Leftists of course deny the fact since it serves their purposes to do so. Their grand strategy is to win by demographic means.
Truth is not a leftist value. Or rather, it is if it supports their agenda, but is not if it doesn't.
For a leftist, the difference between a citizen and a non-citizen is the difference between someone who is physically present within a nation's boundaries and one who isn't.
John Fund has done good, objective work on voter fraud. See here and here.
The more the Trumpster accomplishes, the more the victims of TDS hate him.
For Robert Reich, impeachment is not enough. Nor would Trump's removal from office be enough. The formerly sane Reich, descending into a delusionality delightful to us of the Coalition of the Sane, proposes the annullment of the entire Trump administration and all of its works.
Muslims are well-known for their iconoclasm, hostility to the arts, and destruction of cultural artifacts. Leftists are like unto Muslims in this regard too.
The trouble with iconoclasm is that all parties can play the game.
Mass-murdering communist regimes are responsible for some 94 million deaths in the 20th century. Why not then destroy all the statues and monuments that honor the likes of Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, Fidel Castro and all others who either laid the foundations for or carried out mass murder?
You understand, of course, that I am not advocating this. For one thing, the erasure of history would make it rather more difficult to learn from it. For another thing, there would be no end to it. Why not destroy the Colosseum in Rome? You know what went on there.
Or how about St. Robert Bellarmine, S. J. ? Should paintings and statues of him be destroyed? He had a hand in the burning at the stake of the philosopher Giordano Bruno! According to Wikipedia:
Bellarmine was made rector of the Roman College in 1592, examiner of bishops in 1598, and cardinal in 1599. Immediately after his appointment as Cardinal, Pope Clement made him a Cardinal Inquisitor, in which capacity he served as one of the judges at the trial of Giordano Bruno, and concurred in the decision which condemned Bruno to be burned at the stake as a heretic.[5]
Better known is the fact that Bellarmine is the man who hauled the great Galileo Galilei before the Inquisition.
Calling all philosophers and scientists! To your sledge hammers and blow torches!
And then there are the paintings, statues, etc. of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., plagiarist and adulterer. Yes, King plagiarized (portions of) his Boston University dissertation.
Anyone with sense should be able to understand that high merit worthy of honor can exist alongside deep character flaws.
There is no need to multiply examples. You should be getting the point along about now.
I now assign Victor Davis Hanson, The Ideology of Statue Smashing. Yes, kiddies, this will be on the final.
St. Monica's feast day is today; her son's is tomorrow. Of the various mystical vouchsafings, glimpses, and intimations recorded by St. Augustine in his Confessions, the vision at Ostia (Book 9, Chapter 10) is unique in that it is a sort of mystical duet. Mother and son achieve the vision together. Peter Kreeft does a good job of unpacking the relevant passages.
Kreeft here lists fourteen features of mystical experience which comport well with my experience.
Arizona does very well. California and New York are crap holes freedom-wise. No surprise with chuckleheads Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo at their respective helms. (HT: Bill Keezer)
Here:
. . . you’ve got a guy, in the White House, rapidly working his way through every conservative’s wish list of all the good, important things that need to be done – and somehow you’ve got to ignore all that and delude yourself and your readers that Crooked Hillary would have been the vastly preferable, conservative-friendly option.
I got 'em all. How about you?
Graphic credit. HT: Ingvarius Maximus of Alhambra
Gladys Knight and the Pips, Night Train to Georgia
Monkees, Last Train to Clarksville
Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
AC/DC, Highway to Hell
Eagles, Hotel California
Wilbert Harrison, Kansas City
The Bonny Banks O' Loch Lomond
James Taylor, Carolina in my Mind
Eddie Money, Two Tickets to Paradise
Steve Miller Band, Fly Like an Eagle
Grateful Dead, Casey Jones
Johnny Horton, The Battle of New Orleans
Brewer and Shipley, One Toke Over the Line
Dave Dudley, Six Days on the Road
Beatles, Yellow Submarine
Ramblin' Tommy Scott, She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes
Peter, Paul and Mary, Puff the Magic Dragon
Abbie Hoffmnan [Hoffman] famously wrote a book titled Steal This Book. What greater compliment could an author hope for than to have his or her book stolen? Jeffrey Kessen, may his tribe increase, quotes from a recent FaceBook post by someone who, in 1983, stole my book, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, from a library! That is infinitely better than a positive review.
This is disgusting but typical of lefties. Here is a guy who is all for socialism, but praises a jackass who steals a piece of public property.
But if there is no respect for public property now, why think there will be after the installation of socialism? Fools like Hoffman and Wolff think that after the glorious revolution 'bourgeois morality' with its stricture against theft will be superseded and we will all live in mutually supportive harmony. That's utopian nonsense, as if the Revolution will bring about a "fundamental transformation" of human nature. It is quasi-religious, idolatrous nonsense to boot as if the New Man will emerge with the secular socialist eschaton. U-topia is Nowheresville for the Nowhere Man.
Socialists have no appreciation of what is called in social science the tragedy of the commons:
The tragedy of the commons is a term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action.
Private property is not only the foundation of individual liberty, it also helps insure that things get taken care of. And please note that if I maintain my property everyone around me benefits as well. This includes my house and my cars.
Thus my well-maintained private property redounds to the benefit of the public. It won't be my car that drops a muffler that hits Mike the motorcyclist in the face causing him to crash. It won't be my properly maintained house that causes your property values to decline.
Am I against public libraries? Of course not. I'm for public libraries and open stacks. I support them with the real estate tax I pay. A little socialism never hurt anybody. But if a thing is good, more is usually not better. Socialism is like whisky in this respect.
The trouble with leftists is that they undermine the very 'bourgeois morality' that needs to be practiced if socialism to any degree is to work in the first place.
We need more mockery and condemnation of leftists. Don't you agree?
This entry continues my ruminations on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). The commenters in the earlier thread gave me no reason to think that DDS does not entail MC. But one of them sent me to Christopher Tomaszewski's paper which is worth reading and deserves a response.
Tomaszewski presents one of R. T. Mullins' arguments as follows:
1) Necessarily, God exists.
2) God is identical to God’s act of creation.
Therefore
3) Necessarily, God’s act of creation exists.
Tomaszewski claims that above argument is invalid and for the same reason that the following argument is invalid:
7) Necessarily, God exists.
8) God is identical to the Creator.
Therefore
9) Necessarily, the Creator exists.
Now the second argument is clearly invalid. It takes us from true premises to a false conclusion. God exists in every possible world. But in only some worlds does he instantiate the role of Creator. So it is not the case that the Creator exists in every possible world.
Some find the Leibnizian patois of 'possible worlds' puzzling. I don't need it. The point can be made without it, as follows. God exists of metaphysical necessity. But he does not create of metaphysical necessity: creation is a contingent act. Therefore, it is not the case that, necessarily, God is the Creator. Had he created nothing, he would exist without being Creator.
So the second of the two arguments is invalid. Now if the first argument has the same logical form as the second, then it too will be invalid. But the first argument does not have the same logical form as the second.
The form of the first is:
Necessarily, for some x, x = a.
a = b.
ergo
Necessarily, for some x, x = b.
Clearly, this argument-form is valid, whence it follows that any argument having this form is valid. I am assuming that the individual constants 'a' and 'b' are Kripkean rigid designators: they denote the same object in every possible world in which the object exists. I am also assuming Kripke's Necessity of Identity principle: For any x, y if x = y, then necessarily, x = y. By instantiation, if a = b, then necessarily a = b. Now if necessarily a exists, and a cannot exist without being identical to b, then necessarily b exists.
Contra Tomaszewski, the arguments have different forms. The first instantiates a valid form and is therefore valid while the second instantiates an invalid form and is therefore invalid.
I expect someone to object that (2) above – God is identical to God’s act of creation — is not an instance of the logical form a = b, where the terms flanking the identity sign are Kripkean rigid designators. But I say they are; indeed they are strongly rigid designators. A rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world in which the item exists. A strongly rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world, period. Thus the designatum of a strongly rigid designator is a necessary being.
My claim, then, is that (2) is a statement of identity and that 'God' and 'God's act of creation' in (2) are both strongly rigid designators. My claim is entailed by DDS which says, among other things, that there is no real distinction in God between agent and action. So if God is identical to his act of creating our universe, and God exists in every possible world, then the creation of our universe occurs in every possible world, which in turn entails modal collapse.
Tomaszevski has an interesting response (pp. 7-8):
While God’s act is indeed intrinsic (and therefore identical) to Him, “God’s act of creation” designates that act, not how it is in itself, but by way of its contingent effects. That is, whether “God’s act of creation” designates God’s act depends on the existence of a creation which is contingent, and so the designation is not rigid. And since the designation is not rigid, the identity statement is not necessary, as it must be in order to validate the argument from modal collapse.
This response begs the question. For it assumes that the effect of the divine act of creation is contingent. But that is precisely the question! If you just assume — as we all want to assume – that creation is contingent, then of course there is no modal collapse. The issue, however, is whether one can adhere to that assumption while holding fast to DDS. Besides, the second sentence in the above quotation makes little or no sense. The act of creation is individuated by the object of creation (our universe, say, in all its detail); an act of divine creation is nothing without its object.
Am I assuming what I need to prove (and thus begging the question) when I insist that (2) above is necessarily true and thus that the first argument is valid? No, I am merely unpacking what DDS implies.
My conclusion is that Tomszevski has clarified the problem for us, but he has not refuted the above argument from DDS to MC.
The Dems are a species of necrophiliac: they love dead voters. Not only that, they have the power to 'raise' them.
Things are going to get 'interesting.'
I'm glad I'm an old man. I've had a good run. Trouble is, I take care of myself.
This is a redacted re-posting of an entry that first appeared in these pages on 8 May 2015. It answers a question Fr. Kimel poses in the comments to Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse.
……………………………….
Fr. Aidan Kimel writes,
Reading through Vallicella’s article, I kept asking myself, Would Mascall agree with the proposition “existence exists”? I find the proposition odd. [. . .] What about the assertion of Pseudo-Dionysius that God is beyond all Being? Aquinas would certainly agree that the Creator transcends created being; but I suspect that Dionysius is trying to say something more. I wonder what the Maverick Philosopher thinks about “beyond Being” language (I can pretty much guess what Tuggy thinks about it).
I plan to discuss the strange question whether existence exists in a separate post. Here I will say something about whether God is beyond all Being.
Well, what would it be for God to be beyond Being? What could that mean?
First we must distinguish between Being and beings, esse and ens, das Sein und das Seiende. It is absolutely essential to observe this distinction and to mark it linguistically by a proper choice of terms. If we do so, then we see right away that Kimel's question is ambiguous. Is he asking whether God is beyond all beings or beyond all Being? Big difference! (Heidegger calls it the Ontological Difference.)
I think what Kimel means to ask is whether God is beyond all beings. A being is anything at all that is or exists, of whatever category, and of whatever nature. Being, on the other hand, majuscule Being, is that which makes beings be. Now one of the vexing questions here is whether Being itself is, whether that which makes beings be is itself a being or else the paradigmatic being. Heidegger and Pseudo-Dionysius say No! Aquinas says Yes! (That is, Aquinas says that Being is the paradigmatic being from which every other being has its being.) Dale Tuggy would presumably dismiss the question by maintaining that there just is no Being, there are only beings; hence the question lapses, resting as it does (according to Tuggy) on a false presupposition.
Now distinguish three positions. (A) God is a being among beings. (B) God is not a being among beings, but self-subsistent Being itself. (C) God is neither a being among beings, nor self-subsistent Being itself, but beyond every being. Tuggy, Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius. (You're in good company, Dale!)
I have already explained what it means to say that God is a being among beings. But to repeat myself, it it to say that the very same general-metaphysical scheme, the very same scheme of metaphysica generalis, that applies to creatures applies also to God. This implies, among other things, that God and Socrates (Socrates standing in for any creature whatsoever) exist in the same way. It implies that there are not two modes of Being, one pertaining to God alone, the other pertaining to Socrates. If, on the other hand, one maintains that God is not a being among beings, then one is maintaining, among other things, that God and Socrates exist in different ways. The difference can be put by saying that God is (identically) his existence and existence itself while this is surely not the case for Socrates: he has existence but he doesn't have it by being it. In God there is no real distinction, no distinctio realis, between essence and existence while in Socrates there is a real distinction between essence and existence.
Equivalently, if God is a being among beings, then God is one member of a totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties.' But if God is not a being among beings, then there is no such totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties' such that both God and Socrates are members of it.
How does (B) differ from (C)? On (B) God is (identical to) Being but also is. God is not a being, but the being that is identical to Being itself. (C) is a more radical view. It is the view that God is so radically transcendent of creatures that he is not! This is exactly what pseudo-Dionysius says in The Divine Names (Complete Works, p. 98) It is the view that God is other than every being. But if God is other than every being, then God in no way is.
This can also be explained in terms of univocity, analogicity, and equivocity. For Tuggy & Co. 'exists' in 'God exists' and 'Socrates exists' has exactly the same sense. The predicate is univocal across these two occurrences. For Aquinas, the predicate is being used analogously, which implies that while God and Socrates both are, they are in different ways or modes. But for Pseudo-Dionysius the predicate is equivocal.
Fr. Kimel suspects that Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more than that God transcends every creature. The suspicion is correct. Whereas Aquinas is saying that God is, but transcends every creature in respect of his very mode of Being, Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more , namely that God is so transcendent that he is not.
My question for Fr. Kimel: Do you side with the doctor angelicus, or do you go all the way into the night of negative theology with Pseudo-Dionysus?
Reviews the millions upon millions slaughtered under socialist regimes in the USSR, Nazi Germany, China under Mao, Cuba under Castro, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and North Korea. Analyzes the situation in Venezuela and explains why socialism must fail.
Socialism reliably leads to disaster, but know-nothings refuse the lessons of history.
For example, why would anyone want to practice medicine under socialism? Doctor shortages are exploding under ObamaCare.
