Government and Greatness: The Contemplative Way, and the Active Way

This is an excerpt from King Jason's War, that I enjoy. It is, here, entirely out of context, but I'm hopeful that it will still make some sense. It describes, I think, some of what's going on between the radical Liberals and the radical Conservatives, in these days.

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"It's amazing, really." Jason sighed. "They have their expectations of the world, of how it works, and the world just seems to shape itself around them."

"That is generally the way of it, with noblemen."

Jason growled, "It's not just the people. Sure, you'd expect it to be that way with people. All the commoners know that the nobles are in charge, so they conform to the world as the nobles see it. But…I mean…everything. The Eskiem certainly don't credit our Peers any authority, but look what has happened. The Peers want a war, and the events of the last few hours seem to guarantee one! Reality shaping itself around their expectations."

"There is more to it than that, Jason—"

"But the worst part is," Jason took a deep breath, eyebrows furrowing, "the worst of it is being me, living in this world of my own that doesn't conform to their expectations, but watching their world move right along in spite of me. They see a war as right and necessary, and my little objections—"

"You have not been entirely sure of your objections, Jason." Robert interrupted, softly, but Jason stopped speaking and listened closely. "Are you suddenly sure that you stand against this war?"

"Not…well, yes, but…. No, I see your point, but even so—"

"They believe, and stand by their beliefs. You doubt, you take time to consider, and your search for real understanding makes you hesitate, makes you wait for more information. Meanwhile, they act in their quick confidence, and the world has left you behind."

"It's not fair, Robert. It's not right that recklessness should have the upper hand."

Robert started to answer, but then stopped, thinking. Finally, he said, "It's not necessarily recklessness, Jason. Their path, their whole worldview, is one of confidence and action. Yours is one of contemplation and philosophy. Yours requires patience, and care, and long years to attain its end."

"But what do I do about this war? This decision must be made today, no matter my own patience."

Robert looked over and met his friend's eye. "Are you truly asking my advice? Do you want my answer to that question?" Without hesitation, Jason nodded. "Then here it is: your path has nothing to do with this war, or any one war. Your philosophy is not one that shapes decisions, but worldviews. If you stand against this war, the war will happen anyway. If you become king, you will have a lifetime to change the way this nation views the world around it. My advice, good and true, is to say your piece, and then let the Council make its decision in this matter. Then commit your reign to crafting a world where we will never have to face this decision again."

Ewww!

Eww. Ew.

Ew.

I read an article about a Chinese cosmetics firm using the flesh of executed prisoners in the formation of their makeup.

Ewwwww!

Habanero Pepper Oil Recipe

From Teresa Nielsen Hayden's infuriating (read: liberal) weblog. To all my reading public: do not read the rest of the website. Just this one post, with associated comments. I emailed most of you the recipe, but once I got to the comments, I realized those needed to be preserved, too, so here's your link.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006812.html#006812

Daniel...you're an exception. You're allowed to read the rest of her website. None of the rest of you! Seriously. On pain of I'm-not-going-to-listen-to-you-complaining-about-their-extremism.

That is all.

Government: America is NOT a Democracy

HaHA! I have fooled you all. You expect me to spend a page and a half talking about how, technically, it's a Republic. To that I say "Pshaw!"

America is a very polite, Practical Anarchy.

We are a nation so founded on hatred of tyranny that we established a non-government government. Our greatest political pride comes from our Bill of Rights -- protecting the citizens of the country from any actual government -- and our Checks and Balances -- protecting our government from the terrible responsibility of actually being able to accomplish anything.

Seriously, consider your education in the nature of our government. How much focus was given to checks and balances? You know what "checks" are, in this sense? They're things that stop forward motion. We have a system in place to prevent the government from going anywhere. We have "balances" to make sure that these checks are equally restrictive on all branches of our government.

We are the first nation (at least to my knowledge) to wholly gloat in the deliberate and successful construction of an impotent government.

We've done okay, though, haven't we? I'm not denying that. When I claim that the U.S. is an Anarchy, I do so in the terminology of political philosophy, not popular media. We have constructed a system that politely tells the American government to stay out of the lives of the American people, and everything will be fine.

What amuses me most is that our Founding Fathers recognized Government as an inevitable aspect of human society so, instead of trying to establish a nation free from Government entirely, they quarantined it.

We provide our government with just enough power, just enough resources, and just enough attention to keep them concentrated on their nonsense, while we go about our lives. Our corporations act, our entrepreneurs act, our charitable organizations and special interest groups and legal teams and community organizations all act, while our government blusters and talks.

We don't have a representative government at all -- instead we have direct representation, in that we have built a society to enable the citizens to express themselves without the interference of a Government.

No, it's not a perfect Anarchy, and I didn't claim it was. I called it polite Anarchy, and then I went on to acknowledge that we do have an established government structure. My point is that, practically, the main political concern of most Americans is to keep the government out of their lives. We're still the Colonialists, who built their own cities, who managed their own affairs, and who were willing to pay taxes to keep the king on the other side of the sea, but willing to fight a war when he actually tried to control their lives.

It's worked, because of the massive amount of resources available to everyone in our society. When our poor are better off than most of the world's middle class, we don't need government in the way so many nations do. We have, in Practical Anarchy, what most nations need rigorous Socialism to achieve.

We have Corporations so wealthy they don't need tarriffs. We have Charitable Organizations with sufficient volunteer funding to dwarf the public works projects of many developed countries. We have, in our individuals, what most societies only have through the organization and administration of a careful government.

In other words, we're spoiled. Furthermore, as all spoiled children do, we're squandering. Governments develop in order to help a society make the most of its resources. Governments organize and control independent elements so that the productivity of the whole can be greater than the sum of their parts. That's what Governments do.

It's also what we call tyranny. The importance of the individual must be placed below the importance of the society for the society to fully attain its potential. We as a nation dread that pragmatism, and so we designed a self-contained, cannibalistic system of Government, encased it in a fancy marble shell, and got on with our lives.

Listen to the outcry right now against the Federal government's response to the Katrina disaster. It's too slow, it's unproductive. When it should be rushing in to save people's lives, something has stopped its forward motion. When the Government should be acting, it is instead quibbling, attempting to assign blame to all of its balanced members.

Look: that's the way the system was designed to work. That's what we're so proud of, in our civics classes. We chose to hamstring our Government and that's why, right now, the volunteers and the aid organizations and the independent assitance groups have so much more to offer than the Federal response. It's not a matter of resources, but of structure, and the philosophy that designed our nation in the first place.

The Nature of Prescriptive Linguistics

Read this link, too. It's funny.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050829ta_talk_alford

Instructions

http://www.endicott-studio.com/cofhs/cofinstr.html

Okay, perhaps I wasn't perfectly clear, but everyone needs to READ this link.

God: Christian "Science"

I got this passage from someone else's blog, which I clicked through to from a blog that makes me entirely furious, every time I glance at it. So, instead of following proper etiquette and linking you to the other blog, I'll just paste the relevant bit here:

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"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]''

-- Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad Litteram Libri Duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), AD 401-415, translated by John Hammond Taylor
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See? That's a passage from some ancient dude. Credit goes to him, not the chick that brought him up in the first place. If you'd LIKE to read a bunch of people bash on Christians, though, here's the link to the source blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/ajhalluk/145379.html

I like the points this Augustine makes, though. I strongly agree with what he's saying here. Then again, as a Social Constructionist, I'm more readily able to surrender discussions of the nature of reality than many Christians, because I'm basing my faith on something bigger, behind the scenes. Know what I mean?