Trump’s Space Force

"I will not weaponize space," said Barack Obama while a candidate in 2008. That empty promise came too late, and is irresponsible to boot: if our weapons are not there, theirs will be.

Some warn of the militarization of space as if it has not already been militarized. It has been, and for a long time now. How long depending on how high up you deem space begins. Are they who warn unaware of spy satellites? Of Gary Powers and the U-2 incident? Of the V-2s that crashed down on London? Of the crude Luftwaffen, air-weapons, of the First World War? The Roman catapults? The first javelin thrown by some Neanderthal spear chucker? It travelled through space to pierce the heart of some poor effer and was an early weaponization of the space between chucker and effer.

The very notion that outer space could be reserved for wholly peaceful purposes shows a deep lack of understanding of the human condition.  Show me a space with human beings in it and I will show you a space that potentially if not actually is militarized and weaponized. Man is, was, and will be a bellicose son of a bitch. If you doubt this, study history, with particular attention to the 20th century. You can  bet that the future will resemble the past in this respect. Note that the turn of the millennium has not brought anything new in this regard.

Older is not wiser. All spaces, near, far, inner, outer, are potential scenes of contention, which is why I subscribe to the Latin saying:

     Si vis pacem, para bellum.

     If you want peace, prepare for war.

One must simply face reality and realize that the undoubtedly great good of peace comes at a cost, the cost of a credible defense. A  credible defense is what keeps aggressors at bay.

I mean this to hold at all levels, intrapsychically, interpersonally, intranationally, internationally, and in every other way. Weakness provokes. Strength pacifies. That is just the way it is. Conservatives, being reality-based, understand what eludes leftists who are based in u-topia (nowhere) and who rely on their unsupportable faith in the inherent goodness of human beings.

They should read Kant on the radical evil in human nature.  Then they should go back to Genesis, chapters 2 and 3.

Here we have one of those deep defining differences between conservatives and leftists. Vote for the candidate of your choice, but just understand what set of ideas and values you are voting for.

President Trump can claim a big win with approval of the funding that includes money for the Space Force.  But will he get any credit for it from his political opponents? Of course not. For the Left, politics is war and Trump is an enemy to be removed from office by any means, fair or foul, right or wrong, Constitutional or extra-Constitutional. 

Why the Left Hates Christmas

Dennis Prager (emphasis added):

One is that the left sees in Christianity its primary ideological and political enemy. And it is right to do so. The only large-scale organized opposition to the left comes from the traditional Christian community — evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics and faithful Mormons — and Orthodox Jews. Leftism is a secular religion, and it deems all other religions immoral and false.

From Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin to George Soros, the left has regarded religion in general and Christianity in particular as the “opiate of the masses” — a drug that dulls the masses into accepting their oppressed condition and, thereby, keeps them from engaging in revolution.

The left understands that the more people believe in Christianity (and Judaism), the less chance the left has to gain power. The left doesn’t concern itself with Islam, because it perceives Islam as an ally in its war against Western civilization, and because leftists do not have the courage to confront Islam. They know that confronting religious Muslims can be fatal, whereas confronting religious Christians entails no risks.

Second, the left regards Christianity in America as an intrinsic part of American national identity — an identity it wishes to erode in favor of a “world citizen” identity. The left has not only warred against Christmas; it has sought to undermine other national identity holidays. For any number of reasons, not only including the left, Americans no longer celebrate George Washington’s birthday (it has de facto been replaced by the utterly meaningless “Presidents Day”) or Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, as they did when I was a child, my father was a child and his father was a child. The only American celebrated in a national holiday is Martin Luther King Jr., which is acceptable to the left since he is not white. One proof of the left’s desire to undermine specifically American national holidays is its war on the two remaining specifically American holidays: July Fourth and Thanksgiving.

The left deems Thanksgiving a historical fraud and an immoral celebration of “genocide” of the American Indians — which is what American children are now taught in many American public schools. And “happy Thanksgiving” has been replaced by “happy holidays.” As for July Fourth, The New York Times is leading the undermining of the celebration of America’s birthday by declaring that the real founding of America was 1619, the year, The Times asserts, African slaves first arrived on the American continent.

Of course, there is still Veterans Day and Memorial Day, but they are not specifically American national holidays; just about every country has such holidays.

But Christmas is a problem for the left. It celebrates religion, and it does so in quintessentially American ways (take American Christmas music, for example).

The third and final reason is that the left is joyless. Whatever and whomever the left influences has less joy in life. I have met happy and unhappy liberals, and happy and unhappy conservatives, but I’ve never encountered a happy leftist. And the further left you go, the more angry and unhappy the people you will encounter. Happy women and happy blacks, for example, are far more likely to be conservative than on the left.

Christmas is just too happy for the left. “Holly, jolly” is not a left-wing term.

Communism and Christianity

Communism is a 'religion' refuted by experience. It delivered not paradise, but the gulag and the torture chamber. Its attempted redemption by blood succeeded in spilling oceans of it but achieved no redemption. It is only the spilling of the God-Man's blood that can achieve the redemption of man. Man cannot save himself. That is the teaching of Christianity.  Is Christianity true? Whether or not it is, it remains the case that man cannot save himself. 

Subsidiarity as Bulwark against the Left’s Assault on Civil Society

David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest left-ward drift of Democrat administrations such as President Obama's, on the one hand,  and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other.  The Left is totalitarian by its very nature, and as the Democrat party drifts ever left-ward, it becomes ever more totalitarian and socialist and ever more a threat to individual liberty and the private property that is its foundation.  

Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Democrat candidates.  'Federalism' is another one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose the Left.  The argument is this:

1) The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state.  (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)

2) Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.

Therefore

3) If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose Obama and the Left.

The truth of the second premise is self-evident.  If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tunes of the Season

BoulevardierMerry Christmas everybody.  Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.  Me, I'm nursing a Boulevardier.  It's a Negroni with cojones: swap out the gin for bourbon.  One ounce bourbon, one ounce sweet vermouth, one ounce Campari, straight up or on the rocks, with a twist of orange.  A serious libation.  It'll melt a snowflake for sure. The vermouth rosso contests the harshness of the bourbon, but then the Campari joins the fight on the side of the bourbon. 

Or you  can think of it as a Manhattan wherein the Campari substitutes for the angostura bitters.  That there are people who don't like Campari shows that there is no hope for humanity.

Cheech and Chong, Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Canned Heat, Christmas Boogie

Leon Redbone and Dr. John, Frosty the Snowman
Beach Boys, Little St. Nick.  A rarely heard alternate version.

Ronettes, Sleigh Ride
Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas.  This one goes out to Barack and Michelle as their legacy continues to wither away.

Jeff Dunham,  Jingle Bombs by Achmed the Terrorist.  TRIGGER WARNING! Not for the p.c.-whipped. No day without political incorrectness!

Porky Pig, Blue Christmas

Captain Beefheart, There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evening Stage

Charles Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas

Wanda Jackson and the Continentals, Merry Christmas Baby
Chuck Berry, Run Rudolph Run

Eric Clapton, Cryin' Christmas Tears
Judy Collins, Silver Bells

Ry Cooder, Christmas in Southgate
Bob Dylan, Must Be Santa

Is this the same guy who sang Desolation Row back in '65? 

Bob Dylan, Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache. Not Christmasy, but a good tune.  Remember Bob Luman? His version. Luman's signature number.

Who could possibly follow Dylan's growl except

Tom Waits, Silent Night.  Give it a chance. 

A surprising number of Christmas songs were written by Jews.  

Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.

Impersonality in the minimalist style may take the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better still is the nowadays common family picture with handwritten name but no message.

The maximalist style is far worse. Now we are in for a lengthy litany of the manifold accomplishments of the sender and his family which litany may run to a page or two of single-spaced text.

One size fits all. No attempt to address any one person as a person.

"It's humbug, I tell you, humbug!"

Trotsky’s Dream

Here we find:

Socialism, when it comes at long last, will conquer the hideous inequality of capitalism, but the groundwork, as it were, will have been done by capitalism’s destruction of feudalism and slavery.  We may allow ourselves to dream, with Leon Trotsky, that under socialism, “[m]an will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.”  [The great concluding lines of Literature and Revolution.]

Utopian nonsense, dangerous utopian nonsense.

Were You a Part of Your Mother?

Here

Elselijn Kingma

Mind, Volume 128, Issue 511, July 2019, 609–646.

Abstract

Is the mammalian embryo/fetus a part of the organism that gestates it? According to the containment view, the fetus is not a part of, but merely contained within or surrounded by, the gestating organism. According to the parthood view, the fetus is a part of the gestating organism. This paper proceeds in two stages. First, I argue that the containment view is the received view; that it is generally assumed without good reason; and that it needs substantial support if it is to be taken seriously. Second, I argue that the parthood view derives considerable support from a range of biological and physiological considerations. I tentatively conclude in favour of the parthood view, and end by identifying some of the interesting questions it raises.

I don't have time now to study the above, but I will have to eventually, and then maybe write an evaluation.

Related: The Woman's Body Argument

After Enough Time Passes . . .

. . . de mortuis nil nisi bonum lapses.

(In justification of  some negative remarks about  Senator John McCain (R-AZ) posted on my Facebook page. I pointed out that while McCain served with great distinction in the Vietnam war, he failed to translate military valor into civil courage, while Donald J. Trump, who did not serve, has it in spades.)

Practice the ‘Step Back’

Keep the obtrusions of memory and perception and anticipation at mental arm's length. Practice the 'step back.' Rather than 'go with the flow' of centrifugal mind, examine whither it tends. To a place worth visiting?  Harder still, well-nigh impossible, is to examine whence it comes. Swimming upstream to the hidden Source of the stream is much harder than impeding the outward flow.  Content yourself for now with mental continence, an analog of, and probably impossible without, sexual continence. The practice of non-attachment is recommended by the major wisdom schools in the East and the West.