Allen West slams tea party 'schizophrenia'

I think I no longer have a favorable opinion of Allan West. It seems to me that it didn't take him long at all to turn into just one more Go-Along-to-Get-Along Republican; and Congress is already full of that sort.

The Laura Ingraham Show - Allen West slams tea party 'schizophrenia'

As a nation and polity, we have already spent our grandchildren's futures, And so, the choice before us now is not between "Support John Boehner's Plan to Spend Our Great-Grandchildren's Future, Now" versus "Support the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Plan to Spend Our Great-Great-Grandchildren's Future, Now". The choice is between doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing.

Conservative Americans, at the behest of our supposed leaders, have spent the past 50 or 60 years "declaring victory" each time the votes in Congress were there to effect a 'compromise' with the totalist demands of the "liberals" and their leftist puppeteers. That is, we have spent 50 or 60 years telling ourselves that "we must be thankful for what we can get" when the people *we* elect to office make sporadic and half-hearted efforts to slow down, but never to reverse, the implementation of the irrational and ultimately destructive-to-the-nation demands of the leftists.

And thus, the nation has spent the past 50 or 60 years lurching toward the edge of the cliff that will be our doom. And our "conservative leaders" tell us this whole time to rejoice and focus on all their good work of sometimes converting full-steps toward the drop into half-steps.

Well, the cliff-edge is here at our feet, now; if we don't full-stop and back away from the edge, then we will go over the edge. Whether the next step is a full-step or a half-step, we will go over the edge.

Tax on breathing

David Warren: Tax on breathing -- Gentle Reader shall surely want to read it entirely.

Stupid 'Atheist' Tricks II

I sometimes present the observation that when hard-pressed logically, 'atheists' (*) will always retreat into illogic and even outright anti-reason, so as to protect their God-denial from rational criticism and evaluation.

In this "Stupid Atheist Trick", the 'atheist' isn't even particularly pressed ... and he still makes a point of planting his flag in the swamp of anti-reason --

statement by a 'theist': "When the findings of physics point to and give probative confidence for believing in a Super Intelligent Creator Being, then it is unreasonable and somewhat not fair to claim a leap is being made when the evidence, the evidence gives us the probative confidence. Not the final reason for believing, but good probative confidence."

response by an 'atheist': "It sounds like you’re suggesting that we can use the evidence to infer a Super Intelligent Creator Being, but this doesn’t really do anything for us - I can infer anything from any evidence, after all."

Evaluation by Ilíon: --

Translation: if I can reason falsely, then you cannot reason truly.

Further translation: it is impossible to know that one has reasoned truly from known facts or truths to presently unknown truths.

Ultimate meaning: it is impossible to reason … or to know any truth.

What our 'atheist' seems to be doing is taking the known fact that "starting with a false premise, one can imply anything ... and its denial" and turning it into something like, "no one can reasonably infer a 'new' truth and *know* that it is true".

And, notice, as I said, the 'atheist' isn't even particularly hard-pressed here before he makes his dash for anti-reason. Here, the 'theist' (*) isn't presenting an argument that God is, much less an irrefutable one; rather, he is countering the frequent twin assertions of 'atheists,' those self-proclaimed Paragons of Reason, that belief in God is both unreasonable and utterly lacking in evidence.

And, of course, when 'atheists' make the above claim, their generally unstated companion assertion is that only "scientific evidence" can ever count as real evidence. One can see this line of "reasoning" in the linked thread. So, the 'theist' -- still attempting the logically impossible task of reasoning with persons who give themselves permission to say just anything, including the denial of what they have just said -- has responded, in effect: "well, you know, the findings of physics, that hardest of the hard sciences, are compatible with 'theism' and even seem to make more sense in a created world than in an accidental world."

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(*) When referring the the run of the mill so-called atheist, I generally put the word 'atheist' in quote-marks, because there are passing few real atheists in the world. A real knows that nothing at all makes any difference, whatsoever -- we all die, our societies die, our civilizations die, our species will die, our universe will die; and that's the end of it.

The reason I frequently put the word 'theist' in quote-marks is because the word is generally used to lump the classical pagan polytheists with the modern Hindu polytheists with the Judeo-Christian monotheists -- as though these were points on a continuum. In point of fact, classical paganism and most (if not all) strains of Hinduism lump with materialistic atheism, not with "monotheism".

That's the way you do it

Raymond Ibrahim -- Zakaria Botros: Islam's Scourge Returns

A reader of Lawrence Auster's blog comments: "... As much as the problem with Islam is political, social, and religious, it is fundamentally a spiritual problem. As St. Paul said, our struggle is ultimately not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual evil. It is from spiritual evil that political, social, religious, and other worldly evils arise. This is something important for defenders of the remnants of Christendom to remember."

If It Was Good Enough for Washington and Hamilton, then

If it (*) was good enough for Washington and Hamilton, then it's good enough for me.

Walter Williams: Framers distrusted, loathed democracy -- "... If the founders did not believe Congress would abuse our God-given, or natural, rights, they would not have provided those protections. I've always argued that if we depart this world and see anything resembling the Bill of Rights at our next destination, we'll know we're in hell. A bill of rights in heaven would be an affront to God."

(*) "it" being distrust and/or loathing of "democracy."

Stupid 'Atheist' Tricks I

I've been toying, for months, with the idea of doing a "series" of posts about the amusingly, and amazingly, stupid and/or absurd things that so-called atheists say when they "argue." You know, sort of like "Kids Say the Darndest Things" crossed with "Stupid Pet Tricks." But, it seemed so crass, and so I just never did.

But, today, I saw a "Stupid 'Atheist' Trick" that I just couldn't allow to pass without mocking --

The context is this (Gentle Reader may find the full context here) -- over at Victor Reppert's blog, a 'hopeless' of God-haters (that's the term for a herd of 'atheists', sort of like a "murder of crows") are arguing (snicker) that it's unreasonable to believe that Gods is, or that the fundamental claim of Christianity -- that God raised the Christ back from death to life -- is true, because, you know, "there is no evidence" ... and, in their strange world, the testimony of the people who say that they saw him alive -- physically/bodily alive, not some sort of ghost -- after he was murdered, and who submitted to terrible deaths, which they could easily have escaped merely by denying what they'd said, doesn't count as any sort of evidence. One or two 'theists' are trying the logically impossile task of reasoning with these so-called 'atheists'; the particular point the 'theists' are trying to get across to the 'atheists' is that their tactic of discounting trust in the testimony of others is unsound (for, it is illogical and irrational) ... and, that they, themselves, constantly trust the testimony of others.

Question from a 'theist': "That's the question I'm asking you and DL regarding statistical data and various other facts you spout on this blog. The answer seems mostly to be that you were taught those facts, or you read them somewhere - which ususally is fine, if your reasons are sound.

For example, if you haven't done the experiments, how do you know that F=mA? I've done them. Those that haven't done the experiments are trusting others that it's not really F=mA +C. They likely have good reasons for giving their trust so there's nothing wrong with trusting others."

Answer from an 'atheist': "Because it’s a stated scientific fact, and is not the subject of scientific controversy, and because scientific facts that aren’t the subject of scientific controversy have an awesome track record of staying true."

Evaluation by Ilíon: Sometimes, one does begin to wonder whether one really ought to automatically discount, as one does, massive stupidity as being the reason/cause that so many 'atheists' constantly say so many stupid things. After all, if one allowed that perhaps they really are that stupid, one wouldn't be forced, time and again, to conclude, by a process of elimination of logical possibilities, that they are/tend-to-be intellectually dishonest.

edit:
Also, 'grok' this clause separately:

Answer from an 'atheist': "... and because scientific facts that aren’t the subject of scientific controversy have an awesome track record of staying true."

This is how 'atheists' really "think" and "reason" -- one simply *must* put scare-quotes around the words, for that is not an example of, you know, actual reasoning. And, by the way, the "reasoning" I have highlighted here is not the only flawed/false thing about just that one sentence fragment.

The Shape of Things To Come

Charles Hugh Smith: The Shape of Things To Come (h/t to Matteo) -- "... To the degree a nation gets the leadership it demands, then the U.S. is in trouble. We're now a nation of spoiled teens who get to elect their parents. No surprise, the 'rents who never enforce any rules, never challenge their own bosses (the kleptocrats) and who dole out the most allowance win every time."

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

I've written before about the foolish -- and economically destructive -- focus of politicians on, and distraction of the public by, concerning themselves with "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" In this piece, I will address the issue again, by reference to a recent pronouncement of The Smartest Man In The World --

Our message today comes from The Book Of Barack (where else!), 2 Obamacles 99:150 (the Man can talk on!), wherein Our Zero, Who art The Won (hollow be His Fame) deigns to share with us His Wisdom. Let us bow our heads and prepare to receive the Word of The Won:

a video clip
"There are some structural issues with our economy, where a lot of businesse have learned to become much more efficient, with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM; you don't go to a bank teller."

So, if we follow the logic of what The Smartest Man In The Hostory Of The World has said in diagnosing the "structural issue" of our ecomony -- that which is, he notifies us, the cause of unemployment -- how shall we solve the problem of unemployment? Why, by making the economy -- that thing which supplies all our bread and butter -- more inefficient. I trust Gentle Reader understands that "economic inefficiency" is more simply called "wastefulness."

How like a "liberal," how like a socialist, to imagine that the waste of wealth can generate wealth!

How like a "liberal," how like a socialist, to assert that in finding ways to become more economically efficient in their creation of the goods and services that you wish to purchase from them -- that is, in finding ways to offer you those goods and services at reduced price -- companies are screwing-over someone, and by implication, that someone includes you.

What The Won is calling a "structural issue[] with our economy" -- what he is asserting is a flaw in the working of our economy -- is precisely one of its major and foundational strengths: the principles of our economy are such that we are able to harness the natural (and inescapable) self-centeredness exhibited by all human beings, such that in our economy, those who wish to become more wealthy can do so only by pleasing, and serving, their fellow man.

The Won is not attacking a "flaw" in our economy, he is attacking our very liberty. And our ability to generate future wealth.

There are no good arguments ...

... against capital punishment. For, all arguments against it, if ever applied consistently, must make human society, and the exercise of justice, impossible. The blanket opponents of capital punishment like to pose as exemplars of a “higher morality,” but they are, in fact, merely nihilists.

William Vallicella: Farrell, "Tookie," Hannity and Colmes, and Bad Arguments

Some years ago, I offered the same argument (see here) as Vallicella does in the above linked piece. And what I found is that almost no one, including "conservatives", is willing to attend (*) to it.

(*) A similar pattern can be seen in this thread on Victor Reppert's blog; in which most comment is directed at mindless opposition to one of the few correct (if controversial) moral propositions that Sam Harris asserts. And, it's controversial precisely because almost no one is willing to understand why it is correct, regardless of whether Harris himself understands either why it is correct or how it may correctly be applied to life-as-we-live-it.

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Wm.Vallicella: … So the logical level is low out there in the Land of Talk and I repeat my call for logico-philosophical umpires for the shout shows. But I suspect I am fated to remain a vox clamantis in deserto.

Dude! You’re not a “voice crying (out) in the wilderness;” you are a fool -- you demand a level of respect, bordering on the obsequious, toward you and yours that you are not willing to extend to those who may offer real criticisms of the (false) positions that you and yours may take. Oddly (*), you are more respectful toward those who offer asinine criticisms of valid/correct positions that you and yours may take.

(*) not so odd, really, once one understands the psychology of it.