Sunday, December 30, 2012

Pseudo-Libertarian Aggressive Secularists

It’s not just that they worship government as a religion. I could live with that. It’s that they compel us to pay for its “services” and abide by its edicts. While religions and employers persuade, the State coerces. This is precisely the authority that makes the State qualitatively different from any other entity in society.

I am not aware of any mainstream church enjoying a similar monopoly of violence in these increasingly crypto-fascist (well, increasingly fascist if not so cryptic about it) United States. You are free to believe or not believe in hell. You are free to believe or not believe a particular church can save you from hell. You are free to practice or not practice the tenets of that church. No armed priests, ministers or their agents will appear at your door if you withdraw your membership or cease your tithing. Try that with your local, state or federal not-so-friendly government.

I've had quite enough of this pseudo-libertarian conflation of church and state. If Obama threatens hell instead of jail time to advance his vision of Truth and Goodness, I’m keeping my tax dollars and laughing all the way to the bank.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

"External Authority": Source of All Evil?

Who was Hitler’s external authority? How about Stalin’s? Charles Manson’s? These three weren't mere enablers of evil; they perpetrated it on a grand scale. Their parents must have indoctrinated them to obey some external authority, no?

What’s that? Sometimes evil does its own thing? So maybe cultivating your own inner authority doesn't turn out so hot either, eh?

“No one has the right to trespass against another’s person or property. Ever.” This principle sounds reasonable enough to me. As a Catholic, I find it surprisingly compatible with my obscurantist morality. Perhaps in this case my parents' indoctrination to obey “external authority”—the Old and New Testament writers, Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and the hierarchy of the Church--didn't turn out so bad?

Then again, perhaps an external authority freely embraced becomes an internal authority? As far as I can tell, *it is internal*. The Pope has never threatened to sic his Switzers on me.

The Randoids seem to endorse some version of the Non-Aggression Principle. What, then, do we do with their views on warfare? They insist a “civilized” nation has the right--nay, the *duty*--to perpetrate wholesale civilian slaughter on an "uncivilized" nation. It all sounds rather uncivilized to me, but what do I know? My ethical system isn’t rational and objective like theirs.

Whom did the Randoids' parents indoctrinate them to obey? And how is I turned out so much more peace-loving than they?  

The late Christopher Hitchens issued screeds perpetuating black legends linking Christianity to violence. Ironically enough, he proved an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War, even as the last two popes condemned it. How do we explain the conundrum? Perhaps Hitchens' parents indoctrinated him to obey secular "liberal" democracy to keep the forces of Islamic darkness at bay?

Then again, maybe "external authority" and parental "indoctrination" have nothing to do with it. Maybe it's all about human choice, action and volition. Maybe evil results when people become overly attached to their version of the Greater Good, however defined, and start trading the rules of common human decency in the interests of expediency.

Saturday, December 08, 2012

Court Historians Hate the Church of Rome

The cultural Marxism of the court historians does not allow them to examine episodes like the persecution of the Cristeros by the Mexican government. Same goes for the Bolsheviks' terror-starvation of Ukrainian Christians and the slaughter of Vendee Catholics at the hands of the French Revolutionaries. The Church of Rome and her minions--like the Germans and U.S. southern whites--are eternal persecutors. Whatever they get, they had it coming. Move along now, there's nothing to see.

Flight 553

Today is the 40-year anniversary of the crash of United Airlines Flight 553 in Chicago. It killed 43 of the 61 people on board, including Dorothy Hunt, wife of E. Howard Hunt, convicted Watergate conspirator. JFK researchers have long claimed Hunt was also one of the Three Tramps arrested November 22, 1963 on the grassy knoll.

Years later, Hunt made a deathbed confession to his involvement in the JFK assassination. In the Watergate tapes, Nixon voices concern about an unraveling of the "whole Bay of Pigs thing"--Nixon code for the JFK hit, according to his aide H.R. Haldeman. What did the Watergate break-in have to do with the JFK hit? Here we enter the realm of deep politics. All manner of fishiness surrounds these events and their ensuing "investigations."

Eerily enough, doomed Flight 553 was piloted by one Captain Whitehouse. (Key the eldritch laughter and rising organ music.) An autopsy revealed a high level of cyanide in his blood. Surely that came from inhaling fumes overtaking the passengers and crew in the wake of the crash.

The truth is out there. And sometimes, Virginia, the Truth is Way Out There.


http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/02nd_Issue/dhunt.html