It is now part of the human anatomy.  I used to have a department head who was computer resistant.  He had to retire, then the department entered the 21st century.

MarthaA Good morning here too.  I posted a reply to your double post here over at the Inside Story Forum.  I am involved in too many forums to keep things straight.  My apologies.  I’ll copy what I wrote there here, then all will be right with Saturn.

...I have downloaded a few articles by and about Alvin W. Gouldner.  As a sociologist I find his thinking interesting enough that I will pursue trying to understand it.  I actually have about 25 articles by and about him downloadable through my institution of higher education.  I read the encyclopedic entry but it was much too abbreviated.  So I went looking at the University Library. And a treasure trove was provided.  So along with the animated interest in Sisyphus et al, my reading life is being kept very busy.  Besides making comments on the way too many TD forums.  Gad I get myself into such trouble.  Were that I could keep my mouth (via my computer keyboard fingers) shut!  Guess I’m not able, it is a family teaching.

Just know that even if it is not soon, I will get around to those provocative questons.  You do already know a bunch about how I feel about socialism and capitalism, democracy and tyranny.  Democrats vs autocrats vs theocrats.  So all that Gouldner will do is to sharpen those views, I hope.

MarthaA – I read your double post and I am interested in thinking about what you said and whether or not I agree.  It will take me some time to research it because I really always take my time on topics of such gravity.  Gravity is my enemy.  It weights me down.  As I’ve said, my bumper sticker is Levity…..you all know it.  But I will link to the Gouldner article in the encyclopedia.  It might take me some time to assimilate it.

I was impressed at the well-presented question.  It was not unexpected as you are really an articulate thinker/writer.  Some quirks get in the way, but you manage to rise above them when it is favorable to do so.

John Hanks, only if it were true that the home, okay middle class home, is where critical thinking is taught by way of life experiences.  I completely disagree.  Opinions are developed in the home.  Often opinions not easily shed throughout one’s life, and if one has an epiphany and find truth to any degree they find it excruciating to get rid of miserable family teachings.  That is why you have so many people seeking psychological help, or joining cults, Buddhism, fleeing their middle class homes to go to India and drown in the Ganges of Worst Regrets.

You do have a point about schools subject to the tyranny of bureaucracy.  It is a struggle for intelligent teachers to overcome.  It is done, but it is also a function of the kind of society in which individuals have not learned to think for themselves, then critically.  Unfortunately, the United States could learn much from the Europeans in their philosophical views of life. What always jolts me though, is that there are more Europeans wanting to immigrate to America than the reverse.  Regardless of all its sociological warts, America is the land of milk and honey.  Freedoms that most foreigners only dream of.  Thank you for these moments of reflection on a topic near and dear to my heart.

Shenonymous,

Forgive me, my post could have been worded differently, no personal inflection was intended.  My post is not about Christianity; apparently you think Christian thought is limited; sublimate and the babble problem will pass. Get that snake back around your eagle’s neck as a friend and you will get your perspective back to its customary heights.

Since you think, what you think is important to me.  Critical thinking and the Culture of Critical Discourse are quite different, which the excerpt in my preceding post from “The Future of Intellectuals and The Rise of the New Class” by Alvin W. Gouldner points out; as the Culture of Critical Discourse has been and is being used as a tool for POWER and CONTROL by the 20% minority New Class [the Nearly Nobles] over the 10% minority American Aristocracy (Old Money)[the Nobles], totally leaving out the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION by means of the Culture of Critical Discourse.

The late Alvin Gouldner was Max Weber Research Professor of Social Theory at Washington University, St. Louis. He authored many books and is best known for ‘The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology,’ ‘Enter Plato: The Origins of Western Social Theory in Ancient Greece,’ and ‘For Sociology:  Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today,’ and was the founder and editor of the journal ‘Theory and Society’.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-GouldnerAlvinW.html

Gouldner, Alvin W. (1920–81) An American sociologist who was as much a critical intellectual as a sociologist, whose early work ‘Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy’ (1954) was recognized as important within the orthodox sociological framework was critical toward the dominant functionalist perspective. His essay ‘Anti-Minataur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology’, published in 1964, argued that sociology was capable of simple OBJECTIVITY.

From the beginning Gouldner was influenced by European traditions of thought (see ‘Enter Plato,’ 1967) and he eventually settled in Europe. His most influential work was ‘The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology’ (1970). This offers a substantial and exhaustive argument for reflexive sociology against science in general and sociology in particular being concerned with producing OBJECTIVE truths, Gouldner argued that knowledge is not independent of the knower, and that sociology is intimately bound up with the political and socio-economic context in which it exists.

His later work is an attempt at totalizing theoretical critique of modern culture and a concern with the nature of intellectuals as a NEW CLASS. His criticism of Marxism and of intellectuals made a distinction between those who see themselves as producing OBJECTIVE knowledge about society and history, on the one hand, and on the other critical thinkers who are less concerned with OBJECTIVE truth than with understanding history in order to change it. In this context, he argued that ideology developed by intellectuals has a wider reach and depth and become a means of social transformation. These ideas are expounded in The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology (1976), The Two Marxisms (1980), and Against Fragmentation (1985).

Do you agree with Alvin W. Gouldner relative to the New Class’ Culture of Critical Discourse?  Could it be the reason why the population is so passive relative to their best interest?

Based on Alvin Gouldner academic work, my question still is: “What are your thoughts on the “Culture of Critical Discourse” compared to a “Culture of Independent Discourse” – independent thought?

Night-Gaunt  Time for me to celebrate!  You have shed your cocoon and have become a beautiful butterfly showing a hint of those lovely pastel and intelligent wings.  Hail Night-Gaunt!  Greetings and salutations to you too!  There is hope in this world after all!  At least in my odd universe.  Soooo sideahs are fairies, the most terrifying kind.  Yikes, maybe they have already carried me off and I just don’t know it.  Sort of like Descartes’ inability to know, ah,... er….anything.  Or David Hume. Guess I will just have to go by instinct.  Way…ell I think I must have said something like “weeeee peeeople” at one time or another. Em shure they be cross w’me, f’sure.  I have always felt I was an anachronist. 

Ah, yes…. the quiet ones.  For some reason I think the Bernie Madoff’s of this world will do the quiet ones (the Delusional Dominionists) in over time.  I really don’t think we have much to worry about.  I mean we do have Janet Napilatano!  She has her hundred pairs of eyes everywhere, sort of a modern day Argus.  She is a Big Sistah.  See Big Sistah’s are female and truly caring, where the old Big Brutha was of the tyrannical state caring only for the tyrants.  At least that is the fairy tale, uh, sideah tale, I tell myself.  And besides there are many of us who play chess, not just so-called pretentious Dominionists. 

StuartH, I will visit your site soon.  It could be a commitment to dialogue that I do not have time at the moment.  But it is most intriguing and I know I will check it out.  Thank you for the most graceful invitation.

Greetings and salutations, Shenonymous, you are right, it is good to follow social etiquette.

The sideah or fairies are cruel, mercurial and powerful beings. So deadly and bewitching that the human folk are careful to call them innocuous things like “the wee people” and hope they don’t piss any of them off. Even so they may take you away to one of their places in the other world where it may seem a day and you return 20 years later. And whatever you see while there may not be the way it really is.

As for “Dominionists it is the quiet ones, the drab business suit wearing ones operating Fortune 500 or 100 companies that are the danger. They are the ones behind this and after failing in 1934, not being punished either, they bide their time and set things up like in a chess game to get to the check mate. It started in 1980 and has continued unbroken to now. I dare say the king is in check right now.

Shenonymous:

My email provider is gmail.com.  I recommend it.  My last name is Heady.  The nomenclature is firstname.lastname@.

You can see some of my postings through the index system on Daily Kos, where I don’t use a pseudonym.  I have worked over the years in an attempt to create a byline.

I have been looking, without success so far, for someone who can intelligently discuss the particular subjects you have been discussing.

Good morning John Hanks.  I hope you have a good day.

Why is it I see no courteous greetings on TD?  Is that how far we’ve regressed into savagery?  Hmmmm. 

You said ”...Schools are almost impossible because they have banned critical thinking long ago.  Imagine talking about God vs. Atheism.  What they want is critical thinking that stays within the lines.”  I’m glad you put that word “almost” in.  Since public schools are supposed to stay away from theological arguments, I am more than happy bible babble, and atheism babble, is kept out of the arena of analytical thought, if it is even possible to engage in real analytical thought when it comes to religion.  You are talking either theology, creationism, or intelligent design and atheism.  And I think all those religious investments (atheism is included since it would be an argument counter to the theological one) is best kept in churches or college debate.  Furthermore, it is hard enough to produce self-reliant teachers who can intelligently handle their own area of expertise such as “good” English who don’t even know the difference between bring and take, or how to get students to “love” math, that adding the theological element into the equation of teaching becomes even more distracting.  In general, as StuartH has pointed out, students are leaving high school and are proportionately as dumb as when they went in.  Nearly all of those who beat the odds and found a successful career or were able to get into college go on to have lives that fulfill the promise of intelligent human beings do so but are not on the whole “interesting” people.  They are bloody bores.  Moreover, I have found freshmen college students are stunningly deficient in orderly thinking skills, lack basic language skills, have no idea what a binomial is, or who Galileo was or why the Renaissance was an important moment of achievement for the human race.  Then the college professor has the added chore to teaching their subject to teach these students how to think.  I know this first hand since I was one of those community college students who embarrassingly discovered she did not know how to think.  I’ve spent the rest of my life learning to do just that!  And thar’s still morr larning ta do!

Having been in schools, both public and higher education for more than 20 years, I know for a fact there is the attempt to bring in critical thinking skills, but there is the intentional effort by self-serving and misguided politicians to flood education with teaching to the interminable national tests where students learn disconnect facts and then are little able to see relationships among the experiences they have or able to evaluate them for degree of truth.  I retreated from public school for that very reason that teachers are unable to be teachers in the best sense of the word.  Thank goodness there is a brigade who stuck with it.  At least in higher education there is the forum to have students engage in earnest debate.  I don’t know where most of the denizens of TD went to school, or if they even did, and if they didn’t have good experiences in college then I’d say they missed their opportunity to make it so. There comes a time when humans have an unbreakable contract with their own mind to make the most of it.  So much for my rant of the day.

MarthaA... this training limits the student to “the box” that is YOUR training.  True, and MY training is to be as open as possible, provide as many paths to resources as possible for them to become informed in their own way.  What is your complaint about that?  What kind of miserable teachers did you have? 

I do not consider myself limited by the “Culture of Critical Discourse”, as a box, that frames my thought by the limitations of orthodox thoughts of others.  Do you think you really believe that, MarthaA, when you claim to be a Christian?  You have got to be joking.  Just claiming to be a Christian limits you.  Reading your two posts I think maybe you believe too much of what you read.  It seems you have gotten stuck on reading and believing a lot of babble crap.  Might be better to chew babble gum.

What do I think?  Ho hummm!  Quite boring.  Why?  Because you do not demonstrate any independent thought, and not any dependent thought that is interesting.

Night-Gaunt I have been reading your and OzarkMichael’s talk about Dominionism for some time now with great amusement.  Almost as amusing as MarthaA’s brand of socialist psychosis.  It is peculiar theater but theater nonetheless.  It is fascinating that two grown, intelligent men could actually believe there is some substance to that quasi-religious confabulation that thinks they can take over the United States and force it to be an Evangelical Christian nation (whatever that could possibly mean!).  You even have rational StuartH believing it is possible they could “under certain circumstances could be joined by others and become one.”  Amazing.  It is in the same genre as the Illuminati and Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code whacko melodramatic level of intelligence.  As if talking about it gives it any legitimacy.  Unbelievable.  Yes, of course there are those mashed bananabrains in Texas, white supremacists, KKK, and such miscreants but while they have some numbers of misfits, and they can make some mayhem from time to time, it is self-induced paranoia that is working to drag this stuff out as serious business.  The government will take care of any uprising rather quickly.  These idiots can play their little dress up games and pretend they are lord of the outhouses, but if anything beyond some silly parades and burnt crosses happens, they will be shut down tighter than a coffin is before its lowered into the ground.

And besides, as they go about trying to conquer the entire world, they would be running into those ever increasing Islamists who do not use birth control of any type, and murder women who don’t want or cannot have children! who will tear the crap out of their behinds with bare hands.  Those are the fellas to be more scared of.

Shenonymous,

(Part 1 of 2)

Being a teacher, therefore you are also trained in the “Culture of Critical Discourse”; this training limits the student to “the box” that is YOUR training.

I do not consider myself limited by the “Culture of Critical Discourse”, as a box, that frames my thought by the limitations of orthodox thoughts of others.  I like the thoughts of others, but also like independent thought and the freedom to think the unthought thoughts that are a progression of past thought, rather than the orthodox thought of the “Culture of Critical Discourse” that you were indoctrinated to follow as a part of your training.  It is my opinion that the “Culture of Critical Discourse” stifles creative thought. When you have to document your thoughts based upon passed thought, without creative independent thought being allowed unless documented by preexisting orthodox thought, this effectively stifles all creative independent thought.

Here is some information from Alvin W. Gouldner book, “The Future of Intellectuals and The Rise of the New Class” that I want you to peruse that has to do with the “Culture of Critical Discourse” under Thesis Fourteen: The Flawed Universal Class:

“14.2 For all that, however, the New Class is hardly the end of domination.  While its ultimate significance is the end of the old moneyed class’s domination, the New Class is also the nucleus of a new hierarchy and the elite of a new form of cultural capital.

The historical limits of the New Class are inherent in both the nature of its own characteristic rationality, and in its ambitions as a cultural bourgeoisie.  Its culture of critical discourse fosters a purely “theoretical” attitude toward the world.  Speakers are held competent to the degree that they know and can say the rules, rather than just happening to follow them.  The culture of critical discourse thus values the very theoreticity that the “common sense” long suspected was characteristic of intellectuals.

Intellectuals have long believed that those who know the rule, who know the theory by which they act, are superior because they lead an “examined” life.  They thus exalt theory over practice, and are concerned less with the success of a practice than that the practice should have submitted itself to a reasonable rule.  Since intellectuals and intelligentsia are concerned with doing things in the right way and for the right reason—- in other words, since they value doctrinal conformity for its own sake—- they (we) have a native tendency toward ritualism and sectarianism.

Shenonymous,

(Part 2 of 2)

14.3 The culture of the New Class exacts still other costs:  since its discourse emphasizes the importance of carefully edited speech, this has the vices of its virtues: in its virtuous aspect, self-editing implies a commendable circumspection, carefulness, self-discipline and “seriousness.”  In its negative modality, however, self-editing also disposes toward an unhealthy self-consciousness, toward stilted convoluted speech, an inhibition of play, imagination and passion, and continual pressure for expressive discipline.  The new rationality thus becomes the source of a new alienation.

Calling for watchfulness and self-discipline, CCD is productive of intellectual reflexivity and the loss of warmth and spontaneity.  More over, that very reflexivity stresses the importance of adjusting action to some pattern of propriety.  There is, therefore, a structured inflexibility when facing changing situations; there is a certain disregard of the differences in situations, and an insistence on hewing to the required rule.

This inflexibility and insensitivity to the force of differing contexts, this inclination to impose one set of rules on different cases also goes by the ancient name of “dogmatism.”  Set in the context of human relationships, the vulnerability of the New Class to dogmatism along with its very task-centeredness, imply a certain insensitivity to persons, to their feelings and reactions, and open the way to the disruption of human solidarity.  Political brutality, then, finds a grounding in the culture of critical discourse, the new rationality may paradoxically allow a new darkness at noon.

14.4 The paradox of the New Class is that it is both emancipatory and elitist.  It subverts all establishments, social limits, and privileges, including its own.  The New Class bears a culture of critical and careful discourse which is an historically emancipatory rationality.  The new discourse (CCD) is the grounding for a critique of established forms of domination and provides an escape from tradition, but it also bears the seeds of a new domination.  Its discourse is a lumbering machinery of argumentation that can wither imagination, discourage play, and curb expressivity.  The culture of discourse of the New Class seeks to control everything, its topic and itself, believing that such domination is the only road to truth.  The New Class begins by monopolizing truth and by making itself its guardian.  It thereby makes even the claims of the old class dependent on it.  The New Class sets itself above others, holding that its speech is better than theirs; that the examined life (their examination) is better than the unexamined life which, it says, is sleep and no better than death.  Even as it subverts old inequities, the New Class silently inaugurates a new hierarchy of the knowing, the knowledgeable, the reflexive and insightful.  Those who talk well, it is held, excel those who talk poorly or not at all.  It is now no longer enough simply to be good.  Now, one has to explain it.  The New Class is the universal class in embryo, but badly flawed.”

The “Culture of Critical Discourse” gives the “New Class” a way to use Cultural Capital to compete with Moneyed Capital, and is in effect nothing more than just one more form of orthodoxy used to promote POWER and CONTROL by the “New Class” and their Cultural Capital over both the Old Class and their Moneyed Capital and the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION as a Class and Culture, who have neither Moneyed Capital nor Cultural Capital.

What are your thoughts on the “Culture of Critical Discourse” compared to a Culture of Independent Discourse”—- independent thought?

Night-Gaunt, I think you show to be an intelligent young man and I should like to give you absolute due regard.  So I will address some of your last few thoughtful posts in the hope that I have shown proper respect for your reflections and opinions.

If you meant Tantalus’s pitiful garden where Tantalus was stuck for eternity in the Lake of Gross Regrets (my invention), deprived of even a drop of water to drink, and unable to sup on the most luscious of fruit that were always beyond his reach, then in that sense it was a lie at least to Tantalus.  Our dear sorrowful friend Sisyphus was seen in the region by visitors, Odysseus, and many hundred years later, Dante…and he too was bound to Tartarus, a region three times darker than a moonless night, where Tantalus’ crystal clear pool held him captive and Sisyphus found his Eternal Slope there.  There must be meaning beyond the surface of particulars.  Both men’s crimes were pissing off the gods in defiance of the gods’ autocracy.  That is my interpretation, can you retell it in a different way?

All mythologies are a ‘mirage’ so to speak.  They are the classic allegories for human interaction.  Those who populated them were not as important as the dynamics among the players.  There are a few versions of the stories, and I have about eight different ones.  The various transcribers saw the stories differently.  Some got Tantalus’s and Sisyphus’s a bit mixed up.  But it doesn’t really matter as the lessons to be learned are attached not precisely to any particular character but to the deeds done and rewarded or punished for. The question remains whether it was meted out justly. Isn’t that always the question, the one about justice?  The gods were tyrants and capricious.  The justice that was theirs was that they disappeared from the common commerce only to be left as devices to remember morals.

Sorry, but I am not familiar with [See also the false appearance of the Sideah’s places.]  Perhaps you could give a better clue?

All the world may be a stage but the death scenes are real.  Indeed, and so are the birth scenes.  What shall we conclude?

... he couldn’t just walk away. Neither can we no matter what we dream of.  Sartre said there is No Exit.  Seems like you may have the same view.  So does that mean we ought to take the Buddha’s advice to give up?  Lose all attachment?  Rest in the idea that humanity is stuck forever, like Tantalus and Sisyphus?  Can we rest in that idea?

One of the most important things humans must do is to learn who they are and then all other things can happen. Otherwise you can get lost.  What do you think are the steps to learning who one is?  The implication of learning means there is something to learn.  Where do you think is the source of that learning?

Thank you Night-Gaunt for many questions.  For I believe when the questions stop, we are dead.

Yes Dominionist is a broad term and encompasses a variety of beliefs within a larger whole. The ones at the top, from the richest families and powerful corporations, some going back 100 years are part of this. From small independent groups to global organizations but with a single purpose. To evangelize the world and prepare it for JHVH’s return. Many have no problem with killing or enslaving others. Just as in the past. They wish to have a base here to show the world what is to come.

I see very little to gladden my heart. a few people here and there. A few in gov’t still fighting the tide. Organizations like FFRF & MFRF fighting the indoctrination of our military. To follow the laws and do no harm. But our adversaries want violence. They consider it a noble and cleansing act.

http://www.talk2action.com/ is just one of those sites that catalog what is going on and works to stem it and alert others. It is worth checking out. [Ozark Michael‘s seal of disapproval.]

Stuart H, I am only too happy to have someone else to discuss this very important facet of human evolution, learning how to learn and understand and negotiate in a civilized way the world in which one finds oneself.  To me that is the epitome of being human. 

Yes, the forum written word interaction does provide a marvelous background to test your own thoughts.  I find it useful for that purpose too.

I have similar concerns as you about what might be lacking in people’s education.  My colleagues and I try to show people better ways of thinking about things, how to think analytically.  We talk all the time about citizenship education and political literacy.  Others say, well, there is always poly sci, and social studies.  But I think it has to start in grade school.  That means teachers have to be trained in their teacher education programs.  So courses have to be developed and presented for consideration to education departments and textbook publishers as well. I occasionally review textbooks (and get paid rather well for it).  So also occasionally a publisher for whom I review will ask me if there is any other new inclusions they might consider.  I suppose if I could get myself more together I could brainstorm what you are asking for.  It would take quite a bit of effort.  I only have so much time.  It would take a lot of compilation of data and then slogging through it for coherency.  Nothing is easy, eh?  I’m afraid if something like this does not become part of a teaching curriculum, it simply cannot become part of a class curriculum either.

Here are a couple of links that are relevant and could be used as food for thought:  You will be surprised where they come from.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6386/is_32/ai_n29387493/
Hidden in the curriculum: political literacy and education for citizenship in Australia

I have downloaded another document that is most intriguing. It is offered through ERIC Education Resources Information Center, a 1996 course from of all places Sierra Leone (they have had bigtime social mega trouble)  But this document is an intelligent approach to political literacy and civic education,  gawd only knows they certainly need it! The article title is Political Literacy and Civic Education Curriculum. An Integrated Approach. (both right up your alley of interest).  It is 27 pages long!

Anyway the website is http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED395139&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED395139

and you will have to copy and paste it in your browser, as it does not link like most html documents do.  Once at the ERIC site, click on the Acrobat PDF button upper left and it will download the document but I don’t know if it can be saved to your desktop that way.  The way I save it is to invoke a print command then not print it but ask for a preview instead, at which time the software Preview will open the document again and then you can save it to your desktop that way.  (Teachers learn how to do this trick for scholarly research purposes).  I personally have access to unlimited journal articles through my education institution’s library too. 

There is an abstract that describes the Sierra Leone Curriculum on the ERIC site as well. You might want to read that before downloading it.

Next is a google search site that gives a whole lot of research sites to browse at your heart’s content.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=political+literacy+in+education&aq=f&oq;=&aqi;=

Well I hope I’ve provided enough to keep you reading and thinking…  Your command of the word and understanding of people through your experience of reading their papers, (I assume you also make red-mark corrections, suggestions, etc.???), gives you a wealth of information and literacy to shape something out of it that could be most constructive for education.

Shenonymous:

I am sorry to hear that some on Truthdig forums seem to take things a little too far.  I have only been posting here for a short time, largely because it afforded a useful sort of thinking out loud in which the typewriter actually talks back!

I have noticed that some people seem to take a license with this to really take it out on others, as if they really needed somebody to punch.  I’m not sure what is really going on with that.

I was intrigued to see your online reference to critical thinking education.  I just scanned through it, but I intend to work through it more thoroughly. 

Here is a question.  I have been concerned for some time with the feeling that there is something lacking in citizenship education or political literacy or whatever one might call it.  I suppose one could consider this covered in teaching critical thinking, because it is basic to citizenship.  But I wonder if there could be something more.  Have you ever run across any reference to such a concept?

I have to say how surprised I am StuartH that you don’t know how to teach critical thinking.  I would think that teachers of any subject would have to teach it to some degree in their classes.  I have many colleagues who teach it and I’ve taught it at the university level for 10 years. I believe all teachers need to have it as a tool and teach it to their students. 

Have I seen successful results.  I have.  Students begin the class without much skill at seeing precisely and understanding what they read, or see and by the end of the class they demonstrate they have learned to some degree how to examine and make informed judgments, some learn better than others of course, since that is the nature of people with different learning skills.

Unfortunately the term critical thinking has over the last several years been way overused and seems to have lost some energy as a tool to help people think through issues, regardless of the degree of importance.  As an intellectual discipline process, it is useful to learn for any subject of study, for any review of current events as obtained from news or public shows that purport to offer an opinion on anything.  Take for instance the debate over climate warming.  It is far from a settled issue.  The debate over abortion is a hot button item, and whether health care reform is good or not in its present state, or what should it look like for the greatest benefit of the entire society?  Critical thinking is also a valuable tool in sorting out ancient philosophical issues such as Plato’s ideals, Aristotles’ opinions about ethics, Descartes’ dichotomy of body and mind, whether there is such a thing as the mind, what is the importance of humans existing in the universe, is it simply an assumption humans who have cognitive skills have created to further their evolutionary survival, since there are probably no other animal that so contemplates.  Since aesthetics is part of the philosophy known as axiology, or the theories of value, and is a sister to ethics, critical thinking about the visual, performing, and literary arts is also a valuable tool for sorting through a lot of the mental garbage that is offered through those media as well.  There are unending topics up for argument.  Problem is that too many do not know how to argue civilly and resort to name-calling or making up information (lying), rely on unreliable information, or falling into fallacies they are too ignorant to recognize.  Ah so, I do yearn for another Bertrand Russell!

How is it taught?  Since I do not as a policy give clues to my identity (I was put in danger a while back) I will only offer a neutralized bit of information sticking strictly to topics rather than any personal information.)  There are others active on TD who seem to carry quite a hatred for me due to my neutrality on, uh critical issues.  I firmly believe no one has the truth about anything and like David Hume, knowledge of an external world is essentially unknowable.  And so it goes (ala Vonnegut).

I am here providing a link to a site for an essay Introduction to Critical Thinking: http://www.freeinquiry.com/critical-thinking.html
It is quite comprehensive and has a helpful quiz at the end.  I could provide more if you wish.

Night:

So you think that the “dominionist” sorts of people, who might broadly be defined as a coalition of all the Christian church members in the US who seem to think that they were hoodwinked by the Founders and now want to tear down the wall of separation between church and state, all those suffering from lack of education or capacity to keep up with the changes and are therefore in a state of generalized chagrin, that this concatenation of persons is a majority who might follow an unscrupulous leadership?

What scenario do you see unfolding from this point? 

My sense is that this collection of uncertain and fearful souls is not a majority, but perhaps under certain circumstances could be joined by others and become one.

But, from my work in contacting people in various neighborhoods over the years, people are really more resilient than we usually give them credit for being.  “We” usually underestimate “The Public” perhaps because of the illusion brought about by the media. 

But what do you fear the most in what might really happen, and conversely, what gives you hope?

I am attempting to with mixed and uncertain results. I give what I know and how I see things an look to others to give feed back and their knowledge in those areas covered.

We are in very bad times. I believe they are mostly manufactured for others benefit. I see a history that is little known to most even though it is available. I see many who do not care or are too busy with the contratempts of life to be so involved. That too I think is planned and is working. Either working too many hours or not enough while many things are happening at once and few have the mental faculties to keep up.

For all the similarities to other times and countries we have our own unique problems in this second revolution—-really a counter revolution. To return to a time before the Square Deal and New Deal and even the Bill of Rights and Articles of Confederation. To get back to that time of the Puritan theocracy of Massachucetts Bay. But with all the accumulated knowledge and technology to keep it a caricature of the USA.

I see them winning even now. But when will the other shoe drop?

Shenonymous:

I agree that there has to be a balance.  I don’t really know what to call the brainless shouters that seem to be popping up.  Conservatives?  I remember my parents’ 1950s era Republicanism.  Pat Nixon’s cloth coat.  Eisenhower. 

The shouters would have just been considered rude and told to behave. 

The conservatives of that era I respected, and I thought that the country needed them.  The current bunch seem to me to be used car salesmen and second story artists. 

How do you teach critical thinking or whatever your nomenclature is?  At what level?  I am intrigued that somebody is doing this.  Are you making headway?

StuartH, I left Texas a while back, but not long enough ago to have forgotten the narrow track the general Texas population takes.  Quite remindful of ultra-religious conservative lemmings.  With all the rabid televangelicals and talk radio shows promoting the mindless to remain mindless.  I am a Paine acolyte and yearn for anyone with as keen a grasp of democratic rule and the benefits to populations the proper construction of democracy brings.  I am in education and I do care greatly about the decline of informed formation of opinions. You would call it critical thinking.  I have taught critical thinking for a decade or so and have also read umpteen papers but not nearly as many in comparison with your experience.  Nevertheless, I agree in substance that the inability to read, understand, and critique is now an endemic disease. 

But I have no qualms saying there are aspects of conservatism that is logical and needed.  But be assured that is not saying I embrace “The Conservative View” that generally describes that faction of American political society.  There are many more contributions to a egalitarian altruistic view within a Democratic perspective, which I think is the healthy view.  However, Democrats can sometimes have rampant imprudence over social programs if left unchecked that would ruin the country.  A balanced pendulum is the best control.  I do think as time goes by We the People will prevail, but it may take many chain-mail and quadruple-mace-ball battles that will go into a future where I no longer live.

Usually I read your comments with much interest and a sharp perspective of the socialist view.  I lean towards socialism, but be sure, it is only a leaning.  But, sorry, MarthaA, when it comes to the Greeks, like Ion who woke up at the mere mention of Homer, I too become alert when anyone mentions anything about the ancients.  I want to point out that you have not demonstrated that you know Socrates or that he is a friend of yours (unless, of course, it is the name of your cat or your next door neighbor is named Socrates!  I know someone who has forty cats all named Socrates who keeps them separate by assigning a number to the name, i.e., Socrates 1, Socrates 2, and so forth.).  To accuse another, even a conservative, who with a certain amount of levity identifies with the outspoken old Athenian for asking unpopular questions, using a cudgel, as it were, shows only intolerance, a thing which you criticize voluminously.  I wonder if you reflect on the inherent contradictions found in your didacticisms?  Socrates was a vehement critic of democracy, and would cringe at the idea of socialism.  He was an elitist through and through right to his Hemlockean End (in contrast to a Lockean end).  So if anyone wants to identify with good old Soc, they must have seen how conservative Socrates was.  Oh do tolerate my very poor jokes!  Some ennui has seeped in from the repetitive tediousness of a miscalculation of the effects of capitalization.

Shenonymous:

I have long felt that Thomas Paine was in need of being restored to a rightully higher status.  I suspect that he is not read in every classroom beginning at the Junior High level, is because he still seems radioactive to the mediocre sensibility, 200 years after his death.

Do you live in Texas?  From your posts, I gather you are in higher ed and care about the general circumstance of declining standards from that perspective.

I have to say that I haven’t been involved in education, apart from monitoring my wife’s Information Literacy work over the years.  I was really shaken by the student essays I read and now I want to do something about it, but am not sure what.  I could commit myself to doing some writing, although the prospects for publishing have never been worse.  I could return to political organizing and will at least probe the possibilities. 

Looking around at the state of American political literacy and the literacy of English usage and thinking, I am truly alarmed.  If nothing changes the future looks like a Mad Max movie and not because of a dramatic catastrophe like a nuclear holocaust that annihilates civilization.  It may be annihilated by us just not taking seriously the need to reverse the dumbing down of our culture.

Your appraisal, I’m afraid, is accurate, though I have no statistics. I cannot become involved in Texas politics, and the malaise that you criticize Democrats as suffering is chronic and endemic.  There is such an entity called the Democratic Party, however, it is faction ridden and unless they “see” a problem as urgently universal they stick to their own perceived worthwhile causes, whether they are worthwhile or not.  It is misplaced doggedness (I can see how the Blue Dogs earned their name).

There is a model for written action that Thomas Paine gifted the American people with a hundreds of years ago.  There are demagogic overly passionate conservatives who can jerk their ravenous base into a frenzy.  But the Democrats do not have anyone so eloquent as Paine that would galvanize action.  He might be a paragon to study to see how his language moved a nation of both educated and unschooled to action.

Shenonymous:

Thanks for the positive comments.  I agree that a petition aimed at this particular Board probably will just be music to their ears.  These people are jihadists in the true sense of the word.

I remember back in the early ‘80s when I was coordinating a school board campaign and there was an organized Moral Majority slate running to stack the board, they were winning for awhile.  At some point, a local TV station actually noticed what was going on and ran a story.  Then, there was an outpouring of support and the voters turned out and turned the tide.

It seems when the majority of voters learns the truth about what is going on in an election, they do the right thing.  But, generally all this flies under the radar, leaving it up to the smallest pool of voters.  In Texas, there were no candidates opposing the Creationist candidates to the state Board, so they won by default. 

But this is bottom feeding. In the larger scheme of things, there is a bigger fish to fry.  The problem is how to reverse the general decline across the whole educational spectrum.  From
my scoring in standardized testing, it seems to me that this is at best a problematic solution.  However, considering how dumbed down the system is, even a mischievously flawed solution is better than no solution. 

At least, standardized scoring operates behind a firewall that protects it from the more frivolous and less-than-professional complainers.  You have to be very organized and professional about challenging any aspect.  That eliminates a lot of the brainless shouters.  Who are they?  Just look at some of the comments on Truthdig. 

A lot of the problem in education policy, as with many other issues, would seem to be that people will put a lot of energy into opposing anything they haven’t taken the time to understand.  This would seem to be a basic lesson in civics:  “don’t get up and yell or start typing until you have gathered a little real information and checked it out from more than one source, especially if there are special interests involved.”

I think most people have the sense to realize that is basic sense, because they were at least C students whose parents taught them courtesy towards others.  The shouters have learned that very boorish behavior trumps - or at least provides a sense of immediate gratification.  Not a good trend.  I hope it loses steam. 

In Texas, the Democrats are looking at redistricting, following the next census.  By then, the voters will be looking at the Governor’s race and this will bring these issues into focus.  I suspect those interested in education nationwide will be intensely interested and we will probably see both sides pouring a lot of money into it. 

However, I haven’t heard that the Democrats have a viable statewide candidate yet.  Having been part of that scene, I think the problem is that there is a very old malaise in the Democratic Party there which goes back to why Ann Richards lost to Bush.  Just a lack of energy where it counts.  I hope they are overcoming it.  Our system of governance works best when there is really energetic competition, a real debate, and the intellectual energy to generate new policy directions for the future.  When everyone is moribund, society stagnates.  When you have stagnation, that’s when you have symptoms like the rise of Creationists.

You are right in every thing you said StuartH.  Anyone who has any consciousness of the alkaline-contrived schemes of the religious right is well aware of what is happening in Texas.  That it is happening in Texas should not surprise anyone given the gross deranged activities that historically has taken place in Texas: the Waco debacle, the assassination of a President, providing the worst President this country has ever had, is the home of the white supremacist organization Texas Knights of the Invisible Empire that is tapping the jerked up racist nerves of malcontents of a so-called fraternal organization, the dreadful Mormon polygamy case in April 2008, and now the creationism insanity.  So I watch with you StuartH.

The group known as the Brights have an email campaign to send petition letters to the Texas State Board of Education.  Frankly I don’t think letters do much.  They are too benign an instrument to instigate any action.  Action speaks louder.  But I don’t see any organized effort in that direction.  I think it is a mistake.  I will send in a petition since I agree with their sentiments and they should know there are those who support them, but I do not harbor any optimism it will help. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/318/t/9133/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2048

The topic of fanaticism and how it plunders humans and curdles their minds is something that I think needs scrutinized in depth.  Reaction sometimes is a good thing, if it is controlled reaction, and I think the etching away at American minds is too pressing to permit any delay at stopping it.

One of the most important things humans must do is to learn who they are and then all other things can happen. Otherwise you can get lost.

OzarkMichael,

I know Socrates, Socrates is a friend of mine, and YOU, OzarkMichael, are NO Socrates.

SturatH,

Answering your 8/13 1:12AM post.

The wings of the butterfly are flapping, Saturn is making something more than an oyster and time will tell what the world will become.

With the technology at our command we are at a critical juncture. We can destroy ourselves and most of the planet’s biosphere many times over. We are at that threshold that many species would probably reach in their development.

We may not live past our childhood at this rate. Radical climate change could mean our extinction. It did partly for the Neaderthals who couldn’t adapt well to a warmer world unlike Homo could. We may not be able to for a hotter world.

I’ve been watching what is going on with the situation in Texas.  7 out of 15 members of the Tx State Board of Education are Creationists, interested in seeing science curricula and textbooks revised and also in seeing social science textbooks revised.  Gov Perry recently appointed as chair of the SBOE an activist who pushes hard for Creationism.  The reason for rewriting social studies history is the view, stated by Ozark here, that evangelicals feel they were tricked.  That they were there at the founding of the nation and they now are persuaded that history should record that the Founders intended to give them special status, and to create a virtual if not actual state religion.

The move to push Creationism is a move to reject modern science, as it creates too much conflict with dogma.  Witness the debate over Stem Cell research and global climate change. 

Ultimately what is at stake is the dumbing down of the educational system with the essential effect that the “Enlightened Public” will elect fewer people like Obama and more people like Palin. 

This might be a latent hope in the more political, but it probably goes more to the basics of established religion.  When there is a system you must agree to accept without questioning it too much, you put aside your ability to respond genuinely to conditions in reality that you might observe for yourself directly unless you adopt some kind of perceptual authority to do it for you. 

That is antithetical to honest citizenship and can never be anything else. 

So the battle in Texas and everywhere else is between dogmatic thinking (which by the way corporate culture tends to promote) and genuinely honest critical thinking. 

I see writing as a sign of this, so this is why I tend to analyze writing, to see the mind behind it.  I think our language is all we really have and we need to be very careful about its future. 

Over the past eight years we saw new dimensions in the use of trickery, lawyering and lying at the service of a combination of special interest corporate public relations and religious rationalization parading as rationality. 

Some people are angry now because that has proved not to be effective, even with great amounts of money and the media behind it.  So there are tantrums being thrown in the hopes that is might pre-empt honest debate.

The question is whether adults who are educated and can see clearly will be able to gain traction in dealing with the problems facing us, or will the rationalizers and those who want to believe in pre-programmed scripts handed down by manipulators? 

I see things hanging in the balance.  We could easily go down the darker path, led by the evangelical right who care for nothing beyond their own specialism and ego.  That there are so many people who find comfort in the certainty of mental programming in response to uncertainty and ambiguity, is dangerous to the future of the Republic.

Whether the human race makes it past the 21st century in any numbers, might well depend on which way the balance goes. 

Ultimately, I think the fact that were are really only about 100,000 years old as a species means we will find an evolutionary maturity.  But getting there may not be easy.  Probably as a race, we are just now entering our teenage years.

With a certain amount of humility in deference to your worldly wisdom, I may be considered an intruder, but I happen to be awake and alert right now, and that might not last…

StuartH says: “That is a dilemma we all face.  What is an authentic, original response to actual reality and what is a pre-programmed script?

...Another take-away from this is the need to be even more careful about articulation and thinking through illusions.”  Yes, agreed, as you could diagnostically deduce from my writings on careful reading, I think you repeat what I’ve said, in a different way, but essentially the same.  And if I may be so bold, exactly where does the pre-programmed script come from?  And does everyone have the same pre-programmed script, or are they different. And if different, in what way are they different?  What are the defining symptoms of a pre-programmed script?

Yes, the Lakota have their rendition of delusionary illusion, Buddha had his, and Kierkegaard had his (and just take a look at Nietzsche’s angry dead God), as well as Shiva, and for Islam that has no belief in that kind of illusion there is the valley of Gehenna.  The anquish is as intense in one as it is in the others.

Innapropriate reference to Greek intellectual heroic archetype is a replacement for articulate meaning.  One cloaks oneself in hubris rather than facing what one is wise to fear. 

Fear of the Other, fear of disagreement, fear of change, of the unknown and unknowable.  To some extent, to ascribe to a systemic, codified belief system is to create a serious and profound disconnect between one’s own response to what is real and the demands placed on one by sheer pressure to conform to the system one more or less signed a contract to adhere to. 

That is a dilemma we all face.  What is an authentic, original response to actual reality and what is a pre-programmed script?Another take-away from this is the need to be even more careful about articulation and thinking through illusions.

I think the most incisive moment I can remember is a discussion somewhere in the wee hours in a Native American Church meeting, between sessions of drumming, rattling and singing.  As the roadman sat gathering his thoughts, his large round face was like the harvest moon above the coals in the central crescent altar firepit, riding in the dim darkness.

He reminisced about his grandfather, who had been a traditional Lakota medicine man, and whose inspiration he was attempting, with mixed success to follow.  A lot of sadness in this story of what was lost. 

He talked about how, being on a circuit in which he conducted healings all over North America during the year, he saw a lot of pain and a lot of soul sickness.  He also went down into South America to connect with tribal healers in various countries. 

At length, he observed that the state of man in this time is that we live in a state of illusion.  The ability of some to claim authority over others and to subjugate others and to promote prejudice comes from this.  We give ourselves permission for hubris that we, in our ignorance and arrogance, can believe was ordained for us by God.  But we are living in illusion and our challenge is to throw it off and be real. 

He had been taken away from his tribal roots and had grown up in the burbs, ultimately becoming a stockbroker.  But something tugged at his spirit and he became an alcoholic.  He recalled waking up on a lot of bar room floors.  At some point, he and his brother were coming home from someplace, very drunk.  They crashed in a ditch.  He woke up in a hospital to discover his brother had died.  His anguish was huge.  He went back to the reservation, to the badlands, to find a traditional healer.  This process took a long time.  In the end, he decided to follow his grandfather’s path.

I think that this story is archetypal and I find myself thinking about that in relation to where we are all at now and then.  There is deep and profound pain in our history and everyone feels this.  There is also a great and pervasive sense of the change represented by the 21st century and we have no way of being adequately prepared for that. 

It is no wonder people are talking past each other using words that don’t work to convey deeper meaning.  Language itself was not invented for what we face.

We need to start over as children, learning how to talk and why we should for the very first time.

There is a dramatic misunderstanding about Socrates being bandied about here.  However we must take moment and a sharper look at the amazing fictions that has been flung before us, ...well, has emerged before us, by two of the denizens of this forum, and one other for it seems as if a cosmic battle somewhat awesomely and suddenly has erupted between two Old Testament archangels who have taken opposing sides of Dominionism.  Now that is a twist. 

Bible babble has appropriated the floor.  So be it, but when it comes to a pretense and assuming various characters as in theatrical roles and one of players allegedly is Socrates, the Nearly Noble ancient Greek philosopher, who doesn’t know of Socrates???  well then some checking is required lest a lie is perpetrated.  For the Socrates that has been loaded onto us is beyond fiction.  The Socrates seen on this forum is an over 2500-year complete mythical fabrication of one named Plato.  The popular most affectionate view of the Athenian who is memorialized in David’s Painting taking the hemlock has two other biographers and Plato’s portrayal is of a man he would have liked Socrates to be, but he wasn’t.  He was the eternal gadfly, going about stinging minds to consciousness, but at the same time he was not a lover of the public.  He was no friend to democracy.  He was, in the words of MarthaA, and elitist.  He and Plato, a Noble, were elitists who had disdain for the Athenians.

While we cannot know what could have been going through the minds of the 281 jurors who voted him guilty or the 220 as not, or the 381 who voted him the death penalty to the 140 not, but the vote tells us that Socrates was not a liked man in spite of his disciples.  There is more to the story than meets the eye.  Actually all we have are history books, Plato’s dialogues, Xenophon’s observations, and of course that wonderful comedy writer, Aristophanes who also immortalized the character Socrates in hilarious plays, Clouds, and Wasps.  They were written years after the drinking of the poison.  Even Plato himself admitted that Socrates was a “bumbling performer,” and was unable to convince the jury that he should be given a Medicare and Social Security stipend that would last the rest of his life.  Oh well, sigh.  Like Jesus, Socrates never wrote a mumblin word.  So why indeed was he put to death.  Plato says it was for acts of impiety and corrupting the youth.  Hmmm.  A good set of charges, but not quite right.  Socrates was part of a society that was left over from the Peloponnesian War, you know, the one between Athens and Sparta.  When the oligarchic regime of the 30 Tyrants butchered over 1,500 men, which was a huge percentage of the population of Athens at that time?  Ah yes, the 30…  A family member of Plato,  Uncle Charmides, and a couple of Socrates other students Alcibiades and Critias (Plato’s second cousin) were among the most vicious and treacherous along with Critias, who the architect of forming the 30 Tyrants.  Socrates was not seen at his ripe old age of 70 as one historian described the “lovable town eccentric.”  He was seen to be a dangerous breeder of tyrants, and an enemy of the Common Majority.

So what could it mean to liken oneself to Socrates?  Most likely it is to identify with the image of the “wise” gadfly who went around getting young men to know themselves before thinking they know anything else.

While thinking about what to take away from this forum, which seemed to hold for a time the promise of actual dialogue, and the context around it,  I encountered Thom Hartmann’s latest book, Threshold.  His ability to travel to many places in the world and find intelligent people to talk to, made possible by his success in broadcasting and publishing, has enlarged his scope.  He looks at the future of America, the whole planet, the human race and takes in all the issues that we can currently consider. 

With the health care panics going on and news about the rise of militias,  I read through the forum with a sense of loss.  What the discussion showed, if you analyze it, is that we are losing the ability to have discussions and arguments that have any center to them.

Conservative Christians, who believe themselves to be keepers of a pre-Revolutionary faith in America seem to be preparing to withdraw from the compact that has defined us since the founding of the Republic. 

It happens that my family has an ancestor who came to America in the late 1600s and whose son and grandson fought in the Revolution.  I contemplate what this means, this tradition.  My father grew up in a house in upstate New York on the Erie Canal, a house built by the great great grandson of the Revolutionary War soldier who had “moved out West.”  I think he didn’t go any further, even though as a wheelwright, he had a portable trade, because he married the grocer’s daughter.

In 1876 he stood on a brick street in a classic small town, a part of a community and celebrating the Nation’s centennial with all the pride one might imagine.

I think when you think about traditional values, about America and about what we have been used to for generations, you get a good feeling about the best in those values.  These are good people. 

But I also think that there are many people who cannot believe in any way that things are really changing the way they are.  Just cannot.  Won’t.  When they hear about responses to changing conditions by those of us who are more ready to move with the tide, they become deeply and profoundly shocked
and feel betrayed.  If the American deal has become corrupted by inability to keep things from changing, then maybe they are feeling they should believe in revolt.  They won’t be explained to. 

It isn’t a question of not being smart.  It is the ground shifting and never again going back.  I suppose if I thought I could shoot this, I would be tempted too.

I think the problem is that this will get worse.  We are only beginning to see hints of the sort of change that this century will bring.  This is not because anyone has an agenda.  No one can really do more than observe like a weather forecaster poring over a long range model.  Like the song says, “the forecast is for pain.”

We are all just going to have to do the best we can to understand what is happening to our world, to figure out some useful response, to be part of a community of people and a nation holding it together in the face of unknowns and ambiguities that humans may never have faced before on such a scale. 

If old time religion helps, more power to you.  String theory and quantum dynamics may offer explanations, but they don’t offer much human company and comfort.

So Ozark Michael has revealed himself to be a Christian Socrates! Now he leaves, either tired of our plebian ways or borish forthrightness or have better things than this to do.

So we do agree at least in some areas. If we are in a cage it is an infinite one of our own making. As the philologist and philosopher asked, when are we at the door to our freedom and do we know when we are there? How many of us are waiting and not knowing we can walk right out?

Will we have the wisdom to know when we are wise? I am still learning. The universal freedom of the individual to control their own lives is still elusive. Maybe one day we can reach a kind of species adult hood to make it so. Maybe.

If we lose our republic to a theocracy it will be a dark age for that kind of development. I do not want that to happen. Nor do I like the secular dictatorship of France in relation to other religions. It isn’t enlightened or freeing. It is oppressive and it should be stopped.

Ozark-Michael,

(Part 1 of 2)

Warring Right-Wing Conservative EXTREMISTS choose to avoid political discussion and will always try to bring “religion and queers” into the conversation so everyone can go off in the “religion and queer” direction and ignore the Conservative EXTREMIST elephant’s oppression and tyranny.  It’s an old ploy, and it is what you are doing, but nevertheless, since I am a Christian, I will tell you what the Bible says about Dominion and Dominions, from whence one has to get Dominionism.  Government ran by Christian Dominionism is sacrilegious FASCISM that is blasphemy of the dominion of Almighty God, as Christian Dominionism’s god is corporate money, NOT Almighty God. 

“And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear.  Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword unto his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.  Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” ——
St. Matthew 26:51-54 “And one of them smote the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.  And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far.  And he touched his ear and healed him.” ——
St. Luke 22:50-51 This follower of Jesus, thought to be Peter, was thinking on the lines of dominionism when he cut off the ear of one of the high priest’s servants, but dominionism is still not what Jesus is up to, dominionism is what Satan is up to. 

“But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise DOMINION over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.  But it shall not be so among you:  but whosoever will be great among you let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your SERVANT:  Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.——St. Matthew 20:25-28

“As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.  If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister let him do it as of the ability which God giveth:  that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and DOMINION for ever and ever.  Amen. ——I Peter 4:10-11

“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you.  To him be the glory and DOMINION for ever and ever.  Amen.”——I Peter 5:10-11

“And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and DOMINION, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:  And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church.  Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” ——Ephesians 1:19-23

“Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise DOMINION, and speak evil of dignities”——Jude 1:8

“To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, DOMINION and power, both now and ever.  Amen.” ——Jude 1:25

“Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth.  Not for that we have DOMINION over your faith, but as helpers of your joy:  for by faith ye stand.”——
II Corinthian 1:23-24

“And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father to him be glory and DOMINION forever and ever.  Amen.”

Ozark-Michael,

(Part 2 of 2)

We the saved are not DOMINIONIST, Jesus our God is the DOMINIONIST.

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or DOMINIONS, or principalities or powers:  all things were created by him and for him:  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.  And he is the head of the body, the church:  who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.”——Colossians 1:16-18

Daniels vision of the Beasts and the Eternal Kingdom:

“And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.  But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his DOMINION, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.  And the kingdom and DOMINION, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all DOMINIONS shall serve and obey him. ——Daniel 7:25-27

FASCIST Christian Corporate Government Control Dominionist had better rethink who they are following because they are not following Jesus of the most High DOMINION based on the above scriptures.  Jesus did not teach the church to take over the government through corporations for money, if so, where is it?

Ozark:

Again from wikipedia:

“Most of the Huguenot congregations (or individuals) in North America eventually affiliated with other Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, Reformed Churches, the Reformed Baptists and the Mennonite Church.”

So, if you identify with the Huguenot history, and claim to be a evangelical, would that make your affiliation then Reformed Baptist?

I am reminded of a parable of a Philosopher and a Sophist.  A Philosopher was walking his dog, and A Sophist was carrying a mallard duck, when they happened upon each other.  The Philosopher was contemplating the nature of a rock that was precariously hovering over the edge of a precipice he could see high above along the walking path.  He was craning his neck.  The Sophist was eating what he thought were and professed to be marshmallows.  One of the marshmallows accidentally was dropped and it landed on the Philosopher’s foot, and he smiled thinking it was impossible to know if it was a real marshmallow, or might it not be an imaginary rock?  Since nothing in objective experience can ever be known, he only knew subjectively which it possibly could be.  He was unaware if his foot had been injured or not.  There was no precise way to tell.  So he shrugged his shoulders and turned his thoughts to what the really real was.  The Sophist ate another ersatz marshmallow, set his mallard duck to flight as it had gotten too heavy and continued walking past the Philosopher.  He made a passing remark saying to the Philosopher how hard the marshmallows were and that he didn’t understand why all of his teeth were broken, moaning that it would certainly put a chink in his lecturing.  The dog barked as it plaintively watched the mallard fly off, but that was all it could do.  He was chained to the Philosopher, who was lost in thought while the Sophist whined about his broken teeth, and the mallard flying towards the sun, was the only being that was free.  There really is no moral to the story, it was just the way things are.

Shenonymous said: It is not my position as a gentle atheist, to eliminate religion from the stew of the population as I believe there is an intentional positive social function for the existence of religions as well as non-religious members in a huge and disparate citizenry.

i appreciate that. That is my sentiment as well. No one should be left out.

MarthaA said TREASON:  The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance

There was a man named Socrates. He asked questions which drew the truth from the soul.  Using reflection and humor, Socrates helped people break their own prejudices. But he did it without people knowing what he thought the correct answer would be. He was only an occasion for others to give birth to the truth within themselves.

Socrates proved that truth comes from reflections within the self and not from the external teachers and circumstances. So he was ‘vague’. This was confusing for people who constantly wanted to know who Socrates was. What was he really up to, etc, etc, etc. It was as if Socrates was hiding something.

Eventually people got quite fed up with him and put Socrates in jail.

Night Gaunt: You can still not be a Dominionist if you will follow the laws and Bill of Rights here Just as Jesus commands.

Oh, can I escape? You mean you will let me out? Just me though. You still wont let any of THEM pass the checkpoint. I see.

Since you wont let them out, I will remain in this cell with my brothers and sisters. Its funny though, guarding that cell door, its almost as if you are stuck too.

I confess myself a sinner, and that Christ is my saviour. I cannot do otherwise.

Night Gaunt: And don’t forget that he has stated before that he likes to lie about things to see how we will react.

Socrates wore a garment that most people thought concealed him completely, but it is also said that those who concentrated were able to see that the garment was flimsy and transparent. He was therefore exposed all the time. In fact there was nothing hidden after all.

Be a good fellow, NG, and fetch me some hemlock…

Night Gaunt: Ozark Michael what you are telling me is that such a simple question is pregnant for you with possible problems. Like interfering with how you operate here. The less we know the easier you can maneuver. Nice but your excuses don’t wash.

You are right, there are no excuses. Nor is there anything hidden. If you recall the truth or not, it is completely your own process. I believe you can, but not by me repeating answers again and again and again. so there is nothing left to say except goodbye.

I toast you, Night Gaunt, no hard feelings. You were my reason to post here. We both did our best.

MarthaA: ORGANIZED ASSERTIVE SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING SOPHIST POLITICAL PROPAGANDA MUST BE STOPPED

Everyone wants to be so much more than an individual these days. For the Age of Objectivity is coming, in which a person will not reflect to discover truth, but constantly seek it externally, first from catagorizing who is speaking, then by obtaining databases on them, and searchwords, and more databases still. The circumstances fly by faster everyday. 

The ‘SUBJECTIVE MUST BE STOPPED!’, screamss the blur and the fury.  Then all hail the computer! for it is more objective and therefore more truthful than any human being can be.

Perhaps others can exist that way, but I do not care to. 

MarthaA: Why are you proud of being a disturber?

My sister, why were you disturbed?

With my “impenetrable” garment wrapped around me, I pass into the shadows.

And don’t forget that he has stated before that he likes to lie about things to see how we will react. Sounds like he is being the dove with the mind set of a snake. Just as in the Bible.

I can’t make you something you are not. A Dominionist thinks that gov’t and state should be melded. Do you? I don’t myself. But then I think a gov’t should be for all of the people not just for a single group. Those Dominionists are followers of Calvin and he was a very sever kind of fellow. For any who are interested look him up.

Asking whether you believe in the foundations of this country isn’t a litmus test. Just want to know where you are coming from. And where you want to go. Me I want more freedom for the individual. Do you?

“However, a conservative fundamentalist/evangelical Christian like myself is another story. Ask the question and yes you turn us into Dominionists. Force the choice on us and something very unpleasant will happen.”—Ozark Michael

You can still not be a Dominionist if you will follow the laws and Bill of Rights here Just as Jesus commands. It is only when you want a theocracy is where you automatically become one. How are you on the Beatitudes? The Inquisition? The Crusades? Does the Great Commission include force of arms and domination of all who you conquer? Or can we go our own way and live our lives? Do you agree with the concept of live and let live?

I would allow you to exist but would you allow me to as long as we don’t infringe on each other? You see that is the problem and I am not sure you can grasp that. But my cup is still not full.

Ozark:

So what denomination experience are your comments informed by? 

Why do you not wish to address the legal history that we are ALL bound by?  No one is aggressively pursuing some kind of persecution.

What is the problem with being specific about what you mean so that others can understand it?  Really, this overly abstract vagueness is not a good technique.

StuartH, the issue we are discussing now became a pretty big deal in the 70s when you went to college, but i understand that it wasnt an issue at Baylor since the dominant paradigm there was not secular.

Thats some interesting history you found, I was not aware of it, concerning the supreme court and the Jehovah Witnesses i mean. One problem is the J.W is a pietistic type and so privacy could be their line of defense. But for me it is not,since I am the opposite, trying to be active in the public sphere. I will explain later.

A broad question by leefeller: What of other regions or so called religions, do they not supersede individual support before the nation, not just Christianity?  First allegiance to the Pope, or any belief you want believe in?

That is an excellent question. The great variety of Christian denominations, from oldest Orthodoxy and Catholicism to the newest Protestant speak for themselves. They spoke by their promotion of our liberties in the past. The track record is very good for Christians.

Has it ever happened that a small, local Christian sect has denied/fought to deny liberties and breathed threats toward our Bill of Rights?

Yes. I dont know of one right now but I am sure it happened sometime. maybe the Jonestown guys.

What happens far more often is the non- participation, or what is called the “piety movement” or “Pietist” such as Mennonites, Amish, Shakers, and I guess old time Quakers and the newer sect called Jehovah’s Witnesses, just to name a few. These folks consider participation in certain or all parts of civics to be wrong. They dont overthrow the government. They ignore government. They want to be left alone. Do not ask these people questions about “Bill of Rights or Bible”. You will certainly “make” them into Dominionists that way, but they were no danger to you at all. Force the choice on them and they will move to another country if they can, or just put up with it if they must.

however, a conservative fundamentalist/evangelical Christian like myself is another story. Ask the question and yes you turn us into Dominionists. Force the choice on us and something very unpleasant will happen.

300 years ago a certain group of Christians(Huguenots) ran from persecution from France to the netherlands, when persecution followed them to the netherlands they got tired of running. Thanks to Calvin? or maybe it was Knox, they decided it was legitimate for Christians to turn and fight.(very quick and imprecise i know)

200 years ago Christians with a similar outlook participated far more than any other group in the fighting of the American Revolution and the founding of the USA.

My point is: With that track record, this type of Christian is unlikely to accept persecution or run away from it. Nor do i think we will accept a sort of second class citizenship where we cannot participate or influence the government like everyone else.

“Bill of Rights… or Bible” is a nice conversation, but a bad litmus test.

again, all written quickly because time is short, so corrections needed and welcome. I think i didnt answered every aspect of leefellers question.

Sorry Ozark Michael but my question doesn’t event come anywhere near the Inquisition by any stretch but your own. Why is my innocuous question so pernicious to you? No death penalty awaits for asking whether you consider the gov’t to be separate from your religion. You should have given, allegedly, Jesus/Joshuah’s response over tax paying. “Rendering unto Caesar etc…” which should have came instantly to you instead of your furtive actions here.

I have more to fear from Christians than you do from Atheists, by far. So I should be the paranoid one not you.

For the Supreme court, the wall is a high wall.

Maybe there is for some extreme separationists a strong desire to eliminate religion (all religions) from involvement in the government and further desire an elimination of religion completely, militantly hot atheists.  It is not my position as a gentle atheist, to eliminate religion from the stew of the population as I believe there is an intentional positive social function for the existence of religions as well as non-religious members in a huge and disparate citizenry.  Beliefs vary exceedingly, there is no way to determine if there is any dogma that holds a primacy over any other.  StuartH makes that abundantly clear in several of his posts.

FYI: the original Jefferson letter:
To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Thomas Jefferson, Jan.1.1802.

In the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education (1947), almost seventy years later, the Supreme Court reasoned the metaphor: “In the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall of separation between church and State””. That wall, the justices concluded that wall, in an all-inclusive separationist declaration, ‘must be kept high and impregnable.’ We could not approve the slightest breach.”  [ Everson, 330 U.S. 1, 16, 18 (1947).] Jefferson’s words were entwined into the Everson ruling, which, like Reynolds, was packed with references and denotations to history, especially the important parts played by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia disestablishment struggles.  (My bold emphasis)

EVERSON V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 330 U. S. 1 (1947)
http://supreme.justia.com/us/330/1/case.html

The well-worn phrase “wall of separation” entered the language of American constitutional law in 1879. In Reynolds v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote the opinion that the Danbury letter “may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [first] amendment thus secured.”  http://supreme.justia.com/us/98/145/case.html

After reading up a little on the Supreme Court and Jehovah’s Witnesses, it seems clear that the Witnesses started a program of seeking court tests before 1940. 

They didn’t seek exceptional status for religion as being exempt from the Constitution, but rather, to define how the First Amendment protects religious practice under Supreme Court interpretation.  (Any and all religion)

From the wikipedia article:

“Of the 72 cases involving the Jehovah’s Witnesses that have been brought before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court has ruled in favor of them 47 times.

Significant cases have struck down laws making flag salutes compulsory, imposing limits of preaching in public (proselytizing), and instituting conscription—upholding a right to conscientious objection to military service.

Although the Jehovah’s Witnesses did not win every case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jehovah’s Witnesses in several landmark decisions of First Amendment law.

These helped pave the way for the modern civil rights movement.[3] Even the cases that the Jehovah’s Witnesses lost helped the U.S. to more clearly define the limits of First Amendment rights.”

The preview showed a lot of empty space that I couldn’t eliminate.  I hope that the actual display doesn’t do that.  Sorry if it does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_involving_Jehovah’s_Witnesses

I would think religious exceptionalism would be subject to the same judicial framework, under the Constitution and two centuries of court precedent that binds us all.

But, to inform the discussion better, here is a Wikipedia page on the courts and Jehovah’s Witnesses that is cited as general precedent for all religious cases.

What of other regions or so called religions, do they not supersede individual support before the nation, not just Christianity?  First allegiance to the Pope, or any belief you want believe in?

Ozark:

What religious group articulates this line of argument?  Jehovah’s Witnesses?

To me, it seems novel.  The language you use is not the same that you hear from people who are used to talking about law, legislation, or the history of legal issues.

The general principle at work, though, is that, since “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” and the wall of separation between church and state is a practical barrier that protects your religious practice from government intrusion, there really isn’t a reason it would matter ordinarily. But just because people want to believe in their exceptionalism doesn’t mean that they really are exceptional in a legal sense, any more or less than anyone else.

We all enjoy the fruits of being American citizens, we also bear the same responsibilities under the law equally.

I would like to read up on this.  Surely there is a history.  What are the key words?

I said: “A Christian can never be more loyal to any state than to Christ. So dont ask, or you create disloyal citizens where you had perfectly loyal ones before.  Even gentler variations of the question are not a good idea. The USA is founded on the idea that the government doesnt ask such questions.”

StuartH responds: I have not heard that one before.  I don’t see how that is a legal stance that could really stand up in court. The last point might be a reference to legal tradition that there is a right to privacy, but as Justice Sotomayor pointed out, there is not a specifically enumerated right with the word “privacy” in the Constitution.  The government doesn’t have an interest because of the wall of separation of church and state, also a concept in practice.

I am not a lawyer. Time is short, forgive the rough edges…

Perhaps the separation should be interpreted more broadly.

Since the only powerful/widespread belief system of history to that point(American Independance) was Christianity in its various sects, the danger of a controlling interest influencing the state to the exclusion of others could only come from that direction. Yet since those days there has arisen a philosophy which has the same effect as a religion in muscleing out other belief systems.

We have history to teach us that there are such philosophies. The founding fathers did not.

The founding fathers never anticipated that unbelief could ever be a threat, or that unbelief would think of asking the sort of questions of a citizens that Belief had asked historically. Belief asked: “What are you more loyal to, the state or your heresy?” The assumption of disloyalty to the American government because of faith in Christ is a terrible mistake.

The question “Christianity or Constitution?” is a callback to Revolutionary France and also more recently the USSR. It is a an anti-religion, which competes on the level of religious belief(unbelief) perhaps we Christians could defend ourselves from this by the ‘separation clause’.

So, unexpected by the founding fathers, a new power walks the earth. It asks the same type of questions as an Inquisition, but it is not a religion at all. In America? Yes, and to my knowledge it is going on for 30 years, and growing stronger.

NightGaunt is a good guy, that is why i have hammered him over this. He is better than this. 

I have to go.

Interesting, Ozark.

“A Christian can never be more loyal to any state than to Christ. So dont ask, or you create disloyal citizens where you had perfectly loyal ones before.  Even gentler variations of the question are not a good idea. The USA is founded on the idea that the government doesnt ask such questions.”

I have not heard that one before.  I don’t see how that is a legal stance that could really stand up in court. The last point might be a reference to legal tradition that there is a right to privacy, but as Justice Sotomayor pointed out, there is not a specifically enumerated right with the word “privacy” in the Constitution.  The government doesn’t have an interest because of the wall of separation of church and state, also a concept in practice.

I know of people who believe they should not pay taxes because they prefer to believe that the IRS is an illegal institution.  Whenever they wind up in court, due to not filing, they lose and get hammered.  Churches and other non-profits have to be careful about the IRS rules for political action, or lose their non tax status.  There have been a few cases like that. 

I know that there are instances where individuals refuse military service because of conscientious objection. 

But actually in those cases, people are not claiming a special exemption from the Constitution because they believe their religious affiliation supercedes their state affiliation.

I’d like to know if there are actually court cases that have arisen from this idea.
My sense is that this attitude will only stand as long as there is no contest over implications that might cause laws to be brought to bear.  One can believe any sort of thing you want until it crosses a line that causes a test.  I would be very careful in anything that might create a cause for legal action, especially by a prosecutor.  I can’t however, think of a way that this would really happen.

This is a nation of laws, and there is no religious exemption, and certainly Christians have no better claim to one than any other religious affiliation, say Muslims.

“Night Gaunt and StuartH, you are both aware that ‘non disruption’ applies to your side as well as mine. It applies equally. You knew that already.”—Ozark Michael

Yes. To all sides, yours, mine and all the others not represented or have had a chance yet to speak.

We get more done here than most of those town meetings. Sad but the format doesn’t allow for shouting over anyone else. Good thing too.

Thank you for being mindful, Leefeller! You are a True…. peach

I was rereading some of the comments here, especially MarthaA’s and I have to say, MarthaA your posts are 70% not understandable, 20% nearly not understandable, 10% understandable. I am now ruined for life.  That 70/20/10 ratio will dog me forever.

No disdain from this end OM, though we may disagree on many things and agree on others this is how one learns. We know some of differences already (we meaning you and I, for Shes sake). 

For me, differences should not be grounds for animosity or deviousness.  Seems manipulations by special interests work very hard to create those divisive differences by calling enhanced attention to them, if one is enlightened enough to see them as such, reason should evade the pitfalls of manipulation. 

Can one have respect for something which one does not believe? Of course, in my case I have always had a different belief than a pirate, but have found pirates interesting and I respect the pirate acceptance of the pirate code. For some strange reason I feel the same about Middle Eastern people and their life styles, though I have some trouble with perceived abuses of their women.

Yes we may be like Jerry and Kramer, but which one are you?

Again I shall sound off for the really ignorant use of collectives such as “us,” “we,” “everyone,” which in essence is a shotgun attack to mediate being specific.  It is a way of concealing oneself among a fictionalized crowd.  Hopefully those I point to are big enough to take the scolding, but it is a matter of literary exactitude.  But if you are not, don’t make the mistake that I care.  It is my wish that it be stopped, StuartH, starting with examples in your last post when you said, ”Possibly, we are also all timing out on patience for a discussion that just goes round and round meanwhile we suffer from heat exhaustion.” and ”Perhaps if we were in person that could be overcome.”  This is not to discount the time you spoke directly to OzarkMichael, which was excellently put, nor when you spoke for the rhetoric “we” in the last paragraph of that post where you were expressing a hope for a rational way for the group to proceed. OzarkMichael, you also spoke acceptably in the figurative “we” in your responding comment wherein you also legitimately waxed philosophically.  But otherwise as I noted at first here, the use of the inclusive collectives “we, us, everyone, all of us,” and etc., is most irritating and I find wholly disrespectful.  I cannot speak for the others, but I do not consider myself united with the others in more ways than I do so consider.  A careful reading gives evidence of that.  It is invalid to do that and it is a habit, a widespread sin committed by the use of those collective pronouns and highlights MarthaA’s description of sophistry.

Since you made an open invitation, OzarkMichael, to assess the rather boorish behavior of people attending public political meetings, rallies, town hall meetings, etc., I will.  Seems that rude behavior is recognized by anyone who is the recipient or the perpetrator of it.  It is my opinion that it is reasonable and a responsibility to challenge politicians on the actions they bring to bear on the politics affecting the people.  As civilized, cultivated humans, there is a general sense of conventional manners.  This is normally taught at home and in the schools.  Human beings cannot progress in meaningful ways unless tolerance is learned and an ability to negotiate different points of view, especially when those views are expressed in ways that do not assault one’s person.

There are so many fuzzy collective nouns in MarthaA’s posts, that makes all of her posts null and void, meaning they are reduced to zero value.  It is not knowable exactly to whom she is referring.  It is a shotgun tactic erroneously thought to “cover all the bases.”

Night Gaunt and StuartH, you are both aware that ‘non disruption’ applies to your side as well as mine. It applies equally. You knew that already.

Again, i am being direct now, no irony. i am knocking my own weapons out of my hands: MarthaA, you need to think about whether you really want to go along with this pact or not. Code Pink.

leefeller! saw ya here before, but was too tied up to ask,  “howzitgoin?”  Our relationship is like jerry seinfeld and Kramer. One of them just saunters into the kitchen and starts eating a bowl of the other guy’s cereal. Hopefully we are like that, and not like jerry seinfeld and Newman. where they square off and greet each other friendly words but clear disdain:

“Hello…......... jerry.”
“hello…......... newman.”

Night Gaunt said Ozark Michael what you are telling me is that such a simple question is pregnant for you with possible problems. Like interfering with how you operate here. The less we know the easier you can maneuver. Nice but your excuses don’t wash. If you don’t agree with how our country should operate that’s your business but it would help us understand where you are coming from. Something you don’t want. Fine.

The question is not pregnant with problems for me. I accept full responsibility for giving you any cause to assume this. Let me explain my view, which is very typical for Christians, as clearly as i can.

1. A Christian can never be more loyal to any state than to Christ. So dont ask, or you create disloyal citizens where you had perfectly loyal ones before.  Even gentler variations of the question are not a good idea. The USA is founded on the idea that the government doesnt ask such questions.

2. No one in this chat is more interested in preserving the Bill of Rights than I am. No one, including you, is more devoted to it. It is prejudiced for you to even think otherwise.

2. An overwhelmingly Christian people demanded the Bill of Rights. So understand that the Biblical wordview is not only compatable with but was the ground for the Bill of Rights. The people of that time thought that God was the source of their freedom. The Christians 100 years later believed the same, and the Christians now believe the same.

2. If the early American population would have been forced to answer “Christianity or Constitution” they would have thought you a fool. If the government forced citizens to choose, the people would have REVOLTED against the government.

I am trying to tell you that the question is not in your best interests. If the question becomes widespread, if it is asked by the state, it will tear the nation apart even today.

If you cannot trust me, thats is my fault. Then listen to MarthaA, a Christian who is on the opposite side of politics from me. She will not like it if you ask her the question the way talk2action does. Or listen to Shenonymous, an atheist and a liberal, because she understood that the question contains a false assumption.

I am not really afraid to answer, I was afraid to give you reason to believe that the question should be asked of Christians. So stop already for their sake and your own.

Ozark Michael what you are telling me is that such a simple question is pregnant for you with possible problems. Like interfering with how you operate here. The less we know the easier you can maneuver. Nice but your excuses don’t wash. If you don’t agree with how our country should operate that’s your business but it would help us understand where you are coming from. Something you don’t want. Fine.

I have already said that freedom of speech doesn’t include stopping others from talking. I am against anyone for doing it. I don’t care what position the speaker or the interrupter has. Without dialog we just have nothing but noise and failure to communicate.

I think hate speech is bad but not allowing it to go out and those who would correct have their say is worse. Shout downs aren’t free speech.

That’s a good start.  Most communities that have any kind of functioning ethics are based on some kind of principle of respect for the common good that courtesy brings.  That is the cornerstone of the American system.

Unfortunately we are all tempted to confuse this with a video game. 

So far so good!

Night Guant: “I apologize for asking you if you think the Bill of Rights should be more important than the Bible in affairs of gov’t. My mistake. What was I thinking?”

I am sorry for making such a stink about it, but it was my way of telling you that the direction of the question is not fair, nor is it wise. You(and talk2action) are create enemies of the Bill of Rights with that type of question. Shenonymous and Martha explained why in a very direct way. especially Martha was very clear.

For the last few days I have been direct here. No irony at all. So lets try to move forward. Maybe we could start at a simple point. American political discourse.

I will start. My opinion:

Interrupting a speaker is bad. People who do that put themselves above the process, and if everyone does it we will not have a process at all. We have a good process that works (more or less)so we ought not destroy it just to get our way.

can we all agree about that? I am worried that we wont.

Ozark:

The problem you seem to be having in dialogue with “The Left” is that you fail to realize that you are in a forum that is totally based on text and that there is an art to creating a bridge between styles of thought and learned communication behavior.  Not an uncommon problem.  My father was an electrical engineer and my mother was an English major and their communication problems were my first observations about this.
They were stuck for many years this way and died never realizing what the real issue was. 

You come across as sharing nothing, wanting others to cater to you, and then just casting stereotypical blame. 

From your writing, I first thought you were probably a junior college student.  Then, there were some clues about age that created a different impression, but it is still hard to tell what you are talking about because references to where you are coming from are kind of missing.  Call it the control track the mind needs as a basis to understand incoming information.  That is basic to getting a reader to relate.  Combative conclusions and stereotypical disparagements are just bricks to throw. Maybe that is satisfying at some level.  Maybe that is the entire purpose.  Throw a brick and duck.  Throw another, duck.  Perhaps you want to hide so as to not be a target yourself. 

I mention your name because you have successfully used this method, consciously or not, to become central in this discussion.  Everyone here, however, has engaged in some aspect of this “throw and duck” style. 

I don’t see that as going anywhere, especially after thousands of words.  The discussion is hardening into attitudinal concrete.  But then, the political environment outside this forum is getting combative at the same time.  That affects us all.  I realize that it has affected me. 

Possibly, we are also all timing out on patience for a discussion that just goes round and round meanwhile we suffer from heat exhaustion.  You may have noticed that there is an ambient anger that just rises with extended high temperatures and acuity is lowered.  That probably can be said to happen virtually as well.

Perhaps if we were in person that could be overcome.  Some empathy might be more likely.  It is after all, hard to see text as really human…

Looking at the other Truthdig forums, though, this has been much more civilized by comparison.  The latest ones seem to me like scratchings in the scum shellac on a bathroom wall at a run down bus station in a bad section of downtown.

The potential in this technology is better than that.  I think we can either insist on scratching epithets in the virtual bus station bathroom wall, making deeper cuts - or we can decide to seek a better paradigm.  The choice is really the issue.

Yes I will try not to lace OzarkMichael into the dominate(?) paradigm of wanting to know where he stands on things. That might put a dent in his humor manipulations and irony games he so delights in. I see now. I apologize for asking you if you think the Bill of Rights should be more important than the Bible in affairs of gov’t. My mistake. What was I thinking?

Glenn Beck is both correct and incorrect in his assessments. Things are changing and not for the best but it isn’t Progressives behind it, it is the Regressives like Reagan, GHWBush, Clinton, GWBush and Obama are all in this together even if they aren’t clued in on the complete specifics. Just following their natural flow of more control and build upon what was laid down before. The revolution is on and it isn’t being televised in its entirety. It started the same year, 1980 when it was at the height of the Middle Class earnings. After that it was down hill. A Middle Class is against the Cabal’s religion. A Middle Class here started only in 1945. That means from 1619 to 1945 there wasn’t one on this continent. We can thank that ardent ‘progressive’ FDR for doing this. We are present at its slow death by strangulation and a million tiny cuts.

I know I’m mostly alone on this but I say it never-the-less. We are in a far worse financial state then they will let on. http://www.truthout.org/080909?n lets you in on what we aren’t being told on just how precarious our “recovery” really is. We are at the precipice of a steep hill we are at the bottom of. Only the abyss yawns before us. We didn’t get here by blind greed either and ad hoc actions but long term planning and careful execution (in both its uses) have been used to get what they want.

Dmitry Orlov noticed that even with the economic fall of Russia in the 1990’s the people managed to survive far better than one would expect. The infrastructure there allowed them to. He noticed that such infrastructure did not exist in the USA and it too was headed for a fall. He worked out the 5 levels of social collapse. See it at his web site http://www.cluborlov.com/ to see a detail look and hear his speeches on the subject. I think that the Cabal will ‘help’ us when we hit stage #3. What do you think? We can’t afford a financial collapse it would play into their waiting claws. Violent action too would help them because they planned for contingencies as any good military action is always done. After failing in 1934 (without any punishment by FDR) to get their way and join the Axis and win the world they have planned carefully and funded and expanded and infiltrated on may levels. I have deduced and adduced that these people are dead serious and hell bent on getting their way. I wish I knew how to stop them. The best I can see is if the best of real Democrats and even Republicans (if you can find any real ones) along with the 3rd parties break that barrier keeping the fresh blood of the other parties out of high office. I don’t see too many other ways to do it.

Because if we fail to stop it and they fail to stem the collapse we can balkanize into fragmented pseudo-states and roving bands of starving predators. Other nations will invade to seize and guard the enormous nuclear arsenal just sitting there. Not a good scenario either. So the Dominionist’s plan is a dangerous one in itself. We are seeing the fall of the Republic not an Empire. [the Empire’s global reach was funded on the back of draining the coffers of the Republic.]

Only a quick moment to devote to this realm as ordinary life calls, but since “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm” is a poster on the wall of my office, I was amused at OM’s more or less appropriation.  Good for him!  I applaud anyone who does that, subvert the dominant paradigm, that is.  It demonstrates individualism at it’s finest.  All that notwithstanding, I visited that other forum on the drug companies, much to OM’s backtracking invitation, ha!  One must be careful in the deep dark forest of Truthdig.  I realize my own peril.

Sophist, a modern meaning is pretender of wisdom who bombastically attempts to influence others.

A modified paradigm, a take-off of MarthaA’s:  The Rights, the Nearly Rights, and the Wrongs.  On every important issue, 70% of the population are Perfectly Rights, 20% are Nearly Rights, and 10% are Wrongs.

I did it very fast, i posted some irony at MarthaA’s link.

Why dont you all go over there and agree with my post, and take it a step further! Post your opinion that the people involved in taking millions from big drug companies are committing treason, and are Nazis. Its fascism, right?

I am kidding. It isnt treason. Dont post. It would be very dumb for you to do that. I set a trap up over there, i dont want you to step in it so just sit back and watch what happens at: 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090810_inside_story_on_town_hall_riots_right-wing_shock_troops_do_corpora/

Shenonymous to MarthaA: I do see that OM is not answering your questions.

I have found in my life that when liberals have power, they do not ask Christians questions in order to learn or to compromise, but they ask as if they are sentries at the gate. For me it is like getting profiled or being frisked. I have never found the process to be helpful in dialogue or learning for anyone, it only establishes the Leftist dominant paradigm.

I resisted/resist/and will never cease to resist the dominant paradigm.

Could i get past the gate? Yes, I could. Which for the Left serves another process. If I admitted it proves how reasonable and tolerant and openminded the Left is.

As I write this my conscience bothers me about the places and times when I got through the gate. My brothers and sisters were locked outside.

The dominant paradigm of the Left is a fraud. My attacks of reflection and irony expose it little by little. Direct conversation(which i have attempted for the past few days here) allows the Leftists to lapse back into their dominant paradigm.

Besides I could not answer every question if I tried.

Martha linked to the “stormtroopers” article here at Truthdig. I tried to do everyone a favor by warning you that the article has a massive error in it so none of you would make fools of yourselves if you decide to post there.

Perhaps I should have played my usual game with you guys and tried to tie all of you to that error but I did not.

Hmm. i might go over there and play a little so you can see what i mean. If I can find time, and if someone else hasnt figured it out already

Reading all this, I think whatever chance there is of communicating has been buried under an avalanche of text. 

There has to be a limit on the memory allocated to such forum threads as this, and the error messages that happen when linking back from emails may be an indicator.  So if it locks up, that should be expected at some point.

I am reminded of an observation I made some time ago.  I was chairing an ongoing series of meetings at city hall.  This involved a knotty issue that involved lawyers, bureaucrats, elected officials and citizen activists from across the spectrum from A to Z.  Actually this went on for years.  But I remember a really intense argument that erupted between several people.  The thing was, after six months of yelling and increasingly sharp and impolite name calling, and efforts by me and others to sort this out, it turned out that these people actually agreed with each other all along. 

What they had been doing was not listening very well, and in their ardor to focus on their own need to express themselves, they failed to realize that they had just been using somewhat different vocabulary and working from slightly different styles of English usage. 

I see these discussions cycling through something similar.

It could be the format.  The way we are used to using text.  The lack of tone or sense of presence.  It also could be the subject.  But, if you look at the volume of keystrokes, this would be enough for a book manuscript - albeit a tome that few would have the patience to read. 

I find that these forums are a good writing exercise, so experimenting with what is or is not effective is one of my purposes, an excuse for wasting the time.  Are they good for establishing some sort of dialogue?  I don’t know.  Sometimes there seems to be a glimmer of hope, but then it usually gets buried as it all keeps tumbling past. Ultimately, I think we will learn to use this technology for better communications purposes, but it may well take another generation or two. 

Time for a Second Revolution?  Like I said, I think the evidence is all around that we are in one and it is moving us like quantum physics heading into new dimensions of reality.  Some of the population is shying and whinnying like horses trying to break out of the barn, ahead of an earthquake.  Others don’t see anything happening at all.  Maybe we can attach names to things that bug us about this, maybe we don’t have language for it.

But in a sense we are all Volunteers for America singing “Revolution” ever since Woodstock (or before.)  As they say in Austin, “Onward Through the Fog.”

For some reason MarthaA, I think I am seeing double.  It seems your posts are doubling up, except there are   l i t t l e   m i n u t e,  well maybe not so minute, differences between the twin posts.  Are you posting then reconsidering   a   l i t t l e   t i n y   b i t?  It is okay with me, it is sort of a visual broken record.  I sort of live my life that way.

I’m trying to get a handle on what you are doing.  I’ve had to take the day off to deal with life.  Tomorrow will be another off day so I’m thinking I will get really far behind in the cogency of the forum if I don’t think my way through some of it tonight.  I’ve been enjoying this forum for the profound thoughts it has generated, at least it has for me, and I don’t visit too many, so I’m claiming residency… for now.  Seems like the name-calling has been elevated exponentially.  I find that the weakest form of argument.  Because he identifies himself with conservative Christian views, that does not equate OM with Hitler.  It is obvious you wish to paint that picture, but I say the incessant repetition of an untruth hinders your program.  It appears you are engaging in the very thing you are criticizing.  A systematic discrediting of an individual by identifying them with some evility.  That is called demonization and typical of Nazi tactics. 

I do see that OM is not answering your questions.  But that is his way.  It is a regular complaint from N-G, and others. 

Catching up from a day or two ago…I read where OM said
All i can do is reflect your own words back at you. You are not able to work out a complex, changing situation. Is there not less racism now than when you were a kid? 

Is there?  If there is, and by the looks of recent events, it has been concealed to all but the Rightists and Nearly Rightist, and the Common Majority Leftists has not acknowledged there is less racism.  We are reminded, as an example of demonization by OM himself, that Thomas Jefferson, the Left’s favorite founding father, held slaves.

The most murky puzzlement of Jefferson’s life is often thrown into the face of those who love, and on a cellular level, believe in freedom and liberty:  The fact that he owned slaves.  But more than a cursory view would show clearly the irony – that Thomas Jefferson did more to end slavery in the America than anyone else in American history with the sole exception of Abraham Lincoln, who by the way and not by coincidence, took Jefferson as his model.  But that detail is always omitted by those who use only partial truths (trooths).  It is an effrontery when a battle cry is made out of “Nearly” truths.  I call them who practice it, Troothsayers.  Let’s put some perspective on this issue.

2nd Part

Not joining in the usual choir that complains they live in the wrong time period, I am overjoyed to witness history as it is presently unfolding, the return (eternal) of conservative hysteria.  And I want to interject a thank you to OM for giving the opportunity once again for exposure to the Truth, not Trooth mind you, to be given refreshment!  It is my mission to whatever degree I can, to present a corrected view of facts misused. 

The Christian Right relies heavily on historical distortions and as a regular orchestrated program carries out their intention to discredit Thomas Jefferson.  This has been an invariable program since the 18th century.  Jefferson was represented as diabolic from his contemporaries for his neutralization of religion in shaping this nation.  OzarkMichael is merely the latest voice to invoke the tired-old accusations.  It is all right.  We all have and are entitled to our proclivities. 

The often whine from Rightists is that they are given unequal treatment.  This wry defense, as blatantly seen on this forum, is ludicrous since equality is not included in the extreme Rightist playbook. But giving the Illusion they are unfairly treated is!

I have always held that actions speak louder than words.  And the fact that TJ had slaves is a perfect example of action in spite of his voluminous words on the evils of slavery.  I too tremble as did Thomas Jefferson when trampling on the rights and freedoms of people transforms those who trample into despots, and freedom becomes a tenuous proposition.

That any man may imagine his right to own another as property is anathema and if there were a Just God, would indubitably be against that God’s Will. 

While Jefferson, in his lifetime, did free three slaves, and in his will freed a few more out of the 300 he had, that could be seen by those who are hunting for it, as a weakness in his character, and could possibly even with some righteous indignation accuse him of hypocrisy.  I offer a treatise on this very subject, at http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/slavery.PDF that soberly looks at Jefferson and Slavery.  Rather than recite this essay, which would take way too much space here, I will let you check it out if you care about truth.  Instead I will just say, however much criticism is thrown at him, a reading of all Thomas Jefferson wrote against slavery had an indestructible effect and I submit that this effect lasted not only until Abraham Lincoln carried out Jefferson’s intentions but that the vile business of slavery was eradicated from our shores and presents a model for the rest of the world, for there is still that loathsome practice in the world today.  Does it matter in the history of the world exactly when justice is realized.  A hundred years is not so much an eternity as could be argued.  But I argue that when it comes to human rights, even more than a hundred years has passed that the evils men do to one another has yet not been excised out of their genes.  If their effort to genetically engineer human beings, those reviled scientists (ala Erhlich and Holdren) could permanently remove the “doing evil” gene, it arguably could be seen as worth their effort.  And so we still feel the vestiges of slavery in the shameful bigotry that both blatantly and surreptitiously permeates imperious xenophobes.

Ozark-Michael,

I think you made a mistake and answered somebody else because nothing you are talking about was anything I have asked you.

Here is the last question I asked you:  “if Christian EXTREMISTS have reasons for what they do, please explain the reason the Catholic Pope sided with Hitler in World War II?”

Is framing your Congressman as a DISTURBER, as Adolph Hitler did the Jews, making yourself in your own mind the innocent underdog fighting against tyranny in the same way as Adolph Hitler did? And, Do you see what you did as being the right thing?—this type of behavior has been used from Goldwater, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II and continues to be used to subjectively frame the innocents, the Liberals, as the DISTURBERS and the DISTURBERS as the innocents, and the RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT is just as proud of what they have done as Adolph Hitler was, and you say you are???  You have nothing to be proud of.  What Adolph Hitler did cost the lives of over 20 MILLION innocents and time has shown that the innocents of Adolph Hitler was nonexistent.  Is the standard of DISTURBERS being innocents your standard?  Again, in this regard, I assure you we have nothing in common.

You have admitted you are one of the REPUBLICAN EXTREMISTS GANGSTERS GONE WILD:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141811/health_care_town_halls_"gone_wild”:_right-wingers_on_the_rampage/

Why are you proud of being a disturber?

Ozark-Michael,

I think you made a mistake and answered somebody else because nothing you are talking about was anything I have asked you.

Here is the last question I asked you that you didn’t answer:  “if Christian EXTREMISTS have reasons for what they do, please explain the reason the Catholic Pope sided with Hitler in World War II?”

Is framing your Congressman as a DISTURBER, as Adolph Hitler did the Jews, making yourself in your own mind the innocent underdog fighting against tyranny in the same way as Adolph Hitler did? And, Do you see what you did as being the right thing?—this type of behavior has been used from Goldwater, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II and continues to be used to subjectively frame the innocents, the Liberals, as the DISTURBERS and the DISTURBERS as the innocents, and the RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT is just as proud of what they have done as Adolph Hitler was, and you say you are???  You have nothing to be proud of.  What Adolph Hitler did cost the lives of over 20 MILLION innocents and time has shown that the innocents of Adolph Hitler was nonexistent.  Is the standard of DISTURBERS being innocents your standard?  Again, in this regard, I assure you we have nothing in common.

You have admitted you are one of the REPUBLICAN EXTREMISTS GANGSTERS GONE WILD:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141811/health_care_town_halls_"gone_wild”:_right-wingers_on_the_rampage/

Why are you proud of being a disturber?

MartaA, The article you linked to about opposition to Obama’s Healthcare has an error

Normally I would write a highly ironic post to draw you in. But you are potential friends and i will be direct. Also i dont have time so i must write this fast.

The two paragraphs in Martha’s link about the drug companies beginning with

“Imagine you’re an executive at a pharmaceutical company…”

This is totally flawed. Some of you are friends of mine and I dont want you to get sucked into the stupidity. 

Listen:

The US drug companies held a secret meeting with Obama. They came to an agreement, taking lobbying to new heights. No one knows what the agreement is except that the drug companies just announced that they would donate 150 MILLION dollars to help sell Obama’s plan. Thats more money then John McCain spent in his campaign to be President, and much more than the companies who oppose the plan could afford.

They will also contribute 80?(dont have time to check) BILLION to the healthplan itself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/health/policy/09lobby.html?_r=1

Please be aware of this error in the article before you post there. If I had time… oooh the fun i would have playing with them!

Gotta go. Peace!

hello MarthaA,

I did tell you that probably wouldnt post for a day or two. I just wont have time for writing so much.

But I do read the posts here. Every day. And i think about them off and on all day. It is enjoyable.

Please keep posting but dont get frustrated if i dont answer tonite or tomorrow.

Night-Gaunt,

Objective Political Discourse as OPPOSED to Subjective Political Discourse——Big difference.

What Politicians Should be doing:

OBJECTIVITY:  n. the state or quality of being objective; intentness on objects external to the mind; external reality.

OBJECTIVE:  n. 1. something aimed at;  2. something real and observable.

OBJECTIFY:  v.t. 1. to make objective; externalize.

OBJECT:  n. 1. something that can be seen or touched; thing; fact.

as opposed to:

What the Conservative Right-Wing EXTREME Republican Politicians have been doing for the last Forty Years that continually gets worse:

SUBJECTIVITY: n. 1. subjective quality or state; existence in the mind only; absorption in one’s own mental states or processes; tendency to view things through the medium of one’s own individuality.

SUBJECTIVE: adj. 1. existing in the mind; belonging to the person’s thinking rather than to the object thought of:  Ideas and opinions are subjective; facts are objective.

SUBJECTIFY:  v.t. 1. to make subjective; identify with the subject.

SUBJECT:  n. 1. something thought about, discussed, investigated, etc.

ORGANIZED ASSERTIVE SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING SOPHIST POLITICAL PROPAGANDA MUST BE STOPPED

While there is still time law and order must be legislated and enforced to regulate the use of ORGANIZED ASSERTIVE SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING POLITICAL SOPHIST PROPAGANDA; this is sophistry and propaganda that is harmful to National Security; this was done to the Weimar Republic in Germany and we all know what happened there; if we in the United States do not want the same thing to happen here, it is time to act and prohibit the assertive use of ORGANIZED SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING POLITICAL SOPHISTRY and ORGANIZED SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING POLITICAL PROPAGANDA, as a means to exercise POWER and CONTROL by the few to oppress and tyrannize the many, by making ORGANIZED SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING POLITICAL SOPHISTRY and ORGANIZED SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING POLITICAL PROPAGANDA a crime of conspiracy against the National Security of the United States.

I am in no way suggesting an impingement on the free speech of individual citizens.  What I am saying is that when organizations use ASSERTIVE ORGANIZED SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING POLITICAL SOPHISTRY and ASSERTIVE ORGANIZED SUBJECTIVE DEHUMANIZING POLITICAL PROPAGANDA that rises to the level of a clear, present and imminent danger to the security of the United States as a nation, this type of behavior must be criminalized and punished as a treasonable offense to the National Security of the United States.

TREASON:  The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance; or of betraying the state into the hands of a foreign power.

The following thread has provided evidence of treasonable offenses by a vast network of organizations who are through overt action trying to overthrow the government of the United States.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090810_inside_story_on_town_hall_riots_right-wing_shock_troops_do_corpora/

Hope you got it, because I don’t think I can say it any better.

OzarkMichael the Republican Sophist,

Are you unable to objectively answer any of my questions?  Because that rant sure wasn’t an objective answer?

Conservative Republican EXTREMIST sophist propagandists always subjectify everything and are unable to be even marginally objective.

“Subjective sophist propagandists”  invariably ask for OBJECTIVE proof against SUBJECTIVE assertions; this has been done by Goldwater, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, as well as all of their minions in current RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN PARTY politics and in the CORPORATE RIGHT-WING MEDIA; it is time that “subjective sophist propaganda” of the CONSERVATIVE EXTREMIST RIGHT-WINGERS be OBJECTIVELY challenged for what it is “subjective sophist propaganda”, pandering to “subjective sophist propaganda” keeps the dialogue framed by the “subjective sophist propagandists” like the “subjective sophist propagandists” that empowered Adolph Hitler at the expense of the Weimar Republic.

The whole OzarkMichael dialogue comes straight out of the Play Book of the Right-Wing Conservative EXTREMIST Republican Party—- “Mein Kampf” by Adolph Hitler.

The only pertinent question in OzarkMichael dialogue is the same as it was with Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and ALL of the other “subjective sophist propagandists” of the RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN PARTY, and that is whether or not democratic opposition is dumb enough to be sucked in to the RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANS use of “progressive subjective sophist propaganda framing” to distort OBJECTIVE REALITY and when caught be allowed to change the topic, make a plethora of new “subjective accusations” to distort OBJECTIVE REALITY and start the whole “dumb show” all over again; THIS IS WHAT ADOLPH HITLER DID, and it worked well for him. 

The question that we all have to ask ourselves today, at the start of the 21st Century, is whether or not we want to do the whole destructive ADOLPH HITLER “dumb show” all over again—- we know where it leads and I don’t think that anyone other than a fool would want to go there.

Goldwater, Reagan, Bush I , Bush II and all of their political minions and minions in the press set a STANDARD that required “objectified answers and proof” to refute “subjectified assertions”.

If “objectified answers and proof” are required for “subjectified assertions,” the same STANDARD must apply to the assertions, “objectified assertions”, responded to by “objectified answers and proof” is a proper practice for dialogue and anything short or “objectified assertions” and “objectified response” is pandering to “subjectified assertions” that is most probably for reasons of ignorance or sophist propaganda.

By MarthaA, August 9 at 9:23 pm #

“OzarkMichael the Subjective Sophist,”

OzarkMichael said:  “1. Reality for a single human being is a subjective experience.”

MarthaA’s answer:  “This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?”

This time I must side with OzarkMichael because the idea of objectivity is fully impossible in a quantum universe where the very act of observing can change the outcome of the observed! The closest we can come is to weigh all the arguments and see from various points of view and work to a conclusion from them. No more, no less. From occultism to gnosis. Otherwise from your point of view I too am a sophist.

One can have opinions but there are only one set of facts. All else is opinion, lies and misinterpretation masquerading as fact. Such is what a scientist does in finding out which is which.

Actually that Night-Gaunt quote you use is from Shenonymous, not me. Maybe OzarkMichael is having at both of us for a little twist on the topic?

I didn’t make up the attempted coup in 1934, or the fact that many of those families supported the Axis or the fact that when Reagan was elected we started on our decline as a republic and a huge increase in our global war machine while trashing our economy in the process. Or all of the laws that have passed and the formation of the Northern Command and Homeland Security et al. You look but you do not see.

It is there and I am sorry they are Christians of a sort. But just because they are I am not simpleminded enough to condemn all Christians for their actions. Anymore than all Basques for the ETA or all Islamics either for what a few do. However “smart” you really think I am or not I continue on and let my words define me as do you. Despite your constant attempts to paint me to the contrary. I council against violence and extreme acts and want to act within our Constitution and Bill of Rights, not against them. Unlike our opponents who are not so similarly restrained.

You must understand Ozark Michael if you are not for them then you are against. [The Bible has two quotes like that too.] However that is not how I operate as I said on this very thread. Yes peace and may wisdom come to all of us in time.

Oh MarthaA you only have one poisoned arrow!  But you used it most efficiently.  It was I who made the original statement about science and religion.  But, but, but I did not say it was either a subjective or an objective observation.  Except I did offer reason why they are immutably incompatible the basis of which is derived from their openness for revision.  OM was just mocking me.  It is his warrior style.  Like a duck with water rolling off its back, I took it in good spirit.  I am used to it, and that was a very subjective statement.  The duck (mallard) has now become my totem animal!  I am really going to put that story into bookform.  I look forward to illustrating it as well.  I then should be able to say that something tangible has come out of this forum.

OzarkMichael that was my question, not Night-Gaunts. Hmmm.  I feel like I am z-editor-in-residence here. 

Yeah, maybe it is time for a break.  The TD format is all f’d up.  It is pathetic. But maybe when the webmaster gets enough complaints he will do something about it.  The feature of posting a Submit used to post immediately if you are a logged-in registered commenter, now it doesn’t most of the time. But occasionally it does????? Then I almost always get a syntax error once I’ve submitted a post and try to return to the forum.  Another crazy thing. Good grief… Charlie Brown.  And have you noticed that the times indicated for posts are all messed up too.  Like it is still Sunday, August 9, yet the forum is showing August 10.  Weird.

BTW:  At the bottom of the page is a Contact Us link where a problem, technical, or really any other problem as there is a selection menu, where a complaint may be written to the webmaster.  If you didn’t already know…

ooops. typo. I was quoting shenonymous in the middle of my prior post but did not assign it to her:  “Science and religion are essentially and immutably incompatible.  Science is only involved in investigation and nothing else.”

Moving along, StuartH said that I: “used the right wing pejorative “ecoscience” to dismiss the current Administration’s science based approach. Maybe you didn’t intend that.”

I confess that i did. Holdren wrote “Ecoscience” and until he denounces it, I can ‘disparage’ him with his own term. 

Night Gaunt says: If you were singed in an earlier life, you then know the feeling of being burned!  And as a Christian how could you countenance harming others, which the extremists in America do?  You said you do not do such things, I believe you, but yet you do not condemn those who do.

I hereby condemn those who do. But do not assume that everything which I think is extreme/harmful is exactly the same as you.

Martha: “I am a speaker in tongues as well as a Bill Moyers listener.”

I was wondering! Your insightful and passionate statements about Jesus and the coin were a tip. Well hello, sister. I am very happy. I was wrong to think I am alone here. I was wrong and I apologize.  We diametrically disagree about politics but we both have to follow the same orders as best we can.  My, you were brave enough to quote the Bible at Truthdig. I bow to you.

For a few days i probably wont have time to post. i dont feel right about some of the harsh things i said on the table, since many have made an effort to be kind to me. Some or maybe all of you have proven that i am wrong to act so certain about what the future holds if you Leftists gain power.

This I know: the political discourse in our nation is just at the edge of insanity. People are being manipulated by fear and they resent it(support the bank bailout right now or else its doom. support the stimulus right now or else its doom. support the Healthcare Bill right now or it is doom) But this happened before, in the Iraq war too didnt it? the pressure to act right now is a whip, and questions are characterized as the work of the know-nothings.

When one side is intimidated into silence, the greatest questions that we face as nation become more frought with danger. When one side can be dismissed as ‘unpatriotic’ or the other as ‘fascist’
the process itself is in danger. We force the other side into more bizarre behaviour and into coming up with wierd conspiracy theories just to make sense of what is happening. We are creating what we fear.

As briefly as I can state it, art is involved with investigation of ideas, all kinds of ideas, even ideas about love; art investigates form and uses as its vehicle elements such as line, color, shading (value), texture and is restrained by aesthetic principles, or rules of good design, such as balance, variety, contrast, proportion, pattern, movement, emphasis, and unity. There is a psychological factor that humans find particular degrees of these principles more pleasing than others.  Art is similar to science and is not entirely “mutually incompatible” in its motive to investigate but its main focus is to find ways to use the physical world to communicate to the emotional world by generating a phenomenon of expression, and while for the most part using the physical world, art essentially is a mental activity.  The mind contemplates and probes for the best combination of the elements by exploring the principles to express an idea, hence the investigation.  Like science, the book is never closed and an idea is open to further artistic investigation. Even works may be re-worked.  This goes for any art and the relationship between the elements/principles/and ideas specific to that art, visual/performing/literary. To express anything is to become conscious of an emotion or perception.  Visual art or music or dance expresses emotions or ideas primarily not in words.  It provides a means to clarify and illustrate the emotion or idea within its principles what is vague through consciously willful, intentional works.

Generally understood, love is a noun about feeling (psychological).  And hence it is a hypothetical construction, that is heavily coated with sentimentality, and is a biologically evolved emotional state.  And since I think love is not the only worthwhile thing in life, I also think saying that it is, is vastly a vague statement.  It is grandiloquence.  Inasmuch as I experience love and have experienced love, even so, I should not like to vet the meaning of the idea called love as it would definitely take this forum on a wide and broad digression.  At least not until the current topic of the forum has run its course.  Success is always staying the course.  The Hindus have a lovely expression for it:  Mind Poise. 

Getting by is equivocating life.  Getting by means existing on the edge of something, in this case, life.  It is not living life fully.  What possibly happens to that part of life that is beyond getting by?  To do more than get by one has to define for oneself what the good life is.  Most likely it is meeting self-defined goals, and probably most rewarding goals that are accomplishments that will outlive the one just getting by.

An interesting self portrayal, it is unclear how being a scientist, or having had a scientific training would make one incompatible with oneself.  Sounds like doubletalk to me.

For all of the above, it does not change or affect the fact that science is only involved in investigation and nothing else.  Religion does not countenance investigation but rather catechizes, which resembles investigation but does not allow revision of its canons and doctrines.

OzarkMichael the Subjective Sophist,

OzarkMichael said:  “1. Reality for a single human being is a subjective experience.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “2. No person from any class is able to encompass/possess/own objective reality as if it is their property.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “3. Objective reality is not determined by vote or created by mob action or generated by riots covered by Bill Moyers.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “4. Only subjectivity is capable of moral action, such as “human benefit” and “favor””

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “5. Objectivity about even the simplist particles has proven to be very difficult to attain, even with scientific instruments. One must account for the subjective or the experiments fail.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “Science and religion are essentially and immutably incompatible.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “Science is only involved in investigation and nothing else.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “Science and art are essentially and immutably incompatable.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said:  “Science and love…( love is the only worthwhile thing in life)... are essentially and immutably incompatable.”

MarthaA’s answer:  This is a subjective statement.  On what objective basis is your subjective statement made?

OzarkMichael said: “By training i am a scientist!”

MarthaA says:  You must be a really poor scientist, because you are using subjectivity instead of objective metrics:  Why is that?

MarthaA says:  Why did you not answer my questions?  Were they not subjective enough?  You have only made a bunch of subjective statements saying NOTHING.  Again, on what objective basis are your subjective statements made?

Here is my original question that you still haven’t answered with all that subjective stuff.  You assume Christian EXTREMISTS have reasons for what they do, if Christian EXTREMISTS have reasons for what they do, please explain the reasons the Catholic Pope sided with Hitler in World War II?

I do not find the subjective use of sophistry and propaganda at all impressive, it was an old technique when Hitler used it and you are not very good at it.

martha said :The topic is subjective framing to deny and condemn OBJECTIVE REALITY, objective reality that has benefit for the many in favor of SUBJECTIVE REALITY that has benefit for the few.

1. Reality for a single human being is a subjective experience.

2. No person from any class is able to encompass/possess/own objective reality as if it is their property.

3. Objective reality is not determined by vote or created by mob action or generated by riots covered by Bill Moyers.

4. Only subjectivity is capable of moral action, such as “human benefit” and “favor”

5. Objectivity about even the simplist particles has proven to be very difficult to attain, even with scientific instruments. One must account for the subjective or the experiments fail.
 

Science and religion are essentially and immutably incompatible.  Science is only involved in investigation and nothing else.

Science and art are essentially and immutably incompatable.

Science and love…( love is the only worthwhile thing in life)... are essentially and immutably incompatable.

For all that, By training i am a scientist! Therefore I should be incompatable with myself and miserable on every level.

But I get by somehow.

If this was a card game, Om should feel uncomfortable, with all the recopies of the same posts he is out gunned and seems to have egg on his face, are jokers wild?

TD seems to be having a problem with it’s web site, maybe it is being Twittered by the Russians?

After following this thread for some time now, I believe I am coming down with OzarkMichaelits. Having spent some time in past threads with OM, I have always believed him to be fair and honest while evasive at the same time.  Which is fine, some people do not like to call their bets.

OM, though,  I must admit my disappointment of finding out your throwing tomatoes and producing Raspberries at your local town meeting!

FYI:  I am posting this only once, let’s see what happens on TD?

OzarkMichael the EXTREMIST Hitler Defender,

I misspoke when I said democratic riots, they have all been peaceful—police arrested some, but as a general rule, all were peaceful demonstrations—- the Republican Party Convention, the Democratic Party Convention and the Capitol in Washington, DC.  No local coverage was ever on the REPUBLICAN MEDIA NETWORKS, only on the liberal internet, DemocracyNOW and a little on PBS.  There have been lots of marches, with lots of people, just none of them are covered.  All the Left’s protests have been peaceful until the RIGHT-WING’S HITLERESQUE EXTREME disrupters of peaceful political democratic meetings came on the scene.

I applaud the CODE PINK Peace Team.  They are the only ones standing for the common population who do not want the United States to continue warring on little nations.  What the CODE PINK Peace Team is doing is very patriotic and brave.  It is difficult to stand up peacefully against war amid a throng of warmongers and they are doing it bravely.

OzarkMichael said via Barry Lopez: “The only change i seek is that you give some room to the Christians you come across. If they disagree with you about something, assume they have a reason.”

Assuming there is reasons politically doesn’t cut the mustard.   
You assume Christian EXTREMISTS have reasons for what they do, if Christian EXTREMISTS have reasons for what they do, please explain the reason the Catholic Pope sided with Hitler in World War II?  Since you favor Hitler, this should be easy for you.  I want to see scripture to prove your religious reasoning from the New Testament, as Christians are suppose to be following the New Testament, not Adam Smith.  Proving ones reasons by scripture is not trying to convert, only to learn what possibly the reasoning could be to justify EXTREMISM.

Anyone can SAY they are a Christian, but you know Christians by what they do.  I actually do not think you are a Christian, because of your defense of CONSERVATIVE EXTREMIST Adolph Hitler.

Apparently you think you are a part of the Conservative EXTREME Right, and invariably the Conservative EXTREME Right always seeks to turn legitimate political dialog to “religion and queers” for destruction of constructive democratic political dialog, with the same purpose as the disturbers at Democratic Party Meetings, which is only to destroy democratic political dialog and close the meetings.

While you say you are not arguing religion, you are definitely arguing religion, or is that Barry Lopez?  I am a speaker in tongues as well as a Bill Moyers listener.  Christians are suppose to be followers of Jesus, who spoke to anyone, and went where a physician was needed, not cocooned away from the people Jesus died to save, as ALL people are our brothers and sisters.

From your 12:12 pm post today, you harvest this sentence:  And as a Christian how could you countenance harming others, which the extremists in America do? Then reply and interrogate: I do not anywhere. Do you?

To be fair, you need to give the entire quote instead of picking out just a salient part, so that truth can be exacted not a factless premise attempting to construct an argument, or rather a clever counterattack against me.

The entire quote is:
Shenonymous said: If you were singed in an earlier life, you then know the feeling of being burned!  And as a Christian how could you countenance harming others, which the extremists in America do?  You said you do not do such things, I believe you, but yet you do not condemn those who do.  The key is the second clause of the last sentence.

Again, in response to a directed statement about Night-Gaunt’s compromise: I determined, That seems fair enough. OM qualifies that by saying Shenonymous encourages a truce on those terms, and ”If She was the one whose opinion has been and will predictably be truncated by the prejudice, I think she would see it differently.”

I have had my truly neutral opinions not only truncated but denounced as evil, by both left and right radicals, so I sharply understand that deadly game-plan.  I do fight back.  And when it is done by a Contingent, I fight them all, as a group and individually.  However, on this forum, there is not a homogenous “group.”  We who are not OzarkMichael have disparate “leftists” opinions on just about everything, except the one topic that chafes OzarkM.  Defense of religious power in government. 

On the town hall turbulance: August 6.  CBS News reported: With the auditorium at the Tampa Children’s Board of Hillsborough County quickly reaching full capacity, Tampa Police started turning people away. Subsequently, violence broke out outside, reports local CBS affiliate WTSP, with at least one person being treated for minor injuries. A photojournalist reported had his glasses and camera equipment broken.

The event was sponsored by state Rep. Betty Reed for [Rep. Kathy Castor] and the SEIU, but many protesters said they were prompted to attend by the Tampa 912 activist group promoted by conservative television personality Glenn Beck, the St. Petersburg Times reported. Other protesters reported receiving e-mails with talking points to speak out against health care reform from the Hillsborough Republican Party.  Are these genuinely concerned people or malevolent instruments of Glenn Beck invectives?

Yes, the SEIU was involved in the violence in St. Louis, and their behavior gives worker-protection agencies (unions) a bad name, and even though I see real value in unions, I say SEIU’s actions are destructive to the promise of benefits to workers’ device of unions.  Physical violence is inexcusable.  I heard that the White House requested the general public (Common Population) to more or less spy on the public and report by email when something looks fishy that might criticize the health care plan, this is unquestionably wrong and a pathetic way to prostitute the Common Population.  MarthaA’s Orwellian ears ought to perk up at that!

I don’t mind hecklers. While irritating, they have a cause to disturb complaisant politicians, from either party, that they may have the opportunity to hear opposition.  But when hecklers really are thugs and goons goaded by miscreants like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, to inflict harm, I believe they are criminals.  I think however, that for heckling to be productive or effective, it needs to have a form that is respectful.  Otherwise no one need respect them. Tit-for-tat rules.  While those who are in opposition must have a voice, everyone is given due time so that ideas can actually be heard.  To be simply out of hand against something without giving reasonable argument by yelling and screaming is infantile.

OM said in reply to StuartH…
...”give some room to the Christians you come across. If they disagree with you about something, assume they have a reason. They are used to being dismissed by people like you so most wont try”.  I know lots of Christians, in my family and outside of it.  There have been occasions of disagreement, both about religion and about other things.  I have never known them to feel dismissed. As a matter of fact, they usually dismiss me for my atheistic perspective.  As a matter of further fact, some even snickeringly say I’m condemned to a hell… of their invention.  Because familial feelings transcends those criticisms, we “tolerate” those differences and our relationships continue. 

I have no high opinion of Hedges and I’ve made that known for a couple of years, so I agree more with OM on what Hedges is doing, whipping up fear and hate.  A review of all of his articles shows his self-manufactured reason for his existence as a contributor to forums like Truthdig.  I would not call him a journalist as his reportage has always been deformed by conceit.

OM, this forum seems to have permutated into a you-against-the-rest regardless of the clashing views.  I find that fact interesting in itself.  Almost mythically superheroic. You said in a recent post, ”... I have used it and yes victimhood works ten times better than good logic. Its just where we are, sistah. i would change that if i could.”  Change is just a matter of turning in place.  It doesn’t necessarily mean moving from place to place.  It just takes a certain resolve.

MarthaA, I think the comparison between OM and Hitler is theatrically overstated and in reality, baseless.  While I don’t agree with OM on many things, I believe he is basically a decent and good man who is somewhat defensive.  Hitler was incomparably evil through and through. 

______
A question that is not part of this discussion:  I am experiencing some very strange behavior of Truthdig accessibility and wondered if anyone else is having a similar problem.  First, when receiving a notification email of a comment made, a very odd message about a User-Agent: ExpressionEngine 1.6.8 and so forth (quite long by the way) is at the top of the email.  Then when clicking to navigate to the site of the forum, an error message is given and I am unable to link to the forum.  I have to go through some very odd accessing shennigans to get to the site.  I’ve pulled a previous email that does not have that peculiar heading in the notification email then sometimes it will send me to the forum, sometimes not.  Very much a pain in the arse.

I have complained to the Truthdig webmaster twice copying the odd stuff that is showing up but have not had any response.  He is either off on the weekend or asleep at the wheel or just doesn’t care.  Bah humbug.

Ozark:

“StuartH said I’ll repost this…  Barry Lopez, the writer who specializes in deep and lengthy essays on environmental philosophy and nature…

you said it twice so its important. It is an issue that i know some about but I didnt know where it came from. Disagreements over that issue for me are minor. I am worried about how we talk.”

How we talk.  Well let’s talk about how we talk.

I thought you might want to avail yourself of the invitation to articulate yourself a little better than you did when you used the right wing pejorative “ecoscience” to dismiss the current Administration’s science based approach.

Maybe you didn’t intend that.  Or maybe you did.  You did use right wing disparagement language.  But perhaps there is a basis for the difference that isn’t just rubbish talk. 

Does the Bible call for a position on the gas content of 400,000 year old ice cores?  Is this connected to the need for dominion over nature to be rigidly defined as dominance?  Where does this come from? 

How would you characterize the debate?  I know that some evangelicals, are more “progressive” on environmental issues than others.

I and others have attempted to figure out how to engage with you, and have given you plenty to go on.  You on the other hand, seem wedded to some notion that you don’t have to put anything on the table except conclusive statements and judgments.

If you think you are not being allowed enough room, maybe it is because you do not give anything in return for what others give you.  You certainly seem to choose to respond to the more negative items on the menu, rather than use the openings represented by the more positive items.  Again, if you look at how the conversation has drifted since it began, it really is your
choice.  You have taken center stage. How I or anyone else reading these posts think of your arguments will be determined by what you do. 

The impression I have is that people who would describe themselves as “conservative evangelical Christians” have a tendency to be working from a script which they are not free to be independent of.  I mean you buy the entire franchise book when you buy the program and picking and choosing what to believe or not to believe isn’t in the contract, is it?

So where are you coming from?  Do you live in the Ozark area?  Are you a Jehovah’s Witness?  Are you practicing your missionary outreach to the leftists? 

Why be so defensive instead of just real?  I know, you have said…30 years….blah blah….OK.  Why not try a different tack?  Maybe it is your defensiveness that causes the need to be defensive.  How you use words.

Don’t be rushed.  If you want to take a while to think about how to take offer a more pro-active and less re-active post and try a truly different tack, then fine.  It is how we talk.  Model the behavior you want to see from others.

From your 12:12 pm post today, you harvest this sentence:  And as a Christian how could you countenance harming others, which the extremists in America do?
Then reply and interrogate:
I do not anywhere. Do you?

To be fair, you need to give the entire quote, instead of picking out only your salient comment, that way truth can be exacted not a factless premise to attempt to construct an argument, or rather a clever counterattack against me.

The entire quote is:
Shenonymous said: If you were singed in an earlier life, you then know the feeling of being burned!  And as a Christian how could you countenance harming others, which the extremists in America do?  You said you do not do such things, I believe you, but yet you do not condemn those who do.  The key is the second clause of the last sentence.

Again, in response to a directed statement about Night-Gaunt’s compromise: I determined, That seems fair enough. OM qualifies that by saying Shenonymous encourages a truce on those terms, and ”If She was the one whose opinion has been and will predictably be truncated by the prejudice, I think she would see it differently.”

I have had my truly neutral opinions not only truncated but denounced as evil, by both left and right radicals, so I sharply understand that deadly game-plan.  I do fight back.  And when it is done by a Contingent, I fight them all, as a group and individually.  However, on this forum, there is not a homogenous “group.”  We who are not OzarkMichael have disparate “leftists” opinions on just about everything, except the one topic that chafes OzarkM.  Defense of religious power in government. 

On the town hall turbulance: August 6.  CBS News reported: With the auditorium at the Tampa Children’s Board of Hillsborough County quickly reaching full capacity, Tampa Police started turning people away. Subsequently, violence broke out outside, reports local CBS affiliate WTSP, with at least one person being treated for minor injuries. A photojournalist reported had his glasses and camera equipment broken.

The event was sponsored by state Rep. Betty Reed for [Rep. Kathy Castor] and the SEIU, but many protesters said they were prompted to attend by the Tampa 912 activist group promoted by conservative television personality Glenn Beck, the St. Petersburg Times reported. Other protesters reported receiving e-mails with talking points to speak out against health care reform from the Hillsborough Republican Party.  Are these people genuinely concerned or malevolent instruments of Glenn Beck invectives?

Yes, the SEIU was involved in the violence in St. Louis, and their behavior gives worker-protection agencies (unions) a bad name, and even though I see real value in unions, I say SEIU’s actions are destructive to the promise of benefits to workers’ device of unions.  Physical violence is inexcusable.  I heard that the White House requested the general public (Common Population) to more or less spy on the public and report by email when something looks fishy that might criticize the health care plan, this is unquestionably wrong and a pathetic way to prostitute the Common Population.  MarthaA’s Orwellian ears ought to perk up at that!

Now personally I do not mind hecklers and think they are a have a place to disturb complaisant politicians, from either party, that they may have the opportunity to hear opposition.  But when hecklers are really thugs and goons goaded by miscreants like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, to inflict harm, I believe they are criminals.  I think however, that for heckling to be productive or effective, it needs to have a form that is respectful.  Otherwise no one need respect them.  While those who are in opposition must have a voice, everyone is given due time so that ideas can actually be heard.  To be simply out of hand against something without giving reasonable argument by yelling and screaming is infantile.

OzarkMichael the EXTREMIST Hitler Defender,

Answering your 8/2/09 3:38pm post:

Subjective framing of the innocent as determined gangsters to deny objective reality was the process Adolph Hitler and his STORM TROOPERS used to come into POWER and, here you are at it again.

The topic is subjective framing to deny and condemn OBJECTIVE REALITY, objective reality that has benefit for the many in favor of SUBJECTIVE REALITY that has benefit for the few.

OzarkMichael the EXTREMIST Hitler Defender,

Answering your 8/2/09 3:58pm post:

Subjective framing of the innocent as determined gangsters to deny objective reality was the process Adolph Hitler and his STORM TROOPERS used to come into POWER and, here you are at it again.

The topic is subjective framing to deny and condemn OBJECTIVE REALITY, objective reality that has benefit for the many in favor of SUBJECTIVE REALITY that has benefit for the few.

Now, Chris Hedges in a recent book, refers to aggressive, political evangelicals as fascists.  In looking at that, this was intended to make a point through heightened contrast and words people can readily understand.  If he had been trying to be more academically accurate, he probably would not have gotten the book published or read very widely.

Are you explaining why its ok to do this? Maybe, maybe not.
But just think of the fear and hate that Hedges whips up.  Combining the effects of calling us fascist with rewriting history to make us the ultimate bad guys is making us a rather obvious scapegoat. There is a huge debt Christians owe the world. The bill gets run up higher and higher. I have discovered that much of it is artifically inflated.

Recently Rush Limbaugh used the word fascist on… I dont know, probably Obama. Do you suppose it is for the same reason Hedges did? ie to make his point and get it circulated? Yes and yes.

And he will get the same result that Hedges gets: Fear and hate. Combine the namecalling with latent or overt racism to make Obama a scapegoat.

You decide if demonizing people by calling them fascist is a good idea. It is totally your call.

i dont really want to talk about myself or issues, i want to settle how we talk.

shenonymous said: One clever defense is the one that pretends oppression.

Somewhere along the line the status of victim became more powerful than facts and good arguments. It happened about 40 years ago. It is not conservatives who discovered it, but I have used it and yes victimhood works ten times better than good logic. Its just where we are, sistah. i would change that if i could.

Martha spoke about Bill of Rights vs Bible: As for the liberal Bill of Rights being against God, that is absolute rubbish.  If that’s so, ALL agreements are against God, so all agreements would be null and void in the sight of God…

Wow, that good, and I mean it. I did say something like it twice, and Shenonymous said it a different way, but you said it in a better way than either of us. Maybe you will succeed where we failed.

Bill Moyers, covers democratic riots, but these riots are the autocratic Right trying to exert their minority power.

...democratic riots, like who exactly? What you seem to be saying is that rioting is ok if the Common Majority do it? Someone here applauded Code Pink. Is that what you mean? this is not good.

StuartH said I’ll repost this…  Barry Lopez, the writer who specializes in deep and lengthy essays on environmental philosophy and nature…

you said it twice so its important. It is an issue that i know some about but I didnt know where it came from. Disagreements over that issue for me are minor. I am worried about how we talk.

What actually is your definition of conservative evangelical Christianity?...  Are you a speaker in tongues or more like a Bill Moyers intellectual sort?