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Understanding Progressives

Posted by strugatsky 6 years, 4 months ago to Politics
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Today, I had accidentally gone to a meeting of Liberals/Progressives, about 20 of them, on the subject of healthcare. The topic was intentionally advertised so as to conceal its aim and I, in a state of bliss, took the bait. Disappointed at first, I ended up almost enjoying it, for this was not the typical college uneducated crowd of children (per Obamacare, childhood has now been officially defined as 0-26), but a geriatric congregation where some of the patients may have gone to real schools back then. So I stayed. What I learned was quite interesting. The presenter was a retired medical doctor, whose medical expertise I won't question (though he seemingly retired at an earlier age than most), but whose lack of understanding of economics and other subjects which he proclaimed to champion was astounding. It was like listening to a NFL player or a Hollywood star. But most interesting was the reaction of the audience, who approvingly nodded their heads to every unsubstantiated claim. Even a claim that doctor visit deductibles are evil, as, he claimed, that a $5 deductible prevents patients from seeing a doctor – regardless of the fact that these same patients spent that on cigarettes every day. I thought that I was in a middle of circus seals, only these were too weak to clasp. As the level of bull rose above my tolerance level (quickly, actually) and I began to politely challenge with facts, the audience became most uncomfortable and their leader asked me to be quiet (of course, I did not). My main take away was the amazing shallowness of these people – every attempt at analysis, delving even a little deeper, caused them pain and anguish. I have seen this before – from the teenagers going onto 30-something, but these were supposedly adults in their 60's and 70's. Had American education failed us that long ago?

Second takeaway – the Progressives actually believe that the US economy, prior to Obama, was pure capitalism! I was and remain, at a total loss how to confront such a deviation from reality. Can anyone here help?


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  • Posted by CaptainKirk 6 years, 4 months ago
    For comparison. I am 50. I Learned in public school (the following BS):
    1) We have a Living Constitution
    2) Judges must apply current moral norms (therefore are magical and have even higher authority)
    3) Judges are apolitical by their very nature
    4) Prayer in school is bad (Watched a teacher get canned for a morning prayer of thanks, she would not stop)
    5) You cant fight City Hall (Teaching us to become sheep!)
    6) Get out of line, your future can be DESTROYED by these people(teachers).
    7) Learning is about regurgitating what the teacher wants to hear
    8) We obscure things in nomenclature (rubric anyone?) so your parents can't help you, we are the only true path forward...
    (we change this nomenclature: New Math (then), Common Core (now), because we are SO CLEVER)
    9) We are TOO STUPID to switch to Metric...

    In my daughters lifetime (she's 18):
    A) Kwanza OVER Christmas
    B) No Child Gets ahead
    C) No Winners: All Losers
    D) No bullying, UNLESS it is to pick on a kid who gets 100% all the time, then look the other way
    E) Time Magazine Weekly Reader (How to calculate your carbon footprint, How Capitalism Destroys, etc)
    F) Only ONE side of a conversation is REALLY allowed.
    G) A teacher calls ME out because I tutored someone in her math class (who aced the class now), because having
    the kid pre-read the material was giving this UNTALENTED child an advantage over the better kids!

    Schools do NOT Teach HOW to learn, How to think, How to solve problems, or How to ENJOY learning. They
    treat school like work, and kids don't want a job, they want to feed their creativity and grow.
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    • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 6 years, 4 months ago
      I'm 65 and after reading your lists...I thankfully missed all of that and more.
      By comparison, I almost learned truth...only I was too hyper and bored to tears to pay much attention...but, believe it or not, I did better in college as if all that didn't matter and had a AS degree before my high school class graduated...laughing...all because of a chick I liked a lot.
      Go Figure.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
      Where is this? My wife, I, and my kids all have had a very normal experience with the public schools compared to this. Normal isn't great, but I saw almost none of this bizarre stuff except for C and D. I saw a little #6 from private school.
      1) Constitution - It was presented without comment on how it should be interpreted. We learned it was important but not much about what's in it.
      2+3) Judges applying moral norms or judges being apolitical - We just learned about "checks and balances" of three branches. I heard no comment on moral norms.
      4) Prayer - I learned the gov't can't establish a religion, but I never saw any sign of someone wanting to pray and being told no or someone in the school wanting to lead a prayer, which would obviously be totally inappropriate.
      5) " You cant fight City Hall " - I remember learning the exact opposite. Maybe I had particularly progressive teachers, but I actually remember learning about people who protested and changed society for the better.
      6) "your future can be DESTROYED by these people" - I didn't see any of this until I was at private school. They taught that your "high school career" was key to success in life.
      7) "Learning is about regurgitating what the teacher wants to hear" - I remember hearing "don't read and regurgitate." It was at the private school, but I recall them giving us something to comment on, and the correct answer was to reject it because all the footnotes pointed to sources with an agenda.
      8) "We obscure things in nomenclature " - I never even heard of this in any school.
      9) "We are TOO STUPID to switch to Metric.." I think I remember learning mostly metric, but they certainly never called us stupid. I think they just taught us metric without comment.

      For my kids:
      A) "Kwanza OVER Christmas" - I am certain they don't teach some holidays as being superior to others.
      B) No Child Gets ahead - There's nothing like that.
      C) No Winners: All Losers - They do teach this. They go way overboard on it too.
      D) No bullying - I'm for no bullying, but they've turned bullying into almost a catchall for any behavior they don't like. We're working with them on this. Bullying is a word with a specific meaning to me, but they use it very broadly.
      E) Time Magazine Weekly Reader (How to calculate your carbon footprint) - We teach them this, at least in terms elementary school kids can understand. I'm not sure if they're learning in school yet.
      E2) "How Capitalism Destroys" - They've done nothing like this so far, but I wouldn't put it past them. The kids might hide it from us if they taught something like that because they're afraid we'd pull them out of the school.
      F) Only ONE side of a conversation is REALLY allowed.- I don't know what this means.
      G) A teacher calls ME out because I tutored someone in her math class - I've never heard anything like that. It sounds bizarre.

      One thing not on your list is what I consider being neurotic about safety. It's not just the school. Our whole world is scared to let kids take any action or any responsibility.

      I know the people who work at the school and run it. Some of them when to school with my wife or me. They don't do all this bizarre stuff. More and more I wonder if I live in a bubble.
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      • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
        CircuitGuy, I must say that it is rare when anyone nowadays engages in a detailed discussion – I appreciate it very much. So, in order not to miss this opportunity, I take upon myself to answer some of the points above. Some, because we've all had somewhat different experiences, being of different ages and growing up in different areas. I grew up in the '70's and 80's and went to private schools, so, as I wrote in the original comment, it was somewhat of a shocker to see the apparent results of public education of the 60's and 70's. I did have children in public schools in this past decade, so that part I am well aware of, to the point of pulling them out and home schooling for several years and then sending them to study in Israel. I would also add, that as opposed to most other parents that belong to their PTA's and have regular discussions with the teachers, I have actually sat in classes during lessons. I was so appalled by what I saw that I immediately removed my children from the public school. Now, to the individual points:

        Constitution – the current version, very lightly studied, in some instances within the public school system, has been intentionally perverting the Second Amendment (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/.... But the most egregious evil, is the one of omission – very lightly studied.

        Prayer – I went to private schools which had prayers. I completely agree that they do not belong in public schools.

        "Learning is about regurgitating what the teacher wants to hear" – I don't know if this "feature" is by design or simply the result of ever growing incompetence of the teachers. I can present one example that speaks volumes (happened to my coworker). His daughter, in HS, was doing a science project. She set up an experiment to demonstrate that water boils at different temperatures with an addition of salt (this should have been an elementary school project in my days). The teacher gave her a "C" because, the teacher said, "everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C." And if your kid even attempts to question "Global Warming," the teachers will literary foam at the mouth and your kid will be public enemy number one. Tried that already; it would have been fun to watch, if it wasn't so tragic.

        "We obscure things in nomenclature " - that applies to everything the Party does; this is not specific to schools. Like the Affordable Care Act, the Democratic Republic of North Korea, institutions of higher learning, etc. They're good at it.

        "Kwanza OVER Christmas" - I am certain they don't teach some holidays as being superior to others. - No, they don't. And that is the problem. When everything is equally good, then nothing is good.

        No Child Gets ahead - There's nothing like that. No Child Left Behind is exactly the same as no child gets ahead. By definition. Do we even need to discuss it? And "No Winners: All Losers" proves the point. Everyone gets a participation trophy. If only the real world was so generous.

        No bullying – At first glance, what parent wouldn't want to protect their child from bullies? But what will these children, after they reach the age of 26 and start venturing out on their own from their parents' basements, do when they face the real world? Get a 6 digit micro-aggression counter and run back into the basement? After all, they would have never learned to deal with bullies and wouldn't know how to survive without a nearby safe-space.

        Time Magazine Weekly Reader (How to calculate your carbon footprint) – No doubt that we all know that the Green-Green propaganda starts early. This is a self-evident issue for anyone that has kids in school. As I said above, causes the teachers to foam at the mouth at any attempt to challenge it.

        How Capitalism Destroys – Oh, yeah! The preaching of sharing, donations, food drives, the evils of unequal distribution – starting in kindergarten. I've cleansed my kids' brains on this subject very early. When they came home asking me to donate to their class causes, I graciously offered them to make the donations themselves – from their piggy banks. That stopped it cold.

        Only ONE side of a conversation is REALLY allowed.- I don't know what this means. - Most evident on the subject of the environment and Global Warming. Whenever facts are absent, the teachers get nervous and cut off the conversation. That I've seen multiple times. Wouldn't be surprised if that includes Common Core math.

        You have rightfully mentioned safety as another issue. Back when I was 10 years old, I rode the city bus across half of Manhattan to go to school. Now, we have 17 year-old's being bused across the road and the traffic stopped in both direction while the imbeciles walk home. No wonder they're still adulting at 36!

        About 20 years ago I taught a Civics class in a public school in St. Louis. 8th grade. The classroom walls were completely covered with posters on two subject, exclusively - slavery and outstanding Black Americans (most long dead). About a third did not know who their fathers were and on the subject of the role of the government, almost half said that it was to assign/distribute jobs, salaries, work and income. Naturally, the results couldn't have been different.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
          " it was somewhat of a shocker to see the apparent results of public education of the 60's and 70's."
          I understand what you mean, but I think it has more to do with that particular group than public education in the US.

          "I was so appalled by what I saw that I immediately removed my children from the public school. "
          My wife says, half jokingly, that that point is coming for us.

          "the most egregious evil, is the one of omission"
          I have not seen them pervert the 2nd Amendment, but I agree they completely steer clear of it-- an evil of omission, as you say. We have to teach them. When it comes to gun rights, maybe the best thing we can do is teach them to shoot and use guns responsibly, so they won't believe stereotypes about guns. That's not the same as teaching the Constitutional issue, but it's one important thing.

          "everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C."
          Is that bad? I do not know. I think they want you to come up with a hypothesis, like less ionic things affect boiling point less. I always found it hard b/c for a HS science project, you will be replicating others' research no matter what.

          "No, they don't [teach the relative merits of holidays]. And that is the problem"
          I am confused. I don't think the notion of holidays among different religions having relative merits makes sense. It almost sounds like something my 7 y/o would come up with: Which is better Easter, Yom Kippur, or Ramadan?

          "Everyone gets a participation trophy. If only the real world was so generous."
          This is a real problem. I don't know what to do about it. I don't find it generous or un-generous but just wrong. My kid plays all kinds of sports, but the adults can't admit which team won. That's crazy. At least the kids know.
          Not keeping score would be just a little quirk, but it's part of a larger trend of trying to protect kids from even the most trivial disappointments.

          "Get a 6 digit micro-aggression counter "
          I know. I want to protect them from real use of force. If I didn't know any better, I would think you just want to tolerate bullying, but I don't think that's the case. We've gone overboard calling all kinds of normal behavior bullying.

          " No doubt that we all know that the Green-Green propaganda starts early."
          We haven't seen this. They teach the facts about human activities causing global warming and other changes to environment that will be costly to humans, but at least from what they tell me they never teach them "mother Earth" is more important than people.

          "The preaching of sharing, donations, food drives, the evils of unequal distribution"
          I don't want the school to teach it, but I think giving voluntarily to the poor is generally a good thing, but I don't like the way the school asks for food. Use MONEY. And I completely agree it should be money from their piggy bank that they earned through work. And if they don't want to, that's totally fine. I think giving to charity is a good thing, but it's not a moral thing where you're bad if you don't want to.

          BTW, they share all the school supplies. I can't stand that. It has a real communist feel to it. I encourage them to flout the policy and keep their own stash of supplies and share only when they feel the desire to.

          "[One side of a conversation being allowed is ] most evident on the subject of the environment and Global Warming. "
          I think there only is one side. The evidence says what it says, and talking about "sides" is a rhetorical trick by people who want to deny the problem, similar to creationists saying "at least teach the controversy." There is no controversy.

          "we have 17 year-old's being bused across the road "
          I know. It's INSANE! I see insanity. I see kids who are at an age when my wife was a crossing guard with a badge who now literally cannot go behind a tree out of sight of an adult, who literally cannot cross a street even with an adult Madison Police Dept crossing guard!! It's no wonder they need "comfort flufflies" to deal with life in their 20s.

          "almost half said that it was to assign/distribute jobs, salaries, work and income."
          Damn. They're only 12, so it was not too late. Hopefully some of them rolling their eyes at you remembered something of what you said. They're 32 now. Maybe some of them remembered something you said in response that may have sounded like a rant at the time.
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          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
            You seem to have misunderstood the problem of her teacher's reaction to the experiment with boiling water. She set up a simple experiment "to demonstrate that water boils at different temperatures with an addition of salt". The teacher did not understand the experiment. "The teacher gave her a 'C' because, the teacher said, 'everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C'." As simple and primitive as the experiment was, the student was ahead of the teacher, leaving the student with no way of understanding the next educational step that scientific principles require explanation and generalization beyond simply observing a physical experiment.

            The problem with teaching Kwanza with Christmas as no better is that it is multiculturalist egalitarian ethnicity versus an American individualist joyous and mostly secular holiday. They are pushing ethnicity over the American sense of life to children who cannot possibly understand the philosophical implications but who are being taught wrong values inculcated for life.

            Green propaganda does start early. The climate hysteria pushed in schools is now down to the lowest grades in the form of pure propaganda with posters and slogans pushed on children who cannot possibly understand the issues, let alone the political and scientific controversy. Rejecting the climate hysteria movement blaming natural climate cycles on industry while packaging it with the concept of harmful pollution is not like "creationism". The viros "proving" their enviro-chondria by contriving "experiments" to demonstrate what they accept on faith is like creationism.

            The same goes for the rest of environmentalist ideology and it's "mother earth" imagery denigrating private land use, development and industry. On top of that the children are being inculcated with the belief that the emotionalism and dogma of the viros represents "science" before the children can appreciate what science is and what it requires. The whole notion of indoctrinating the idea of sacrificing human values to nature as a supreme value is misanthropic, nihilistic, and pre-science, yet it is being inculcated at the emotional level that is very difficult to break out of later in an uphill battle, surrounded by society that shares the same religious belief.
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
              "As simple and primitive as the experiment was, the student was ahead of the teacher, "
              WOW. That's kind of mind boggling, if you're right. That kind of thing would have our kids in a different school.

              Our kids are lobbying to stay at their public school b/c they like their friends, but I would definitely draw the line there.
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              • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                On the average, the worse students would go into teaching careers, providing ever slightly worse instructions to the following generation. And so on... I have personally seen examples when the teachers' lack of understanding of their subject was appalling. Most noticeable is the lack of proper grammar among most teachers that I've interacted with. Even brought back to the principal an English assignment that was riddled with grammatical errors; I thought that I was reading Michele Obama's Master's thesis...
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                • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
                  The worst students don't continue in education at all, let alone as teachers. Where are the teachers you encountered who can't even speak with a proper grammar? The biggest danger is those teachers who are intelligent and who adopt the wrong premises and theories, then effectively spread them in educational institutions they monopolize.
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                  • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                    I have taken back to the principal an English assignment (6th grade), where I circled grammatical errors in every paragraph. Every paragraph. Some had several. The interesting thing is that the principal, embarrassed as he was, said that this assignment was written by a teacher several years ago and used several times by various teachers. Over the years, among other teachers, students and parents, I was the only one who noticed and drew attention to the errors. There were over a dozen in a one page assignment. I also enjoyed, from time time, while talking to the teachers, to correct their speech on the fly - most of the time they had no idea what I was saying. Those are just a sample.
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                    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                      English teachers whose main effect is to repeat each other's bad grammar are not the intellectuals who are leading the culture into statism and collectivism or anything else. Correcting their worst grammar will not change the role of the intellectual leaders. And the ones teaching and writing at major universities don't misunderstand simple observations of boiling water. To dismiss the influence of bad teachers in terms of the worst examples of ignoramuses is to miss the point. The educational establishment has a major bad influence because of what the most intelligent of them do.
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          • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
            "I was so appalled by what I saw that I immediately removed my children from the public school. "
            My wife says, half jokingly, that that point is coming for us. -- I highly recommend sitting in the class during a lesson. You are permitted to do so. The schools often don't like it and often try to discourage it, which is a sign of a problem. There are good schools that welcome parents sitting in. Typically, after insisting, you will be allowed to sit it on one or two lessons (that is enough) with an assistant principal there with you. Obviously, you are to be a fly on the wall and sit quietly in the back. Well worth the experience.

            When it comes to gun rights, maybe the best thing we can do is teach them to shoot and use guns responsibly, so they won't believe stereotypes about guns. -- Completely agree. I taught my kids to respect guns, safety and shooting at kindergarten age. I think that is much more difficult for those living in large cities.

            "everyone knows that water boils at 100 deg C." -- no need to whitewash stupidity. The girl explained everything properly. This is a level of experiments that we did in elementary school. The teacher was (and remains) too stupid to know basic physics and too moronic to be able to learn.

            "No, they don't [teach the relative merits of holidays]. And that is the problem"
            I am confused. -- What I am trying to point out here is that there is an intentional effort to remove our historical symbols – holidays, icons, statues, items and people of value, the bedrock of our culture and civilization. This is not unique to the American Progressives; this is exactly the same as happened in the Soviet Union, where every pillar of society was intentionally uprooted and destroyed. This is the continuation of the Lenin-Stalin-Alinsky policy.

            "The preaching of sharing, donations, food drives, the evils of unequal distribution"
            I don't want the school to teach it, but I think giving voluntarily to the poor is generally a good thing... - I am not against charity or help. I am against charity at someone else expense. If you want to give – by all means, everything that is yours. The school teaches the kids to give that which belongs to others, starting with the parents.

            Global Warming. -- I've addressed this in another comment, but to ease of reading, will copy and paste here: When we talk about religion, we give examples of the hypocrisy and lies surrounding it. That in itself is enough for a thoughtful person to question the dogma. It is a well demonstrated fact that Global Warming claims are riddled with intentional lies and falsification of data. For a thoughtful person, that in itself should be enough to question the dogma.

            To touch again on the safety, busing and bullying issue – we are in agreement, but I want to reiterate as it is so important. These issues are related in the sense that the system prevents children to grow up into adults. It is as if we are making eunuchs. They can't make decisions, can't take responsibility, run for cover at a mere sight of a micro-aggression and, most importantly, look up to the government for everything, from jobs to housing to healthcare.
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            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
              The intentional effort to uproot American values is much deeper than following "Lenin-Stalin-Alinsky policy". There is nothing to follow. Almost no one today follows or cares about Lenin or Stalin, who were political thugs cashing in on Marx and centuries of Russian mysticism and pessimism, leaving no intellectual legacy themselves.

              Alinsky influenced the New Left in the 1960s and its current successors, but also left nothing intellectual to follow: he was a nihilist who overtly specialized in local disruptive activism for the purpose of wreckage as such, with no idea of what to replace it with. He had no ideals. He couldn't even articulate the bad ideological premises he inherited. You can see first hand how utterly negative he was in his Rules for Radicals (without paying for it) at https://www.historyofsocialwork.org/1...

              The radical political progressives today follow and build on his methods but have an ideology based on over a century of American Pragmatism as a means to think about and follow altruism and collectivism to replace America with.
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              • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                Perhaps the Left would have existed without Marx, just as it is likely that Nazism would have existed without Hitler. In the age of material abundance, it seems to be natural that some can be persuaded to share. As the sharing epidemic grew, it turned into mooching and stealing. Maybe Marx was just a prophet of the things to come, along with his well known disciples. Whether blaming the Jews or the Russians or whomever, or accepting American socialist movement as completely homegrown, the fact remains that the Progressive Left in America abhors Capitalism and empowerment of the Individual. They have been working on destroying the American values at least since the 1930's, when they were ecstatically in love with Stalin and his Gulags. The Hippy / Vietnam era gave them a tremendous boost, through the universities and the Peace Corps and they permanently occupied the education field. They bred several generations of people that are trained to respond to they feelings-tickling whistles, while being completely immune to facts. The government "education" system continues to do tremendous damage to the American culture, or what's left of it. It is perhaps not at times noticeable because the pot is roasted slowly, over decades and decades. But it is roasted.
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                • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
                  " the Progressive Left in America abhors Capitalism and empowerment of the Individual."
                  I can't tell what's going on, but to me it feels more like I imagine the Roman Republic-- decadent, considering success a birthright, becoming and empire, and corrupt. I'm sure there are people who are anti-capitalist and anti-individual, but I don't sense they have broad support. I also don't sense people appreciating/understanding capitalism and individualism. It's more like "wait, success is a birthright, so let's give whoever's in charge broad authority to do whatever it takes to stop these tragic anomalies of absence of easy success." Along the way, they may accept socialism, but I don't sense a broad movement that starts with a theory on economics and the individual.
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                  • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                    Well, let's put these facts together - Obama, the Darling of the Left, has proudly written about his communist education (not from a school, but from his most respected tutor - Frank Marshall Davis); Hillary does not hide her communist schooling in the '60's (it takes a village); in schools, on TV and movies, greed is displayed as the most egregious evil against the society (the entrance to Hell is on Wall Street); altruism is taught in schools as the greatest virtue (I can't even go peacefully to Walmart without pressure to donate - I often feel like Rex Kramer going through an airport); the destruction of the statues is just the latest in a long march to demonize the leaders and achievers of the past, starting with Columbus about 25 years ago. I can go on, but the parallels with the Soviet Union are too obvious. And yes, the rank and file cannon fodder do not have a plan to destroy America, Capitalism and Individuality; they don't have a plan at all - they follow the plan from their leaders, from the Party.
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                    • -1
                      Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                      "Darling of the Left,"
                      I wonder if one day I'll see the world radically different, but right now the whole thing looks like a professional wrestling. I see no plan whatsoever. Certainly mainstream politicians aren't communist or fascist. No one's pressuring you at mainstream stores. I find it bizarre to read. I travel a lot, so I don't think I live in a bubble. I see none of this crap anywhere I go.
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                      • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                        Obama and the left have gone as far as they could with what they could get away with. That you haven't seen them acting out the role of full-blown fascists in uniform doesn't mean that they don't have statist and collectivist premises driving everything they do, or that they haven't imposed enormous damage through what they could do.
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                        • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                          "Obama and the left have gone as far as they could with what they could get away with."
                          I hear what you're saying, but it does not sound remotely true. I don't believe in "a left" or any of that. I think you're overthinking the motivations of the citizens of a somewhat decadent empire.
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                          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                            Obama made it very clear what he is as a leftist. "Left" and "right" are not precise terms, but "left" does generally mean collectivist and statist, and that is not "overthinking decadence".

                            A big example was Obamacare. It is obvious what it is in the form it was rammed through Congress, as the most they could get at the time, and Obama was caught in a recording saying he intended it as a step to complete government control -- euphemistically called "single payer" since they know better than to use the "S" word now. The overt collectivist premises are all over the Democrats now in a more extreme form of admission than ever and there are many more examples from Obama.
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                      • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                        How can you say that "mainstream politicians aren't communist or fascist" when I have just presented examples to Obama's and Hillary's communist ties. Bernie is an openly proclaimed socialist completely in the Soviet mold. What kind of proof would convince you?
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                        • -1
                          Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                          I do not believe those examples of Obama and Hillary. I do believe Sanders is openly socialist. I am concerned that we will start seeing more figures like him for various reasons: a) post WWII nostalgia, b) automation changing society, increasing ROI and decreasing some labor costs, and c) less influence of media gatekeepers and increased feedback from click-through data. I really hope I'm wrong about this.
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                          • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                            The influence of Frank Marshall Davis is mentioned by Obama in multiple references. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub1Li... The biography of Davis is widely available.

                            Obama, in his own words, has grown up as a paranoid racist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Jlq...

                            Then, of course, there's Alinsky's influence (Obama holds him in high regard) and his friends from the Weather Underground.

                            If that is not sufficient, then I don't know what kind of proof you would believe.
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                            • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                              I will listened to parts of it. The parts I've listened to are inconsistent with what you're saying, e.g. that he's a closet communist and racist. It sounds absurd. I understand typically half the people don't support any given president. This seems like purely making stuff up.

                              I have not listened to the whole thing, so maybe there's a bombshell hidden in there. It all seems pretty standard.

                              It feels to me like there's this whole world of politicians making absurd claims about one another, and I keep listening as if there's some hidden secret to make their claims makes sense. But it seems like there's hyperbole inflation. In addition to blaming random criminal acts on President Trump, for the first time I heard the claim he won't leave office and is planning some kind of coup. I heard that about Bush and Obama. It seems like the Internet has hastened the inflation. I should stop listening to this crap, and if we do get a president staging a coup, I won't know it until it's too late.
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                              • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                                In one segment above, Obama describes his relationship and influence of Frank Marshall Davis, a communist.
                                There many more references by Obama himself to Davis' teaching.

                                The other segment from his book describes a very angry young man who blames the White Man and colonialism for almost all of the problems in the world, or at least around him. Is that not racism?
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                      • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 3 months ago
                        "I see none of this crap anywhere I go."
                        You support Hitlery and Obama, and you still don't recognize the anti-freedom, facism in their actions.
                        Your eyes are closed when your undeserving heroes act like mobsters.
                        The fact that you call it crap is just more proof of your irrational bias.
                        You have to open your eyes to see.
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                        • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                          "your undeserving heroes "
                          [Sarcasm]Clinton and Obama are my heroes![/Sarcasm] They're not.
                          "call it crap is just more proof of your irrational bias"
                          Let's call it very bad stuff then. By it I mean a plot to undermine freedom.
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
              "The teacher was (and remains) too stupid to know basic physics and too moronic to be able to learn."
              I thought you were saying teacher was saying it's too simple and widely known. You're saying the teacher didn't even understand the experiment.

              "there is an intentional effort to remove our historical symbols"
              I don't see it. I know what you're talking about with Stalin destroying all symbols and institutions outside the party, but I don't see that happening here at all. It's more that they do a decent albeit sometimes clumsy job of having people from all walks of life come together. My kids school is decent about this.

              "They can't make decisions, can't take responsibility, run for cover at a mere sight of a micro-aggression and, most importantly, look up to the government for everything, from jobs to housing to healthcare."
              That's about it. I hear the pendulum is swinging back the other way on the Coasts, teaching kids to have "grit". It's not here. They grow up much slower. There's the idea an authority should handle even the slightest little problems. I've heard stories of people at West Point with their mothers still wanting to mediate their minor issues with peers and teachers.

              I was on this message board a few years ago saying I didn't believe it was true. I've seen it first-hand now that my kids are older, in forms that I would have thought too absurd to believe.
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              • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                I don’t want to appear presumptivous, but I believe that the intentional destruction of American past and her underlying culture will also become apparent, in time. Coming from the Soviet Union, I recognize the strategy, having lived it before.
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      • Posted by CaptainKirk 6 years, 4 months ago
        How old are you? Roughly where are you from?
        And when did your private school start? (You can't compare a private school to the public schools fairly, IMO. Their teachers can be fired. We had only a few good ones. The really good ones moved to nicer neighborhoods!)

        I was about 35 miles outside of Detroit, in a relatively poor school district. But most of the schools were the same, and got worse over time.

        But the lettered stuff was witnessed here in South Florida.
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        • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
          I am 53 and grew up in Manhattan. My parents were scared of public schools. There were a few good ones, like Stuyvesant, but the regular schools were drug infested rat cages. Manhattan offered some choices (my sister went to Art and Design, a very good school back then). We now live in semi-rural VA, which offers no choices; just garbage, for which I am forced to pay.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
          I started public school in Madison, WI. I went to public middle school in Tampa, FL. Our kids are in Madison schools very close to where my wife and went. I like the teachers, but I am worried about the safety obsession. It has a rule-following element to it that I don't like. I in no way think it's a government plot. Its more of a gov't mentality: Show up, follow the rules, do the process as directed by your boss, retire early.
          Some of the teachers are really good. They also say they like it. But we'll probably move them to Catholic school, even though we're atheists, for high school, maybe middle school.
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          • Posted by CaptainKirk 6 years, 4 months ago
            Interesting. You have not seen them teaching Climate Change, Carbon Impact, White hate, or denounce male sexuality as dangerous?

            Do you review your kids books/lessons? (I always reviewed what me daughter was learning, she took her SAT when she was 11, so she might have been a little ahead of the curve, but I taught her to question things, to strive for understanding/mastery, not A's.) I started reviewing things in Kindergarten, and was surprised by second grade. In just over a year, she should have 2 degrees, both from Honors Colleges. (While Ice skating, Yoga (or Tai Chi), Student Government, etc).

            She said the tactic she hates most is when the teacher "Throws out" some comment, making clear her beliefs, but also clear that it is NOT to be challenged (e.g. "So Trump doesn't believe in Global Warming, because he can't comprehend simple science, and we are all going to pay the price for his ignorance... Moving on..." And then starts the lecture. BTW, in an unrelated business class!).

            This is at a University, of course. NOT every teacher, but too many of them. She says the more tech/mathy the classes are, the far less this happens, which she finds interesting.

            Anyways... If your kids are getting a decent education... why move them out? I refused to private school our daughter, and I am glad I did not. Education starts at home. If we can tweak what she really takes away, WHILE teaching her to do the same for herself... She will not be prepared, otherwise.
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            • Posted by $ pixelate 6 years, 3 months ago
              Regarding your comment on Trump and Climate Change ...

              I get similar from my ultra-lib neighbors. We meet, have a dialog regarding the goings on in the neighborhood. As I am leaving, Linda chimes in with her 2 cents on regarding how the latest tax cuts only profit the rich corporations, or how blacks are being targeted by police, or how we need more money for schools (99 million dollar bond got passed in my area, but no, we need more). After tossing a highly biased bit out there vocally, she adds "But I don't want to talk about politics... have a nice day!"

              I walk away scratching my head... What? But you just did talk about politics, you did bring it up? I suspect that folks take this approach - the blind shotgun - because they cannot defend their assertion or would choose not to. Another idea is that they just lack self-awareness. I have thought about trying this tactic myself, but I just don't speak that language.
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              • Posted by CaptainKirk 6 years, 3 months ago
                I have seen it used as a litmus test. Then suddenly the like minded morons flock together and because they are so relieved to find another asylum inmate they can have a "normal" conversation with!
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            • -1
              Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
              "You have not seen them teaching Climate Change, Carbon Impact, White hate, or denounce male sexuality as dangerous?"
              We have both taught them about climate change and carbon impact. I don't know what white hate is, but I'm almost sure they haven't.

              Regarding sexuality, they do have a social worker who teaches them to report sexual molestation to the school. They have a lot of troubled neighborhoods feeding into the school, and I think they're honestly trying to help legitimately troubled people. I don't think there's anything Orwellian about it. They teach them stranger danger, which I think is wrong. Strangers are good. Play in the park and turn to strangers for help. Just never ever go off alone with a stranger b/c bad guys hide. You're more likely to encounter a creep at a friend's house than out at the park.

              So I am not satisfied with the way they teach the kids to avoid child molesters.

              "Do you review your kids books/lessons?"
              Yes, and we ask them probing questions. It's still possible they slip stuff in that we miss.

              "In just over a year, she should have 2 degrees, both from Honors Colleges. (While Ice skating, Yoga (or Tai Chi), Student Government, etc)."
              I admire that, but I see so many parents pushing their kids. She's old enough to decide for herself if she's in college. It's her life. I hope my kids have similar accomplishments, but also hang out with others, watch some TV, go to msg board like this, smoke some pot, or whatever.

              Teacher says: "So Trump doesn't believe in Global Warming"
              People are wrong in this world. I think this teacher is wrong. I think President Trump knows that scientific opinion says global warming is caused by human activities and will be costly, but his focus is getting people fired up. He doesn't care. He's not trying to comprehend science. Future generations will indeed play the price for our failing to act quickly to address global warming. I would be frustrated by a class giving any time to crackpot global warming denier theories, but within reason you have to tolerate people being wrong about stuff.

              "If your kids are getting a decent education... why move them out? "
              1) I'm concerned in older grades the behavior issues are worse and the teacher can't even kick the kids out of the classroom.
              2) I think formal instruction at early ages is mostly socialization and learning to go to a place on time and deal with different people. At this age they really need to play more. As they get older, they need more sitting and studying, but at ages 7 and 9, it's more about playing with other kids and learning to resolve minor disagreements on their own. I am very deeply concerned with their schools philosophy that a teacher should resolve all disputes and they should never have even the most minor issue with other students. This is a red flag that makes me think we'll need to take them out at some point.
              3) I sense a bureaucratic mentality that I don't like.

              The kids urge us not to take them out, though. I probably won't take them out of a school they get up and say they're happy to go to.
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              • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                Not that I want to change this discussion exclusively to Global Warming, but I will point out that when we talk about religion, we give examples of the hypocrisy and lies surrounding it. That in itself is enough for a thoughtful person to question the dogma. It is a well demonstrated fact that Global Warming claims are riddled with intentional lies and falsification of data. For a thoughtful person, that in itself should be enough to question the dogma.
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                • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
                  Anyone who promotes dogma the way the authoritarian climate hysterics do while loudly announcing they represent "science" should be dismissed before you even get to the particulars of the dishonesty. That includes many of the professional viros in universities insisting that what they say is science because it is environmentalism.
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                • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
                  "to question the dogma."
                  I think dogma should be ignored altogether. Do not question it or engage it.
                  Except I think you're calling accepting the science on global warming the dogma, and I see accepting science as fundamentally not dogma. We even use the word accept instead of believe as with dogma because in science we're excited to find evidence that overturns how we previously understood the world.
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                  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                    The dogma promoted on global warming is not science.
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                    • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                      "The dogma promoted on global warming is not science"
                      I agree completely. I'm not talking about people who deny the science. I'm talking about the science itself.
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                      • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                        You are still not addressing my main point - the intentional falsification of data. You can't ignore this and still consider it "science."
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                        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                          You are referring to the falsifications by scientists betraying their own fields, not just hysterics promoting their dogmas and slogans. Honesty and objectivity are required for all knowledge, not just science. They don't even get as far as the beginning of science. The viros' propagandistic, ideological rationalizing precludes them from the realm of knowledge entirely, not just science, no matter how many "models" the 'specialists' concoct. Yet viros pretend there is some core 'science' behind their climate ideology and which you are not allowed to question. It is truly religious while emotionally clinging to a claim to be science.
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                          • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                            Yes, I'm referring to supposedly scientists who unabashedly quote and promote falsified data and other people, whom I would expect to be rational, who accept lies and false data as if the Earth was flat.
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                  • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                    Anytime that a science is called "settled" and discussion is abrogated, it becomes a dogma.
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                    • -1
                      Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                      "a science is called "settled" a"
                      Right. Science does not call things "settled". (Maybe you say that when something becomes a law, like the law of thermodyamics.) Science is always looking for a surprising breakthrough. Being open to new evidence does not mean we do not know anything now. We'd love to find shocking evidence that ESP exists in some form, but the current scientific evidence says it does not. People who really want it to be true may say to avoid being dogmatic we must consider "both sides of the controversy". But there is no real controversy. The sides are science and ESP woo.

                      I see all unscientific and pseudo-scientific things people would like to believe in like this: climate change denial, homeopathy, organic food being more healthful than GMOs, creationism, the Bermuda Triangle, gods/religion. I categorically reject the choice of dogma vs "at least consider the controversy". I have to accept what we know now. There may be some shocking breakthrough changing how we see those things. I'll be thrilled. True believers will laugh at science for not picking one desirable answer and sticking too it.
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                      • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                        Then please address the undeniable fact that Global Warming theories (or facts, as you may say, or whatever they are) have so many documented lies and falsifications of data that it makes the Clintons jealous. If the Laws of Thermodynamics were riddled with intentional lies and false data, would you still consider them Laws? I would be happy to discuss the fake "science" of GW, in detail, but I think that the above question needs to be addressed first, for we must have a common discussion point of reference and a common understanding of "science."
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                        • -1
                          Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                          Oh I did not mean to say the human effects on climate change are a law or anything on par with the Laws of Thermo. Human impact on climate is a scientific theory, i.e. a hypothesis shown to be true. My suspicion is if I live 35 more years I'll see some major changes in understanding. I do not have a guess as to whether the changes will be what we all wish: that human activities do not contribute to climate change as much as we though, some other effect offsets human activities, or that climate change is not as costly as we thought.
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                          • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                            Allow me to say that you are being illogical here. You are claiming that Global Warming (by GW we mean detrimental or even catastrophic effect of human activity on the Earth's climate, not just mere natural climate change or human-induced, but infinitesimal and irrelevant changes) is "a scientific theory, i.e. a hypothesis shown to be true." How can any claim be considered a "scientific theory" if it is riddled with documented lies and data falsifications? That in itself disqualifies it from the realm of science and moves into the realm of politics.

                            About a year ago there was a good article in the Gulch (can't find it now) explaining how CO2, which is the evil greenhouse gas, absorbs only 10% of radiant energy per mass compared to water vapor, while constituting something on the order of less than 1/2 of 1 percent of vapor, of which only 20 - 30 % are caused by human activity. Basically, you have an elephant in a china shop, but you are concerned with a butterfly turning over the dishes. If you really want to affect climate change, start combating water vapor from the oceans, seas and rivers - declare war on the clouds!
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                            • -1
                              Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                              "How can any claim be considered a "scientific theory" if it is riddled with documented lies and data falsifications?"
                              I hope someone finds new models/evidence, not just because it would be favorable to humankind but also because it's good to learn new things. It could break either way; the new evidence could show human activities are more or less costly than we thought. I love the notion that you're (or someone like you) working in this field with obscure models that turn out to be right. I don't think you're saying you're a climatologist. You're saying you read some politicalized commentary outside your field and convinced yourself there's a conspiracy to suppress a discovery that almost everyone would welcome. I don't get it.
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                              • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                                I am not a climate scientist. However, as an engineer and a scientist, I do know something of the scientific method and I am capable of reading and understanding data. I am also capable of recognizing fake data. If any of my research was ever to have been based on fantasy data, I would have been laughed out of my field. The intentional falsification of data has been proven by numerous scientists and organizations. It has been admitted by some. This is a multi-trillion dollar industry world-wide; it is based on fake data. This has nothing to do with the results that I "would like to see" - as a scientist, I must reject known, documented falsifications, no matter what the intent might have been. The real facts so far - human industrial activity does cause some impact, but barely measurable compared to the natural causes (in totality, perhaps less than the effects of one volcano eruption, of which there are hundreds going on constantly). As to how the planet compensates for both the natural and human activity - we don't know. Colder or warmer? We don't know. There are factors pushing in both directions, simultaneously. Should it be monitored and studied? Of course. Is there a reason for hysteria? Only if you make money on it, but it has no connection to science.
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                                • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                                  They not only don't know and can't predict, they have no causal explanations consistently integrated into a theory, only adjusted and tuned 'models'. Yet if you reject it you are disparaged as a "Skeptic" and must only be reading "politics"; viros want people to believe that they are untouchable and beyond reproach. There is always an excuse to dismiss the "Skeptics".

                                  There are a lot of psychological and political motives for hysteria other than money, not that they aren't riding an institutionalized gravy train.
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                          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                            "Human impact" is too vague to be a theory at all. The climate hysterics are making absurd claims of apocalypse with no theory applied in their "models" to justify it.
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                            • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                              "Human impact" is too vague to be a theory at all. "
                              You can certainly calculate the value of things to humans and calculate the impact of things changing. For example, you can compare rents in similar areas that have and do not have some form of pollution. If you're considering doing something that causes that pollution, you can work out the human impact (cost to human beings, whatever we want to call it) of that act. Then you can calculate if the activity still makes sense after you make those people whole for the lost value. It's not vague. Apocalyptic hysterics is a straw man that has nothing whatsoever to do with this discussion.
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                              • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                                That humans affect the environment is an obvious fact. We live by changing the environment to suit our needs. Calculating things like rents does not make a vague "human impact" a science. Science is systematic,proven knowledge in the form of generalizations and causal explanations, not bean counting. The climate hysterics that are all over the place claiming to be "science" is what this discussion is about.
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          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
            Catholic schools can be much better academically, or at least used to be, but there is a real danger in focusing only on that aspect because there is much more involved that influence students at a deep psychological level. Catholicism inculcates a religious metaphysics and a duty mentality in ethics (and may or may not also have the government mentality that you already see mixed in with the rest). Adults who were brought up with that (but usually also starting at an earlier age) and who are, for example, later interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy often have a difficult time understanding it and assimilating it as a natural way of thinking and reacting because of earlier emotionally ingrained premises that are difficult to shake free from. Without Ayn Rand's ideas it is much harder. It's much safer to look for a good school not inflicted with the underlying psychological dogma. Try asking the Van Damme private school in California for advice.
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            • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
              I went to two religious schools and got very turned off by religion. However, through the study of the Bible and Judaeo-Christianity, I can better understand our Western Civilization. If I didn't have to, I doubt it that I would have ever read the entire Bible. But in the end, I'm glad that I did.
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
              It's unfortunate how turned off I am to philosophy and schools Our kids were in a school that claimed to have a philosophy, and it ended up being the only time I've been a party to a law suit. I don't disparage philosophy as a subject, but I'm turned off by it. When I read the Van Damme website and their philosophy, I was reminded of that other school and their philosophy. I immediately imagine people who are fastidious, sanctimonious, rigid, self-righteous, and so on. I'm a bit of a philistine when it comes to kids' education because of that experience.
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              • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
                The Van Damme school is achieving excellent results. A school having what it calls a "philosophy" doesn't tell you what it is. They are all different and every one of them has one at least implicitly. Imagining something bad when you see a different school is like imagining some crook you encountered whenever you see a person. It isn't logical.
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              • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                I think of philosophy as direction, closely tied to our moral compass. Can we wander without direction? Sure. But I think that you can see where that would lead a person.
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                • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
                  I was about to joke, "Oh come one, who needs philosophy," before I saw ewv's comment. Yes. I'm only a philistine about philosophy in education for the irrational reasons ewv describes above.
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                  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                    There is so much bad and regurgitated bad philosophy that you should be skeptical when someone announces in a sales promotion that they have a "philosophy of education". Then find out what it is and what they do in action before deciding if it is of any value.
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                    • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 3 months ago
                      If you lived here you could help us look at their claimed philosophy, evaluate if it makes sense, and then say what to look for to see if they're executing it. Instead I take the philistine approach: At their pre-school, I asked the director what their philosophy was on which direction kids should enter the room, what kind of winter clothes kids should wear, and so on. She looked confused. I told her that's exactly how I thought. If she had said, "we believe kids should enter from the east and leave from the west to be in harmony with mother nature," I would NOT have used that school. They went to a preschool liked that. Everyone seemed chill, maybe a little stoned, but when it comes to dogma, they were hardcore about delivering it with a smile and circumlocutions that sound like "let kids be free to be harmony with nature" but actually mean we control every move they make. I guess that pre-school causes us to set the bar low.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
      I'm 53, but I went to private schools, so the concerted effort at my demise was postponed for a while... That's why I expected the 20 -30-year-olds to be a wasted generation, but I see that the government was working on us much earlier.
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      • Posted by CaptainKirk 6 years, 4 months ago
        I found this a while back, you can find it.
        There is the original Pilgrims who tried COMMUNAL (communism) to work the land. EVERYONE felt cheated, and therefore did as little as possible, and every year, people starved. Until he divided the land up by family and let them reap what they sow.
        Suddenly, they were up early, planting early, and working hard (serving their self-interests). The complaints stopped.
        And that was the first year they not only had enough food, they had excess. And celebrated.

        BTW, it is MY BELIEF the the number of side dishes was really the side effect of CANNING their foods. They had a little bit of everything they canned, left over (probably ran out of jars!). That is not mentioned in the diary, but it makes sense to me.

        Anyways, when you start STRIPPING that one lesson from our schools.

        Then, NEVER require reading the constitution. Oh we learned the bill of rights. Because RIGHTS would become a talking point, I guess!

        BTW I grew up just outside of Detroit, as a Democrat until I opened my eyes and used my talents to LEARN!
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        • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
          It is interesting to note the supplantation of Thanksgiving with Kwanzaa. When as the first celebrates the results of labor, the later celebrates an effortless harvest of fruit off the trees. The traditions and folk tales of a nation speak loudly of its character. For example, the traditional Russian folk hero, Ivan, spends most of his life laying in a warm bed and things magically appear, while he laughs at those that labor much and get little. We are moving in the same direction.
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        • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 4 months ago
          Jamestown, Virginia July 1619 - " Twice a a day, the men were marched to the field or woods by the beat of a drum, twice ma4rched back and into church" : Historian Samuel Eliot Morison.
          "These military methods failed. In about a decade the Virginia Company realized profits would come only after the pioneers had a stake in their own fate, soon after, the colonists asked for a voice in government." -Eyewitness to America, David Colbert
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  • Posted by walkabout 6 years, 4 months ago
    Whenever one is forced (or has the opportunity) to deal with "progressives" you must remember almost every term they will use they will avoid (refuse to) defining, thought they will use it as if it means exactly the opposite of the accepted (i.e. "dictionary") meaning. "progressive," of course, means to act to REGRESS society to when some elite (king, queen, prince, warlord, etc.) told everyone else (aka peasants, serfs) what to do. "Fair" is some exceptionally unbalanced relationship between inputs and outputs. "Justice," likewise, disconnects behavior and consequences (I won't continue but urge everyone with an example to share).
    I guess I would have asked what the goals of the leader/participants were? Did they want everyone to have access to quality healthcare? Then eliminating bureaucracy would be helpful; having a huge deductible system (again minimizing interference between patient and doctor, Almost every "answer" they propose has tons of data noting such has the opposite effect from what is stated as the goal (O-care resulted in huge premium increases, unaffordable deductibles, reductions in the numbers of healthcare providers available. Urge them to follow the data and ignore what they want reality to be. The laws of human behavior are pretty simple and straightforward and look nothing like what the typical politician believes they look like.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
      That is the whole point - they are unwilling or incapable of dealing with facts and reality. Like Marx, they believe that human nature is different from what it is or that it can be commanded to be different. And healthcare, to them, is a Constitutional Right. No, seriously, a Constitutional Right, as part of the Pursuit of Happiness. Only instead of the Pursuit, they expect Deliverance.
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      • Posted by walkabout 6 years, 4 months ago
        Well said. Much of this discussion has wandered over to the idiocracy that is the American education system. For whatever reasons that industry has come to be owned by below average (in intelligence and related dynamics) people -- the average teacher has an IQ of 85, placing him/her in the bottom 16 or so percent of American population). If we want to fix it (what passes for education) we need to stop hiring professional teachers. I suggest recruiting educators from the vast number of "early retirees" (such as retiring milittary, police and state/federal agency personnel. They have actually done something (where led people/organizations, been engineers or whatever and they still have a good 20 years of work life in 'em. Oh, yeah they have IQ's in the average or higher range. Additionally, as most already have some kine of pension they don't "need" the job, so they are less likely to commit stupid when ordered to do so.
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        • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
          Even in my college days (1980's) we all knew that professional professors knew little of the real world. We had some teachers that taught part time while working in the industry - those were the best. The "education" system now has built-in fail safes, where in order to teach one needs degrees that can be attained through many years bowing to the education system and being molded by it. I am an engineer with extensive business and economics experience and knowledge; I am not allowed to teach HS kids neither math, nor physics, nor business - I don't have the correct, approved by the system, degrees for that.
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 4 months ago
    Liberalism is based on emotion and emotional manipulation. They say whatever will convince people to give in and support the liberal programs.

    As to healthcare, its funny that a medicare for everyone supporter thinks

    1) that HE is going to get free medical care that OTHERS pay for; forgetting that the others will get "free" medical care that HE is going to pay for.
    2) that "free" medical care will continually expand into more and more "care" options.
    3) that the current tax structure supports only retired people over 65 basically, but the costs will increase quite a bit when everyone is covered and the base of people (working people) who will pay for it essentially doesnt increase
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    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
      It is based on more than emotion and its manipulation. Emotions are automatic responses based on the values one holds, which they articulate all the time as altruistic and collectivist. The progressives today even more extreme in that.

      They count on people sharing some version of it, accepted through prior indoctrination, to induce guilt, for example, or try to reinterpret or redefine better common values to mean their opposite in collectivism -- which we see all the time in their redefinitions of common words: tax cuts as a "cost to government", "investment" as government spending, etc. They count on positive reactions to the vocabulary but not thinking of the meaning. Their premises and methods are much deeper and more explicit than just emotions.
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      • Posted by term2 6 years, 4 months ago
        I think I agree with what you are saying. What I hear from liberals though are constant emotional appeals through political correctness. I don’t. See most people even knowing what their values are. I think their values are piped in thru emotional appeals without thiught
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        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
          How people come to accept their values may or may not be rational or with full conscious awareness, let alone consistency. Commitment to reason requires full conceptual awareness with honesty and objectivity, as opposed to explicit faith or passively absorbing whatever is around you and what you are told to believe from an early age.

          The left emotionally manipulating people counts on people not thinking through their own concepts and principles. The emphasis everywhere downplays reason and objectivity. In that sense of epistemology, irrationalism leaves only emotional thinking, but beliefs still have a content. Even the principles of thinking have content: as epistemology. The basis of progressivism is collectivism and altruism in ethics and politics, not pure emotion, but the "basis" of all of it in terms of method of thinking is a mixture of reason and emotion. The philosophical form of that for progressives is Pragmatism, with its truth is what "works", what is true today need not be tomorrow, evolutionary concepts, etc. That is what the collectivism and altruism cash in on.
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          • Posted by term2 6 years, 4 months ago
            So are you saying that the main issue us that liberals have not learned to think as opposed to be simply controlled by emotions like a small child? That they go through life bouncing from one emotion to the next, where their emotions are essentially controlled externally by others? If this is true, doesn’t this mean that it’s game over by a quite early age unless they learn how to think maybe by age 5-6?
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            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
              No, they have learned to think improperly, which makes it very difficult to penetrate. But they don't have to be 'converted', only defeated by growing numbers of people who are better. That is time-consuming both because of how radically different Ayn Rand's ideas are and because the real "swamp" control is so entrenched in the intellectual professions such as universities. Children are not hopeless beyond age 5 or 6, but it is important to properly educate children as early as possible and throughout the school years.
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              • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                As I mentioned in the original post, these people actually believe that the American economy, including the healthcare system, prior to Obama was pure Capitalism. The leaders of the Left have shifted the plank. Think of it as if you were pushing a wagon up a ramp - the full sway would be from the bottom to the top. But if you continue to chuck the wheel, if you were to lose your grip, it could only roll back to the last position of the wheel chuck. Likewise, the Left's minions don't have a clue what Capitalism really is; they are shown examples of the evil crony capitalism, without the knowledge that crony capitalism is really socialism. The re-education process for such a far-gone population cannot be accomplished within one generation.
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                • Posted by term2 6 years, 4 months ago
                  Its appearing like the very things the left is blaming Trump for, are perpetrated by themselves. What concerns me a lot is the level of violence exhibited by the left towards anyone who does not agree with their positions. That tells me that the leftists are prepared to silence opposition by force in the future.
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                  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                    The left has been silencing opposition by force for a long time.
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                    • Posted by term2 6 years, 3 months ago
                      The left in the 60’s WAS the opposition. Now they are the mainstream swamp and try to silence the opposition. What happened?
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                      • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                        If you mean a change in tolerating opposition, there has been no change. The left has always used force to suppress those opposed to them.

                        They became influential in the establishment because they were the product of establishment education. There wasn't anything new about any of it. It came from the European counter-Enlightenment over a hundred years old, applied to current politics.
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                        • Posted by term2 6 years, 3 months ago
                          Since the left doesn’t use logic and reasoning, the only thing left IS violence
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                          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                            Yes. They use reason and logic in a superficial sense in how they misuse it, including the 'logic' of Rationalism (along with the usual emotionalism), but fundamentally they reject it in the Aristotelian sense of Ayn Rand.
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                  • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
                    In every "social experiment" where the Left have acquired sufficient power, they held on to it through violence. Jacobins were perhaps an earliest example, followed by the Bolsheviks, followed by the National Socialists, followed by the Maoists and on and on. There has never been an example of the Left voluntarily or peacefully giving up power. (The collapse of the USSR is not an example, because the same people remained in power under a different flag). And, yes, the Left always accuses others of what they do themselves. It's called projection. All or most of what Trump is accused by the Left are the sins of the Left, constantly committed by them. Russia collusion - Uranium One, sexual harassment - Bill, Harvey, Charlie, Matt, Al, Johnnie...
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  • Posted by dougthorburn 6 years, 4 months ago
    I believe two words explain this: cognitive dissonance. Google "Scott Adams cognitive dissonance" and you'll find a wealth of ideas. I'm 64 and have been libertarian since age 15 and, until I read Scott Adams' ideas on this, other than Keirsey's and Myers-Briggs work on Thinking-Feeling, none of this made sense. Combine the two, and we can make sense of most (but not all) such non-thinking. Add alcohol and other-drug addiction into the equation, due to distortions of perception and memory fueling egomania, I think it's all comprehensible, even if it's illogical.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
      Then that confirms my suggestion that if we are to talk to them at all, do not talk facts. Speak their language - fear mongering, exaggeration, hyperbole, fantasies. We are wasting our efforts when presenting facts - that is a language that they cannot understand.
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      • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
        Frightening already frightened children teaches them nothing. If you can't find a way to appeal to someone with reason then you are wasting your time.
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        • Posted by dougthorburn 6 years, 4 months ago
          No you're not. Don't confuse factual analysis with persuasion. Feelers decide based on emotions, not logic. The lower brain centers are at work when deciding political things (not to mention stock prices). It's the herding instinct at its finest.
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          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
            Rational persuasion does not manipulate emotions. If a person is not rational then don't try to communicate with him. You cannot emotionally manipulate a person into rational understanding and knowledge.
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            • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
              The goal here is not to make rational people out of irrational beings. That, in the best of circumstances, will take more than a generation. The Progressives worked hard to achieve this (in reverse) for several generations, while we docile looked on and even subsidized them in our destruction. At this point, the goal should be to protect what we have left, that which has not yet been stolen. We need the support of the masses, as dumb and irrational as they are. Speaking the language of rationality is a waste of effort, as they have already been bred to ignore the facts and respond only to feelings. If we don't learn this feelings language, we will lose that little that we have left.
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              • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                The goal is to spread rationality and appeal to rational understanding, not to make irrational brutes rational. There is no way to do that. Language is the language of rationality. There is no other kind, only its misuse. It is not a "waste of effort"; it is all that is possible if you don't want to live like a brute. Persuading people what is right is the only way to do it. There is no "this feeling language" to learn and attempts to manipulate emotions communicate nothing.They are only a dishonest attempt to temporarily induce actions. You cannot protect what you have by pandering to brutishness and "masses" you think are "dumb and irrational". Such creatures, such as they exist at all, will not support you and do not represent this country.
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                • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                  Our lives are being attacked and destroyed by the Left. In the recent past it had mainly been through words; now it has the force of law (with a gun supporting the law). It is a matter of time when the komissars will enforce their laws directly. This is a slow-ratcheting war. Do you suggest (insists, it seems?) fighting a war exclusively with words and philosophy? The Jews in Europe have already tried that.
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                  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                    The only way to change the course of the nation is through ideas. It is an intellectual battle, not words against fists. Once that is no longer possible, for example by complete elimination of freedom of speech, then there isn't anything left. But that isn't what this mixed society is.

                    All the Jews could do in Europe was to get out while they could, as many did in the 1930s when the tyranny was still limited geographically and exits were still open. The victims who were left were not fighting with words, they were huddled in despair wondering what had happened; it was for them too late for words.
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                    • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                      The Holocaust is a separate subject, of course, but I brought it up not only as an example of the extermination of physically weaker people, but also as an example of extermination of people that have historically insisted on being unarmed and on non-violent response to violence. Amazingly, the majority of Jews today (worldwide) continue to reject armed self-protection. Obviously, the lesson has not been learned.

                      Had several hundred thousand Jews in Germany, along with others, been armed (and had the mentality of armed self-defense), it is not entirely clear if the Nazis would have acquired power in the late '20's and early '30's in the first place.
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                      • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                        There was a lot of political violence in Germany. The Nazis and other aspiring power seekers thrived on it. I wonder how many of the Jews there at the time were supporters of communists and other statists and collectivists. If more had had guns, different people would have been dead, but it would not have stopped the trend. 'Had lots of people done something different' is irrelevant. They did what they did for the motives they held. The course of Germany was not random.
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              • Posted by dougthorburn 6 years, 4 months ago
                You are soooo right, Strugatsky. I won't waste any more time with "ewv," as he/she obviously isn't receptive at this point. Likely a classic Spock-like INTP.
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                • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                  This is a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and individualism. That does not mean anti-intellectual libertarians. Those who are not "receptive" to the role of ideas in human life and civilization are themselves "wasting their time" here. No, we are not "receptive" to punching people in the face as a means to improve the country.
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                  • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                    This was not a call to punching people in order to make them believe in Objectivism. This was an acknowledgement that bullies need to be repelled by force. Referring to Ayn Rand, she was totally for using force when attacked; she believed in national defense, just as it makes sense to believe and practice personal defense. No one here is advocating starting a "conversation" with fists, but when the other party changes (or initiates) the conversation to physical force, then force must be met with force.
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                    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                      Punching people in the face as a response to government policies will get you thrown in jail, not reform society. The attempt would accomplish nothing positive. There are no shortcuts to rationality. Denouncing people as "the dumb and irrational masses" justifying manipulation and force is no solution to anything. It isn't even practical as a short term deterrent. The philosophical basis for a culture run amuck is not a bully on a street corner.
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                      • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                        I think that you have misunderstood the original comment. The discussion was about the school preventing kids from learning how to deal with bullies - other kids that act as bullies, not government officials or adults with different views. By having "zero tolerance" the schools put kids in straitjackets that prevent them from becoming adults by figuring out by themselves how to deal with problems. Instead, they run for help to their teachers, then professors, then the government.
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                        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                          The initial discussion was much broader than that; it tried to reduce the methods to metaphors and analogies as if dealing with a school yard bully were all that was required.
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                          • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                            In the rational adult world, initiation of force is, obviously, a no-no. But not all adults are rational. Thus, children need to learn how to deal with bullies at an early age, just as bullies need to learn that there are consequences to their behavior. Fighting among children is a good way to learn these skills, while being too young to cause any serious damage. Now, I am certainly not suggesting getting kids into a ring like roosters, but allowing kids to work out their problems without the interference of adults has benefits. As it is now, children do not acquire the skills to deal with bullies and the bullies haven't throttled down. The result is snowflakes who need plush puppies in safe-spaces to protect them from micro-aggressions and thugs who don't know how to stop until caught committing serious crimes. The language of rational thought is applicable to adults; but a person must first reach that level to understand it.
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                            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                              The thread is about progressives, not bullies in a schoolyard..
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                              • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                                The issue discussed was how to talk to Progressives (adults), with the question being whether rational arguments are appropriate or should the Leftists' own language of exaggerations and hyperbole be used and, after you brought up the issue of physical force (the rejection of it), I have added that in some instances, such as when children are growing up in order to prepare them for adulthood and in the adult life as self-defense, physical force is appropriate.
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        • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
          Let's suppose that rational thought represents a language. And irrational thought represents another language. If you want to communicate with the later, shouldn't you use the language that your intended audience understands? I am making two points here: a) we need to communicate with the Progressives because our political system is set up in such a way that the majority holds most of the power. They are the majority. b) the only language that the Progressives understand is irrationality. If we want results, there does not seem to me much of a choice, is there?
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          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
            Thoughts do not "represent language". Language is the means by which you think and communicate. Irrationality is not an alternate means of understanding. There are no shortcuts to rationality. Hardly anyone is totally irrational. If you can't find some means to rationally convey thoughts to someone then you can't do it.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
    Yes education failed us that long ago. The collectivist premises have always been bad, even though the dominant sense of life was much better and the explicit advocacy of socialist policy had not begun. Over the ensuing years people have experienced the accumulation of problems but have not been told the cause. The result is a willingness to reconsider socialism in a desperate quest for something better. That direction is where their premises lead them to be sympathetic.

    2. Deviation from reality requires replacing it with fact. You need to find some individual or organization with expertise that has focused on the complex history of government intervention in US health care, which you can use as a source, covering its many decades of growing statist intervention before Obama. Obama was only the latest cashing in of what was already underway. So was Hillary care before that. Both were consciously intended to lead to complete government control in the phony name of a simpler "utopian" "single payer", but they were not the beginning.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 6 years, 4 months ago
    A colleague of mine just handed me a printout of something you guys should look at on this. Pew Research Center "Democrats and Republicans more ideologically divided than in the past". Enlightening graphics on this one.
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    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
      If they are more divided now it is only because the Democrats are moving to the tyrannical left faster than the me-too-but-slower Republicans.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 4 months ago
    Dang, Captain, I'm surprised you weren't called a racist in an attempt to make you shut up.
    When unaffordable Affordable Healthcare Act became,as Harry Reed would bray, "The law of the land," I recall critics being called racist due to the socialist in the White House being Obamacare's driving force.
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  • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 4 months ago
    Understanding progs is simple, they`re communists.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
      The leadership - yes. But the cannon fodder is just a mass of low IQ's. However, they wield the power. That is one of the drawback of democracy. To prolong our existence, we need to sway them to our side. And the typical approach has been to present the facts and rely on the truth. It doesn't work; we are sliding further and further into the communist abyss. Perhaps we should speak with them in the language that they understand.
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      • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 4 months ago
        Agreed. The school yard bully stops taking your lunch money when you bloody his nose.
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        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
          Threatening to bloody people's noses will not convince anyone of anything except to put you down where you are no longer a threat. Threatening people is not the way to defend and spread reason and individualism.
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          • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 4 months ago
            We disagree on individualism. When you find yourself at that point it`s because talking has failed. Your choices are to capitulate or fight, the only threatening that was done, was done by the "bully" .
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            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
              You are not going to convince anyone of anything by punching him in the face. He may leave you alone for awhile if you are successful but he has learned nothing about what is right, and with the government as bully you can't even do that. We are talking about reversing the direction of a culture and a nation, not petty louts.
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              • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 4 months ago
                If we follow your thought process, how would you explain Japans actions pre 1945 as compared to post 1945? What would you suggest caused the sudden change in behavior?
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                • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
                  The emperor and his dictatorship were removed and the country was put under the control of the US, which wrote a constitution with its better concept of government. It did not change Japanese culture, it only let different kinds of people have more influence in a more modern version of the 20th century. The better people were able to thrive, but it is no example of individualism and freedom today.

                  Do you propose bombing Washington DC and taking over with overwhelming force to set back the progress of collectivism -- so it will continue on the same downward trend that brought us to where we are now?

                  The modern history of Germany was similar. They understood enough to not vote for Hitlerian fascists again, which kept the worst oppression out, but not enough to stop the socialist trend. The US poured enormous funding into Germany mostly to stop communism from spreading, which had shown a strong influence in Germany. That propped up its recovering economy and reduced the pressure from fear following appealing-sounding communist slogans. They took the money, enjoyed the improved economy and the relative freedom, and continued to pursue socialist trends more gradually.

                  In Russia the people never liked what they experienced under communism but did not know what to replace it with even if they could have overthrown the overwhelming power of the Communists. They literally had no concept of how to live in freedom. They retained the traditional Russian mysticism and dark sense of life, and when the Communists fell they wound up with a corrupt fascist state, less totalitarian but still brutal, not individualism.

                  There is a range of what a country might do with its government and what it does within the ideas dominating the culture. But it doesn't change abruptly on its own onto a different track within the range. Where it is within that range depends on political momentum, whatever the entrenched powers are, what the people will generally tolerate, and what certain individuals can do and the choices they make as leaders in the circumstances they find themselves in.

                  But the overall trend still depends on the ideas that people follow, just like it did in the difference between the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment. Today few in America would tolerate an outright theocracy, just as capitalism, freedom and the pursuit of happiness on earth would have been impossible in a culture that lived in superstition and other-wordliness.

                  In 18th century America a unique group of exceptional individuals acting in very different circumstances than those in England created much better results than in the slowly moving entrenched status quo of England under the same Enlightenment influences. The role of ideas does not mean that certain basic premises varying across the population uniquely determine a particular government without regard to anything else, including how it got to where it is, the forces keeping it there, and the kind of choices made by those who become leaders. But statism and collectivism will not turn to individualism when people are clamoring for and willing to accept strong government controls under the influence of their basic ideas. The American individualistic sense of life has kept the country going despite the ideas spread by the intellectuals and increasingly accepted, but that cannot continue as the bad ideas become adhered to more explicitly and change the dominant sense of life. Lashing out and punching someone in the face won't change that.
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                  • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 4 months ago
                    The removal of the emperor was not initiated by dialog. As to " Do you propose bombing Washington DC and taking over with overwhelming force to set back the progress of collectivism..." This is my position - http://4thestatemedia.com/?p=438
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                    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                      Japan lost the war it started. Tens of millions of people were killed, which was not good. Removing the emperor of Japan, along with the elimination of an independent Japanese military, was only a last event as the consequence of fighting back, not the motive. World War II did not, and could not have, wiped out the premises of statism and collectivism. It only eliminated some of the worst practitioners of the time and If the US had not had better ideas the war would have been nothing but musical chairs with different statists.

                      World War II is not a lesson in how to reform the country by punching people in the face and ignoring the role of ideas that guide people's thinking and action. Dramatic slogans exhorting to 'follow the patriots' is not an explanation or answer to anything.
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                      • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 3 months ago
                        "Japan lost the war it started" is that not another way to say "if you bloody a bullies nose, he stops being a bully?" "Dramatic slogans" followed by organized actions are the reason we are able to have this conversation as a free people. I wish no harm to you, but, if you` re ever accosted in a parking lot, convincing your attacker to stop using pleas alone will most likely result in you on the ground -or capitulating and handing over your possessions. Bullies, muggers and dictators respond to actions, not words. N.Korea leadership pops into mind.
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                        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                          North Korea with its nuclear missiles is not a bully in a parking lot. And no, defeating Japan is not another way to say bloodying a bully's nose makes him stop being a bully. You seem to make no distinction between vastly different scales, at the level of nations, or understand the difference between a reform movement and the necessity of fighting WWII or that the course of a nation towards or away from freedom is determined by it dominant ideas about the nature of the individual and government, not physically fighting wars while cheering about 'patriots' and expecting a miracle by no identifiable means.

                          This country was made possible by the dominance of Enlightenment ideas of reason and individualism, not the repetition of countless wars over centuries. Without the dominant Enlightenment values an American Revolution against Britain would not have resulted in an improved government. If you tried it today you and five like-minded others would be squashed and that would be the end of you.

                          If a nation attacks us we fight back as a nation to put an end to it, requiring in the duration putting up with the deprivation of the loss of civilization with a lot of death and destruction. That is not a temporary physical restraining of a criminal within the context of civilization.

                          Cheering about wars in the name of punching someone in the face will not change the internal direction of this country. Have you read Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels? That will tell you a lot about the nature of the problem and the solution.
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                          • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 3 months ago
                            This Country was made possible by a few hundred citizens willing to stand up to a much larger force - our original "bully in the schoolyard". April of 1775 saw some 800 british soldiers enter Concord and begin burning the town ( the bully takes your lunch money) twice citizens retreated (the bully advanced) then the citizens attacked ( the bully ran away and stopped his aggressive actions) the citizens than cut through the woods and waited in ambush to make sure the point was made ( dont take our stuff) . We all know the losses that followed, but the ultimate victory insured our "lunch money" remained in our possession and the " bully" went home. There is a time for diplomacy, and when that has come to an end, force - or surrender is always required. As to cheering about wars, those are your words, not mine. Enlightenment and ideas are what made this Country, a willingness to fight for them made this Country possible. N. Korea and its nukes are one of the largest "bullies in the parking lot", they have been cajoled, appeased and given things for decades, all in the name of diplomacy - is there a well defined change in their actions as a result? Of course not, bullies only respect one thing.
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                            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                              This country was founded on the ideas of reason and individualism of the Enlightenment, not fighting bullies. Without the ideas no wars of any kind would have accomplished a country founded on the rights of the individual, as the previous ceaseless wars with people 'standing up' to opposing armies demonstrate. Fighting the British did not create the individualism that was already in the colonies. That and the ensuing formation of a constitutional limited government were an intellectual achievement by those who shared the ideas.

                              Restoring the country requires the spread of the proper ideas to replace the progressive collectivism that is increasingly dominating, not dramatic calls to stand up to bullies. Your website and posts invoke all kinds of imagery about 'patriots' and courageous battles of the past; they do not address how to restore the required ideas that must dominate a culture.

                              Exactly who do you propose to fight whom and by what means, and how do you propose that it change what people think about the nature of government they have accepted and pursued? Blowing up the Korean peninsula is expected to replace progressivism here? Fighting for ideas is an intellectual battle that begins with identifying the proper concepts and principles, not emotional imagery about patriotic wars and fighting bullies.
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                              • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 3 months ago
                                " Fighting the British did not create the individualism that was already in the colonies. " True. It secured it, along with the God given rights that come with it. An auto repair manual is full of ideas, procedures and truths of engineering, but it cannot open the tool box, or use a wrench. "Exactly who do you propose to fight whom and by what means..." is a reference you have used often in this discussion, if you have read any of my essays and could see the bullet / blade wounds, not to mention 60+ years of multiple violent contacts, you might see just how mistaken you are in that regard.
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                          • Posted by 6 years, 3 months ago
                            It is interesting to note, however, that in the entire 20th Century and so far into the 21st, there has hardly been a year when America was not fighting a war somewhere, for some reason. Seems to me that the use of force has not gone out of style, yet.
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                            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 3 months ago
                              Of course there are wars everywhere. There have almost always been wars everywhere. That is not what made civilization, though some of it has been necessary to defend it. It won't go out of "style" until the rights of the individual are recognized everywhere. That won't happen just by physically fighting without people's ideas changing.
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          • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
            I did not perceive this comment as a "threat," but a proper response to physical aggression. The bully needs to be taught that bullying does not pay, while the victim needs to learn how to deal with the bullies. Both are invaluable life skills, which the school system completely destroys. While my son was in public school, I have instructed him that should he be physically attacked by any kid, he is to physically defend himself, regardless of the consequences that the school threatened. Otherwise, I would punish him. My goal was to raise a man, not a snowflake.
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            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
              You will not "sway them to our side" through personal physical violence. We are talking about the course of the nation, not a punk in a playground. The course of a nation depends on its dominant fundamental ideas.

              The goal of raising a man requires first and foremost developing rational thought, the essence of man. More often than not, standing up for your self as an adult requires moral self confidence, thinking, and persuading those who can make a difference, not physical swaggering. Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged to portray in fiction her view of the ideal man, not individualism as being a 'tough guy'.
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      • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
        It doesn't work because presentation of facts has been too narrow. If the fundamental premises of altruism, pragmatism and collectivism are not replaced by a defense of individualism and reason no detailed facts will change the direction people look to for what they think is improvement.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 6 years, 4 months ago
    No, I can't help. Just start going Galt.

    "every attempt at analysis, delving even a little deeper, caused them pain and anguish." - This is a majority of Americans. I admire your efforts to help them. But, I stopped wasting my time trying to help people. Most actually enjoy being wrong and getting terrible results and acting like they just have bad luck...LOL
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    • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
      No, no - I'm not trying to help them. They are beyond help, for sure. But going Galt, in real terms means a collapse and, probably, a civil war. And then there is no guarantee as to who will win. Perhaps it is inevitable, as all civilizations end at some point. Short of building an independent island-nation, the collapse will be a disaster for all. As to the island-nation, I haven't seen any realistic attempts yet. So, since there's really no escape, perhaps prolonging the pain is the only alternative and if that is the case, then we need to be able to communicate with the one-dimensional creatures that hold so much power.

      It had often been said that we should stick to facts to promote our views and ideas. I think not. Facts make these creatures tired and cause alienation. Perhaps it is better to use the language they understand - hyperbole, exaggeration and fear mongering. Repeated continuously. This is the language that the Party has used successfully for over a century on every continent; maybe there something to this technique, since it achieves its goals everywhere it has been tried.
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      • Posted by $ Abaco 6 years, 4 months ago
        I hear you. I was recently thinking, "What if we decided to turn to lies and violence, like they do?" Made me laugh.

        In terms of going Galt...I'm in a version of it - no longer voting, no longer taking part in any conversations about things that the masses treat as religion (medicine, politics, firearms, global warming, etc...) I just sit by now and watch people come unglued being wrong. It was a tough transition for me, but has been rewarding. My next move is getting more separation between me and the addled masses...
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        • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
          I actually did something very similar. We had a small business, worked hard, made a good product and employed several people. Closed it two years ago. A year ago I also left my government job. Time to join the moochers - after years of feeding them, why not?

          Ayn Rand had a convenient cop-out - a secret place in the mountains. If it only existed in reality... I tried in the past, on this site and elsewhere, promoting an idea of collaboration on actually creating a physical Gulch, starting with a theoretical (paper) design. No one was interested. So, mooching it is...
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          • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
            Ayn Rand didn't have a cop out. The Valley in Atlas Shrugged was never intended as a place to escape to and she did not advocate that. The plot shows what happens to human existence when the mind is withdrawn (from the outer world in the plot). A Valley is not a practical means of an alternate civilized existence or a way to reform society without changing the dominant ideas.

            You have not "joined the moochers" by living in the only world there is. You still live in spite of them.
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            • Posted by $ Abaco 6 years, 4 months ago
              I saw the valley as a place to escape to in the story. Perhaps I misunderstood. Sure looked like an escape to me.

              I agree that strugatsky did not join the moochers.
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      • Posted by ewv 6 years, 4 months ago
        If someone is hopelessly anti-reason then you can't reach him at all. Hyperbole, exaggeration and fear mongering will not help him and is no way to spread a rational philosophy. The most influence that can have is a temporary change in policy on some specif issue on the way down.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
    So a doctor says he's for a policy that makes people give someone else over a thousand dollars a month and you can only get that value back by having the money go to him.

    You ask what this says about generational traits, education during the 60s and 70s, political philosophy, President Obama's impact on economic freedoms. Unfortunately I think you are way overthinking this. He's talking to providers struggling to get customers. All the philosophical stuff is window dressing around the idea of taking from unwilling customers and giving it to him.
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    • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
      Since he claimed that as part of his humanism he would treat poor patients for free, I asked for his address. He replied that he is retired... It is so easy to discount what one does not have.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 4 months ago
        "as part of his humanism he would treat poor patients for free,"
        As you say, that's easy for him to say since he's retired. Other thoughts:
        1) It's easy to say this. The devil is in the details of who's poor and how many pro bono customers he'll take.
        2) If you can't find customers and you make a deal to treat some for free and others "for free" to the customer but actually using, their money, then you come out ahead of someone trying and failing to get people to part with their money voluntarily.

        At a networking event a doctor once said to my wife and me, "Wow. I can see how hard that is for you as an attorney and engineer. You can't bill insurance. You have to convince the customer to write a check with their own money."
        That's partly fundraiser networking small talk, but I sensed it was true. I sensed a lot of doctors in my area would find it daunting to have to find customers and convince them the service is worth the price.
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        • Posted by 6 years, 4 months ago
          Yes, you make an excellent point here. Lee Iacocca’s touched on that a while back - in his book, he said that as a CEO of Ford, he was happy with the unions because they made prices, productivity and benefits exactly the same for all the big three. Made his job a lot easier. Of course, that also stagnated the US auto market in the ‘70’s. And then came the competition...

          In terms of economics, this doctor was way out of his breadth, but with supreme confidence kept making unsubstantiated assertions. And even when I factually pointed out his errors and incorrect assumptions, with actual examples, no one wanted to hear their fantasy crumble. It was easier to shut up the messenger. They refused to even consider an analysis, as it was way too difficult. Reminded me of Winnie the Pooh - “I’m a bear with a very simple mind; big words confuse me.”
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