I've read several sources for the quote that we should never blame on malice when it can be blamed on incompetence. In the case of Europe, it's both malice and incompetence.
When people blame everything on conspiracies they always miss the truth even when it's right in front of their eyes.
There is a part of people that wants to be free - and a part that wants to be enslaved. Today, look at how many people want the government to be Big Daddy and Big Mommy - "free" heath care, "free" food cards and so on.
A decade ago, I once met a man who said something about "the wealth the government creates." I said nothing. Stupid can't be fixed.
Some people apparently think the government has its own money instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul. That's basically what governments do - steal, lie, murder, with a dollop of transfer payments thrown in.
The United States was founded on freedom. I do know I have mentioned this before, but if have ever read Benjamin Franklin, you'd find he was a hugely popular writer in those days - he wrote about freedom, self-reliance and getting rich and retiring early and devoting your life to scientific pursuits and advancing society.
And it just wasn't him - it was just about every educated and influential man of that time. Religious leaders of that time spoke also of freedom and self-reliance and getting rich to help others.
Those who think getting rid of religion is a good thing are as naive as can be. Religion is hugely influential - and it should support a small government, liberty, and self-reliance. Being free and not enslaved.
This attitude of freedom and self-reliance persisted until the 20th Century, although Lincoln put a big dent in it.
Even the so-called "robber barons" - weren't. Andrew Carnegie opened up thousands of public libraries and gave away nearly all his money before he died. And he was the richest man in the world.
J.P. Morgan used his money to start one of the best art collections in the U.S.
Yes, some of them were Robber Barons -the Rockefellers and Gettys were not good people. But most of them were not as the history books portray.
When did this "freedom" or "slavery" start in the U.S.? It's probably been here since the beginning. After all, it was there in Moses' time.
It seems to have started in a big way during the '60's, which is strange, since the pinnacle of the U.S. appears to be have been in the '50s. How did it start to go bad in some ten years?
The growth of that Black Thing known as the government.
I do know Lyndon Johnson had a lot to do with it, starting in the middle '60s, with his "War on Poverty," which turned out to be anything but. And Congress went along with it. And the people too, went along with it. Who protested these laws?
Some did. Daniel Patrick Moynahan predicted what the welfare state would turn into. He was right on the money.
Now the U.S. is in pretty big trouble, economically and culturally. And, again, it's because of a huge destructive government meddling in what is none of its business. Passing destructive laws.
It's amazing the number of people who can't see this. Liberty and self-reliance creates good people. A huge government - serfdom and wanting to be taken care of.
This is from the Right Stuff.
This is an old article, but with the West's intellectual class throwing its weight behind the Islamization of Europe and the acceptance of pedophilia everywhere, it seems somehow timely.
As academia becomes increasingly pozzed, hoi polloi are losing the reverential awe they had for academics. This causes said academics no small amount of consternation, especially those whose "field" of "research" consists mainly of inventing new ways to destroy civilization. I am become death, destroyer of rectums.
It's not just Buttdick Studies departments, of course. Even the sciences have been losing respect, thanks to the reinvention of the scientific method to mean "wild guessing combined with fraud" in the service of social justice.
What academia doesn't understand is that a PhD, tenure, and a CV full of publications are all a kind of currency whose value is grounded in the social capital of trust, and that trust is never owed, only earned. Nor do they understand that trust, once lost, is almost impossible to restore.
Western academia has exploited the trust it built up over centuries in order to populate our towns with rapists, generate apocalyptic panic in order to steal our wealth, and turn sodomy into a sacrament.
We're anti-intellectuals because the intellectuals have betrayed us. They deserve nothing but to be cast down from their thrones.
"To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security." - Walter M. Miller Jr.
...to minimize discord and chaos and to maximize well-being (what the ancient Greeks called "eudamonia").
For that matter, the purpose of religion, of economics, of political science, of the study of history, of science and technology, is to minimize chaos and maximize well-being.
Of course, there are arguments as to how to achieve these things. Certain leftists, who disguise themselves as "libertarians," think the way to to achieve this objective is to get rid of governments and borders. The fact that if this objective was achieved would lead to nothing but death, destruction and murder - genocide, actually - is something they refuse to believe. As for what is happening in Europe right now, including the current Muslim terrorism in France...they avert their eyes and make excuses. Such people, in their sincere delusions, unwittingly want to maximize chaos.
Good intentions mean nothing. You know where that leads. Hell.
Other leftists - probably 99% of them - believe that expanding the government so that it can "take care" of us is the best route to this well-being. They apparently think the government is some sort of god, or maybe just Big Daddy and Big Mommy.
The evidence of history has been that the only thing that works, that gives the greatest well-being for the greatest number of people, is political and economize liberty. The only country that was founded on those concepts is the United States, which is now busy trying to dismantle that which it was founded upon.
The Greeks also noticed the best way to achieve eudamonia is though arete - excellence. You can only achieve this excellence through...political and economic liberty, so you can be free to achieve what you desire.
I'll add one other thing: the West was also founded on Christianity. I've mentioned before that men such as Increase and Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards, were not religious fanatics. They believed in science and technology - and they believed in people being the best they can be.
In fact all the most influential people of those days believed in being the best you can be - Benjamin Franklin and later, Ralph Waldo Emerson. They argued many times that being free and independent (that is, self-reliant) is the best way to live.
How often do I see such claims today? Rarely. A lot of popular Christianity has turned into bizarre claims how Jesus is going to come back with blood and iron, and how we should support Israel to make sure the Rapture happens.
The popular role of government? How many believe in laws and more laws? Lots!
I find this whole paradigm shift just bizarre. It wasn't like this when I was a kid. This honestly is not the same country I grew up in. It's even changed since I was in college. Look at what has happened at the University of Missouri, with presidents resigning over leftist whining. I never saw that in college.
Of course I wonder about the future. None of this can last, obviously. What I see, as I have written before, is science and technology advancing by leaps and bounds, and our government slowly collapsing.
We live in interesting times - and that's an old Chinese curse.
This article is by Helen Carroll is from the Daily Mail.
The party had been wonderful and she had enjoyed every minute. But as the goodnights rang out and her friends - all of them in couples - headed for the door with arms draped around one another, Susan Wilson followed behind, alone, feeling a familiar pang of sadness. Now aged 55, Susan's last relationship broke up 17 years ago and, other than a couple of brief, casual encounters shortly afterwards, she has been single - and sexless - ever since. In fact, like a quarter of all women over 40, Susan has been without a lover for so long she has almost lost hope of ever experiencing intimacy with a man again.
Susan Wilson, 55, has been sexless for 17 years, losing hope of intimacy after her relationship broke down 'Days turn into weeks, weeks into months and months into years and, before you know it, you've gone a very long time without sex,' says Susan. 'It makes me feel so sad and lonely when I realise how long it's been since I made love with a man, so I try not to think about it. I always enjoyed sex and found it exhilarating, and I miss that physical closeness. You don't get it with any other human contact.'
According to recent statistics, 28 per cent of women over 40, like Susan, now lead celibate lives. Those who are menopausal often say hot flushes and mood swings have reduced their sex drive, according to nutrition company Healthspan, which conducted the research. However, there are many more, including Susan, a dance teacher from South London, who crave a loving relationship but unfortunately find themselves single in the 'danger zone' - that is any time after their late 30s, when most people are either paired up or cynical and wary of commitment following a divorce.
They seem left with an impossible choice: meaningless, soul-sapping casual encounters or decades of celibacy. Most opt for the latter. Susan baulked at the idea of internet dating, finding it too impersonal. And as a teetotaller, she can't even rely on a nip of good old Dutch courage when she's out to give her the confidence to chat up men in the old-fashioned way. 'I don't talk to many people about the fact I've been celibate for so long because I'm embarrassed, it feels abnormal,' she says. 'I did, however, tell a friend the other day and she looked very surprised and said 'Oh really?' And I said: 'Yes! Where's the justice in that?' 'I remember, years ago, going home after spending a passionate night with a boyfriend and my flatmate saying: 'My God you look amazing, you're glowing! What have you been doing?'. Susan assumed she would end up settling down with someone who cared about her - but it never happened.
Susan's last relationship, with a man who had an ex-wife and children, ended when she was 38
Susan assumed she would end up settling down with someone who cared about her - but it never happened. 'When you're having sex you have a vitality about you, even your hair and skin look healthier. But, at this stage in my life, I do wonder if my desire to meet a man is less about the sex and more about wanting to share something with somebody else - I'd love to wake up in the arms of someone who cares about me. 'I have to accept that it may happen for me again but it might not, so I just have to get on with life.' Most of the 'nice men' Susan has met over the past 17 years were already committed and, although she has been propositioned by a couple of them, she wants more than just sex and is too moral to contemplate an affair with a married man. Susan's last relationship, with a man who had an ex-wife and children, ended when she was 38. It makes me feel so sad and lonely when I realise how long it's been since I made love with a man, so I try not to think about it Although Susan came onto the scene after his marriage had ended, she says his ex-wife would be critical of her in front of his children and this put an intolerable strain on their relationship, leading them to break up. At the time, Susan never imagined she was consigning herself to a life without intimacy. 'When you grow up in a normal, middle-class family with parents who have been happily married for 60 years, you assume you will end up settling down and having children with someone who loves and cares about you,' she says. 'But that just never happened for me. When friends complain about their husbands pestering them for sex when they're not in the mood I can't help but think: 'You don't know how lucky you are to have someone who loves you and wants to show it.' 'My desire to feel a man's arms around me and be loved, even briefly, is so deep that I've even contemplated offering just to have sex with one. 'There must be plenty out there who would like a no-strings relationship, but I'd end up returning to my flat feeling lonely and rejected, so that's not the answer.'
Relationship therapist Val Sampson says that women in their 40s and 50s can experience just as much desire and get equal satisfaction from sex as younger women. However, older women scarred by unhappy relationships in their past may be reluctant to risk a brief encounter with a man for fear of the pain it may cause. This was certainly true for thrice-divorced Shirley Yanez, 59, who has been celibate for 15 years. Her turning point came shortly after her third marriage ended, when she fell desperately ill, due to a 8lb fibroid in her uterus. The condition, she knows, is a direct legacy of a promiscuous youth. 'Staring death in the face in that way and then getting a second chance I made a commitment to myself to only ever do things that are good for me,' recalls Shirley. Shirley, pictured here aged 27 on her second wedding day to Scott in 1986, has been married three times
'I gave up smoking and alcohol and vowed I'd never have sex - the source of so many of the problems in my life - with anyone other than a man happy to commit, love and support me. As men like that are hard to find, it was difficult contemplating the rest of my life without a boyfriend. 'So, while I'm open to the idea of meeting a man - I love men, I enjoy their company and love the warmth of feeling close to them - I don't look for one any more and haven't met any I'd risk my happiness on. 'I've realised how important I am, how important my life is, and, rather than risk being hurt, I concentrate on me and that's helped me become very successful in my professional life.' Shirley, who runs a clothing company called Venus Cow, ultimately aims to open free life coaching schools for those who can't afford to pay. I've realised how important I am, how important my life is, and, rather than risk being hurt, I concentrate on me and that's helped me become very successful in my professional life 'I teach girls that sex is a very special thing that binds you to another human being,' says Shirley. 'Sex makes you feel good in the moment because you're producing positive chemicals and pheromones, but if he doesn't text or call you the next day you don't feel very good at all. You feel used, as I often have. So sex comes with very big highs and very big lows and you have got to be able to navigate them.' Shirley, from Leicester, married her first husband aged 16 believing she had found the perfect escape from an unhappy home-life, alone with her father following her parents' divorce. But that marriage, to a man who was ten years her senior, lasted just 18 months. Aged 32, Shirley married her second husband, who owned an engineering company, at a big church wedding in Knightsbridge, followed by a month-long honeymoon in Africa. Although they were very happy and had 'a great sex life' in the beginning, the stress of trying for a baby, discovering that Shirley was infertile and then two rounds of IVF put enormous strain on the marriage, which ended after three years. Ever hopeful of finding lasting love, she married her third husband within days of meeting him at a wedding in Los Angeles. Shirley decided to move out to the States to live with him and again says their intimate life was fulfilling. She had previously made a lot of money through a head-hunting business she set up in the City of London then sold, but a few months after her marriage, she lost the lot in a stockmarket crash. Shirley felt emotionally unsupported and, realising that she barely knew her husband, divorced him within a year of their wedding. Shortly after the breakdown of her marriage to Marty Yanis in 1999, above, Shirley collapsed and needed emergency surgery. After this she vowed she'd never have sex with a man who wouldn't support her again.
Soon afterwards, Shirley collapsed on a street in LA and, after being rushed to hospital, discovered she needed emergency surgery to remove a fibroid. She returned to Britain for the operation where, with three broken marriages behind her, she decided to direct her energy towards creating a more fulfilling existence for herself. 'Rejecting advances is not something that, at my age, I have to contend with very often but part of my work is teaching young girls that sex should be a reward for men who put them on a pedestal and treat them well,' says Shirley. 'We've come a long way since the days when a woman's only place was in the home, but we have to accept our biology dictates that when we sleep with a man we want him to commit and nurture us. My passions are still going strong, so I do look at men and think 'Cor!' but I've not met the right one to settle down with 'Given my age and based on past experiences, it's doubtful I'll meet someone like that now. 'So as I value myself far too much to make do with casual sex, I have to accept I may never be intimate with a man again.' Therapist Val Sampson says women like Shirley, who associate sex with a trauma, can become so wary of getting hurt that they miss out on opportunities for relationships, even with men who are also looking for love and commitment. And once we stop having sex, our desire can quickly wane. 'Men respond to visual cues but the most important erotic organ in a woman's body is her brain,' says Val. 'Once we switch that off, for whatever reason, there's definitely a use it or lose it aspect to sexual desire.' Suzie Webster, 61 - who was married for eight years until 1990 - has been celibate since breaking up with her partner of five years in 2004, aged 50. The relationship was an 'unhappy' one, but Suzie never imagined it might be her last. Yet she has subsequently failed to meet anyone to share her life with. Suzie Webster, 61 - who was married for eight years until 1990 - has been celibate for 11 years. She runs a website, Platonic Partners, with 9,000, members where people who want relationships without sex can meet
Suzie Webster, 61 - who was married for eight years until 1990 - has been celibate for 11 years. She runs a website, Platonic Partners, with 9,000, members where people who want relationships without sex can meet 'I loved sex,' says Suzie. 'I'd be very happy to have a physical relationship now, but only when I really know a man. I'm not interested in casual sex, which so many men seem to want.' She adds: 'My passions are still going strong, so I do look at men and think 'Cor!' but I've not met the right one to settle down with.' Instead, Suzie, from Cambridge, has a happily platonic relationship with a younger man. She says she gets to experience the joy of having comforting man-hugs and even walking hand-in-hand with him on the many holidays they have had in places such as Crete, Italy and France. They share rooms but, after a chaste kiss, say goodnight and climb into separate twin beds. Nine years ago Suzie set up a website, Platonic Partners, where similar-minded people can connect, which now has 9,000 members, 90 per cent of them within the UK. She wanted to create a place where people could meet others for whom sex was not an essential ingredient in a relationship. Meanwhile, Suzie fills her evenings with art classes, dance classes and socialising with friends. 'We live in a very competitive society where if you're not having multiple orgasms and don't look like Barbie and Ken you feel you're doing something wrong,' she says. 'I try to ignore these pressures and instead take myself to places through physical exercise, where the afterglow is comparable with the afterglow from sex.' Susan and Shirley, like millions of other middle-aged celibate women in Britain, will no doubt be delighted to learn that Suzie has discovered an alternative to the love of a good man.
That's a true saying: machines are amplifiers, amplifiers of our inherent abilities. Machines are not moral or immoral; they're amoral. They can be used for good or bad.
So the big question is: how can you tell if they are being used for good or bad purposes? To answer this, I look to mythology. Not the old mythologies, but the new ones. Although, to be fair, the new mythologies are just the same old stories retold for modern sensibilities.
One old story, told in a new way, burst on the modern world in the '70s. Everyone knows his name: Darth Vader.
Vader is a modern retelling of the story of Satan, in that his greatest sin is Pride, and he wants to be God and have absolute power over everything, but he's something that Satan or any incarnation of him isn't: he's half man, half machine, a monster who is, as Obi-Wan said, "twisted and evil."
Vader was a representative of the Empire, and everything about the Empire was a soulless machine: the Death Star; the identical Myrmidons known as the stormtroopers, Vader himself. There existed not the slightest evidence of any warmth, or love, or community. Just the will to power. And as Carl Jung noted, you can have either love or power (meaning political power, which is the power to turn a live human into a corpse), but not both.
Joseph Campbell said something just as perceptive as Jung but funnier: he called Darth Vader "a bureaucrat," living under a system imposed on him. Vader could strangle people by pointing his finger at them, but he was nonetheless a bureaucrat of the State just as much as a nonentity at the DMV.
On the other side, in the second movie, opposing the Empire, the Ewoks were added. They didn't really use many machines, and advanced ones not at all, but they had community. Compare them to the Empire, and it's easy to see the difference between them.
Lucas did this split between the Ewoks and the Empire on purpose. He was using an old theme in literature known as the Machine State versus the Natural State. The Empire is a machine, a monster, really; the Ewoks live a natural, organic life. You can see this same thing in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, in which the Eloi symbolize the Natural State and the Morlocks (who eat the Eloi) the Machine State.
What Lucas was saying is that when technology is appropriated by the State, it will sooner or later turn into a monster that conquers and destroys and murders, that uses up people and eats their lives. The obverse is that when not used by the State, it will almost always be used for good purposes. In other words, when used by political and economic liberty, good will come from machines.
You need look no farther than modern State militaries, eternally searching for ways to drug soldiers, to remake them so they look and fight like the Borg (also half human, half machine) – and to what end? To kill, to conquer (of course, this is rationalized as "bringing freedom" to the benighted of the world).
The Borg are also representations of the Machine State, people turned into machines, to be used by the State to destroy and conquer. And not surprisingly at all, the Borg Queen complained, "Why do you resist us? We only wish to improve the quality of your lives."
This "improving the quality of your lives" entailed turning people into automatons who had no free will, who don't know the difference between good and evil, who never question their leaders because they can't, not with all those machines screwed into their brains. For all practical purposes, they had no self-consciousness. This unquestioning unconsciousness is, ultimately, what the State wants from nearly everyone. To be sheep who never question, and follow all orders. Since the State does not (yet) have the technology or drugs to pervert us into their desired, obedient machines, right now it has to use propaganda in its attempt to brainwash us into turning into their sacrificial little lambs.
Or, I should say, sacrificial Borg, who never question. Or sacrificial stormtroopers, who never question.
The Borg are, in my opinion, are a more accurate representation than the Empire than Star Wars. The Borg Cube is a gigantic womb, and the "people" in it are taken care of womb-to-tomb. Isn't this what the average hypnotized sheeple wants from the State? To never think, to avoid all anxiety, to be taken care of like a baby? They certainly have never heard what Frederick the Great said: "If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the ranks."
What these people never realize is that the downside of welfare is warfare. Welfare/warfare are opposite sides of the same coin. You won't find one without the other.
You can see this warfare/welfare theme today in the U.S., which unfortunately has turned into an empire. The State is trying to turn the U.S. into Nerfworld while slaughtering foreigners across the globe, in an attempt to turn them into us, i.e., the proto-Borg.
Or, as the Borg broadcast to everyone, "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." This will never happen, of course, since people will fight to the death against us. Also, of course, as the old saying tells us, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter.
People also never realize that States try to make everyone the same, so that being equal and identical one can easily be replaced by another, just like a cog in a machine. The loss of an individual life doesn't mean anything. Notice how soldiers came to be called "G.I.s," which means "Government Issue." It's also why all stormtroopers looked exactly alike, and the loss of one Borg meant nil.
When the State uses machines to destroy and kill, it turns into a monster, the way Vader was a monster, or the Borg. And monsters, even in the simplest of children’s fairy tales, are things that always menace good.
I read a fair amount of science fiction, which is the only truly visionary genre. Originally technology was portrayed as not having much of a downside -- a lot of it was like Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although there were exceptions, such as Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers. But starting pretty much with cyberpunk, suddenly writers were looking very closely at the dark side -- or maybe I should say, the Dark Side -- of technology, until we ended up with The Matrix. But Star Wars preceded all of them.
And in nearly every story in cyberpunk, the State was in some way almost always involved in the badness.
Ezra Pound once called artists "the antenna of the race." You might say the same about schizophrenics, since the paranoid ones often believe machines are controlling them, machines usually operated by agents of the State.
And what these antennae have been saying for the last few decades is: be very, very careful of what the State does with its machines, because, contrary to the cheers of its deluded supporters, that monster will always use them to squash you like a bug.
All of this slaughter, torture, death and destruction is, bizarrely, a perverted attempt to return to the Garden of Eden.
