The Clan prospers

My sister delivered a baby girl on Saturday evening. Some minor bumps in the road required the baby to be on oxygen for a while, but Sis is healthy and baby comes home tomorrow.

In other news, I'm in India.

Lurve

Holy shit, I luv the Atomic Nerds. I probably wouldn't quite change my gender for Stingray, but I would certainly risk my life to steal Labrat away from him.

There is not a single fucking rant on the Internet cool enough to reference the Holy hole of Freyja and make it sound more natural than that.

Mr. Baxter follows up...

Quoth he (inline to my original, I've seperated here for clarity):

"You obviously don't know the source of conservative and libertarian individual values and economics. No, not Greco-Roman; they were more than 90% slave and non-citizen throughout their entire histories. SOURCE: CHRISTIAN only."

Some underlining and italicization omitted because of laziness.

"Ignorance does it." (Turns me off his program.)

"knowledge is not a superstition" (apparently in reference to Christianity.)

In response to my assertion that politics as an extension of Christianity is a collectivist stance:

"Not true. Individual value and personal responsibility were initiated when Jesus died. There is No Other Source. Like it or not!?! You are ducking truth in favor of YOUR ignorance. SOUNDS LIKE YOU ARE LIVING A LIFE NEEDING SELF-JUSTIFICATION. Welcome to it!! Criteria??? duh..."

Way to go ad hominem, pally pal. Fortunately I don't really see a self-justified life as much of an insult. So, there was no individual responsibility prior to the Christ myth? (Note that I am not going out of my way to proselytise or preach. You came to ME, dude.) There's no justification for individuality outside of the Christian ethos? This statement falls flat on its face without any serious need of refutation.

Still incoherent and illogical, Mr. B. I recommend some more history and philosophy reading. You might want to refernce some Christian reading in there as well, if you intend to base your arguments upon that body of writings. Particularly enlightening might be the doctrine of original sin, and the expiation of sinners by Jesus' sacrifice- fairly collectivist ideas by my lights.

The graphic pretty much says it all

You don't even need to read English, much lass Hebrew.

Update: Interestingly enough, this same link disappeared down the memory hole when I posted it on Facebook. Hmmm...

Wrong Audience

I've made it onto a few political distro lists over time. Got an email a few days ago, and didn't read it until today. I have to say this is just as bad as any crap the so-called "liberal" left puts out:

No one is smarter than their criteria...

Though the election is over, Gov. Sarah is being attacked by the leftist-humanists because they fear her re-appearance on a future ballot. They are afraid and rightly so! She is a perceptive excellent candidate to represent the Founders Principles and our American way of life with intelligent courage.

Additionally, since no one is smarter than their criteria, the collectivists are working from a pre-chosen mediocre (and worse) set of man-made carnal-ruled opinions that delimit perception of consequences-of-choice prior to choosing. In other words, they lack Vision. Based on a universe-sized ignorance, such devices are self-imposed, thus, the lefties can accurately and historically be defined as unintelligent.

On the other hand, Sarah and her chosen criteria, which is far superior to any man-made system of opinion, and reasonably scares those who possess no practicing standard greater than mediocrity. Their collectivist opinion rises no higher than eyebrows - or belly-button.

Sarah lives life governed by God's superior transcendent principles as found in The Holy Bible. Judeo-Christian principles are the founding precepts of the greatest nation in human history; America! Including, but not limited to, Human Defined: Earth's Choicemaker, Unique Individual Value, Personal Rights and Responsibility, and Representative Government. Add: The Creative Process is a choice-making process and functions best in Freedom.

( 5th Grade Lesson: God-made social criteria cannot be topped. All man-made social opinion has a ceiling! )

( 6th Grade Lesson: Every IQ Test is a test of one's ability to make choices. )


Sarah is recognized by friends and admirers a worthy representative of all that is wonderful about America. 2012 will be here shortly. Keep your eye on this courageous intelligent leader - and pray!

MERRY CHRISTMAS and a Happy 2009 AD!

Jim Baxter
Santa Maria, CA
semper fidelis
Sgt. USMC
WWII & Korean War
a point-man/follower of The Lion of Judah
www.choicemaker.net

Now, I don't begrudge Mr Baxter his opinions or his religion, not at all. The automatic assumption that people who are somewhat or marginally aligned politically, would necessarily be so for the same reason, however, shows a complete ignorance of reality. I know that a lot of my fellow voters have their own reasons for what they do. Many of them who make the same practical choices that I do, do not do so for anything approaching the same reasons. But when I argue something, I try to put it in both my terms, and in the terms that will make sense to the audience.

The above email makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. There is absolutely no logical justification or suasion. It is purely a call to tribal loyalty with an a priori assumption that the premise is correct and universal. There is no reasoning with Mr. Baxter's assertion. There is no middle ground to come to in compromise.

Worse, it's somewhat incoherent:

"working from a pre-chosen mediocre (and worse) set of man-made carnal-ruled opinions that delimit perception of consequences-of-choice prior to choosing. In other words, they lack Vision. Based on a universe-sized ignorance, such devices are self-imposed, thus, the lefties can accurately and historically be defined as unintelligent."

The first sentence doesn't even make sense. I'm not sure that the "other words" relate to the meaning of the first sentence at all: seems gibberish to me. In terms of philosophy the last sentence here makes no sense at all either. One might make the argument that all human philosophies are doomed to circular logic, but that doesn't seem to be what he is saying. I'm not sure that the phrase "historically defined as unintelligent" can even be parsed for any meaning at all.

My response:

Yeah, wrong platform here pal. Some of us are not Christians, and don't give a shit what Sarah Palin's religion is. To the extent that I thought she was basing her platform on fiscally conservative and socially libertarian principles, I support her wholeheartedly.

This email turns me off of your program completely. Give me some sense and some logic, and keep your superstitions to yourself. I won't try to talk you out of them, but I don't want to be preached at. This is just as 'collectivist' a stance as the so-called 'liberal' leftists.

Herd immunity

Via Snowflakes in Hell I saw this discussion on correlation between nations with high liberty indices (by a variety of standards) and high rates of private gun ownership.

One point:

The relationship only exists for high-ownership countries. Countries with medium rates of gun density generally scored no better or worse than countries with the lowest levels of per capita gun ownership.

This would seem to me to be explained by the concept of herd immunity. Self-reliance and personal arms are a vaccine against totalitarianism. Firearms are the most effective personal armament invented so far. A small number of people will not stem this tide, but large numbers will never have to confront it, or even be aware of it as a real possibility.

On track

I'm finally able to track my passport online, and was informed the visa has been processed. So it looks like I am on track for my India trip. This is very good news, because if I were to have to replace the passport, I would need to start the process right about now.