Thursday, December 31, 2009

Justin Fox's red-herring charge of utopianism serves only to betray his "crackpot realism" (C. Wright Mills' term), which he shares with his Power Elite (the title of Mills' book) handlers at Slime magazine. Every time a libertarian sets forth a common sense, free market alternative--who on earth can object to the abolition of legal tender laws and the competing currencies that would ensue?--to the statist quo, the statists parry with their usual pack of lies, half-truths and innuendo.

Thus, putting one's faith in the the morally and fiscally bankrupt U.S. leviathan's flimsy green certificates is "realistic," while permitting the most marketable commodity to serve as currency is utopian, half-baked, cooky, cranky and no doubt anti-Semitic. Now let's move on to more important subjects. Is Brittany Spears still sporting a navel ring? Doesn't she know that's why the terrorists hate us?

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Friday, December 25, 2009

No one's advocating Christians shirk their civic responsibilities. On the contrary, I'm all in favor of their embracing their civic responsibility to resist the Biggest International Bully of Them All. This would entail, at a minimum, repudiating the conversionists' adoption of the methods ("Thou Shalt Not Steal or Kill, Unless Thou Art Advancing the State's Version of the 'Public Interest'") employed by the reigning territorial monopolist of force (TMF), whether that TMF presumes to Preserve the Disorder only within its own borders--like those peon "isolationist" nations run by mullahs--or across borders, like the One Indispensable Nation run by forward-thinking men of vision like Bush and Obama.

Yes, Pox (sic) Americana, like its Pax Brittania and Pax Romana predecessors, can serve an invaluable service if it preserves the civic peace. I see very little evidence it does. The words of Tacitus--"Where they make a desert, they call it peace"--still ring true. Millions of Iraqis and Afghanis will testify to them.

The Pox may or may not protect the roads and waterways. Either way, there's no reason to believe smaller governmental units or private interests can't accomplish that task more efficiently and inexpensively.

Finally, I see no evidence Obama is appeasing bullies--unless you mean he's appeasing his pals in the military-industrial complex and himself. That sham of a Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, he's pretty much pursuing the policies of his predecessor: maintaining the U.S. military presence in Iraq, expanding it in Afghanistan, and siccing his drones on Yemeni and Pakistani wedding parties.

Happily, when the inevitable blowback comes, as it did on 9/11, the Empire and its apologists can blame "Islamofascists" motivated by hatred for our freedoms. As if the imperial mischief-making had nothing to do with it. As if the victims of Muslim extremism are any more innocent than the victims of U.S. imperial extremism. As if we're free. And on and on it goes.

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Sunday, December 20, 2009

I'm one-quarter Walloon, but I don't blame the Flemish for wanting to secede. Hell, we can all benefit from secession. Centralization is just a euphemism for conquest! Maybe we can return to a system of city-states, kingdoms and independent duchies. Get a load of these statistics (from the 9/09/2007 online article at http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2433):

Though Wallonia has 33% of Belgium’s population, it has 46% of its unemployed and it accounts for only 24% of Belgian GDP and 13% of its exports. 20% of the Walloons are unemployed and 40% work for the government. The only regions of Wallonia where there is an entrepreneurial spirit are the regions bordering Flanders just south of Brussels, the provinces of Namur and Luxemburg and the German municipalities (GM).

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Saturday, December 19, 2009

Burris links to Joseph Sobran's May 1999 column The Church and Jewish Ideology in this post.

Pius XII and the Unspeakable
Posted by Charles Burris on December 19, 2009 07:00 PM

Jack W. Douglass’ brilliant and courageous book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, has challenged the elite establishment consensus regarding the controversial life and unreported behind-the-scene efforts of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in trying to bring peace and conflict resolution to a world beset by the insane spectre of thermonuclear war (what Douglas, following the example of Trappist monk Thomas Merton, has called the Unspeakable). JFK was savagely murdered for his actions.

Like Kennedy, Pope Pius XII, the intrepid pontiff during the Second World War, has been the subject of intense controversy and calumny because of his under-reported behind-the-scenes efforts to bring peace and conflict resolution to the warring parties of WWII. In some circles of vilification he is regarded as “Hitler’s Pope,” and the moral equivalent of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in regards to the Holocaust. The latest move this week by the present Vicar of Christ, Benedict XVI, in declaring Pius XII “venerable” in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church and one more step closer toward sainthood has again angered these groups. What hatred, animosity, and character assassination lay behind these ongoing relentless attacks? Is it a case of Pius XII and the Unspeakable?

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Your etymology correctly notes that anomie derives from anomos, from a- (without) and nomos (law). But nomos meant a special kind of law to the ancient Greeks.

Nomos refers to the law of custom, not design. It arises from the spontaneous give-and-take of freely interacting human actors. Manners, morals, cultural norms, mores, tipping and language itself all reflect this human propensity for self-ordering.

Conversely, statutory law arises from the whims of State actors, acting on their own behalf or at the behest of politically influential special interests, and depends on the State's armed brigands to enforce its diktats. Intrinsically disordering, statutory law generates anomie--as more and more of us are coming to learn in this age of bankster bailouts, centralized counterfeiting and perpetual war.

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Saturday, December 05, 2009

Of course disagreeing with the mainstream is disagreeing with the regime-stream. It is the regime that sets the parameters for responsible discourse--that being what C. Stuart Mill called "crackpot realism." And what could be more crackpot-realist than for a nation, even one beset by economic calamity such as ours, to fund and maintain a worldwide military empire?

I find Joseph Sobran's definition of extremist most apt. "If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist."

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