Crime And Punishment

Here is a link to a summary of the book, it seems quite good, but it does not include what I see as the key line, printed on the back cover of my copy. 

"One death in exchange for thousands of lives, it's simple arithmetic". 

What we miss by reading and discussing the classics is how they bear on timeless principles in understanding human nature. 

If you are certain that all "intelligent people" need to "believe the science", the "simple math", rather than the complexities of immutable human nature and the sages, poets, theologians and philosophers that have wrestled with these questions for thousands of years will drive your decisions.

Is it not at least taking a few hours of your time to read a classic work before supporting the sacrifice of millions of lives on the altar of convenience through abortion? 

Part 3, Chapter 5 ."..All men are divided into "ordinary" and "extraordinary." (3) Ordinary men have to live in submission and have no right to transgress the law because they are ordinary. (4) On the contrary, the extraordinary man has the right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way because he is extraordinary. That is not an official legal right but an inner right to decide in his own conscience whether to overstep the law or any obstacle that stands in the way of the practical fulfillment of his idea. (5) All great men would (or should) have the right to eliminate a few men in order to make their discoveries known to the benefit of all humanity."

Take away God where all men are equally sinners, and nothing else other than their acceptance or rejection of Grace really matters, and you discover it is all about "categories" ... wealth, education, gender, family lineage, etc

If  video works better for you, here is a bit of a plug for reading it. 

Biden Unifies, Let's Go Branden!

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-lets-go-brandon-chants-pro-biden-unity

The past 4 years have made us all aware of the division caused by Russian Disinformation. 

Biden promised to unify this nation, and he has! Spontaneous cheers in support of this great unifier have been breaking out around the country. Reagan was the "Great Communicator", it seems a foregone conclusion that Biden will go down in history as the "Great Unifier".

The linked Tucker satire is pretty good and pretty sad. 

Thiel, Bitcoin $60K

 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/peter-thiel-bitcoin-60000-report-us-political-system-unsustainable-cryptocurrencies-2021-10

I really like Peter Thiel. He is an iconoclast like Elon Musk -- not a guy that follows crowds. My review on his book "Zero To One" here.

I hope this statement proves to be true. 

Now is the time where the "one-world state" stops, and with the help of crypto, "we're going to succeed," he said, according to The Information.

Is Wokeistan Worth Protecting?

 https://www.npr.org/2021/10/20/1047384050/behind-murky-claim-of-a-new-hypersonic-missile-test-there-lies-a-very-real-arms-

So China has built and is testing hypersonic weapons that could easily take out all our carriers and almost certainly our power grid in one stroke, and we have no defence against it. 

 Do we care? 

What might we defend? Our "right" to be consumers? 

A people's myths, or in this shallow age, superhero comics, give a good clue to what they really believe.
Superman used to fight for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way". 

Today, a bisexual Superman fights for "Truth, Justice, and a Better Future". 

What "truth"? Critical Race Theory? What "justice"? John Rawls? What might a "better" future look like? 

If if the Chinese can provide us with a lot of nearly free entertainment and consumables without the need for work, competition, and the costs of  being a fading world power much like the USSR in the 1980's, why fight? 

 I would guess a majority of Wokeistanis would be fine with that .... and in a pure "democracy" rather than a Republic for which one might stand, or even die for, why not? Perhaps the majority of those who used to sheepishly call themselves "Americans" would not even notice that Biden's puppeteers were Chinese.

Are we so racist as to think that being ruled by Chinese is any worse than being ruled by the Davos Elite? 

Our current "leadership" has a remarkable resemblance to the old Politburo?

I highly recommend reading the last link ... the others if you don't believe me..

Let's go Brandon! 

NY Governor Kathy Hochul Sends "Apostles"

Governor Hochul: "I need you to be my apostles. I need you to go out and talk about it and say, we owe this to each other. We love each other. Jesus taught us to love one another and how do you show that love but to care about each other enough to say, please get the vaccine because I love you and I want you to live, I want our kids to be safe when they're in schools, I want to be safe when you go to a doctor's office or to a hospital and are treated by somebody, you don't want to get the virus from them. You're already sick or you wouldn't be there. We have to solve this, my friends. I need every one of you. I need you to let them know that this is how we can fight this pandemic."https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/rush-transcript-governor-hochul-attends-service-christian-cultural-center

Talk about separation of church and state!

Since we had it and recovered, we are living in sin, and apparently a lot of healthcare workers in Pennsylvania are as well, due to the heresy of a hospital chain.  

A hospital chain in Pennsylvania announced a revised policy that seems like a reasonable recognition that certain employees who caught and fought off COVID-19 might not want to get vaccinated, and prefer to stick with natural immunity. 

"Liberals" have always had "ideas so good they must be mandatory", since they are the "smart ones", and the "deplorable, bitter clingers" are just not not smart, moral, etc enough  to follow "the word" from their betters. 

So far, no problem seen here by "Americans United For Separation of church and state",  but they did have this helpful  quote: 

Right now, religious extremists and their lawmaker allies are trying to force everyone else to live by their beliefs and to use religion as a license to harm others. They threaten our freedom to live as each of us chooses, which widens inequality in our communities and country. Our nation promises everyone the freedom to believe as they want, but our laws cannot allow anyone to use their religious beliefs to harm others. That’s why Americans United for Separation of Church and State brings together people of all religions and none to fight in the courts, legislatures, and the public square for freedom without favor and equality without exception. "AU will never stop doing all we can to protect your right to live and believe as you choose,"--Rachel Laser, CEO

Got that? Being the sort of "extremist" who defends peoples right to choose what goes into their bodies are seeking a "licence to harm others". 

 As we ought to have learned from the National Socialists in Germany, National Socialists  are all about "the freedom to choose" -- between following their mandates or death. 

As we can see from the Hochul speech, the religion of the state is National Socialism, and you have received "The Great Commission" to get out there and save the sinners! 

Bankruptcy Abolished

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/weimar-its-us.php 

Most of us have heard this statement more than once -- "The US can't go bankrupt because we can print all the money we want". 

It is rare however that you hear it directly from someone that  supposedly is managing our money ... like "The Chairman of the House Budget Committee". 

A super way to test it's truth would be to just cancel all taxes and print ALL the money. If his view is view is right, a new era in public wealth and ease has arrived!  It is amazing nobody has tied since a simple solution before ... or maybe they have, and the results were "non optimal". 

In further cherry economic news from our economic elite, the current numbers are not so bad if you just remove "beef, pork, and poultry" from the calculations! 

I suspect the results could be further improved by removing milk, bread, and eggs! 

Trump's Vaccine Fails!

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/covid-deaths-in-the-u-s-are-higher-than-last-year-at-same-time.php

COVID deaths are a little higher than they were last year at this time - of course you don't hear much about that. 

If Trump was president (as he would be if the election was fairly held), it would be a "crisis of malfeasance"! As would Afghanistan in the unlikely case that the withdrawal went even half as badly as it has under Biden. 

Last fall, both Biden and Kamala suggested any vaccine that rolled out under Trump would be highly suspect, and Kamala was clear that she would not take it (not that one can have ANY trust in what she or Joe says). Is it "better" that Kamala likely knows what she is saying? 

The media called for Trump to be tested for Alzheimer's for pretty much his whole term, and then when he was and passes, they questioned its accuracy.  

Any questions why my faith in the media is ZIP? 

Land Of The Locked Down, Shelter In Place

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/08/19/capitol-police-investigate-active-bomb-threat-multiple-offices-evacuated/?sh=58f542d55c8e

Can we change the "Star Spangled Banner" wording to "Land of the locked down, and the home of shelter in place" yet? 

Seems more appropriate these days. 

Or perhaps we just scrap the old "white" anthem and replace it with the black national anthem?

The flag seems jingoistic now, and with Democrat total control. DC and Puerto Rican statehood soon at hand, it seems time for "progress" there too. 

Perhaps rainbow flag?  I understand it has fallen in Afghanistan for some reason. The link explains how important it was to fly it.

 

Afghanistan, Another Step Down

I happened to run into this article on a day that Wokistan is ignominiously attempting to slink out of Afghanistan in defeat as the Taliban is taking Kabul. 

"Biden also told reporters that the world would not see a situation similar to the chaos that was seen in Vietnam, saying "there's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy."

Saigon 1975.

Kabul 2021.

Biden's grasp of reality is a bit shaky. 

The Treason Of The Intellectuals

https://newcriterion.com/issues/1992/12/the-treason-of-the-intellectuals-ldquothe-undoing-of-thoughtrdquo

The linked is well worth the read, there is no need to understand the relationship of the classical personnages referenced to get the point. 

In its crassest but perhaps also most powerful form, this desire led to that familiar phenomenon Benda dubbed “the cult of success.” It is summed up, he writes, in “the teaching that says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt.” In itself, this idea is hardly novel, as history from the Greek sophists on down reminds us. In Plato’s Gorgias, for instance, the sophist Callicles expresses his contempt for Socrates’ devotion to philosophy: “I feel toward philosophers very much as I do toward those who lisp and play the child.” Callicles taunts Socrates with the idea that “the more powerful, the better, and the stronger” are simply different words for the same thing. Successfully pursued, he insists, “luxury and intemperance … are virtue and happiness, and all the rest is tinsel.” How contemporary Callicles sounds!

Or to put it simply, "might is right!". 

To succinctly explain "why the the title"?  

This is not simply to say that there are many anti-intellectual elements in society: that has always been the case. “Non-thought,” in Finkielkraut’s phrase, has always co-existed with the life of the mind. The innovation of contemporary culture is to have obliterated the distinction between the two. “It is,” he writes, “the first time in European history that non-thought has donned the same label and enjoyed the same status as thought itself, and the first time that those who, in the name of ‘high culture,’ dare to call this non-thought by its name, are dismissed as racists and reactionaries.” The attack is perpetrated not from outside, by uncomprehending barbarians, but chiefly from inside, by a new class of barbarians, the self-made barbarians of the intelligentsia. This is the undoing of thought. This is the new “treason of the intellectuals.”

Again, well worth reading the linked ... it gets a little esoteric in spots, but the key points are easy to pick out.