Category: Culture

Recently, I am interacting w/ one of the Ph.D’s at my college Alma Mater. Dr. Schenck and I are about as polar opposite as one can imagine in our belief systems and our notions about the nature of reality. Recently, he wrote a brief bit about the dangers of “labelism” that you can read below. It suspiciously reads like it was a treatise born of a liberal and post-modern agenda. Now, certainly some of what Dr. Schenck wrote was true. It is absolutely true that we all need to be careful about hasty generalizations, false compositions, and false divisions. However his piece struck me as one that could as easily been written concerning the opposite dangers of “Label-phobia” (my new word to be submitted to the Webster Dictionary people) to describe many of Dr. Schenck’s positions.

I interact w/ Dr. Schenck’s material because I still have a soft spot for the Wesleyans in my heart. Nothing will ever change how much the Wesleyans did for me in my first 22 years of life. As such, I’d like them to be as orthodox as it is possible for Wesleyans to be. Dr. Schenck is dragging them away from that Wesleyan orthodoxy.

I am coming to have a growing admiration for Dr. Schenck for I find him to be a person who can get my creative juices flowing. Perhaps, I am finding in him a muse?”

Dr, Schenck wrote,

I have a suggestion for a new word for the dictionary:

labelism: The tendency to skew diverse particular ideas, events, people, and so forth by grouping them under overly generalized labels in the service of argument.

Examples:

* Those who favor women in ministry are liberals because radical feminists push for equal rights and pay for women.

* True conservatives are opposed to gun control because gun control is generally pushed by Democrats.

* Allowing the government to manage some area of its citizens’ life shows that we are becoming socialist like China.

* Taxing us to support the health care of the elderly shows that we are becoming communist like the Soviet Union.

* Making decisions that are unpopular shows that President Obama is a Fascist like Hitler.

* You can’t believe in the idea that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke because that is an idea that comes from higher criticism.

* The students at Oberlin were transcendentalists like Emerson who didn’t believe in a personal God because they put a high emphasis on religious feeling like the Romantics.

All these statements are logically fallacious, even though they are the stuff of common rhetoric. They take diverse realia and oversimplify them because the human mind has difficulty processing complexity.

Logical fallacies involved: 1) hasty generalization, where differences between one observation and a general conclusion are ignored in the midst of argument; 2) fallacy of composition, where a whole is assumed to have certain characteristics because some parts have certain characteristics; and 3) fallacy of division, where all parts of something are assumed to all have certain characteristics because of some characteristic of the whole.

Explanation: The human mind is generally unable to process large amounts of particular facts without grouping them together into schemata, as Piaget called them. In deductive reasoning, where all the data can be accounted for and where all the data is usually of a simple nature, universal groupings can be fully coherent.

In inductive thinking, however, which is the nature of our lives in the world, all the data can rarely be accounted for, and the data is almost never a simple nature. People, events, and various other particular data are extremely complex and interwoven together. Simple ideas thus can hardly represent them without skew of some kind.

Beware of generalizations bearing fallacies! The Devil is in the details.”

Bret responds,

I have a suggestion for a new word for the dictionary:

Label-phobia: The tendency to skew related particular ideas, events, people, and so forth by refusing to properly generalize them in order to put them in the service of argument.

Further, this would be the state or condition of refusing to see patterns or the refusal to speak in generalities unless 100% compliance was held in each and every generality. Un-labelism or Non-Labelism or Label-phobia would flinch at Universals preferring instead to see the world only in terms of mass and total differentiated individuation. Label-phobia, Un-labelism or Non-labelism would be something consistent w/ a kind of post-modern reading of reality where, if universals exist, they only exist on a (you guessed it) an individual by individual basis.

Examples of such would be,

* A refusal to label those who hold to women in ministry as “liberal” since the un-labelists refuses to see that generally speaking people who embrace women in office also embrace a confluence of other liberal positions.

* A refusal to label Obama as a Marxist even though his past associations, his past employment, his administration appointments and his current actions all testify that Obama is a Marxist.

* A refusal to label the current government as socialist even though there has been a long and decided trend in US government (which has displayed Fabian waxing and waning) for 100 years. This refusal to label is defiant even in the most egregious of evidence to the contrary such as the State taking over much of the Financial infrastructure, the Auto industry, the health industry and the student loan industry.

* A refusal to identify and label neo-orthodoxy and higher criticism even when people clearly embrace a distinction between geschicte and heilgeschicte.

* A refusal to label the Oberlin College of the 19th century as Transcendentalist even though Finney had clearly drank deeply from the Transcendental / Romanticist zeitgeist. (Indeed, so deeply had the man quaffed from the spirit of the age that when you read his systematic theology you realize that it is all ethics and no grace. All what man does and none of what God does. There is no personal God in Finney’s theology.)

All this refusal to label might be seen as endemic to the post-modern mind which refuses to see universals or organize material into universal universals. Indeed, label-phobia might be seen as the mark of the post-modern.

Beware the refusal to generalize, and to label and recognize the presence of the Universal. The devil would love for us to be forever knowing but never coming to the Truth.

Beware of non-labelists or Un-labelists who create words like “labelism” in order to demonize those who do not have a post-modern bent mind.

Simple ideas such as label-phobia can hardly represent truth without skewing of some kind.

“Sometimes long term history impacts the now, and we’re in it. A schism — like two tectonic plates that suddenly shift after a hundred years of energy building up. This is really the end of the Western Christian Empire. (The Western Christian Empire) was bigger than the British Empire, bigger than the American Empire. This is the end of all the Christian Empires for 900 years, and America is the last one (i.e. — the last expression of that 900 year Empire). When the last one changes and declines — which it is in — (and it will be very rapid), that is the end of the old system. At the same time the system that rises challenges it (the old system) far quicker as it moves into the vacuum created by the collapse of the old system. And that is the East. And we all know that there is going to be a change. The surprise will be the rate of that change. We have viewed the new administration in Washington as new hope. Unfortunately, if you look at historical precedents of underclass and the mechanism of underclass coming to the fore demographically, it is not new hope it is the beginning of the end, and we are seeing that very quickly take place.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36013573

David Murrin
Head Of Emergent Hedge Fund
Author — Breaking the Code of History

1.) The Christian Empire always managed to survive somehow. When the Goths challenged brought the fall of Rome the Christians missionaries brought the Gospel to the Goths. When the Muslims challenged Christianity and Christendom God raised up Charles Martel and eventually Charlemagne. When the Muslims pressed to the gates of Vienna God closed the gap with the Christian Knights of the West. When Christianity and Christendom became corrupted by the Medieval Church God raised up the Reformation. When the British Empire fell at the end of WWI the Americans were there to take up the banner of Christendom. If America falls the doddering remains of what is left of Christendom is finished and Christianity as a faith that can inspire civilization goes into abeyance.

Some, as those foul and vile adherents of R2Kt, will say “good riddance.” But their chortling will be cut short with the first blade that is drawn across their throats as wielded by those who have triumphed over the Christian faith. Ironically, the very civilization R2Kt despised also protected their ability to rail against it. When that Christian civilization disappears, so will their ability to rail and so will their “churches”.

2.) If Murrin is correct and the West really dies there will be no place to go, no place to run, no place to hide. There will be no safe havens. If the West falls the window shade of civilization is pulled and we will return to a new dark age of tyranny, chaos, and bedlam. Most people do not realize that the command and control economies of the world only work as well as they do because they have been able to rely on the wealth generation that happens in America. For example, it is a well known fact that the Soviet Union would have collapsed years prior to 1989 if the West, w/ its wealth, had quit supporting the Soviet Union. Since this is true the collapse of the West means the collapse of the World in terms of the living standard around the world. The whole world is going to go into shock and wonder what happen when the golden goose is finally killed off.

3.) I don’t think I agree w/ Murrin about the rise of the East. China does not have the infrastructure or the economic heft to practice global hegemony. I think that that it is far more likely that we will return to an era where regional powers dominate certain geographic areas.

4.) There has been rumors that have circulated in Washington that the current administration sees its role as managing America’s decline.

5.) The question we all must ask is how do each of us prepare ourselves for the short term and long term change that is coming. I don’t know the answers to that question.

6.) Murrin’s comment about the underclass coming to the fore is a nod to the reality that w/ a wealth redistribution agenda that putatively serves the poor the consequence is fiscal catastrophe.

I’ve stumbled across something that I’m sure that many many other people have seen before. I’ve always been kind of slow on the uptake. That something that I’ve stumbled across is a commonality that exists between and among disciplines that have been thought to have been quite varied. What I’ve discovered is that disciplines like Keynesianism (economics), Deconstructionism (literary theory), Marxism (political theory), Legal Positivism (legal theory), Nihilism and existentialism (philosophy), historicism (historiography theory) neo-orthodoxy (theological theory) and Code Pink (sexual theory) all derive from a common theological assumption and that assumption is that “God, or the objective, is Dead.” Of course this makes perfect sense because it serves, once again, to reveal that theology (in this case the theology of anti-theology) is the fount out of which springs an integrated fount of academic disciplines.

Humanism is the positive side of the negative I am getting at. In other words, all the disciplines I’ve mentioned are, positiviely speaking the embrace of Humanism. However, when view negatively they all share the common thread of insisting that any notion of an objective, including an objective God is dead. Let us consider this to see if we can see the clear “death of the objective” strand that links all of these disciplines together.

In economics, Keynesianism desires the death of any objective standard for money and desires only that a subjective governmental standard be used in order to set the value of money. This is done so that money by fiat can be pursued. This explains why Keynesians hate the idea of a gold or silver standard. Keynesians despise the notion of the objective and so in order to set the government or the money interest up as god they seek to forever get rid of the objectively objective. In economics you have the death of the objectively objective.

In literary theory, Deconstructionism posits the death of the objective author. With the death of the objective the Deconstructionists end up positing the subjective reader as the sovereign. In Deconstructionism it is the subjective reader who determines the meaning of the text. When Deconstructionism is given its head all of life becomes a author-less text and the sovereign subjective interpreter shapes and creates their own meaning out of whatever text they encounter. In literary theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In political theory, Marxism is materialistic and so posits the death of an objective God finding its objective instead in the subjective movement of the Hegelian Absolute spirit. For the Marxist economics is the foundation and talk about religion, mind, and values are merely the superstructure that is built upon the foundation in order to justify the foundation in a ex post facto manner. For the Marxist there is no external objective reality to which subjective reality must answer to. For the Marxist the subjective is all there is and the best that can happen is that the subjective can be enlarged (blown up like a balloon) to become the objective. This is done by making the State the subjective objective by which all the rest of the subjective is measured. In political theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In legal theory, Legal positivism denies transcendent meaning insisting that meaning can only be that which can be proven subjectively. (All statements must be verifiable except for the statement that all statements must be verifiable.) Legal positivism assumes the death of the objective and then insists that anybody who disagrees with their ontology must prove the objectively objective by means of their subjective standard as it exist in their subjectively objective worldview. An impossibility from the word go. The result of legal positivism is that God and the objectively objective are ruled out of bounds clearing the field for their legal theory. In legal theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In philosophy, the existence of both Nihilism and Existentialism (the informing streams of post-modern consciousnesses) is posited upon the truth that there is no objectively objective truth. Nihilism denies their is any meaning except for the meaning that there is no meaning. Existentialism declares that existence precedes essence so that existence has no concern about objectively objective essence or meaning since subjective existence determines meaning. In both of these philosophies all that exists is the sovereign subjective individual using his will to power to turn his subjective will into the objective standard by which all things will be measured. In philosophy you have the death of the objectively objective.

In educational theory, the standard for meaning comes from within each child. Whether one is talking Freud, Dewey, or Rogers, educational theory has lost the objectively objective and the results are programs such as value neutral education where the sovereign subjective student is encouraged to discover his own values. Now, clearly value neutral education is not neutral but since the sovereign subjective student is putatively discovering and navigating his own value system what we we see once again is the clear demonstration of the death of the objective objective. God is dead. The objective is dead. All that is left is the subjective enlarging his or her subjectivity in order to turn the subjective into the a subjective objective. In educational theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

In historiography theory, historicism insists that there is no God or objective by which the meaning of History can be determined or known. As such the only thing that is left is for subjective History itself to become the objective by which it is itself measured. In Historicism God is dead and man becomes the infallible interpreter of all reality. Naturally the problem here is that historiography is only as good as the objective standard of the historian who is, by his subjective will, forcing history to do his bidding. If the historian who is doing the history is Humanist or Muslim, or Hindu, then his produced historiography will be respectively Humanist, Muslim or Hindu. The idea of the objectively objective is lost and historiography becomes awash in a sea of subjectivism. In historiography you have the death of the objectively objective.

In sexual theory such as militant homosexuality and Feminism, and all other sexual perversions what you have once again is the positing of the death of God and the death of the objectively objective clearing the field for the pervert interest to insist that perversions aren’t really perversions since w/o a God there can be no such thing as perversion. Without God or the objectively objective and with the introduction of polytheistic pagan gods who are but “man said loudly” what happens is that perversion is subjectively re-defined and sexual polymorphy becomes the norm. In sexual theory you have the death of the objectively objective and the death of God.

In theological theory, Neo-orthodoxy posits the Transcendence of God (His objectiveness if you please) but in neo-orthodoxy God becomes so objective that He has no contact with the subjective. As such, God dies of incurable hyper-transcendencism, and the subjective once again becomes objective. Since God is beyond the creature the subjective creature is left to take his subjective intuitions and enlarge them so that the subjective once again becomes objective. I once had a conversation with a Dean of a theological Seminary (this conversation is on Iron Ink somewhere) who was neo-orthodox (though he refused to admit it for fear of his job I think) and who freely admitted that it was impossible to access the objective. If one can not access the objective then God is dead. In theological theory you have the death of the objectively objective.

Now, where R2Kt comes in is that it insists that the Spirit of God is constricted to the Church and that the Church can not and should not and must not insist that a living God, as the objectively objective reality that gives meaning to everything is not dead and as such He comes in conflict against the Spirit of Chaos that manifests itself in Keynesianism, Deconstructionism, Marxism, Legal Positivism, Historicism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Perverted Sexual Theory, Freudianism, and all other pseudo realities that exist upon the premise that God is dead. R2Kt insists that the Church must not speak of the implications of a living God to a culture that is animated by philosophies, theologies, and theories that incarnate the death of God and the objectively objective. R2Kt insists that implications of the living God are to be felt only in the Church and that the Church as the Church can not speak with the voice of the living God against those who would create a culture where because God is dead, God is mute.

Keynesianism, Deconstructionism, Marxism, Legal Positivism, Historicism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Perverted Sexual Theory, Freudianism, all love R2Kt to pieces, first, because a Church infected w/ the R2Kt virus has no place from which to stand to resist the God is dead movement as it makes cultural inroads. Second, the God is dead movement loves the R2Kt virus because it teaches nothing to God’s people that will serve as a prophylactic against the impact of the God is dead movement upon the culture. Because of this the R2Kt churches will churn out people who will be saints on one hand in the church but who very likely will imbibe deeply from the God is dead movement culture they are immersed in. They will have no ability to ward of the God is dead cultural movement because they will have never been taught to see the implications of the death of the objectively objective.

“More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:

1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.

2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.

3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.

4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means and that hardball politics is a moral necessity.

5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.

6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.

7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.

8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.

9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.

10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill advised.

11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.

12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.

13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.

14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.

15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)

16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.

17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.”

Congressman Ron Paul
Neo-Conned Speech

There is a great deal of talk these days about conservatives recapturing the Republican party to use it as a vehicle to advance their agenda. This is all well and good. However, what I suspect may very well happen is that the conservatives that end up capturing the Republican party as a vehicle will be the neo-conservatives (actually neo-liberals) that the Republicans have been plagued with since Reagan allowed them to hijack his conservative revolution. These neo-liberals are not conservative in the slightest. Their agenda for big government was clearly on display during the Bush administration where government welfare was expanded through the “no child left behind act,” the prescription drugs legislation for senior citizens, the attempt to force amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants down the throats of Americans, and the unnecessary preemptive war on Iraq. None of this is conservatism and yet many if not most of the major Republican players are certainly neo-libs. Voices in the Republican party such as Dick Cheney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, George Will and Glen Beck are all neo-liberals. This means all of these people are on the right side of the left as opposed to being on the left side of the left where people like Barack Obama hang out. The differences between the left side of the left and the right side of the left is merely one of degrees.

Rank and file activist Republicans, as well as activists in the Tea Parties need to do their homework on neo-liberalism. Many of these people profess a deep and abiding love for the constitution and yet if they fail to familiarize themselves with the neo-liberal movement — a movement that is easily identifiable as distinct from classical conservatism — they will end up supporting a candidate that will be merely a George W. Bush retread.

The reason that this is of great import is that it looks like, unless something drastically changes the political landscape between now and November, we are going to have a election cycle that is going to be a massive correction to Barack Obama and the left side of the left. My fear is that, despite the rise of Middle America that we have seen in the past year, what is going to happen is that this rise is going to be betrayed by a Republican party that remains ideologically captive to the neo-liberals. What Middle America does not yet realize (even after 8 years of Bush) is that the Trotsky-liberals are every bit as capable as the Marxist-liberals of constructing a Fascist state.

If Middle-America really desires a return to a two-party system they will flush the neo-liberals out of their party and instead build the party with people who;

1.) Support decentralizing the Federal state and so return power to the states per the 9th and 10th amendments.

2.) Enforce immigration laws and so give time for America to re-establish its historic identity.

3.) Withdraw from areas of the world where we have little or no pressing national interest and so relieve some of the strain upon our massive government debt.

4.) Eliminate the department of education so that education can be returned to states and families.

5.) Creatively restructure the welfare / entitlement state so that contractual obligations come close to being honored and government debt is paid down and personal responsibility restored in the citizenry.

6.) Pursue a fair / free trade policy that would include the dismantling of globalistic trade agreements that work to the end of disintegrating national sovereignty.

7.) Eliminate corporate welfare thus insuring that mega-corporations can’t use government handout and government policy to crush their competition and institutionalize their market hegemony.

8.) Eliminate Federal government involvement with social engineering programs such as quotas thus ending the race pimp industry and allowing all Americans to make their own choices with who they will and will not associate with.

9.) Substantially reduce the oppressive regulation put upon American small business thus freeing the entrepreneur to be once again be the engine of our economy.

10.) End the Federal Reserve return to a hard money that has objective value. Such action would forever break the back of the controlling reach of the money interest.

11.) Simplify and restructure the tax code so that it can not be used as a means of social engineering.

12.) Pass legislation that will make it possible to impeach judges so that judicial over-reach will not be attempted without consequence.

13.) Eliminate abortion and pass legislation, based upon the US Constitution’s requirement for Due Process, that abortion will be outlawed in the 50 states.

If Middle America really wants to return to a two party system, requiring all or any number of these proposals for candidates for office would go a long way towards creating a true second party.

http://www.therightscoop.com/ryan-sorba-cpac-and-my-personal-thoughts-on-homosexuality/#disqus_thread

Watch the 70 second video and read some of the comments and notice a general theme. Keep in mind that CPAC is The Conservative wing of the Republican party. Among the Conservative wing of the Republican party a young man, making a natural law argument against homosexuality is booed out of the place.

Here the hero of millions of “conservative” Republican Americans, Bill O’Reilly of FOX news, advocates that the Federal Government has a legal right to seize your weapons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvrwsZwL5vE&feature=player_embedded

And here O’Reilly tries to rescue his position by citing the precedence of Abraham Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus but only succeeds in proving that Abraham Lincoln was a unconstitutional tyrant.

http://www.therightscoop.com/oreilly-defends-his-statements-on-gun-confiscation-in-state-of-emergency/

Folks, it is most especially in a state of emergency that citizens need their weapons. What …. Does O’Reilly think think that once law abiding citizens are stripped of their weapons that the criminals will suddenly go away?