tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56758385284295162702024-03-13T01:02:10.343-07:00............................Bush2012....................................freedom or fear?Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-64696686313961253812011-02-06T20:25:00.001-08:002011-02-06T20:25:30.884-08:00The horror of skin pulled tight against ribs,<br />Anger and lust and grief hijacking<br />the director's reigns,<br /> until the movies of our lives are lurid snuff films<br /> pieced together footage from the crash site.<br /><br />The horror of the body and it's uncontrollably,<br />to find oneself an unformed character,<br />and the author was<br />everywhere and nowhere to be found.<br />And I was surely a fool.<br />That much I was certain of.<br /><br />I held a gun to my own back<br />and made myself do it.<br />I buried truths I'd known alive,<br />screaming and scratching at the lids of pine coffins.<br /><br />I lied. And died a liar.<br />A dead liar lying<br />on a cold stone table.Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-4549625207522178962010-04-04T19:54:00.000-07:002010-04-04T20:03:53.799-07:00"Everything solid melts into air..."<a href="http://www.trivalleyvine.com/blogimages/Home%20Underwater.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 383px;" src="http://www.trivalleyvine.com/blogimages/Home%20Underwater.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><blockquote>There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?" (Wallace 2005)</blockquote><br /><br /><br /><strong>LIQUIDITY RECONSIDERED</strong><br /><br /><br /> In the social theory of Zygmunt Bauman, the solid world we once navigated has melted into a liquid modern world. In the solid modern world there were enduring social institutions that could be used in designing the trajectory of one’s life project. Yet the liquid modern world is plagued by endemic uncertainty. We can no longer expect stability from social forms, “structures that limit and organize individual choices, institutions that guard repetitions of routine, and patterns of acceptable behavior” (Bauman 2007 : 1). Liquid modernity demands that individuals do for themselves the heavy lifting once performed by these social forms. Before, one could employ social forms to develop long-term life projects. Now, social forms are not cohesive or consistent enough to serve as the frame of reference from which to set a permanent life trajectory.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS: CENTRIFUGAL OR CENTRIPEDAL?</strong><br /> Bauman identifies two different orientations towards the pursuit of happiness that are presented to citizens of the liquid modern world. Humans can either choose a centrifugal or a centripedal orientation towards their pursuit. <br /><br />The centripedal orientation is that which Bauman warns us against. The centripedal orientation emerges forcefully from the individualistic, disordered logic of liquidity. In the old solid modern world, selfishness was frowned upon. “Individual interests were once understood to be petty, futile, abominably short—lived, vagrant when juxtaposed with the interests of the social whole: the nation, the state, the cause (Bauman 2008 : 32).” Yet in the liquid modern world, selfishness loses its old stigma. Now, an ideology of privitization instructs individuals to go it alone. Care for one’s own well being is considered the top priority. Responsibility is turned inward, and our highest responsibilities emerge as responsibilities towards ourselves (Bauman 2008 : 88). <br /><br /> The centrifugal orientation is epitomized by Emmanual Levinas (Bauman 2008 : 104). This model is based on obligation towards the well-being of others. Instead of turning away from our communities and towards selfishness, we embrace the pursuit of happiness as an outward looking project. The centrifugal orientation understands “the other as the trigger, the target, and the yardstick of a responsibility to be accepted, assumed, and acted upon…. This centrifugal orientation has all but disappeared from [today’s] view… elbowed out by the actor’s own self” (Bauman 2008 : 107). The centrifugal orientation that Bauman recommends to us embodies the idea that I cannot be well off if my neighbor is poor, because we are all bound up together in “one garment of destiny” (King 1963).<br /> <br /> In some ways, the centrifugal orientation is less a normative plea than an easily overlooked empirical observation. In the long-term, our well-being is often inseperable from the other. In today’s interconnected, liquid modern world, “no well-being for one… is innocent of the misery of another” (Bauman 2007 : 3). Like it or not, our well-being is increasingly interdependent with that of even the most remote Others. <br /><br /><strong>WINNERS AND LOSERS, SINKERS AND SWIMMERS</strong><br /> The dominant ideology of privitization individualizes both successes and failures. “Individuals are expected, pushed, and pulled to find individual solutions to socially created problems” (Bauman 2008 : 88). “Communally endorsed insurance policies against individual misfortunes… now being… withdrawn” Bauman 2007 : 13). Community-wide solidarity is dismissed as futile. The privatizers deride the centrifugal principles of individual and collective responsibility for the well-being of its members. Ideology dismisses other-oriented ethics as fostering dependency and the infantilizing tendencies of the welfare/nanny state.<br /> <br />The liquid modern world divides people between winners and losers, sinkers and swimmers. “Privitization ideology divides humanity and its own believers into winners and losers… It enables some and disables others” (Bauman 2008 : 92). Humanity becomes divided into winners and losers (Bauman 2008 : 116). Some will flourish if they are equipped, mentally and materially, to practice the art of life. Those who are not properly equipped will sink to the bottom of the liquid modern world, becoming servants to the swimmers. Capitalism’s global triumph makes an increasing portion of the population redundant. “Modern capitalism is choking on its own waste products which it can neither reassimilate nor annihilate” (Bauman 2007 : 29). In a world of Nietzschean Supermen, the weak are offered little more than an apology and a servile position in the new liquid order.<br /> <br /> To use Bauman’s metaphor, ours is increasingly a world of hunters and not a world of gardeners (Bauman 2008 : 113). We cannot set up residency on some solid surface and man the grounds long enough to reap what we sow. Instead, we must always be on the move, searching for a shifting body of dangerous and exotic game that eludes capture. Now, there is a bliss to being a hunter among hunters (Bauman 2007 : 110). For those natural swimmers in the liquid modern world, the pursuit is enjoyable and rewarding. However, given the diversity of humanity, some are predisposed to misery in this world. For factors often quite outside an individual’s control, the liquid modern world can offer either feast or famine. The liquid modern world is brutally Darwinian. Those who fail are expected to be the sole absorber of their failure. The weak are, at best, offered an apology from the strong. Where once the weak found strength in numbers, the logic of liquid modernity wilts their former solidarity.<br /><br /><strong>SHALLOW WATERS</strong><br /> Liquid modern socities are pulled towards privitzation not just by charismatic leaders but by the very logic of liquid modernity. Our individualistic society is not animated by a shared way of life. The liberal order “offers no official guidance on how people are to conduct their lives in a meaningful direction” (Beiner 1995). Liberalism offers an agnostic or neutral sponge to soak up the liquid modern social forms. Liberal societies in the liquid modern world threaten to leave the individual’s interior life as a world without furniture. As Robert Beiner puts it, “we purge our dwelling places of furniture because its presence would derogate from the moral imperative to create every bit of spiritual furniture from out of ourselves. The liberal impulse is an adventure in spiritual self-creation, and it transfers what the greatest poets and artists have been able to accomplish onto the shoulders of ‘Everyman’” (Beiner 1995).<br /><br /> Bauman’s liquid modern theory suggests that this interior decorating dilemma is not unique to liberalism. The social forms that once provided for people, top-down, moral and spiritual furniture, are no longer up to the task. Beiner says that liberalism transfers the burdens of great artists onto the shoulders of Everyman, but in The Art of Life, Bauman argues that it is the liquifying, “mind boggling pace of change” (Bauman 2007 : 11) that imposes the role of artist onto every modern individual. <br /> <br />The threat remains the same though for both Beiner and Bauman. Our interior lives face a crushing poverty given the lack of guidance and spiritual furniture, once available from the old solid social forms. Both see that to demand from everyman the accomplishments of the greatest poets and artists is unrealistic given the resources, material and inborn, that such feats demand.<br /><br /><strong>THE HERO VACUUM</strong><br />The liquid modern world is marked by perpetual uncertainty. Violent currents of change can come from any direction as “bolts out of the blue” that leave our life strategies blown to smithereens (Bauman 2007 : 94). These circumstances encourage a method of navigation that is “bland, calculating, petty and unheroic” (Beiner 1995). We risk losing all that makes humanity awesome and heroic with the collapse of long-term thinking, planning, and acting. <br /> <br />Morality is a matter of we-intentions. It involves the overlapping part of ourselves in which expectations are shared within communities. However, once the social forms that structure this type of morality are disintegrated, what is left of our moral personalities beyond a hollow shell? Can substantive morality exist without substantive communites?<br /> <br />Emerson said that, “our chief want in this world is for somebody to make us do what we can” (Ruppert 2003). In the liquid modern world, we are left without the people or institutions that make us do what we can. In the liquid modern world, if little is substantiviely expected of us, and if the expectors are increasingly ghosts of their solid selves, mankind’s accomplishments are likely to become increasinly bland, petty and unheroic.<br /> <br />Without community and the Levinas-style call to sacrifice, we cannot comprehend duty. Without duty, life is boneless and hollow. When we fail to look outward in our pursuit of happiness, our lives take on a perverse inward trajectory, like “a snake eating its own tail” (Bauman 1995 : 33). The cold utilitarian calculation of liquid modernity erodes principles and turns all of life’s focus towards ends and away from means. As the great gonzologist Hunter S. Thompson once put it: “…where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only… sin is stupidity” (Thompson 2003).<br /><br />Calculation and risk-management surrender the part of ourselves that is informed by emotion and sacrifice. The logic of liquid modernity tells us to achieve security by enclosing ourselves in “defense capsules” of solitude (Bauman 2007 : 11). However, in this risk-averse insulation, we lose the pleasures and possibilities of attachment. Attachment and community offer up the possibility of being heroic and fully human in a way we cannot do from within our anomic defense capsules. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><em><strong>Works Cited:</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Times. Polity Press: Malden, Mass. 2007.<br /><br />Bauman, Zygmunt. Life in Fragments. Blackwell: Cambridge, 1995.<br /><br />Bauman, Zygmunt. The Art of Life. Polity Press: Malden, Mass. 2008<br /><br />Beiner, Robert. “Liberalism: What’s Missing?” Society. Vol. 11, Number 5. July 1995.<br /><br />King, Martin Luther. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail. April, 1963.<br /><br />Ruppert, Jack. One of Us: Officers of Marines – Their Training, Tradition, and Values. Praeger Press: Quantico, 2003.<br /><br />Thompson, Hunter S. Kingdom of Fear. Simon and Schuster: New York, 2003.<br /><br />Wallace, David Foster. Commencement Speech at Kenyon College, Ohio. May 21, 2005. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html></em><br /><br /><a href="http://web.clark.edu/sclark/Baby%20swimming.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 323px; height: 400px;" src="http://web.clark.edu/sclark/Baby%20swimming.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-35466661286067924962010-03-04T22:53:00.000-08:002010-03-04T23:48:48.528-08:00The Pursuit of Autonomy and Adulthood<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.artnewsblog.com/images/diamond-skull-2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 379px;" src="http://www.artnewsblog.com/images/diamond-skull-2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Sam_Harris/Atheist_Manifesto.html">From Harris's ATHEIST MANIFESTO</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, "This belief gives my life meaning," or "My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays," or "I wouldn't want to live in a universe where there wasn't a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator." Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot. - Sam Harris <br /></span><br /><br />Harris is forcefully dismissive of religion's ability to cure our neuroses. Religious beliefs can function as mind cures, giving us confidence, easing our aches and fears, giving our lives a sense of spiritual pursuit, a groping in the dark which makes us happy in a way that, for some, cannot be filled by any other activity.Harris dismisses it as not fit for any but the "idiot[s]" or "madmen." In Harris's flippancy with the value of religion as mindcure, he pushes aside a modest goal which might not be so modest as prudent.<br /><br />To me the best argument against religion is that it seems to infantize us in some manner that is not good enough for me or you. If digging for diamonds that aren't there makes this guy happy, then WTF, that might, as I suggested above, be good enough. As Zygmunt Bauman asks, what's wrong with happiness? On the other hand, what a waste, this guy and his family could be far more fulfilled and contributing to the well being of others if they spent their scarce time and energy on searching for the real diamonds based on the best information out there.<br /><br />They say philosophy asks questions that can't be answered, and religion gives answers that cannot be questioned. Answers that can't be questioned are for children. Can the benefit of religion as a mind-cure, as a noble lie -- can that compare to the autonomy of life with no unquestionable answers, the uncomfortable reality that a restrained atheism is not just one superstition among others, but the absence of superstition.<br /><br />They say, the truth will set you free...... I go back and forth on how I feel about this. Sometimes I feel like nothing can be more freeing than ambiguity and nothing can enslave us more viciously than a taste of the truth.Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-31508378641908609652010-03-01T00:17:00.001-08:002010-03-01T00:24:53.123-08:00Emancipator<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0V1lRYLJvxMBJwB630G4CgEsH-9uqaLMYFJSs-bO2QyYwj-QEd8AoDyG2bHymEiKg1fPCWf4X8X3vIflnfmVI5bx_pMxNGn0UTRdpASRurytRJRG5vU-r3ho0zFHy3OQS41kWMQP6b9Wy/s1600-h/macaskill.storm.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 331px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0V1lRYLJvxMBJwB630G4CgEsH-9uqaLMYFJSs-bO2QyYwj-QEd8AoDyG2bHymEiKg1fPCWf4X8X3vIflnfmVI5bx_pMxNGn0UTRdpASRurytRJRG5vU-r3ho0zFHy3OQS41kWMQP6b9Wy/s400/macaskill.storm.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443577000208304514" /></a><br />John Brown, in Court before execution.<br /><br />"This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, <span style="font-weight:bold;">I submit</span>; so let it be done!"<br /><br />the emancipation, the martyrdom, the violence, and the submission... It is all tangled up in the John Brown story. Hmmm....Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-62363109508452145462010-02-23T14:32:00.000-08:002010-02-23T17:18:22.073-08:00Against "submission." The Infidel's Advocate<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4OvETeTTDIqyx39LrCXcTw4M5vZcnXp3O24vkfvlqFTziL2dZ8Oim3SmBhk8_kBI82CyFyKQBbM0uH8LiPcdGET1McefYRxO8NrwcATMbDqF1soZP8CGiRB465A1t8b0qAyG9hJOLzWj/s1600-h/eyes.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 385px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4OvETeTTDIqyx39LrCXcTw4M5vZcnXp3O24vkfvlqFTziL2dZ8Oim3SmBhk8_kBI82CyFyKQBbM0uH8LiPcdGET1McefYRxO8NrwcATMbDqF1soZP8CGiRB465A1t8b0qAyG9hJOLzWj/s400/eyes.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441609729706744562" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh__mr4DOnrJSDbBWnIhmtyQlk4cw-7tSuAPKimIOESqe9iDH3POR1mE_Q9PHpObbANv_93C7g8O8ePT3hXLpEo5V8y-_DmPI7m_H-fy5-BF1NURkPOirRM5x3D2vu4IR3SNg37iKaMOU1C/s1600-h/aaaaaaaa.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 341px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh__mr4DOnrJSDbBWnIhmtyQlk4cw-7tSuAPKimIOESqe9iDH3POR1mE_Q9PHpObbANv_93C7g8O8ePT3hXLpEo5V8y-_DmPI7m_H-fy5-BF1NURkPOirRM5x3D2vu4IR3SNg37iKaMOU1C/s400/aaaaaaaa.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441582432910597330" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Islam : </strong>translated into English, "submission."<br /><br /><strong>Liberalism:</strong> an emancipatory doctrine of individual liberty. Freedom. <br /><br />Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a woman born into a cage. Her fate was sealed by the face of global Islam in Somalia. She was not to be educated. She was not to be seen by any but the husband her parents selected for her, and her family. She was to veil, but not the colorful viels of the past, only the black veils of the new Global Islamic moovement. She was to obey her husband, or be struck, as the Koran stated. She was to provide him many children. She was to submit to Allah, but to know his will through her husband's will. <br /><br />But she escaped. She applied for refugee status, came to Holland, got a hand full of PHDs, wrote several bestsellers, served in Parliament, renounced her faith, removed her veil, dated, drank alcohol, and became on outspoken advocate for the freedoms she had gained by stepping into a liberal order.<br /><br />She teamed up with Theo Van Gogh, a distant relative of Vincent Van Gogh, to make a film called SUBMISSION. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGtQvGGY4S4">The ten minute film</a> presents a critiscisim of the way Islam subjugates women and structures violence against them. <br /><br />Some say Islam is a religion of peace and that those who use it to promote misogny and terrorism are "hijacking" it. In class I was told: "you are trying to make these issues about religion, they are about culture." --- Yet this violence and oppression and darkness are not some abberation, but the logical consequences of specific ideas. Koran, Sharia law, they are the foundation for a Global Islam that is all fringe and no center.<br /><br />The provocative film was shown on Dutch tv and Theo Van Gogh was killed by a young man with Islamic motivations, stuck to his chest was a note, declaring death for Hirsi Ali, but also death for those moderates who attempted to bridge the differences between them. All were infidels on the death list. No matter whether they were provocateurs like Van Gogh and Ali, or moderates like the mayor of Amsterdam, a man who criticized Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali' strident tone, and preached open ended tolerance.<br /><br /><strong>That mayor traded in holy war for uneasy peace</strong>... He made the death list nonetheless.<br /><br />In 25 years many Western European countries will be majority Muslim.<br /><br />In September of 2001, well... You know.<br /><br />Part of the cosmopolitan character of liberalism moves us to believe that there are no such thing as other people's children. If a young girl is being beaten and kept in a social cage next door, then you are complicit if you do nothing. If you are a man, in Islam, you are forced into a submission relationship with your spouse that dehumanizes you too. If your neighbors acceptance of your right to live is contingent on you accepting and retaining his supernatural doctrine, or at the least tip-toeing around it, then he is not a neighbor worthy of the name. <br /><br /><strong>An uneasy peace is not a peace worthy of the name. </strong><br /><br /><strong>Let us not be so open minded, that we cannot muster the defenses to hold a conviction.</strong> Global Islam refuses to adopt secular and civic values while exploiting ours to assault or gender equality, our freedoms, the genuine pluralism that underwrites our pursuit of happiness.<br /><br />The film that got Van Gogh killed and sent Hirsi Ali into hiding, Submission, was not very diplomatic. But you know the old adage about diplomats? A diplomat will tell a man with a gunshot wound to the head that he is "open minded."<br /><br /><br />I will proudly defend this intellectual territory. Emancipatory liberalism: the docrine whose fruits we enjoy and all should be offered that opportunity. <strong>You, I and our sons and daughters, will never have to bow to any priest, king or husband. </strong><br /><br />Hallelujia!<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESocLHiw7NjPHFK5jFVW2lV-jFk0GKDnBH6M9-WFJQqzqNbdsSdVu650i7jn6cPipwzVqqHzlMIO55emdE21zuXCmmDjS1t_hhLcatEkldoMLm0hJeoGc-cXihVhFifvchWh1IX1xX9hg/s1600-h/FallingMan2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 315px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESocLHiw7NjPHFK5jFVW2lV-jFk0GKDnBH6M9-WFJQqzqNbdsSdVu650i7jn6cPipwzVqqHzlMIO55emdE21zuXCmmDjS1t_hhLcatEkldoMLm0hJeoGc-cXihVhFifvchWh1IX1xX9hg/s400/FallingMan2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441582417625214850" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-61795275581801979402010-02-22T02:07:00.001-08:002010-02-22T02:27:46.640-08:00the pursuit of happiness<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiemFiQ9aJVa9pHqcB1UE39k1qb9R1PqKAhu8TyNNEDrWiV58o_EJ-IH7hVjZSW2h8zOlQrb5oYhDHDsYk5vjmoBY3GjVc3VRrZRjA80_S6XSZGtHykLVRSC567Y0Hl2u_W_jTyO4U-0WAm/s1600-h/zawtr.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiemFiQ9aJVa9pHqcB1UE39k1qb9R1PqKAhu8TyNNEDrWiV58o_EJ-IH7hVjZSW2h8zOlQrb5oYhDHDsYk5vjmoBY3GjVc3VRrZRjA80_S6XSZGtHykLVRSC567Y0Hl2u_W_jTyO4U-0WAm/s400/zawtr.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441012530238158578" /></a><br />The best things in life are beyond money: their price is agony and sweat and devotion - Starship Troopers<br /><br />Solemn pride must by yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. - President Lincoln<br /><br />We are what we repeatedly do... Excellence is a habit. - Aristotle<br /><br />Whether you think you can or think you cannot, you are right. <br /><br />What you give today: you have forever. What you don't give today, you have lost forever.<br /><br />Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.<br /><br />Our chief want in this world is to find someone who will make us do what we can. - Emerson<br /><br />Always do what you are afraid do. - Emerson<br /><br />The best way out is always through - Robert Frost<br /><br />Fortune favors the brave. = Publius Terrence<br /><br />Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness which frightens us most. - Nelson Mandela<br /><br />He who hesitates is lost.<br /><br />We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. - JFK<br /><br />Twenty years from now you will be more dissapointed by the things you didn't do than by the things you did. Sail away from the safe harbor towards undreamed shores. - Twain<br /><br />It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure and embrace the new. - Alan Cohen<br /><br />Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom - Marilyn Ferguson<br /><br />It's not that I'm smart, it's just that I stay with the problems longer. - Einstein<br /><br />Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Not talent or genius or education.<br /><br />Out of sufficiency have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. <br /><br />Trust yourself when all men doubt you. Being hated, don't give way to hating. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run... You'll be a man... - Kipling<br /><br />Self-trust is the nature of heroism.<br /><br />A big man makes us feel bigger when we are with him - John C. Maxwell<br /><br />Happiness depends on disposition, not circumstances. It is, above all, a choice. <br /><br />To be a great champion, you must believe you are the best, or pretend that you are. - M. Ali<br /><br />Finish each day and be done with it... Tomorrow is a new day, begin it well... with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. - Einstein<br /><br />Everyone has his own burden. What counts is how you carry it. - Merle Miller<br /><br />The optimist sees opportunity in every dangers. The pessimist sees danger in every opportunity. - W. Churchill<br /><br />If you conquer yourself, the victory is yours. It cannot be taken away from you.<br /><br />The time is always right to do whats right.<br /><br />The price of greatness is responsibility.<br /><br />To be great is to be misunderstood.<br /><br />Strength comes from seeing the honor in things.<br /><br />"Good luck" is really tenacity of purpose.<br /><br />I was never afraid of failure, I'd sooner fail than not be in the company of the best.<br /><br />Failure teaches success. <br /><br />A hero is not braver than the ordinary man, but he is braver longer.<br /><br />Great men have wills, feeble men have only wishes.<br /><br />Tis' better to be alone than in bad company. - G. Washington<br /><br />Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.<br /><br />All good things are very difficult to achieve and bad things are very easy to get.<br /><br />The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.<br /><br />High achievement always takes place within a framework of high expectations. <br /><br />There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.<br /><br />You must do the thing you think you cannot do<br /><br />People become quite remarkable when they start thinking they can do things.<br /><br />You have a powerful mind that can make anything happen as long as you keep yourself centered.<br /><br />Success is largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.<br /><br />If you're going through hell, keep going. - W. ChurchillBlack Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-25566790083005278272010-02-11T20:24:00.001-08:002010-02-12T05:49:12.794-08:00GOD IS (not) DEAD<a href="http://www.freerefill.de/blog/pix/sodebate_1104.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 374px; height: 250px;" src="http://www.freerefill.de/blog/pix/sodebate_1104.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Religious zealots will argue that if one fails to embrace a transcendental moral doctrine, usually their own, a person will be left with nothing to suppress their basest desires and lead them towards a morally bankrupt, nihilistic state of relativism. On the other end of the spectrum, the neo-atheists argue that religion is inherently toxic and destructive. Between these two extremes is the argument I endorse: affirmation of religion’s potential to soothe our pains and deepen commitments to causes shared with humanists, coupled with recognition of religion’s toxic potential and the possibility for non-supernatural sources of morality. Philosophical materialism does not necessarily bring about nihilism, and religion does not necessarily bring about destructive fanaticism.<br /> <br />The violence and intolerance done in the name of God does not overshadow the good deeds, just as the anguish and guilt caused by belief does not overpower the comfort and serenity. Belief in God is not a monolithic institution, but an internally diverse phenomenon. At first glance, we might put Buddhism and Islam in the same category the same way we might mistakenly place a shark and a dolphin in the same category. Just because some religious memes prey on their hosts does not mean that all of them do. In times of incredible temptation, loneliness and despair, belief in a stern but loving God can not only comfort people, but enable them to be good when “being good for goodness’ sake” is an insufficient incentive. The toxic religious memes use the larger benevolent ones as “<a href="http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/sci/A0840300.html">protective coloration</a>,” but with careful analysis we can see past the deception and untangle the destructive strands of religion from the beneficial ones.<br /><br />Religion has great potential to complement secular humanist projects. To evidence this claims I point to the Archbishop Desmond Tutu who took a defiant stand against the South African apartheid state. Even though the white supremacy of apartheid was a very toxic sort of religiously based meme, Tutu showed that Christianity could be used to spread just the opposite of racist evil. To the inhumanity of racism, Tutu used the gospel to spread a Christian meme that all humans are "God's children. There are no outsiders." "My humanity is bound up in yours," Tutu preached, "for we can only be human together." Religions that were once composed of toxic memes can come to mirror and complement the same values and projects supported by secular humanists.<br /> <br />For both those who claim religion as universal truth and noble lie, <a href="http://www.vision.net.au/~apaterson/science/philosophical_materialism.htm">philosophical materialism</a> is seen as a course which inevitably leads to moral relativism and nihilism. They claim that with only a materialist worldview, humans can only be “grotesque… “puppet[s] suspended on… chromosomes,” living accidental, insignificant lives. However, morality is not mere artifice that lifts us above primal, bestial amorality. Evolution gave humans an innate, hidden moral grammar, an unconscious process, activated by society that mediates our moral judgments. Humans are moral by nature, and will navigate the world in a morally informed manner whether or not a religious morality is there to guide them.<br /><br /><br />----<br /><br /> Secularization theory predicted that religion would slowly lose its significance and place in social life, eclipsed by rational, scientific explanations to the questions that face humanity. This premise has not born out, as religious life not only continues but thrives in the 21st century. Secularization theory is flawed because science cannot always do what religion does. Belief can enrich our lives in ways rational knowledge cannot. Despite the utopian dream of establishing one comprehensive account of everything, there is an epistemological pluralism, a number of incommensurable ways of understanding the universe.<br /> <br />Religion can do things that science cannot. Belief in a loving being which organizes the cosmos can give people the resilience to overcome the worst kinds of adversity. Religion can steel our will against temptation and deliver us from loneliness and apathy. While some people might be able to manage life’s trials without faith, for others it is unsubstitutable. Religious beliefs, even if erroneous, can have a placebo effect on the human mind, curing our aches and anxieties in a way that there is no reason to trade in for universal acceptance of Western medicine. Science itself has shown some false beliefs to improve human capacity, and studies show positive illusions can improve mental health. The choice between science and religion is a false one, as the two spheres are capable of complementary coexistence. <br /> <br />Those who advocate secularization theory as an empirical fact or a normative goal are guilty of the same fundamentalism as the religious fanatics they criticize. Secularization theory mirrors the utopian, universalistic assumptions of Christianity and Islam. Religious and scientific fundamentalists offer a “refuge from uncertainty, promising freedom from thought." In eclipsing religion as the main source of authority, science has mirrored its monopolistic ambitions, “preserv[ing] the comforting illusion of a single established world view. The false dawn of the secular age shows that while it might be a comforting illusion to anticipate an emerging account of the meaning of everything, there will always be multiple ways of knowing that are incommensurable. Epistemological pluralism tells us that science, art, religion and love can all offer insight into our human condition. No one approach to knowing can answer all our questions.<br /> <br />Religions are not so inflexible that we are forced to choose between holy war and total secularization. Despite their claims to “eternal and immutable principles,” religion has changed to meet the demands of modernity. Religious beliefs are adept at ensuring their own replication by adapting to the demands of the day. Modern religions are organized around increasingly abstract conceptions of the divine. Modern believers increasingly use second order beliefs to create religious institutions capable of coexistence. “Systematically masked creeds,” like belief in belief, allow adherents to avoid conflicts with “contradictory creeds that would otherwise oblige the devout to behave far more intolerantly than most people today want to behave. Despite the assertions of the neo-atheists, the existence of religion does not necessitate holy war or sectarian violence. In modern human life, religious institutions needs reform, not total removal.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.andrewjaffe.net/blog//images/Blake-Newton.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 450px; height: 347px;" src="http://www.andrewjaffe.net/blog//images/Blake-Newton.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-80360876160363250182010-01-27T23:32:00.000-08:002010-01-28T16:12:23.226-08:00GIVE ME LIBERTY OR SOMETHING ELSE:<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAxrAWtV1UJwdiDJBkmJTARRdtu3Y8mY7lChMM0-mBQTaceuYL2uo73vOnyY4HfIgZq9T4FX8xs9obHB1vEAs9aP9dFEy6k-Ec1kyoBwpO9oFiGr6tfpadajKEvVH6XYWxw7miaMBtl8Y8/s1600-h/howalt-crashed-car-windshield.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 318px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAxrAWtV1UJwdiDJBkmJTARRdtu3Y8mY7lChMM0-mBQTaceuYL2uo73vOnyY4HfIgZq9T4FX8xs9obHB1vEAs9aP9dFEy6k-Ec1kyoBwpO9oFiGr6tfpadajKEvVH6XYWxw7miaMBtl8Y8/s400/howalt-crashed-car-windshield.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431908350168704082" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Emancipation</strong><br /><br />Picture yourself at Marine Corps boot camp. The state has taken your hair and that of every other recruit. From the back of a perfectly spaced formation of bodies, you see a sea of shaved heads, identical in their infantile hairlessness. To enter this cradle of a very unique sort of citizenship, you have divorced yourself from your friends, your family, your home and your belongings. You have even divorced yourself from your self in a sense. There is no more "I," "me," or "us." Everything is "this recruit" or "these recruits." After a few days screaming at the top of your lungs, you will also literally lose your voice.<br /><br />Emerging from the belly of the state, bald and uniformed, you are now a new creature - for whom duty trumps particularism or emotional, localized loyalites.<br /><br />Now this experience, which I have tasted myself, is an apt metaphor for the modern condition of a citizen in a liberal state. We see each other as equals, but with that flattening of the social landscape comes an abstraction and a struggle to make it a reality, wherein the state both robs us of our selves to serve its own interests, and frees us from our selves for our own sake.<br /><br />Emancipation. The act of breaking the chains of bondage and setting people free. Many act of emancipation are preceded by terror or uncertainty from all parties regarding the forces that liberation might unleash. Once the chains are broken and the master and slave shred their respective roles, what chaos will be left? Conservative voices have long cautioned against too hasty or comprehensive forms of emancipation. They tell us it is better to stick with the imperfect oppresive regimes we have than potentially worse off post-liberation layouts.<br /><br />When I speak of emancipation I am speaking more broadly than literal slavery. I refer the ways a modern liberal state could liberate it's citizens, through education, legislation and coercion, from various forms of religous, ethnic and local identity. A liberal education might free an Amish child to become an astronaut or a Marine or a porn star. <br /><br />I hope the paradox I am after is emerging for the reader... Emancipation we often think of as the removal of oppression, the establishment of noninterference rights, rights to be left alone. But for a modern liberal state, emancipation isn't just stepping out from under the thumb of oppression, it is assuming an entirely new role that comes with its own set of restraints.<strong> To be emancipated is to be integrated into an organization of equals. Political equality and emancipatory liberalism are bound up with an ideal of neutrality that pushes us towards a thin sort of sameness. Emancipation is a process worth examining, because it comes with its own measure of frictions and sacrifices.</strong> I guess I'm just riffing on an age old question --- How do we balance freedom and equality, sameness and difference? <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Emancipation of the human race: could it require something that does not look anything like freedom as we understand it?</span><br /><br /><br /><br />With the internet, I can hop on Google Earth. Here is a whole new emancipation. I can step outside my body and view any corner of creation. Take the SAFE SEARCH off your Google and, trust me, you can step into any moral corner of the world too. You can use Facebook to peer into the lives of others, and they can peer into yours. The modern "you" is increasingly transparent, and rootless. If liberalism offers a program to unlock human potential through emancipation, then we have to ask what will lie before us when the dust settles? Will liberalism offer us a world with no masters, or are we after the freedom to choose who we bow to?<br /><br />Perhaps as we stand in the Age of Google, in the doorway of the 21st century and beyond, we are all like those boot camp recruits. Reborn. Emancipated from our old selves and struggling to understand our new roles.<br /><br />Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death!"<br /><br />Modernity opens the door for a third option. An abstracted, uniformed equality, forged in the metaphoric boot camps of our world -- animated with a boundless, liquid hybrid identity, made possible by the sea of information, communication and identity experimentation unleashed by the internet.<br /><br />Give me liberty... or something else?<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisNDz-3uoLrObtkUe9DYclLhQVVGVhYSSmO3g5__nY0mr9q9Jb7GPXTKUyjxNXeN0PgbwyxMrpNspBHagFT3BCTCWq-3Ukp6oYyCMYmghqTKYG3Eysm4BrUgfB219xtq2DnvCksdpunGYN/s1600-h/000000000000000000.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 286px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisNDz-3uoLrObtkUe9DYclLhQVVGVhYSSmO3g5__nY0mr9q9Jb7GPXTKUyjxNXeN0PgbwyxMrpNspBHagFT3BCTCWq-3Ukp6oYyCMYmghqTKYG3Eysm4BrUgfB219xtq2DnvCksdpunGYN/s400/000000000000000000.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431908344739513282" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-14704208539002948322010-01-22T15:06:00.000-08:002010-01-22T15:10:30.365-08:00So Sick<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha3i3PyogdlSdM0xkPyAMDYS1NYbyntG0rBIs5O0FWBSCfiH_KINDr9DlP2mWebGlicm5F0cSV89tA4FTM80aqKgptZUhzkstQ9gzDOwhfvWszBsMi2s4Cu0K_usJVYFObSAFXn6sYCVde/s1600-h/barack-obama-criminals.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 327px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha3i3PyogdlSdM0xkPyAMDYS1NYbyntG0rBIs5O0FWBSCfiH_KINDr9DlP2mWebGlicm5F0cSV89tA4FTM80aqKgptZUhzkstQ9gzDOwhfvWszBsMi2s4Cu0K_usJVYFObSAFXn6sYCVde/s400/barack-obama-criminals.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429705015520490338" /></a><br /><br /><strong>I wrote this in the first weeks of the Obama Adminstration. It speaks to this week.</strong><br /><br />Sick, so sick<br />Need a doc.<br />Need a government nipple<br />Need to nurse.<br /><br />I deserve hardwood floors.<br />I deserve health care<br />So sick, sick, so sick<br />Need a doc.<br />Need a job.<br /><br />I deserve stimulation.<br />I deserve a stimulus bill <br />I need my scheduled stimulant pills<br />I have the chills.<br />I am so ill<br />Just pass the bill<br />Can't afford?<br />Just pass the bill...<br /><br />So sick, Need a Doc? YES!<br /><br />I deserve a Third World nightmare.<br />I deserve a glass of water.<br />I deserve to wait in long, miserable lines.<br />I deserve a wire cage.<br />Inescapable, unblinking cameras.<br />I deserve supervision.<br />I deserve vaccinations.<br /><br />I am untamed, please bring my leash.<br />I will press the button.<br />when it hits you feel no pain<br /><br />So sick. <br />So Anglo. <br />So Saxxon.<br />I deserve it.Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-3529245284963490962010-01-21T16:40:00.000-08:002010-01-21T16:59:20.823-08:00Split Screen<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRz81N2PoBciQ2AdTMRphyphenhyphensvmEBQnQDNiLEvieY3gr8Ew7g4qvHg21ltsiniK9Xdkt4vVxHHflsc_8AqYa9LU-HO0xb_27HX4vjV5S8U3z_ziq0SewpxeGAkU3ugmYSxB6o5ruC4LdFGDX/s1600-h/cooper.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 304px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRz81N2PoBciQ2AdTMRphyphenhyphensvmEBQnQDNiLEvieY3gr8Ew7g4qvHg21ltsiniK9Xdkt4vVxHHflsc_8AqYa9LU-HO0xb_27HX4vjV5S8U3z_ziq0SewpxeGAkU3ugmYSxB6o5ruC4LdFGDX/s400/cooper.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429359258481440306" /></a><br />I turn on the tv, and Anderson Cooper has, for a week straight been playing savior on CNN. He is always sticking cameras in peoples faces, robbing them of their dignity at the moment it is all that they have left.<br /><br />Those god damned patronizing split screens, as if people in peril and agony just aren't enough to justify more than 1/4 of the screen.<br /><br />The commerical break reminds us that, while Hatians know they need food, water, shelter and medicine, you might not have realized you need a Droid and a Snuggie and GoldLine. <br /><br />Surely, if Cooper's primary objective was to help people, he could do that much more effectively without the cameras. But here it is: philanthropy as performance. Poverty porn.<br /><br />----------<br /><br />OR... Maybe Anderson Cooper is awesome. First major anchor on the ground in Haiti. Doing what a journalist does, within the context of the medium. Maybe my grievance is less towards him and more towards cable news in general.<br /><br />Still, maybe he should be more passive. What would be more effective in inspiring sympathy and material contributions: to turn on the TV and see that people are helping, or to turn it on and see the reality, that without the cameras and the media crews, there is agony and need on a Biblical scale. <br /><br />Maybe it'd be better for all of us to turn on the TV and see suffering without Anderson Cooper swooping into save the day.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/N-P5D887IcI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_GB&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/N-P5D887IcI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_GB&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-43055711232399418912009-12-19T01:01:00.001-08:002009-12-19T01:01:19.692-08:00Operation WEEZY F BABY<object width="480" height="430"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FLIL_WAYNE_ARTICLE_12_3.jpg&videoid=99621&title=DEA%20Recruits%20Lil%20Wayne%20To%20Use%20Up%20All%20Drugs%20In%20Mexico" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed src="http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf"type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="480" height="430"flashvars="image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FLIL_WAYNE_ARTICLE_12_3.jpg&videoid=99621&title=DEA%20Recruits%20Lil%20Wayne%20To%20Use%20Up%20All%20Drugs%20In%20Mexico"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/video/dea_recruits_lil_wayne_to_use_up?utm_source=videoembed">DEA Recruits Lil Wayne To Use Up All Drugs In Mexico</a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-15633378212083628822009-12-18T17:31:00.000-08:002009-12-19T21:17:32.554-08:00Four Wrong Turns: Four Moral theories and Four Visions of "the Bad Life"<a href="http://www.freefoto.com/images/33/15/33_15_15---Fire-Flame-Texture_web.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 600px; height: 400px;" src="http://www.freefoto.com/images/33/15/33_15_15---Fire-Flame-Texture_web.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />A moral theory tries to tell us what is valuable in life and how we should treat one another. Each moral theory is a project for articulating "the good life," whatever that may be. But the flip side of positive instruction is a negative warning. Each moral theory also threatens a wrong turn - a vision of the bad life - the hell on earth that we could create through either embracing the wrong moral theory or failing to embrace a moral theory all together.<br /><br />For the first three "hells," I'm not going to re-invent the wheel. If the reader evaluates me on originiality they might judge this post a failure. But I hope to provide a keenly observed, accesible and easily understood articulation of the moral projects of smarter men than myself. <br /><br />#4, my Facebook dystopia, is more my own invention.<br /><br /><br />ENJOY!<br /><br /><strong>DYSTOPIA #1</strong> <br /><br /><strong>THE REASONABLE, RATIONAL PUBLIC SPHERE WHICH SNEAKS INTO OUR PRIVATE LIVES</strong><br /><br />Liberalism is centered around the idea that we can draw a line between our public and private lives. In our private lives we can be religous, irrational, passionate. Behind the walls of our home we can experiment with sexuality and religous devotion in any way we seek.<br /><br />However, once we step into the public realm, the courthouse and the schoolyard and the town hall meeting, we are expected to check our private baggage at the door. If we are to make an argument in the public sphere, we have to house it in a vocabulary that is public, that other people can accept without having to accept our private religous or moral doctrines.<br /><br />Because rationality and reason are the only public currency, religon would start to erode over time as citizens began to, inevitably, take their public lessons home with them. <strong>As John Tomasi argues, the demand that we use reason would lead us to pull up our moral anchors one by one, until we were completely unanchored. Soon we would find ourselves floating aimlessly in the moral ocean, blown whatever direction by whichever wind carried the day.</strong><br /><br />This is the sense in which I am conservative and not liberal. The same sense in which friendship is conservative. Where modern liberalism asks us to divorce ourselves from our particularisms, friendship asks us to embrace the familiar shores we've come to love. Rather to stick with the imperfect friends we have than pull up our anchors and sail off into the unknown in search of better ones.<br /><br />Rationality. Reason. They can only take us so far. Political liberalism purports to be an agnostic, neutral grid that can manage the diversity of a society with different moral views (atheist, Islamic, Christian, ecologist, etc)... But at what point does that neutral grid become its own moral theory. Will the agnostic neutral grid eventually turn all our private moral convictions into mere hobbies? <br /><br />When the demands of the public sphere bleed over into our private lives, our lives become empty, uncomfortable, petty, calculating, and unheroic.<br /><br />Richard Breiner compares this vision of the bad life to a room without furniture. He offers this image to illustrate:<br /><br /><a href="http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/reviews/gray/gray6-23-2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 440px; height: 306px;" src="http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/reviews/gray/gray6-23-2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><strong>DYSTOPIAS #2 and #3</strong><br /><br /><strong>LIBERTERIANS IN HELL: THE STATE AS NANNY</strong><br /><br />You own yourself. This fundamental argument is at the center of libertarian thought. You have a right to be treated as an end in and of yourself. It is wrong for society to treat you merely as the means to some other end.<br /><br />To bring an illustration to this point about deserving to be treated like an end and not a means to someone else's end, imagine you are on a lifeboat with ten other people. It would certainly be noble of you to offer your body to the other 9 as food. But could the other 9 justifiably take your body as food by force. Could they kill you and eat you and argue that it was in the name of the greater good?<br /><br />A liberterian argues that this is an apt metaphor for being taxed under the table to pay for the social welfare of others.<br /><br />Let's say that the government decides it can take 25% of your earning at the end of the year. We are used to this idea.<br /><br />But what if you decided to work 25% less every year, could the government coerce you into working more? Is there any moral difference between the government taking 25% of the profits of your labor and the governement forcing you to labor for an extra X number of hours??? What is slavery other than being forced to work for nothing? For those hours for which the wages went to the governement, were you not working for nothing? To be sure you are not a total slave, but are you a partial slave?<br /><br />In this vision of the bad life, the government either forces you to work, or steals the fruits of your labor from you. There is no hope of working hard and getting ahead. You do not own yourself. <strong>The government owns you. And the government will gladly cut you up into little pieces and distribute you to the masses if that will make the public happier as a whole.</strong><br /><br />As Grover Nordquist said, <strong>"I don't want to get rid of government, I just want to starve it down to the size where I can drown it in the bathtub if need be." </strong>The liberterians fear a nanny state. The nanny state would decide what was best for you and if you disagree, you get spanked.<br /><br /><a href="http://commonsense.sizrz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dtom-shirt-for-den-2.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 500px;" src="http://commonsense.sizrz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dtom-shirt-for-den-2.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong>THE FLIP-SIDE: THE STATE AS INEFFECTIVE NIGHTWATCHMAN</strong><br /><br />What do we get when we abandon social welfare as the end of government? Would a world without taxes be anymore satisfying?<br /><br />A world where income inequality was enormous and insurmountable. There would be no equality of opportunity. The luck of the draw you experienced at birth would govern your entire life.... The state that is weak enough to be drowned in the bathtub would also be too weak to keep citizens from cheating and harming one another. In cases of racism and prejudice, the state's "hands off" attitude would doom those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder to staying on the bottom forever.<br /><br />Without a robust and effective government, there is not meaningful social mobility. Without meaningful social mobility, there is not hope.<br /><br />It would be terrible to live in a world where the governement was so weak it could not provide the basic institutions that give every citizen a glimmer of hope in reaching their potential. Liberterians claim they want to give people the ability to improve their condition through work, but in a pure liberterian future, many children would be doomed from birth to a life of poverty and squalor.<br /><br />The flip side of the libertarians vision of hell is the fact that their utopia might itself be rather hellish. Imagine the anarchy of a purely capitalist state. The police would only protect the interests of the wealthy. There would be an apartheid society based on inherited wealth, with ostentatious displays of wealth and wretched examples of miserable poverty.<br /><br /><strong>Morally, a libertarian utopia would have citizens not connected to each other with the moral ligaments of a dedication to the common good.</strong><br /><br />This "bad life" is a lawless, anarchic wild west. We live without hope for the future unless we were born with wealth and natural talent. We live in fear of our neighbors unless we are wealthy enough or strong enough.<br /><br />Where the liberterians fear the nanny state, critics fear the nightwatchman state. This state is too weak to help us overcome the collective action problems which we cannot solve for ourselves. <strong>All the public goods we enjoy, roads, streetlights, highways, public schools, police, firefighting, have been privatized.</strong><br /><br />There is no spirit of the common good to animate our policy deliberations.<br /><br />We have gained a bankrupt freedom. Not the freedom for every citizen to actualize their potential, but the freedom for the rich to be as selfish as possible.<br /><br /><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/09/business/600-view.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 600px; height: 340px;" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/06/09/business/600-view.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><strong>DYSTOPIA #4</strong><br /><br /><strong>GENERATION FACEBOOK</strong><br /><br />Is Facebook making ours a morally bankrupt generation? Are people more concerned with crafting their online personas than they are with actual actions and communication? <strong>Are we all retreating into ourselves, barricading ourselves up in fortresses of virtual identity.</strong><br /><br />Facebook and its clones inspire a moral landscape based on surfaces. Each person is nothing but a list of aquaintances and preferences, a collection of images. The very concept of friendship loses all meaning as it is institutionalized into nothing more than an arbirtary line of code linking two virtual profiles.<br /><br />Facebook is merely the medium for this dystopia, which is a larger confluence of modern evils. Privacy becomes an artifact of a bygone era, as strangers are given access to our most intimate thoughts and experiences.<br /><br /><strong>To illustrate this, I must quote Tyler Cowen's review of the film CLOVERFIELD: "The characters are supposed to be vacuous and annoying... the opening scene is supposed to be obnoxious and superficial. The heroism is supposed to be thin... Most of all this is a movie about how the young'uns have no tools for moral discourse and that all they can do is utter banalities and take endless pictures of each other and record their lives for no apparent purpose."</strong><br /><br />Is Facebook really optional anymore? Can we avoid the dominance of Facebook anymore than we can avoid Universitites and Corporations?<br /><br />Is the world of social-networking taking a heavy toll on us? Does it make our identities shallower? Does it rob us of the moral vocabulary to talk to each other about matters of substance? <br /><br />The medium is the message. The message is the medium. When I first started Facebook it was a channel for my group of friends to post pictures of us fucked up on drugs and having meaningless sex with one another. <strong>Facebook not only exhibits but encourages this tendency towards fleeting, intoxicated closeness. Why build sustainable friendships and memorable experiences if we don't need to. Who needs memories when someone will post pictures?</strong><br /><br />Do grade school kids have facebook now? I'm sure Middle Schoolers do... What does it tell children about who they are as people? Random collections of images and adjectives and codes: erasable and revisable. A Facebook future is not so much immoral as it is ammoral.<br /><br />I fear for the republic.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1jY9J6TwiAU5Qda_lqrvTSTvKN7VHJv6iCyHbEzqyEfPuyr31m4gLY1ALbBZqsJX7PEkBj46tRq006MD9wsfe75CSTf-VSV8xp3dLxr1RTmxl0I_CO4Qeq1QIQTWh4eCQCZvpwaRceTdV/s1600-h/0001.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 349px; height: 287px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1jY9J6TwiAU5Qda_lqrvTSTvKN7VHJv6iCyHbEzqyEfPuyr31m4gLY1ALbBZqsJX7PEkBj46tRq006MD9wsfe75CSTf-VSV8xp3dLxr1RTmxl0I_CO4Qeq1QIQTWh4eCQCZvpwaRceTdV/s400/0001.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416789761498698962" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-76587872274938913392009-12-18T04:40:00.001-08:002009-12-18T20:45:15.721-08:00Douthat on Post-9/11 Movies<embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1460906593" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1452245733&playerId=1460906593&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-279305701552620332009-12-16T10:04:00.001-08:002009-12-16T14:50:46.760-08:00Change<a href="http://weblogs.cltv.com/features/health/livinghealthy/breast-cancer.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 369px; height: 480px;" src="http://weblogs.cltv.com/features/health/livinghealthy/breast-cancer.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a>
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<br />"Would you like to donate your <strong>change</strong> to breast cancer?"
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<br />This is what they ask me.
<br />The teenagers. The not so teenaged. The middle aged and beyond.
<br />Retail.
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<br />Retail experiences are strange. At turns arduous and exhilirating: goods given, services rendered, tolls taxed.
<br />They are apt metaphors for our larger experiences in a pocket of the world that is a hub of industrialization and consumption. Like our larger experience as political actors, we are guided by scripts and roles and our tacit roles divide us against one another in the service of the script: either salesman or consumer, enforcer or obeyer. The liberties and privileges the script protects are defined by a the items on the shelf and the money in your pocket.
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<br />Retail experiences are bad strange. It reminds me of a dystopian, nightmare future sometimes. That is why I go to the Wal-Mart and shudder. As the Brazils, Russias, Indias, and Chinas emerge in the global economy, and robotics prove that the paradigm that holds laissez-faire conceptions against social welfare spending is going to have to shift or be shifted by massive, violent instability.
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<br />To put that another way: unemployment could conceivably rise above 50% and stay there.The jobs that did exist for the great masses of Americans will only grow worse and worse, with more and more fucking Red Wall-Mart vests and less manufacturing jobs. One day a majority of people could find themselves cut out of the production process.
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<br />The robot thing sounds crazy. Don't take that as a throw-away line. It has already started to happen and it is crazy not to think that the trend of machines replacing human labor, that began in the industrial revolution, isn't only going to accelerate in the 21st century.
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<br />Prison planet.
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<br /><ahref="http://www.klbschool.org.uk/ict/gcse/theory/images/car_robot_production.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 356px; height: 253px;" src="http://www.klbschool.org.uk/ict/gcse/theory/images/car_robot_production.jpg" border="0" alt=""//></a>
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<br />Retail experiences are funny strange.
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<br />They ask me: </em></strong>"Would you like to donate your <strong>change</strong> to breast cancer?"
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<br />I tell them no. Because I am against breast cancer.
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<br />But it gets me wondering: why breast cancer?
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<br />Of all the things that the retail people, who only have ever given a fuck about getting as much of my cash as possible, or my name and email address, or to tie me to them with cards and memberships and BS.
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<br />Of all the things that the salespersons could be required to ask me by the powers that govern them. Breast cancer.
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<br />It's obviously noncontroversial.
<br />The store doesnt want you to associate your Pepsi and Doritos with city slickers, crack addiction,or AIDS, or the infrastructure needs of the community.
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<br />Breast cancer is an awesome cause. Please dont take this the wrong way. Breast cancer isn't benign or funny. It is monsterous and blind. Women of all races and ages and social classes fight it. But the reason the stores are willing to devote their salespeople to collecting your change for that cause, is that it is good for sales.
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<br />It should be obvious. Buisnesses only care about doing good insofar as it causes them to do well. The philanthropy of corporations is much needed, but it is also disingenuous, cynical and kind of scary. The classic is the proverbial company that spends $500,000 dollars on a charitable cause and $10,000,000 telling their customers about it. They want you to associate that store with a warm and fuzzy feeling that, "us humans ultimately have each others backs."
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<br />Who knows. Maybe that conviction will make you save less and spend more...
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<br />People who have been touched by that cause will feel almost charitably, if not merely warmly, towards that buisness.
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<br />I realize this is all sounding like half-baked Marxism. But maybe Marxism isn't dead but ahead of its time. It is the kind of prophetic vision that loses its power without a sense of urgency. If you were as brilliant as Marx, it would be easy to overstate your insight, having experienced the fantastic passions that motivated him to discover some of the truths he did.
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<br />In the coming centuries, society will deliver a bill to our current system of production for which this system will be unable to collect the sum from its constituent pieces. Giant problems are emerging that know no borders. Capitalism and sovereignty cannot coordinate the collective sacrifices of the economic interests that threaten stability in the 21st century and beyond.
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<br />I fear a day society turns to the propertied, moneyed interests for help. The emmergent truth will be that corporate charity was nothing but theater performed in the interest of profit.
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<br />There is no dine and dash on global warming, unless you own a spacecraft I don't know about.
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<br /><strong>"Bush 2012."</strong>
<br />That's what we call this thing. <strong>Change is funny like that.</strong>
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<br /><a href="http://jonkeegan.com/images/retail_home_depot.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 550px; height: 711px;" src="http://jonkeegan.com/images/retail_home_depot.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-83935478185904072742009-12-05T15:52:00.000-08:002009-12-08T00:48:45.164-08:00Modernity Unmasked: walking prisons, public genitals and being seen<a href="http://www.resist.com/updates/2009/FEB_09/ElkinsJamesKKK.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 357px;" src="http://www.resist.com/updates/2009/FEB_09/ElkinsJamesKKK.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.nextnature.net/research/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charming-burka.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 440px; height: 327px;" src="http://www.nextnature.net/research/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charming-burka.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />What does it mean to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity">modern</a>? What is this modern world we find ourselves in? What does the future hold?<br /><br />What do we make of seeing a woman in a burka walking down the street of a metropolitan area? The Muslim bee-keeper suit which keeps women from being seen. Those who preach tolerance might tell us that the burka is not a walking prison but a choice. Though many women are forced to conceal themselves by their brothers and fathers, others conceivably choose to wear the get-up.<br /><br />Some would argue that the burka is no different than the necktie, an article of clothing which bears a meaning for the wearer and the public. This, ostensibly, is protected by the 1st ammendment. Clothing as a means of self expression.<br /><br />But what if I were to walk naked into the Capitol Building? Could I claim that my certain arrest was a sign of intolerance? Doesn't society need to manage moral diversity by setting some cultural norms with the force of law? Does not the same logic that keeps my cock in my pants, justify laws against burkas?<br /><br />Modernity? There is the argument that Islamic fundamentalists are just as modern as us, by virtue of living in the twenty-first century. They worship one Ancient text (the Koran) and we follow another (the Declarations of Independence and the Constitution). <br /><br />But where their text is a superstition - a story - our text is a good faith attempt at reason. Is modernity another word for a technocratic age governed by science and reason? Or are we just updating our delusions, trading our tattered old dogmas in for newer ones.<br /><br />How are WE modern in a way THEY are not? Only insofar as modernity involves an obsession with evidence.<br /><br />Where the premodern are satisfied by the claims of authority, myth and superstition, the modern demand evidence. The modern is characterized by a hunger for visibilty. <strong>The modern human says "show me!"</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://patdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/burka-girl.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 672px;" src="http://patdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/burka-girl.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The Ku Klux Klan triggered many communities in the US to pass laws that said you could not wear a mask while protesting or otherwise making political demands.<br /><br />Despite the enormous risks, Iraqi translators working in are military are told not to wear a mask while they work, because we belive that this is inconsistent with the ideal of creating an open society.<br /><br /><strong>Somewhere in the character of democracy is a demand that we take off our masks and allow ourselves to be seen. Modernity asks us to remove our veils, to emerge as individuals from behind traditional group identities.</strong> Modernity asks that we liberate ourselves from the cages of religon and family tradition. As suggested by theorists like Jon Laramore, <strong>if we can broaden our moral personalities enough to take on some differentiation between our roles as private and public actors, then we can find some way to compartmentalize our different loyalties. </strong>Christianity, unitl recently, has been marked by its ability to coexist with republican virtues by its tendency to accept boundaries between the personal and the political. If we fail in doing this, and we fail at persuading our fellow citizens to tolerate our differences, then as John Rawls suggested, the state has legitimate means to keep your privates our of the public. Don't walk by the playground naked or in your burka, at least not in my neighborhood. <strong>Cover up your private parts and show us your public parts!</strong><br /><br />Perhaps I am offering up an ideal of modernity, when in reality there are multiple modernities. Honestly, anyone wearing a burka in 2010 is just as modern as I am. But theirs is part of a troubling new strain of modernity. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber">A backlash to globalization </a>and the visual-reason based modernity I mentioned earlier, this parallel modernity involves fragmented, factional identities. The tribal and the superstitious take on a legitimacy more powerful than that offered by sight and science.<br /><br />This is a disturbing trend. As a democratic citizen of America and the world, I implore you, take off your masks, look critically on your parent's superstitions. Show your face.Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-4075616396843619652009-12-04T22:39:00.000-08:002009-12-05T02:06:17.204-08:00Fire and ice: a theory of human modes of self invention<a href="http://purplebliss.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/fire-and-ice-by-zeda.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="http://purplebliss.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/fire-and-ice-by-zeda.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />a theory of humans, propelled, paralyzed or somewhere in between by their power to invent themselves, both publicly and within the walls of their minds...<br /><br />PLEASE RESPOND WITH ANY THOUGHTS!!!<br /><br />Coolness is so disputed, such a subjective label, that its does not have a single meaning. Often, its usage is most revealing as to the mindset of the person using the word as opposed to the person, place or process that it is applied to.<br /><br />Coolness literally means some thing warmer than cold but not quite room temperature. It is associated with self-control and composure - a'la "don't lose your cool." The cool girl or guy is such a well oiled machine that they don't overheat a bit when the going gets tough. Perhaps the cool person is almost a little dead. Their embarassing qualities are ice cold corpse organs within them, moderated or muffled by the warm, remaining qualities, within the cool body they share.<br /><br />Uncool people have hot and cold blood too, they just can't find a balance between the two. I am often hot blooded, boisterous, passionate and reckless. If not, I am cold, apathetic and detached from the sincerity and warmth of the warm.<br /><br />The warm are those individuals who have found a balance between hot and cold blood, but unlike the cool, they err on the side of warmness. They are the understanding and caring individuals who have lots of hot blooded plans but a cold blooded skepticism and temperamental conservatism that keep them from being too assertive like a hot-blooded individual. A warm person is passionate, sincere and tries to use faith to navigate the world, but often takes the path of least resistance or greatest profit.<br /><br />The continuum I am putting forward:<br /><br /><strong>THE COLD: </strong><br /><a href="http://fusedfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/american-psycho-02.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 496px; height: 638px;" src="http://fusedfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/american-psycho-02.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><strong>The Cold </strong>are apathetic, perhaps nihilistic, maybe even sadistic in petty everyday ways, unfeeling, cold. Detached, little affection. They don't have a lot of friends and that is a choice only insofar as being cold is a choice (it often isnt). The cold dont feel sympathy. They can watch other suffering and not sympathize. <br />The cold white guy sees a black guy suffering and says, "who cares, I'm white!"<br />The cold white guy sees a white woman suffering and says, "who cares, I'm a man!"<br />The cold white guy sees a white guy suffering and says, "who cares, I'm not him."<br /><br /><strong>The COOL: </strong><br /><a href="http://thecrustycurmudgeon.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/paris-hilton.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 330px; height: 441px;" src="http://thecrustycurmudgeon.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/paris-hilton.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><strong>THE COOL </strong>are associated with composure and self control. They have barely civilized their cold, soulless selves, but not enough to assert any certain identity or chase a destiny not determined by the opinions of others.<br />The cool are often highly wanted and desired because [1] their is a possibility of winning the affections if only temporarily, but [2] they are "hard to get." The cool do not commit to their emotions. They are reluctant to take the risk of claiming a particular identity. They are not passionate and if they are it is about something that others will surely look upon with approval. They don't want to pursue their passions if it means breaking a sweat or looking like a nerd.<br /><br />Cool is often an expression of admiration or approval, but should it be? One might think we should embrace warmer figures, whose passions determined their paths.<br />Cool was once an attitude fostered by rebels and underdogs, such as slaves, prisoners, bikers and political dissents, etc., for whom open rebellion invited punishment, so it hid defiance behind a wall of ironic detachment, distancing itself from the source of authority rather than directly confronting it.<br /><em>Coolness might be a coping mechanism for a world that burns the fearless.</em><br /><br /><strong>THE WARM:</strong> <br /><a href="http://christthetruth.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ned-flanders.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 431px; height: 500px;" src="http://christthetruth.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ned-flanders.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><strong>THE WARM: </strong><br />The warm are essentially the nerds of this new menu of human temperaments. They are hot blooded, but in a controlled way.<br /><em>What is a nerd? It is someone who cares deeply about something, but in a compartmentalized way.</em> Where the hot blooded's passions overflow and engulf the kitchen in their smoke, the Warm's passions simmer on the backburner. Nerds have hobbies. Nerds are hot blooded people who have tamed their passions into miniature pass times they can take out, play with, and then put away when society asks it of them. The warm are the way they are because of distaste for the cold. They know the ache of engagement and the risks that go along with hotness, but they are willing to comit to identities and pursue knowledge and purchase books, because their aversion to what they see as the numb, toxic, distant emptiness of the cold.<br /><br /><strong>THE HOT: </strong><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5dnYSNVwX9_UOsUZM1n-VfhsfOz-iGgmgDr8NmgFMmGf_XdjJoF5UFTzMnFE-7KH7GgL7lgHTho7SmzxMkurnsdqsjmzS1NUA921Xhnj194UCSZX1_EyGxB9_ZnZsKvKHriqa6YeR0M/s400/malcolm-x-by-any-means-necessary-276x400.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5dnYSNVwX9_UOsUZM1n-VfhsfOz-iGgmgDr8NmgFMmGf_XdjJoF5UFTzMnFE-7KH7GgL7lgHTho7SmzxMkurnsdqsjmzS1NUA921Xhnj194UCSZX1_EyGxB9_ZnZsKvKHriqa6YeR0M/s400/malcolm-x-by-any-means-necessary-276x400.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><strong><br />THE HOT: </strong>The hot blooded people are passionate. They commit to their belifs and identities. They assert themselves without shame or restraint. <br />The Hot's way of inventing themselves is totally unleashed, and that charges Hot people with danger and potential.<br /><br />So what are you? What does the world need more of? Are they all just coping in their own ways? What choices do we have as individuals and as a society?Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-66588780381387896832009-11-23T22:58:00.003-08:002009-11-24T02:02:04.941-08:00Violence and Political Identity: our wounded attachments<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.thierrygoldberg.com/artists/alsoudani/alsoudani_digging.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 800px; height: 390px;" src="http://www.thierrygoldberg.com/artists/alsoudani/alsoudani_digging.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJBjm-yL12gCbq5FFBiIttBq-nI5KgYYkc1ZpviVyEKwN-BAxTIhBwLXqTnziiIyxjkKI8R89L8K17BtITT6aI2bdbJuVlIlaCsckudZ5hYhlwoXsPeLe7SvfpA2qJLHj_IB3PcweyWtn/s1600/001CA24234Z.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJBjm-yL12gCbq5FFBiIttBq-nI5KgYYkc1ZpviVyEKwN-BAxTIhBwLXqTnziiIyxjkKI8R89L8K17BtITT6aI2bdbJuVlIlaCsckudZ5hYhlwoXsPeLe7SvfpA2qJLHj_IB3PcweyWtn/s400/001CA24234Z.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407560998895145346" /></a><br /> Political science is the study of “who gets what, when and how?” War is the continuation of political intercourse beyond nonviolent means. War is the absence of restraint. For my purposes in this paper, war is defined as organized violence with a purpose. Organized violence can be a state’s means for enforcing policy, or it can be a means of defiance for an individual or a group. Organized violence embodies the assumption of political identity through the physical assertion of political demands. Political violence can also function to secure a specific distributive outcome, or it can be performed as a symbol. MK and other liberation armies performed acts of violence and sabotage that functioned more powerfully on a symbolic level than as practical blows against the operations of the apartheid state. <br /> It has been said that “an army is a nation within a nation.” They act as the nucleus of a political community, organizing, mobilizing and transforming political identities. Militaries and irregular forces function as vehicles for preexisting political identities, but they are more than hollow vessels, as these groups can transform the political identities of their members and those outside the group. This effect is especially pronounced in situations of minority rule where society’s inequalities are enforced along lines of violence. In colonial settings, violence implies a political structure and an orientation towards that structure. When this orientation is shared by a group and they organize in order to perform violence, they become fused together under a political identity. Their experiences within these organizations can come to transform they way that they think about themselves and others in relation to the political system. The role of the military in the maintenance of political identities is also accelerated under conditions of conscription, as the military’s role as an agent of socialization is intensified.<br /> In few places is the significance of violence in a political system more apparent than under white minority rule. Political theorist Frantz Fanon grew up on the Caribbean island of Martinique, at the time a French colony. He served, with resentment, in the French army, and then in a liberation army during the Algerian revolution. <br /> First published in 1961, Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth, considered violenceas a means of liberation and a catharsis to subjugation. Fanon presented the violence of colonial as a process in the cognitive imprisonment of indigenous peoples under colonial rule. Fanon writes that ”the colonial world is a world divided into compartments… the colonial world is cut in two. The dividing lines, the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations. In the colonies it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the spokesman of the settler and his rule of oppression.” Fanon envisioned violence as a structure which not only organized distributory outcomes, but shaped the consciousness violence’s victims and perpetrators.<br /> Colonial societies being shaped by subjugation and violence, Fanon argued that liberation was best achieved through violent resistance. As Karl Marx wrote in Capital, “violence is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one.” Fanon wrote that “the colonized man finds his freedom in violence.” He argued that in committing violence against an agent of European colonization, the colonized man would figuratively kill two birds with one stone – at once destroying the colonizer and the colonized in that the act of violence transformed the colonized into a new person. Political violence is presented here as the means for the colonized man to find himself, stepping out of the shell of his colonized self and emerging as a new person with a new consciousness and a new political identity.Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-51965766546845193952009-11-23T22:52:00.001-08:002009-11-24T02:05:38.886-08:00Wolf by the Ears<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos-f.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v216/180/49/754520633/n754520633_2567837_8608.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 604px; height: 453px;" src="http://photos-f.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v216/180/49/754520633/n754520633_2567837_8608.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhi73skWC_TjOg08l-e3elPCV1wF1xV3V4KS7yRpJlPZQlmrsXi-uPqEP14yXukJUWdDUlc525zeZ8tbUCibXEPPJp4pfRKBemt61IAtmn00LnzKP_0Qb3pjBOUCq60ChkBsQORXKhgDu/s1600/american-flag.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhi73skWC_TjOg08l-e3elPCV1wF1xV3V4KS7yRpJlPZQlmrsXi-uPqEP14yXukJUWdDUlc525zeZ8tbUCibXEPPJp4pfRKBemt61IAtmn00LnzKP_0Qb3pjBOUCq60ChkBsQORXKhgDu/s400/american-flag.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407559715315264050" /></a><br /> The chattel slavery of black Americans was an embarrassment to the commitment to liberty and equality embodied in the American Revolution. There is nothing more deeply embedded in the American ideology than the notion that ours is a free country. Slavery developed out of the earlier practice of indentured servitude, and at the dawn of the revolution, the peculiar institution had already been established, racialized and imbued with an unfortunate momentum which the founders found largely insurmountable. Many of the founders acknowledged that slavery was immoral and dangerous, but they failed to embrace immediate abolition as an alternative because they did not see it as practical.<br /> The conception of slavery as necessary evil was a means for late-18th and early-19th century Americans to digest their fear of emancipation within the context of their republican, egalitarian ideals. The formulation, which attempted to resolve the contradiction between unfree labor and republican values, proved to be untenable. Incapable of containing its contradictory components, the necessary-evil consensus would come unglued, splitting between a conception of slavery as a positive good in the South, and a Northern condemnation of slavery as corrupt and degrading.<br /> Before the 1820s, the necessary-evil theory came closer to describing the national consensus on slavery than any other position articulated before the Civil War. The consensus became decentered because of its internal contradictions. Figuratively, it proved itself a most uncomfortable fence on which to sit. To use a Biblical parallel, those that held slavery to be a necessary evil were trying to serve two masters: God and Mammon – their highest principles and the things of the world. <br /> The necessary evil formulation allowed early Americans to digest their fear of emancipation within the paradigm of liberal, egalitarian values. In time this consensus would erode, as its proponents would be forced to confront either slavery’s inherent evil, or its supposed necessity.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />PRIMARY DOCUMENTS:<br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #1: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes. Monticello April 22nd 1820<br /><br /><br />" I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle that would not cost me a second thought, if… gradually, with due sacrifices, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation the other. "<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In this letter, Jefferson remarks on the injustice of slavery. He seems hesitant to even refer to slaves as “property,” recognizing the corrupt nature of such thinking. Jefferson voices his own sincere wish that slavery would cease to be. He claims that he would “sacrifice more [than anyone] to relieve us” of the institution, but implies that the momentum of slavery was larger than any action he could take to end it. His “wolf by the ears” analogy illustrates the supposed horrors of emancipation he fears unleashing on the country. He is torn between his moral disagreement with slavery, and the practical matter of “self-preservation.” He understands that unfree labor is immoral and dangerous, but fears that immediate emancipation would unleash poverty, crime and economic disruption.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #2: “Mark Antony.” Boston Independent Chronicle, January 10th, 1788<br /><br /><br />" The friends to liberty and humanity, may look forward with satisfaction to the period, when slavery shall not exist in the United States; while the enlightened patriot will approve of the system, which renders its abolition gradual. "<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In this letter from a Northern newspaper editorial, the author uses the pen name of “Mark Antony.” This letter was written in the immediate aftermath of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and responds to another editorial by an author who bemoaned the tacit blessing given to slavery in the Constitution. The author acknowledges that the revolutionary paradigm oriented towards liberty and human equality is inconsistent with the institution of slavery. However, he notes that an “enlightened” patriot will go beyond his base American ideology and acknowledge the practical realities of emancipation. Because of pragmatic concerns, slavery’s abolition should be gradual and not immediate.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #3: Letter from John C. Wynkoop to Peter Van Schaack. Kingston, New York, February 23rd, 1792<br /><br /><br />" My head is too crammed with political, moral and electioneering stuff, that I can neither write grammatically nor intelligibly… My friend Mr. Jay… proposed as the illustrious opponent to Gov. Clinton at the next election, will, I fear, not have many votes from the Dutch Inhabitants in this Country. A great majority of these pose many slaves, and as Mr. Jay is the President of the society for the abolition of slavery, they will probably vote against him for that reason… The justice and propriety of his sentiments… affects the Freedom and Course of Happiness of thousands of our fellow Creatures, differing from ourselves only in complexion, have no Weight in the minds of men, many of whom are rich in property of this Kind… You will therefore in your calculation of electioneering success, set down this Country against you… "<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In this letter, a Northerner discusses his friend’s plans to challenge the incumbent governor of New York, George Clinton. The author agrees with his friend’s abolitionist position on the slavery issue, but feels that taking such a stand will make his friend a sure electoral loser. He is torn between his “moral” thoughts and those related to the practical realities of “electioneering.” He endorses his friend’s belief that blacks and whites “[differ] only in complexion,” but since this sentiment holds “no weight in the minds of [the majority] of men,” he argues that it is a political stance doomed to failure.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #4: Letter from George Washington to Robert Morris. Mount Vernon, April 12th, 1786<br /><br /><br />"…When slaves who are happy and contented with their masters, are tampered with and seduced to leave them; when masters are taken unawares by these practices; when a conduct of this sort begets discontent on one side and resentment on the other, and when it happens to fall on a man, whose purse will not measure with that of the Society, and he loses his property for want of means to defend it; it is oppression in the latter case, and not humanity in any; because it introduces more evils than it can cure. "<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In this letter, General George Washington has just finished explicating the immorality of slavery as an institution. After having thoroughly condemned the practice as dangerous and evil, he considers the problematic nature of immediate emancipation. He describes the chaos that would occur in terms of both masters being rudely stripped of their “property,” and of slaves “happy and contented with their masters” who are suddenly uprooted. Washington acknowledges that slavery is evil, but worries that immediate emancipation might “[introduce] more evils than it can cure.” He feared the economic disruption that might accompany immediate emancipation more than he valued the immediate realization of republican values.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #5: John C. Calhoun, "Speech on His Slavery Resolutions in Reply to James F. Simmons," Floor of United States Senate. February 6th, 1837.<br /><br /><br />" Let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the races in the slaveholding states is an evil-far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. We now believe it [slavery] a great blessing to both of the races-the European and African… The proposition to which I allude has become an axiom in the minds of a vast majority on both sides of the Atlantic, and is repeated daily from tongue to tongue as an established and incontrovertible truth; it is that "All men are born free and equal" ... It is utterly untrue. "<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> John Calhoun was a House Representative, Senator and eventually Vice-President of the United States. In the Senate, he represented the state of South Carolina. Other Americans formulated slavery as a necessary evil, but Calhoun rejected this line of thinking as well as the liberal, egalitarian foundation on which it was based. Calhoun conceived of slavery as a positive-good, one that offered benefits to blacks and whites, slaves and free men. Based on white supremacy and paternalism, Calhoun reasoned that slavery offered white people the benefits of slave labor, while blacks could be cared for and civilized under the direction of white masters. To him slavery was not a necessary evil but, instead, “a great blessing to both of the races- the European and the African.” Calhoun rejected the liberal, egalitarian ideology as being “utterly untrue.” Though Calhoun’s thinking is offensive within the context of a liberal, republican paradigm, his thinking possessed an internal consistency that the necessary-evil theorists lacked.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #6: Campbell, John. Negro-mania: Being an Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Men. Philadelphia, 1851.<br /><br /><br />" Let us now carefully scan the flimsy arguments offered to our notice by the advocates of negro equality. The first argument is “that the negroes never have had an opportunity to develop themselves because the white man has always oppressed them.” They forget that the latter proportion refutes the former. If the white man has always oppressed the negro, it goes to establish the fact claimed by me that the white man is mentally superior, because, if the white man has been always powerful enough to debar the negro from improving his intellect, it establishes the complete force of my views. "<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> This excerpt comes from a book by the white supremacist John Campbell. He, like John Calhoun, debates takes issue with the liberal, revolutionary principle of universal human equality. He points to the black man’s state of slavery as self-evincing proof of the black man’s inferiority. This book was published in 1851, a time in which abolition was becoming increasingly charged as a moral issue. Campbell attempts to deflate the calls for immediate emancipation by showing that slavery is not evil at all since blacks are not the equals of whites.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #7: William Lloyd Garrison. “On the Constitution and the Union.” The Liberator, December 29, 1832. 207.<br /><br /><br />" People of New-England, and of the free States! is it true that slavery is no concern of yours? Have you no right even to protest against it, or to seek its removal? Are you not the main pillars of its support? How long do you mean to be answerable to God and the world, for spilling the blood of the poor innocents? Be not afraid to look the monster Slavery boldly in the face. He is your implacable foe—the vampyre who is sucking your life-blood—the ravager of a large portion of your country, and the enemy of God and man. Never hope to be a uited, or happy, or prosperous people while he exists. He has an appetite like the grave—a spirit as malignant as that of the bottomless pit—and an influence as dreadful as the corruption of death. Awake to your danger! the struggle is a mighty one—it cannot be avoided—it should not be, if it could. "<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> William Lloyd Garrison was a preacher and one of the main advocates for immediate abolition. In this excerpt from an early edition of his abolitionist publication, he argues that slavery is not necessary, and that, in fact, its downfall is inevitable. Abolition “cannot be avoided,” Garrison argues, and that even if it could, “it should not be.” Garrison charged the slavery issue with a moral energy which had not previously carried. Garrison states that the enormous evil of slavery outweighs whatever minor inconveniences might accompany abolition. For Garrison, slavery is “a monster,” a “vampire” and an “enemy of God.” This shows that while some Americans moved away from the necessary-evil conception of slavery by viewing it as a positive-good, others, particularly in the North, were beginning to view it as a definitive evil. They were unwilling to compromise their commitments to human equality and freedom with the supposed property rights of slaveholders.<br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />Doc. #8: William Lloyd Garrison. “Truisms.” The Liberator. January 8, 1831, p. 5<br /><br />"1. All men are born equal, and entitled to protection, excepting those whose skins are black and hair woolly; or, to prevent mistake, excepting Africans, and their descendants……<br />4. The color of the skin determines whether a man has a soul or not. If white, he has an immortal essence; if black, he is altogether beastly…<br />11. None but fanatics or idiots desire immediate abolition. If the slaves were liberated at once, our throats would be cut, and our houses pillaged and burnt! …….<br />15. A white man, who kills a tyrant, is a hero, and deserves a monument. If a slave kills his master, he is a murderer, and deserves to be burnt. <br />16. The slaves are kept in bondage for their own good. Liberty is a curse to the free people of color—their condition is worse than that of the slaves! "<br /><br /><br /><br /> In another excerpt from William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, the author sarcastically skewers the arguments against immediate emancipation. Everything Garrison writes here is meant to point out the internal contradiction of the necessary-evil argument. He writes “all men are born equal, and entitled to protection, excepting those whose skins are black and hair woolly.” Here, he points out the inconsistency between slavery and a nation based on freedom and equality. Garrison points out the corrupt paternalism of the necessary-evil formulation, writing that “slaves are kept in bondage for their own good. Liberty is a curse to the free people of color.” “A white man who kills a tyrant,” Garrison sarcastically posits, “is a hero, and deserves a monument. [Yet] if a slave kills his master, he is a murderer, and deserves to be burnt.” Garrison points out the hypocrisy of a nation born in an act of rebellion against the supposed tyranny of being governed by an alien power, yet imposes white tyranny on black slaves<br /><br />CONCLUSION:<br /> Thomas Jefferson and many of his contemporaries recognized that slavery was the most dangerous and intractable problem our infant nation faced. He wrote that “slave owners are despots and slaves their enemies .” Slavery was recognized as dangerous and immoral, particularly in the North where early 19th century thinkers argued that it inhibited economic development, undermined the virtue of all Americans, and imperiled national security. However, these people were not able to move from their distaste for slavery to a call for immediate emancipation because of respect for the property rights of slaveholders and contempt for black people’s capacity for citizenship.<br /> As of 1790, of the 3.9 million Americans, 700,000 of them (or 15%) were enslaved . The thought of emancipating all these blacks meant not only a massive loss of property, it also presented the prospect of widespread poverty and crime.<br />The conception of slavery as necessary evil was a means for late-18th and early-19th century Americans to balance their fear of emancipation with their republican, egalitarian ideals. The formulation, which attempted to resolve the contradiction between unfree labor and republican values, proved to be untenable. Incapable of containing its contradictory components, the necessary-evil consensus would come unglued, splitting between a conception of slavery as a positive good in the South, and a Northern condemnation of slavery as corrupt and degrading. The necessary evil formulation allowed early Americans to digest their fear of emancipation within the paradigm of liberal, egalitarian values. In time this consensus would erode, as its proponents would be forced to confront either slavery’s inherent evil, or its supposed necessity.Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-83400652499330078892009-11-01T01:25:00.001-07:002009-11-08T17:04:50.664-08:00The Invisible Man<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRVJw6pzkIt80yyueEPWw8u-wXiqUPP4mN-AovhDRBswKf10KkxzlMNYLo0PeUM_lv5-RsV3rvdArbqYsz2pVh3Vh3wM-Ht6x0X9LGitAd4D_AkYyDAXyXfbIj0tHh_rFoCof6yne-NxWh/s1600-h/soldier.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRVJw6pzkIt80yyueEPWw8u-wXiqUPP4mN-AovhDRBswKf10KkxzlMNYLo0PeUM_lv5-RsV3rvdArbqYsz2pVh3Vh3wM-Ht6x0X9LGitAd4D_AkYyDAXyXfbIj0tHh_rFoCof6yne-NxWh/s400/soldier.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399048741975570914" /></a><br /><br /><em>Coming Starting on page 158 of *The Portable Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: First Part, Nietzsche writes:</em><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>ON WAR AND WARRIORS</strong><br /><br /><blockquote>[. . .] My brothers in war, I love you thoroughly; I am and I was of your kind. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!<br />I know of the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. Be great enough, then, not to be ashamed of them. [. . .]<br />You should have eyes that always seek an enemy—your enemy. And some of you hate at first sight. Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage—for your thoughts. And if your thought be vanquished, then your honesty should still find cause for triumph in that. You should love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long. To you I do not recommend work, but struggle. To you I do not recommend peace, but victory. Let your work be a struggle. Let your peace be a victory! [. . .]<br />You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause. War and courage have accomplished more great things than love of the neighbor. [1] Not your pity but your courage has so far saved the unfortunate.<br />"What is good?" you ask. To be brave is good. [2] [. . .]<br />Recalcitrance—that is the nobility of slaves. Your nobility should be obedience. Your very commanding should be an obeying. [3] To a good warrior "thou shalt" sounds more agreeable than "I will." And everything you like you should first let yourself be commanded to do.<br />Your love of life shall be love of your highest hope; and your highest hope shall be the highest thought of life. [4] Your highest thought, however, you should receive as a command from me—and it is: man is something that shall be overcome. [5]<br />Thus live your life of obedience and war. What matters long life? What warrior wants to be spared? [6] I do not spare you; I love you thoroughly, my brothers in war!<br />Thus Spoke Zarathustra.</blockquote><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIEMtw9TSHJfjjxk1tTkYMij3IQb6IR3SnbpdyhvmXAVNkc8xgdiq9MDx5Nu4sTdSeMXqVR7d2s7JOrNQFvOMqZx5SMcAJZSJyicDH8NZGTBhqdYUDWc51PQHuclwUxxjFYitwKojzHpqi/s1600-h/marine+invisible.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIEMtw9TSHJfjjxk1tTkYMij3IQb6IR3SnbpdyhvmXAVNkc8xgdiq9MDx5Nu4sTdSeMXqVR7d2s7JOrNQFvOMqZx5SMcAJZSJyicDH8NZGTBhqdYUDWc51PQHuclwUxxjFYitwKojzHpqi/s400/marine+invisible.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399048651222524626" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-33161864081044907482009-10-28T21:35:00.001-07:002009-10-28T21:35:42.025-07:00I'm not here to make friends...<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/w536Alnon24&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/w536Alnon24&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-77170188746318215332009-10-24T23:09:00.001-07:002009-10-25T00:24:43.557-07:00Dogs in Cars<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5RE8d4SeIMZ4tHJZzvU1jENjHvE0juS1GhzhAXbqvfdQKB7A0ldEWDSWctCEE8n-xWuy3FXnSIFo2mKR5u41yow2JBpsnoOLzyD9o3xnUL7ouE5aYI7sD8ODjjVB0S7V_mwsokKjK5uz/s1600-h/dogs+in+cars2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 398px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5RE8d4SeIMZ4tHJZzvU1jENjHvE0juS1GhzhAXbqvfdQKB7A0ldEWDSWctCEE8n-xWuy3FXnSIFo2mKR5u41yow2JBpsnoOLzyD9o3xnUL7ouE5aYI7sD8ODjjVB0S7V_mwsokKjK5uz/s400/dogs+in+cars2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396415987279043202" /></a><br /><br />I have a preoccupation. A little motif in my life that makes me stop and smile almost daily if not more so. Dogs in cars. I see them when I go running. I see them in parking lots. While driving, they'll stare out the back windows of cars in front of me.<br /><br />Why do I love them so much? These dogs in cars? Why do I find them so damned funny and satisfying? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I feel they make an apt metaphor for the modern human.<br /><br />Modern humans find ourselves in a complicated world, at the mercy of larger processes we cannot begin to unravel, and surrounded by amazing possibilities we are incapable of unlocking.. Like the dogs in cars, modern humans are trapped in compartments of plastic, steel and glass, taken down roads we did not ask to travel, to destinations we did not choose. It's not a terrible existence. In some respects, it is a fantastic, humbling privilege - but I see a reflection of myself in these car windows.<br /><br />The look on these dog's faces: either grinning obliviously ear to ear or outwardly unamused and displeased, I see it on cops on the block, the guy bagging groceries or the girl wearing headphones on the bus.<br /><br />We're all dogs in cars. Patiently waiting for someone to return, put the key in this strange machine and take us home.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh70Iq2AhM9gb_5ivdWch9dR1Vpalw851O9FAoIIxXQKlQttFH977IAzKXAG2Gi0Gvw7syBwazidFsEAnLBf8TmzJl-HxsgvxK_q_DlcD-T7LXWk_Th3IX7-Vo33_cL_SaFNA5xC1O2uEpK/s1600-h/dogs+in+cars.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 398px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh70Iq2AhM9gb_5ivdWch9dR1Vpalw851O9FAoIIxXQKlQttFH977IAzKXAG2Gi0Gvw7syBwazidFsEAnLBf8TmzJl-HxsgvxK_q_DlcD-T7LXWk_Th3IX7-Vo33_cL_SaFNA5xC1O2uEpK/s400/dogs+in+cars.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396415898960776178" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-26027247476536307012009-10-18T21:43:00.000-07:002009-10-18T21:56:54.792-07:00the Reluctant Settler and the Turbulent Frontier<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn9RAdbFz36AwOowF8uzL6LnMHIUq3e5CdMmdGnqvq6elFp_rNEsi7k1ZW80l_sRBLlroi52sZP2zunXEubFzGiMy14mnukkew124a0oZLMB-3Boknfco3J0nJ1J1jWP8qbv6_6EMNXclY/s1600-h/ass.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn9RAdbFz36AwOowF8uzL6LnMHIUq3e5CdMmdGnqvq6elFp_rNEsi7k1ZW80l_sRBLlroi52sZP2zunXEubFzGiMy14mnukkew124a0oZLMB-3Boknfco3J0nJ1J1jWP8qbv6_6EMNXclY/s400/ass.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394168829946992338" /></a><br /><br />Afghanistan: a just war, or just another war?<br /><br /><br />"You bleed green, I bleed red."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvUEhFwXbBhXDytPj_khBhzcw1M-KiSZkDD0JoQBbC8oh4iEXmWJdy-su-Bt9glgZ5juRh4LDa1-GQQALK9lFOT6X30TWICaezSpdxO1R1ZtO1RPB_UF4wuu9ktn0zo4NHn-dGapextZzj/s1600-h/a23_19674009.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvUEhFwXbBhXDytPj_khBhzcw1M-KiSZkDD0JoQBbC8oh4iEXmWJdy-su-Bt9glgZ5juRh4LDa1-GQQALK9lFOT6X30TWICaezSpdxO1R1ZtO1RPB_UF4wuu9ktn0zo4NHn-dGapextZzj/s400/a23_19674009.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394166236468474882" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />Obama's war. That is the the truth and the lie that frames our newfound interest in the American project in Afghanistan. Our political menu is being realligned in the foreign policy realm by a mixture of persistent critics, recent turncoats and Republicans who would criticize Obama if he cut himself shaving. That is to say nothing of the actual situation on the ground, which is deteriorating in real ways, as the clear illegitimacy of the Karzai government tarnishes our project in the eyes of Afghanis and the world writ large. Foreign relations, they say, is a two sided game: actors must model their moves for both foreign and domestic audiences.<br /><br />It's not just Obama's war. This war belong to every American with a spine and an interest in our good name and the blood and treasure already spent on this project.<br /><br />A liberal friend of mine has expressed his impatience with the project in Afghanistan.<br /><br />"We should just go home, man." He tells me. "Who cares about those Afghanis? They obviously don't want democracy and you like can't force democracy at the barrel of a gun bro... Don't you know anything?"<br /><br />Now my friend might have a point. If he wants to conduct his political theory as if he were God, then YES! I suppose it would also be fantastic if summer were 4 months longer and ice cream made you run faster and look better naked, but none of these things are. His attempts at theory cannot facilitate an examination of how an individual <span style="font-weight:bold;">should be</span> in light of how the world <span style="font-weight:bold;">is.</span> He admits that he was for the Afghanistan project at the time. All red-blooded Americans supported a targetted strike against al-Queda, Usama bin Laden and the Taliban government that enabled him.<br /><br />Now he'd found he doesn't have the stomach for the conflict. <br /><br />I must admit that a formative experience in the trajectory of my thinking on foreign policy was the surge in Iraq. At the time, in 2005, the war effort was going to hell in a handbasket. I wanted out. Where others would base their arguements on what was best for the Iraqis, I didn't. I was clear that I wanted out of Iraq to protect American lives and treasure. I was fully aware that there would be a bloodbath there if we left.<br /><br />But we stayed. Sober, courageous minds and the momentum of a military occupation won out. I was sure that this was folly. But sure enough the surge worked. Those brave enough rushed in where the supposedly rational were rushing out. And a difference was made. That corner was finally turned. The situation as it stands now shows that the surge was a better decison not just for Iraqis but for Americans too.<br /><br />Now what lesson is there to take away from this. We've made a covenant with the Afghanis. He who is so quick to inject responsibility and humility into our foreign policy cannot grasp that by invading, we entered into a covenant. We hold their lives in our hands: every man and woman who sided with us against the Taliban, every person who has embraced our liberal idea that everyone should be able to pursue their own vision of whats valuable in life. <br /><br />We've chosen the arena, drawn the lines and started the timer and now we want out? Such an epiphany would have had more currency before we set this project into motion. <br /><br />What does it mean to be liberal? Liberal in the sense that all Americans are liberal. Is liberalism a spineless philosophy? Is it politics as holy war between secularism and fundamentalism? Is it an uneasy piece between different visions of whats valuable in life?<br /><br />Those who want to pack up and go home in Afghanistan want a spineless sort of liberalism for themselves but don't believe in in enough to take any leap of faith in its potential for traction in Afghanistan. Our defeatist friend (Brian) lives through a liberalism that is calculating, bland, petty and unheroic. We slap this articulation of liberalism down. We spit on its body and dance on its grave.<br /><br />For we hold up a liberalism that is heroic. It is not heroic in the romantic conservative sense, but in a more nuanced, chaotic liberal sort of way. This is liberalism not as a road map but as a flash light. It doesn't tell you exactly where we are going and how to get there, but it offers you a tool to navigate a confusing and dangerous world. With a little courage and ingenuity we can use it too.<br /><br />I present you liberalism as impatience with arguments based in fear and self-preservation. Liberalism as faith in our ability to take our individualistic ideal and spread it like apple seeds on a wild frontier.<br /><br />In the Afghanistan project we are the new pilgrims of liberalism. Instead of bringing bibles, we bring guns and ammo and food and money, and cranes and planes and the promise, or the threat, of making Afghanistan into California.<br /><br />My defeatist friend told me: "You would have been one of the people who advocated Manifest Destiny."<br /><br />Well my friend is a Washingtonian. He obviously can abstractly critisize American expansionism but feels no need to retreat Eastward. Perhaps he has resigned to the reality on the ground. He is not trying to reverse or disavow the newfound possibilities and problems that have followed from the combination of Western civilization and Washington State.<br /><br />No one likes a reluctant settler. Sitting on the back of the covered wagon, feeling a slight sense of remorse, and feeling almost sorta kinda unhappy, as he plows Westward into the night.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">From Shakespeare's Macbeth:<br />"Fair is foul and foul is fair.... What's done cannot be undone... Blood will have blood."<br /><br />From Colin Powell on the Iraq War:<br />"You break it, you buy it."</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjYWaJW3bYvYUm0CB3aRGWae4AIM9PEACIGC6kJBNV3ownzsEhgolQ3VPiZgYJtBHGFszOEohvLa-RkjUj5WZqkCOCY8z9aelxFHgsB-AJU9J3rftA7J2wrm9ULfs85Z3HByzSrFjF6IV3/s1600-h/a07_19619685.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjYWaJW3bYvYUm0CB3aRGWae4AIM9PEACIGC6kJBNV3ownzsEhgolQ3VPiZgYJtBHGFszOEohvLa-RkjUj5WZqkCOCY8z9aelxFHgsB-AJU9J3rftA7J2wrm9ULfs85Z3HByzSrFjF6IV3/s400/a07_19619685.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394165927878091970" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-16718035577898431342009-10-17T22:58:00.001-07:002009-10-17T22:59:45.692-07:00W<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjamGFVZTgrycUtyRFlgwElOpDB_so6ZEMd9fS6d8q5LQUnivQJHFcU3fZnH3zh9Y8JTUH6cuVzM2MQuY-i4DeV8AtajxqvwqbDVFlC0tgn6Kk-CFWE2aJB8LG1Of7GZ-NrX_EdpU_fonVK/s1600-h/untitled.bmp"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjamGFVZTgrycUtyRFlgwElOpDB_so6ZEMd9fS6d8q5LQUnivQJHFcU3fZnH3zh9Y8JTUH6cuVzM2MQuY-i4DeV8AtajxqvwqbDVFlC0tgn6Kk-CFWE2aJB8LG1Of7GZ-NrX_EdpU_fonVK/s320/untitled.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393815682137447282" /></a>Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-91216895793687167712009-10-10T02:02:00.000-07:002009-10-10T02:17:35.420-07:00on Morality and Marines<a href="http://media.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/content/img/photos/2007/12/13/final_salute_t613.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 613px; height: 452px;" src="http://media.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/content/img/photos/2007/12/13/final_salute_t613.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>
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<br />"I had rather lived a day as a lion than a hundred years as a dog." <em>-Major Zembiec aka "The Lion of Fallujah"
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<br />The nation that draws a line of demarcation between their thinkers and fighters risks having the fighting done by fools and the thinking done by cowards... -- Sir WF Butler
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<br />"We'd promise you sleep deprivation, mental torment, and muscles so sore you'll puke, but we don't like to sugar-coat things."
<br /><em>-USMC Recruiting Poster</em>
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<br />"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats" <em>--B. C. Forbes</em>
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<br />"A Marine is someone you don't need to push but rather, hold back." --<em> LBJ</em>
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<br />MY THOUGHTS: Military service is ultimately a moral commitment. Duty is animated by morality. Both involve our struggle to live ourlives and know ourselves through the eyes and expectations of our communities. It involves we-intentions. Marine's being trained will often by instructed that "Marines always...." or "Marines don't do that." Here we see the moral enjoiner: to step outside of our bottomless appetites and commit to stepping outside of ourselves and looking for that overlapping part of our being that we share with our brothers and sisters. How do you get a man to step out into gunfire in the exectution of a mission? If courage is the trait of willingly confronting danger in the pursuit of mission accomplishment, if courage is not the abesence of fear but the mastery of it, then courage is bred from unselfishness. Our identites are not set in stone, they are malleable and we can come to construct our perception of our own identities differently over time. This tells us that unselfishness breeds courage. The courageous man is he whom will risk his own well-being because he has assumed the burden of duty: he lives in the overlapping, shared part of himself that fuses him with his country and Corps: knowing that his own well-being is actually inseperable from that of his community.
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<br />Black Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675838528429516270.post-79513291773878910442009-10-04T21:49:00.000-07:002009-10-06T14:52:49.934-07:00Thoughts on war<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirl0FkY7Wwr7u6kX1oBtPMmz0gvRuyBB_Or6M_f7wMsdbFJrfA1DEGTqwl1FXFA7vRCS3foOhOifo3-PRSnP2kpOPsY6jdm5Tk3YPxqBH_6V2se94YwL3AWhp7I5qSt7YIdo7VbmurFTN3/s1600-h/911+fires.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirl0FkY7Wwr7u6kX1oBtPMmz0gvRuyBB_Or6M_f7wMsdbFJrfA1DEGTqwl1FXFA7vRCS3foOhOifo3-PRSnP2kpOPsY6jdm5Tk3YPxqBH_6V2se94YwL3AWhp7I5qSt7YIdo7VbmurFTN3/s320/911+fires.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388974080590594738" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Thomas Paine: <br /><br />"If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />"The living give us crowds. The dead give us communities." Joseph Bottum <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />"World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” - EINSTIENBlack Republicanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00833605317661709789noreply@blogger.com1