Facts, Feelings, Thoughts, Opinions

While visiting Joe Huffman's blog, I lifted this excerpt because I felt it deserved more comment.

"While I think there is a fair amount of lying going on they don’t think of it as lying. They just don’t understand facts are independent of their feelings. If they feel something then, in their view of reality, it is true. I’ve had people flat out tell me this. I would point out that what someone was saying was in direct contradiction to verifiable facts. And I would get a response of something to the effect, “Well, it’s true to them and that is what matters.” -- Joe Huffman
There is also a very telling anecdote about liberal “research” in this same article:

In 2006 I was at a cocktail party in Arlington, VA, talking to a liberal journalist about his soon-to-be-released book on Iraq when John Lott joined us. John listened for a moment and then said to the author, 

“I’m curious. You say you just finished a book on the Iraq war. I always find it so hard to finish a book. I get so deep into the research I have a hard time stopping to write. I’m guessing you had a hard time leaving Iraq. There is so much to investigate and understand.”  

The author said, “I didn’t go to Iraq.”  

John paused with this quizzical look on his face before asking, “Oh, how did you do your research?”  

The author said, “I didn’t have to do much. I mean, I already know what I think.”

Feelings versus facts. It’s a type of mental disorder.—Joe]

The article quoted above can be found at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2014/09/25/how-bloombergs-million-dollar-desire-for-gun-control-is-backfiring/

What is so revealing in that last statement by the unnamed liberal author is how he thinks about research.  To him, research isn't about gathering facts and using logic to come to a realistic and logical conclusion on a matter.  To him, research is only necessary to confirm what he already thinks, or more specifically, his opinion.  And because he feels he is a member of the anointed visionary class, he owes it to the unwashed masses (which really means anyone who doesn't already think the way he does), to share his enlightened opinion.

Too much about living in 21st century America allows for this kind of lack of rational thought.  Many decades ago when there were no "social safety nets," failure to think logically and act accordingly could get you killed or end up suffering very bad consequences.

Now the modern world is populated by too many people  (dare I say about half of the population) who have raised the right to an opinion to some kind of sacrosanct status.

Oh, but wait!  That's not entirely true when I really think about it.  On closer examination, only opinions that are politically fashionable to the left that are respected, or damn near worshipped.  I use the phrase politically fashionable because there isn't a damn thing correct about "political correctness."  Political Correctness, in all it's verbal forms, is Orwellian newspeak for the highly intolerant soft tyranny of the statists.

Very soon, the unsustainable economic situation in this country is going to collapse, and when it does, modern liberal thinkers will be forced, dragged kicking and screaming, to the reality that all of their wishful but totally incorrect feelings, thoughts, and opinions on how to create a utopian society is all just crap.

That degree in political science, women's studies, international relations, art history, public administration, urban and regional planning, environmental studies or applied sociology, is going to be about as useful to you as a degree in typewriter repair.  It is not going to help you know how to grow or preserve food, to hunt and field dress an animal, take care of domestic animals, make fire without a lighter or matches, find or purify water, or build a shelter.

The last thing to note about the liberal author's final statement above is the subtle arrogance. An arrogance that even he doesn't seem to recognize.  "I mean, I already know what I think,” pretty much tells you that he doesn't think that any more thought needs to be given to the subject.  For a leftist who has made up his mind, facts are inconvenient and sometimes downright confusing.  I guess you could also attribute his statement to over-confidence.

 

 

The low-or-no-information voter never wants to be bothered with questions of epistemology.  The next time a leftist is defending a socialist idea or attacking a tried-and-true conservative one, just ask the question: "What if you're totally wrong?"

 

Remember the pseudo-genius evil character from Princess Bride?  You'll probably hear the answer: "Inconceivable!"



The Bigger Problem

"Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance." 
             -- Francis W. Porretto

Once again I run across a tidbit from Liberty's Torch that becomes the seed for a post here. Francis managed to encapsulate an idea in just seven words.  Sometimes, really great quotes don't get the appreciation they deserve. Maybe this one little sentence struck me so significantly because I have enough worldly experience.

Maybe it set off bells and whistles in my head because I've had to deal with the truth of that statement so much lately.

At the risk of boring my more intelligent readers, I feel like expounding on the quote above. I guess another reason for this is that I've got several decades of experience that growing older does not guarantee growing wiser; at least not in a society that coddles ignorance and stupidity.  Recently I've had to encounter the most egregious sin of stupidity.  Willful ignorance.  While lately I have seen this attitude most irritatingly in people quite older than myself, I try to mitigate my angst by seeing an underlying attitude of: "I'm old, I've paid my dues, and I'm not long for this world anyway."

Believe it or not, I've spent enough time thinking about this that I now have two categories of willful ignorance. In the first kind, the subject is confronted with facts that are so upsetting to his worldview, that he dismisses the new information and quickly moves on to something else that distracts him from having to really ruminate on it.  It may be in the back of his mind, able to resurface later if brought about by another event.  But the subject sort of subconsciously suppresses it because the cognitive dissonance is just too uncomfortable to deal with presently.  In this primary level, at least there is hope that the subject will accept the truth in the future.  When I encounter this in an individual, I can easily smile and drop the subject, thinking to myself, "It's okay, he/she's just not ready yet."

But the second level of willful ignorance is where I have to fight the demons that set my blood to boiling. It's when the subject makes clear and very declarative statements to the effect of: "I don't WANT to know." And more importantly, the statements are made with a smile and a smugness as if delivering divine wisdom from on high.  This is where I DO need grace from the Almighty, because I feel like slapping the ever-loving shit out of the jerk.

Getting back to the main idea; both of the levels of ignorance above are most often born out of miseducation.  Ignorance in its pure form simply means that you don't know, but you have not been indoctrinated in any particular direction, like a juror in a fresh venue with no prior knowledge of the case.  The problem comes from being purposely "educated" to believe things that seem very plausible, have been seemingly accepted by the vast majority, and are typically very difficult and time consuming to falsify or prove on one's own. Amusement of all kinds is the modern American sport. Ignorance is bliss. "I'll take the blue pill."

Why?  Well, as much as I don't like leftist/progressives, I'll quote one here.  Gloria Steinem said, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."  Of course, truth won't piss you off until you are forced to come to grips with it.  It's like the child of any age who's parents finally throw him out of the house to go fend for his self. The Eastern Airlines employee or air traffic controller who finds out that the union doesn't really have his best interests at heart. The college graduate who finds out that there is no one looking to hire someone with a masters degree in "Graffiti's Social Importance."
So many more examples I would like to give here, but I'll move on.

People don't cling to false things they believe to be true because of evidence or logic.  They cling to those things because of their emotions.  Kevin Baker over at The Smallest Minority has many uberposts on his blog, along with some long-running exchanges with hoplophobes that help prove this point.  I remember sifting through long threads on his site as well as others, and being dumbfounded at the extremes to which anti-gunners will go to defend their position against all evidence and logic which demonstrates their position to be blatantly stupid.

One reason emotion is such a big issue is because nobody likes to find out they've fallen for a lie.  Short-term lies on the personal level are one thing. Someone in your personal world lies to you, but you eventually find out. Most of your anger can be righteously directed at them, and once you've calmed down you can at least feel good about yourself for discovering the truth.  But the big lies that will really rock your world are just too painful to deal with for a lot of people. Big lies that you find out you actually talked yourself into because they sounded so good.  But it was wrong.  And in the realization it was wrong you become angry. You are angry because it made you feel stupid.

The bigger the lie, the more stupid you feel, and thus the angrier you get.  The force multiplier to the tune of 10X is the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself.  There's not one individual you can blame for knowingly defrauding you.  If you got taken in by Bernie Madoff, you've got someone you can focus your anger on.  But who are you going to take to court or see in shackles over the Social Security Ponzi scheme?

Nothing perpetuates and protects ignorance as much as believing that you already know the truth. Oh, I believe that there are indeed absolute truths. But they are the things which I am always willing to put to the test.  Any test. Over and over.  But when you've come to the conclusion that "the argument/debate is over," then the only thing you have proven is your ignorance. 



Minor Rabbit Trail:  It's so easy to be like one of the sheep in this parade.  It's cool to feel like you are connected with a popular movie star.  It's so easy to let people like Leo and Algore and Bernie the Commie Sanders do your thinking for you, instead of asking the epistemological question: Are they right? How do they know?  What are the arguments on the other side?  If the argument is over, why the need for the march?  Back to my screed.

The things I am willing to argue passionately for are the things I am sure are true, with the caveat that I know I am human and that there may be information yet that I do not have.  But show me someone who is unwilling to entertain a reasonable and intelligent argument, and I'll show you a willfully ignorant and downright stupid fool.

Was Paul Crazy?

This is post number nine in the series: Why I Am Not A Christian.

Outside of those laws that directly pertain to Temple service and worship by the priesthood (Kohanim), you really can't point to any of Adonai's laws in Torah and say that it makes no sense to follow them, or that by following them you will not be upholding the two greatest commandments, and again, I point to what the Master Himself said in Matthew 5:17-19:

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.  For truly I say unto you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished.  Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

Instead of seeking out the opinions of people who lived hundreds or thousands of years after the resurrection of Yeshua, doesn't it make more sense to search the Scriptures to find the correct view on how to obey God's commands?  If you are a Christian who claims to believe in the authority of Scripture as inspired directly by the Holy Spirit, should you not then read the New Testament and take its instruction as having more weight and authority than any church tradition?  I find it rather ironic that there are Protestant churches who only exist because Martin Luther said that his conscience was held captive by the Scripture, which gave rise to the Latin phrase: Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, Soli Deo Gloria. (by faith alone, by Scripture alone, to God alone be the Glory),  but all that really served to do was allow a breaking away from the horribly corrupt Roman Catholic tyranny.  As Luther continued on, he fomented horrendous hatred against the Jews and gave rise to the concept of "replacement theology."  The new Protestant church beginning with the Anglicans or Church of England kept the vast majority of traditions of pagan origin.  Maybe some of the clergy understood what they were doing wrong, but the churches had all pretty much become political structures with immense power and most of the masses simply did not question such authority.

We simply refer to it as the book of Acts.  Its complete name is the "Acts of the Apostles."  I've heard more than a couple of people say it should more properly be called the "Acts of the Holy Spirit," and I agree with that sentiment.  Luke, the author of the gospel that bears his name, was a careful and thoughtful historian.  No one in any of the sciences dealing with history or archaeology has ever found a flaw in any of Luke's work, but then what would you expect from someone writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit?  The last time I referenced Acts was in regard to the misunderstanding I often encounter about the tenth chapter, as if that was to tell us that believers no longer had to worry about the dietary laws of Torah.  Regarding Acts chapter fifteen I pointed out that the elders and Apostles simply assumed that the new converts from the gentiles would begin learning how to obey Torah.  It was rather shocking to their system that gentiles could have received the Holy Spirit without first learning Torah and engaging in circumcision and ritual baptism, but the Holy Spirit made it obvious that they could be received first and learn later, just like what happened to the people at Mt. Sinai in Exodus.  In other words, the leaders of this new body of believers in Messiah had to reach back for the lesson that had been given in Torah and realize that the precedent had already been set.  God wants sincere seekers and believers who are willing to learn His ways, rather than those who think they already know.

Therefore, with the idea in mind that we should look to the example and words of those who actually walked with and were disciples of the Master, let's look at what the 21st chapter of Acts has to tell us.  At this point in time,  Paul finally got back to Jerusalem after travelling around and evangelizing and he reports to the elders of the congregation, apparently led by James.  This account can be found in Acts 21:17-26.  This is an event that you just won't hear preached about from any Christian pulpit, because what it really teaches just throws a monkey wrench in the typical Christian interpretation of how we are to live.  I'm going to paraphrase this in plain modern English.

Paul returns after what might be a couple of years of travelling around to the synagogues.  This is well after the leadership of the body of believers in Messiah or "the people of The Way" have swollen in numbers to several thousand, having observed the Holy Spirit perfoming miracle after miracle through these men and women who walked with Yeshua.  The Temple is still standing, but the Talmud records ( I love a hostile witness proving my case), that ever since they crucified that troublemaker from Nazareth, the scarlet cord that they cut from the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement no longer turns white as a sign that God has accepted this offering.  The doors to the Temple swing open by themselves, and disturbing voices will continue to be heard until the Temple finally is destroyed by Titus in 70 AD.  The Sanhedrin and other skeptical Jewish leaders are probably beside themselves because it's even worse now than it was when the upstart from Galilee was walking around.  This body of believers is an enigma to everyone outside of belief in Messiah.  These believers in the Nazarene continue to come worship and pray in the Temple and even bring sacrifices and offerings.   . . . .  .  er, . . . uh . . . .  what?   Yeah, what it says.

Luke writing:  "And when we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. And now the following day Paul went in with us to James and all the elders were present.  And after he had greeted them, he began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.  And when they heard it they began glorifying God; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many  thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law [Torah]  ----   [Yep, that's right.  Go check your own translation.]   ----  and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs."   Acts 21:17-21

Read it again and let it sink in.  Does it sound like they think this is a good thing?  If there is any question in your mind, let's continue on in the text, and let the text, the Words of the Holy Spirit, speak for themselves.

"What, then, is to be done?  They will certainly hear that you have come.  Therefore do this that we tell you.  We have four men who are under a vow; take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses in order that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Law [Torah]."   Acts 21:22-24

And Paul did exactly as he was told.  Yep.  That Paul.  The guy who single handedly wrote almost half of the New Testament.  The guy who wrote the letter to the Romans, which gets twisted into whatever meaning any particular preacher wants to give it by lifting select verses out of context.  Notice that Paul didn't reply to them by saying, "Wait a minute, you guys.  You've got it all wrong.  We no longer have to worry about all that stuff.  We are now under grace and don't have to worry about keeping the Law."   Is that what Paul said?  No.  So we need to stop and think.  We need to make up our minds on this issue.  Was Paul schizophrenic?   Was he crazy?  If he was, then we should just forget all this stuff about wanting to be disciples of this Jewish Messiah, because this religion makes no sense.

I will choose a better way.  I will choose to believe that the Scripture is right in all that it says and that I need to correct my human, fallible thinking by conforming my thoughts to Scripture.

Now, as if that wasn't enough to make the case for Torah observance, the story continues.  Paul goes to carry out the very thing that will prove that he is also zealous for the Law and it creates an uproar in the Temple because those who accuse him of breaking the Law and teaching the same, are there assuming that he has brought uncircumcised men into the Temple area beyond the court of the Gentiles.  Paul is arrested for his own protection and to prevent a riot.  Asking for an opportunity to speak to the crowd, Paul appeals to them on the basis of having always been a Torah observant Jew, "educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, just as you all are today."  Acts 22:3  

Paul doesn't take this opportunity while under Roman guard to tell the Jews that Torah observance is no longer important now that Messiah has shed His blood.  On the contrary, he appeals to his own zealousness for Torah and to correct the misconception that he would ever condone the breaking of any of the commandments of God in order to have righteous standing before these men to then proclaim the gospel of Yeshua the Messiah.

Let's become mature in our thinking when it comes to understanding Scripture. God is not a God of confusion or capriciousness.  He didn't give us all those commandments only to later on say, "Just kidding."  And you can find nothing, anywhere, in all of the New Testament to prove that the Torah is no longer in effect.  Oh, you can certainly take individual verses out of context to try and make such a case, but you would be engaging in eisegesis, or "reading into" the text what you want to infer.

In the next installment, I hope to bring to light what really upset the Jews and has been twisted to mean something entirely different.  Click on "What Upset The Jews" to go there.

Peterson Postmodern Connection

The issue of gun control and individual freedom can bring about some discussions that drive logical people to want to tear our hair out.  The apparent inability of some people to use linear logic and reason to come to rational conclusions in spite of feelings and emotion has given rise to Joe Huffman coining a name for the condition Peterson Syndrome, in "honor" of Joan Peterson of  the Brady Campaign.

Some of us have spent some time discussing how it is possible to be so disconnected from reality.  While Huffman and myself, as well as others seem to be able to describe Peterson Syndrome, we would still like to understand where it comes from.  After all, you want to know if it's organic or communicable, and if it is communicable, you want to be able to take all possible precautions against it.  I never got around to writing an in depth post explaining how I believed it was the result of postmodern education. But then, today, I started at Smallest Minority, where Kevin led me to Labrat's post at Atomic Nerds.  His post led me to MaxedOutMama.

Wading through all of this seemed to confirm for me that what I originally suspected.  That Joan Peterson and this professor Venkatesan have the condition we now call Peterson Syndrome as a result of postmodern indoctrination.  This is a very subtle form of solipsism.  It is very subtle because you have to let someone like the professor, or Peterson, talk long enough for the origin of their irrationality to manifest itself because neither of these women would consciously be aware of, let alone admit, that they were steeped in solipsism.

I can understand that Peterson has succumbed to her mental disorder because she lost a family member to a violent predator using a gun.  I would liken it to a child getting thrown by a horse, who then is afraid to ever go near a horse  from that day forward.  She allows her emotions to completely override rational thought, and gets support from like-minded individuals.

The postmodern thinking described by the two citations at MaxedOutMama's blog, as well as her explanation got me thinking again about how people like Joan Peterson become the way they are.  The best quote from the professor that drove it home for me, was the following:

In graduate school, I was inculcated in the tenets of a field known as science studies, which teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth and that science is motivated by politics and human interest. This is known as social constructivism and is the reigning mantra in science studies, which considers historical and sociological understandings of science. From the vantage point of social constructivism, scientific facts are not discovered but rather created within a social framework. In other words, scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.

Wow.  Just, Wow.  No wonder her students were making fun of her.  The first part of that statement isn't completely bizarre, but the last statement is whacko.  Let's break it down.

You are not in any kind of reality if you think that facts are created rather than discovered in the realm of science.  That there are people who believe such a concept would explain why so many buy into the global warming hoax.  If your social framework is that capitalism and free markets are bad, there is no better idea than to make naturally occurring gases that are good for plant growth into some kind of evil pollutant. If you want people to believe that biochemical molecules can somehow defy the laws of physics and that complex, coded information simply arises out of inanimate matter, I suppose the view of the professor makes sense to you.

Since the world began, scientific discovery by humans has been driven mostly by need.  Need for better ideas, tools, and techniques in everything from agriculture to warfare. That there may have been a political (warfare) reason to try to figure out a trebuchet or discover the chemistry of gunpowder doesn't make the facts of chemistry work differently because of why you need it.  Food plants don't sit around thinking about whether or not you have the right historical and sociological motivations or understandings about how to cultivate them. Ergo, to make the outrageous leap to concluding that last sentence just makes me want to find whoever passed on that idea and drop them in the Australian outback.

As someone who passionately defends the truth of the Bible based on hard, proveable science and history, I find it hard enough to have discussions with people about real science and the scientific method even when they haven't had their minds warped by ideas like that.  How then do you have a rational discussion about scientific facts versus theory with someone who thinks that social construct determines facts?  In short, you don't.  Facts that conform to a social construct are not facts at all.

If there are people with the title of professor in colleges and universities spreading this kind of mental disease, it's no wonder we can't have any civil discourse on politics.  We can't have any discourse.  It's no wonder I run across comments on various blogs that reflect complete ignorance of historical facts on the constitution.  It's no wonder that so many people don't, or simply can not, distinguish between raw facts and interpretations of evidence.

Because we didn't make a concerted effort to embarrass people like that professor out of the classroom long ago, we end up with people like the person Kevin Baker is engaging in this post.  People who a hundred years ago we would have just pointed at and laughed at, because even a sixth grade child could have explained why what they were espousing was sheer nonsense.  Now such people are numerous enough to have elected a president to what once was the most powerful country on the planet.

A Moderate Danger

I had been thinking of posting on this subject for a couple of months now, but I suppose I hadn't had enough of a push until the past couple of days.  I don't believe in coincidences.

First, the lovely Daphne over at Jaded Haven simply opened up a thread on gun control.  Most of those who come to her sight seem to be of an intelligent conservative bent.  I hate to seem redundant, but we live in a world of newspeak, so, in case someone is surfing by here who isn't adequately educated I wish to provide clarity. Two particular commentators caused me to deem this post necessary.

"The Phantom" is to most of us, an obvious lefty.  He came with this typical nonsense:

NRA-Occupied America is incapable of speaking rationally about guns.

Pay no attention to the fact that the USA has a gun murder rate that is ten times higher than our neighbor Canada, which has sensible gun controls.

And an overall homicide rate that is ten times higher than Canada’s

Screw the dead kids. Fuck ‘em. They’re a small price to pay. The NRA comes first, that’s what I say.

Everybody repeat after me ” Guns make us safe “!

Of course, after that, he tried to bring statistics that came from sources he liked and ergo, not worth paying any attention to.  There are much better sources of information by those with rational and scientific methods, and if you spend any time with experienced law enforcement people who generally aren't into seeking political office, they will tell you that criminals absolutely hate the idea of citizens commonly being armed. But all of that is not the real purpose of this post.

My point is in comparing The Phantom to someone with the handle of "mahons."  I'm sure mahons is a great guy.  Daphne seems to like him a lot.  Toward the end of the thread things seemed to devolve because some people who like to think of themselves as centrist or moderate seem offended by what I said or Gal Spunes said.

Now, I certainly believe that language, and that includes labels, gets abused on a regular basis.  Nobody likes to get mislabeled and so they protest at being labeled at all.  Problem is, humans live in a world that requires language and we can't make sense of our world without labels.  As someone pointed out on the thread, "centrist" and "moderate" are difficult labels because they apply to moving targets.  Political chameleons.

Do all conservatives fit neatly in any given profile?  Of course not.  People labeled conservative can range from John McCain to Barry Goldwater.  On the liberal side you have people on a continuum from Joe Scarborough to Alan Grayson.  So, if there is that much diversity in those two sides, how much more so does it exist in people who call themselves moderates?

The other thing that got me to write this post was, last night, watching An American Carol, the movie by David Zucker. It was just a couple of hours after leaving the thread at Jaded Haven.  In the movie is a scene where "Michael Malone" is on the Bill O'Reilly show with "Rosie O'Connell," in which Rosie comes off like the completely loony, nutcase leftist that she is, and "Michael" begins to realize that he doesn't want to be compared or connected with that level of crazy.  Bill O'Reilly makes the observation that "Michael" is more of a problem because some people like him and listen to what he says.  This just reaffirmed something I had said on the thread.

Trolls who come to blogs and say the kinds of things that Phantom say are quite easy to point to and laugh because what they say is so easily disproven and their rhetoric is so over-the-top.  The "mahons" on the other hand are another matter because they seem so reasonable and intelligent.  Their sarcasm is subdued and very deflective.  For those of us on the deeply conservative side (remember, check the glossary), he is a very dangerous political animal, because when he talks about destroying freedom, it comes off as reasonable and without a hint of malice.  Indeed, a wolf in a sheepskin.

You see, we didn't get this far down the socialist road in America because of the Barak Obamas and the Bill Clintons.  We got this far precisely because of the Richard Nixons, the John McCains, and the George Bushs, both father and son.  We bought into the lies that, seeming to be against the obvious left made you a conservative.  Nixon was power hungry egomaniac who gave the left a whipping boy that would keep conservatives on the defensive for decades.  Bush 41 messed up many of the gains made by Reagan and paved the way for the country to let Bill Clinton use the White House as a playground.  Bush 43 came in and proceeded to let Ted Kennedy write expansive education legislation, signed the McCain/Feingold assault on the 1st Amendment into law, massively expanded medical welfare where it wasn't needed.

Perhaps George W. Bush's greatest damage to any possible conservative presidency was his failure to explain his actions in the "war on terror."  The name itself was a colossal mistake.  You cannot make war on a tactic. Perhaps it is because he had all the wrong advisors on this issue or he simply chose to ignore good advice.  We have never been at war with terror.  We didn't start the war.  Islam declared war on us a long time ago.  Since it's inception, Islam has been on a campaign to dominate the entire world for their god, Allah.  Failure to recognize this fact was a crucial mistake. I remember an article by a Jewish writer dated between Sep. 12, 2001 and Sep. 16, 2001 that said we may have lost this war already because of that.

I'll never understand why he did not at least have his press secretary hammer on the facts. That many prominent democrats, especially senators with access to the intelligence reports insisted that Saddam Hussein had access to WMDs and that it was documented that Saddam had WMD's because he had used them on his own people and Iran. British intelligence never backed down from its report on the uranium story.  Former Iraqi general Georges Sada has been touring the United States, testifying that the WMDs were there, that they had been moved north into Syria.  He knows the names.  He knows the details.  None of this is classified.
These and many other facts lead me to believe that George Bush and many like him are nothing more than loyal opposition and marionettes for the real government behind the scenes. The Bushes, the McCains and the Boehners are simply there for the right-wing drones to think they are supporting conservatives.

In hindsight, I believe Saddam Hussein was removed from power because he was a megalomaniac dictator who wouldn't go along with the New World Order plans of the other government powers.  Was he a threat to peace? Yes.  Should he have been removed for being a brutal dictator to his own people? Yes. Do I believe the United Nations and the powers that be, authorized Bush and the other coalition forces to remove him for the benefit of the general populace? Not at all.

But in getting back to my point about moderates, it is this pretending to rationality that is so irritating.  They are the people who will agree that we can't just sit and do nothing while the enemy is trying to overrun us, but they'll nitpick every tactic you might employ to fight the enemy.  They will chime in on agreeing that reasonable gun control measures are a good thing, but when you point out that there is no such thing, they simply repeat the premise again as if that is an answer.  They help the leftist/progressive side while appearing to remain neutral.  They believe in compromise for the sake of peace, but each little compromise is ALWAYS toward socialist and tyrannical ends.

I remember my argument with a moderate friend over McCain/Feingold.
"It's a direct violation of the first amendment of the worst kind, because it specifically targets political speech."
"But we have to do something."
"Why?  To protect incumbents?  How does limiting free speech help when what the people need is more information and not less?"
"But the money is corrupting the system."
"Nonsense.  Money is an inanimate object.  It doesn't have magical powers. People can be corrupted if they want to be.  It doesn't matter what the system is.  What we need is more transparency.  There should be no limits on campaign contributions so long as there is open access to the names and sources of every dollar given to a politician.  Then the people can decide for themselves who is worthy of their vote and why."
"But at least it's a step in the right direction."
"No, it's a step toward giving the government more power to shut people up who don't go along with the narrative."
"Oh, you just sound like a crazy right-winger.  It's just about trying to bring some moderation to the debate and curb the special interests."
"Special interests being anybody who doesn't agree with the liberal agenda; who tries to point out the voting record or history of someone like McCain or Kerry or anybody for that matter."
"You just won't give it a chance, will you?"
"No.  Because every time you surrender just a little bit of freedom, you never get it back."
"Why can't you just be reasonable?"

No logic. No evidence that he wanted to move past stage one thinking on this. It's the same old "We've got to do something!" without ever stopping to think about where it really leads; that it might end in disaster.  No real cognitive depth on such an important subject, but he sounded so "reasonable."  And because he has an MBA and is former military and seems conservative in other areas, no telling how many others he influenced with that crap. The true-believers in statism will be right out there where I can see them and see what they're up to.  But the moderates might be flanking me while smiling and nodding.  While I'm focused on the obvious enemy in front of me, I'm getting a thousand little cuts from the "reasonable" guy next to me.  To hell with that.

I understand the appeal of the centrist.  Nobody wants to be hated or viewed as a hater.  As Alison Armstrong points out, the drive to be liked is especially strong in women.  They are hard-wired that way for good reason.  Thank God!  Baruch HaShem!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why moderates are so dangerous.  The devil won't come to you in a red suit with horns, a pointy tale and a pitchfork.  He will come to you as an angel of light or as the object of your desire to feel good.

Must Be On Drugs . . .

. . .  to believe that we need more bureaucracy.

Over at Bayou Renaissance Man, there is another new post about the shenanigans of the incestuous relationship between government and the pharmaceutical companies.  Oh, it isn't labeled as such, and I'm quite sure that the average person reading the story will come away with the idea that, "Big Pharma bad, Big Government punishing  Big Pharma good, let's go eat at McDonald's."

I know that what I'm about to say is just so foreign to most people because we've lived for several generations now with the idea that government is supposed to be like a parent to us, but just in case someone wanders by here and might be open to some radically OLD ideas that go back thousands of years, mainly because they worked and made sense, read on.

If you ask the average person if they think there should be a Food and Drug Administration, I'm sure they would naturally answer, "Of course."  If you asked them why, you might get some vague answer about protecting the public.  Now this may seem really strange to switch gears on you so drastically now, but do you think that the purpose of law enforcement agencies are to protect the public?  If you answered yes, you'd be wrong. The Supreme Court has ruled more than once that it is not even the purpose of law enforcement agencies to be preemptive.  They make very logical arguments for why that is so. People have tried to sue various law enforcement agencies for failing to protect them from criminals, and it was explained to them that that's not how government works.  Now I ask you, what in the world makes anyone think that other bureaucracies can be held accountable for protecting us from anything else?

Americans, and most citizens of modern countries operate under the silly notion that we need the vast bureaucracies to "protect" us from the big impersonal corporations, keeping them from foisting products on us that might kill or injure us. Before you go thinking that I'm some big lover of corporations, you need to read my previous post on this matter.  Do I think that all big corporations are out to kill and injure people in order to make a profit?  No.  Why not? Because it would be stupid.  Especially in a truly free market, companies are extremely sensitive to competitive pressure and guarding their market share.  I remember in 1982, someone had taken bottles of Tylenol and put poison in them, it created a crisis for the company. Even though it wasn't their fault, their sales plummeted.  Could the FDA have done anything about that?  No.  It was just in 2009 that we had an even worse event with people dying of salmonella poisoning, not because of tampering at the retail end of the supply, but because of contamination at the source of production.  You would have thought that the FDA was supposed to be on top of things, but no.  The evidence available to the public seemed to show a picture of corporate officers who had a callous disregard for consumer safety.

Should those responsible at the company be punished accordingly?  Only an idiot would disagree.  But why no outrage when the reaction at the FDA is to request even more money to hire more bureaucrats?  Are you kidding me?  You see, it turns out that the FDA had at least some idea that something was going on at the plant that was producing bad product going back to 2007, according to this article in the NY Times.  Once enough cases of salmonella had been reported and enough people died, we find out that everybody that worked in the plant knew how shoddy and unsanitary the conditions were.  Are you telling me that just a brief walk-through by some FDA or USDA inspector wouldn't have raised some red flags?  Why aren't we asking why some bureaucrats at the FDA aren't getting perp-walked to a jail cell over this?

But that's not really what I want.  I just want all the useless, black-hole-for-tax-dollars agencies abolished and the power-hungry, do-nothing, paper-pushing weasels bureaucrats to have to get real jobs in the productive areas of society.

UPDATE:  Over at Samizdata, there was a recent post about regulation on the airlines and how it was more about limiting competition, but of course the safety issue came up.  Even a man I once admired for his often staunch defenses of liberty took me by surprise by his defense of regulation, proving that even the best of us don't often think things through well enough.  Better minds on this topic prevailed on the comment thread and it is so useful to my points here that I lifted some of it for you to see below.

The moderate view:

The uncomfortable reality of the market is that someone can ALWAYS find a cheaper way to offer a product, but the other uncomfortable reality is that this discount has to come at the expense of one of the legs of the Iron Triangle (cost, quality, time). Once the efficiency curve has flattened, as it must, one of the three is ALWAYS compromised for the sake of market share.

I'm not a huge fan of government regulation: quite often, the regulations are gamed by the major players to their own advantage.

But I'm absolutely in favor of SOME government regulation. If the No-Regulation Fairy waved her magic wand tomorrow and made all government regulations disappear, planes would be falling out of the skies like hailstones within a matter of months, once the finance departments started running their little actuarial scenarios which triangulate the risk/reward/cost/benefit factors.

The only people who would benefit greatly would be the tort lawyers, and who wants to give THEM more money/influence?

As with all things, the trick is determining where on the "Over-Regulation/No Regulation" line one has to set the optimum, because neither extreme is desirable. Letting "the market" set the optimum is not desirable, because, as noted above, there are always people (and I mean passengers) who are prepared to risk their own safety for the sake of accessibility, cost or circumstance. And as long as there are those people, 'the market" will find a way to accommodate them.

 The intelligent, freedom view:

It's not a new argument; it's trotted out all the time by authoritarians and their apologists. And despite its presentation here as an undeniable truth, it's palpably false. As has already been noted by others in this thread, private certification bodies would most certainly take over the job, as they did in the days before the professional busybodies started their radical expansion of government and its regulatory powers.

What is also invariably overlooked by fans of government regulation is that regulatory agencies are invariably captured by the industry they purport to monitor. The same is not true of private certification bodies, who have a vested (read: financial) interest in doing a good job. Government bureaucrats have no such direct, personal interest in the quality of their work; their incentives lie completely elsewhere.

Kim du Toit is just wrong, on several levels. First of all, in the absence of government regulation planes would most certainly not be "falling out of the skies like hailstones within a matter of months." It's just not good business, as even the much-vilified finance departments would recognize. Second, even assuming that were true, and accepting his dictum that "there are always people (and I mean passengers) who are prepared to risk their own safety for the sake of accessibility, cost or circumstance," by what right does he (or anyone else) deny them that choice? Whose business is it if I want to assume greater risk in exchange for a lower price or more convenience?

In the end, government handles regulation just as it does everything else it attempts: poorly, inefficiently, and at high cost (both direct and indirect). If this quote is representative of the book it's a poor inducement for me to read it. I expect that I'll pass.

Another person in that same comment thread brought up something I wish I had thought of earlier.  His whole comment was: "Two words: Underwriters' Laboratories."    Bingo.

Now that I think of it, I can't remember the last time I saw a UL logo on a product. But apparently they are still in business.  Government still can't do the job they do.  Underwriters' Laboratories was started by insurance companies because they wanted a non biased way to estimate whether or not it was worth it to them to insure various products.  So, some enterprising engineers and such saw a need and filled it.  They set up facilities to throughly test everything from kitchen gadgets to hand tools to make sure that they had no inherent defects to make them unsafe for the purpose they were designed for.  The folks at UL knew that they needed to take their testing seriously because if they didn't, in a free market, some other company could rise up and take the business away from them.  And if they were negligent enough, they could be sued.  Neither of those two things apply to government agencies.



You see, as we've allowed the liberals/progressive/leftist/statist types to gradually wean us off of the concepts of caveat emptor and personal responsibility and into the idea that government is there to coddle us and oversee every aspect of our lives, from how much water goes through our toilet, to the idea that we shouldn't need to be armed against criminals, we've become like little children.  "Why, I shouldn't have to think about eating a balanced diet of healthy and nutritious food.  Why should I read labels and think about what kinds of ingredients or chemicals are being processed into my food?  If the government thinks it's okay, it must be fine."

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies look for every possible avenue to do what any and all companies in business do, from the mom & pop hardware store or restaurant to Microsoft: increase profits. Nothing at all wrong with that per se. However, big corporations have the money and resources to lobby legislators to get regulation that favors them whenever possible.  Worse than that, when companies get big enough, certain things become normal in the cost of doing business.  Like retaining enormous staffs of lawyers to fight off lawsuits that may or may not have any merit and reserving enormous amounts of cash for paying fines when it makes more sense to risk breaking the rules and get caught, instead of doing what's best for the consumer.

The public takes the ignorant attitude that the government will act like a conscientious watch-dog on their behalf.  What if that's not in the best interest of the bureaucracy?  What if the powers in control of the bureaucracy stop and think:  "It's not such a bad thing to have billions of dollars rolling in from fines and penalties from these companies."    Think about it.  Even if the bureaucracy doesn't directly receive the money from penalties, they can still go to the legislators and justify ever increasing budgets by pointing to revenue that they helped bring in. The salmonella in peanut products fiasco proved that the FDA is willing to let a lot of stuff slide until some people die, and then take advantage of that fact to ask for even more money.

Every single government bureaucracy, whether it's city, county, state, or federal, lives by two over-arching rules:  1. Protect the bureaucracy.  2. Grow the bureaucracy.  All other considerations are subservient to those two rules.  That's why, at the end of the fiscal year, heads of agencies scramble to spend every last cent in their accounts whether they need to or not, so they can claim that they didn't have enough money to do all the things that needed to be done. Never mind that they spent the money on new desks, chairs, carpeting, re-decorating, and all kinds of things that really didn't have to be replaced.

Ultimately, what thinking people in a free society need to understand is that we don't need 90% of the bureaucracies that exist now.  Does it make you feel good to know that the person that cuts or styles your hair has a license?  Why?  Are you not capable of discerning whether or not someone has a track record of doing good work?  If somebody does botch the job, do you pay them and then recommend them to your friends and acquaintances?

Why do you need a local "Health Department" to inspect restaurants?  Seriously.  I've walked into several eating establishments and after about five minutes had enough visual information to decide it wasn't worth the risk, in spite of the licenses and inspection certificates on the wall.  I've seen places where I wondered if a broom or mop had touched the floor in days, let alone since the last shift. Restaurants go out of business all the time because customers vote with their dollars and their feet; not because some bureaucrat was doing his job.  And when some major outbreak of food borne illness happens, it's the CDC that is playing detective agency to figure out where it came from, not the FDA or the USDA.  Leaving the intelligent person to ask: "What the hell good are you?"

Why even license doctors?  There are lots of great doctors, and I've talked to a lot of them in various specialties.  It usually takes me about five minutes of talking to them to figure out whether or not I'd put my life or my health care in their hands.  And while I think that there are many cases of ambulance chasing low-life lawyers like John Edwards bringing worse than frivolous lawsuits, I also know of plenty of cases of unconscionable malpractice.  Did licensing ever prevent a case of malpractice?  If you are a lousy doctor who didn't get weeded out during medical school or during internship, why would licensing matter?

When I was a licensed mortgage broker in the State of Florida in the late 1980s, I learned the dirty little secret about licensing.  A big part of the licensing test for becoming a broker involved a set of complicated math equations that made the quadratic equation look simple by comparison. I had been working as a loan processor and doing truth-in-lending statements and all kinds of calculations for mortgage files, and none of the math required for that was even vaguely similar.  I asked the VP of the company I was working for why we need to learn all of these equations for this test when none of it was ever used in finances or the mortgage industry.  He laughed.  Then he told me how, when the existing big dogs in the mortgage industry figured out that licensing would be great way to cull a lot of the competition, they went to a math professor in the State University system and asked him to come up with these convoluted formulas to make it very hard for anyone to pass the licensing test.

Two things came to light in my research over that.  Existing industries always lobbied the politicians to introduce licensing under the guise of protecting the public while they themselves would be "grandfathered" in, only needing to pay the fee.  Secondly, I discovered that the lawyers who made up the Florida legislature always put a paragraph in at the end of a law that exempted lawyers from the requirements and regulations of the bill itself.  The more I investigated the more I uncovered that this was true in almost every industry.  Then I realized that it didn't matter how much training or expertise I had in any field; if I wanted to open any kind of business and be immune from the licensing requirements, all I had to do was go to law school and pass the Florida bar.  How many other States are that way?

Licensing does nothing to protect the public from negligence or incompetence, and it certainly does nothing to protect against fraud.  There is no magic fairy dust that gets sprinkled on someone when they pay the government for a license. They can rip you off just as easily as another guy. I know first hand.  I've had it happen to me, and I was there during the 1987 housing bubble bust.  We in the mortgage business then knew that it was due to changes in the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae underwriting rules.  It made it too easy to create borderline fraudulent loans or loans that would be too susceptible to default.

 But there is another way that licensed professionals can subtly take extra money from you.  Most of the people in a specialized, licensed profession have a vested interest in forming clubs, societies, associations, call it what you will.  Then they all informally talk amongst each other to come to a loose consensus of what the going rates for products and services ought to be.  One guy might be dedicated to performing his service with the highest of standards, while somebody else in that trade association does "the same basic thing," but cuts a lot of corners or uses cheaper, substandard materials.  If you as the consumer don't know the difference, you can pay a lot more for less, just because you relied on licensing and maybe some kind of trade membership, rather than doing your homework for referrals and such.

The advent of consumer clubs have arisen out of the need for something better, thereby proving the point that government licensing does nothing more than raise revenue for the government and help the businesses limit their own competition.

Quit buying into the idea that government is there to protect you.  Government helps create and perpetuate the problems and the ultimate victimization of the people.  First, don't be intellectually lazy.  It's not that hard be careful about spending your money.  The reason medical care is so outrageously expensive is a confluence of two things. The gradual indoctrination of society to believe that medical insurance or somebody else paying for your medical care is some kind of right, and the fraud that results from disrupting the free market system, and the interference of government making laws to fix problems that wouldn't exist if it was a free market.

That's an entire blog post by itself.  But I can state briefly that if government didn't regulate insurance companies, which they have no Constitutional right to do anyway, everybody would buy  insurance on the basis of need and affordability.  It would be treated like car insurance.  You would take a keen interest in how much value you were getting for your dollar and you wouldn't let a doctor run tests you don't need.  More people would have to think twice about how much and what they ate and whether or not that smoking habit was really worth it if the insurance companies could base their rates on your lifestyle choices.  You can live your life any way you want, but I shouldn't have to subsidize your risky behavior by paying higher premiums out of some sense of "fairness" or "wealth redistribution."

Just eliminate half of the cabinet positions in the Federal government and in thirty days you would see an economic boom that would shake the world, and we would be so much better off.

Medical Right

I've written about this before, but who knows who comes by here or when and how many people think like Dr. Ronald Pies, MD?  How does one have enough intellect to graduate medical school and yet be so ignorant about basic facts and reality?  It doth boggle the mind.  I like seeing good responses to stupid ideas wherever and whenever possible.

George Mason U. economist Don Boudreaux has an incisive letter to the Boston Globe yesterday that helps one to understand what real rights and “rights ” that consist of forcing others to do one’s bidding are:

Here’s a letter to the Boston Globe:

Ronald Pies, MD, asserts that every individual has a “right” to “basic health care” – meaning, a right to receive such care without paying for it (Letters, Dec. 26).

The rights that Americans wisely cherish as being essential for a free society require only the refraining from action.  Your right to speak freely requires me simply not to stop you from speaking; it does not require me to supply your megaphone.

Not so with a “right” to “basic health care.”  Elevating free access to a scarce good into a “right” imposes on strangers all manner of ill-defined positive obligations – obligations that necessarily violate other, proper rights.  For example, perhaps my “right” to basic health care means that I can force Dr. Pies away from his worship service in order that he attend (free of charge!) to my ruptured spleen.  Or perhaps it means that I have the “right” to pay for my health care by confiscating part of his income.  If so, how much of his income does my “right” entitle me to confiscate?  Who knows?

And if Dr. Pies is planning to retire, do I have the “right” to force him to continue to work so that the supply of basic health care doesn’t shrink?  If Dr. Pies should die, am I entitled – again, to keep the supply of basic health care from shrinking – to force his children to study and practice medicine?

Does my right to basic health care imply that I can force my neighbor to pay for my cross-country skiing vacation on grounds that keeping fit is part of basic health care?

Talking about “rights” to scarce goods and services sounds right only to persons who are economically illiterate, politically naive, and suffering the juvenile delusion that reality is optional.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

Good Answer

I wish I could have written this answer.  It may not perfectly fit everything I believe, but it comes very close.  Maybe someday I will take the body of the text and embellish on it.

I think my favorite aspect of his explanation on the answer is the fact that we conservatives, and I mean true conservatives, and not the George Bush, John McCain, Karl Rove types, have to explain our conservatism in contrast to leftists/progressives.

Scientific Scrutiny

For so many years now, I have been fascinated with seeing "discoveries" in the periodicals and then the amazing interpretations of them and how gullible people can be about accepting the conclusions therein.

It is amazing what people will simply accept as fact, when it is nothing but pure speculation or in some cases a "SWAG."  Daddy taught me that phrase.

I came across this recent discovery over at Bayou Renaissance Man.  Seems they found a Roman gladiator in York, England.  Now, you really need to click on that link and go there and look at the pictures.

The problem I have, like so many such things foisted on the public, is the idea that they can tell so much from so little material evidence.  Let me just work this problem like a prosecutor.

So, you don't have any bones from anywhere below the lower spine?  No pelvic girdle? No femurs, no tibula, or fibula, or any assorted foot bones, yet you claim that you can extrapolate from that little evidence how tall the subject was?

Based on only wound marks found on rather old and decaying bone, and the total lack of soft tissue, you can tell us he was a swordsman?    How does this tell us what the man did for a living?  Why does he have to be a gladiator?  What if he was simply a victim of stabbing?  How do you know how muscular he was?  Everybody had to work very hard before the advent of welfare states.

Given that the man was buried and not cremated as is the custom of the Romans, and given the wide range of diverse people who traveled the European area in the time frame you choose for this subject, how do you know what ethnicity the man was?  He could have been Nordic or Irish or Moorish or anything.

How many records are available from living subjects which accurately record their biometric measurements to tell us with some degree of certainty what the average height of a person was at that time? How do we know how homogeneous height was at that time.  History records plenty of discrepancies in biometrics going back thousands of years.   Since Roman practice was to cremate their dead, what evidence do we have to go on, that this information is correct?

Given the frauds of Piltdown man and Nebraska man, and the proven unreliability of radiocarbon dating, how do we know when this body was buried?

The number of questions far outweighs any "known" facts.  Yet you get the impression from the story that they know all about the poor bloke.  This is how people get taken in by hoaxes.  Just say that somebody is an expert and has credentials and whatever they say about a given subject must be right.

Beer and Taxes Story

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
* The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
* The fifth would pay $1.
* The sixth would pay $3.
* The seventh would pay $7.
* The eighth would pay $12.
* The ninth would pay $18.
* The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.’ Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.’
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
* The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
* The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings) .
* The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings) .
* The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 ( 25% savings).
* The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
* The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’ declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, ‘but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar,too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’
‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’
‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

It's The Sun, Stupid

Back in about the mid 1980s the crap was starting about CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons destroying the ozone.  In spite of my incredibly boring high school classes, I was fascinated by chemistry and physics and biology, so I had done a lot of self-study in those areas.  At that time I still believed in evolution as well, but that's another story.  The point is, I sought out good sources that really made clear in my mind how these things worked and why they were important. Pretty much the opposite of what went on in the government school, memorizing a lot of abstract facts and formulas long enough to pass a test so you can forget about it the following week or semester.  BTW, it was in my high school years in the late 70s I think, that we were being warned in the papers and magazines about a coming ice age.  I seem to recall a TIME magazine cover to that effect.

Then came that period where I learned to be a mechanic, learning all I could about everything from brakes to engine rebuild, electrical systems and air conditioning. In order to understand and diagnose HVAC systems, you need to understand at least some basics of chemistry and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  A thorough understanding of the 2nd Law will seriously mess up any belief in evolution, unless you can fool yourself into thinking that the two things can somehow exist in the same universe.  But I digress.  Let me just insert this quote from the British media that I found via BMEWS, and then I'll explain what I'm getting at.

Throughout the 20th century the sun was unusually active, peaking in the 1950s and the late 1980s. Recently sunspot activity has all but disappeared.

Gavin said: “It is the sun’s energy which keeps the earth warm and the amount of energy the earth receives isn’t always the same. I’ve looked at the evidence for global warming and while I understand and agree with a lot of it, there has been a lot missed out. A major factor is the activity of the sun.”

There is also solar wind – streams of particles from the sun – which are at their weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted at an unusual degree. This is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on earth and force what for many is unthinkable – a reappraisal of the science behind global warming.

It was thought that carbon dioxide emissions rather than the sun was the bigger effect on climate change. Now a major re-think is taking place.

The upshot is that Gavin is not alone in predicting we face another 30 frozen years, each getting progressively colder than the last.

You can read more about it here.

What first got me questioning the "management by crisis" stuff going on in the world, was that I had learned about earth science in general.  I was working on my private pilot license when I was sixteen, and you have to really learn about weather and navigation.  In navigation you discover that the earth wobbles on its axis. That magnetic North doesn't stay in the same spot from year to year.  You discover that solar activity can play havoc with radio equipment.  You learn all kinds of things that you just won't learn to be a cog in the average labor force.  So when I first heard the nonsense about CFCs destroying the ozone layer, I said, "You have got to be kidding."  First of all, the little ozone layer is but a small part of protecting us from various forms of cosmic radiation.  The magnetic field and water vapor play a much greater role.  Secondly, CFCs are complex and denser molecules that are heavier than air.  In order to successfully find a freon leak in an air conditioning system, you had to keep the sensing probe below any possible slow seeping leaks or you would miss them, so how in the world could CFC be finding it's way up to the upper atmosphere where the ozone is?  I smelled a rat.  Then I find out that the patent that DuPont had on standard R12 and R22 freon was running out.  We must invent a new formula to patent on the premise that "something's gotta be done."   Anybody want to guess who funded studies to show that CFCs are harmful to the environment?  Anyone?  Beuller?

What really irritates me is how many people, and a lot of them with college degrees can be so foolish.  Let's just take this one statement:

“It is the sun’s energy which keeps the earth warm and the amount of energy the earth receives isn’t always the same. I’ve looked at the evidence for global warming and while I understand and agree with a lot of it, there has been a lot missed out.

First question:  What evidence?  Computer models that have failed dramatically?  Mitigating evidence that has purposely been suppressed by East Anglia University and others who have a vested interest in not looking stupid, or worse, deceptive?  Second: You understand and agree with it, and then you say that a lot  -- not a little, not a piece or two -- has been missed out.  Wow.  In the scientific world, I mean the real scientific world as opposed to the one of consensus, where people with Ph.D.s vote on what they want to believe is true, it only takes one piece of evidence to falsify a theory and cause it to be thrown out.  Tell me again WHY I should take anything you say seriously?

I suppose the unwashed masses just need to understand that critical thinking has become as extinct as the dodo bird in the halls of academe.  Thou shalt not question the keepers of the faith in "science."  To do so makes you a, a, **GASP**  "DENIER."  You shall be cast down with the xenophobes, homophobes, racists, bigots, and all manner of subhuman life forms.  "Evidence?  We don't need no stinking evidence!"

Sorry, dude, but it really is the sun.  And because of the fact that we know the sun is shrinking, and because of the laws of physics, and especially the 2nd law of thermodynamics.  It is a lot more likely that we are going to experience more cold.  We should be hoping that solar flares start kicking in again.

Here's a little experiment that you can do at home.  Get yourself a couple of mason jars, quart or half gallon size, with lids.  The bigger the better.  Get a little dry ice; sold at many grocery stores.  You'll need a couple of small non-electronic thermometers, alcohol or mercury type.  In the first one, put in one thermometer and put in the dry ice and put on the lid LOOSELY enough that the sublimating gas can escape as it expands until you don't see any more solid dry ice.  The expanding CO2 should displace most all of the standard air in the jar.  You can then tighten the lid.  In the other jar, put a thermometer and about a teaspoon or tablespoon of water. Screw the lid on tight.  Set both jars out in the sun in the morning.  By about 3:PM local time, check the temperature in the jars.  Then write to me and tell me how much you think that carbon dioxide can contribute to "global warming."

I'll Have What She's Having

This is one of the finest rants I've ever read.

It deserves to go "viral" all across the internet.  So here I am, doing my little part to make it so.

It also reminds me of a stupendous lie that the left keeps repeating to this day, namely that "There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)."

I know that's a lie because I saw the news reports and the covers of the periodicals that showed the Kurds in Iraq that Saddam had gassed to death.  I read the reports by the former Iraqi General who escaped Hussein's Iraq to report that, of course there were no WMDs to be found three months after we warned we were coming. The Russians had come in and transported them north into Syria.  The British Intelligence agents stood by their reports on the yellow-cake uranium story.  Other refugees from Iraq stood by their stories of mobile nuclear weapon processing facilities.  When the case was being made in the Congress for going to war with Saddam Hussein, then Senate majority leader Tom Daschle said: "Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people."


Just another of the many lies told by the left and repeated mindlessly by the myrmidons of faithful democrat voters.

But we've been pushed enough, and we're tired of it.

More Funky "Science?"

I don't know where Bayou Renaissance Man gets this stuff, but I'm grateful, er, I think.


I'm grateful because it demonstrates in very shocking and graphic ways the kind of thing I've talked about in other posts regarding logic and reason.  I don't want to copy and paste all of that stuff here, so assuming you've read it now, let me deal with the pertinent parts.

"It is believed the bacteria increases levels of serotonin, reduces anxiety and may also stimulate growth in certain neurons in the brain."

Really?  You believe that because . . . ?  Wow.  There is so much of this kind of nonsense going on in the so-called scientific community these days.  Take a little bit of data and extrapolate to all kinds of bizarre conclusions.  Never mind doing actual controlled experiments, isolating and controlling the variables to determine if your theory is valid or falsifiable.

This is how we get fantastic hoaxes like anthropogenic global warming.  You see, somebody is going to read that, and then when they tell somebody at work or their friends or their family, they are going to leave out the crucial "It is believed . . . " part.  Some will use their God-given common sense to dismiss it until some solid research comes along, but others will just swallow it wholesale and repeat it to others.  The only reason that it won't be pushed through the use of advertising and further press releases is that there is no way to patent dirt and make money off of it.  At least not yet.

Maybe the USDA or the FDA, under the provisions in S 510 will figure out a way to harass the public if they catch anybody letting their kids make mud pies.  


Then there is the second part of BRM's post regarding the Swedish woman:

"After having been administered the enema of her husband's bacteria-free faecal matter, the woman made an rapid recovery and immediately began to regain some of the 27 kilogrammes in weight she had lost over the previous eight months."

Do I deny that the technique worked? No.  Do I understand why it worked? Yes.  But for crying out loud, why do we need to resort to such methods when there are perfectly good, natural nutritional ways of dealing with such a thing?  First you could have had her take copious amounts of spicy food with large amounts of capsaicin to kill the bad bacteria, and then naturally fermented raw cabbage or other such vegetables to restore her own healthy digestive tract.  But no, let's do something uncomfortably invasive that might have resulted in a very bad reaction with her immune system.  And by the way, how do we know that it hasn't happened already?


To be fair, maybe they had tried the food route already and her case was so special or severe that it wasn't producing results fast enough.  Perhaps the heavy antibiotics had so destroyed her good bacteria cultures that there wasn't enough there to regenerate quickly enough.  I just hope that I've learned enough and made enough changes to my own diet to never have to need an enema with somebody else's feces.


Now, go forth and eat better, and try to forget about this story for the rest of the day.

Peterson Syndrome II

The first installment of this essay can be found here.

From my studies on language, the government welfare systems, politics, and history, I find that people are pretty much like electricity and water; they take the path of least resistance and they seek their level.  Both of these things are a corollary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Both of these conditions have never changed in the course of human history.  The founders of the U.S. of A. understood this.  Mankind is not inherently good. Therefore, he needs to be trained in the ways of goodness. The Left wants to believe that mankind is inherently good and because they want it to be so, therefore it must be so. Both cannot be correct.  The proof of this can be found every time one ventures out into the community.  You can easily find one example of the Leftist style of parenting.  It is often hard to find examples of conservative styles of parenting, especially if you live in a large, metropolitan area.

You are in the store, and you can hear the kid wailing, sassing back, just being an all around little jerk in an effort to get his way (girls too).  The reason this is happening is because the parent sees little Johnny or Susie as an adult with all the rights and privileges that they themselves have. Johnny must be negotiated with. Johnny deserves to know that mommy can't afford to buy him that toy. Never mind that he doesn't contribute anything to household income or even know how to balance a checkbook.  The word "No" to Johnny simply means that he hasn't negotiated long enough or used severe enough tactics. This kid has been reared to date under the assumption that Left wing ideas about human nature are true, only to prove that such ideas are nonsense.  This kid has not the slightest inkling of concern over what is good for his family, his mother, or anyone around him.  He wants what he wants and is determined to push the envelope as far as he can to get it.

Once in a great while, you come across a family, often there are two or more children (that's the first clue, and there's a reason for it) where the children are quiet, respectful, and observant.  The older one's might even be helping to tend to the younger ones.  These are kids who have been trained under the assumption that the training is necessary.  Lest there be a misunderstanding, I'm not talking about strict discipline that borders on abuse.  I'm simply talking about loving discipline that helps the child develop into a loving, caring adult.  The conservative understanding of human nature and the subsequent training that results from it, produces people who function well in a society as self-sufficient and contributing to the overall good.  The leftist philosophy of human nature is that of leaving the garden to grow completely untended so that it produces nothing of any value, and we all end up starving.  The only thing that keeps the latter scenario from happening quickly is the reality of human nature that creates the speed bumps on the way to hell.  We just experienced such a kind of speed bump in the 2010 elections, or as P.J. O'Rourke said, "more like a restraining order."

What does this have to do with Peterson Syndrome?  Well, in thinking long about it (and I intend to think more, and refine my thoughts on this), Peterson Syndrome is something akin to Stockholm Syndrome, in that it is induced by outside factors, rather than being something innately organic.  It is my opinion that it is like brainwashing.  Albeit slow and subtle and accomplished by what I would call a "Cattle Conspiracy."  Once a Cattle Conspiracy has fully developed, reality becomes a very inconvenient truth.  This is what we see happening in France and Greece as of this post.  It does not matter that there is no more money to allow government union workers to retire at 55 and continue to collect taxpayer money in the form of pensions. They will riot in the streets until either the government sprinkles more magic pixie dust on the treasury to produce the money, or the government sends in troops to violently squash the rebellion.  This is the fruit of Peterson Syndrome on a large scale.  You could take a classroom full of Greek or French union workers, or for that matter, General Motors union workers and set them all down with charts and graphs and give them a crash course in basic economics and you would be lucky if one or two out of 50 understood that the game was rigged for disaster from the start.  It doesn't matter that the laws of economics have no feelings for their circumstances. They were promised something. Logic and facts be damned. "I have my RIGHTS!"  These people don't even understand the rules that determine whether or not something can or cannot be a "right."  Somebody said  "_____" was a right, and they believe it, and that settles it.  Look for a forthcoming essay on what constitutes a right.

Peterson Syndrome was coined by Joe Huffman about Joan Peterson and her irrational and illogical perception of inanimate firearms and human nature.  I think this became easier for us conservatives to analyze because the firearms issue has statistics that are far less complex for understanding than economics, while at the same time having far more emotional aspects that paint the picture with much more vivid colors.

In the next installment, I'm going to try to show why the promoters of the Peterson Syndrome do what they do.  After that, I hope to delve into their methods.

Peterson Syndrome

I won't get into my reasoning and thoughts about predestination. That's a subject that I wouldn't discuss with someone unless they were a fairly accomplished Bible scholar and over the age of 30 and it would help even more if they had children.  I only mention that to say this: I am very blessed that I did not start college until I was almost 26 years old.  I had been orphaned at 13 and lived at the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch. I had intellect, but no wisdom, and no one to help me or make me realize that good academic scores would realize a big payoff in the future.  After graduating high school, it would be straight into the work world.  Before beginning college I would have had at least six very different jobs.  One of them involved digging in the hot sun to install phone cable with a guy who had a Ph.d.  in some liberal arts field that I don't even remember.  By the time I was 20, I was THE store manager for an auto parts chain. I would go on to more things, and all of that experience gave me some wisdom.

Don't ever confuse knowledge with wisdom.  You can know a lot of crap that is factual and not have "a lick of sense," or wisdom.  You can spend a lot of your time and intellectual power to learn a lot of facts and information that is very useful, or stuff that won't make a pile of dirt worth of difference to your well-being.

My hard won wisdom borne of experience was with me when I started taking the requisite classes for my associate of arts degree.  So, when I had to sit in a college classroom and listen to some instructor pontificate on a subject, my BS meter would go off like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl. I was nothing like the teenagers fresh out of high school who sat there listening to every word that came out of the instructor's mouth as if it was all beyond question.  I had many "lively discussions" with many of my professors, to the shock and disbelief of surrounding students, especially when I made them admit their errors and biases.  It was a couple of years into my college work and also teaching Creation/Biblical apologetics that I discovered what the problem was in academe.  Which brings us to the following quote by Joe Huffman regarding his naming of the condition that we conservatives encounter in people on the left:  Peterson Syndrome; named for Jan Peterson who advocates for the Brady Campaign.  [Hat tip to Kevin at The Smallest Minority]

She is frequently incoherent. She cannot distinguish the difference between intentions and results. If she is a liar she would not repeatedly make these kind of mistakes. Or if she is a liar then she is very very smart and skilled to consistently use the same sort of tool without ever slipping up.

I claim it is not necessarily and in fact probably isn't stupidity. If this were stupidity then this sort of faulty thinking would not continually show up throughout human history even with people that are exceedingly well respected. Every age and society has stupid people in it and they are easily recognized and the instances of them being well respected are exceedingly rare. This is some other type of mental disorder.

This mental disorder can be, and has been, easily detected. Ask the question, "What is the process by which you determine truth from falsity?" People suffering from this mental disorder not only won't be able to supply an answer but frequently cannot even understand the question. The question is nonsensical to them. They are lacking a thinking process. Hence, by necessity, they fail to process information. Asking them to supply a process when they are totally unaware of the existence of such a concept results in the same sort of difficulty as asking a person blind since birth what color the walls are. They have no common basis with the questioner such that they can even understanding the question. This is the same sort of response we get from her. She cannot understand concepts that to us are intuitively, blindingly, demonstrably, obvious. It is nearly impossible for us to believe that she does not understand what we are saying. But if she were blind you would not claim she was stupid or a liar if she did not know the color of the wall.

Joe describes the condition, but does not offer a cause.  This is what I would like to rectify.

The problem begins when the philosophy of education shifts from teaching students HOW to think to just teaching them WHAT to think.  I wondered how we got to this model of education in the United States and most of the western world. In my own autodidactic studies, and teaching of apologetics, I saw the need to demonstrate to my students how important it was to use logic to determine truth.  I had known that in the past, even high schools had debating classes and competitions, but this had become passé.  That's where the breakdown of education had begun.  Having to learn how to reach a conclusion and then articulately defend it is the real measure of knowledge.  With rare exception, such learning is now missing from all "higher" education past the twelfth grade.  When that which is supposed to pass for education has been reduced to merely memorizing facts and information with no understanding of how the information should be usefully applied, society is heading for disaster.

History bores the snot out of kids in the public government school indoctrination centers because it has been stripped of the information that makes it relevant in the name of "separation of Church and State."  Math is boring because it isn't coupled to history and the significance of what each discovery in the field did to improve the human condition. Science is boring to many students for the same reason.  I've always loved science and thought it was fun, but it had nothing to do with what I learned in school.  It was because I was always finding stuff on my own and doing my own experiments.

How many people understand syllogism?  Far too many people cannot recognize a false premise to start with.  This is what creates the famous GIGO condition that software engineers and other scientists in the hard sciences are painfully familiar with (Garbage In, Garbage Out).  If the basic facts or information is flawed, no amount of wishful thinking is going to create a better outcome.  Not within the confines of this space/time continuum.  That is the first lesson of logic.

This will be my first essay on understanding the Peterson Syndrome.  If you'd like to contribute your thoughts on the matter, email me at:  moses5768@yahoo.com.