Rebane's Ruminations

Where is the moral fiber?

George Rebane

Where indeed?  In responding to my Christmas post, a reader emailed me about a grocery store incident in which a man, with daughter watching, helped himself to some mixed nuts from a bin.  She reminded him that that was stealing, and he reminded her that it wasn’t stealing at all since he was a regular customer of that store.  There was more to the conversation, but that was the gist of it.

In her email she asked where is the moral fiber today that permits us to ignore or define away stealing.  This may be a question of our age, and it applies to a broader category of social infractions.

We are now an enforced, non-assimilating, multi-cultural society.  A mono-cultural society teaches its young rules of social behavior much of which need not be codified into law since they are understood by almost all the population.  And if that culture also teaches the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent god, then correct social behavior stands on the divine dictates of morality.  You don’t mess with a god who knows your heart and can hold you to account if you persist in going against the rules he has laid down.

But in a multi-cultural society, where behavior is enforced by the state’s ‘power of the bayonet’, things are very different, especially if the state religion turns out to be secular humanism.  The secular humanist worships complex combinations of atoms.  And since the constituent atoms are the fundamental material elements of this universe, they cannot represent any absolute good or bad, no matter in what combinations they may occur.  What can one say in an absolute sense about the progress of one particular dynamic path of such a collection of atoms versus, say, another dynamic path?  Can one such path be intrinsically ‘better’ than any other?

Christmas 2009

George Rebane

The two main events in the Christian calendar are celebrations of the Promise and the Fulfillment.  Christmas calls on us to reflect on the Promise delivered - the arrival of Emmanuel, God with us, that made real what had long been promised.  By His appearance among us, the Promise of the good news and a new covenant of salvation between Man and God became an historical event.  He had come.

As Christians, we take great joy in the remembrance of that little noticed event two thousand years ago, an event that would alter the course of Man and his empires.  Today, in our own country and around the world, Christians again stand battered and confused by forces and events we scarcely understand.  But Christmas reminds us once more of the real hope for a better world in which we, in His image, will all have the freedom to grow and give according to the talents and opportunities afforded us.

Jo Ann and I wish all of you a joyous Christmas, and a new year where ‘Better!’ will properly respond to every ‘How are you?’ coming your way.
  
 

Ruminations - 15dec2009

George Rebane

• Truthout.com reports on military resistance group March Forward!
• 'Whole Foods Republicans' is not a strategy 
• Heritage updates on climate change and Copenhagen 
• Climategate catches Al Gore lying about polar ice melt
• CRU temperature datasets and programs were “botched”
• Why don’t socialists and leftwingers like those labels?

The hard left blog Truthout.com reports (here) on the formation and activities of March Forward!.  MF is a disgruntled veterans group that asks all active duty military to join and protest the mid-east conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  MF considers them illegal military adventures and urges military personnel to refuse their mid-east assignments.  Such groups have arisen during most of America’s conflicts.  But wholesale mutiny seems to me to be a desperate stratagem to apply at this point in our war against militant Islam.

Another positive collateral effect of Climategate is that climate scientists are beginning to speak up when their work is publicly misrepresented by political types.  As reported by the online London Times, yesterday in Copenhagen Al Gore got his tender part in the wringer when he resumed his lying about climate change data, this time overstating the receding of the arctic ice cap (more here).  Dr Wieslav Maslowski, the scientist whose work was the basis for Big Al’s monologue, quickly came forward and stated that he had no idea how such conclusions could be drawn from the data he gave Gore.  Things continue to unravel on man-made global warming.

The Toronto Sun end runs our MSM with the detailed report of how the CRU’s temperature dataset archives’ management and the subsequent software for estimating historical temperatures were “botched”.  And this from one of their own software engineers charged with trying to come up with the politically correct temperature record.  It is an ongoing joke how the know-nothing MSM and the White House continue to spin all this as inconsequential.  I guess they have given up on the tack that ‘botched’ is just normal jargon which scientists use to report progress and success to one another.

For a complete update on what’s really happening at the big climate change conference in Copenhagen, please visit the Heritage Foundation’s site here.  The big Kahunas of the developed world will converge there in a day or two for the purpose of signing something that looks like a consensus.  Right now it appears they will not be able to cobble anything together that is too damaging to the world and its economies.  The poor countries are miffed (aka pissed) that they won’t be getting the expected big bucks from the rich countries to reduce their CO2 emissions or stuff in Swiss bank accounts.  Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what is the basis for the so-called “negotiations” with the poor countries – what will/can they do if they don’t get the money they want.  And how does it matter?

Whole Foods Republicans? In the 14dec09 WSJ, Michael Petrilli of Stanford’s Hoover Institution exhorts that Republicans need “to enlist voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics”.  RR readers know that most of the time I think that the sharp minds from Hoover, Heritage, and Cato do give the appearance of walking on water.  But Dr. Petrilli definitely got his socks wet when writing this piece.  To regain and hold the national pulpit, the GOP needs to come up with a real strategy for putting under-educated and un-educable people to work in fulfilling, quality of life sustaining jobs (example here).  Merely repainting the elephant to look more like a donkey sounds like a difficult and unsustainable bamboozle to me.

Finally, why don’t socialists and leftwingers like those labels?  From the comment threads on this and other blogs across the country, socialists and leftwingers consider being so identified equivalent to being called a bad name, instead of just labeling their ideological bent.  My fellow ideologues and I don’t mind being labeled conservatives, libertarians, free marketers, rightwingers, and such – we bear those appellations proudly.  Is it that in their heart of hearts our left-leaners know collectivism has a sorry history in its application, and that they would rather slip in their current new and improved version of it before we notice its pedigree?

Liberal Beliefs Revealed – This May Explain a Lot

George Rebane

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life just released a survey of religion and spirituality from which the table below is abstracted.  (Hat tip to a RR reader for the heads up.)  Check out the complete results here comparing Republicans and Democrats, and Liberals and Conservatives.

Now our leftwing cum socialist friends have been telling everyone for years that it’s the folks on the right that are the knuckle-dragging bible-thumpers who stray from reason and logic because they believe in weird things that you can’t prove in a laboratory.  Well, not only is that not necessarily so, but it turns out to be exactly 180 degrees out.

Today’s Bookends of American Education

George Rebane

The stretch in approaches to educating our kids is vast, ranging from the pragmatic to the idiotic.  A RR reader from the northwest sent the following words and links to illustrate the point.

It is just amazing what $5000/year/kid can do without the interference of public schools and teachers unions (The Harlem Children’s Zone text here , video here).

Contrast that with the UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA UNDER FIRE FOR TASK FORCE'S DISCRIMINATION-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION PLAN – insanity.

To me, as an American, one of these programs is evil, stark and simple.

Is Ours a Defendable Culture?

George Rebane

Last Sunday the Swiss voted to ban the erection of additional minarets on the country’s mosques (here).  The vote was desperate, awkward, and overwhelming.  That small ever-neutral, obstinately independent country was seeking a way to say no to its colonization by Islam.  In every direction the Swiss have seen their neighbors with growing communities of unassimilated Moslems, and politically correct politicians competing in pants wetting competitions, powerless to slow the onslaught.  So the Swiss people went against their elected leaders and expressed their frustration in a vote that sends a clear but, most likely, an ineffective message.

The Swiss are saying we don’t want to become an Islamic country, we want to remain rooted in the western cultures that have sustained us for centuries.  Switzerland invented successful multi-culturalism that has demonstrated how people of German, French, and Italian descent, who retain their traditions and language, can live together under one system of governance.  Islam does not tolerate the peaceful co-existence of multiple cultures, especially if they don’t share a common sect of a common religion.  Islam has become a world-class pain in the ass from Indonesia to Canada, wherever it has set down its roots.

But what Islam has perfected is how to maintain and propagate its culture.  It does this by brooking no compromises in its ascent, and most certainly not in its ascendancy.  With this policy it has slowly, albeit with declared purpose, infiltrated Europe.  As most RR readers are aware, its colonization program is on track.  And the colonization will continue apace until a sufficient fraction of the countries are Muslim.  The next stage of takeover was again recently made plain by Omar Bakri, a British Islamic leader published in London’s daily Al-Hayat, who said, “Allah willing, we will transform the West into Dar Al-Islam by means of invasion from without.  If an Islamic state arises and invades, we will be its army and soldiers from within.”

'What Does the Public Know?' (Updated)

George Rebane

That question was asked recently by the Pew Research Center of a random sample of Americans who answer phones.  The survey contained a 12 multiple choice question questionnaire.  The questions were pretty vanilla about the current world.  There was only one question the answer to which may be debatable.

The sidebar is one of the results panels that you can see when you visit the survey's website, but go here first to answer the questionnaire to see how you did.

Hat tip to a regular RR reader for the link, and who also remarked, "Scary.  And they all vote."

[update] On ClimateGate and AB32, I am fascinated how uneven is the coverage of these major news events.  One revealing the patent fraud behind the IPCC 'science' (and there's a lot more to come as this door is pried open) and the silence of the lambs.  This even as IPCC scientists are beginning to denounce their colleagues (here) while our leftwing Congress is trying to rush Waxman-Markey through on the coattails of ObamaCare.

The other news deals with AB32 - California's economic death knell legislation now being hurried into practice by the socialists.  It seems that there is a great awakening occurring and an initiative, led by our Assemblyman Dan Logue, to get AB32 repealed in next year's election.

See more on this and related climate change news on Russ Steele's NC Media Watch. 

Internet Conversations – Sackheads & Scattershots

George Rebane

The comment thread under my recent column in The Union’s online edition started out normally – with the usual acrimony, vitriol, and inanities - and then morphed into a disjointed discussion on ‘handles’ and ‘sackheads’ and privacy, and even “public safety”.  It brought to a head something that I have been thinking about for some time, but I should first back up.

All of us who surf the internet’s blogs, columns, and information sites have run into comment threads that are full of the most disagreeable diatribes launched by commenters at each other.  They hurl such ad hominem insults from behind the anonymity of ‘handles’ which are short character strings that may mean something to them, but little besides a temporary marker to anyone else.  One is not even sure of how many people are really participating, since a single person may enter the fray using several handles.

The common denominator of such scattershot threads is that they seldom stay on topic, exhibit inabilities to accurately read let alone understand the written word, are absent of reasonable development, invariably illuminate nothing, and lead nowhere.  But given their number and frequency, they must provide some type of release not available elsewhere.

This month I decided to experiment and respond to some of the comments that actually attempted to address the volatile topic of public sector unions which was the thrust of my column.  My thought was that readers might like to expand on what I had presented.  It turned out that polite replies actually made some progress in transiting from the ad hominem to the substance of the article.  In this exchange I lamented on the use of handles and said –

Using a handle is the literary equivalent of speaking in public while wearing a paper sack with two eye holes. It is a disguise worn for many reasons, and for certain kinds of discourse, it is the only acceptable way to present yourself and your views. I think that those of us, who under their own names openly offer their commentary in a public forum, should be perfectly at ease with the self-assessments that responding sackheads offer. They certainly know best which messages should not be traceable to the messenger. Who are we then to disagree?

HR 3962 from two universes

George Rebane

There is no middle ground anymore.  The House version of Obamacare passed last night on a party line vote while we were at a local charity event.  My faithful iPhone, with a realtime AP feed application, gave its familiar ‘hot off the press’ audio signal as we were preparing to eat, and I read the short summary to our table.  There was no celebration in Mudville last night.

But to see how differently nationalized healthcare and its impact on our republic is viewed, take a peek at these two perspectives.  (Exercise for the careful reader – identify the elements, if any, of common ground between the right and left views.)

The socialists see no fiscal impact, abridgements of freedoms, reduced healthcare services, and massive government encroachment in the country’s economy.  They celebrate the much publicized attributes of the Peter/Paul Principle, and look forward to another successful victory in their ongoing class warfare.  Happy times are here again.

• from Truthout
• from Daily Kos

The dastardly free-market capitalists (aka conservatives) fully embrace Obama’s promise that this will be one of the mainstays of his promised “fundamental transformation of the country.”  You can peruse their views of our future here.

• From Heritage Foundation
• From the House Republican Conference

And never the twain shall meet.

Why Reason Fails

George Rebane

"It ain't what you don't know that worries me, it's what you know that ain't so."  Will Rogers

We are often taught that parties can always settle their differences by engaging in a reasoned dialogue – ‘Come, let us reason together.’  But the evidence, today available in thousands of comment threads on more thousands of blogs and online media outlets, seems to contradict such hopeful paths to resolution.  Self-referentially I can say that there is no reasonable basis for such a conclusion.  It’s the word ‘always’ that becomes the bugaboo, and gives lie to the frequent goal and noble sentiment.  Fisher and Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project acknowledged this failure in their landmark essay Getting to Yes (1981).

Recently this point was driven home by Mr. Steven Frisch, a RR reader and commenter of the liberal persuasion.  He posted two magnificent and voluminous ripostes (here and here) wherein he seeks to destroy my motive and method for the offered commentaries.  As I studied his comments in preparation for a reply, it became clear that his presumably reasoned compositions belonged to a class that was inaccessible to me (and perhaps others).  To contend with his assertions and accusations on a point-by-point basis would be a fruitless effort.  From my perch, his reasoning was insane and would give no purchase for me to attempt a reply.  Let me explain.