I don’t want to overlook the actual freedoms, innovation, tolerance, and open-mindedness West Coast cities can offer, but, boy, there sure are a lot of fruits, nuts, flakes and dreamers out here. Across the nation, one wonders about character formation and institutional stability under what I’ll call doctrines of Liberatory Self-Help, and all the ways it can go wrong:
The idea of love toward into a political force shouldn’t seem absurd, given that hatred turned into political force is wreaking havoc with the world even now. Gandhi and MLK Jr. spoke of love turned into a large scale social force for good; creating that force is our task today.
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) July 1, 2019
In the meantime, I’ve joined a great new group: We can be pretty aggressive about recruitment goals, but we’re making progress:
Excuse me, sir. Do you have time to talk about our lord and savior, Godzilla??? pic.twitter.com/L1GCJ7XS6x
— Nyoman Indra K. (@nyombek) July 4, 2019
Around Seattle, I’ve heard talk of the Ramtha School Of Enlightenment:
‘Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (RSE) is an American spiritual sect near the rural town of Yelm, Washington. The school was established in 1988 by JZ Knight, who claims to channel a 35,000-year-old being called Ramtha the Enlightened One.’
Let’s just say if you don’t believe there are lizard-people out there, waiting to remorselessly devour tasty human flesh after the impending and catastrophic eruption of Mt.Rainier, well, buddy, you’re the one with problems.
This stuff is funny until you’re on your own, wandering an unknown road at dusk, just trying to find a source of warmth to regulate your body-temparature for the night:
Dear Reader, this means I may have to leave The Human Pagoda. Please click through to read about our spiritual and material Leader, raised in the ducts of the United Nations.
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By all means, please skeptically assess the level of your own skepticism, admitting new knowledge and experience, but with the ol’ bullshit detector constantly running:
Yoram Hozany at The American Mind: ‘Conservative Rationalism Has Failed:
‘In recent decades, American and European elites have devoted themselves to the project of rethinking society from scratch.
What were once linchpin concepts such as family and nation, man and woman, God and Scripture, the honorable and the sacred, have been found wanting and severely damaged, if not overthrown. The resulting void has been filled by new doctrines, until now mostly neo-Marxist or libertarian in character. But a racialist “white identity” politics in a Darwinian key is gathering momentum as well.’
This blog has found much truth in the Oakeshottian critique of rationalism, the Straussian critique of post-Nietzschean modernity, and the post-Kantian, Friesian critique of Left illiberalism.
What the hell is going on here, anyways? What is a ‘flower crime-scene?’:
If we are coming apart, who’s putting us back together? : Via Youtube: ‘Are We Really Coming Apart?’ Charles Murray and Robert Putnam Discuss…Repost-Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People
Related On This Site: Once you take apart the old structure, you have to criticize the meritocracy you’ve helped create: David Brooks At The NY Times: ‘Why Our Elites Stink’
The anti-intellectual’s intellectual: Repost-Via Youtube: Eric Hoffer-’The Passionate State Of Mind’…
Leo Strauss:From Darwinian Conservatism By Larry Arnhart: “Surfing Strauss’s Third Wave of Modernity”
A deeper look at what education “ought” to be, which is remarkably like it is now: A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.
How dare he?: Repost-Revisting Larry Summers: What Did He Say Again?From The Harvard Educational Review-
Still reliving the 60′s?: A Few Thoughts On Robert Bork’s “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”
The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.New liberty away from Hobbes?: From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’…Richard Rorty tried to tie postmodernism and trendy leftist solidarity to liberalism, but wasn’t exactly classically liberal: Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”Via Bloggingheads-Helen Andrews On Meritocracy