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Liberaltarian pundit and volunteer junior thought policeman Will Wilkinson just got fired by Niskanen Center president Jerry Taylor for emitting a lame but obvious joke about how both sides of the political spectrum could find unity in lynching Mike Pence.
The centrist Niskanen Center announced:
Ironically, Taylor, the man who fired Wilkinson for his dumb joke, put out an evidently serious tweet encouraging violence last summer.
The president of the Niskanen Institute boasted that if he’d been part of the trespassing BLM Mostly Peaceful Protesters who broke through a locked gate to get onto private property and were confronted by the McCloskey homeowners, “I like to think I’d rush them and beat their brains in.”
Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center think tank, fantasizes that if he had been breaking and entering onto the property of that St. Louis couple with the guns, he would have turned into NFL legend Lawrence Taylor and sacked the homeowners: pic.twitter.com/vgl4qiEgdh
— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) June 30, 2020
Taylor then doubled-down on endorsing violence:
When thinktank executive Jerry Taylor stares into the mirror and dreams, I bet that this is what he sees:
Let’s all watch Reggie White destroy people with one arm for 40 seconds … pic.twitter.com/hT5Jqnb1GY
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) January 21, 2021
But … amusingly, Wilkinson himself strongly endorsed Google firing scientific truth-teller James Damore in 2017:
For my part, I think the dude was way out of his lane, and I would have canned him in a second for hurting team morale and the company’s PR.
Also, in 2013, writing in The Economist as “W.W.,” Will Wilkinson praised the Heritage Foundation firing Jason Richwine for writing his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation on the IQ of immigrants:
Will Wilkinson, who just got cancelled by the Niskanen Center, praised the firing Harvard Ph.D. Jason Richwine by the Heritage Foundation.
"Racism and immigration policy – The Richwine affair" https://t.co/e43hILGcva
— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) January 22, 2021
Of course, to Wilkinson, Cancel Culture didn’t exist:
https://twitter.com/anosognosically/status/1352409908252188673
But at least Wilkinson didn’t call for beating up Damore and Richwine (I hope), so he’s got that going for him in his struggle with his ex-boss for the moral high ground.
Commenter Publius suggests that Wilkinson’s firing offense was using the L word, a symbol of the sacred suffering of Blacks, to joke about a white man being lynched, which demeans the Holy Horror in which we are to hold the L word:
I think you have it wrong. He wasn’t fired for making a bad joke about attacking a Republican. I’m pretty sure you can definitely joke about that and not get in trouble. What he did was use a word that is not to be joked about in his joke. That’s no laughing matter and of course they sacked him for that.
Could be …
Wilkinson certainly didn’t melt down out of anger. I’m not super familiar with the Niskanen center but it seems like the Biden administration is going to give them pretty much everything they could possibly want.
While I never liked Wilkinson, I always did feel kinda bad for him because he was clearly just not as intelligent or credentialed as he wanted to be and I’ve long held that unless you get paid far more money than I imagine Wilkinson made, you should be able to do and tweet whatever you want on your own time.
His wife is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, so I would assume he telecommutes and isn't paying DC rents.
the bitter jokes write themselves.
these people are probably all disliked by their families.
POCs - The Golden Child (who can do no wrong)
The MSM, SJWs, etc. - Flying Monkies
The Host Population - Designated Scapegoat (that can do no right)
The Rest of The Country - The Invisible ChildThere's alsoThe DNC = Demonic Narcissistic Communists
The RNC = Really Never Cared (leadership) Repressed Neo Cucks (base)The late, great USA. Put a fork in her. She's done.
Actually the Pence joke was pretty funny.
https://twitter.com/ElElephantes/status/1352338002752638976
I was worried that the next four years would be more horrifying than funny. I'm into horror, but I need lots of comedy in counterbalance..
I need Lysistrata to balance Medea, if you know what I mean..
It looks like I don't have to worry. The jokes are going to keep coming, and may be even better than the general satire that Trump's sojourn in power provided..Replies: @vinteuil
“Liberaltarian (Libertarian?) pundit Will Wilkinson just got fired by Niskanen Center”
I don’t see much Libertarian in their policies. Kind of old school Republican.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policies/
Not Libertarian: “Our work aims to maintain the positive developments that stem from America’s post-1945 grand strategy.”
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policy/foreign-policy-and-defense/
As a very long time libertarian myself this annoys me but I do see one silver lining.
When the modern libertarian movement started about 55 years ago "libertarians" were often confused with "librarians", really! So having false flag outfits and controlled opposition stooges is a sign of real growth and influence.
As for getting babes at parties (in DC) that is beyond my scope of knowledge. Are beltway babes that shallow?
You can spot the fake libertarians/outfits because anything Koch funded is highly suspect. Charles Koch was busy proclaiming his love for Democrats and ditching his supposed libertarian cloak a few months before the election in the pages of the Wall St. Journal.
Though some principled libertarians have and may still work for these Koch fronts, these organizations all have a long tradition of firing anyone who deviates one inch from the Koch Party line. However the Kochs were the only billionaires who ever funded anything remotely libertarian.
I think you have it wrong. He wasn’t fired for making a bad joke about attacking a Republican. I’m pretty sure you can definitely joke about that and not get in trouble. What he did was use a word that is not to be joked about in his joke. That’s no laughing matter and of course they sacked him for that.
To my mind, this is either a pretext for a firing that they wanted to do anyway, or else it's panicky cowardice: My God, we can't let a man joke about political violence in this climate! This is a time for healing! We might get in trouble for harbouring extremism!
Or perhaps cowardice about "lynch": The sorts of people who complain about racist nonsense might get upset! We might get in trouble for racism!
(Not that the sort of people who'd fire someone for fear of upsetting the sort of people who complain about racist nonsense would ever characterise racist nonsense as racist nonsense, even in their own thoughts. But they think it thus, nevertheless: they'll find each new turn of the screw a bolt from the blue, and bafflingly incomprehensible, even as they accept it as having always been obviously true. The cognitive dissonance must be enormous.)Replies: @VictoryGin
You could write about D-list punditry tweeting doublespeak all day if you wanted. Why should anybody care about this?
Ironically, the right also eat their own for not being left enough.
This man using negrified twitter-speak informs the reader that his opinions can go straight in the trash.
I must admit that I don’t think Wilkinson’s joke is a big deal. It’s even mildly funny.
Taylor’s comments are disturbing and much worse than what Wilkinson said. .
Jerry Taylor agrees with Mel Brooks: it’s good to be the king.
Beautiful news, thank you Steve.
‘In a world of fascists and anti-fascists, I’m with the latter.’
That’s infuriating. Advocating violence against those you disagree with is the quintessence of fascism.
Taylor has a drinking problem or Ashkenazi ancestry or both.
I don’t know how to take Wilkenson’s remark as more than an ironic observation. Then again, some people think the QAnon Shaman invasion was a non-zero threat to topple democracy. So people will are even more credulous then the QAnon followers.
Jerry Taylor is the biggest whore in Washington D.C. history. That is not hyperbole.
Keeping up with the Current Day opinion is a struggle. It used to be good enough to know Current Year opinion.
Of course, it’s good to see these clowns delete themselves, but don’t dare imagine this will make the current Terror go away.
But I’m curious if devilish White men (who are based) will anonymously find ways to have fun reporting on these people, ruining their lives and generally using the system to harm White men and women who pride themselves on being race-traitors. Such things do happen.
Such devils, these based White men.
Niskanen Center is just another front organization for the NWO/Deep State/Globalistcorporocorruptotechnocrat crew. Who cares? They would cancel their own saintly mothers if instructed to.
I like it. Catchy - I’m using it!
Why do parents choose a baby first name that duplicates much of their surname?
Will.. Wilkinson.
Phil Phillips (from Philadelphia).
John Johnson (ABC-TV).
Chris Christie.
See reduplication.
Day One of the Biden Administration:
I think the blogger Roissy suggested the on-line commenting rule:
If you aren’t proud to have it appear on the Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium, don’t say it.
Thus:"Keep your head down"
Both these individuals seem like awful people.
While I never liked Wilkinson, I always did feel kinda bad for him because he was clearly just not as intelligent or credentialed as he wanted to be and I've long held that unless you get paid far more money than I imagine Wilkinson made, you should be able to do and tweet whatever you want on your own time.Replies: @Desiderius, @Art Deco
He’s been angry for a long time. At God most likely. Justifiable tbh.
How much overlap between who/whom and irony?
Niskanen funders are whos and Wilkinson a whom. For now Taylor is the former but that may be short-lived given Steve’s work here.
Which, lemme guess, is not Avery’s or Jerry’s. (And what’s with the lower case; are these people homos?)
Niskanen was a Finn. (And it’s NIS-ka-nen, no matter what he or others might say. Puhu oikein!) It seems that libertarians are drawn from the same ethnic groups as communists.
Never mind lynching Tuppence. What could unite Americans more than renaming Washington? One side hates the city, the other side the man. What’s not to like? Also Columbia honors Columbus, the Father of Genocide. He and Lincoln can come off their memorials, too.
Niskanen was born in Bend. Just to the east are Ontario and Vale, which are only one hour behind Panama City, Fla. My boys and I were discussing time zones at about four this afternoon, and I asked them, what if the whole earth was one time zone? Then it occurred to me, why not? Numbers are just arbitrary. We could all use GMT. The bank (we were at the drive-thru) would close at 23:00 here, and open at 23:00 in Vladivostok, Port Moresby, and Hagåtña.
Taylor’s comments are disturbing and much worse than what Wilkinson said. .Replies: @Desiderius
That’s the difference between signing the checks and cashing them.
Needed to bold/italicize the “he’d” so people would get the reference.
The underlying point is a strong one. Really not a good time to be on Team McConnell. Walpole knew enough not to embarrass his sovereign even if he did carry around his balls.
Will’s tweet is definitely said in a more humorous spirit, while Jerry sounds much more serious in his. It can’t be taken as funny, because it’s not in any way.
That said, some people, when they want to tweet, should just go for a walk outside instead… and leave the piece of iCrap at home!
I’d pay good money to see Jerry Taylor learn the same lesson those three shitbags in Kenosha last summer learned about what usually happens when you try to rush somebody with a gun.
Honestly couldn’t happen to a better guy. He got way more insufferable over the years too.
YouTube Scrubs 10,000 Dislikes From Biden Admin’s First Press Briefing Which Received 10x More Dislikes Than Likes (THEY PRIVATED THE VIDEO AFTER GETTING CAUGHT!)
Niskanen was a Finn. (And it's NIS-ka-nen, no matter what he or others might say. Puhu oikein!) It seems that libertarians are drawn from the same ethnic groups as communists.
Never mind lynching Tuppence. What could unite Americans more than renaming Washington? One side hates the city, the other side the man. What's not to like? Also Columbia honors Columbus, the Father of Genocide. He and Lincoln can come off their memorials, too.
Niskanen was born in Bend. Just to the east are Ontario and Vale, which are only one hour behind Panama City, Fla. My boys and I were discussing time zones at about four this afternoon, and I asked them, what if the whole earth was one time zone? Then it occurred to me, why not? Numbers are just arbitrary. We could all use GMT. The bank (we were at the drive-thru) would close at 23:00 here, and open at 23:00 in Vladivostok, Port Moresby, and Hagåtña.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Reg, your ongoing Tiny Cuck “rename Washington” hobbyhorse riding is as pitiful and lame as your obsessive Creationist pedagogy crackpottery.
A much better idea: Keep the names, keep the patriotic monuments, keep the classical buildings, and depopulate the city (and country) of traitors. Ask God, I’m sure He would agree with me.
I never endorsed "Creationism"-- indeed, the world has thousands of wildly differing creationisms to choose from. The truth is, however, that old-fashioned down-home salt-of-the-earth Americans wanted Darwinism banned from their schools, and supposedly nefarious underhanded New York Jews fought to force it upon them.
The question is, which of these two sides is right? Whom do we side with? Who are the liars? Who is the enemy? Who is trying to destroy us? Again, whom do we side with? Who, whom?
No one ever answers that. Because the next question is ultimately "why?"Okay, when and how do we start? In a country which just endorsed Critical Race Theory!
What are your first steps? Mine are easy, as the other side already agrees the city does not deserve the name.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @James Speaks, @James O'Meara
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cc/e6/2f/cce62f63f1ed0b885a4106a33b800ce0.jpgReplies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Taylor sounds like a nut
Well-observed, that.
The standards for getting canned on the left from one of these jobs could get really tight. There is only so much worship of the regime that is needed. People like Wilkinson are in for a rude awakening.
No longer useful to the Dems. Ergo, Night of the Long Knives.
Something tells me that Will Wilkinson has all the friends he has earned and deserves.
We should probably still care. First they came for the twazzocks, and I said nothing, because I wasn’t a twazzock…
Not that we shouldn’t laugh at him, of course, but we should still support him in his inevitable lawsuit against his hypocritical boss. While laughing.
Libertarians are just liberals that don’t want to pay taxes.
Anything they conserve will be confiscated from them by their betters.
There is a difference between wanting Private Property and libertarianism.
Private Property requires a State to protect your rights.
Libertarians are too stupid to see the Truth about the World.
Their own self-centered worldview prevents them from seeing REALITY.
Heck, my basic instincts are vaguely libertarian: I'll take care of my business,. You take care of yours. (I can live a long and happy life without the minders and schoolmarms.)
But even i know libertarians are clueless doofuses who understand nothing of how the world works. We're a social animals. We aren't individual atoms floating in the marketplace sea.
People are part of some sort of society, with some sort of culture. And libertarians have no interest in conserving the people and culture that are responsible for America's pleasantness and prosperity. No interest in conserving the American nation.
Their own self-centered worldview prevents them from seeing REALITY.I honestly don't think most of them are stupid. I think as with liberals it's a case of reality being too difficult for them and their ideology provides the answers. The Libertarian ideology offers them simple solutions to complex problems. Cut taxes, legalize drugs, open the borders and everything will be fine. Once you bring race into the discussion the whole thing falls apart. No wonder that Rand was so adamantly opposed to racial thinking. We see this today with current Libertarian writers and leaders. They will go to amusing lengths to blame the police for "civil unrest" as if The Big Bad State only exists to crack down on innocent Blacks. They do not want to consider the possibility of race being a factor in group outcomes. It must be the ever ominous state trying to hold back Blacks from reading Rand.
LOL! And I think iSteve’s prediction about the Democrat Stormtroopers is about to come true. The Democrats used them, but antifa won’t stop now even with Twitter shutting down the more vocal, radical ones.
If you aren't proud to have it appear on the Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium, don't say it.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @El Dato
Sydney Biddle Barrows told her girls never to say over the phone anything they weren’t willing to have their mothers hear in court.
Hmm… maybe, but probably not. I certainly don’t think some libertarians – white, old – are the type to think along those lines.
To my mind, this is either a pretext for a firing that they wanted to do anyway, or else it’s panicky cowardice: My God, we can’t let a man joke about political violence in this climate! This is a time for healing! We might get in trouble for harbouring extremism!
Or perhaps cowardice about “lynch”: The sorts of people who complain about racist nonsense might get upset! We might get in trouble for racism!
(Not that the sort of people who’d fire someone for fear of upsetting the sort of people who complain about racist nonsense would ever characterise racist nonsense as racist nonsense, even in their own thoughts. But they think it thus, nevertheless: they’ll find each new turn of the screw a bolt from the blue, and bafflingly incomprehensible, even as they accept it as having always been obviously true. The cognitive dissonance must be enormous.)
Stick to 2D chess. DC is enemy territory, and the sooner what’s left of real Americans knows this, the better. Do you honor George Washington? If so, why would you wantan open-air toilet to bear his name? His monument should be rebuilt somewhere in America, not the alien landscape in which it sits now.
I never endorsed “Creationism”– indeed, the world has thousands of wildly differing creationisms to choose from. The truth is, however, that old-fashioned down-home salt-of-the-earth Americans wanted Darwinism banned from their schools, and supposedly nefarious underhanded New York Jews fought to force it upon them.
The question is, which of these two sides is right? Whom do we side with? Who are the liars? Who is the enemy? Who is trying to destroy us? Again, whom do we side with? Who, whom?
No one ever answers that. Because the next question is ultimately “why?”
Okay, when and how do we start? In a country which just endorsed Critical Race Theory!
What are your first steps? Mine are easy, as the other side already agrees the city does not deserve the name.
Now if Jews (or others) furthermore want to ban public school calendar observations of Christian holidays that are part of established mainstream culture, then yes, they are being “nefarious” and should be called out and thwarted. Score one legit point for “salt-of-the-earth Americans”.You’re (intentionally?) leaving out some “sides”. Are (were) middle and upper-middle class Whites clamoring for religious instruction in public schools, and the blocking of Darwinism? I think not. So put them on the correct side with the ACLU on this point.
Ideally, the loyal White middle class and elites who are upstanding can provide solid intellectual and cultural guidance to the lower classes, while the (working) lower class can remind the uppers to be team players. But religious worship/guidance is privately optional and should not be publicly prescribed. The ACLU, mostly Jewish or not, is correct on this particular point.I answered it. Do you agree with my answer? The ACLU is correct on the public teaching of Darwinism. But it’s inaccurate of you to equate the ACLU with all “New York Jews”. Plenty of contemporary secular “New York Jews” (and others) are anti-/selectively Darwinist and downright ‘creationist’ in their own right. They are dead set against the teaching of evolutionary science as applied to humans, i.e. HBD.Sorry, I don’t follow. Why what, exactly?We won’t have to start. It will be a reaction to the other side’s overreach. When and where will be the next irrevocable Battle of Lexington Green? I don’t know. Virginia came close last year (#74).Was it unanimous? News to me!Same as every day: “Be nice. Until it’s time to not be nice.”Replies: @Reg Cæsar
I've been told that the real issue the Tennessee legislature was concerned with was eugenics, not creationism. They saw a straight line from Darwin to eugenics, as was being promoted in "progressive" states like Oregon. Darrow brought in creationism at the trial to humiliate Bryant. Law is about showmanship, not scientific proof.
This makes things sticky for "the Left" because post-WWII they have demonized eugenics, so it's in their interest to promote the "Darwin vs. Creationism" version.
How the pro-HBD men of Unz reconcile that with "we need Christianity to hold society together" is another sticky issue.Replies: @Keypusher, @John Johnson
You sound like your soulmate:
He’s correct, though, right here: that Fundamentalists’ doctrine/faith/beliefs “lie outside the domain of science”. Alas, the rest of his quote is stereotypical hypocritical projection on his part, as his own sundry “discredited preconceptions” (lies) are devoid “of any honest intellectual inquiry”.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Anything they conserve will be confiscated from them by their betters.
There is a difference between wanting Private Property and libertarianism.
Private Property requires a State to protect your rights.
Libertarians are too stupid to see the Truth about the World.
Their own self-centered worldview prevents them from seeing REALITY.Replies: @AnotherDad, @John Johnson
Agreed.
Heck, my basic instincts are vaguely libertarian: I’ll take care of my business,. You take care of yours. (I can live a long and happy life without the minders and schoolmarms.)
But even i know libertarians are clueless doofuses who understand nothing of how the world works. We’re a social animals. We aren’t individual atoms floating in the marketplace sea.
People are part of some sort of society, with some sort of culture. And libertarians have no interest in conserving the people and culture that are responsible for America’s pleasantness and prosperity. No interest in conserving the American nation.
Phil Phillips (from Philadelphia).
John Johnson (ABC-TV).
Chris Christie.See reduplication.Replies: @Peter D. Bredon
If only they’d channel all this aggression toward each other. Exactly how by the way do you become a “center” or an “institute?” Does that mean you have a fax machine and a postage meter?
It is with a heavy heart that I part ways (until tomorrow), and thank myself for my valuable contributions …
So, “lynching” is now a Jehova-style word, too?
This just as lynch mobs really seem to be in the ascendant. Damn. I guess we will have to switch to some circumlocution then.
https://www.jpost.com/international/roberta-kaplan-is-crushing-white-supremacists-in-court-656332
*Sigh*
In recent years, she has been raising the alarm about the dangers of domestic terrorism, and made headlines for suing the organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
In December, Kaplan filed a US Supreme Court brief defending the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania against claims of election fraud, and is also representing Mary Trump, President Trump’s cousin, and E. Jean Carroll, who has accused the former president of rape, in civil cases against him.
—
Evidently she goes to Synagogue on a computer screen. (Very last sentence) It’s not really a religion is it. There is no faith.
How to lose your job with One Crazy Trick. Nikasen fires Will Wilkinson with epic clapback.
Oh HMMofG…that is the wife of Rachel Levine…
While they are being led to the block, their necks bared for the mornings execution, Libertarians will be discoursing on how much finer the chop will be, because they are paying the headsman themselves.
I never endorsed "Creationism"-- indeed, the world has thousands of wildly differing creationisms to choose from. The truth is, however, that old-fashioned down-home salt-of-the-earth Americans wanted Darwinism banned from their schools, and supposedly nefarious underhanded New York Jews fought to force it upon them.
The question is, which of these two sides is right? Whom do we side with? Who are the liars? Who is the enemy? Who is trying to destroy us? Again, whom do we side with? Who, whom?
No one ever answers that. Because the next question is ultimately "why?"Okay, when and how do we start? In a country which just endorsed Critical Race Theory!
What are your first steps? Mine are easy, as the other side already agrees the city does not deserve the name.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @James Speaks, @James O'Meara
You’re too quack, sorry, quick to concede territory. DC is only partially theirs, and at our temporary sufferance, as they were reminded on January 6th. Our national dispute hasn’t even gone ‘hot’, yet you are eager to surrender. Sad!
Flush the “toilet” and it will be a toilet no longer.
Most of DC is not an alien landscape, and is worth fighting for. The presence of aliens can be reversed.
Those “old-fashioned down-home salt-of-the-earth Americans” who wanted Darwinism banned from (public) schools were wrong. If a school is publicly funded, evolution must be taught. On this point at least, score one legit point for the “New York Jews”.
Now if Jews (or others) furthermore want to ban public school calendar observations of Christian holidays that are part of established mainstream culture, then yes, they are being “nefarious” and should be called out and thwarted. Score one legit point for “salt-of-the-earth Americans”.
You’re (intentionally?) leaving out some “sides”. Are (were) middle and upper-middle class Whites clamoring for religious instruction in public schools, and the blocking of Darwinism? I think not. So put them on the correct side with the ACLU on this point.
Ideally, the loyal White middle class and elites who are upstanding can provide solid intellectual and cultural guidance to the lower classes, while the (working) lower class can remind the uppers to be team players. But religious worship/guidance is privately optional and should not be publicly prescribed. The ACLU, mostly Jewish or not, is correct on this particular point.
I answered it. Do you agree with my answer? The ACLU is correct on the public teaching of Darwinism. But it’s inaccurate of you to equate the ACLU with all “New York Jews”. Plenty of contemporary secular “New York Jews” (and others) are anti-/selectively Darwinist and downright ‘creationist’ in their own right. They are dead set against the teaching of evolutionary science as applied to humans, i.e. HBD.
Sorry, I don’t follow. Why what, exactly?
We won’t have to start. It will be a reaction to the other side’s overreach. When and where will be the next irrevocable Battle of Lexington Green? I don’t know. Virginia came close last year (#74).
Was it unanimous? News to me!
Same as every day: “Be nice. Until it’s time to not be nice.”
There is a reason the place has no vote in Congress, and had no electors before 1964. It's not normal. Never has been.
The National Archives and Library of Congress can be moved to a Trump county somewhere-- there are 2,500 to choose from. The Smithsonian always belonged in Philadelphia anyway. Smithson never came here, and had a very distorted view of this country. What else is left? National Geographic?Replies: @vhrm, @Jenner Ickham Errican
It was the L word that dod it, Steve. If Wilkinson had said “draw and quarter” instead of “lynch”, he would have been a-okay.
“Tar and feather”: probably ok, as long as you feather thoroughly, else there’s a danger of blackface.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cc/e6/2f/cce62f63f1ed0b885a4106a33b800ce0.jpgReplies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
You’re crediting Gould with having a soul ? Mighty generous of you, even if accounting for the possibility of his eternal damnation.
He’s correct, though, right here: that Fundamentalists’ doctrine/faith/beliefs “lie outside the domain of science”. Alas, the rest of his quote is stereotypical hypocritical projection on his part, as his own sundry “discredited preconceptions” (lies) are devoid “of any honest intellectual inquiry”.
OT
FBI, via contractors, using facial ID on January 6 protestors.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/artificial-intelligence/machine-learning/facial-recognition-and-the-us-capitol-insurrection
He’s correct, though, right here: that Fundamentalists’ doctrine/faith/beliefs “lie outside the domain of science”. Alas, the rest of his quote is stereotypical hypocritical projection on his part, as his own sundry “discredited preconceptions” (lies) are devoid “of any honest intellectual inquiry”.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
If you think the New York Jew is right and regular Tennesseeans and Arkansans wrong, don’t tell me. Tell those other commenters, so common on non-Steve Unz.com. They bitch that Pat and Ted and Ilana and Steve, etc., ignore the JQ. But so do they, on points like this.
As for Darwin, there are thousands of creation stories to be found across the globe. But his is the only one known to send the birthrate into a death spiral. Sure, teach it to your children. But they won’t teach it to your grandchildren. There won’t be any of those!
The estimated population of the earth in 1920 was 1.9 bn. Now, 2020, it's 7.8 bn. Some death spiral !Replies: @Reg Cæsar
This must have been a satisfying article to write.
Now if Jews (or others) furthermore want to ban public school calendar observations of Christian holidays that are part of established mainstream culture, then yes, they are being “nefarious” and should be called out and thwarted. Score one legit point for “salt-of-the-earth Americans”.You’re (intentionally?) leaving out some “sides”. Are (were) middle and upper-middle class Whites clamoring for religious instruction in public schools, and the blocking of Darwinism? I think not. So put them on the correct side with the ACLU on this point.
Ideally, the loyal White middle class and elites who are upstanding can provide solid intellectual and cultural guidance to the lower classes, while the (working) lower class can remind the uppers to be team players. But religious worship/guidance is privately optional and should not be publicly prescribed. The ACLU, mostly Jewish or not, is correct on this particular point.I answered it. Do you agree with my answer? The ACLU is correct on the public teaching of Darwinism. But it’s inaccurate of you to equate the ACLU with all “New York Jews”. Plenty of contemporary secular “New York Jews” (and others) are anti-/selectively Darwinist and downright ‘creationist’ in their own right. They are dead set against the teaching of evolutionary science as applied to humans, i.e. HBD.Sorry, I don’t follow. Why what, exactly?We won’t have to start. It will be a reaction to the other side’s overreach. When and where will be the next irrevocable Battle of Lexington Green? I don’t know. Virginia came close last year (#74).Was it unanimous? News to me!Same as every day: “Be nice. Until it’s time to not be nice.”Replies: @Reg Cæsar
When is it ever unanimous? They act like it, though. Tying CRT to Joe, Nancy, and Chuck is what they have coming. It should be shoved down their throats, and their voters’ as well.
Have you been there? It’s a damned theme park surrounded by ghettos and a few frou-frou districts. There are more gays than Republicans. As can be said of any number of other weird demographics. It’s an alien landscape with little of value and much of arm to the country it arrogantly demands to govern.
There is a reason the place has no vote in Congress, and had no electors before 1964. It’s not normal. Never has been.
The National Archives and Library of Congress can be moved to a Trump county somewhere– there are 2,500 to choose from. The Smithsonian always belonged in Philadelphia anyway. Smithson never came here, and had a very distorted view of this country. What else is left? National Geographic?
i.e. it would be only government buildings and commercial; maybe some hotels. Nobody could be a resident of DC and everyone would have to commute from surrounding areas.
Either that OR give the land back to the states it came from, create a new capital somewhere else and apply the above rules to it.Replies: @James O'Meara
I don't see much Libertarian in their policies. Kind of old school Republican.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policies/
Not Libertarian: "Our work aims to maintain the positive developments that stem from America’s post-1945 grand strategy."
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policy/foreign-policy-and-defense/Replies: @Polistra, @Bill, @Muggles
Lots of Republicans like to cast themselves as Libertarians because they figure they’ll land hotter babes and maybe get invited to more stylish cocktail parties.
There is a reason the place has no vote in Congress, and had no electors before 1964. It's not normal. Never has been.
The National Archives and Library of Congress can be moved to a Trump county somewhere-- there are 2,500 to choose from. The Smithsonian always belonged in Philadelphia anyway. Smithson never came here, and had a very distorted view of this country. What else is left? National Geographic?Replies: @vhrm, @Jenner Ickham Errican
A better solution, imo, would be to make the whole thing non-residential.
i.e. it would be only government buildings and commercial; maybe some hotels. Nobody could be a resident of DC and everyone would have to commute from surrounding areas.
Either that OR give the land back to the states it came from, create a new capital somewhere else and apply the above rules to it.
I've long thought of that. The existing Capitol made sense in 1789, being smack dab in the middle of N and S and on land ceded by two states, who presumably wanted to palm off some swamp land. (Northern hospitality and Southern weather, I think JFK called it).
Now, it makes no sense, stuck on one side of a continent. I guess air travel has made California reconciled to it, leaving the rest of the country to the ignominy of being "flyover country." Otherwise you could argue that DC and NYC are the only cities that matter anyway.
You'll notice that this is the Democratic power base: LA, NYC. Back in 2016 someone pointed out that absent the Electoral College, LA county, NY and Westchester County could have given Hillary her victory.
Joe Biden may have thought that pretending to be "Lunch Bucket Joe" by "commuting" from DE to DC on the Acela made sense, and Nancy loves the pomp and circumstance of her military flights back and forth (which would drive me nuts, so I kinda sympathize with her madness)
I'm sure they all like the idea of being isolated far from family and constituents, so that the mice can play. See Advise and Consent for how the alpha males of the all-male government caroused back in the 50s-60s (think JFK).
But with the push for more states, they may consider building a new capitol, as a "show of unity" or something. Most of DC is a ghetto, the diorama part is all in NW, along with all the NGO and lobbyists (check out if you EVER get mail from any other DC address than NW). The diorama part is all racist monuments, after all (except for the MLK statue and the Holocaust Museum). A new capitol, centrally located but otherwise new and even more isolated might be tempting.
After all, the rich love being isolated and exclusive. Aspen, Sun Valley, Jackson Hole, perhaps? Or would the site of the Overlook Hotel be more symbolic?Replies: @Reg Cæsar
There is something very wrong with these people
https://twitter.com/jerry_jtaylor/status/1348262680214335490?s=21
I feel like Granny in the Beverly Hillbillies who saw a Civil War movie set and thought the War of Northern Aggression was still raging and took up arms...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_2eHbbGV2s
Really? Have you asked them?
You’re blaming Darwin for easy birth control? Isn’t G.D. Searle & Co. a likelier culprit?
Perhaps the correlation is reversed-- the desire for contraception encourages the embrace of Darwin? More likely it's synchronicity. Jung's territory, not Freud's.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
There is a reason the place has no vote in Congress, and had no electors before 1964. It's not normal. Never has been.
The National Archives and Library of Congress can be moved to a Trump county somewhere-- there are 2,500 to choose from. The Smithsonian always belonged in Philadelphia anyway. Smithson never came here, and had a very distorted view of this country. What else is left? National Geographic?Replies: @vhrm, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Of course. But cucking on essential territory is not the way to go.
Yes, a few times.
Nah, it’s much more than that, some of it quite beautiful and grand. The rest of your comment is impotent bitching about the current denizens, many of whom are transients from outside the District.
no it isn’t.
Well, it's certainly a hallmark.
Like Antifa, the Fascists got their start beating up people they disagreed with and vandalizing their businesses. That's what the squadristi did.
Ditto for Hitler's Stormtroopers. What was Kristallnacht but the government as Antifa?Replies: @ben tillman
Schadenfreude is a powerful emotion. I wonder how many strings Wilkinson has to his bow. Just how many paying gigs are out there for middlebrow libertarian hacks?
I’m already wondering if this could be a deep fake!
Can we just get to the point, ‘Centrist’ is code for establishment and the establishment in the US currently really hates the peasants getting uppity.
These people cheer the pillow over the face of working class America, these people are the pillow.
One thing Jordan Peterson, himself a Libertarian sperg, is that he focuses all the time on ‘envy’, it ever once occurs to him that the far greater force in politics and history and, indeed, life, is contempt and begrudgery of those below the elite.
In the 1960s/70s, everyone was doing better materially, even the elite, but they weren’t doing so much more better than they had in the past. So they went ahead and destroyed the economy long-term, but by god they are proportionally so much richer and powerful now.
And that’s why these guys use such insane language, their entire political universe is bound up in putting the peasants in their place, it comes from nowhere and nothing else.
Same energy.
I never endorsed "Creationism"-- indeed, the world has thousands of wildly differing creationisms to choose from. The truth is, however, that old-fashioned down-home salt-of-the-earth Americans wanted Darwinism banned from their schools, and supposedly nefarious underhanded New York Jews fought to force it upon them.
The question is, which of these two sides is right? Whom do we side with? Who are the liars? Who is the enemy? Who is trying to destroy us? Again, whom do we side with? Who, whom?
No one ever answers that. Because the next question is ultimately "why?"Okay, when and how do we start? In a country which just endorsed Critical Race Theory!
What are your first steps? Mine are easy, as the other side already agrees the city does not deserve the name.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @James Speaks, @James O'Meara
I know this one: The side whose belief system is consistent with being able to make other verifiable and needed scientific discoveries is the side that is right. An it’s neither intelligent design or creationism.
For more interesting is how all the top layer stuff can arise from basic quantum field theory + GR + a few unexplained constants, whereby there is nothing in those ingredients that says that if you zoom out one universe of magnification you will find a tree or a gorilla. Really weird. It's like setting up a gigantic cellular automaton with a few basic rules, then letting it run a long time and later finding that it has coalesced into a gigantic working copy of Windows 95. WHY! HOW!Replies: @James O'Meara
In the long run, that is all that counts. Survival of the fittest.
We don't need a "god of the gaps" to explain nuances we don't understand. Explain how order spontaneously erupts from chaos, out of nothingness. Explain how energy (called matter, when it becomes perceptible and manipulatable by scientists) seems to self organize itself, and become ever more complex. Explain that. You can't, and you know it. We don't need a "god of the gaps" to explain things, we need a God of the Abyss.
Darwinism is a crock of nonsense. Explain the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record goes from plankton and algae, single celled organisms, to a plethora of complex life forms in about ten million years or so. That's not random mutations being "selected" by the environment. That's something you - none of us - can explain, something that we do not understand.
It's tiresome that materialists sneer so stupidly, pretending to understand everything. You understand next to nothing. You can merely describe some things incompletely, without explaining why things ineluctably happen as they do.
The more I understand how little you understand, how absurd and idiotic the extent of your gaslighting is.. Well, all I can say is you are pathetic. At least as pathetic as the silly "fundamentalists" who pretend that Genesis is a science text, or a positivistic history. All you modernists are silly and absurd.
Arrogance, foolishness and stupidity are all of a piece. The modern world is dying for a reason: your "thought" - the idiotic way you think - is it.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @James Speaks
“intelligent design” and “creationism” are fools’ errands and fools’ non-problems.
For more interesting is how all the top layer stuff can arise from basic quantum field theory + GR + a few unexplained constants, whereby there is nothing in those ingredients that says that if you zoom out one universe of magnification you will find a tree or a gorilla. Really weird. It’s like setting up a gigantic cellular automaton with a few basic rules, then letting it run a long time and later finding that it has coalesced into a gigantic working copy of Windows 95. WHY! HOW!
“NWO/DeepState/Globalistcorporocorruptotechnocrew.”
I like it. Catchy – I’m using it!
Mayflower Madam reference! Nice job, Reg. Nina Clifford would be proud of you.
Someone will have to overhaul the late George Carlin’s list of words you can’t say on television. Only it will be much longer than seven, with new ones added daily.
“Ironic observation” is an apt description.
“Salute the Marines..” Even if that’s a deep fake, it’s a pretty funny one.
I was worried that the next four years would be more horrifying than funny. I’m into horror, but I need lots of comedy in counterbalance..
I need Lysistrata to balance Medea, if you know what I mean..
It looks like I don’t have to worry. The jokes are going to keep coming, and may be even better than the general satire that Trump’s sojourn in power provided..
If Jerry Taylor were being eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs, I would do everything I could to protect the dogs.
As for Darwin, there are thousands of creation stories to be found across the globe. But his is the only one known to send the birthrate into a death spiral.
The estimated population of the earth in 1920 was 1.9 bn. Now, 2020, it’s 7.8 bn. Some death spiral !
United States: 5.4% > 4.6%
United States white: 4.9% > 3.4%Secularism comes at a steep price.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
What if everybody who has ever been on Social Media got together and tweeted (etc) the same series of offensive jokes? I mean, a total blizzard of nsfw material?
Could “they” fire everybody?
Here is one to start:
What is the best thing about a blowjob?
Ten minutes of your life when a woman has to shut up about her feelings.
If you aren't proud to have it appear on the Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium, don't say it.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @El Dato
A lot of hardcore insults, obliterated truths and calls for extreme violence (YES!) SHOULD appear on the Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium.
Thus:
“Keep your head down”
Taylor’s tweet could be exhibit A for the St Louis couple as complainants for libel. They could
burntake Taylor and his little institute to thegroundcleaners.(don’t want to be accused of advocating violence, since nobody seems to understand metaphor these days)
‘no it isn’t.’
Well, it’s certainly a hallmark.
Like Antifa, the Fascists got their start beating up people they disagreed with and vandalizing their businesses. That’s what the squadristi did.
Ditto for Hitler’s Stormtroopers. What was Kristallnacht but the government as Antifa?
https://twitter.com/jerry_jtaylor/status/1348262680214335490?s=21Replies: @Anon
I feel like such an idiot for believing for decades that establishment conservatism and the Republican party was really, actually trying to fight, even defeat, the Democrats and liberal policies.
I feel like Granny in the Beverly Hillbillies who saw a Civil War movie set and thought the War of Northern Aggression was still raging and took up arms…
To my mind, this is either a pretext for a firing that they wanted to do anyway, or else it's panicky cowardice: My God, we can't let a man joke about political violence in this climate! This is a time for healing! We might get in trouble for harbouring extremism!
Or perhaps cowardice about "lynch": The sorts of people who complain about racist nonsense might get upset! We might get in trouble for racism!
(Not that the sort of people who'd fire someone for fear of upsetting the sort of people who complain about racist nonsense would ever characterise racist nonsense as racist nonsense, even in their own thoughts. But they think it thus, nevertheless: they'll find each new turn of the screw a bolt from the blue, and bafflingly incomprehensible, even as they accept it as having always been obviously true. The cognitive dissonance must be enormous.)Replies: @VictoryGin
I found that final paragraph very difficult to understand – inf act still don’t totally understand it. But I was delighted by the metaphors (or similes, or whatever they are). Very funny!
The real L-word is Lapp. Have you seen the t-shirts that say “This shirt can say Lapp because it’s yellow”?
i.e. it would be only government buildings and commercial; maybe some hotels. Nobody could be a resident of DC and everyone would have to commute from surrounding areas.
Either that OR give the land back to the states it came from, create a new capital somewhere else and apply the above rules to it.Replies: @James O'Meara
“Either that OR give the land back to the states it came from, create a new capital somewhere else and apply the above rules to it.”
I’ve long thought of that. The existing Capitol made sense in 1789, being smack dab in the middle of N and S and on land ceded by two states, who presumably wanted to palm off some swamp land. (Northern hospitality and Southern weather, I think JFK called it).
Now, it makes no sense, stuck on one side of a continent. I guess air travel has made California reconciled to it, leaving the rest of the country to the ignominy of being “flyover country.” Otherwise you could argue that DC and NYC are the only cities that matter anyway.
You’ll notice that this is the Democratic power base: LA, NYC. Back in 2016 someone pointed out that absent the Electoral College, LA county, NY and Westchester County could have given Hillary her victory.
Joe Biden may have thought that pretending to be “Lunch Bucket Joe” by “commuting” from DE to DC on the Acela made sense, and Nancy loves the pomp and circumstance of her military flights back and forth (which would drive me nuts, so I kinda sympathize with her madness)
I’m sure they all like the idea of being isolated far from family and constituents, so that the mice can play. See Advise and Consent for how the alpha males of the all-male government caroused back in the 50s-60s (think JFK).
But with the push for more states, they may consider building a new capitol, as a “show of unity” or something. Most of DC is a ghetto, the diorama part is all in NW, along with all the NGO and lobbyists (check out if you EVER get mail from any other DC address than NW). The diorama part is all racist monuments, after all (except for the MLK statue and the Holocaust Museum). A new capitol, centrally located but otherwise new and even more isolated might be tempting.
After all, the rich love being isolated and exclusive. Aspen, Sun Valley, Jackson Hole, perhaps? Or would the site of the Overlook Hotel be more symbolic?
Robert Alexander of Ohio Northern U., who has been studying the EC for decades and published two books thereon, was informed of this by someone in the audience at a talk, and was stunned. But it was true.The Virginia donation was returned to the Commonwealth in 1847. Only Maryland's part hangs on. Perhaps offering the residents the Calvert flag would entice them back.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0161/4702/products/morphsuit_1024x1024.png?v=1605529128
For more interesting is how all the top layer stuff can arise from basic quantum field theory + GR + a few unexplained constants, whereby there is nothing in those ingredients that says that if you zoom out one universe of magnification you will find a tree or a gorilla. Really weird. It's like setting up a gigantic cellular automaton with a few basic rules, then letting it run a long time and later finding that it has coalesced into a gigantic working copy of Windows 95. WHY! HOW!Replies: @James O'Meara
The same way that working 747 was created by that tornado that whipped through a junkyard, remember? All it takes it enough time. Surprisingly easy, barely an inconvenience.
I never endorsed "Creationism"-- indeed, the world has thousands of wildly differing creationisms to choose from. The truth is, however, that old-fashioned down-home salt-of-the-earth Americans wanted Darwinism banned from their schools, and supposedly nefarious underhanded New York Jews fought to force it upon them.
The question is, which of these two sides is right? Whom do we side with? Who are the liars? Who is the enemy? Who is trying to destroy us? Again, whom do we side with? Who, whom?
No one ever answers that. Because the next question is ultimately "why?"Okay, when and how do we start? In a country which just endorsed Critical Race Theory!
What are your first steps? Mine are easy, as the other side already agrees the city does not deserve the name.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @James Speaks, @James O'Meara
“The truth is, however, that old-fashioned down-home salt-of-the-earth Americans wanted Darwinism banned from their schools, and supposedly nefarious underhanded New York Jews fought to force it upon them.”
I’ve been told that the real issue the Tennessee legislature was concerned with was eugenics, not creationism. They saw a straight line from Darwin to eugenics, as was being promoted in “progressive” states like Oregon. Darrow brought in creationism at the trial to humiliate Bryant. Law is about showmanship, not scientific proof.
This makes things sticky for “the Left” because post-WWII they have demonized eugenics, so it’s in their interest to promote the “Darwin vs. Creationism” version.
How the pro-HBD men of Unz reconcile that with “we need Christianity to hold society together” is another sticky issue.
Who told you that? And why did you believe them?
“Law is about showmanship, not scientific proof.”
Oh. Because you’re a moron.
For sure.
I don't see much Libertarian in their policies. Kind of old school Republican.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policies/
Not Libertarian: "Our work aims to maintain the positive developments that stem from America’s post-1945 grand strategy."
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policy/foreign-policy-and-defense/Replies: @Polistra, @Bill, @Muggles
William Niskanen was a libertarian economist. Well-known once upon a time. The Niskanen Center used to be a “regulations bad” one-note shop (almost). I think it used to be called something like the Niskanen Center for the Study of Regulation. What it is now, I don’t know.
Wilkinson was paid $170,000 as 'vp for research'. The man has zero training in economics, public policy, statistics, or any other like subject. Same deal for their top echelon generally. They have several economists on staff and a physician with an interest in policy. A lot of lawyers, some people with undergraduate training in economics, poli sci mavens.
He is pointing out, via contemporary events, that the left eat their own (for not being left enough).
Ironically, the right also eat their own for not being left enough.
Oh my gawd, oh my gawd, the “L” word. Right up there with the “N” word.
Spot on list.
Another list could be one using Family Systems categories.
The Hostile Elite – Narcissistic Shaming Parent
POCs – The Golden Child (who can do no wrong)
The MSM, SJWs, etc. – Flying Monkies
The Host Population – Designated Scapegoat (that can do no right)
The Rest of The Country – The Invisible Child
There’s also
The DNC = Demonic Narcissistic Communists
The RNC = Really Never Cared (leadership) Repressed Neo Cucks (base)
The late, great USA. Put a fork in her. She’s done.
“Essential”? It doesn’t even have a single farm! It’s a malarial riverbank with no more essentiality than Port Tobacco downriver. Patriotic Americans should view the place with horror.
The (oxymoronic) Washingtonians should be denied the use of the President’s name until they shape up. Say, with a white majority. Real whites, not the pod people who now outnumber the blacks there today.
The true cucks are those who allow “the current denizens” to usurp the name. Take it back!!
All of them are transients. There are no true citizens of the place. (Which is why you used the term denizens.) Not even my favorite natives, Pat Buchanan and Florence King. (Music lovers might prefer Duke Ellington and Jorma Kaukonen; Nils Lofgren and Mama Cass grew up in the suburbs.)
At any rate, I’m not opposed to recapturing the place. Let’s make the name change temporary, until that is achieved. And the city merits the eponym again.
Still, it should never regain its old importance. The writing on the wall was there in 1901, when the Americal League found the city large enough to deserve a major league baseball team. No, it’s minor-league in every way, and should be treated thusly.
I've long thought of that. The existing Capitol made sense in 1789, being smack dab in the middle of N and S and on land ceded by two states, who presumably wanted to palm off some swamp land. (Northern hospitality and Southern weather, I think JFK called it).
Now, it makes no sense, stuck on one side of a continent. I guess air travel has made California reconciled to it, leaving the rest of the country to the ignominy of being "flyover country." Otherwise you could argue that DC and NYC are the only cities that matter anyway.
You'll notice that this is the Democratic power base: LA, NYC. Back in 2016 someone pointed out that absent the Electoral College, LA county, NY and Westchester County could have given Hillary her victory.
Joe Biden may have thought that pretending to be "Lunch Bucket Joe" by "commuting" from DE to DC on the Acela made sense, and Nancy loves the pomp and circumstance of her military flights back and forth (which would drive me nuts, so I kinda sympathize with her madness)
I'm sure they all like the idea of being isolated far from family and constituents, so that the mice can play. See Advise and Consent for how the alpha males of the all-male government caroused back in the 50s-60s (think JFK).
But with the push for more states, they may consider building a new capitol, as a "show of unity" or something. Most of DC is a ghetto, the diorama part is all in NW, along with all the NGO and lobbyists (check out if you EVER get mail from any other DC address than NW). The diorama part is all racist monuments, after all (except for the MLK statue and the Holocaust Museum). A new capitol, centrally located but otherwise new and even more isolated might be tempting.
After all, the rich love being isolated and exclusive. Aspen, Sun Valley, Jackson Hole, perhaps? Or would the site of the Overlook Hotel be more symbolic?Replies: @Reg Cæsar
You wouldn’t even need Westchester, or Staten Island. Five counties– Los Angeles, Kings, Queens, New York, and Bronx– made up her entire majority.
Robert Alexander of Ohio Northern U., who has been studying the EC for decades and published two books thereon, was informed of this by someone in the audience at a talk, and was stunned. But it was true.
The Virginia donation was returned to the Commonwealth in 1847. Only Maryland’s part hangs on. Perhaps offering the residents the Calvert flag would entice them back.
I don't see much Libertarian in their policies. Kind of old school Republican.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policies/
Not Libertarian: "Our work aims to maintain the positive developments that stem from America’s post-1945 grand strategy."
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policy/foreign-policy-and-defense/Replies: @Polistra, @Bill, @Muggles
Neither this organization (funded by Kochs as a Cato Institute spin-off, also a Koch creature) or this idiot who got canned is libertarian or promotes consistent libertarian ideas and values.
As a very long time libertarian myself this annoys me but I do see one silver lining.
When the modern libertarian movement started about 55 years ago “libertarians” were often confused with “librarians”, really! So having false flag outfits and controlled opposition stooges is a sign of real growth and influence.
As for getting babes at parties (in DC) that is beyond my scope of knowledge. Are beltway babes that shallow?
You can spot the fake libertarians/outfits because anything Koch funded is highly suspect. Charles Koch was busy proclaiming his love for Democrats and ditching his supposed libertarian cloak a few months before the election in the pages of the Wall St. Journal.
Though some principled libertarians have and may still work for these Koch fronts, these organizations all have a long tradition of firing anyone who deviates one inch from the Koch Party line. However the Kochs were the only billionaires who ever funded anything remotely libertarian.
I was worried that the next four years would be more horrifying than funny. I'm into horror, but I need lots of comedy in counterbalance..
I need Lysistrata to balance Medea, if you know what I mean..
It looks like I don't have to worry. The jokes are going to keep coming, and may be even better than the general satire that Trump's sojourn in power provided..Replies: @vinteuil
I don’t think it’s at all likely that JohnnyWalker123 will know what you mean.
Over and over. They never answer!
For the attitude that brings it about. Correlation isn’t causation necessarily, but you can’t miss the correlation unless you are willingly blind.
Perhaps the correlation is reversed– the desire for contraception encourages the embrace of Darwin? More likely it’s synchronicity. Jung’s territory, not Freud’s.
Reg, I’m trying to save you from going down the Tiny Duck/Corvinus repetitive facetious rhetoric route. Why? You actually demonstrate some intellect, but succumb from time to time to vain, faux cleverness. Heal thyself.Pretty sure most people using contraception aren’t thinking of Darwin. You’re obsessed with the man. Why not cite Galileo instead? He likely did far more to break the ‘spell’ of Christian belief.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
I think this is a case of people trying to find their way under new perceived rules. Taylor is worried that the Parler situation means a crackdown on violent speech from big tech and he doesn’t want to cross the line because he doesn’t know where it is. However, he just doesn’t get it yet that the rules don’t apply to them.
Wm. Niskanen was asoociated with Cato. The Niskanen Center was founded after his death, by some accounts a secession from Cato.
Wilkinson was paid $170,000 as ‘vp for research’. The man has zero training in economics, public policy, statistics, or any other like subject. Same deal for their top echelon generally. They have several economists on staff and a physician with an interest in policy. A lot of lawyers, some people with undergraduate training in economics, poli sci mavens.
The estimated population of the earth in 1920 was 1.9 bn. Now, 2020, it's 7.8 bn. Some death spiral !Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Not in the West.
% of world’s population, 1913 to 1998:
Europe: 27.7% > 13.5%
United States: 5.4% > 4.6%
United States white: 4.9% > 3.4%
Secularism comes at a steep price.
Who’s having the grandchildren? The great-grandchildren?
In the long run, that is all that counts. Survival of the fittest.
While I never liked Wilkinson, I always did feel kinda bad for him because he was clearly just not as intelligent or credentialed as he wanted to be and I've long held that unless you get paid far more money than I imagine Wilkinson made, you should be able to do and tweet whatever you want on your own time.Replies: @Desiderius, @Art Deco
Given his actual training (he has an MFA), he’s been paid quite handsomely. I doubt he’ll ever be as well compensated again. If he lands a job teaching English at a private school, the pay cut will be on the order of 70%.
His wife is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, so I would assume he telecommutes and isn’t paying DC rents.
Well, it's certainly a hallmark.
Like Antifa, the Fascists got their start beating up people they disagreed with and vandalizing their businesses. That's what the squadristi did.
Ditto for Hitler's Stormtroopers. What was Kristallnacht but the government as Antifa?Replies: @ben tillman
Fascists were the people organized to oppose bolshevism. Opposing bolshevism is the essence of fascism.
It isn't. The entire political spectrum opposed the Communist parties except from some suborned outfits. The salient features of fascism are a rejection of parliamentary institutions, revanchism, and conceiving of the default function of the state as an agent of national mobilization.Replies: @Curle, @ben tillman
Perhaps the correlation is reversed-- the desire for contraception encourages the embrace of Darwin? More likely it's synchronicity. Jung's territory, not Freud's.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Well, then that is your answer: You’re asking a dishonest question, with glaring omissions: They likely recognized your trolling attempt, and didn’t respond. Being a sport, I indulged you with an answer, in detail, while pointing out your BS omissions. One can be redpilled on the “JQ” and still recognize that some Jews are sometimes right about some things. There’s no contradiction. There’s no ‘gotcha’.
Reg, I’m trying to save you from going down the Tiny Duck/Corvinus repetitive facetious rhetoric route. Why? You actually demonstrate some intellect, but succumb from time to time to vain, faux cleverness. Heal thyself.
Pretty sure most people using contraception aren’t thinking of Darwin. You’re obsessed with the man. Why not cite Galileo instead? He likely did far more to break the ‘spell’ of Christian belief.
You have to believe in persistent rational patterns to make any meaningful predictions about the universe at all.
We don’t need a “god of the gaps” to explain nuances we don’t understand. Explain how order spontaneously erupts from chaos, out of nothingness. Explain how energy (called matter, when it becomes perceptible and manipulatable by scientists) seems to self organize itself, and become ever more complex. Explain that. You can’t, and you know it. We don’t need a “god of the gaps” to explain things, we need a God of the Abyss.
Darwinism is a crock of nonsense. Explain the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record goes from plankton and algae, single celled organisms, to a plethora of complex life forms in about ten million years or so. That’s not random mutations being “selected” by the environment. That’s something you – none of us – can explain, something that we do not understand.
It’s tiresome that materialists sneer so stupidly, pretending to understand everything. You understand next to nothing. You can merely describe some things incompletely, without explaining why things ineluctably happen as they do.
The more I understand how little you understand, how absurd and idiotic the extent of your gaslighting is.. Well, all I can say is you are pathetic. At least as pathetic as the silly “fundamentalists” who pretend that Genesis is a science text, or a positivistic history. All you modernists are silly and absurd.
Arrogance, foolishness and stupidity are all of a piece. The modern world is dying for a reason: your “thought” – the idiotic way you think – is it.
1. The entropy of any closed systems never decreases; it only increases. Order did not increase; life on earth did not spring out of chaos. The sun must be included, and it is clear the entropy of the earth-sun systems increases.
2. I seem to have struck a nerve. You should reflect on your own insecurity rather than project it all onto me.Replies: @fitzhamilton
Reg, I’m trying to save you from going down the Tiny Duck/Corvinus repetitive facetious rhetoric route. Why? You actually demonstrate some intellect, but succumb from time to time to vain, faux cleverness. Heal thyself.Pretty sure most people using contraception aren’t thinking of Darwin. You’re obsessed with the man. Why not cite Galileo instead? He likely did far more to break the ‘spell’ of Christian belief.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
It has nothing to do with whether they are “right”. It’s about whether they are determined to destroy us– the commenters’ claim, not mine. If so, then their support for evolution classes, contraception, pornography, and the lot through the ACLU must be part of this endeavor. Why would it be an exception? What gives?
What’s the difference between the ACLU and the ADL, or SPLC?
No, they’re thinking of getting off. Without propagating the race. You don’t need a scientist to tell you what’s wrong with that. The parish priest can explain it.
No, with his adherents, and their contradictions.
Darwin is fascinating because he (or Wallace) came up with “survival of the fittest”. Yet those who embrace his theories end up rendering themselves unfit.
The Yupik creation story has a warning about overpopulation, but it’s less effective than modern man’s at racial suicide:
We don't need a "god of the gaps" to explain nuances we don't understand. Explain how order spontaneously erupts from chaos, out of nothingness. Explain how energy (called matter, when it becomes perceptible and manipulatable by scientists) seems to self organize itself, and become ever more complex. Explain that. You can't, and you know it. We don't need a "god of the gaps" to explain things, we need a God of the Abyss.
Darwinism is a crock of nonsense. Explain the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record goes from plankton and algae, single celled organisms, to a plethora of complex life forms in about ten million years or so. That's not random mutations being "selected" by the environment. That's something you - none of us - can explain, something that we do not understand.
It's tiresome that materialists sneer so stupidly, pretending to understand everything. You understand next to nothing. You can merely describe some things incompletely, without explaining why things ineluctably happen as they do.
The more I understand how little you understand, how absurd and idiotic the extent of your gaslighting is.. Well, all I can say is you are pathetic. At least as pathetic as the silly "fundamentalists" who pretend that Genesis is a science text, or a positivistic history. All you modernists are silly and absurd.
Arrogance, foolishness and stupidity are all of a piece. The modern world is dying for a reason: your "thought" - the idiotic way you think - is it.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @James Speaks
Sorry, Colin, it’s a basic historical fact.
We don't need a "god of the gaps" to explain nuances we don't understand. Explain how order spontaneously erupts from chaos, out of nothingness. Explain how energy (called matter, when it becomes perceptible and manipulatable by scientists) seems to self organize itself, and become ever more complex. Explain that. You can't, and you know it. We don't need a "god of the gaps" to explain things, we need a God of the Abyss.
Darwinism is a crock of nonsense. Explain the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record goes from plankton and algae, single celled organisms, to a plethora of complex life forms in about ten million years or so. That's not random mutations being "selected" by the environment. That's something you - none of us - can explain, something that we do not understand.
It's tiresome that materialists sneer so stupidly, pretending to understand everything. You understand next to nothing. You can merely describe some things incompletely, without explaining why things ineluctably happen as they do.
The more I understand how little you understand, how absurd and idiotic the extent of your gaslighting is.. Well, all I can say is you are pathetic. At least as pathetic as the silly "fundamentalists" who pretend that Genesis is a science text, or a positivistic history. All you modernists are silly and absurd.
Arrogance, foolishness and stupidity are all of a piece. The modern world is dying for a reason: your "thought" - the idiotic way you think - is it.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @James Speaks
Too much here to take seriously, but I do offer two insights.
1. The entropy of any closed systems never decreases; it only increases. Order did not increase; life on earth did not spring out of chaos. The sun must be included, and it is clear the entropy of the earth-sun systems increases.
2. I seem to have struck a nerve. You should reflect on your own insecurity rather than project it all onto me.
I've been told that the real issue the Tennessee legislature was concerned with was eugenics, not creationism. They saw a straight line from Darwin to eugenics, as was being promoted in "progressive" states like Oregon. Darrow brought in creationism at the trial to humiliate Bryant. Law is about showmanship, not scientific proof.
This makes things sticky for "the Left" because post-WWII they have demonized eugenics, so it's in their interest to promote the "Darwin vs. Creationism" version.
How the pro-HBD men of Unz reconcile that with "we need Christianity to hold society together" is another sticky issue.Replies: @Keypusher, @John Johnson
“I’ve been told that the real issue the Tennessee legislature was concerned with was eugenics, not creationism. “
Who told you that? And why did you believe them?
“Law is about showmanship, not scientific proof.”
Oh. Because you’re a moron.
I've been told that the real issue the Tennessee legislature was concerned with was eugenics, not creationism. They saw a straight line from Darwin to eugenics, as was being promoted in "progressive" states like Oregon. Darrow brought in creationism at the trial to humiliate Bryant. Law is about showmanship, not scientific proof.
This makes things sticky for "the Left" because post-WWII they have demonized eugenics, so it's in their interest to promote the "Darwin vs. Creationism" version.
How the pro-HBD men of Unz reconcile that with "we need Christianity to hold society together" is another sticky issue.Replies: @Keypusher, @John Johnson
This makes things sticky for “the Left” because post-WWII they have demonized eugenics, so it’s in their interest to promote the “Darwin vs. Creationism” version.
It’s not even Darwinism. It’s egalitarian Darwinism vs Creationism.
You aren’t teaching Darwinism if you assert that it doesn’t apply to human groups and that anyone who says otherwise is a dirty evil Nazi.
This is why I think the whole debate is a joke. The left only embraces evolution to bludgeon Christianity as it is perceived to be a White religion.
Leftists will go to crazy extremes to defend Islam while suppressing any discussion of race and natural selection. Most of them know full well that they are lying and have to embrace such ridiculous double standards. In their minds the only way to take down Whites is to lie about race and then support non-White religions while pretending to embrace secularism.
Anything they conserve will be confiscated from them by their betters.
There is a difference between wanting Private Property and libertarianism.
Private Property requires a State to protect your rights.
Libertarians are too stupid to see the Truth about the World.
Their own self-centered worldview prevents them from seeing REALITY.Replies: @AnotherDad, @John Johnson
Libertarians are too stupid to see the Truth about the World.
Their own self-centered worldview prevents them from seeing REALITY.
I honestly don’t think most of them are stupid.
I think as with liberals it’s a case of reality being too difficult for them and their ideology provides the answers.
The Libertarian ideology offers them simple solutions to complex problems. Cut taxes, legalize drugs, open the borders and everything will be fine.
Once you bring race into the discussion the whole thing falls apart. No wonder that Rand was so adamantly opposed to racial thinking.
We see this today with current Libertarian writers and leaders. They will go to amusing lengths to blame the police for “civil unrest” as if The Big Bad State only exists to crack down on innocent Blacks. They do not want to consider the possibility of race being a factor in group outcomes. It must be the ever ominous state trying to hold back Blacks from reading Rand.
Those things are in fact destructive.
Really. I haven’t seen commenters writing that the ACLU is “determined to destroy us”. That’s your assertion. Are you still trying to conflate the ACLU with “the Jews”?
One huge difference—the ACLU (still) supports free speech, unlike the ADL and SPLC. Unless I’m mistaken, the ACLU fights against anti-“hate speech” legislation. The ADL and SPLC, not so much.
LOL. Priests are either celibates or increasingly likely to be degenerates—pro LGBTQ, pro immivasion. Do you take White race propagation advice from priests? Do they advocate White race propagation in their sermons? If not, you can’t blame the ACLU for that.
You’ve got it backwards: Those who’ve (temporarily?) abandoned “survival of the fittest” are rendering themselves unfit. There are two components to SOTF: Racially endogamous procreation combined with suppression/exclusion of other (hostile) racial groups within a territory in question. You seem to loathe to countenance the latter; are you a pacifist of some sort? Do you follow a specific religious doctrine?
[White] racial suicide has little to do with birthrates, except in some regions. There are plenty of Whites creating plenty of more Whites, in enough numbers to run those countries just fine. It’s the swamping of White countries with (often hostile) non-Whites that’s putting Whites in a precarious position.
If anything, Christianity is the culprit rather than Darwin: Most modern Christians seek peace above all and believe there to a universal ‘brotherhood of man’ in the eyes of God. Thus the phenomenon of White “Christcucks” worldwide who embrace racial ‘diversity’.
The ACLU is doing Whites a favor by keeping Christian (and other religious instruction) out of public schools: It would probably further decrease the White birthrate—a “parish priest” might likely smile at that.
United States: 5.4% > 4.6%
United States white: 4.9% > 3.4%Secularism comes at a steep price.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Reg, you’re bad at math, or tiresome at trolling, or both. Where’s the White “death spiral” in total numbers? With cites, please.
My work here is done
One down. A lot more to go.
Hopefully Jerry Taylor will be next. He’s certainly got it coming.
If anything, Christianity is the culprit rather than Darwin: Most modern Christians seek peace above all and believe there to a universal ‘brotherhood of man’ in the eyes of God.
Well the problem is that when Whites go secular they have fewer children.
It’s really not debatable and is true in both Europe and the US.
Certain forms of Christianity seem to provide a level of inoculation against liberalism.
Now in theory you could have a countering force to liberalism that isn’t Christianity but no such force currently exists.
So we have a very real problem of secular Whites being duped by liberalism. Their liberal profs convince them that Christianity should be rejected while sideloading the liberal virus.
Even intelligent Whites become convinced that liberalism is “teh science” and truly believe that racial inequality would exist in all areas if not for racist Whites. This leads to self-loathing and the belief that Whites do not need to have children.
White people don’t do well with secularism and gravitate towards liberalism as a replacement religion when they leave the church. It’s just the way it is.
Fascists were the people organized to oppose bolshevism. Opposing bolshevism is the essence of fascism.
It isn’t. The entire political spectrum opposed the Communist parties except from some suborned outfits. The salient features of fascism are a rejection of parliamentary institutions, revanchism, and conceiving of the default function of the state as an agent of national mobilization.
You mean like key elements in the US banking community, influential US universities such as NYU and the US government under FDR. Small suborned outfits like that?Replies: @Art Deco
1. The entropy of any closed systems never decreases; it only increases. Order did not increase; life on earth did not spring out of chaos. The sun must be included, and it is clear the entropy of the earth-sun systems increases.
2. I seem to have struck a nerve. You should reflect on your own insecurity rather than project it all onto me.Replies: @fitzhamilton
I’m not insecure. I’m weary. You’re the one that’s difficult to take seriously.
If you believe that entropy is inescapable, let entropy take you then. Let the annihilating void claim its own. This conversation is pointless.
As is everything else. For you, anyway. Enjoy your nihilism.
You assume that the universe, reality itself, is a closed system. But you have no way of proving it. The fact that energy in organized self renewing patterns exists – the fact that anything exists at all – suggests that entropy itself is merely an illusory artefact of time and space.
Energy continues to manifest itself in complex forms. Stars continue to form.
We sit here, conscious in a nanosecond of eternity, and pretend to understand what is happening. But we don’t. You don’t.
You haven’t touched a nerve, James. I’ve been listening to people like you for decades now, all of you holding forth with such arrogant confidence, passing judgement on reality while raining contempt on people who presume to question your fundamental assumptions.
It’s not threatening. It’s tiresome.
Clever blowhards who think they have everything figured out, who run around insulting everyone who disagrees with them are one of the worst sort of bullies to take.
It isn't. The entire political spectrum opposed the Communist parties except from some suborned outfits. The salient features of fascism are a rejection of parliamentary institutions, revanchism, and conceiving of the default function of the state as an agent of national mobilization.Replies: @Curle, @ben tillman
“ The entire political spectrum opposed the Communist parties except from some suborned outfits.”
You mean like key elements in the US banking community, influential US universities such as NYU and the US government under FDR. Small suborned outfits like that?
Since another reply wants to challenge your reasonable definition of fascism with what I suppose might offer itself as a more general definition suffice it to say that 20th century Fascists were the people organized to oppose bolshevism. Opposing bolshevism is the essence of the successful fascist movements in the 20th century.
You mean like key elements in the US banking community, influential US universities such as NYU and the US government under FDR. Small suborned outfits like that?Replies: @Art Deco
What do you fancy NYU and American banks had to do with Finnish politics?
Comment 14 is the beginning of this non-Finnish thread.
Thanks.
It isn't. The entire political spectrum opposed the Communist parties except from some suborned outfits. The salient features of fascism are a rejection of parliamentary institutions, revanchism, and conceiving of the default function of the state as an agent of national mobilization.Replies: @Curle, @ben tillman
I pulled my definition from the Shorter OED, circa 1930.
This Jerry Taylor was featured recently on The Jimmy Dore Show (on YouTube).
Taylor had been invited on the show to talk about a possible labour action, but instead decided to talk about how Dore had committed the crime of previously interviewing a ‘Boogaloo Boi’, who Taylor termed a ‘nazi’.
Dore does a great job showing how phony roadblocks are put up by some ideologues on the left when the subject of cooperating with right-wing dissidents comes up!
I should have mentioned in my comment above that the take-down of Jerry White is in the episode of The Jimmy Dore Show entitled ‘Class Solidarity or ‘Deplorables’? — The Left’s Failed Messaging’.
And one other thing I could have mentioned: the couple with the guns defending their home from that mob had just spent a considerable amount of time painstakingly restoring their historic home to its condition & appearance from its heyday about 100 years ago. They even went to the trouble of consulting with a historical association and purchasing furniture which had formerly been in the house.
So those two weren’t just protecting their home & themselves. They were also protecting a historical artifact restored to its original condition…
Thank you for this. I (a Catholic) used to be deeply skeptical of the Reformation, of both Luther and Calvin, and most especially Zwingli, but the past twenty years have taught me many things, and one of them is deep respect and affection for serious Protestants, most especially radical Anabaptists and ferocious hard nosed five point Calvinists like you.
I used to – and still sometimes do – make cracks such as the five solas being four solas too many, and have a few dozen scriptural bombs (e.g., how John 3:16 interpreted as “once saved always saved,” “salvation by faith alone” and irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints does’t seem to square with Paul “working out his salvation in fear and trembling,” so on, so forth..) – facile apologetic proof texts I once took far too much uncharitable pleasure and glee in lobbing.
The last twenty years have humbled me. On my last trip to Rome all I seemed to sense (spiritually “see”) was occultism and perverse decadence all about me.. I came away with a profound sense of foreboding, a premonition of looming catastrophe, an intimation of apocalypse. I realize now how Luther must have felt in the court of fey louche lecherous old Leo X.. I understand and deeply sympathize with him now.
There are far too many Greco-Roman statues and paintings of naked men in the Vatican, and very few of naked women.. The obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s square (brought to Rome from Alexandria by Emperor Caligula in 37 AD) is in the middle of an eight pointed star (Astarte’s?) and is in occulted opposition to the basilica’s dome. That’s high test magical hermeticism, not Christian in the least. There’s an ancient nameless corruption festering there, I felt its gathering malignant power and presence.
I think it was Newman (a somewhat sketchy fellow now in my mind – his argument on the development of incipient dogma is really the only leg that Vatican I & II can possible stand on, and that leg is wobbling dangerously, near toppling..) who said “to get deep into the scripture is to cease to be protestant”.. I still believe that to be true..
But I now also believe that to get deep into history is to cease to be an ultra-montane papist. I have read deeply, and now I am no longer one. Papal juridical supremacy and infallibility are historical nonsense on stilts, stilts splaying widely askew.
I am deeply tempted by Orthodoxy, my heart surges at their aesthetic purity and ferocious atavism..
But I believe in purgatory, because suffering must be ontologically (spiritually) cathartic and meaningful, and God’s justice must be satisfied. Christ’ martyrdom and ours must be one in the same. We must suffer with him, gladly.
I also believe in the filioque (“Christ is eternally begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father through the Son” just as St. Basil says)..
I also think that Orthodox ecclesiology without the emperor makes no sense, and has fallen into heretical tribal jurisdictional fissiparity..
So I’m left without a meaningful ecclesiology. The Church I believe in doesn’t now in the formal sense exist, except in the mystical sacramental (baptismal and eucharistic) sense.. Which is to say the only ontologically necessary sense.
What is my point here? It’s this : Now, when I encounter people like you, I’m no longer tempted to attack. In fact, I wish on some level I could join you. We have much in common, and what we have in common is becoming ever and ever more salient, as the world becomes ever and ever more openly depraved, ever more impudently wicked and unabashedly satanic.
Thanks for your witness. God Our Father, Christ Our King bless and keep you. May the Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you. May our Triune God keep you safe and purify you, and sustain you in this trial we are facing.
I noticed something peculiar a while ago, when I was in Geneva. Calvin’s “cathedral” in there has something odd in the neoclassical tympanum, in the peak of the roof above the main entrance.. It’s a radiant host, inscribed with Christ’s monogram: IHS. You can see it here:
There’s no other iconography in the church to speak of, the iconoclasts stripped everything else bare, leaving all the niches empty. But the glorified host remains. I found that exceedingly strange, and very moving..
I’m glad you’re out there. Stay staunch in the faith that we’ve received. I’m your friend, and ally. Pray for me, as I do you.
Same here. Time was, a libertarian would be ashamed to join a pant-hooting mob of simps who’re wishing violence on a person for carrying of a firearm. The Rittenhouse lad did nothing wrong.
Thanks so much for that insightful and inspiring response, Fitzhamilton.
I join you in feeling adrift in a world where the great cathedrals function mostly as vulgar museums (at best), and where traditional liturgy and ecclesiology are either derided and discarded (my side of 1517), or deracinated and disempowered (your side, perhaps, and also the Orthodox).
Speaking of which, I almost laughed when you described the pull Orthodoxy has on you — when I feel most spiritually adrift, I have a set of CDs with sung Russian Orthodox liturgies to which I listen, and often feel encouraged. There remain few confluences where beauty and artifice meld naturally with devotion, but that one holds steady.
Thanks also for your observations on St Peter’s and Calvin’s church in Geneva. I’ve visited both, but I didn’t notice the host at Geneva as you did — I grew up in a Reformed church, so, as you might expect, iconography is not my strong suit. Even so, I found Calvin’s church eerie — the absence of so much shattered and ripped-away beauty was disquieting, and led me to question some of the assumptions I’d made about the ‘idolatry’ of image-ing the Divine. I was overwhelmed at St Peter’s, and not in a positive sense. Looking at churches built in the past 50-70 years, it’s easy to see how both of these extremes have eroded the majestic unity of the vision that inspired the great cathedrals and churches. I hope there still might be — this side of the Heavenly City — a better contemporary meeting of earthly architecture and stripped-down-to-essentials spirituality.
By the way, I have a couple of recommendations for you, if you’re not already aware of them. The first is the novel Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, by the Canadian author Michael O’Brien. It’s an odd but quite compelling story of a Carmelite priest called out of seclusion to confront the Antichrist. It sounds like the awful Left Behind kind of thing, but it’s not. It’s about 25 years old now, but I recently reread it, and it held up well.
The second is the crowd-funded TV series on the life of Jesus titled ‘The Chosen‘. My family and I have watched six out eight of the first season’s episodes, and we have enjoyed it immensely. It’s again very unlike the cringe-worthy stuff the Christian media often turn out. It’s funny, very natural and human, and quite deeply affecting. The production values are good. It’s available free at the link I’ve given, as well as on YouTube. I haven’t watched any of the introductions/commentary provided with the episodes themselves, so I don’t know if they’re worth the time, but the series itself is.
Finally, I am most grateful for your prayers; I will indeed pray for you as well. Stay strong; we must remind ourselves we are never alone.