Almost walking on water
Bookworm on Dec 15 2008 at 7:23 pm | Filed under: Barack Obama
I got a very funny email from someone today, although the humor was entirely unintentional. Read the email, and then, if you like, stop to read my comments at the end.
CHICAGO – President-elect Barrack Obama and his wife took their daughters to work at a food bank on the day before Thanksgiving, saying they wanted to show the girls the meaning of the holiday, especially when so many people are struggling.
Ten-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha joined their parents to shake hands and give holiday wishes to hundreds of people who had been lined up for hours at the food bank on Chicago ‘s south side.
Sasha wore a pink stocking hat over her pigtails and Malia had on a purple striped hat as the family handed out wrapped chickens to the needy in the chilly outdoor courtyard. Those seeking food on Wednesday at St. Columbanus also received boxes with potatoes, oranges, fresh bread, peanut butter, canned goods, oatmeal, spaghetti and coffee.
The president-elect, dressed casually in a leather jacket, black scarf and khaki pants, was in a jovial mood, calling out “happy thanksgiving” and telling everyone “you can call me Barack.”
He told reporters that he wants the girls “to learn the importance of how fortunate they are, and to make sure they’re giving back.”
The soon-to-be first lady said the Obamas wanted to give their children “an understanding of what giving and Thanksgiving is all about.”
The Obama family’s activities in the courtyard quickly drew the attention of schoolchildren whose windows overlooked the courtyard. They put up a sign against the glass that read: “We love our prez” and screamed when the president-elect waved to them.
Obama then turned to his wife and suggested they go visit the kids. Secret Service agents, looking surprised, disappeared inside the building to accommodate his request.
Minutes later, hundreds of children were brought down to the school auditorium, and Obama loped onstage as they screamed and cheered.
“I just wanted to come by and wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving,” he said. He then asked the children what they would be eating for Thanksgiving dinner.
So lets recap.
He took his kids to work in the cold…? Instead of getting someone to line up and dish the gifts? Instead of telling them ‘You are kids of a VIP. Therefore there are things that you can’t do.
To show the kids that people are suffering? Yes, that people are suffering? They have to live understanding the importance of giving back to the community.
Let us learn from this great family… and for those who have children, this is a wonderful example of raising our kids.
Have you read it all? Good. Now I’d like you to let me know what politician doesn’t do photo ops showing him/her and family engaged in some heart-warming charitable activity. It’s a shtick as old as politics itself, right up there with kissing babies. Normally, we recognize it for spin that it is — unless, of course, the shticker is Barack Obama, in which case an ordinary photo op with family is suddenly elevated to a unique act of charity, unparalleled in the history of American politics.
Please understand that I am not denigrating the fact that his mere presence brought a thrill to the people in that community, and I think his daughters are charming. Nevertheless, I find it creepy that a man who has built his career on doing nothing and his campaign on promising to use government strong-arm tactics to “redistribute” wealth is practically canonized for spending an a little time handing out food (donated by people other than himself, of course) and shaking hands.
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Lots of people do this as a matter of course. Heck, there’s several restaurants where I live who open their doors on Thanksgiving to all who want to come. They are aided by scores of volunteers, including my parish priest. These people all get no respect and love from the press, but they are amply re-paid by the gratitude of those who are the recipients of their kindness.
And I agree – the Obama daughters are cute as can be!
Obama can’t go anywhere without being recognized. His face is pretty well known, wouldn’t you say? So how does he handle a situation like this, where he has a chance to teach his daughters the joy of giving? And isn’t giving one form of “spreading (redistributing) the wealth)? Isn’t it a good thing that poor people were able to eat well on Thanksgiving? Obama isn’t being canonized. He’s just doing what he probably has done before – helped out at a shelter on Thanksgiving.
I had the privilege of doing this once – in Knoxville, TN a few years ago. I got to help because my husband’s niece, with whom we were staying, worked with homeless people as her job. The shelter has to turn away volunteers on Thanksgiving. The real tragedy is that we do not convince volunteers that we should share every day not that Obama chose a day he was free to help out in such a manner. He is busy these days, selecting cabinet members and such. If we shared every day, no government intervention would be necessary. It is more important that people eat than who pays for the food.
“…he wants the girls ‘to learn the importance of how fortunate they are, and to make sure they’re giving back.’ ”
What a grotesque muddle.
He wants his girls to know the **importance** of how fortunate THEY are. That’s what he said.
…And to make sure they’re **giving back**
EXCUSE ME! They are NOT “giving,” they are handing out stuff somebody else gave.
The story did NOT speak of the Obamas going to a store, and buying cases of soup, for example, and then giving that away — the message they are pretending to teach. The lesson they are actually teaching IS consistent with the Left’s Modus Operandi: Take from some Americans, and hand out what you’ve taken — that ain’t “giving” — to other Americans.
Again:
He wants his girls to know the **importance** of how fortunate THEY are. That’s what he actually said.
That is, it’s important to be in the Left’s ruling class. What he’d like us to THINK he said is: When you have been fortunate, it is important to share what you have with those who are less fortunate. But he didn’t say that, this Harvard educated, golden voiced hero. Not even close.
Besides. Thanksgiving is not so much about giving. Giving is a given. What’s important about Thanksgiving is Giving Thanks to GOD for what you have. Giving away a portion of your bounty is the natural result of Gratitude.
Thanksgiving is not about the “importance” your good fortune — or the importance of YOU — which is what I see here.
Children, it is not important how rich your parents are, or how readily they hand out other peoples’ stuff. What’s important is being generous YOURSELF with YOUR stuff, and RECOGNIZING that it came from GOD.
Yeah, it’s amazing how everything in or around this man’s life manages to elide into being about him. Now, apparently, even Thanksgiving is all about him – how could the Pilgrims have not known?
And Bill is absolutely right: to listen to what comes out of this guy’s mouth is often a visit to an alternative universe. I especially love the locution: “they need to learn the importance of how fortunate they are…” – huh? What does that mean in straightforward English? And – how the hell does it relate (if in fact it should mean anything at all) to any concept of what Thanksgiving means?
I mean, c’mon Helen: parse that sentence for us. I’ll even accept an explanation of what he meant – and let you off the hook trying to explain what he actually said.
Hey, Helen, hope your Thanksgiving was a good one.
Say, if somebody hosted you at Thanksgiving, I sure hope you didn’t thank them by saying, “It’s more important that I was fed than that you provided the food.” I’m sure your host/hostess would have appreciated the generosity of that insight.
Also, it seems to me that you persist in your penchant for equating
“might” or “could be” or “probably” with “is.” Believe me — and remember I’m only half-white like Obama, which gives me far, far more cred than a mere white woman like you — if Obama had “probably” handed out food at Thanksgiving before, all of his apologists would have quickly pointed it out.
But they didn’t.
Bummer when reality bitch-slaps wishful thinking, isn’t it?
Can I have that on a bumper sticker, Charles? I’ll put it on my car … what do you think, is January 21st too soon?
Book, remembered what the Left thought of Bush at the elementary reading to children?
The Left don’t give a damn about the children when their lives are threatened. They just want somebody to shield them from threats, and currently children are the best shield around. Terrorists have proven that quite handily, along with the New York Times.
Obama can’t go anywhere without being recognized. His face is pretty well known, wouldn’t you say?
The same is true of Bush, but he somehow found a way to get into Landstuhl medical hospital without the cameras and photographers.
People with internal mental partitions, Helen, need to do more work when they have to reconcile inconsistent facts like that.
And isn’t giving one form of “spreading (redistributing) the wealth)?
Certainly, given that you are redistributing everybody else’s wealth while selfishly keeping your own wealth. What makes you think, in the end Helen, that people like you won’t take back the wealth of the poor on the justification that you know best where to put it?
If we shared every day, no government intervention would be necessary. It is more important that people eat than who pays for the food.
Certainly the ends must justify the means in your universe, Helen. Of course, in your universe America can do anything it wants to prisoners so long as America gets the required information from them. After all, what matters is how many lives are saved, not who is interrogating the subjects, heh.
Y., RE: “Of course, in your universe America can do anything it wants to prisoners so long as America gets the required information from them. After all, what matters is how many lives are saved, not who is interrogating the subjects, heh.”
Huh? I don’t approve of anyone torturing prisons for any reason.
What I meant was, if one person pays for the food and another person hands it to a third (the hungry) person, what is the big deal? But not to worry. Someone will twist these words, too.
The “big deal” is real simple, Helen: Obama didn’t collect that food nor lift a finger to amass it. He just rode in on his white horse to pass it out to the peasants like a celebrity.
Then people have the gall to say that by having his children hand out food that they neither earned or toiled over, they are somehow learning charity.
Besides, Helen, the Bible commands us to perform our acts of charity quietly and behind the scenes.
There, did I twist your words enough?
What I meant was, if one person pays for the food and another person hands it to a third (the hungry) person, what is the big deal?
Well, what would be the big deal if the US outsourced torture to third parties, like the Iraqis who have lost wives, sons, and daughters?
It doesn’t matter who does the torture, so long as the information is used to save lives, right?
You may see this as “twisting” your words, but they are inevitably the logical consequences of your “philosophy” and “thinking”.
I know you aren’t big on logic but even you can see what your philosophy of the ends justifying the means entails.
He just rode in on his white horse to pass it out to the peasants like a celebrity.
Aristocrat, Charles, not celebrity. Remember that it was the aristocracy and their taxes extorted from the peasants that paid for the patronage of artists and others. You worked for the aristocracy and they gave you a “living wage”: meaning whatever they thought you needed to live off of. There was no “salary” and no “free market” economics.
Y., Where is the logic in going from Thanksgiving dinner to torturing prisoners. I’d say that was a leap. I thought you didn’t believe in leaps. I didn’t mention torture. I don’t see how you employ logic to say, after dinner we always torture someone. What are you talking about?
>>What are you talking about?>>
Helen, what he’s talking about is whether or not the “means” used to accomplish something is justified by the goodness or badness of the result.
Your point is that feeding the hungry is good, therefore it doesn’t matter who does what’s necessary for that end is achieved.
His point is that torture is wrong, even when it might be justified by being done by individuals who have cause to inflict it as punishment.
His comparison is taking the “who” which you are are using for justification, and changing the end result from one which you approve to one which you do not approve. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and it doesn’t matter what personalities are doing the action.
Actually, I sympathize with the Obamas and their intent. Being a good parent and guiding your children must be difficult when everything you do is done in the public eye. I think the very wealthy and people who are prominent and in the public eye have a similar problem. How do you teach a child responsibilities when you can’t exactly tell them to take out the trash – so to speak. Or make them earn the money for their own first car plus the insurance to pay for it when you – and perhaps they – have a trust fund that pays big bucks each year without personal labor? It’s got to be a challenge. If someone has a winning lottery ticket, it’s one I’d be happy to take on…!
Suek, I agree with everything you said. I still think it was a leap. And I’ve been accused of being looney for making leaps. Just as right is right (no matter who does it) and wrong is wrong (no matter who does it), looney is looney (no matter who’s lloney). So if my leaps are looney, so is this one. Finis.
Not so looney, Helen…he just wanted clear contrast between something you consider good and something he thought you’d clearly consider was bad. It may be a leap in the practical sense, but not so looney a leap in the conceptual sense. Right and wrong, good and bad – opposites. Sometimes you and he disagree with what we consider good and what we consider bad.
Pretty clear agreement on this one!
Whew! Glad to see that since Helen did not address my comments she agrees that I did not twist her words.
Charles Martel, LOL
Helen doesn’t get the logical syllogism here. While I find that rather amazing, it is not truly surprising.
Y., Where is the logic in going from Thanksgiving dinner to torturing prisoners. I’d say that was a leap.
The reason why you see it as a leap is because you can’t connect the dots between the two. For example, you have one compartment that you put torture and the bad things in and another compartment in your mind to put good things like healthcare, economic equality, and food care in.
There are specific barriers designed to stop any connections between those two compartments, Helen. At least in your style of thinking there is.
For example, you believe torture is wrong and you aren’t the kind of person who would say “torture might be justified if anything good came from it” because you don’t believe anything good could come from it. However, when it comes to food, you don’t care how the food is “acquired”, so long as it is used for “good” in your view. That, however, is the same thinking behind the use of torture, which you oppose, Helen. But you don’t oppose it when you adopt the same kind of thinking, only it resides in a separate compartment from those that hold such things as torture.
The connections don’t want to touch because you don’t want to think about these two subjects as being the same in how you are using them. They are different, for your mind has categorized them as different, yet you use the same thinking (logic) with one as with the other. Cause if they are the same, then you are confronted with a particular problem in how to reconcile your views against torture and war with your views towards Obama and food care.
And I’ve been accused of being looney for making leaps.
You have been accused of using poetry and emotion to make connections between real world subjects. This is called fantasy, or in your words “looney”, rather than realistic, serious, or accurate. It doesn’t matter what you say or how far you leap; it only matters with what you are leaping with. Are you leaping into the void with logic and some kind of consistent and objective standard that can be used to check to your accuracy or are you leaping into the void with emotionalism, sensationalism, and pure subjectivity which can never be proved wrong? It’s always harder to use and adhere to logic than to adhere to your own emotions about what is right and what is wrong. For logic can prove you wrong or at least inconsistent, but your emotions never will.
So if my leaps are looney, so is this one. Finis.
What an amazing circular logic trick you are trying to do here, Helen. And for someone that doesn’t use logic, or at least straight logic.
There is no finis, for you wouldn’t even pass Logic 101 in college. Which, while not an easy class, certainly isn’t as hard as writing poetry.
Just as right is right (no matter who does it) and wrong is wrong (no matter who does it), looney is looney (no matter who’s lloney).
But right isn’t right. When Obama does something, cause he is black, you believe it is right. When a white man does the same thing, you believe it to be wrong. You can’t use the “premise” that right is right to justify your logical conclusion that “looney is looney” given that to you, right is not right absolutely. It depends. It has always depended on various things to you, Helen. Let’s not try to pretend otherwise here.
As for wrong, torture is wrong to you regardless of what good it does but passing out food is good to you, Helen, regardless of where or how that food was acquired. By that logic, saving lives is a good thing and so it doesn’t matter how those lives were saved: saved by information gotten from torture, for example. You think in categories. You have no real fundamental epistemology, philosophy, or ethics to guide your way except white guilt, institutional racism, and equality. Those aren’t principles; they are just categories. You put people into these categories and these compartments then decide who is right and what is wrong. Thus you are not consistent concerning what you see as “bad” (torture) and what you see as “good” (food, healthcare, equality). Those things are not “good” because right is always right. Torture to you isn’t wrong because wrong things are always wrong. No, torture is only wrong to you cause you decided to put it into a box called “bad things”. And with food and healthcare, you decided to put it in a box labeled “good things”.
Pretty clear agreement on this one!
I think not.
Y., You are truly amazing. All you’ve managed to say is, you think better than I do.
In reality, the way I think is with “thin boundaries” – without boxes. But I can manage to discuss one thing at a time.
Maybe your connection is true – that there are similarities between who pays for the food and who gives it out AND the torture of prisoners. But it has nothing to do with the fact that many Thanksgiving dinners are bought by one person (or groups of people) and served (sold or given away) by a different person (or group of people) and that isn’t immoral a bit; whereas, torture is always wrong. I do care how food was acquired, but I don’t think it’s immoral to serve food somebody else bought. (And neither do you.) You’d pass the dressing, bought by your mother, to your aunt, now wouldn’t you?
If a group buys food (or collects it by donations), it is not immoral for Obama’s family or anyone else to help with the distribution. To imply that it is, is silly. You don’t have to be a poet to know that I was talking about Thanksgiving dinner NOT torture.
You are acting silly and trying to use confusing crap to make me seem silly instead. Nice try.
You are truly amazing. All you’ve managed to say is, you think better than I do.
There are objective standards in thinking, also known as epistemology or the theory of knowledge, Helen. You may not like that fact, and you may not subscribe to objective standards, but none of that is “truly amazing”.
But it has nothing to do with the fact that many Thanksgiving dinners are bought by one person (or groups of people) and served (sold or given away) by a different person (or group of people) and that isn’t immoral a bit
Since you have already said it doesn’t matter who gave the food or who provided it, it doesn’t matter if it was done morally or immorally by theft or murder. It doesn’t matter that the person distributing it is promoting a philosophy of “redistribution” where one man has the right to forcibly take food from others to “redistribute” it to those that have less food.
“That isn’t immoral a bit”? Only to you, Helen, only to you.
I do care how food was acquired
People with subjective standards of epistemology tend to contradict themselves and claim that that was always their position to begin with. Something like what you did here.
No, you don’t care how food was acquired. You care how much food is acquired, but you don’t make a differentiation in the morality of the methods, so long as more food is brought about and redistributed.
You’d pass the dressing, bought by your mother, to your aunt, now wouldn’t you?
Ah, but I wouldn’t stand up and say that I was a paragon of virtue, like Obama and you have, in simply being the transporter of the goods rather than the producer. I wouldn’t pass the food and say that I was being charitable and would need to be praised for providing the dressing to my aunt. This “entitlement” attitude is what people like me don’t like about your philosophy, Helen. People should not feel entitled to things that they have never earned or worse, earned by others. It does not make for a good society.
Helen,
“So how does he handle a situation like this, where he has a chance to teach his daughters the joy of giving?”
The point that I think bothered most people the most was this notion that he was teaching his kids about giving, by having them give out stuff that they’d done nothing to produce, or buy, and there’s no evidence that they do anything like that ever.
“And isn’t giving one form of “spreading (redistributing) the wealth)?”
No, Helen, giving is definitely, absolutely NOT a form of redistributing the wealth. That phrase is a euphemism for TAKING, by threat of force, money from one American, and handing it to another [with thanks to the great Walter E. Williams].
Obama and his party are about forced taking, and fake “giving” which isn’t giving at all, and it sticks in folks’ craw to be told that he and his family are giving when they clearly are not.
You are clearly not a stupid woman, yet you keep studiously avoiding the obvious.
Bill, for your information, in case you didn’t know, Helen supports redistribution and believes redistribution is a Good Thing. That means “giving” is a good thing and since redistribution is also a “good thing”, then giving is a good thing. You see the logic, I hope. It’s a circular logic, but even circular logic is covered in logic.
Bill and Ymarsakar, to understand the “reasoning” here it’s best to just come down to Helen’s level.
Helen, like all progressives, believes that the measure of goodness is how good an act makes you feel.
It feels good to pass dinner to a hungry person, therefore doing so is good.
It feels good to vote for a man with dark skin, therefore doing so is good.
Yes, things can get complicated if you go just a smidge past the good feeling. For example, if I rob a supermarket because I want to serve caviar to my guests, how I come by the food is not so good.
Or if my only reason for voting for the dark-skinned man is his skin color, totally ignoring other important things about him, such as his character, experience and morality, that is not so good.
But we really want to avoid things that are not good, because they make us feel bad. So, the trick here is to never examine your motives or the possible complexities of a moral situation lest the world lose its rosy-colored glow.
(In closing, I would like to say that as a not-quite-white person, everything I write carries twice the moral and intellectual weight of anything that white Helen says because race confers moral superiority.)
Y., Did you mean I think in logical circles?
I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from you.
Y: Ahhh…. I have been away from the forum, and have only met Helen on this thread. So, I thank you for the heads up.
CM: Yes, I am familiar with this fundamental of understanding Liberals. They live in fear of ever doing, or not doing something that could give anyone, anywhere cause to point a finger, and say, “YOU, are a BAAAD PERSON!!!!!”
It’s all about how they feel, not at all about actually helping. Otherwise, they woud look at the hideous, disastrous results of their efforts at “helping” and stop doing it. When Reagan, I believe it was, convinced congress to revamp the welfare system people did not lie starving, and dying in the streets. They got jobs.
Faith-based, and other private charities run RINGS around government programs in terms of effectiveness / results, but Liberals insist that what’s wrong with their own programs like Obama’s housing project debacle is that they aren’t doing (spending) enough. This gives them the most liberal cred with the least work. It also gives them an excuse to further expand their political, and governmental power base which is their real goal. Follow the money, and follow the results, and you’ll see what is important to them, and what is not.
Helen’s problem is that she’s a true believer that good intentions produce good results. They do not. It is good, well-designed, and thus effective programs — which may well have been born of good intentions — that ACTUALLY produce good results. Not holding hands and/or a candle, and singing Kumbaya. That just produces good FEELINGS in those singing, which they CALL “caring.”
Obviously, I could go on, but I have to go buy, and deliver 2 dozen cans of Progresso soup to a soup kitchen. That is true, Helen, not a sarcastic slap.
Wow Bill, you sure sized me up quickly. Nothing like individuality here. I’m not a person, just a liberal. LOL
Nice non-responsive response. You didn’t answer any points I made.
Actually, Helen, you do seem to be like the Liberals I described. Am I wrong? Are you NOT in favor of government taking citizen’s money and giving it to other citizens? Let’s start with that one.
Please, defend this statement:
“And isn’t giving one form of “spreading (redistributing) the wealth?”
Y., Did you mean I think in logical circles?
I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from you.
Logical circles are not a good thing, helen. Circles in logic mean that you have messed something up totally, like a short circuit in electronic circuits. That is not a good thing because it produces nothing usable concerning the search for truth.
There is nothing true about justifying your views, Helen, by making up more stuff. Not only do you “choose” what position to hold, which is a subjective decision, but if you also get to choose what proves your position, via subjectivity, then you are nowhere closer to the truth than when you started.
Nothing like individuality here. I’m not a person, just a liberal. LOL
Fake liberal, Helen. You don’t deserve to be called a “liberal” in anything: except poetry and the arts.
Bill, also be sure not to forget her line: “It is more important that people eat than who pays for the food.”
To all according to their need, from all according to their ability (to produce). It is more important that I get the goodies that I desire than it is for the actual workers to benefit from their time and sweat. Right, Bill?
In the real world, somebody has to create that food. Making it impossible for them to do so, by stealing their stuff without giving them anything back cause “it is more important that people get fed”, results in famines and food shortages. The fake liberals of the world, like they did with bio-fuels, will then say that the problem (that they created) can be fixed by more fake liberal crack! Just a little bit more, Bill, and you’re overdose symptoms will just go away…
Bill and Ymarsakar, to understand the “reasoning” here it’s best to just come down to Helen’s level.
I was here when first Helen commented at Bookworm Room. In all those months, totaling somewhere around a year, plus or minus a year or so, Helen has never defended the core precepts and principles of her philosophy. She has justified and explained why fake liberal policies are right, why Obama should be elected cause he is black, why white folks need to feel guilty for institutional racism, and why blacks need to get “equal” by the application of reverse racism to subjugate whites and others vulnerable to government thuggery, but she has not defended the philosophical contradictions in her ethics and epistemology.
In so far as you can understand Helen’s “reasoning”, there is not much there to understand.
But, you can still be surprised by the permutations of Helen’s views, such as on food, healthcare, taxes, and so forth.
Y,
Are you aware that you sometimes come off as attacking me, as you do above? I suspect that if I could see your face as you speak, and hear your voice I would understand your words as you mean them, but you seem to be deliberately ambiguous in text alone. What overdose symptoms are those you speak of?
I do agree with the points you make above, and I didn’t forget about her “… important that people eat..” statement. I just wanted to give her one, and only ONE statement to respond to lest she go off in fourteen different directions again.
Helen seems — like most liberals — to live only in the present. That is why their nutty, and ruinous policies make sense to them. They can’t see the before, or the aftermath. To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities. Seems to make sense — in the moment. Except it doesn’t work over time. EVER.
We even tried it here. YES! The Pilgrims tried it, but the lazy didn’t work much, and let the industrious feed them, because everybody got a share of the food grown. Obviously that didn’t last. Those who did all the work — while others didn’t — declined to be taken advantage of anymore.
As soon as they apportioned plots of land to be privately owned, and farmed, whadya know, people farmed up a storm. Some worked for others, or sold their land, and went hunting, and sold their meat, or plied other trades, and the little economy worked. Those truly in need WERE fed, Helen, by CHARITY. Charity which would have had NOTHING to give without the productive, Capitalist economy, Helen.
Food does not just APPEAR on supermarket shelves, Helen. It takes land, it takes money to buy, maintain, and operate machines, to buy seed, trucks, and railroads to get the food to your store, Helen, and people to risk their savings to buy the land, and build the store Helen, and hire, and train all the workers involved, Helen.
Little children think that eggs come from the store, Helen. They think that Barney lives in the TV, and that all it takes to see Barney is to press a switch. Why SHOULDN’T Barney be free if that’s all it takes, Helen? Why SHOULDN’T food be free if it just appears all by itself on the shelves of some dirty, greedy, cruel hearted store owner who LIKES to see people starve? Why of COURSE that’s unconscionable!
What I wrote above is what your thinking does look like, Helen. I can’t know for certain, because I’m not inside your head, but that IS how you present yourself, and people have a right to take you as you present yourself.
Who gets to come to YOUR house, Helen, and tell YOU how much of YOUR stuff now belongs to them because they “need” it?
What overdose symptoms are those you speak of?
It’s a sarcastic tone in which I mimic our Leftist overlords.
“Fake liberal crack” is the drug, the fake liberal agenda is the overdosing of that particular drug, and the symptoms of overdose include shock and death, to which the obvious solution is more of that particular drug.
I just wanted to give her one, and only ONE statement to respond to lest she go off in fourteen different directions again.
That wouldn’t be consistent with her previous behavior here.
Helen seems — like most liberals — to live only in the present.
Helen has studied history: the last 60 years of it in America.
Y:
I stand by what I said.
You have said many things. To what are you referring to?
Here’s one example of tone
>> is practically canonized for spending an a little time handing out food (donated by people other than himself, of course) and shaking hands. >>
I didn’t catch that until you repeated it at the end, Book. Everyone else here caught it! Even Helen caught it, though she thinks it’s both fine AND noble! I think it’s fine, but certainly not noble, to have done what Obama did. Training your daughters to hand out the things that other people worked much harder gathering and even sacrificing for, is hardly a noble lesson. Especially for a politician, who is known for giving other people’s assets away for free, and taking the credit.
Y:
You’re lecture me on Rhetoric, and then commit a sentence like:
“To what are you referring to?”
??
When I said that I stand by what I said I meant that I stand by what I said.
Bill Smith (#33) – My, my.
Helen:
I’ve been inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt considering your refusal to engage in intelligent defense of some of the things you advocate here, such as racism and theft.
At first I thought your reluctance was due to a lack of time — so many unenlightened white racists to look down on, so few minutes in the day in which to do it.
But now I think you know what the rest of us know: You lack a coherent rationale for the things you believe. Feeling is enough for you, so it is feelings that are your arguments.
What’s the old saying? “People who feel see life as a tragedy; people who think see it as a comedy.” So, you must forgive us, Helen, when we laugh at the silly things you say. It’s what happens when you try to engage people who’ve learned how to think.
Charles, I “felt” my way to a Master’s degree at Wake Forest University – oh yeah, they made me read books, too – where I studied slavery from a black point of view (meaning, we read manuscripts written by actual slaves), slavery worldwide (in Africa, Europe, Asia, South American adnd North America), a comparison between the struggle for freedom in the US and South Africa, black biography, black religion, as well as creative writing (poetry and fiction). I wrote my Master’s degree on the redemptive value of unmerited suffering in the life and works of Martin Luther King Jr. But oh, they forgot Thinking 101.
Not thinking like you doesn’t mean not thinking. Enough of your silliness. Good night. Or, don’t I know when night is without some kind of feeling?
Helen, if I remember correctly, the Wizard of Oz awarded the scarecrow a diploma.
I guess if you have a piece of paper in your hand from one of them thar universities, you must be a thinker!
(By the way, did you “feel” your way to an understanding of the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority while you were earning your Master’s?)
Wake Forest was then and this is now. I repeat, you are incapable of making a sustained argument for your positions that withstand simple tests for logic, coherence or consistency.
Or would you rather I argue with your diploma? Does it have a screen name and does it know how to use Word?
There’s an old saying, Helen, that you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. I’ll add a corollary: You’re entitled to your own definition of thinking, but not your own logic. Maybe you do employ logic elsewhere, Helen, but you haven’t here. Not that I’ve seen. Instead you wave credentials.
Amazing how Charles and I had the same thought at the same thought.
Ack! I’m always hitting the button too quickly. You know I meant to write “time.”
You’re lecture me on Rhetoric, and then commit a sentence like:
I thought I was answering your question. It is not something I forced you to ask. Common courtesy requires you to make your complaints clear, Bill. It also requires you to take in good faith answers that were provided by your request, instead of calling them “lectures”.
When I said that I stand by what I said I meant that I stand by what I said.
And by that I mean that you need to stop being obtuse over your “hurt feelings” and specify what you mean when you say “I stand by what I said”. Are you talking about where you got offended by my mentioning of overdose symptoms or are you talking about the various things you have described concerning Helen?
Ambiguity does not serve the purpose of the truth. If you have some complaint against me, you need to be honest here rather than hiding behind obfuscations. I don’t like obfuscations from fake liberals and I won’t tolerate it simply because it comes from you.
I have already made clear that I have given you no offense nor did I intend any “attack”. Try not to imply otherwise without at least presenting a clear argument as to why.
Not thinking like you doesn’t mean not thinking.
Certainly that can be true. In your case, however, you don’t even talk about epistemology. How, then, can you justify the claim that your “thinking” has merit? Are you assuming that we will take your assumptions at face value? Certainly that cannot be said to be good for critical thinking when people accept the assumptions of others without challenge or debate.
I’ve been inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt considering your refusal to engage in intelligent defense of some of the things you advocate here, such as racism and theft.
Many people here, including Deana, suek, Danny, and MikeD gave Helen that exact same benefit of the doubt. Inevitably, Helen would resort to a couple of consistent tactics, such as quoting her work concerning Martin Luther King Jr. or her diplomas.
Like many Leftists, especially those in academia, titles of authority are like your one stop shop for argument stallers. If you can’t win an argument, pull out the diploma and label your opponents, Intelligent Design or otherwise, as ignorant and dumb people. They did it to Sarah Palin partially because they actually believe “credentials” is wholly contained in a piece of paper. They believe you don’t need anything else, a solid character, record of wisdom and actions, or common sense, to be “smart” or “right”.
You may say, Charles, that Helen is simply unpracticed when debating matters of philosophy, logic, reason, or politics. She has not given the fundamental aspects of such things much thought: certainly not as much thought as she has given to Martin Luther King or poetry.
I mean, really, what does a degree on Martin Luther King or several days and weeks spent reading the memoirs of slaves going to help when it comes to arguing philosophy and ethics? Did slaves create a whole new philosophical arena of ethics while they were starving and dying of thirst on those slave ships, Helen? I mean seriously here, Helen, certainly there are academic subjects you could speak about, if you wished. We are neither denying nor affirming academic sources or resources, but if you want to bring up academia, then you are certainly beholden to bring it up in the right context.
But, of course, eventually Helen gives up, as she wants to do here, and then we will repeat this same process over again some weeks ahead. It is the same now as it was before, Charles. Nothing has changed.
Yes Y., “nothing has changed.” No matter what anyone says or does, Obama will still be wrong to try to teach his daughters to share. The reason nothing changes is that you like being the way you are. You cannot change me any more than I can change you. We change, when we choose to do so and when we begin to listen to those who do not think the way we do (like I did when I went back to school after 25 years). Nothing will change unless you want it to. I wanted to think in fresh ways, so I learned how. You don’t so you bring up “epistemology.” What’s new about that? I don’t come to Bookworm’s blog to get changed but rather to see what the world must overcome. And I see you: “nothing has changed.”
No matter what anyone says or does, Obama will still be wrong to try to teach his daughters to share.
There you go again, Helen. No matter how many times you repeat it, “distributing other people’s wealth” is not “sharing”. This is a philosophical matter, not an “Obama” matter.
I wanted to think in fresh ways, so I learned how.
If you learned how to think in “fresh ways” then you could speak about thinking, meta-thinking, and epistemology. But you have never done so. Why is that, you think?
You don’t so you bring up “epistemology.”
Do you need a philosophy dictionary to define the term, then?
What’s new about that?
Isn’t that what college was for? Didn’t your college and diploma prepare you for such subjects, dealing with them, arguing about them, understanding them? Or is your “fresh ways” of thinking only limited to certain topics like blacks, slavery, and Martin Luther King? If so, just how “fresh” is that in the end: not very if you ask me.
I don’t come to Bookworm’s blog to get changed but rather to see what the world must overcome.
You see, you just did it again. Of course you didn’t come here to have your views challenged by diverse subjects. You came here to check up on your ideological opponents.
But even ideological opponents will argue philosophy, Helen. You choose not to do so, and that is a choice worth criticizing.
Didn’t your college and diploma prepare you for such subjects, dealing with them, arguing about them, understanding them?
No, they didn’t, Y, sad to say. They don’t do that much anymore in colleges. They confuse the laudable idea that everyone is created equal, and has an equal right to express one’s thoughts with the false idea that all thoughts are equally valid, which they demonstrably are not.
Another problem, is that most colleges and universities actively exclude Conservative points of view. These bastions of Academic Freedom will let — even encourage that — conservative speakers and students be shouted down, and even physically attacked.
Helen:
Here’s a challenge you should relish and easily meet: Please name one “fresh way” you have learned to think. Not new, in the sense that you have not thought that way before,* but fresh in the sense that you are thinking bold ideas that the world has never before considered and discarded.
*For example, Charles Martel’s old way of thinking: Never vote for a man based on his skin color. Vote for his intelligence, character and experience.
Charles Martel’s “new” way of thinking: Vote for a man based on his skin color if people with your skin color “owe” him. Nothing else matters. Do not ever see your vote as racism.
Charles,
Helen Losse’s old way of thinking: The US is the best place in the world to live. We have assimilated many people into one (that is, people who came from various backgrounds and countries now are considered equal under the law); we have overcome racism in this country. Now we need to abolish abortion and the possibility of euthanasia, which is the natural conclusion, because these are the most immoral ways in which a country can destroy itself. (Look at the fall of the world’s great empires.) AIDS is a result of homosexual activity and sex outside marriage.
Helen Losse’s new way of thinking: (following an epiphany in which I read that African American tennis great Arthur Ashe said, “the most difficult challenge I have had to face is not having AIDS but being black.”) The US has educated its young with some of the fact, but those about our violent past have been downplayed. Racism is over only if you are white. That’s when I explored the radical idea of the “race traitors” and decided not to be white. I saw that we needed to abolish the need for abortion (which I still oppose) – go after cause rather than effect. I saw that poverty in the US should be compared to richness in the US, not poverty in the rest of the world. I saw that AIDS is a disease that need to be cured and that homosexuals are often more spiritual than the folks putting them down (as a result of about six New Testament Bible verses). I was that equality was the goal and that people who have plenty (like me) are often very, very selfish. I saw that people in the underclass are often happier than the rich ones who must expend so much energy keeping the underclass down.
In other words: I used to be like several of the folks I read here. But thank God, I was born again, and this time I’m black. (Y., Don’t even bother. This is well beyond epistemology.)
The change was gradual. But I am very pleased with where the new thought is leading.
Well, Helen, we finally agree on something. As I’m sure you are aware, Margaret Sanger was a racist, and promoting abortion was her way of gradually eliminating black people in this country. I also share your fears about euthanasia, a slippery slope if there ever was one.
I’ll refrain from pointing out other things in your post.
Bill, I’m sure there are many things upon which we agree. But deciding what a person really meant (which is the way of Y.) is a strange way of discovering what those ways are. Asking simple questions seems far more effective than assigning someone various thoughts and defying him/her to talk his/her way out. If we don’t look for common ground, what do we do? Kill each other. Not me. There’s room in this world for me and others, even Y, to whom figurative language (the way adults actually talk) seems foreign.
I have always been a positive person. But now I see the importance of seeking common ground. We are all more alike than different. I think knowing that is the difference between being content as a conservative and being challenged to become more progressive.
>>Helen Losse’s old way of thinking:
The US is the best place in the world to live. >>
If this is not true in your new way of thinking, please name one country that you think is better. Have you ever lived (not visited, lived) in another country?
>>We have assimilated many people into one (that is, people who came from various backgrounds and countries now are considered equal under the law); >>
This was true until “multiculturalism” became the ideal. We were “the great melting pot” – when you came here, it didn’t matter where you came from, you were now _American_. Then people discovered the hyphen, and where you came from become more important than where you _were_. Makes me wonder why they came – or why they don’t go back.
>>we have overcome racism in this country. >>
The big bugaboo. I think it’s mostly true, but we differ in what we consider racism, so I’ll leave this one alone.
>>Now we need to abolish abortion and the possibility of euthanasia, which is the natural conclusion, because these are the most immoral ways in which a country can destroy itself. (Look at the fall of the world’s great empires.) >>
No disagreement here.
>>AIDS is a result of homosexual activity and sex outside marriage.>>
I wouldn’t say AIDS is a result, but I would say that the _spread_ of AIDS is the result of “homosexual activity and sex outside marriage.” Personally, I think Castro was right when he isolated those who tested positive for AIDS. Quarantine is really the only way to control or end it. Of course, since that isn’t politically correct or acceptable, and since self-quarantine seems a concept unacceptable who are unable to exercise sexual self-control, the result has been the death of hundreds of thousands.
>>Helen Losse’s new way of thinking:
(following an epiphany in which I read that African American tennis great Arthur Ashe said, “the most difficult challenge I have had to face is not having AIDS but being black.”)
Well, AIDS killed him. Being black didn’t. That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
>>The US has educated its young with some of the fact, but those about our violent past have been downplayed.>>
Of course. People always downplay bad stuff – especially dealing with children. Time enough for them to learn about that when they reach adulthood. If we would teach them _history_, they’d learn the good and the bad. As it is, we teach them what we want them to emulate – which is the good stuff.
>>Racism is over only if you are white. >>
So you say. But by your standards, the only end of racism will come when the black race is the dominant ruling force in the US, which is simply a reverse racism. Individual qualifications should be the determining factor, not race.
>>That’s when I explored the radical idea of the “race traitors” and decided not to be white. >>
Wishing doesn’t make it so. In time of race war, I assume you’d be a wiling martyr, because the blacks would see your white skin and you’d be just as dead dead dead as those who disagree with you.
>>I saw that we needed to abolish the need for abortion (which I still oppose) – go after cause rather than effect.>>
And what cause is that? Other than sexual indulgence?
>> I saw that poverty in the US should be compared to richness in the US, not poverty in the rest of the world.>>
Why? so that individuals won’t say “how lucky I am to have this and this and this”, but rather “How unfair it is that you have more than I do”?
>> I saw that AIDS is a disease that need to be cured >>
No disagree ment here.
>>and that homosexuals are often more spiritual than the folks putting them down (as a result of about six New Testament Bible verses).>>
Hmm. Define “spiritual”. Somehow, when I read about the homosexual excesses in San Francisco, and read about the attacks on people who disagree with them politically, I just don’t get the impression of “spiritual”.
>> I was that equality was the goal and that people who have plenty (like me) are often very, very selfish.>>
Of course. That’s the nature of the beast, and one that most religions attempt to counter. That’s not peculiar to the American, it’s the common condition. You can’t correct it politically or legally – only through religion and appeal to the latent better nature that exists in most.
>> I saw that people in the underclass are often happier than the rich ones >>
Define happier. Laugh louder? Sing and dance? How do you measure “happier”? Did you find this true of the white underclass, or just the black underclass?
>>who must expend so much energy keeping the underclass down.>>
No energy needed. The underclass keeps itself down. Society is more than willing to give them a hand up if they’ll accept it, but most seem to be more comfortable in staying in the same rut. Getting educated is seen as “acting white” and education is the key to success. There are plenty who have stepped up to the status of middle class – but not without effort.
>>In other words: I used to be like several of the folks I read here. But thank God, I was born again, and this time I’m black. (Y., Don’t even bother. This is well beyond epistemology.) >>
You’re right – it’s simply self gratification. “I thank Thee, Lord, that I am not as these others…”!
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Helen is black! Dr. King is spinning with joy in his grave, and all of the white-haired old ladies down at the African Methodist Church are crying out, “Surely the Lord God has heard our plea and sent us a race traitor!”
Helen, how do your fellow blacks treat you? When it comes time to do the potluck do they, in an unknowingly racist manner, restrict you to the green bean and mushroom soup casserole?
I’m still working on that “race traitor” term…
suek:
From the horse’s (Helen’s) own mouth:
suek:
I, too, wondered what one had to do to betray one’s own race. Here’s what I came up with if your “treason” is directed at whites:
— No more Volvo purchases
— No more buying rap music (since mostly whites buy that crap)
— No more subsidizing Planned Parenthood to abort 35 percent of all black pregnancies
— No more endless guilt over what people who lived 150 years ago did to other people who lived 150 years ago
— No more defending the 360,000 Union soldiers who died to destroy the racist Confederacy
— No more need to believe that the Greeks and Romans invented all of their stuff on their own without help from magical black Egyptians
— No more need to believe that the Black Panthers were a bunch of violent racketeers who extorted millions of dollars in drug money and protection payments from their East Oakland neighborhood
— No more need to harbor the secret belief that Michelle Obama is an affirmative action baby who wouldn’t have made it in the real world. (But a new need to harbor the open belief that Clarence Thomas is an affirmative action baby who wouldn’t have made it in the real world.)
— No more need to laugh quietly at Kwanzaa, a silly pseudo-holiday made up by a sociopath named Ron Karenga who used to torture people and engage in running gun battles with his rival thugs, the Black Panthers
— No more need to walk around wringing your hands and taking personal responsibility for every bad, stupid, ditzy, evil, off-the-wall decision that blacks have ever made to ruin themselves since it’s all Whitey’s fault anyway
— No more need to use logic when discussing the assertion that the CIA invented HIV to wipe out black people
Sign me up!
I’ve meditated on the radical ideas of both “race traitor” and “time traitor” decided to be Italian, specifically a 16th century Italian philosopher-banditti with a smattering of Aragonese and Moorish blood. In the future, please address me as Giacomo Il Moro.
(which I still oppose)
Since when? You didn’t support Sarah Palin, not even slightly compared to Obama. Your priorites are rather transparent, Helen. I think it safe to say that on your list of “important stuff”, abortion ranks a distant third.
go after cause rather than effect
Instead of going after Planned Parenthood, the cause of aborted black babies, you have decided to go after the eugenics Nazi philosophy behind Planned Parenthood?
If not, then who are you to say what is the “cause” and what is the effect? You don’t study logic. You don’t study military history. You don’t study human history beyond the last 60 years in America and the limited portions of other works you have read. You also don’t study philosophy so how are you able to judge what is the “cause” and the “effect”? Would you expect a novice poet, who has only ever written 1 poem, to be able to decipher rhyming mechanisms and metaphor in poetry, Helen, with any real accuracy? How then can you expect me to believe you know what is the cause and what is the effect, given your lack of preparation in the field of logic, science, philosophy, engineering, and human psychology?
I was [saw] that equality was the goal and that people who have plenty (like me) are often very, very selfish.
You still are, Helen. Calling on others to sacrifice is not a self-sacrificing action here; it is not even if you feel guilty about your previous beliefs or actions. You said before that you can change if you listen to the views of people who disagree with you and if you want to change. Well, did you want to change yourself into a more generous person or did you just want to make your feel better about certain things? Those two desires inevitably lead to different changes.
I saw that people in the underclass are often happier than the rich ones who must expend so much energy keeping the underclass down.
Since you aren’t of the underclass, given your education and non-blackness, what then does that say about your own guilt? Are you doing what you are doing because you truly feel for the downtrodden or is it just simply because you feel guilty and need a way to expiate that guilt?
Asking simple questions seems far more effective than assigning someone various thoughts and defying him/her to talk his/her way out.
In the former, we have a Q and A session better designed for reporters and interrogators. In the latter example, we have what is known as a debate. Supposedly, academia, Helen, was to promote intellectual debate rather than making things into a court trial. Is academic vigor too idealistic a standard for you then?
But deciding what a person really meant (which is the way of Y.)
You, helen, decided all for yourself what racism, redistribution, fairness, equality, institutional racism, America, and “race traitors” were all about when you started talking about them here. I simply disagreed with you and provided alternative interpretations of such things. That is seen by you, Helen, as deciding what “you” meant. In reality, you being wrong is not a claim on my part that you mean what I say you mean; the meaning of your words don’t mean what you claim they mean: an objective standard, not a subjective one. As a side benefit, I’m often able to interpret your philosophy and logic consistent with your claims, as my previous (months ago) successful translations of your “sentiments” to Bookworm Room commenters have demonstrated. Since you aren’t interested in philosophy, thinking about logic, or the use of intellectually rigorous standards for belief and debate, you may be excused for being unable to communicate the gross inconsistencies in your claims. You may be excused for such things because you are not aware of such inconsistencies. You, looking outwards from within, see no problems with your glass house. I, outside, looking inwards, see all sorts of flaws.
If ever I need your perspective, Helen, that of a person inside looking out, I only have to read your words. And if that fails, I can just build my own glass house, replicating yours entirely, and go in there. How can you really believe, Helen, that you know more about your house when you blind yourself to only one perspective on that house? Your house is built from your beliefs, your assumptions, and your experiences. Do you know more about your house simply because you have lived there for a few days, or does the people who built your house and drew the blueprints for your house know it better? You may know its colors, its smells, and its atmosphere better because you have lived there, Helen. But do you know its structural stability? Its electrical grid and wiring? Its hidden walls or trap doors?
There’s room in this world for me and others, even Y, to whom figurative language (the way adults actually talk) seems foreign.
I am familiar with metaphor and “figurative” language. I don’t use it often because it requires that both the communicator and the communicatee have a basic framework upon which to view the context of the metaphor. You, Helen, have an entirely different world view than mine, yet you insist on using metaphor and claiming it is the way adults actually speak. Adults speak what they mean, at least in my part of the world. They don’t lie, they don’t dissemble, they don’t say one thing and then do the opposite, nor do they claim to be your friend and then stab you in the back when you turn your back on them. In your world, Helen, yes, adults do such things because your definition of “adult” is not very stringent. It is like racism and white institunal racism; it means whatever you say it means: but that in itself isn’t true.
I think knowing that is the difference between being content as a conservative and being challenged to become more progressive.
….
If we don’t look for common ground, what do we do? Kill each other. Not me.
Let’s look at the facts here. When conservatives wanted to upset the status quo and free the people of Afghanistan and Iraq from totalitarlian regimes, what did “progressives” like you do to help in that effort to promote human progress? You did nothing except hinder it. And then you call yourself champions of human progress compared to the “conservatives” who don’t want to “Change”.
When conservatives were looking for common ground with the Iraqis, Vietnamese, and Afghans, guess what “progressives” (fake liberals) like you were doing, Helen. You were helping to kill even more Iraqis, Vietnamese, and Afghans.
And of course, the killing is never done by “you”. It is done by the people you enable, help, and fund. That way you can brush your hands of it and say, after the boat people have come, “they lost in a civil war fair and square”.
This is your version of human progress, Helen, but it is not mine.
In other words: I used to be like several of the folks I read here.
You were never like us, Helen. We came to our views based upon independent thinking and rigorous search for the truth. You came upon your thinking because you were radicalized, programmed, and told what to believe. In fact, I would propose as an a priori (what philosophers call an assumption) that your original views were views drummed into you in a similar fashon as your new views.
As one point of proof, if you were ever like us, Helen, you would have been able to speak our language and to communicate with the readers of Bookworm when they first started arguing with you. Instead, Helen, you chose to stone wall, make ambiguous statements, inane statements, and various other gaffes that took time, on our part, to figure out and resolve. You are a poet, Helen, so it is not as if you didn’t understand how to use words to communicate. It is just that you didn’t know how to. You didn’t know how to because you could not wrap your mind around the way we thought. But we could wrap our mind around the way you thought. Funny, how that went.
following an epiphany in which I read that African American tennis great Arthur Ashe said, “the most difficult challenge I have had to face is not having AIDS but being black.”)
Another point of proof is that we have already seen the horrors of humanity, Helen, before we decided to confirm our belief and faith in America. You, however, were ignorant of such history and you are still ignorant of true human history. And you expect us to believe that you held your ‘original thinking’ based upon some kind of independent thinking like Bookworm, Neo-Neocon, or me?
Until you have seen the benefits of America and until you have seen how horrible humanity is without civilization, how could you ever be “proud” of a such thing as America? You couldn’t be, but you say you were, which provides strong hints as to what was really going on.
No disagreement here.
Suek, that belief you are responding to is something Helen has suggested she has discarded.
That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Funny, suek.
The US has educated its young with some of the fact, but those about our violent past have been downplayed.
Certainly the violent past of Native Americans have been downplayed. But I don’t think that is what Helen meant.
As it is, we teach them what we want them to emulate – which is the good stuff.
The Good Amerindian stuff, certainly. Something has to be the model you put on a pedestal and say “look, this is the ideal we can kill and loot our enemies to create”.
Racism is over only if you are white.
Helen’s white and it doesn’t look like racism ended for her. But she calls herself black, like Bill Clinton was the first “black” President. Okay. I guess this is the way “adults speak”. (In reality, this is the way children speak like… let’s pretend we are black or orange or purple.)
And what cause is that? Other than sexual indulgence?
Helen’s talking about economic inequality amongst blacks, Suek. You know that’s her primary priority.
>> I saw that AIDS is a disease that need to be cured >>
No disagree ment here.
Certainly abortion and the Leftist platform on gay marriage will cure that disease.
I just don’t get the impression of “spiritual”.
You get the impression of passion and pride and a lack of shame. These are all things Helen wanted but didn’t have in her “old way” of thinking. Certainly it would be natural for helen to admire people like that, who have a passionate freedom greater than her own.
Laugh louder? Sing and dance? How do you measure “happier”? Did you find this true of the white underclass, or just the black underclass?
The blacks, of course. Helen has studied the Harlin Rennaisance. Black music was always more lively and passionate than European classical motiffs. Helen equates passion, like gay parades, with “happiness”. Blacks and gays had no shame and no lack of pride, thus they were happy. Whites had money, a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, and not much passion, obviously the rich white people were less happy than the blacks, Suek.
Helen should listen to Dennis Prager…! or read his book “Happiness is a Problem”. He’s a wise man, Dennis is.
Suek, It seems Prager said, “Happiness is only achievable, when it is a by-product of something else, and you must hold that something to be more important than happiness,” and that he suggests that the pursuit of moderation, depth, wisdom, clarity, goodness, and the transcendent will help us attain happiness.”
Okay. I say, knowing that I am loved is enough. Happiness is a choice, and I choose happiness.
So why is the underclass happier?
Or maybe the question is why do we hear so much dissatisfaction with their lot in life if they are happier? And, if they are not actually happier, could it be that they simply do not choose to be happy?
How can Helen “listen” to Prager when Helen cannot even contemplate as a possibility that her entire philosophical world view is wrong?
>>I say, knowing that I am loved is enough.>>
And if you were not loved? What would you do? What would you give or give up in order to _be_ loved?
I submit that when you chose your college, when you chose your course of instruction, you gave up your race – so that you could be loved. So that your happiness would be assured. If you had chosen a different college, a different course of instruction, you’d have done the same – just what you gave up would have been different.
Oh bologna, Suek. “God so loved the world,” and surprise surprise, that includes me. God loves me just as I am. Please go jump in the lake.
Well, Helen, does that mean God loves racists just as they are? If that’s the case, what are you doing here?
RE: “If that’s the case, what are you doing here?”
A bad job!
Nice try, Helen. I see you’re hoping a little humor will make us ignore your bodacious arrogance. After all, if God loves everybody just the way he is, what gives you the right to come here and say you’re better than God by trying to change us?
If we’re good enough for God, how come we’re not good enough for you?
God does, indeed, love us, but he does not love our sins. That God loves us is not a license to believe nonsense, or to be self-centered, or to believe that we are superior to others. And, THAT does not mean that we cannot believe that our ideas are superior to other ideas. God is nothing if not about Truth, but there is now abroad in the land this notion that all ideas are equally valid, and they just aren’t.
Charles, obviously Helen doesn’t really believe she is here to “convert” us. I think she gave the honest answer when up above she said she came here to check up upon the things that her side had to “overcome”.
Please go jump in the lake.
Don’t you feel the love, suek ; )
It is consistent with the Helen Complex, after all. Obama loves people and shares food, so Helen is absolved of the personal duty to do so. God loves people, so Helen is absolved of the personal duty to love others and treat them with generosity, because God will do it! Government will do charity, you don’t have to do a thing. Ain’t that grand, suek.
Helen is getting into her “fatigue state”, otherwise known as the Fugue State. You have to make accommodations for her lack of focus and inability to latch unto complex thoughts and philosophical arguments.
If we’re good enough for God, how come we’re not good enough for you?
You are just too conservative and scared for real “progressive” actions, Charles. You are not worthy!
>>Don’t you feel the love, suek ; )>>
Well…she _did_ say “please”…!!
Temper, temper, my children! Debate, yes! Personal attacks, no.
Sorry, Bookworm. It’s five days until Christmas. May “peace come to earth.”
May Peace Through Superior Firepower come to earth, for many defenseless mothers and babes need it against UN “Peacekeepers” (rapists), warlords, and Hamas/Hizbollah “welfare”.
Well…she _did_ say “please”…!!
Why do you think she didn’t tell me to jump into a river? Certainly I, being the abrasive self that I am, would be more disliked by Helen than you, suek, who tend to be non-confrontational, polite, and tolerant of Helen’s views. Why then does Helen pick on you, and only say of me that “there is room on earth for people like Y”?
My answer is simple. Strong individuals don’t pick on the weak nor do they go out looking for those they perceive as the weak to pummel on. Helen knows, whether she admits this or not, that her insults don’t bother me. It did in the beginning, perhaps, for I took her seriously as another person abiding by the same standards of honesty and courtesy that I abide by. But they do not bother me now. They are in fact, entertaining, to an extent. And such attitude will not be tolerated by me any more. Wouldn’t this mean, suek, that you become an easier target for Helen’s frustrations?
As I have said before, those that cannot control themselves have no entitlement to such things as honor or duty.
Sometimes watching folks here toy with Helen is like watching a naval armada idly blasting away at some poor fishing boat whose captain is convinced he’s the smartest, bestest man on the sea.
Target practice gets boring after awhile, so I’m wondering if Helen could do us the favor of directing one of the heavy hitters from her side to this site to offer us a real challenge. Someone who understands logic and will respond directly to our arguments, not act cutesy and evasive or simply ignore any response that offers a real challenge to his argument.
I’m not real hopeful that Helen can do us this favor. For one thing, I think she believes she represents the best that self-proclaimed progressives can offer us. For another, there’s not a lot of intellectual firepower out there in Pergressiveland, so even if she were to make a good-faith effort to accommodate this request, I don’t think she’d find any of her peers who are up to it.
Charles, you missed out on the dagons, the “Pastor Rays” (notice I said plural), and the rest of the trash. They came and they went and dagon, at least, resurged here when Sarah Palin came on the scene. He really felt interested in her, you could tell.
And just like dragging trash into your house isn’t a favor to you, Charles, it is no favor to Bookworm or the rest of us to draw such people here.
Charles, I have no idea whether or not this site will be what you are interested in. But here it is: http://jesurgislac.wordpress.com/
Gosh, Helen, thanks for keeping in mind as somebody who could possibly be interested in such an enlightened site (the hater who writes it can’t even spell inauguration correctly).
I sure as hell hope you don’t take a site like this seriously. If you do, and you think that it represents one of the best your side has to offer, all I can do is shake my head in wonder and feel sorry for you.
Charles, looks like classic Leftist behavior. When they need to blame somebody, they don’t blame the person responsible for the action, Barack Obama, no… they blame us. Very droll, Charles, very droll.
From the blog, Charles, I dare say he/she is gay/lesbian.
Which is interesting, if you read this article of Ross’.
http://john-ross.net/cindy.php
I forgot to make the point that since the author is homosexual, Charles, that this would automatically elevate the author in Helen’s eyes. After all, gays are happier, more passionate, and more spiritual… right, Charles.
>>Certainly I, being the abrasive self that I am, would be more disliked by Helen than you, suek, who tend to be non-confrontational, polite, and tolerant of Helen’s views.>>
Well, this _is_ Bookworm’s site. And I enjoy the “conversation” here. It really wouldn’t be nice, smart or even reasonable to indulge in behavior or comments that would invite Book’s disapproval. I do care about Book’s opinion. I don’t give a fig for Helen’s any more than I’d be concerned if a three year old got annoyed with me.
As for “toleration” of Helen’s views…frankly, even though I can guess what her response will be to any particular topic, I’d hesitate to say that I _tolerate_ her views. It seems to me that you can ignore Helen, you can ridicule Helen, or you can respond in a way that is likely to get you banned on the site. What you can _not_ do is debate or argue with Helen. It’s like trying to reason with the Mad Hatter (do you know why the Hatter was Mad, by the way?). Totally pointless. The only benefit to reading Helen’s comments is that they often trigger divergent thoughts that might otherwise go unexplored. She _does_ push the conversation in unexpected directions.
suek, I’m reminded by your comments of those displays in science museums in the 70s and 80s purporting to be “talking computers.” You’d sit down and type in something like, “Good morning,” and they would respond, “Good morning. How are you? Are you enjoying the museum?”
Their programs were designed to make it seem that the machines had cognition rather than a fairly sophisticated set of instructions for responding plausibly, if blandly, to whatever you said to them.
If you tested the machines by asking them what you thought was a complex question, such as, “Do you believe in God?” they would respond with a feint designed to get you back on track: “Why do you ask?” (And you’d respond, “I’m curious about what you think,” and it would respond, “Why are you curious about what I think?” And this could go on ad nauseum.)
I think you know the analogy I’m trying to make here.
As for “toleration” of Helen’s views…frankly, even though I can guess what her response will be to any particular topic, I’d hesitate to say that I _tolerate_ her views.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you tolerate her attitude more than I do. Concerning her views, certainly it can be said that I am more tolerating of her views than some others here. For example, while many people glazed over in surprise or what not given Helen’s statements about racism, I wasn’t very surprised. I tolerate her views because there is nothing I can say to change them and even if I could say something to that effect, plenty more would believe the same.
What you can _not_ do is debate or argue with Helen.
I think that depends on your expectations.
She _does_ push the conversation in unexpected directions.
I would probably fulfill that role had more people here been interested in arguing about my comments. Helen certainly has a lot of stuff to say that will induce people to argue over. In that sense, she is providing a useful function to us. Curiously, I don’t tend to see any such similar effect at her own blog. Heh, I suppose one Bookworm Room is enough, so des neh.
I think you know the analogy I’m trying to make here.
I would probably play around with the machines seeing if I could put them into a logic loop.
Gosh, Ymarsakar, don’t you think that’s where we’ve already got Helen?
The talking computers remind me of the guy who went into a bar with his dog. Bartender says, “You can’t have that dog in here.” “But he’s a smart dog! He can talk!” “Yeah? Let’s see.” “Fido! What’s on top of this building?” “ROOF! ROOF!” “G’won, git outa here!” says the barkeep. “No, really! Listen! Fido, who was the greatest ball player ever?” “RUTH! RUTH!” “Awright, git outa here, both o’yuz!!” says the barkeep.
So, the guy and his dog get tossed out on the street.
Dog says,
“DiMaggio?”
>>I would probably play around with the machines seeing if I could put them into a logic loop.>>
Shades of Star Trek!!
>>…it would respond, “Why are you curious about what I think?” And this could go on ad nauseum.>>
Ever been to a therapist?
Or alternatively, had a …let’s see…4 year old? I used to call mine “Whybirds” at a particular stage of life….! First you’re thrilled at their thirst for knowledge, then their seeming perceptiveness, and finally, just plain annoyed when it becomes obvious that it’s just a game!
Gosh, Ymarsakar, don’t you think that’s where we’ve already got Helen?
But there’s no challenge, there. Computers should at least give me a run for my money.
Part of Helen’s problem is that she is too honest compared to other Leftists. Other Leftists will run circles on what their philosophy is or is not by painting ours. Helen, doesn’t do that and that is a problem for Helen but a bonus for us.
I have had experiences of long arguments of trying to get Leftists to expose their real deep a priori thoughts and beliefs, but the Leftists often always know to obfuscate the issue. They won’t tell you what they really believe. Instead, they talk about things like “poverty”, “the children”, “Iraqi casualties” or any other nonsense they could bring up. Helen certainly does some of that, but Helen also tends to stick to her philosophical talking points (like racism), which, if not an a priori, is certainly close enough to one for me to figure it out on my own.
If you take Dagon, the infamous bully that targets women for Peace, as one example, Helen is so much better in comparison.
by painting ours
Painting ours as evil, cruel, illegal, or immoral.
In that light, Helen doesn’t run circles around us, not that she doesn’t use such paints.
Zombre’s #63 is worth a reread, everyone! A belly laugh is a wonderful way to begin the morning.
Many have been dissecting HelenL’s proclamation of “new ways of thinking”. I’d like to add my own.
>> Racism is over only if you are white. That’s when I explored the radical idea of the “race traitors” and decided not to be white. >>
If that means, judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, I’m right there with you, Helen. I didn’t realize that I’d been making all my judgments with the idea of “the more this benefits my white brothers and sisters, the more I’m for it”? I must add that I see THAT kind of thinking among black leaders of this unfortunate day and age a lot. “How does this benefit my black brothers and sisters” can hardly be seen as triumph over racism.
>> I saw that we needed to abolish the need for abortion (which I still oppose) – go after cause rather than effect. >>
Again I agree: It’s always better to eliminate the cause than the effect. But the rub is in identifying the cause. I’m sure we disagree on the cause of more than one million abortions in the US each year.
>> I saw that poverty in the US should be compared to richness in the US, not poverty in the rest of the world. >>
There is in fact a certain truth to this. We in America are all citizens of one nation under God. My heart is warmed, actually, that Helen is taking a nationalist perspective here, respecting our sovereign borders, in making her comparisons solely among Americans.
>> I saw that AIDS is a disease that need to be cured and that homosexuals are often more spiritual than the folks putting them down (as a result of about six New Testament Bible verses). >>
Well, I thought every disease needed to be cured (if “needed” is the right word, which it probably isn’t). I guess malaria doesn’t “need” to be cured, though it kills hundreds of thousands every year, and makes a misery of the lives of millions, even though we could alleviate nearly all the misery and pain via the judicious use of DDT, which can be used effectively. IE, you don’t sprinkle a layer of rat poison over your entire carpet; you don’t spray a cloud of DDT over a village.
Homosexuals are “often” more spiritual than others… Does that mean, “sometimes” or “occasionally” or “more spiritual than”? There’s an implication that they’re more spiritual than the rest of us, which, trust me, by what I saw when I once visited a gay Dallas church fifteen years ago, ain’t the case. Some guys behind me were scoping out others in the pews and making quiet highly lewd, pornographic comments about them, during the sermon. The attempt by well-meaning others to show me gay religion failed. I didn’t go back. There were good people there, but they were outnumbered.
>> I was that equality was the goal and that people who have plenty (like me) are often very, very selfish. >>
There’s that “often” word again. One never knows quite what it means, nor what one should DO about the problem. Redistribute the country’s wealth, at the point of the government gun? Give more to charity, voluntarily? Is it selfish to buy two toys for your child when you know that somewhere in this country, there’s a child that hasn’t received a new toy?
>> I saw that people in the underclass are often happier than the rich ones who must expend so much energy keeping the underclass down. >>
Dang! There’s that “often” word again. What DOES it mean? What are its implications for advocating a policy that solves the problem? When I drive through severely depressed parts of cities, the people I see on the streets hardly seem happier than others. I guess the happier ones are all inside, being happy.
>> In other words: I used to be like several of the folks I read here. But thank God, I was born again, and this time I’m black. >>
Born again, in the Church Of Racial Identity. I’m not so sure that’s a step forward… and I bet there are “Browns” out there who wouldn’t be too happy to see that Helen has abandoned them to their fates. Or the “Yellows”, but they are OFTEN so industrious and self-sufficient that we don’t need to worry about them anyway. I kinda like this Church Of The Skin Color, it allows me to make broad and offensive statements about people based solely on the color of their skin. This is Enlightenment! As to the rich… well, Oprah is rich… she must therefore be one of the oppressors. Somehow I don’t think that that is a HelenL conclusion, though. Only rich white people get to be oppressors. They meet every Thursday night, you know, and try to figure out New Ways To Oppress.