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.

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."

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.

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?"

Kurt Schlichter: 

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.”

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.      

 

Immigration assholicity

Joe Biden: An Anti-Civilizational, Race-Baiting, Opportunist and Ignoramus

And as all of those things, a worthy representative of the contemporary hard-Left, hate-America, Democrat party. Ben Shapiro has his number:

More importantly, however, Biden's characterization of "English jurisprudential culture" as "white man's culture" is profoundly disturbing. English jurisprudential culture is rooted in the belief in the rule of law, due process of law, equal rights under law; English jurisprudential culture is responsible for preserving the natural rights we hold dear, rights which were imperfectly but increasingly extended over time to more and more human beings, particularly minorities. No less a leftist figure than Barack Obama explained just that in 2009, saying he sought a system at Guantanamo Bay that "adheres to the rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system."

Protection of individual rights — and in particular, minority rights — lies at the heart of English jurisprudence. Yet Biden boiled down those rights to racial privilege. And the attempt to reduce the fundamental principles of our civilization to a mask for racial hierarchical power is both false and frightening. It suggests that those principles ought to be undermined for purposes of disestablishing that supposed hierarchy. Get rid of English jurisprudential law, presumably, in order to fight racism.

Prayer: A Fall-Back Position

Suppose there is no God. That might be so even if I am a believer. (And it seems that I must be a believer, actually or potentially, if I am to pray sincerely.) Whether or not God exists, when I sincerely pray for someone I produce benevolent thoughts that benefit me even if they do not reach beyond me.  Intercessory prayer, then, is good for me even if God does not exist. 

What about petitionary prayer? I take a dim view of  petitionary prayer for mundane benefits for oneself. Petitionary prayer for another, whether for material or spiritual goods, falls under the rubric 'intercessory prayer' which is good for the one who prays whether or not God exists.

As for non-petitionary prayer to God, prayer in which I do not ask for anything material or spiritual for myself or for another, but simply aim to elevate my mind/heart to God in worshipping and loving him, this too is beneficial even if there is no God. In this case there is a self-elevation and self-ennobling in a God-ward direction. 

Of course, I won't be able to engage in this sort of aspirational prayer unless I sincerely believe that the object of my worship, love, and aspiration exists.  My point, however, is that I become a better man when I engage in this sort of prayer whether or not God exists.

This is the 'fall-back' should it turn out that there is no God.

Objection: If you pray in any of these ways, and God does not exist, then your prayer life is one of self-deception and you waste your time on an illusion!

Response: Not so! For the objection to hold water, the objector would have to know that God does not exist. But he knows this just as little as the believer knows that God does exist. Both the existence and the nonexistence of God are epistemically possible, that is, possible given what we can claim legitimately to know in the strict sense of 'know' which implies impossibility of mistake.  One cannot prove either the existence of God or the nonexistence of God, if 'prove' is used strictly and responsibly.

An objector who thinks otherwise is himself guilty of self-deception. If he is an atheist, he fools himself into thinking that it is objectively certain that God does not exist, and if he is a theist, he fools himself into thinking that it is objectively certain that God does exist.  There are rationally acceptable arguments on both sides of the question, but no rationally compelling (rationally coercive, philosophically dispositive) arguments on either side.

Negative Events: Likelihood versus Gravity of Occurrence

Suppose you pack heat. Someone might ask you, "But what is the likelihood that you, given your cautious and circumspect style of life, will ever be in a situation in which you will need to defend your life, or a family member's life, with deadly force?"

The question is legitimate. The answer is as follows. You must weigh the likelihood of the negative event against the gravity of its occurrence.  Although it may be unlikely that you will need to defend yourself or another with a firearm, the consequences of not being able to do so are dire indeed: death of self or other.

The point is that you must not consider merely the likelihood of negative events, but also their gravity should they occur, when determining courses of action.

For a second example, consider wearing a seat belt. I never drive without seat belt fastened. Given my cautious driving habits, the likelihood of  a serious accident on any given day are very low.  But the consequences of going through the windshield are grave, in two senses of that term.