Ought implies can. Not first with Kant!
Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!
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Ultra posse nemo obligatur
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Swamp Carjackings
Look on the bright side! It's good for the economy: guns and ammo sales will surge, the insurance companies will be able to rake in higher premiums, and the undertakers will thrive. And things are not really that bad if you consider the stats:
Police data show carjackings in the nation's capital spiked by 97.9% in 2023 with 958 reported carjackings last year compared to 484 in 2022, with motor vehicle theft up 82% from 3,756 in 2022 to 6,829 in 2023. Vehicle theft in the greater Washington-Maryland-Virginia area also rose by 68% last year, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
Only 958 reported carjackings in 2023 in the whole of D. C.! And as we all know, few if any carjackings go unreported.
Besides, law enforcement is racist to its core.
Go Brandon!
Build back better!
Open the borders and let 'em all in. The more the merrier!
Diversity is our strength and unity is white supremacist and insurrectionist!
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The Demand Exceeds the Supply
The demand to feel aggrieved exceeds the supply of grievances. Hence the invention of 'micro-aggressions.'
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Pet Love as Idolatry?
Problems of attachment and grief.
Substack latest.
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A Love of Life Inordinate and Idolatrous?
The case of Susan Sontag.
Top o' the Stack.
6 responses to “A Love of Life Inordinate and Idolatrous?”
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Why Do We Front Our Ideas?
"Preaching to the choir is unnecessary, and if you were to attain the age of a Methuselah you would still not be near converting your opponents. So what's the use of your arguing and asserting?"
This is a text-book example of a False Alternative. For there is a third reason to argue and assert, namely, to sway the fence-sitters whose number is legion, and to bring them over to our side.
What's more, it is false that preaching to the choir is unnecessary. We do so to reinforce them in their 'faith' and prevent their backsliding. It is also false that it is pointless to engage our opponents. We 'preach' to them for several reasons: (a) to change the minds of some; (b) to get our opponents to appreciate that we have a position that is rationally defensible even if not ultimately acceptable to them; (c) to oppose and demoralize them; (d) to make their arguments look bad to others so that their influence wanes.
Finally, some of us just naturally incline to the life of the mind. Its pleasures are intense and reliable. They extend deep into old age. We love to study and we love to write. We athletes of the mind thrive on the agon of intellectual exertion and struggle. For me to go even one day without studying and writing is 'unthinkable,' as 'unthinkable' as going a day without coffee, meditation, and physical exercise.
2 responses to “Why Do We Front Our Ideas?”
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Soloveitchik on Proving the Existence of God
Substack latest.
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Theistic Belief and What Inclines Me to It
Substack post du jour.
9 responses to “Theistic Belief and What Inclines Me to It”
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America, You Don’t Understand Us Academics!
I am too busy now to comment on this self-serving piece, but it is not surprising that people who fill their bellies from some job or profession have no trouble finding reasons in justification of it.
A vegetarian once asked a man who worked in a slaughter house whether he had any moral reservations about his work. The man replied, "People have to eat."
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Open Borders?
I'm not totally opposed . . .
Top o' the Stack.
I strive for one Substack upload per day, no more. Why only one? Out of consideration for my readers. In these hyper-kinetic and hyper-connected times, an excess of 'incoming' can be annoying.
2 responses to “Open Borders?”
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God, Evil, Matter, and Mind
How both theists and atheists stand pat in the face of objections.
Top o' the Stack.
10 responses to “God, Evil, Matter, and Mind”
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No Labels? Label We Must!
"Not Right. Not Left. Forward."
There are are real differences between Right and Left that cannot be ignored. The positions must be carefully defined and appropriately labeled. 'No labels' is itself a label, an inept one. Label we must. We ought to do it carefully and thoughtfully.
The world is a plural world shot through with distinctions and differences and diversities. Aren't lefties big on 'diversity?' Diversity cannot be denied. But neither can unity. Both are undeniable, both are valuable, and both, in their dialectical interplay, are world-constitutive. Since they go to a destructive and undialectical extreme that violates my syn- and pan-opticism I label lefties 'diversity mongers.'
May no peace be upon them.
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The Greatest Risk We are Taking
Pat Buchanan warned us six years ago.
Substack latest.
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Political Pessimism (Realism?) at Townhall
Guy Benson: " 'Sanctuary' Democrats will never forgive Texas Governor Greg Abbott for forcing them to live with even a small taste of the consequences created by their reckless pro-illegal immigration posturing."
Matt Vespa: "Joe Rogan has had enough of these folks in the political discourse. It may not be shocking to the Left since any deviation from their ethos lands you in the gulag, but Mr. Rogan can no longer be affiliated with the Left."
Ann Coulter: "Third-worlders killed three Americans in Jordan over the weekend, and our political establishment is ready to start World War III. Which is more of a national security threat: terrorists 6,000 miles away, or our wide-open border?"
We don’t know what the future will bring. We don’t know what shocking events will take place between now and November, but there is one thing we can absolutely predict. Something is going to happen. Something big is going to occur that will change everything. Let’s just hope our country can survive it.
Civil War:
I called this, too, in my People’s Republic novels. The border situation is coming to a head with a potential confrontation between Governor Abbott of Texas (and 24 other governors) and our alleged President. The fact is that the Constitution requires Joe Biden to both enforce the laws and protect the states from invasion, but he is willfully doing neither. That makes for a constitutional crisis, one completely of Joe Biden’s doing, although the regime media is screaming that it’s all Texas’s fault for not meekly submitting to federal abuse and neglect. I don’t think we’re going to have another Gettysburg, but Joe Biden is a stupid, malignant man, and his administration is full of stupid, malignant people. It is entirely possible that they push this and provoke some sort of conflict. Then it gets scary. I think the great Fred Thompson said it best in “The Hunt For Red October”: “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control, and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”
One response to “Political Pessimism (Realism?) at Townhall”
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Suicide by Illegal Immigration
Such suicide is what the leaders of the present-day Democrat Party promote. They are out to destroy the United States of America. It is perfectly plain that diversity is not our strength despite their asinine and oft-repeated asseverations to the contrary. Diversity sans unity = decline, downfall, disaster. 'Asinine' is exactly the right word, deriving as it does from the Latin asinus meaning donkey, the jackass being the symbol of the Democrat Party, a party once respectable, now despicable. The CPUSA couldn't win under the hammer and sickle, but are now winning in their successor incarnation under the sign of the jackass upon which is mounted the demented puppet Joey B.
As for the useful idiots who follow the leaders, they are an ovine and bovine bunch who need to be reminded that it is not 1960 anymore.
The graphic below is crude and I would prefer not to have to post such things, but the time for unrestricted civility is over. Civility is for the civil, not for political enemies who pose an existential threat, a threat not merely to our lives, but also to our way of life.
15 responses to “Pet Love as Idolatry?”