Showing posts with label Palin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palin. Show all posts

Monday, November 23, 2009

The Palin Phenomenon

What are they responding to? "She's real. She's true to who she is. She's not perfect, but my goodness, you get what you see."

And in this Age of Duplicity, that's a godsend. We didn't want the country fundamentally transformed. We wanted it to become closer to the ideal it was designed to be.




Let me state for the record that I like Palin's fire, her spirit and what feels like an All-American reality-based woman. But no matter that she exists, the real battle is more fundamental than supporting Palin, which I plan to do at least for ballast to right a listing ship of state as a result of the dead, toxic hand of the Democrats.

The real issue and battle is about the moral basis required not only for a life graced by happiness but to have political freedom for human beings be a viable, secure reality on earth. We live in a painful time, powerlessly observing the loss of political freedom. We see the government has turned on us and is wholesale violating our individual rights at every turn. A big part of the reason this has been able to happen is because the Republican Party has always supported and drawn on the moral base which has allowed it. I don't see Sarah Palin being able to speak from a moral base any different from the one that is the root of the problem.

The work ahead is not really political. Any political work can only buy time for the real work to happen. The real work is to cause a cultural renaissance which will arise from learning to live on a new moral base. From there the political consequences will naturally follow. This is what my life is dedicated to and I must say that it is one kickass, hell of an adventure.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

What is War?

With the al-Qaeda trials moved to New York City and the United States not dealing with these killers as a military matter, we find ourselves carrying out a purpose that is based in denial: denial of the nature of human being. A lot of questions are raised which you can read about here. Is this the ultimate exposure of the anti-life nature of the Obama presidency? It may be.

What happens to a human being that causes him to go to war against another human being? What is the change that occurs in his mind? Although we think of war as a social phenomenon, at root it isn't. We as individuals are at war with people and ideas all the time. It is part of living.

War occurs when a person comes to see another person not as 'human' in the sense that he has values, desires, feelings, defeats and triumphs and walks around in the neighborhood where you live. Rather he is seen as the embodiment of a purpose that is destructive of one's own life and the lives of those one loves. In other words, this other person or group's existence, as he/they are living it is a threat to one's life.

Since a man must possess at least some remnant of a purpose in order to have an 'alive' life - i.e., anything than other as a dependent on life-support provided by someone else - the issue is that he should not have a purpose but that it should be such that it is aligned with life and not objectively threatening to others' lives. (By being objectively threatening, I mean that an action is physically damaging or threatens to damage a human life. We are not talking "words, just words" here. We are talking about actions which deprive one of the freedom to live - things which physically take or damage a life or that life's property, the material things in the world that possesses and uses to live.)

War is the recognition that one sees a person's or group of persons' purpose, and his/their actions as evidence of such a purpose, as life-threatening and as a consequence needs to take action to stop those actions. It requires a declaration that one has placed them into that status in relation to himself. (If one does not declare the state change of the other person, group or country, then to fight them is to engage in the behavior of the terrorist -a person at war without a declaration of war. I do think it is possible to do this so long as one is conscious of the state change in his own mind. And, in fact in a state of war, it may be valuable to operate underground. But I believe these are strategic questions.) Once war has been declared, the rules for dealing with that person are completely different, night and day different. Reason and persuasion are no longer the tools one can use. One must use force to stop the initiated or potential initiated force.

The focus no longer becomes acting in a way that works for getting along with other people. In war, the focus becomes about acting in a way that destroys the other person or group's ability to carry out its anti-life, specifically anti-my-life, purpose.

It is said that war dehumanizes people. That depends. It depends on where one is standing. If one approaches war as an action treating people not as the embodiment of a purpose but as ordinary human beings living in some non-threatening way, then yes, it would be senseless and dehumanizing. If one approaches war for what it is - fighting an enemy's ability to carry out its life-destroying activities, then it is not dehumanizing. Rather it is life-enhancing and life-ennobling. It is the ultimate stand for life - putting one's own life on the line in favor of life.

People who are pacifists and display signs "War is not the Answer" in their front yards, without specifying the question, are people who act against the nature of human life itself. They pave the streets with gold for the arrival of the evil person by removing their resistance to him. It's my experience that the only thing they really get mad about is if you challenge their view regarding peace. "War is not always bad" is usually sufficient.

I notice Obama speaks like ministers speak. Ministers do not understand the distinction of war and the valid, life-enhancing purpose of war. They seem to always be trying to get people to deal with each other as regular folks in a socially and ideologically non-challenging world, whether that is appropriate or not. They try to make us feel guilty because there is no peace all the while unable to grasp the validity of war. Thus they are forever unable to be a cause for peace.

The thing they all deny is greatness. They treat life as a "boy next door" phenomenon. Humility, turning the other cheek, always being nice, engaging in socially non-challenging activities like gardening, dusting and discussing arcane philosophical ideas.

Greatness in the full sense of the word is a function of purpose. Because a minister likely does not understand purpose (And without reading the Purpose-driven Life, I suspect he doesn't understand it either.) and its requirements, he more often than not undermines the concept of purpose and thus undermines robust, healthy human life. Rather than talk people out of having a purpose and creating a guilt-trip every time they exhibit one, a minister and a lot of other people in the humanities need to get a grip on human nature. A man cannot reach his full potential as a man without a purpose. And yes, he is capable of choosing an anti-life purpose.

It's ironic that Obama who denies man his nature so morally justifies himself in the name of human life. (This contradiction is another topic entirely.) America, at least in its remnant, is a nation of people with strong and powerful purposes. We have been reared in the bosom of freedom where it is up to every man to forge his purpose and go forth in the world. Thus every time Obama says anything, he goes against the grain of who we are. I hear fingernails dragged across my black board.

Obama and his band of anti-life men attract all those who think that being in favor of life is to be nice, not say anything that is not PC, stand up for the little guy and the traditional victims, and strive to fit in rather than have a purpose which some people may oppose. It is because one buys that view of life at some level rather than the true, life-rousing one of purpose that they gravitate toward Obama. He, after all, is going to provide everything that a man without purpose, a man who has given up on the cardinal characteristic of life, self-generation, needs in order to be on life-support. He (and the likes of John Lewis) urges them to become dependent. To be such is a right one is entitled to, they say.

Obama hopes that his band of resuscitated bodies will have just enough energy to vote.

(PS: I am watching the public reaction and the way of reacting to the rise of Sarah Palin. It's my hypothesis that a person's response to Obama and to Palin are polar opposites and that they key on one's sense of life. Is one a prime mover in his life or not. Depending on one's deepest conviction, he will respond to either Palin or Obama, but not both.

These two are opposites: Palin is a woman of the frontier embodied with the spirit of one who isn't waiting for someone else to do the job. If the government is corrupt, clean it up. If we need energy, "drill, baby, drill." If someone besides who you say gets to decide whether you get medical treatment, they are your "death panel." If someone is a part of the al Qaeda gang who plotted 9/11, "hang 'em high." She has shot the moose and dressed him for dinner. She has fished the waters for winter's bounty at the table. She knows who she is. Her political power comes not from the power gods, but from the people's recognition, from that bubbling spring within of which they cannot speak, of who she is. Thus she is powerful.

Obama on the other hand is a man who has been pissed off and slighted from birth. He wears those slights as badges of honor. Every one is a sore which he picks and uses to gets someone to do what he wants. He had "smarts" and people saw this so they supported him, groomed him and lifted him up as their offering to the gods of political power. The power gods liked their offering and so they granted them power. But being a product of those who did his work for him, he is unable to lead. He cannot take a position, he cannot vote, he cannot fashion a rule which keep people from fighting. The gods of power speak too loudly into his ear and he knows that they can remove him from power whenever it looks good to do so. Thus he is powerless.

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Palin Episode

The news this past weekend featured Sarah Palin quitting her job as Governor of Alaska. What do you make of this?

She said that her being Governor has become a burden on the state. She, having run for national office, has incurred numerous lawsuits for which she has had to mount a defense. Apparently they all were ethics charges and I understand that all of them have been proven baseless. Nevertheless, this has cost Alaska millions of $s and her personally somewhere around a half million dollars.

I think she takes her oath of office seriously and I think she saw that it cost her and the state a lot for her to run for Vice President. With that past and this still mounting up, it makes sense that she would question whether she is fulfilling the purpose for which she took her oath of office.

At this point, I am taking her at her word.

All the facts behind her words could be checked out by any responsible news organization. I have not heard that they have been. All I hear are opinions and speculations as to her motives, her future, her character - whatever. None of it makes a damn bit of difference in my book.

If she lied about the facts, Sarah Palin is done.

If she told the truth about the facts, she struck a blow for honor.

Honor. Now there's something woefully lacking in our public life. I mean, where do you find anyone these days that honors the oath they took or the word they give?

In politics it's deuces wild. Reverend Wright encouraged us to buy into the cynicism that surrounds politicians. "Weeell, Barack is a politician. What do you expect?" The lowlife know that if you are cynical, they thrive.

I'm sure Palin has a purpose. Exactly what it is, I don't know.

I do know she electrified the Republicans and conservatives big time last year. That hasn't really gone away which is why I think the Left is still working overtime to destroy her any despicable way they can. Whether she can capitalize on the excitement she created, time will tell.

In the meantime I'm saying that Palin has some honor to her and I hope she can use that to bring honor to our political and cultural conversation.

I wish her the best.

(I'd like to give her a little coaching on her gravitas, but that's another story.)