University Of Chicago Freedom Of Speech

University of Chicago Statement on freedom of speech at the university. 

In these days of "cancel culture", censorship of "disinformation", and "safe spaces", the University of Chicago has stood up to defend freedom of speech on their campus. 

35 universities have signed up in support of this statement. As the linked article says, "1,606 to go". One might add the majority of the media social, printed, and otherwise, to follow suit. Is it possible that if enough people read this and thought about it, the accusation of "hate speech" would become a signal that the person or institution making the charge is outside the community of free speech, and needs to be counselled  as to what free speech means in a civil society. 

The statement is short and well worth the read. A few excerpts stating what was once obvious to all Americans, especially those with some level of university education (when a university education was in fact education as opposed to today's indoctrination).

In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the University community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is an essential part of the University’s educational mission.

.. President Hanna Holborn Gray observed that “education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.

Much of our social interaction today is all about comfort, and if anyone, any institution, any group, or anything at all gives you a pang of discomfort, that person, institution, media outlet, business, etc needs to be "cancelled", either publicly, or just by you as you shun the person, business, or institution that has "offended" you. 

For Christians, this is especially problematic, since if the message of Christ does NOT offend you regularly as you fail to follow his teachings presented by a pastor with the authority given to a pastor, it is not clear you are an actual practicing Christian. 

Certainly you will be able to find a church with female, gay, trans, etc members and clergy, that believes that "love for all" rather than following Christ in a body of believers and regularly taking part in the sacrament of Holy Communion. In the age of "it's all about me", the concept of "love the sinner, hate the sin" is impossible for many in today's culture to understand. 

"The Rise And Triumph of the Modern Self" does an excellent job of explaining why we got to this point. 

  

Two Cents To Save America, Perry Johnson

 Perry Johnson (politician) - Wikipedia

"Quixotic", as in "exceedingly idealistic, unrealistic, and impractical" are the thoughts that I had as I looked at Mr Johnson's presidential aspirations. 

My not politically involved brother in law, and my equally not politically involved son both a got free hardcover copies of the book. Strange. My wife is co-chair of our county Republican party, and Johnson is running as a Republican

As I looked around a bit to see who this guy is/was, I came across his involvement with ISO 9000 as well as his failed attempt to get the Republican nomination to run against Gretchen Whitmer for governor of Michigan in 2022 because he failed to get the required number of signatures to be on the ballot. 

Failing to get on the ballot is not that impressive. 

As to ISO 9000, my wife and I have had some experience with this in our IBM careers. Basically, ISO requires that you have a documented process for software development, and that you follow it. You pay fairly significant amount of money to have an ISO auditor come into your company and verify that you are doing what you say you are doing. There is no evaluation of your process as to if it makes any sort of rational sense, or actually improves quality, only that you are doing what you say you do. 

"Standards" are an issue that can have a long discussion. "UL" or "Underwriters Laboratories" is one of the best known and widely used. It MAY mean that the product you are buying is "independently tested", however, like ISO, the specifics of that testing vary widely, and there is always the distinct possibility of some form or corruption ... kickbacks, bribes, etc. 

Essentially we are talking about "Non Government Organization" (NGO)  certification, or to put it in my words "NGO equivalent of a countries Administrative State". Are such things needed? Certainly .. the FAA, and the international equivalents certainly help insure aircraft, pilot, navigation and airport safety and ability to interact effectively. (like all international air communication being in English). However, as in the Boeing 737 Max crashes of an internationally certified aircraft, there will be failures. 

We live in a world of trade-offs. How much testing?, how much regulation?, who does the testing?, who "regulates the regulators" to prevent them from creating massive ineffective bureaucracies that end up doing little but lining the pockets of various bureaucratic organizations. It is necessary, but when does it become a necessary evil, and how much "evil" (increased costs, corruption, ineffectiveness, etc) are acceptable? 

Such things are not to be answered in a blog post. 

A lot of the things Johnson's "Two Cents" book suggests ... reducing size of government in general and especially the Administrative State. energy independence, reduced taxes, reduced regulation, secure borders, free trade, "reigniting the American Spirit", incentivizing work and innovation, etc are obvious to all but hardcore Democrats of the Carter, Obama, Biden ilk. 

Reagan tried and was significantly successful and changed the game enough so that the economy, markets, and real income growth, and with the election of a Republican congress for the first time in 50 years combined with a compliant president (Clinton), and the Internet Bubble, even balanced the budget for a couple years! 

The Reagan Recovery, (although far from perfect) lasted until Obama ... a lot of the principles Johnson espouses are essentially Reagan all over again. Trump largely revived a number of those principles with positive results until Covid. Biden has taken us back to at least Jimmy Carter, and I believe has established a new benchmark in dangerous government overreach, unfortunately including further reducing the integrity of elections, weaponizing the government against any opposition, and of course tanking the economy, returning us to "Stagflation", pulling us ever closer to a shooting war with nuclear weapons, and much else. The hope of "Peace Through Wokeness" is believable as "no environment impact energy", or "Military Intelligence". 

In short, Johnson is tilting at the right windmills, so if you need a short refresher on reality relative to government means, it is useful. However like Don Quixote, the effectiveness of someone with a background in international bureaucracy actually practicing what he now preaches is vanishingly small.  

If long shots appeal to you, I would recommend Vivek Ramaswamy. 

DeSantis is my current pick. 

It is a long way to go, but I'll be voting for whoever is the most likely to beat Biden, even if that is a third party candidate with conservative leanings. My guess is that would be Trump, and if he looks to have the best chance of beating Biden because DeSantis is the nominee, but looks to lose in a three party race, I won't have to hold my nose at all for Trump. I believe that 2020 was clearly stolen by a LOT of measures (see "Rigged"), but Trump ought to have let it go after Pence caved. 

The 2016 election and the Trump administration were "rigged" by Hillary, the FBI, and the compliant media, as the Durham Report exposes (way too late). Having a Constitutional/National crisis on how horrible our election system is might of been the best alternative available, but that water is well past the dam.

After 2020 and 2022,  I suspect that it will take bloodshed to prevent us from either "electing", to be run by or like the PRC,  or forced to do so. 

Election Interference Is Not Bipartisan

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/05/russian-disinformation-memo-was-a-biden-campaign-op.php

We have known for a long time that the Steele “dossier” was created by and for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. It was the most successful bit of disinformation of modern times. The second most successful, perhaps, was the absurd claim that the obviously-authentic Hunter Biden laptop somehow constituted “Russian disinformation.” How and why that could be true, no one ever explained. The provenance of the laptop has never been disputed, even by Hunter: he left it at a repair shop and didn’t pick it up.

As Biden has declared many times, Trump, Republicans, Deplorables (but I repeat myself) are "threats to our Democracy". What he means by that is that they are a threat to the Democrat/Deep State/Big Corporate/Big Media Oligarchy, and more importantly to him, the Biden Crime Family.   

We now know that the dismissal of the authenticity of the documents contained on Hunter’s computer was organized on behalf of, and likely at the instigation of, the Joe Biden presidential campaign. Emails have now come to light that show the organizers of the “Dirty 51” were, by their own description, creating “talking points” for Joe Biden to use in the upcoming presidential debate.

To the extent that a significant number of Americans ever find out about all of this, it will be stated as "without evidence" ... the fact that we are looking at evidence right here is immaterial to the Narrative. 

Is It Time For Manly Christianity to be Unleashed?

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/against-the-new-paganism/

A little long, but an article that needs to read in its entirety in order to understand where Western culture are today, and may need to be in the future.

The most prominent exponent of vitalism today is Costin Alamariu, a Romanian political-science Ph.D. (Yale), who goes by the moniker “Bronze Age Pervert” (BAP). As BAP, he is the author of Bronze Age Mindset, an intentionally provocative, discursive, and ungrammatical “exhortation” outlining his thought. In two previous essays, one in the Daily Beast and one in National Review, I described the work, attempted to explain the origin and nature of its popularity, and assessed it critically

So what is vitalism? 

a call for the deepest possible return of all: a breaking of the fetters of secular liberalism and Judaism and Christianity alike, a recovery of a more elemental way of being-in-the-world. The nostalgia of neo-vitalism is for humanity’s most ancient days: for blood and war and shamans and the fierce exaltation of the kill.

The post makes a number of references to "Bronze Age Pervert" which I covered here.

We are all familiar with the current state of affairs in Christianity, 

Over the past few decades, Christianity has both retreated from the public square and from mass culture and been pushed from them. Its once-venerable pillars in this country have atrophied. Catholics continue to disaffiliate, and many Protestant denominations can barely be distinguished from unbelief. “The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God,”

One of my many weird and possibly heretical paths of thinking is correlating the OT with the NT, and Yahweh with Christ.  On one level God is presented as "unchanging",  and Christ as "fully God and fully man". The OT God seems very different from Christ ... 

Deuteronomy 20:16-18 New International Version (NIV)
"However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you."

Certainly in the Judgement, God will kill all the wicked ... eternally. He is a God who desires to show his mercy, but if it is refused, Judgment is his. .  

A book that helped me at least understand the problem a bit was "Jesus and Yahweh, The Names Divine".

The following quote is from the post linked at the top, not the previous line. 

Easter reminds us that the Resurrection remains true — even if the work of revitalizing Christianity today might require an approach different from the one Paul took in the Areopagus, with an emphasis not only on the truth of the Christian faith but also on its muscular application.

During the Reformation, Christians certainly fought valiantly. It was basically the equivalent of the American Civil War. Can/must Christians today be more like the Christians of the the Crusades, who "turned the other cheek" until the battle of Covadonga?

Today we are often given the message to "stand down", and "obey the authorities" because "God is in control". I agree with God being in control, but his often explicit battle plans in the OT. 

Malachi 3:6

“For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed."

God "allows" a lot of things, and "directs" a lot of other things. Which is which is "seen darkly" at best by even the most devout Christian.

Is it time for a new Reformation or Crusade? God will decide. 

Understanding "Disinformation"

 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation

In his last days in office, President Barack Obama made the decision to set the country on a new course. On Dec. 23, 2016, he signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which used the language of defending the homeland to launch an open-ended, offensive information war.

We live in the "disinformation age". Pilate asked Christ; "What is truth"? The correct eternal answer being a "who" rather than a "what" ... Christ.  Even scientists and philosophers are starting to understand this. "The Matter With Things" would be a good place to start your road to that understanding as well.

Since 2016, the federal government has spent billions of dollars on turning the counter-disinformation complex into one of the most powerful forces in the modern world: a sprawling leviathan with tentacles reaching into both the public and private sector, which the government uses to direct a “whole of society” effort that aims to seize total control over the internet and achieve nothing less than the eradication of human error.

The set of things "known for sure" is exceedingly small since our only method of determining such is using our brains, something we believe to be a "thing", however Quantum Field Theory (the current "standard model") says there are no "things", only fields. One thing we do know for certain that is a constant is human error.

Ah yes, an agency/process/bureaucracy to "eradicate human error". Fascinating. 

In the fall of 2020. the New York Post began publishing incriminating information from Hunter Biden's laptop that he had forgotten at a computer repair shop. The disinformation police detected "human error", so they rounded up over 50  "security experts" to correct (and suppress) this error. 

Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming.” The discovery prompted Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, to suggest in an October 2017 email that the company take action to expose the hoax and “call this out on the bullshit it is.”

Once it was clear that the Hamilton 68 were the ones peddling "disinformation" (in simpler terms, "bullshit") the hoax was globally exposed, right? Well, in a sane world, that might be expected, but that is not the world in which we live. 

The American press, once the guardian of democracy, was hollowed out to the point that it could be worn like a hand puppet by the U.S. security agencies and party operatives.

 To those that have never wavered from reality, this is as newsworthy as the sun rising in the east. To readers of my blogs, the following quote will be just as "shocking". 

What we are seeing now, in the revelations exposing the inner workings of the state-corporate censorship regime, is only the end of the beginning. The United States is still in the earliest stages of a mass mobilization that aims to harness every sector of society under a singular technocratic rule.

Another; "Duh" quote for frequent readers ...

Disinformation, now and for all time, is whatever they say it is. That is not a sign that the concept is being misused or corrupted; it is the precise functioning of a totalitarian system.

Much like Dr Strangelove, the government created a "truth doomsday machine" out of social media parts. 

Weapons created to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda were turned against Americans who entertained incorrect thoughts about the president or vaccine boosters or gender pronouns or the war in Ukraine.

If you actually listen to Biden and the media, the greatest threat to our "our democracy" is the "MAGA Republicans" ... or to be more accurate, anyone that questions the narrative. Look closely at "our democracy",  "their oligarchy" is the message we need to get. "Our Democracy" is just propaganda. 

In the days of the internet “freedom agenda,” the popular mythology of Silicon Valley depicted it as a laboratory of freaks, self-starters, free thinkers, and libertarian tinkerers who just wanted to make cool things without the government slowing them down. The alternative history, outlined in Levine’s book, highlights that the internet “always had a dual-use nature rooted in intelligence gathering and war.” There is truth in both versions, but after 2001 the distinction disappeared.

While the Internet was originally built by the military working with universities to be a distributed robust network that would allow communications to be maintained during a nuclear attack, it quickly became the information equivalent of the Interstate Highway system ... a low cost means of mass two way communication that quickly subsumed TV and phones. and allowed everyone to have a voice, and the distinct possibility that some of them would become more followed than the Democrat lapdog media. 

Certainly, that was not allowed, so the voices that persisted in not getting their minds right needed to be silenced. 

  

 

The Road To Celebrating Pedophillia

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/04/democrats-for-pedophilia.php

I dropped my subscription to Time Magazine in the early '90s as they had and editorial defending a teacher that had been fired because they were a member of NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association). 

Now we have "Downstate" a play about a set of pederasts living in a shelter because they can't live anywhere else. The Washington Post and the NY Times have reviewed the play mostly sympathetically 

The NY Times review closes with: 

That, more than the menace of the housemates, is the reason the tension of “Downstate” trails us so tenaciously out of the theater. The thought of all the damage these men have wrought, and the severity of their exile, gets knotted up with questions of mercy.

How much retribution is enough? And what quantity of compassion — bestowed on whom — is too much? Let the wrestling with your conscience begin.

I've been wrong about the "progress" of "progressivism".  After the Stonewall Riots and Roe, it was pretty clear that the SCOTUS could and would legislate any "morality" it imagined. The acceptance of gays into general society was hastened by AIDs. as the terrible deaths that many gays suffered caused natural sympathy for it's victims. Magic Johnson's announcement that he had AIDs in 1991 blurred and destigmatized AIDs and with it gays as immoral, and the gut felt (but rarely admitted) sense that AIDs was a punishment from God for the sin of Sodomy, as in Sodom and Gomorrah was suppressed.

Gays, and "GLBT" was increasingly celebrated with obscene marches, rainbow flags, etc. It was clear that "progress" would demand that same-sex activity would be "protected by the Constitution", as it was in "Lawrence vs Texas" in 2003. 

"Progressivism" (regressivism to a Hobbesian existence) demanded that a direct attack on a critical foundation of civilization, marriage between a man and a woman, be attacked. 

As late as 2008, the idea that marriage was a sacred institution held sway, with all presidential hopefuls in either party making clear statements in opposition to gay "marriage". 

By 2012, the Democrats had changed their minds ( they often equate "morality" with "survey says"). In 2015, the SCOTUS conjured another "right" out of the penumbra of the Constitution in "Obergefell vs Hodges", and gay "marriage" was a reality.

My belief was that sex with children would proceed genital mutilation of prepubescent children. At this point it appears I had the ordering wrong ... but perhaps it will be a tie. 

As is well covered in "The Rise And Triumph of the Modern Self", "progressivism" is not a "live and let live" ideology. While it may lie to you saying it is all about "diversity", that claim is strictly ordered by the  specific, rigid hierarchy of "identities".  What trumps what? While it is clear that heterosextual white males are the bottom, is the next rung hetero white females? Certainly political and religious affiliations affect the discrimination hierarchy. What is the top? Possibly a black, trans woman who is non-binary and has a criminal record? My imagination fails me, but I'm confident that "progressives" will work it out. 

As we see with gay and trans, it is not enough to "accept", you must openly CELEBRATE whatever identity is manufactured. As is now also clear, if you "love" children they must be "groomed" (indoctrinated) to fit into some acceptable category, and stigmatized if they are unfortunate enough to come from a white, two parent, Christian family! Thus we must have "Sanctuary Cities" where genital mutilation is protected without the consent of parents. After all, if some poor child is trapped in a white two parent Christian family, isn't it society's duty to free them from that oppression, which will disadvantage them for life? 

Without appropriate grooming in the public schools through pornographic books, classes, Drag Queen Story Hours, etc, how are these vulnerable children even to be aware of the horror of their situation? Indeed, these vulnerable children are being indoctrinated to think that a two parent Christian home with restrictions on access to social media, internet, etc and possibly even chores and respect for elders being foisted on them! 

Since men having sex with boys was a staple of Greek and Roman civilization, and men having sex with MUCH younger women. (Muhammad's favorite wife Aisha was married to him at 6 or seven, and the marriage was consummated sometime between then and when she reached age 10), it is surprising to me that a Constitutional right to sex with children has yet to be discovered in the Constitution. It certainly seems to be clear evidence of Islamophobia that this right has been overlooked to date. 

The "progressive" road is plain. First you "understand", then you "empathize", then you accept, then you celebrate, then you force all others to celebrate or be discriminated against, up to and including taking their children away if they fail to comply. 

 How can you stand in the way of"progress"??