We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
"Ancient," to me, means before 1000 BC. After that, it's historic, more or less.
These are old pots. I stumbled on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's site with their collection of Athenian 6-4th Century BC red and black containers while searching for an illo for last Saturday's Saturday Verse. I am sure you have looked at their like before. These decorated containers were surely not for everyday use.
There are things we can touch and perceive, or perceive with technology. Some things cannot be touched but can be easily perceived, such as the charming young lassies above. Or mental life: ideas, emotions, etc. And spiritual life.
For some reason, it's Greek Week at Maggie's and, while looking for something else, I found this bit somewhere at Wiki:
Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.
Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.
It is certain that many are indifferent to the invisible world - practical, earth-bound types who are happily without the muses' gift - or burden - of reflecting on the "higher realities" and the hidden realities which seem to try to connect the human heart with the cosmic. The meta-physical or trancendent realm of thought and experience which many of us seek to grasp and hold. More:
The word metaphysics derives from the fact that Aristotle's musings about divine reality came after ("meta") his lecture notes on his treatise on nature ("physics"). The term is in fact applied to Aristotle's own teacher, and Plato's "metaphysics" is understood as Socrates' division of reality into the warring and irreconcilable domains of the material and the spiritual. The theory has been of incalculable influence in the history of Western philosophy and religion.
Indeed we are all Greeks - especially those of us who are Christians (the Greek Paul thoroughly Greekified the Christ Cult, thus translating it into a world religion). "Psyche," the soul, was a combination of the psych-ological (mental) and the spiritual/divine aspects of reality as we experience it, until academics in modern times separated psychology out as a topic of study in the Aristotelian slicing-and-dicing way. Being sober sorts, they did not want to call Psychologists "soul students," nor did Psychiatrists want to call themselves "soul physicians." So they put it in Greek, same as most of the other -ologists and -iatrists.
Photo on top of a few untouchable Muses borrowed from Egotastic. Image below: Bust of Socrates, Louvre
Left and Right participants, from Trotsky to Hayek, in the 20th Century’s debates over the role of government have agreed that a major danger emerges from the coming to power of the “New Class” of intellectuals and public policy managers whose primacy over the hoi polloi (some even refer to the commoners as sardines) is ensured by self-profiting politicians, together extending government controls into more spheres of society.(A brief summary of New Class thought at Wikipedia.)
This New Class debate lay at the core of understanding the essential corruption of morality, of true popular governance, and of state powers that ensues from the rise of this privileged New Class.
My friend Lorie Byrd tries to explain to the in-denial and in-disparagement New Class the Tea Party protests across the country by about 600,000 ordinary citizens: “many average, everyday Americans were not thrilled with the ‘change’ they were getting from the new administration.”This is not an intellectual movement, couched in fancy words, but is the hoi polloi’s recognition of a basic intellectual truth, that the New Class is robbing their resources for their own expansion of power and profiteering.
The rude – indeed classless -- disdain and insult expressed by so much of the liberal commentariat toward the Tea Partiers exhibits their deeper fears of their spreading rejection as more and more Americans realize and react to their gross power grabs.Their fear, and arrogance,propels their haste to ram through major redefining programs before they are stopped by the 2010 elections reducing their Congressional majorities.
2010 can’t come soon enough.So, it is proposed that Tea Partiers crowd the townhall-type meetings held by their Congressmen and Senators to drive the point home before 2010.
The New Class may lack class, but they will recognize their overstepping will undermine their own survival.Behind their crude attitude toward Tea Partiers is their recognition their window of opportunity to further aggrandize themselves is short.
The legacy media is rapidly being replaced by alternatives which do not insult or ignore the legitimate grievances of the hoi polloi.The captains of industryin-bed-with taxpayer bailouts for their excess greed and irresponsibility are recognizing the self-destructive deal with the devil relegating them to managers of the corporate state.The unions, whose demise in private industry has been offset by controlling the government bureaucracies, are seeing their legislative goals to increase their sway sinking, while their bankruptcy of public services through excess benefits is arousing the poorly served public.The leaders of non-profits, who use their tax-exemptions to indulge in obtaining taxpayer grants that feed huge compensation packages, are startled that they are being viewed as abusing their privileges.
As a black man, I love it when ignorant white women like Janeane Garofalo speak for all blacks. It's thrilling to me that Janeane would take time out of her busy Hollyweird life to protect me and my peeps -- the downtrodden, the oppressed...the lowly Negro.
For her efforts, I thank Garofalo, and anoint her Janeane Garofalo: White Chick Protector of the Lowly Negro.
The Sting, from Krauthammer, hits that nail on the head. One quote:
Notes The Washington Post: "But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery." Obama rarely fails to repeat this false connection. A crisis -- and the public's resulting pliability to liberal social engineering -- is a terrible thing to waste.
If you do not love and admire Charles Krauthammer, raise your hand. (I am sure our readers know that Charles is a paraplegic retired Harvard Psychiatrist, with a second career as Brainy Guy.)
It's been cold, rain and stormy, noisy wind here. "Feels like 34," weatherman said yesterday. We are eager for some global warming - solar, anthropogenic, cow farted, or otherwise.
Twain describes his dentist: "He was gray and venerable, and humane of aspect; but he had the calm, possessed, surgical look of a man who could endure pain in another person."
Bob Dylan fans are in for a treat. The man’s new album, Together Through Life, will be released on April 27. Before that, Dylan begins the latest instalment of the Never-Ending Tour at Sheffield Arena on Friday; and Thursday sees the publication of Revolution in the Air, a new book by the man The New York Times described as “the only Dylanologist worth reading”, Clinton Heylin.
Drowning the low-lying Caribbean islands? Who cares? The people can go to the People's Paradise of Cuba and be happy. Come to think of it, though, doesn't coral grow?
Is Hollywood "progressive"? Quite the opposite. But knowing no history - or anything else - they think they're cool.
Are Tea Parties a sickness? You put 10 demented ladies going menopausal in pink t-shirts, and it's a front-page protest. Yet half a million good citizens defending American values is a sickness? I think the O would rather chat with Chavez than with me.
Not in my backyard: Uirghur terrorists. How about one-way tickets to Paris? My intuition tells me that they might not appreciate the blessings of America.
In all my years of watching news coverage in America, I don't believe I have ever witnessed more condescending, amateurish, purely politicized reporting than what just transpired among the liberal MSM covering America's Tax Day Tea Parties. The Tea Parties represented a very significant news event.
Georgia born-and-raised, and CT resident Flannery O'Connor died of lupus at 39 in 1964.
A collection of her occasional pieces, Mystery and Manners, was assembled by her friend the translator and poet Robert Fitzgerald. In that collection is a gem of an essay, "Total Effect and the Eighth Grade."
In my teaching days, no single document shaped my thinking as much as Flannery O'Connor's 1963 essay called "Total Effect and the Eighth Grade." It concerned neither guns nor violence, neither cliques nor experimental approaches to the treatment of adolescent depression. It was about . . . books. In defending the teaching of the great works of the Western canon rather than those of the modern day (which kids far preferred), she said something wise, the sort of thing an adult might say. She said that the whims and preferences of children should always, always be sublimated to the sense and judgment of their elders. "And what if the student finds this is not to his taste?" O'Connor asked. "Well that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."
In other ages the attention of children was held by Homer and Virgil, among others, but, by the reverse evolutionary process, that is no longer possible; our children are too stupid now to enter the past imaginatively. No one asks the student if algebra pleases him or if he finds it satisfactory that some French verbs are irregular, but if he prefers Hersey to Hawthorne, his taste must prevail.
No child needs to be assigned Hersey or Steinbeck until he is familiar with a certain amount of the best work of Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, the early James, and Crane [we can quibble with the names; I certainly quibble with Cooper’s inclusion], and he does not need to be assigned these until he has been introduced to some of the better English novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The fact that these works do not present him with the realities of his own time is all to the good. He is surrounded by the realities of his own time, and he has no perspective whatever from which to view them. Like the college student who wrote in her paper on Lincoln that he went to the movies and got shot, many students go to college unaware that the world was not made yesterday; their studies began with the present and dipped backward occasionally when it seemed necessary or unavoidable.
The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands.
And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.
The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.
"Edicts of nondiscrimination are not enough. Justice demands that every citizen consciously adopts a personal commitment to affirmative action, which will make equal opportunity a reality."
"I believe that women writers no longer need specially constituted juries, softened judgment, unspoken agreements, or suppression of evidence in order to stand alongside the greatest artists in our literary heritage." That, she acknowledges, may not sit well with some literary critics, men and women. The Chronicle Review talked with her about why she thinks the time is right for the kind of broad survey she's undertaken and why it's taken so long to get it.
A blast from the past on Fascism (Parts 1,2, and 3): Volokh
Hate-spewing sanctimony: Garofolo. People use ad hominem when they run out of arguments, but this is ridiculous. Who is this person, anyway?
Obama's most transparent strategy, about which much has been written, is to cement American citizens' economic dependence on the government, and therefore on him. In order to achieve this, Obama has deepened and prolonged an otherwise fixable economic crisis, creating menacing conditions for social disintegration and chaos. His tax policies and private sector takeovers ensure jobless rates that will rival those of the Depression era, greatly increasing the number of individuals who will look to government for their survival.
But Obama's strategies go far beyond mere economic control.
1We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— 3we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
5This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; 7but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
2My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
3Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. 4Whoever says, “I have come to know him,” but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; 5but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him.
Consider, for example, the media storms surrounding discussions of Holy Communion and the sacramental status of Catholic politicians who disagree with church doctrines on abortion, marriage and other issues. In his book "Render Unto Caesar," Chaput argued that it's the "political duty" of Catholics to "know their faith and to think and act like faithful Catholics all the time" -- even those who work inside the Washington Beltway.
Alas, the journalists think they are writing about the rights of politicians, while some Catholic bishops want to discuss the salvation and, yes, damnation of souls. If journalists insist on describing this conflict in strictly political terms, he said, there is no way the public will ever understand what is happening.
Democratic representative from Illinois Jan Schakowsky says you're "despicable" because you don't want to pay the government whatever the hell they want whenever the hell they want it without whimpering.
Let's compare and contrast two "community activists," shall we?
Despite the current global cooling, the Dem congress is determined to tax the heck out of your energy use and the EPA wants to regulate the heck out of it. Via Breitbart:
The court case, brought by Massachusetts, focused only on emissions from automobiles. But it is widely assumed that if the EPA must regulate emissions from cars and trucks, it will have no choice but to control similar pollution from power plants and industrial sources.
The EPA wants to unleash a "regulatory barrage that will destroy jobs, raise energy prices for consumers, and undermine America's global competitiveness," complained Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., one of Congress' most vocal skeptics of global warming.
In addition to carbon dioxide, a product of burning fossil fuels, the EPA finding covers five other emissions that scientists believe are warming the earth when they concentrate in the atmosphere: Methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).
As readers know, we don't think this is about science: we think it is about taxation and control, with the science as a convenient untruth. I guess we could be wrong, but we do read the info.
Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his 
A new book of 
Miss California (on left) 
Today is Patriot's Day: 
The little known 
as Flannery O'Connor's 1963 essay called "Total Effect and the Eighth Grade." It concerned neither guns nor violence, neither cliques nor experimental approaches to the treatment of adolescent depression. It was about . . . books. In defending the teaching of the great works of the Western canon rather than those of the modern day (which kids far preferred), she said something wise, the sort of thing an adult might say. She said that the whims and preferences of children should always, always be sublimated to the sense and judgment of their elders.
More on the govt's 
More links later tonite - probably.
