Restoring Rationality To Argument

As I've been rereading CS Lewis' The Abolition of Man, I began to recognize how our Conditioners have removed rational thought from so much in our lives.

I wasn't thinking of that when media, having played down the size of the 8/28 Rally, spurred to build the scaling tool last Saturday afternoon to shine a light on their lies.

But since then I thought about what I had done, and it dawned on me I had something even more important to share. I had worked to introduce rationality to my argument, and its something that is woefully missing from so much we see in media.

Comparing quantitative sizes of objects to aid argument is literally rational. And because what I did can be duplicated, everybody who does knows I'm telling the truth. It's real value to my efforts to increase honest discourse and reduce the dishonest is in its duplicability.

And we know that the media has the tools to do exactly what I did, but they didn't. Why? Because then they couldn't lie about the size of the crowd. Oh they could try; but then others would come along and try to duplicate it, and thus their lie would be exposed. That would make their lie explicit. This way, their lie is only implicit -- but still a lie with which they've been trying to wiggle out of with really stupid density figures.

More than just math.

But rational argument is more than just math. When we compare attitudes or agendas, and gauge where their leaning or heading, we are engaging in rational thought. CS Lewis, in the first of his lectures in The Abolition of Man, the chapter titled Men Without Chests, he told of the new direction in methods that had been taught the next generation of teachers. Most striking was how the next generation of students would deliberately be taught to throw out the hard earned lessons of the past, and to think of each old problem entirely anew. They would be denied learning of the history of the past so that they could no longer compare the results of what worked and what did not work.

In that course of events were buried deliberate efforts to destroy access to knowledge that allows us to be fully rational.

What are you going to do about trying to remedy that horrible scheme?

Well, I'll tell you what I have done. The last three days are the beginning of a series in which I've striven to point out where rational argument can be reintroduced. One of these was in the line wherein I strongly recommend restoring balance to our judgment. We often hear about the loss of our American meritocracy. Well duh! We can bring it back by giving credit where it is due and pointing out where the shortcomings are, and stop worrying about hurt feelings. Better hurt feeling than someone die because no one dared caution them that they were headed off a cliff. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

And by all means, if you see someone misleading another, and it's not to teach the lesson that a mild misdirection will provide, then speak up and warn the misled subject even if you forgo berating the misleader.

"What I'm talking about today is our need to think twice before will succumb to our earnest desire to project our decency on they who are not (do unto others as thou would have done to thee) so as to better balance that with our need to reward and withhold reward based on merit. For where we are too lax in assuring there is balance, we should not be surprised to find ourselves up to our eyeballs in a muck that is the consequences of demerit after demerit overlooked."

And What If That Soul Is Really Lost?

Yesterday's post, The Battle for a Human Soul, may have been overly optimistic.

In the final paragraph of his otherwise disparaging report on the 8/28 Rally, the editor/writer Clive Crook unexpectedly displayed what appeared to be a shred of common human decency. As I remarked then, I saw in that a spark of hope. Quite a number of others felt likewise. So many felt that way in fact, that I think we affected Richard Hernandez (Wretchard) enough to soften his initially jaundiced view of that man's comments.

And then I awoke this morning with a nagging feeling that the editor/writer with whom I was siding may have been taunting us. I was now more inclined toward Wretchard's original feelings.

You see, even the most wretched of members of the American country class have a tendency to project their own general (more or less) decency on members of the ruling class and their operatives.

What I'm talking about today is our need to think twice before will succumb to our earnest desire to project in that manner (do unto others as thou would have done to thee) so as to better balance that with our need to reward and withhold reward based on merit. For where we are too lax in maintaining the balance, we should not be surprised to find ourselves up to our eyeballs in a muck that is the consequences of demerit after demerit overlooked.

Here is what I wrote to Wretchard with a few new insights added. Please forgive me if I left in some things that I've already mentioned above:

Dear Wretchard,

I now think that your initial instinctive wariness concerning the attitude of Mr. Crook may have been correct.

I’ve had second thoughts about what I posted yesterday wherein I agreed with the others and with your own reconsideration of Crook’s comments at the end of his commentary on the Restoring Honor Rally. This is even though I wrote The Battle for a Human Soul.

1. The Sound of Music scene in the convent cemetary, where the von Trapps have been discovered by the boy interest of his oldest daughter, now Hitler Youth, Rolfe.
2. Rolfe has not yet blown the whistle, confused by the mixed signals in his head.
3. Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) is hoping that he can convince Rolfe to look the other way.
4. At the point where the Captain thinks is right, he tells Rolfe “you’re not one of them; you’ll never be one of them.”
5. That triggers something the NAZI indoctrinators anticipated, because it’s there that Rolfe blows the whistle.

The writers of the Sound of Music still had the NAZI era fresh in their brains. They knew the behavior of “the people Hitler had been waiting for. ” Our contemporary world of conservatives does not remember that as well as you do Wretchard. This could be because of your grittier experiences that many of us here lack. I'm convinced you've witnessed more darkness of the human soul than most.

CS Lewis spoke in 1943 of Conditioners. "The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists."

Mr. Crook could be like Rolfe there. The Conditioners have been indoctrinating him for quite some time. We are witness to the contradictions going off in his head.

But I fear it is far worse, where your original take on his words was focused. Mr. Crook may well have been mocking the sensibilities behind “Restoring Honor” (an element in your initial skepticism?) by telling that tale of the cafe denizens acting mean toward the little girl. Because that fits the purposes of the Conditioners. If tomorrow Mr. Crook turns again to please those for whom he employs his pen, he will find a way to dash the hopes of many not only here at Belmont Club. And another chunk of our country class will be dispirited.

Oh yes -- being mean fits the behavior of the now gloating and brazen Ruling Class. They aim to be much worse yet.

Yes, I think the inner party may still treat him harshly for showing a momentary spark of human decency. It would serve them well to make an example of Mr. Crook. He's only a tool, like old Winston was portrayed. He's not inner party material from the looks of him.

We BCers may be making the same mistake we in the country class tend to make too often. Viz.: Projecting our own decency, our humanity, onto our adversaries.

So what if that soul is really lost?

So nothing can be done. For then Mr. Crook is already lost, like that likable boy Rolfe, and unlike the husband of CS Lewis' heroine in That Hideous Strength (Lewis' novel which runs parallel to The Abolition of Man).

For then what Mr. Crook had written yesterday was not his own human decency slipping out, it was a ploy, a mocking of us who saw a spark of hope in what looked like his struggle to shuck all the postmodernist dreck that's been pumped into him.

We just let him go and use this example as a warning to others who might be tempted to go join his Conditioners.

The Battle for a Human Soul

The soul in my title refers to that of a writer and editor in establishment media who displayed a moment of kindness. I think I too well understand the nature of the beasts who aim to rule us. Where I see a spark of humanity in the writer, they see weakness. So, in way, what this man may endure could be a blessing or a curse, depending upon how he values his own worth.

Some will surely accuse me of making a leap here. If it is a leap, I have good reason to believe it isn't all that far of one.  That is because I am informed by warnings: those written by some in the past, and those exhibited by the behavior of many on the contemporary scene.

Wretchard wrote today of Clive Crook's disparaging of the Restoring Honor Rally. Judging from the reaction in Mr. Cook's publication, The Atlantic, to hear of such disparaging is why they read that publication.

However, what I noticed at the end, and for which many other Belmont Club members also noticed, was that Mr Crook seemed to soften his opinion of those who attended the rally. Not only that. Mr. Crook spoke less than approvingly of the kind of people who read The Atlantic. In his closing paragraph we see:

This afternoon, walking back to my home in predominantly white North-West DC, I paused for a bite to eat in the predominantly white Dupont Circle area, in a cafe whose clientele was predominantly white. There, I did see something mean. A family wearing "Restoring Honor" T-shirts walked by outside, and a little girl tripped over and hurt herself. The couple at the next table laughed.

The prospects for that man -- or any man in his position -- are now less than certain. As one BC member put, we will see what else he writes in the days to come. However, I think he has cast his dice and his fate is on a different track than others are willing to ascribe. It could be a good path, and I hope it is, but the given the nature of the beasts, well -- I hope I am wrong in the dire nature of what follows.

I’m with those who think that Mr. Crook has now varied from the narrative.

Let us hope — no pray — that things have not yet gone so far that he may be forced to endure experiences similar to that of outer party member Winston Smith. Mr. Crook showed a hint of humanity toward that little girl and more than a touch of hostility towards well-healed party members. Sentimentality is not tolerated, unforgivable by the inner party.

It would not matter to Mr. Crook’s fate were he to return to the narrative in the coming weeks. The inner party would not see his performance as Wretchard initially did — as an intentional ambiguity, and thus fitting in with “duckspeak.” They will see it as we hope it was.

So Mr Crook has nothing to regain but his humanity at this point. Again, let us pray that he continues in this new view in the coming weeks. He'd be on our side. We need more humans, not Progs, reinvigorating decency back into our culture.

A Tool for Beating the Ministry of Lies

The following is meant as a public service, and one that anyone can duplicate were they to wish to do so. (And yes, I did not write Ministry of Truth, because sarcasm does penetrate the thick hide of the abuse-full and idiotic propagandists.) [Editor's note: In later years Pascal Fervor began using Agency of Lies because he saw that we were not an Orwellian world quite yet, and felt it best that he speak the truth while he still could. He also used the acronym SKUNCs instead of RINOs for much the same reason. He liked Agency because Ministry sounds too British and the propagandists so labeled wear American and not British disguise.]

I'm tired of the news media lying as to crowd sizes in Washington. So I took another well-known site -- Michigan Stadium -- that I could capture from Google Maps accompanied with its scaling abilities.

Michigan Stadium will seat 110 thousand people. That means approximately the same number will fill a similar area (despite the angle) in a standing-room-only situation such as rallies that use the area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington monument.

The scales shown for both photos below -- in case you can't read them too easily -- is 200 feet for the short scale, and 100 meters for the long scale.

Then I cut up the picture of Michigan stadium to layout a rectangle that holds that 110,000. I also included some additional white space so that the whole rectangle might approximately encompass an eighth of a million. Then let us, for the sake of the argument, just call the rectangle 100,000 SRO people.

Readers can cut up the rectangle to fit the spaces and easily do the rest of the math. To Hell with the MFM: the way they lie to us daily, clearly anyone who can perform simple arithmetic they hold beneath contempt. Your intelligence proves you're not in their bizarre Postmodern world.

If this proves useful in dispelling MFM lies, then I fear that the powers that be will corrupt or otherwise ban this Google Maps feature. So better you see this today while you still can.

Here is a photo of today's Restoring Honor Rally. (update# 2: 2011/09/05 -- original yahoo link has "disappeared" -- imagine that? Our Statist media sending work down their memory hole. For ref this is the old link. I found a replacement today (h/t Vicki McClure Davidson), saved a copy, and replaced the defunct one with it.)

**Update #1**
Adaptive Curmudgeon had kind words to say about this post when he noted Journalists And The Math That Scares Them.

I smell a rat.

A GDP downrating taken now will have the MSM Agency of Lies* playing it as old news -- "just a revision."

It might be interesting if not revealing to go back and check out what other bad news happened on the day they announced the old numbers. Bad numbers then could have been too much to bear.

But here might be their other motive: by releasing the lower numbers now, late, they can release 3rd quarter numbers just before the elections to show that GDP is a bit higher then than it would otherwise be.

Look for the Agency of Lies celebrating a relatively improved GDP just before the elections. Don't let your neighbors be gulled.

[*Editor's note: In later years Pascal Fervor began referring to American media as the Agency of Lies because he saw that we were not an Orwellian world quite yet, and felt it best that he speak the truth while he still could. He also used the acronym SKUNCs instead of RINOs for much the same reason.]

Sarcasm? Surely You Jest

I was just reading another blog post. It could have been any post nowadays.

It facetiously referred to some media moron as "our moral superior."

We are in trouble when a significant portion of our population will see that not as sarcasm, but as legitimate opinion.

We are in grave danger when the person to whom you referred takes your "compliment" to heart, thinking you recognize their innate superiority.  He knew it all along, and now he thinks "the world is coming to its senses."

When the sting of sarcasm becomes this blunted, the intent of the wielder that confused, better stock up on commodities of all sort.

People get upset over my seeming lack of subtlety. "Why is a smart fellow like you so blunt?" Because there are already too many who placate those who are dangerous to human life. Proto-monsters who are never told where they are heading will surely develop into full-blown monsters, and they'll feel good about themselves the whole time. After they've gone too far in their decline, sarcasm simply does not work on them, nor on their supplicants.

Unless you think that one more complimentary message received by your enemy will send him off a cliff, my recommendation to all is to begin to lessen your use of sarcasm, and practice speaking more frankly. Too often your facetious message will not get through.
 

They Hate God Because They Hate Themselves

Andrew Klavan blogged a reluctant critique today of a Christopher Hitchens review of two books on Anti-Semitism. I say reluctant, because Klavan liked a good deal of Mr. Hitchens' review.

What Mr. Klavan found foolish -- rightly in my lights -- was the other author's insistence on placing the blame for the world's most resilient persecution on religion itself.

I recommend reading the whole thing, but I will excerpt Mr. Klavan's concluding lines: 

"...it seems clear to me that the people who feel they hate Jews actually hate God.

And they hate God because, in the light of His goodness, they hate themselves.”

The God of the universe is the exact opposite of misanthropy. The God of misanthropy is Sustainability.

Press a Greeny a bit and you’ll hear: “This planet has too many people.”

God and his promise and his moral code contradicts all those who believe in the Malthusian moral imperative. They find that intolerable.

By hook or by crook, they are determined to reduce the number of people on this planet. In a world dominated by such pessimists, it is totally logical that all of His people are marked for persecution.


Related posts:

• At the Core of the Judeo-Christian Ethos: What Animates Its Critics
• God Asked Abe to Offer Ike, Nothing More

"It's None of Your Business!"

Had seven time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens told Congress in 2008 "it's none of your business whether or not I took steroids or HGH," he wouldn't be facing 30 years of prison for lying to Congress today.

He may have been charged with contempt of Congress in 2008, but in that he'd have become a political prisoner and a famous leader in an attitude that may be fast becoming the new American pass-time: Contempt of Congress.

Here is an example that we need to teach each other to say to our unprecedentedly arrogant Step-Nanny Statists:

Where in the Constitution do you find the authority to demand from me the knowledge of how I acquired my professional skills?

Since you guys are apt to pass a retroactive law penalizing me for God knows what, under the protection afforded me by the 5th Amendment of the Constitution, I refuse to answer.

No epithets are needed here. Read between the lines.

"You Are Keeping Her Sick"

In an article in today's New York Times Economix [sic] Blog: The Bush Tax Cuts and Fiscal Responsibility, we see

Critics say that [the tax cut expiration] amounts to increasing taxes at a time of high unemployment, and that instead the tax cuts should be extended as a stimulus measure. This overlooks the fact that tax cuts are an inefficient form of stimulus, because many people choose to save their additional income instead of spending it. If the goal is to encourage growth and employment immediately, it would be better to let the tax cuts expire and dedicate some of the increased revenue to real stimulus programs. [emphasis added by PF]

In response at FreeRepublic.com, we see SickofLibs commenting:

I saw this movie (The Good Mother (2006 film) ) on the Lifetime (’men are evil’) channel where a psycho Mom was poisoning her adopted son calling the poison ‘his medicine.’ The sicker he got the more she believed she needed to poison him. That sounds like this tax and stimulate theory that keeps failing.

This inspired the following quip:

Who do you think you are? The kid from “The Sixth Sense” who slipped the video into the VCR at the little girl’s wake?

The father and the other mourners immediately saw that the stepmother had poisoned the girl. The Dad then confronted his wife.

"You were keeping her sick."

That was fiction.

In our reality, the sheeple will see and hear what you say, and then continue munching away in oblivion. They refuse to believe that the Dems and other Statists are making them sick.
Pray for the awakening of our fellow Americans, because we ain’t doing it alone.

End of recounting.

Now, here is the reason I'm recording this here:

As far as I’m concerned, the Dems may provide the poison, but the Statists in the GOP are the equivalent of that stepmother, not wanting to be upset by the protestations of those who are being poisoned. And we have her agents busily screwing up not just forums like Free Republic, but  messing with rational efforts to thwart the Statists just about everywhere else. That includes talk radio where I’ve now lost faith in all professional voices, bar none. I'll leave my discussions for the many reasons to distrust talk radio hosts for another day.

Meanwhile, when you hear Leftists and pretend-conservative Statists Republicans telling you how

"our government spending will bring America back," 

be prepared to stand firm in your retort:

"No you're not. You're keeping her sick."

---

For those who never saw the film, I've comprised a further explanation below the break.

Fools Who Are Cowards Too

The problems that people experience were uncovered by this poll (which instigated this JWF post). The results would be similar were the question refocused from the effects of "Progressive" gender goals to the effects all affirmative action goals.

Gee, do ya think that just maybe some women (or any "underrepresented class") have been advanced a bit too soon because company management was forced to put affirmative action goals (quotas) ahead of performance needs (what works best)?

Q: What fools continue working for this ruling class? Our RC demands -- from a distant and faceless bureaucracy -- that the ruled class accept a mediocrity (who "feels threatened by those who are good at their jobs") and that policy's destruction of excellence in order to conform to the RC's stupid and sometimes deadly edicts. 

A: Fools who are cowards and really have no stomach for rebellion.

The Ruling Class' Primitive Urge

Peter Boston observes at the Belmont Club:

The prestige, self-esteem, and emotional payoff of being in control that comes with becoming one of the “shapers” of cultures is an awfully strong motivation for human beings. Perhaps the strongest motivation of all. I believe that the promise of this supreme emotional payoff is the reason that Marxism, and its red-headed stepchild Progressivism, will not go away despite the trail of mangled corpses the shapers must negotiate.

It’s the Adam and Eve story all over again – for a man to live peacefully among other men he must first refuse to be a god. Adam and Eve flunked. 

Emphasis added.


I wrote of this weakness at The Eighth Day. It's reassuring to see others making a strong case of this (reducing the standing that sex is the original sin). Better more of us understand the dangers of unbridled ego with its drive to Lord it over all creation as if one were God.

As the ruling class becomes more fearful and progressively more oppressive, remember the words they simply cannot abide: "You are NOT God."  Their henchmen will hear and be watching. Remember what happened at the Bastille?

Open letter to individual members of the ruling class.

The bulk of you morons are gleefully awaiting the death you have arranged to rain down on all of humanity. Just so long that you sate that primitive urge of yours.

I knew of you before most of you knew yourself. For but a momentary thrill you will try and kill billions of people and cast the remnant into a very dark age. God will deal with you as He sees fit. I pray for you that you awaken from your trance and sabotage the schemes of others of your cadre. God will grant you dispensation by you showing how you truly have repented.

I'd take the offer while you still are in a position to thwart those who seek to force the Hand of God. Your opportunities to demonstrate contrition will become scarcer as the top-most become fearful of you.

Memory Hole Recovery

Do the truth a service and help me find the now lost news articles that spread a lie in 1992. The lie was disclosed after Congress and the President enacted a bad law. The efforts to pass that law had been stalled for years, but due to the lie and the air of panic that the press eagerly waged enabled the supporters of the law to impose it upon us. Key people involved in that are up to their necks in the AGW scam, so there is good reason to recover this story.

About two years ago I attempted to locate the news stories and later disclosure of the truth. The reason was due to the participation of Al Gore and NASA in both that 1992 story and the Cap N Tax push. Last night I remembered that effort and tried again. I had better luck this time. I have no idea why.

Here is what I remember.
The law: the ban on Freon; mainly CFC 12.
The lie: An ozone hole had been spotted over New England during a Shuttle fly over.

The lie was released to the press by one of three NASA scientists [name to be discovered] while the contrary opinions of the other two scientists were ignored.
Newt Gingrich rushed a GOP (minority!) bill to the house floor within days, and both houses of Congress and GHWB signed the ban, all accomplished in maybe days.

The facts: By mid April 1992, NASA revealed that there was no hole. No lie was admitted, but a retraction from NASA was announced along the lines of what the other two scientists had said but which had been largely suppressed earlier.
The law remained in place and now new ones based on even worse science are coming to restrict refrigerants. And of course, there is the EPA and its backdoor impositions based on the Post-Normal Science of AGW.

Here is the recent set of keywords I used to search for the news accounts of the day: freon banned 1992 "new england"

So far I've scanned a dozen or so of the top-most stories and links. What I've found are scattered accounts, some of them totally at odds with what happened, the rest are only partially correct. None of the ones I've looked at seem to be in agreement. I remember what happened pretty well, and none of the links give an accurate recounting.

The very fact that the story of the 3 NASA scientists and their disagreement can't be found is very troubling. I suspect that were I able to find a few stories on that, the complete story would emerge.

Dear readers: Please help me recover this one story from what looks too much like an Orwellian memory hole.


**Update**
Here's an accounting similar to mine. But where are the facts?

This was never more clearly demonstrated than in 1992 when a team of three NASA scientists were monitoring conditions over North America to determine if the ozone layer was in danger. Inconclusive data indicated that conditions might be right for ozone damage over North America—if certain things happened.

Of this three-member NASA team, two could not be sure of what they had found and wanted to do more research. But one took the data and rushed to the microphones with all of the drama of a Hollywood movie and announced in hushed tones that NASA had discovered an ozone hole over North America.

Then Senator Al Gore rushed to the floor of the Senate with the news, and drove a stampede to immediately ban Freon—five years before Congress had intended—and without a suitable substitute. He then bullied President George H.W. Bush to sign the legislation by saying the ozone hole was over Kennebunkport, Maine—Bush’s favorite vacation spot.

Two months later NASA announced—on the back pages of the newspapers—that further research had shown there was no such damage. But it was too late. The valuable comodity known as Freon was gone forever.

By Tom DeWeese December 16, 2004