Author: White Whale

I did some work today for a very large multinational company. I met the CEO, briefly. He’s netting well into six figures, and maybe 7 figures. This company’s headquarters is in another country. I got to thinking about this.

The people who work there are all capitalists, whose “capital” begins as labor, and can expand, through savings, into “excess” money, that can be invested. The people who own the place contribute information. All companies start as ideas. Ideas start in the heads of specific people. All new projects consist in information–which is to say ideas that are followed, developed, altered as needed, and which gradually enable corresponding material enactment, in the form of production lines, new versions of the product, etc, etc.

Economic development begins as an idea, as li, as an idea for a new form (see my previous post). It becomes embodied in chi, which here is both the physical means of production–the stuff–and the energy of the people running it, their labor. Logically, if development begins with ideas, then they are the source–the Fountainhead, if you’ll excuse me–of all material development.

The next conclusion, then, is that those systems which reward innovation and creativity will, in the end, be most wealthy.

Socialism, in this rendering, then, as a system for the subtraction of information, and the enfeeblement of personal imagination through the ubiquitous use and thread of the use of force to ensure compliance, is NECESSARILY a system which leads to poverty. Manifestly, this is what happens, so I’m not doing anything but stating the obvious, but I am trying to put it on a slightly more mathematical footing.

Goodness, in my rendering, is the effort to innovate on the level of personal identity, which itself is the result of perceptual capacity. Such innovations are in the direction of greater personal felicity, with less and less need for material support. Goodness is an expansion of li, with a corresponding decrease in the need for chi, which is to say all the economic goods we think will make us happy, and which generally don’t.

I had more to say, but it felt like a long day–even if maybe I’m just a wimp–so I’m going to call it a day with the blogging.

I was thinking today about this distinction, from classical Chinese philosophy. It layers nicely on to current models of reality.

Chi can be either energy or matter. Really, if we take E=MCSquared as accurate–and some very large explosions say it is accurate–then matter is a type of energy, and energy is a type of matter. What is “real”, within Einsteinian General Relativity theory, is the field within which they operate. Most people don’t grasp this point: that General Relativity is, in the end, a materialistic theory within which “God does not play dice”, or something close to that. Within General Relativity Theory we can, in principle, trace all causal lines forwards and backwards to the beginnings and end of Time. It is simply a much more sophisticated–and empirically useful–version of the billiard ball theories of the nineteenth century.

The problem with it, and it is a large problem, is that it posits that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Where previous theories related all motion to a presumed “ether”, Einstein related all motion to the speed of light. Empirically, though, information can and does travel faster than light, as demonstrated in the Aspect Experiment, and as proven earlier mathematically by John Bell.

Li is form, but it can also mean information, if we take morphological details as information, or what I tend to term “Quality”. What travels faster than light is not chi, but li.

This sets up the possibility of a metaphysics in which “form/li” molds chi, but has no objective existence. Yet matter is always in some form or other, if manifest. The only chi in which li is not present is the so-called Zero Point Field of quantum mechanics, which posits that every particle is simultaneously a wave, and that those waves can only go so low in amplitude. If we calculate the absolute minimum activity of matter in the universe, as I understand the issue, we determine that there is enough latent energy in one square meter of “empty” space to “boil all the oceans on Earth”, in Richard Feynman’s interesting and useful analogy. All quantum physicists accept the necessity of this math, but ignore it for all practical purposes. They put it in their equations, then zero it out again.

Let me offer two equations that are interesting to me: 1) E+i=MC2+i, where i is information; 2) Chi plus li=observable reality. In both cases, what I have added is the possibility of form. Framed another way, I have created a template for what we could term God, which is to say an informational substrate that underlies all of reality. I have turned Einsteins’ theory into what we might term a spiritual one.

This is, I think, how we can reconcile quantum physics and General Relativity. Both work exceedingly well in their domains, but are incompatible. The basic problem is that of the four basic forces in the universe, only three can be reconciled with one another. Gravity cannot. Einstein spent much of his life trying to do it.

Here is a far-out idea that may be nonsensical, but I will put it out there anyway: what if information serves as a sort of qualitative attractor? Form is information. Form is represented in the visible universe in matter/chi. What if “gravity” was expressed not as a result of chi, but li? What if li could be a sort of “mass”? What if “form”, understood in the abstract as having almost an existence on its own, carves out a section of space, “curving” it? What if light, as a type of information, is attracted to it?

I’m not entirely sure what I am saying myself. I have an excellent book by Einstein’s protege David Bohm which I need to read when I get time. Still, as I’ve said before, the road to good ideas is paved with bad ones.

The essence of the Fabian strategy is to avoid direct conflict, to avoid showing the world the actual goal, and forcing a decision. Fabius Maximus, the general, was able to prevent a decisive battle with Hannibal during the entire course of his generalship. His strategy, however, was not liked by those with a more aggressive nature. Following him were generals who raised a large army and went after Hannibal directly, with substantially all the soldiers in the Roman army.

They were destroyed in the battle of Cannae, which should have meant the end of the war, and the end of Rome. Hannibal surrounded them, and hacked his army to pieces from all sides.

Likewise, Hillary Clinton was quite obviously the Fabian candidate. She would have continued the slow slide into tyranny that leftists want, with ample defense from a very compliant media.

Instead, the Left decided that now was the time for a frontal attack, and chose instead a man with a patently radical background, which implies for those with any sense of history a bent towards autocracy.

They did this without full control of the media, and control of the ability of the people to self organize and communicate with one another. Had they implemented something like “equal time” first, and let it run for 10-20 years, what they would have achieved would have been a gradual shift from conservative view/liberal view to liberal view/Leftist view, with conservatives shut out of the national dialogue entirely.

As things stand, we conservatives (really, I call myself a Liberal) have all the maneuvering room, and they have none. They are trapped, and we can destroy their idiotic ideology without their having any chance of counterattack. Their counterattacks have always depended on deception, and the prior indoctrination of those they target, for the simple reason that their ideas are stupid, wicked, and work to the detriment of humankind whenever they are implemented.

Let us remember, though, that Rome rose again. We have the advantage of momentum, but let us never forget what was attemped here, nor that we have no way of knowing what is going on at this very moment in the darkness.

In her book “Mara and Dann”, Doris Lessing discusses different sorts of people that might be found in her imagined future. One group is called the Hennes. Their peculiar trait is that they all look EXACTLY alike, with no deviation, as if they were all the same person. Even the men and women look alike, except that the women have small breasts.

They are dull and slow, and creatures of habit. They eat because it is time to eat, and run because it is time to run, and never question anything about the reasons why they do what they do.

The “order” of their camp seemed a useful metaphor to me, and I will quote the book:

She was surprised at the apparent confusion of this camp. Then she saw there were blocks of order, unconnected with the others. A block of tents was neatly set out, with tidy paths between, but this was set at an angle to some rows of sheds, equally well arranged, and both were unrelated to an adjacent suburb with itself was composed of rows of little boxes. To get from one part to another of this camp . . .was difficult, for she found herself following the nearest of paths, hoping to achieve the next settlement, but it ended perhaps against the wall of a house, or simply stopped. Storehouses, water tanks, stood here and there, and there was a watchtower in the very center of the camp. . . when surely it should have been at its edge?

What this reminded me of is the intellectualism of the Academy. I had a brilliant professor in graduate school–who may well have taught Jerry Wright, since we got our Master’s in the same place–who was an avowed Marxist. I talked with him a bit about it, enough to get a list of recommended texts, which I still have. He suggested I start with Gramsci. Then if memory serves it was Marx’s essay on Feuerbach. I still have not read either.

The point here is that you can have a wonderfully coherent narrative, with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed, you can have a ready countersalvo to all critics, and still be COMPLETELY WRONG.

If you never leave your little neighborhood, and content yourself with equating your conceptions of the wider world with reality, you can reach a point where your conclusions are so self evident, so obvious, that to question them is tantamount to confessing some combination of idiocy and venality.

OF COURSE the paths in my neighborhood are straight. Of course the houses are lined up neatly. It’s all there. Everything you need.

But try to move from that cozy world into practice, and everything falls apart like a wet cardboard wheelbarrow. It won’t hold anything. What happens with leftists at that point is they turn to violence.

Let’s supposed I asked George Bernard Shaw this question: Mr. Shaw, if, as you suggest, all income is equalized, and the State guarantees an income, from whence comes the motivation to work? His answer–and he gave it–was that everyone would be forced to work, and if they objected they would be shot.

But Mr. Shaw, if you are calling Capitalism a type of slavery in that some are compelled to work from economic necessity, how is it an improvement if they are compelled to work through fear of sudden death, and the sundry steps short of that, such as incarceration, and various forms of torture?

His answer: my system is necessarily a just one, since Capitalism is manifestly an unjust one. This conclusion is both necessary and sufficient for my case. Please stop talking now.

That is a path from an orderly neighborhood, running into the wall of a house in the next neighborhood.

As I keep saying, perception is movement. If you are locking yourself in a ghetto, you are missing some or all of the big picture. You are failing to understand, and in so doing confessing, frankly, that what you really want is in fact a prison.

Lessing, by the way, titled a series of essays “Prisons we choose to live inside”.

Food for thought, hopefully.

I think this is one of the most primal of all fears. If we posit that the two most basic existential questions are “why do anything at all–why suffer when we have an alternative”, and “what should be done”, then allowing the possibility of qualitative alteration to enter your consciousness is tantamount to an attack on your identity.

This is the root of dogmatism. Fear leads to the building of thick, high walls, moats, and defensive artillery. If you are afraid of the dark, if you are afraid of existing in a condition of the periodic confusion that necessarily attends perceptual growth, then you will stagnate, and never know it.

The point here is that you can go very fast and very far, on rails. Trains are efficient, since they can only go along very clearly specified paths. Fanatics are often good workers, since they don’t have to question–even for a moment–what they are doing. Yet anyone who doesn’t periodically ask big questions all their lives has stunted their growth thereby.

You have to be open to big changes, and that takes courage. Very few people possess this courage.

All authentic moral judgements are local, necessary, and imperfect.

In my view, no permanent moral principles are possible, as applied socially. Individually, my core values are the rejection of self pity, perseverance, and perception.

The task in determining what is right and wrong begins with understanding. Specifically, we must ask ourselves why things we believe are wrong, are wrong. Why is murder wrong? What is the value to us as individuals and a society in considering it this way? Why is adultery wrong? Why is abortion wrong (or is it?) Why is torture wrong?

What would be the consequences if murder was socially acceptable? Would it not lead to more murders? Would it not make them more likely, since we all feel anger, and control it because we fear the consequences?

In war, is murder not necessary, since by definition it is the effort to resolve different goals by naked force?

Silly people look at things like the Golden Rule, and conclude that if we don’t want people to murder us, we should not murder them. But what if they are trying to murder us, despite our having done nothing to them? They have already violated the Golden Rule, by acting in a way they would not want directed back at them.

Is homosexuality wrong? As I see it, there are three principle types of homosexuality: some people are born with it; some are molested, and placed thereby on a permanently different path; and some embrace it for the political purpose of subverting our social order. The first two are beyond the control of those practicing it, and I cannot see any just reaction but acceptance.

The last, though, often leads not just to indulgence, but proselytizing, and in no few cases to seductions of younger men by older men (which itself leads to my second type). This in my view is wrong, because it is not trying to make the world a better place. On the contrary, it generally betrays a need for power and control, and the pursuit of power is the essence of how evil is formed.

In the end, what is needed for judgement is understanding. What we want, always, is to contexualize judgements such that we view people as individuals, and not as abstractions. When rules are dogmatic and hidebound, then we look at people as objects, and “deviancy” as analogous to a machine which has malfunctioned. Dogmatism and hate go hand in glove.

Thus decisions need to be local, such that we know the facts of THIS case. We bring general principles to bear, but we have derived those principles in advance, and can thus tailor them to the case. We have reasoned through why rape is wrong, and theft, and vandalism, etc.

Such decisions are necessary, since if you don’t HAVE to render a judgement, then don’t. It is silly wandering around thinking bad thoughts about people, if they don’t affect you at all. It is best to spend your time improving yourself. No doubt we often learn how to grow by observing how others have failed, but what I want to do is avoid slipping people into categories, when the reality is that most people are good and bad, and which they are varies on the day and place.

For the same reason, all judgments are imperfect. Human personalities are chaotic systems. They vary from day to day. The organizing principles are the criteria according to which that person bases his or her actions, but behavior is always approximate. Nobody is perfect, not least because what is right varies from day to day, and we can’t see in just what perfection would consist. If someone conforms to a behavior pattern precisely, I would argue they are compulsive, not perfect, even if they are Good.

Since it is impossible to identify the “essence” of a person, judgements will necessarily be imperfect. Yet, you have to make decisions, and I have already stated that no judgement need be rendered unless it is necessary.

This sort of approach adds information to our cultural order. So often one sees patent contradictions passed over with ease. For example, leftists will groan in horror at the institution of slavery in the United States, but ignore entirely the long history of slavery in Communist nations, and by and large the slavery which exists in many Islamic nations, particularly in Africa.

It is not enough simply to have the principle “slavery is wrong”–although that would be a good start. WHY is it wrong? This is the question. It may seem self evident that it is wrong, but that should make the question that much easier to answer.

For example, if one accepts my definition of Goodness as taking pleasure in the happiness of others, and being able to live happily on your own, then knowingly causing long term pain to others is simply incompatible with that. If our aim is Goodness, then we must reject slavery, in all the forms it takes.

I should add on this issue that I have at times seen the term “chattel” slavery, by which was connoted slavery where slaves had a price, presumably versus leftist slavery, where you were simply under the complete control of a totalitarian state.

No person seeking what is Good in this world could possibly make this argument. But such arguments are possible when one is failing to contextualize them, failing, for example, to look at what was actually done in Cuba or the Soviet Union: the rapes, torture, cruel work schedules and loads, the hunger, the deceptiveness and backstabbing required to survive.

My system works, and it is amenable to change and amendment.

Republicans will gain an unknown number of seats in Congress this year. The Party that is opposite the President gains in almost every mid-term election. This has been the pattern for many years.

This year, though, I believe we are seeing a qualitative change. Let us suppose that some 30% of the people will always vote Republican, and 30% always Democrat. This leaves 40% that until this year had some trust for both parties.

What I think independents are increasingly realizing is the size and scope of the deception that has been perpetrated on them. How is it even CONCEIVABLE that we could swear in a United States President with lifelong associations with Communists, and not ask even the most rudimentary questions about his background. How is that a photocopy of an incomplete birth certificate posted on a website and the word of a Democratic functionary in his home state counts as proof of eligibility? I very literally could not get a passport or driver’s license with what he has provided, and he has actively OPPOSED the People getting access to what information we are told the State of Hawaii possesses. To be clear, when he was born, the State of Hawaii would take the word of the parents for where the child was born. You just had to let them know you had had a child within the first YEAR of the childs life. A notice of live birth in the newspaper, for example, would have been quite sufficient. Who placed that ad? Presumably his parents.

Columbia University was a hotbed of radicalism. It was the seat of both the Students for a Democratic [read fascist Socialist; if their lips are moving, they are lying] Society, and its offshoot, the Weather Underground. During the years he attended, 1981-1983, it seems not just possible but likely that he took classes from Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who were both socialists who developed a plan to bankrupt the nation so as to facilitate what would have amounted to a “revolution” away from Constitutional democracy.

He likely took classes with Edward Said, a prominent “Palestinian” activist, and member of that ritualistic academic cult called “post-structuralism”, which I prefer to call Postrationalism. They use incense wine and candles to create the elaborate illusion that some sort of useful thinking is going on.

And this is just a smattering of the possibilities. Columbia, in the immediate aftermath of the student radicalism of the 60’s and early 70’s would have been utterly uncongenial to all but the ideologically sympathetic. Literally every teacher he would have had would have been far to the left of the general population.

In a more general sense, Columbia and Harvard between them produced in the Cold War virtually every Soviet agent we had. Our President, obviously, has degrees from both schools. If you add UC-Berkeley, you have a high percentage of the student radicals of the period when we were trying to save South Vietnam from the imposition of fascist tyranny.

One can go on and on. The grandfather who raised him was apparently good friends with Frank Davis, who was a known member of the Communist Party. Allegedly, he and Davis did drugs together. It is even possible that Davis and Obama’s mother were lovers. This is the internet, and it’s impossible from here to rule out photoshopping, but that very definitely looks like his mother.

Add to that the following two facts, and these are facts: 1) Davis wrote a book called “Sex Rebel” under the pseudonym Bob Greene, in which he described all sorts of what most of us would call perversions. Let me offer up a summary:

“Under certain circumstances I am bisexual. In addition to cunnilingus at times I enjoy anilingus. I am interested in urolagnia. I’m also a voyeur and exhibitionist. Occasionally I am mildly interested in sadomasochism.”

He was also utterly uninterested in the sanctity of marriage, and often cheated with other men’s wives.

2) Bob Greene/Frank Marshall Davis was a mentor to our President. He mentions having talked to him just prior to heading off to California for college, which Davis called “an advanced degree in compromise” (Obama quoting Davis).

I could go on and on. Obama himself cites Saul Alinsky as his biggest political influence.

The point I had intended to make, before I once again did some research, and once again had to shake my head at the LUNACY we committed in electing this man: when ordinary, reasoning people see the GAP between reality and the sanitized, redacted, ILLUSION that our media–in general, Fox and especially Glenn Beck excepted–portray, they are forced away from complacenty and into the realization “I HAVE TO THINK”. We can’t just blindly trust that the Fourth Estate is doing its job. We have to gather the facts. We have to render judgement.

We have to care. We have to be active. We have to fight not just against the seizure of power by evil human beings, but against the cultural malaise and anomie which they have done so much to create by teaching graduates of our institutions of higher learning to reject all values but political conformity to their agenda.

Every person who reaches this realization will be permanently radicalized as an anti-Leftist, pro-democracy American. Every person who sees the congruity between Democratic leadership and the Obama agenda will likewise realize that until they get the radicals out of the drivers seat, they very simply cannot vote for a Democrat. This does not make the Republicans saints, but at a minimum they are not openly supporting the wholesale conquest of our private lives, and the conscious pursuit of economically ruinous policies.

First, a nice bon mot from George Bernard Shaw–vicious, but clever human being: “All retrogressions and blunders, like all genuine reforms, are lucrative to somebody, and so never lack plausible advocates.”

It is an ironic comment, since he intended to benefit from the implementation of his own retrogressions.

What I had intended to say, though, is the following: human life is movement. We are never still, even when we appear to be still. What we are doing is RECREATING ourselves. Conservatism is the process of recreating yourself according to a template.

Many indoctrinated college students have joined what amounts to a death cult (read history, if this sounds excessive. Start with what happened in South Vietnam after we withdrew and then cut off all military and financial support.) This sort of advocacy becomes particularly venal when combined with the sort of flippancy you see on the left. They go to “the demonstration” during the day, then smoke weed at night and spend all their waking hours trying to “find themselves”. It’s really quite ugly, once you really grasp the humanity that has been deducted, as if surgically. Horrible, horrible things happen to men, women and children BECAUSE of the positions they take, which are poorly thought through, sloppy, and almost actively hostile to the actual process of sincere understanding.

Be that as it may, you can’t just say “stop”. Part of their indoctrination has been the removal of all moral “props” that could be available as alternatives. Their meaning system and their politics are one and the same.

There must always be an escape valve. As Sun Tzu said thousands of years ago, an army that can’t retreat will fight the more fiercely for it, to the end. They have no choice. In our own case, what we want is for them to relax, and then recreate themselves–self organize themselves–in personally and socially beneficial ways. This is an attack on delusion, not people, and the means is adding information to their environment such that they can reach new conclusions on their own.

The means by which this happens is dialogue. What dialogue does is force you either to reimagine the political “Other” as an actual human being, with whom you can talk, or reject them with extreme prejudice. The more times we–well meaning people–try to facilitate dialogue, with sincerity, and the more times they reject it, with prejudice, the more likely we will see an erosion of the violent certainty and dogmatism that successful propaganda enables. It’s a question of waves rolling away solid rock, with enough time.

The two ideologies which most threaten what is good in this world are radicalized Islam and what we may as well call Communism, or fascist Socialism. (note that Shaw himself noted that fascism was a trait BOTH of the far right and far left.)

It is for this reason that I have tried to propose a version of Islam that does not require the murder of non-Muslims, and yet which does not require the rejection of any part of their core beliefs; which is scripturally faithful. As I have framed it, I think the doctrine that could be built would in fact be an immensely powerful force for Good in the world.

Likewise, Goodness is my proposed alternative to Leftism. Note I am unwilling to reject in principle social welfare programs, or the use of the government for social improvements. What we have to do is contextualize things. We have to look at the situation as a whole, and observe changing circumstances.

You always start from where you are, not where you ought to be. What should be true is nothing more or less than a prospective template of where we should move FROM HERE.

Conservatives can at times be a bit silly. My car won’t start: Socialism. I pay taxes: Socialism. The guy at the coffee shop has long hair and moves a bit slow: Socialism.

One gets the sense with some people that if other people treat them as anything other than a solipsistic monad with no communal (socialist word, there) responsibilities whatever, then they are living in a tyranny.

Here is my own view. Goodness is a process of organizing information such that all benefit. It is a process of organizing individual consciousness such that YOU benefit. Deployed generally, it operates best in conditions both of freedom, and principle. The principle is the belief that wanting what is best for others and yourself will lead over time to the best emotional, mental, and physical state available, and that the path to that outcome is ever changing, but can be ascertained if we are willing to accept what is without whining, keep trying, and do our best at all times to tell the truth to ourselves and others about what is true and real–physically, emotionally, and mentally.

I won’t go through the process here, but introspection can yield–“derive”–something like the Golden Rule as the best means of organizing individual and social systems.

Liberalism is the doctrine that maximal freedom of movement generates the maximal capacity for personal and social growth and fulfullment. In the economic realm, free trade is nothing other than harnessing local information such that maximal efficiency in matching supply with demand is achieved. As Hayek demonstrated with overwhelming intellectual force, Socialism is nothing other than DEDUCTING information from the system, both in terms of price, but also in terms of what we might term moral information, which here would be motivation to produce.

True Capitalism is the use of innovation for the generation of wealth. We have never had a truly Capitalist system, since banking and financial interests–facilitated by central banks–have stolen large segments of our productivity, and hence our leisure. Ironically enough, this process has been facilitated by Socialist ideas, which purported have as their intent the democratization of leisure.

To get anything done, you have to have three components: motivation, information, and the physical resources. You have to want to do something, you have to know or figure out how to do it, and you have to be able to express it physically. Even books need paper, or computers.

Socialism reduces all three. By taking from them without compensation the fruits of their labor, it reduces the motivation of those who would be innovating on their own. Instead, it compels innovation by force, which reduces the total available. The Soviets were not uninventive. They were superior to us in some ways. But the bulk of their people did not want to work, and they were not encouraged to think, on balance. Quite often, people intentionally worked slow, and ignored ideas that could have been offered, because they hated the people running the nation. Sabotage was a long term, persistent problem.

Socialism is one of the ideas in the air today. What I would suggest is that when self organization happens, it happens from available components. When children 100 years ago were deciding who they wanted to be, and how to live their lives, they were greatly influenced by the Bible, the hard work they grew up doing, and somewhat naive but nonetheless sincere notions of national and local pride.

I was watching kids at the pool on Labor Day. They had hired a deejay, who was playing contemporary music. This music, to be blunt, is stupid. It is entertaining, has a good beat, etc., but it teaches a blind hedonism. 5 year old girls were shaking their hips to Justin Bieber, and being indoctrinated into the “cult of fun”, which is a dominant theme–meme?–in our lives.

To this is added the theme of niceness. You have to always be nice, or else you are a bad person. Self evidently many bad people have mastered this theme, and are able to say horrible things when they format it correctly. Academics would be a good example. They are often allowed to say horrible hateful things, but if they are “Nice”, then they are OK. We are told the lead singers of death metal bands are “Nice”, even if they sing songs like “I cum blood”, and pour fake blood over themselves in their concerts. They are “cool”. What else do you need to know? They smile a lot, when they aren’t shouting out satanic anthems.

Go to the Young Adult section of your local bookstore. Seriously, do it, especially if you have kids. Don’t take my word for it, but you will find HUNDREDS of books about vampires, werewolves, zombies, and other dark creatures. The heroes are always “cool”, but they are dead, or warped in fundamental ways. They are not right. They combine what a previous generation would have readily recognized as evil traits with being “cool”. This is subtle brainwashing.

Doris Lessing wrote in one of her books–I believe the book was “The Five Gated City”, but don’t quote me on that–about the process of turning a girl into a whore, of breaking her. You can’t do it overnight. You have to do it gradually. Perhaps every third time you screw her, you take her just a little past where she is comfortable. You take her past her comfort zone, let her adopt self protective rationalizations (that didn’t hurt so much; he really is nice most of the time; he says he loves me), then repeat the process. Soon enough, she has no boundaries at all. She has lost herself. This will lead, for most, to self desctructive behaviors, like drug use, but economic usefulness. Completing this process is the role of the pimp.

Many in our culture admire pimps. He “pimped out his ride”, and other such sayings are common enough.

When the Fabian Socialists undertook to destroy Western culture, they adopted three symbols: Fabius Maximus himself, a Roman general who strung out his enemy (Hannibal, if memory serves) such that he never allowed a decisive battle to be fought; the turtle, which does win the race with the Hare; and the wolf in sheeps clothing. The intent was the long term combination of deception and gradualness.

In “seducing” a health culture, the task is not just economic. They have to attack the moral basis of our culture as well, the self organizing system component, the capacity to do without government since we trust one another, and carry our own crosses without complaint.

Consider this comment from Keynes sexual partner, Lytton Strachey: he “sought to write in a way that would contribute to a change in our ethical and sexual mores–a change that couldn’t be done in a minute–but would unobtrusively permeate the more flexible minds of young people.”

Socialism does not just deduct local pricing information. It deducts local MORAL information, such that common sense moral decisions become difficult outside of the propagandistic social milieu which has been set up so diligently on our campuses.

Things to do. This will have to pass for now. I will have more to say later.

Muslims submit to the Will of Allah. This is the essence of their religion, the belief that there is but one God–not many–and that that God communicated His will to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel, and that that Word was transcribed exactly as intended, and not corrupted, as they believe the transmissions to the Jews and Christians were.

Yet, only the Quran is uncorrupted. Only the Quran is perfect. Nothing else. The Hadith may have been corrupted just as they believe the Jewish and Christian faiths were. The hadith is the product of man, even if inspired by God. To be clear, Moses and Abraham were Prophets too, but their faiths still had to be supplemented and corrected by the final revelation of the Quran. They were mortal and imperfect, as of course were their followers.

A few interesting facts:

The Hajj is not in the Quran.

The Quran does not specifically mention the times or the number of prayers or the manner in which we pray.

Ramadan IS in the Quran.

Charity is mentioned over 30 times, and there does not appear to be a distinction made between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Quite obviously, the central element is the belief in one God, but according to the Quran, they also believe in what was passed down to the Jews and Christians: according to Sura 2:136 “We believe in GOD, and in what was sent down to us, and in what was sent down to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Patriarchs; and in what was given to Moses and Jesus, and all the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction among any of them. To Him alone we are submitters.”

I, too, believe in God and that the universe is one. I believe in a difference between Good and Evil, and between submission to the laws which God put in this universe, and the laws of man. Here is the central point, though: Sharia and the Hadith are not the Quran. They are the work, even according to Muslim tradition, if looked at with sincerity and an open mind, of men. Muhammad was blessed–as Abraham and Jesus were blessed–but only the Quran itself came from God.

In my view, when verses contradict one another–such as verses calling for killing infidels, and verses calling for mercy, and charity–what has happened is that room has been created for the use of the judgment and conscience which has been implanted in you as a result of having an immortal soul. The call to submit to God is the call to do what is right and just.

If you believe that the Quran is perfect, then this would be a part of its perfection: it allows you to choose what is ultimately the Will of God, and what is merely the will of Man; between what is right, and what is wrong.

There is no reason to suppose God would ask us to be faithful to His Will and not give us the tools to ascertain it. There is no reason to suppose that a book filled with calls to charity would condone blind hatred and unreasoning violence.

Such are my views, at any rate. I believe they are tenable theologically.

I will add that Sharia law must be seen to benefit some members of Islamic society, at the expense of others. It helps men and hurts women. It helps the wealthy, who can afford their four wives, and hurts the poor, who may not marry at all. It entrenches Kings, and offers little recourse for the Many whose voices may not be heard.

If you look at the institution of Ramadan, it is a very positive thing. We Americans would benefit from it. If you look at the belief in one God, it what all Christians and Jews already believe. All believers pray, so there is no inconsistency there, and we all believe in the importance of helping those who are less fortunate, and who are in trouble for whatever reason.

In my view, one has to look at the unreasoning hatred and death that has flowed from certain interpretations of Islam as originating in the minds of men who benefit from cultivating that hate, and who are in many cases simply evil, and using the cover of religion, as has been done so many times in history, by members of all religions on the planet.

What is done in the name of religion says nothing about that religion, except to the extent members of that religion condone and do not oppose it.