[…] A great scene from HBO’s John Adams* *While generally well done, HBO’s show runners and writers did take some creative license and not all roads go to Braintree Darlene Click: Happy 4th […]
“To learn who rules over you, find out whom you are not allowed to criticize.”— Voltaire
America used to be an exception. No more. The official opposition in the Obama era — the Republican party’s leadership — now leads ordinary citizens in self-censorship, further convincing us that our dissent is lonely and futile. But to approve of officious lies, thereby tacitly normalizing unaccountable power, is to become worthy of it. As the great Solzhenitsyn reminds us, the sine qua non of liberty is refusal to live by lies.
Lee beat me to it: I was going to post the Codevilla article.
In fact, public opinion can be led only by persuasion regarding true and false, better and worse. This is how free human beings deal with one another. No democratic case can be made for limiting substantive challenges to premises and pretensions. Lincoln, following John Quincy Adams, pointed again and again to the slaveholders’ efforts to silence debate about slavery’s moral and political effects as evidence of the slaveholders’ threat to the freedom of whites as well as of blacks. Like Adams, Lincoln pressed slavery’s hard, ugly realities upon audiences that preferred to evade them. As Lincoln brushed away the euphemisms and legal constructs in describing the slave trade’s merchandising of human beings, so should we not mince words regarding all that the ruling class demands that we honor.
We can win back our freedom by challenging their assumptions?
Maybe we could have, back in the day, but given that tactics have shifted from “everybody gets to decide what’s true for them” to “we can use the levers of power to destroy the dissenters,” I’m not sure the tool of TRVTH is in our belt anymore.
Can pointing out the abuse of power be sufficient, quite apart from arguing the merits of this or that declaration?
Indiana’s Republicans, its churches, and conservatives in general pled for the liberty to speak and act according to religious faith. They did not and do not argue the worth of the Judeo-Christian religious beliefs that the ruling class deems odious. This has proved to be self-defeating. Appeals for tolerance of all beliefs in the name of America’s traditional freedoms fail because they concede the ruling class’s assertion of its own moral-intellectual superiority, as well as its underlying assumption that good and evil, better and worse, are just other words for its own likes and dislikes.
I don’t how tolerating all beliefs on an even playing field effectively concedes the ruling classes’ assertion of its superiority. Shouldn’t it flatten those very claims to superiority?
I know WHY the Left is violating its supposed value of tolerance all around: it’s what >a href=”http://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/post/56234161686/when-i-am-weaker-than-you-i-ask-you-for-freedom”>Calvin/Muad’dib said: “When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
Can they be made to live up to their own alleged principles, a la Alinsky?
There are legions of SSM supporters and non-believers who are NOT cool with the issue being used to suppress religious liberty.
On the other hand, Alinskyite tactics cannot be used against their practitioners because they only work against decent people. Which the Alinskyites are not.
Furthermore, I’m not cool with asserting that Judeo-Christianity be the only legitimate set of claims on the field. (Especially since there’s no way to universally agree about what they are without enormous battles and schisms.)
You cannot shame the shameless. You can only make them irrelevant.
And they will never, ever, go quietly.
I really hate those bastards for putting us in this position.
I gotta say though, if some nitwit wants to attribute “pure reason” as a “construct of white male Euro-Christian construction” , I’m not gunna kick much.
I mean, it kinda excuses me from the primeval ‘non reasoned’ alternatives non-Christian reasoming has wrought in diminishing our heritage and stealing our liberty.
Still, it is not in my best interests to accept these alternatives…
Ives 2: V. Allegro molto vivace
[…] A great scene from HBO’s John Adams* *While generally well done, HBO’s show runners and writers did take some creative license and not all roads go to Braintree Darlene Click: Happy 4th […]
A timely article by Codevilla. Standing Up to the Ruling Class.
Happy Independence Day from WalMart: Wait, what…?
http://threebeerslater.blogspot.com/2012/07/say-what.html
Lee
Liberty? Reason? Logic?
bah! All social constructs of white males & colonialism.
Lee beat me to it: I was going to post the Codevilla article.
We can win back our freedom by challenging their assumptions?
Maybe we could have, back in the day, but given that tactics have shifted from “everybody gets to decide what’s true for them” to “we can use the levers of power to destroy the dissenters,” I’m not sure the tool of TRVTH is in our belt anymore.
Can pointing out the abuse of power be sufficient, quite apart from arguing the merits of this or that declaration?
I don’t how tolerating all beliefs on an even playing field effectively concedes the ruling classes’ assertion of its superiority. Shouldn’t it flatten those very claims to superiority?
I know WHY the Left is violating its supposed value of tolerance all around: it’s what >a href=”http://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/post/56234161686/when-i-am-weaker-than-you-i-ask-you-for-freedom”>Calvin/Muad’dib said: “When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
Can they be made to live up to their own alleged principles, a la Alinsky?
There are legions of SSM supporters and non-believers who are NOT cool with the issue being used to suppress religious liberty.
On the other hand, Alinskyite tactics cannot be used against their practitioners because they only work against decent people. Which the Alinskyites are not.
Furthermore, I’m not cool with asserting that Judeo-Christianity be the only legitimate set of claims on the field. (Especially since there’s no way to universally agree about what they are without enormous battles and schisms.)
You cannot shame the shameless. You can only make them irrelevant.
And they will never, ever, go quietly.
I really hate those bastards for putting us in this position.
[…] Happy 4th of July [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom. […]
Darleen, good Lord that link was awful!!
I gotta say though, if some nitwit wants to attribute “pure reason” as a “construct of white male Euro-Christian construction” , I’m not gunna kick much.
I mean, it kinda excuses me from the primeval ‘non reasoned’ alternatives non-Christian reasoming has wrought in diminishing our heritage and stealing our liberty.
Still, it is not in my best interests to accept these alternatives…
proggslam news
Leftist and Islamic Policymakers Outlaw the Truth
WalMart’s respect for the 4th of July and its customers…
http://threebeerslater.blogspot.com/2012/07/say-what.html
Greetings:
Those haircuts don’t look much like the the Marine ones I’m familiar with.