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Will You Become The Next Global Secular Human Administrator? E.G.H.E.A.D Will Provide New Questions & New Answers-Also, A Link To John Gray
January 20, 2020 January 20, 2020 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
First off, John Gray's take on Brexit and Boris Johnson's win: 'Why The Left Keeps Losing:'
'For the two wings of British progressivism – liberal centrism and Corbynite leftism – the election has been a profound shock. It is almost as if there was something in the contemporary scene they have failed to comprehend. They regard themselves as the embodiment of advancing modernity. Yet the pattern they imagined in history shows no signs of emerging.'
Where have you put your mind? Your habits? Your hopes, love and labor?
Your own nature, and that of others; in fact Nature herself, may have other plans.
The knowledge for some to be in charge, after the smoke of liberation clears (sexual, moral, political), will surely come from the most abundant known element in our Universe:
Secular Human Values, it turns out, originate from a faint signal with a frequency of 1420 MHz. Many exciting new social changes are coming, including a ruling council: The Elected Global Human Empathetic Administrative Deciders. Trust us.
— Chris Navin (@chris_navin) January 20, 2020
Some unassuming square of sky will justify a vanguard of polymathic geniuses to design new laws. Surely, these great men of (H)istory will not be beholden to the radical impulses of revolutionaries beneath them.
Technocracy is dead! Long live Technocracy!
On that note, all that's left is to make honey for the hive, raising our (C)hildren to become good citizens of a global community. Collectively aware individuals reject traditional notions of gender, race and class. (S)cientartists, working for the common good, will rise through the ranks of existing institutions:
At Plaza East, we raise all secular human offspring in 'The Beehive.' Like related larval members of a Honeybee Collective, they are liberated from outdated concepts such as gender & race. Soon they will burst forth and collect honey for The Hive. Soon. Off Rte 9-Free ice cream
Can you feel these Putumayo rhythms?:
At Peace Pavilion West, the Sunshine Youth Brigade is an anti-vehicular, Romatically Primitive group of precocious youngsters. Just last week, they burned some cars during the Empathy Summit. Kids these days!
This is one classy blog.
Repost-Postmodern Pushback-Some New Links & Lots Of Old Links Gathered Throughout The Years
October 19, 2019 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
Discussed in the video: James Lindsay's cogent account of his experiences in the Atheism movement, and the emergence of Atheism Plus. He attempts to use moral psychology (he mentions Jonathan Haidt) to explain many religious-seeming elements of the woke, social justice crowd.
Also, the two touch upon Critical Theory, and the next generation of post-post-modernists, reacting against the previous generation.
I doubt movements like this ever really die, especially ones committed to the logic of radically standing apart from all institutions of authority, traditions, systems and social arrangments; the lone, brilliant artists and the academic poseurs cloaked within the glamour of nihilist jargon and bad epistemologies.
Lindsay also mentions the Stephen Hicks/Thaddeus Russell debate: 'Postmodernism Is Necessary For A Politics Of Individual Liberty'
Related On This Blog:
Martha Nussbaum on Judith Butler: 'The Professor Of Parody'
Postmodern generator here, via David Thompson.
Simon Blackburn revisits the Sokal hoax.
The Sokal hoax:
"…in 1996 the radical "postmodernist" journal Social Text published an article submitted by Alan Sokal, a mathematical physicist at New York University, with the mouthwatering title "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Sokal then revealed the article to be a spoof…"
Sokal has been busy ruminating since that paper, and Blackburn, a Cambridge philosophy professor, reviews his ruminations.
Mentioned In The Review: Kant, Karl Popper, Einstein, postmodernism, a sympathetic account of the academic postmodernist climate, Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, (T)ruth, Richard Rorty…
Daniel Dennett from 1998: Postmodernism and Truth
'When I was a young untenured professor of philosophy, I once received a visit from a colleague from the Comparative Literature Department, an eminent and fashionable literary theorist, who wanted some help from me. I was flattered to be asked, and did my best to oblige, but the drift of his questions about various philosophical topics was strangely perplexing to me. For quite a while we were getting nowhere, until finally he managed to make clear to me what he had come for. He wanted "an epistemology," he said. An epistemology. Every self-respecting literary theorist had to sport an epistemology that season, it seems, and without one he felt naked, so he had come to me for an epistemology to wear–it was the very next fashion, he was sure, and he wanted the dernier cri in epistemologies. It didn't matter to him that it be sound, or defensible, or (as one might as well say) true; it just had to be new and different and stylish. Accessorize, my good fellow, or be overlooked at the party'
The arts and humantities can be given a seriousness of purpose, I'm guessing, but must that purpose necessarily be scientific?
Do creative musical/artistic geniuses really need to understand particularly well how the sciences advance? How much does it matter that a theater major understands how the sciences come to say true things about the world and predict with high accuracy how nature behaves beyond a science course or two?
Clearly, one problem is that out of the postmodern malaise comes the nihilism, moral relativism and general desperation where many can be found clinging to the sciences, or some standard of rationalism and reason that doesn't seem sufficient in answering all the questions religion claims to answer, nor doesn't seem sufficient as a platform to understand human nature, history, tradition, the wisdom in our institutions, and the experience past generations can offer beyond its own presumptions.
Lots of people can thus make ideology their guide and political change their purpose, or the State their religion and their own moral failings or moral programs everyone's moral oughts through the law and politics.
Who has the moral legitimacy to be in charge?
Quote found here at friesian.com (recovering Kantian idealism through post-Kantian philosopher Jakob Fries):
'Oddly enough, it is the intellectual snobbery and elitism of many of the literati that politically correct egalitarianism appeals to; their partiality to literary Marxism is based not on its economic theory but on its hostility to business and the middle class. The character of this anti-bourgeois sentiment therefore has more in common with its origin in aristocratic disdain for the lower orders than with egalitarianism.'
John M. Ellis, Literature Lost [Yale University Press, 1997, p. 214]
Using quite a bit of German idealism (Hegelian) to get at the problem:
Roger Scruton here.
Book here.
'While I am complaining, I will also note that Scruton has nothing to say about how several of these figures—especially Žižek and Alain Badiou, along with Jacques Derrida, who is barely mentioned here—have played a role in the so-called "religious turn" of humanistic studies, in which various movements generally called "postmodern" find a significant place for religion in their reflections, if not in their beliefs or practices. This marks a significant departure from the relentless secularism of most earlier forms of European leftism, and that deserves note. Nor does Scruton account fully for Jürgen Habermas's reputation as a centrist figure in the German and more generally the European context. (Habermas too has spoken more warmly of religion in recent years.'
I've heard Scruton's rather sober vision of the good society referred to as 'Scrutopia' by dissenters:
On this site, see:
More Scruton here.
So, what is all this Nothing-ness about? 'My view', says Scruton, 'is that what's underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future, but never pauses to describe what that society will be like. It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there's an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.'
Steven Pinker piece here.
Pinker boils his argument down to two ideals:
'The first is that the world is intelligible. The phenomena we experience may be explained by principles that are more general than the phenomena themselves.'
'The commitment to intelligibility is not a matter of brute faith, but gradually validates itself as more and more of the world becomes explicable in scientific terms.'
Hilary Putnam and Bryan Magee discuss the 'treasure chest' vision of science, where you just keep filling up the chest with more and more knowledge.
Pinker's second ideal is as follows:
'The second ideal is that the acquisition of knowledge is hard. The world does not go out of its way to reveal its workings, and even if it did, our minds are prone to illusions, fallacies, and superstitions.'
One of the other debates here is about where meaning shall be found, in politics, in ethics, as a foundation for the humanities, and religion, as all manner of other ideas fill the void.
Addition: I guess I'm trying to say that I remain skeptical the sciences can properly scale. Many people claiming to have a scientific worldview are curiously more committed to ideas downstream of scientific inquiry. This can involve an idealized or popular, mummified vision of 'science,' (the science is clear, it's on on my side, we must act together or vote for x) or even 'anti-science' nihilism and destructive cultism (the universe is a meaningless void, you're utterly alone, here's exactly what the scientists don't want you to know, so join us).
Related On This Site: From The NY Times Book Review-Thomas Nagel On John Gray's New 'Silence Of Animals'…From Darwinian Conservatism: 'The Evolution of Mind and Mathematics: Dehaene Versus Plantinga and Nagel'…
From Edward Feser: 'Nagel And His Critics Part IV'…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts Of Liberty"…
From Darwinian Conservatism: Nietzsche-Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?
The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin's negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts Of Liberty"… From George Monbiot: 'How Freedom Became Tyranny'…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: 'Discussing Disgust' Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.… Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From "Liberal England"
Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge
More here from the Times Literary Supplement.
I suppose 'anarcho-syndicalism' and/or 'libertarian socialism' is better than the dead-ends of socialist doctrine. Noam Chomsky actually had enough computational/scientific training to be dismissive of postmodern thought. Perhaps after Kant's transcendental idealism, Chomsky really does believe that morality, like Chomsky's innatist theory of language, is universal and furthermore hard-wired into the brain. This could lead to a political philosophy of either universalism or nihilism, or at least his retreat into anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism away from such idealism. There's little to no room for the individual in such a vision. Perhaps Chomsky has never seen life, liberty and property and the individual except from such a vantage point: Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge…
What about value pluralism…positive and negative liberty?: The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin's negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts Of Liberty"
Martha Nussbaum criticizing Chomsky's hubris in Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal
Repost-Via C-SPAN-The Historical Context Of Allan Bloom
July 23, 2019 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
Thanks to a reader.
Quite a varied discussion on Bloom's surprise 1987 bestseller: 'The Closing Of The American Mind'
Does rock/popular music corrupt the souls of youth in preventing them from evening-out the passions; from pursuing higher things that a quality humanities education can offer?
Might such a lack allow political ideology to offer young people something to do, something to be, and something of which to be a part?
A questioning of premises, with varied disagreement, including that from an Emersonian.
Related On This Site:
–Heather McDonald At The WSJ: ' The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity'
-Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?'
–Repost-From Darwinian Conservatism: 'Nietzsche–Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?'
-Update And Repost: 'A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection'
– Various Products Of Radical Reason And Reactions To Them- John Gray At The New Statesman
Repost-Looking For Liberals In The Postmodern Wilderness-Jordan Peterson & Stephen Hicks
Alas, the mildly ambitious knowledge, hobby, and vanity project that it is this blog continues (it takes a LOT to listen, watch and paste a link to a Youtube video):
Jordan Peterson and Stephen Hicks. Recommeded:
Mentioned: Immanuel Kant and his transcendental idealism, Noam Chomsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Jacques Derrida, the American Pragmatic tradition and more.
Also from Dr. Hicks:
'In the shorter term, postmodernism has caused an impoverishment of much of the academic humanities, both in the quality of the work being done and the civility of the debates. The sciences have been less affected and are relatively healthy. The social sciences are mixed.
I am optimistic, though, for a couple of reasons. One is that pomo was able to entrench itself in the second half of the twentieth century in large part because first-rate intellectuals were mostly dismissive of it and focused on their own projects. But over the last ten years, after pomo's excesses became blatant, there has been a vigorous counter-attack and pomo is now on the defensive. Another reason for optimism is that, as a species of skepticism, pomo is ultimately empty and becomes boring. Eventually intellectually-alert individuals get tired of the same old lines and move on. It is one thing, as the pomo can do well, to critique other theories and tear them down. But that merely clears the field for the next new and intriguing theory and for the next generation of energetic young intellectuals.
So while the postmodernism has had its generation or two, I think we're ready for the next new thing – a strong, fresh, and positive approach to the big issues, one that of course takes into account the critical weapons the pomo have used well over the last while'
More On Nietzsche's influence-Part of Bryan Magee's series:
Nietzsche directed his thought against Christian morality, secular morality (Kantian and utilitarian), was quite anti-democratic, and anti-Socratic Greek (the beginning of the end).
Quote found here at friesian.com (recovering Kantian idealism and moving in a libertarian direction):
'Oddly enough, it is the intellctual snobbery and elitism of many of the literati that politically correct egalitarianism appeals to; their partiality to literary Marxism is based not on its economic theory but on its hostility to business and the middle class. The character of this anti-bourgeois sentiment therefore has more in common with its origin in aristocratic disdain for the lower orders than with egalitarianism.'
Roger Scruton was cast out of polite society just for trying to provide some context and pushback:
Related: From Darwinian Conservatism: Nietzsche-Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?
A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche's Moral And Political Philosophy.
Out of the Valley of modernism, post-modernism, and relativism…one path from Nietzsche's nihilism is through Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom:Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?'
Can Kant do all that heavy lifting…what are some of the dangers of Kantian reason?: From Bryan Magee's Talking Philosophy On Youtube: Geoffrey Warnock On Kant…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts Of Liberty" …
…Peter Singer discusses Hegel and Marx…From Philosophy And Polity: 'Historicism In German Political Theory'
The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin's negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts Of Liberty"… From George Monbiot: 'How Freedom Became Tyranny'…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: 'Discussing Disgust' Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.…
Repost-From Scientific Blogging: 'The Humanities Are In Crisis-Science Is Not'
October 1, 2018 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
Full post here.
Saving the humanities from some humanists, anti-humanists, ideologues and people who understand too little and expect too much of both the arts and the sciences?
A brief response by our author to this NY Times Op-Ed piece:
"Graduate education in the humanities may have its problems, but don't try to tar science with the same brush."
"The humanities aren't sciences, they don't solve problems like sciences, and they shouldn't try to be sciences."
Is the public lens currently being focused on the problem in a way that does justice to neither the humanities nor the sciences?
Here are some links gathered over the years:
1. Lots of people invested in ideology will naturally seek to extend their ideological commitments, worldview, and beliefs into the books they read (including this blogger?). What are you hoping to get out of that book in your hand?: Heather McDonald At The WSJ: ' The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity'…
2. Conservative Briton Roger Scruton suggests keeping political and aesthetic judgments apart in the humanities, via a lot of German philosophical idealism Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment…but some German influences may come with other problems.
"In the days when the humanities involved knowledge of classical languages and an acquaintance with German scholarship, there was no doubt that they required real mental discipline, even if their point could reasonably be doubted. But once subjects like English were admitted to a central place in the curriculum, the question of their validity became urgent. And then, in the wake of English came the pseudo-humanities—women's studies, gay studies and the like—which were based on the assumption that, if English is a discipline, so too are they."
3. Keep politics (add: and business) out of academia, when you can?-Repost-Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: 'The Last Professors: The Corporate Professors And The Fate Of The Humanities'
4. Strauss and the Straussians-Via C-SPAN-The Historical Context Of Allan Bloom…Update And Repost: 'A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection'
5. Just read for its own sake, man, it doesn't need an endpoint, because art's pretty useful and useless: Why Should You Get A Liberal Education? From The ASAN Institute Via Vimeo: 'Michael Oakeshott's Cold War Liberalism 1'
6. Philosopher Of Art Denis Dutton of the Arts & Letters Daily says the arts and Darwin can be sucessfully synthesized: Review of Denis Dutton's 'The Art Instinct'
Jordan Peterson And Sue Blackmore Debate A Rather Pedestrian Materialist Account Of The World
July 2, 2018 July 3, 2018 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
Jordan Peterson deploys Jungian metaphysics, downstream of Nietzsche, to make knowledge claims which challenge Blackmore's reasonably pedestrian modern materialism and atheism.
In other words, Peterson's defense of Jungian archetypes, including those potentially found in the Bible (and viewed from the depths of Nietzsche's nihilism), might connect with biology more profoundly than Blackmore's psychological materialism might have been able to address.
Nihilism is an interesting epistemological ground out of which to make knowledge claims of transcendant objects, or at least, out of which to synthesize biological knowledge and possibly knowledge claims which align within the burgeoning field of neuroscience.
The desire each of us seems to have for transcendence, wisdom and stories (especially kids) within the subjectivity of our own lived experiences, the deeper hopes and beliefs which seem ever-present (if not consciously realized) in our waking lives, the relationships with loved ones which inform, and probably ought to inform our moral judgments and moral thinking, might align with Jungian archetypes, Greek myths and the King James Bible, and thus some sort of Nietzschen nihilist denial of objective reality or the structure of the material world explored by the sciences…or…they might not.
As posted: John Gray challenged Steven Pinker's knowledge claims for the measurable material progress going on around the globe with a heavy Nietzschean and nihilist influence. In other words, things in ethics and politics get learned, but don't stay learned, and the actual progress and the doctrines of progress may be two different things.
On such thinking, there is a spiritual crisis going on in the Western World as important as the post-Enlightenment advancements in the sciences, and the postmodern nihilist reactions against the natural sciences.
Gray also reviewed two books, one by Marxist dissector of postmodernism, anti-New Atheist, and literary critic, Terry Eagleton,(filling a religion-sized hole with Marxism) and the other by Peter Watson.
Gray finished with:
'Reared on a Christian hope of redemption (he was, after all, the son of a Lutheran minister), Nietzsche was unable, finally, to accept a tragic sense of life of the kind he tried to retrieve in his early work. Yet his critique of liberal rationalism remains as forceful as ever. As he argued with masterful irony, the belief that the world can be made fully intelligible is an article of faith: a metaphysical wager, rather than a premise of rational inquiry. It is a thought our pious unbelievers are unwilling to allow. The pivotal modern critic of religion, Friedrich Nietzsche will continue to be the ghost at the atheist feast.'
Some related links on this site:
Dinesh D'Souza is a Christian, and while debating New Atheist and Compatibilist Daniel Dennett at Tufts University, he brings up Nietzsche's argument that God is dead in favor of his position…not sure if that's a winner.
Interesting debate. Argument starts at 5:30:
Terry Eagleton debates Roger Scruton below. Scruton was no doubt heavily influenced by German idealism.
Are we really that thick into the postmodern weeds? What should students in the humanities be reading?:
There's a bit of an intellectual turf war going on in the Western world. I suppose it's been going on for a while. Here are some public skirmishes I've been able to track:
-Steven Pinker, Harvard experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist wrote a piece in the New Republic, entitled: 'Science Is Not Your Enemy'
-Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic since the 60′s, responded at The New Republic: 'No, Science Doesn't Have All The Answers.'
-Ross Douthat, conservative Catholic columnist at the Times jumped in the fray: 'The Scientism Of Steve Pinker'
-Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist, responded to Douthat.
-Wieseltier jumped back in with: 'Crimes Against Humanities: Now science wants to invade the humanities. Don't let it happen.'
-Now Daniel Dennett, philosopher, cognitive scientist, one of the New Atheists and Boston-based secularis responded to Wieseltier:
'Pomposity can be amusing, but pomposity sitting like an oversized hat on top of fear is hilarious. Wieseltier is afraid that the humanities are being overrun by thinkers from outside, who dare to tackle their precious problems—or "problematics" to use the, um, technical term favored by many in the humanities. He is right to be afraid. It is true that there is a crowd of often overconfident scientists impatiently addressing the big questions with scant appreciation of the subtleties unearthed by philosophers and others in the humanities, but the way to deal constructively with this awkward influx is to join forces and educate them, not declare them out of bounds.'
Got all that?
Related On This Site: From Darwinian Conservatism: 'Nietzsche–Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?'
Here's Nietzsche scholar J.P. Stern on Nietzsche's anti-Christian, anti-secular morality (Kant, utilitarians), anti-democratic, and anti-Greek (except the "heroic" Greek) biases…See the comments Repost-Camille Paglia At Arion: Why Break, Blow, Burn Was Successful…Update And Repost: 'A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection'
Out of the Valley of modernism, post-modernism, and relativism…one path from Nietzsche's nihilism is through Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom: Update And Repost: 'A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection'…Some Tuesday Quotations From Leo Strauss…From Peter Berkowitz At Harvard: 'The Reason Of Revelation: The Jewish Thought Of Leo Strauss'
'In November of 1887, the Danish scholar George Brandes wrote a letter to Nietzsche praising his writings and endorsing his "aristocratic radicalism." Nietzsche responded by accepting this label: "The expression Aristocratic Radicalism, which you employ, is very good. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing I have yet read about myself."'
Excellent, as always.
'Finally, as I have indicated in some previous posts, Nietzsche's aristocratic liberalism is based on a Darwinian anthropology that is open to empirical verification or falsification, while his aristocratic radicalism is based on mythopoetic fictions–the will to power, eternal recurrence, the Ubermensch, and Dionysian religiosity–that are beyond empirical testing.
From all of this, I conclude that Nietzsche's Darwinian aristocratic liberalism is superior to his Dionysian aristocratic radicalism.'
Arnhart maintains that Nietzsche's middle period, focused on Darwin's thought, is the most defensible.
Here's a quote from Leo Strauss, on Nietzsche beginning the 3rd crisis of modernity, having followed the logic of relativism to nihilism:
'The theoretical analysis of life is noncommittal and fatal to commitment, but life means commitment. To avert the danger to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life–that is restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion–or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper. and so conceive of theory as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate. If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors adopted the second alternative.'
A paper arguing that Strauss conflated his own critique of modernity with the intentions of philosophers:
'A fervent critic of modernity, Leo Strauss attributed modernity's intellectual degradation to the influence of some great philosophers in the history of political thought who radically broke with classical political thinking. In doing so, Strauss believed, these thinkers either directly or indirectly contributed to the emergence of historicism and positivism, and he held these movements accountable for spineless relativism, nihilism, and modernity's moral and intellectual demise.'
This Post Is Way Too Modern?
Two juxtapositions of 'texts in space' found at the Times Literary Supplement.
From 'Postmodernism is dead. What comes next?' by Alison Gibbons:
'At the same time, our culture retains many of the themes and concerns that exercised writers of earlier generations; there is little sign of a radical literary avant garde sweeping away the old to make way for the new. Postmodernism might not be as emphatically over as some critics like to claim, but it does seem to be in retreat. Its devices have become so commonplace that they have been absorbed into mainstream, commercial and popular culture. Postmodernism has lost its value in part because it has oversaturated the market. And with the end of postmodernism's playfulness and affectation, we are better placed to construct a literature that engages earnestly with real-world problems.'
From 'The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein' by Ian Ground:
'Wittgenstein was hostile to modern philosophy as he found it. He thought it the product of a culture that had come to model everything that matters about our lives on scientific explanation. In its ever-extending observance of the idea that knowledge, not wisdom, is our goal, that what matters is information rather than insight, and that we best address the problems that beset us, not with changes in our heart and spirit but with more data and better theories, our culture is pretty much exactly as Wittgenstein feared it would become.'
Goodness, this is messy. As previously posted:
Repost-Daniel Dennett: 'Postmodernism And Truth'
Maybe if you're defending religion, Nietzsche is a problematic reference: Dinesh D'Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche's Prophesy…
A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts Of Liberty"…Repost-Classical Liberalism Via Friesian.Com-'Exchange with Tomaz Castello Branco on John Gray'
*******And mostly, but not entirely unrelated, you can make your own Tom Friedman columns at home. Is Tom Friedman a bot?
Many People Want To Tear Stuff Down-Stephen Hicks: Nietzsche Perfectly Forecasts the Postmodernist Left
August 2, 2017 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
It's possible to turn Nietzsche against many of the tired old ideologies found lurking within postmodern thought.
I'm not sure about that 'perfectly' part:
Another pomo quote from Dr. Hicks:
Perhaps Banksy is a good example of a certain Left worldview wrapped within the transgressive postmodern art-scene.
You never have to grow up, really learn how to paint, nor think that much. Perfect for media consumption these days.
It's not Disneyland, it's 'Dismaland.'
A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche's Moral And Political Philosophy..A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection…
Dinesh D'Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche's Prophesy
Youtube-'Week 2 Leo Strauss-The Three Waves Of Modernity'..From The Selected Writings By And About George Anastaplo: 'Reason and Revelation: On Leo Strauss'
Repost-Clive James At The Prospect On Joseph Conrad-Some Links
June 2, 2017 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
James revisited many quite original, quite accomplished works.
Of note to this blogger:
'They are, in fact, idealists: and idealism is a cast of mind that Conrad questions even more than he questions radicalism. The logical end of radicalism, in his view, is terrorism; but idealism is the mental aberration that allows terrorism to be brought about. Conrad's originality was to see that a new tyranny could be generated by people who thought that their rebellion against the old tyranny was rational. Thus his writings seem prescient about what was to happen in the Soviet Union. He didn't predict the Nazi tyranny because he had underestimated the power of the irrational to organise itself into a state. But then, nobody predicted that except its perpetrators; and anyway, mere prediction was not his business. His business was the psychological analysis made possible by an acute historical awareness. Under Western Eyes is valuable not because it came true but because it rang true even at the time, only now we can better hear the deep, sad note.'
Michael Dirda on 'Clive James Last Readings' review: A Critic's Final Homage To Literature, Life:'
'In 30 brief essays James goes on to tell us — in his most digressive, conversational manner — about the books he's discovered or returned to quite probably for the last time.'
Not entirely unrelated:
John Gray begins a discussion of his book 'The Silence Of Animals' with a quote from Conrad:
Added bonus if you act now in the face of no possible objective knowledge.
Part of Bryan Magee's series:
Nietzsche directed his thought against Christian morality, secular morality (Kantian and utilitarian), was quite anti-democratic, and anti-Socratic.
Related On This Site: From The NY Times Book Review-Thomas Nagel On John Gray's New 'Silence Of Animals'.
A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche's Moral And Political Philosophy..
John Gray Reviews Jonathan Haidt's New Book At The New Republic: 'The Knowns And The Unknowns'
Repost: Various Products Of Radical Reason And Reactions To Them- John Gray At The New Statesman
January 4, 2017 January 5, 2017 / chr1	/ Leave a comment
Original piece here (updated).
Gray reviews Daniel Oppenheimer's 'Exit Right: The People Who Left The Left And Reshaped The American Century'
From the Amazon blurb on the book:
'By going deep into the minds of six apostates Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens, Oppenheimer offers an unusually intimate history of the American left, and the right's reaction.'
Gray highlights something I certainly find attractive about conservatism:
'Ever since it emerged in the late 18th century as a distinct tradition of modern thought, conservatism has been defined by a suspicion of grand schemes of world improvement. Whether their thinking was grounded in a religious belief in original sin (as in the cases of Edmund Burke and the American conservative Russell Kirk) or a sceptical view of the power of human reason (as in David Hume and Michael Oakeshott), conservatives distrusted any attempt to remake the world according to the dictates of high-minded ideals and abstract models.'
Neo-conservatism comes in for criticism as having a hand in all of modern American politics.
Gray:
'George W Bush's crazed pursuit of regime change and its continuation in some policies of the Obama administration, particularly when acting under the direction of Hillary Clinton, were the result.'
A few humble observations about the second Iraq invasion:
–There was a reassertion of many Americans' nationalism, pride, and fear, especially after 9/11, and the desire for revenge against that rather awful blow against civilians and innocents at home, in a business setting no less (3,000 lives lost and a lot of terror). Strategically, Iraq could be convincingly argued to be a serious misstep.
–George W. Bush's inherited guilt at leaving the Iraqi Kurds to their fate under Saddam on his father's watch seems to have played a part (for which I have no evidence, but I've long thought…which is a product of deeper American life and politics).
Let me know if/how wrong I might be.
Perhaps one of Gray's main takeaways, a la Oppenheimer, is the almost religious-type experience some people have had within Communist ideals, an experience which drastically shaped this past century, and our lives.
He finishes with:
'Except for Chambers and Horowitz, Oppenheimer's apostates learned very little from their journey across the political spectrum. Those who banged the drum for war were as ignorant of the countries whose governments they wanted to overthrow as they been had of the workers they had claimed to be fighting for in the past. In both cases they used people of whom they knew nothing to satisfy their own need for significance. Believing they had left behind the mistakes of the radical left, they helped create a new right that repeated the same follies. Along the way, an older and more civilised conservatism was consigned to the memory hole.'
Hitchens could be entertaining, especially on grounds I'm guessing he knew instinctively well as a former Trotskyite: Ideologies, while highlighting truths, promise a one-stop shop on truth, knowledge, how to be in the world, what to do and what the future will be.
People can kill for less, and when they adhere to such systems, then they can end-up killing more:
Related On This Site: Repost-John Gray Reviews Francis Fukuyama At The Literary Review: 'Destination Denmark'


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Lucy Webster
Political journalist and writer
After hiding for sixteen years Ratko Mladic may face the Hague
Lucy Webster	Mladic, Serbia	 May 28, 2011 1 Minute
Following the break-up of Yugoslavia, there was a bitter war in which ethnic Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats fought for their own states. The individual armies embarked on the process of 'ethnic cleansing' – killing those from different ethnic backgrounds. The Bosnian War raged from 1992-95. The number of dead will never be confirmed, but the official toll – as of 2010 – puts the figure at just above 100,000.
This week saw the arrest of Ratko Mladic, one of the leaders of the Serb army. At the end of the war in 1995 he was indicted of war crimes including the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, in which 8000 Muslim men and boys were murdered. He also stands accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. During the sixteen years since his arrest warrant was issued a $10 million reward has been offered in return for information of his whereabouts but no-one came forward. Eventually he was arrested at his cousin's house by the Serbian authorities.
There have been sightings of Mladic throughout the last decade and a half – leading many to believe that the Serbs have protected him from the international court because of strong domestic support. For many ethnic Serbs, their war leader is still a hero. However the arrest of Mladic was set as a prerequisite for talks that could enable Serbia to join the EU. Many feel that this is why he was finally arrested. For a few days following his arrest it was thought that his poor health would prevent him from standing trial at the Hague – where the International Criminal Court (ICC) sits. However after a brief hearing in Belgrade it was announced that he would be extradited. Whether justice is ever served remains to be seen, but at least it is a tiny step closer.
Published by Lucy Webster
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John Mayer Defends His Crazy Tibetan Robe Collection
By Will Welch
john-mayer-q-and-a.jpg
The first time we saw the cover of John Mayer's 2012 album, Paradise Valley, we double-took so hard we almost snapped a vertebrae. What happened to America's beloved celebrity panty-dropper, known for dressing like an overgrown teen in rare Nikes, cargo pants, and V-neck tees? This new guy looked like he'd tripped out hard on a bunch of acid and CSNY vinyl, gone vision-questing across the denim shops of Japan, then returned to the Great Plains to rekindle his best-friendship with his long-lost Labrador. We were confused, curious, and impressed, and from that moment on, we began watching Mayer's style more closely. And what we found is that Mayer's intense passion for collecting Nikes and Rollies has now been redirected to the handmade, highly expensive, and extremely cultish Japanese brand Visvim, designed by a denim-whisperer named Hiroki Nakamura who is, in certain tiny circles, revered like a god. Here, we talk to the style-world's most hardwired collector about what happened to all his sneakers, how hiding under layers of indigo helped him through a career hiatus and a booze-heavy rough patch, and whether or not he really has a massive Visvim collection stashed in a storage space in Florida.
GQ: How's it going?
**John Mayer: **Hold on—let me finish tying my bow tie for this call.
Ha! Your local GQ representative thanks you for that. Only thing is I'm in my pajamas.
Just like a good New York writer. What are you drinking, bourbon?
Yes, and smoking a cigar. So let's talk about the evolution of your style, and about some of your collections. For starters: Do you still think of yourself as a sneaker collector?
But there was a time where you were into it heavy, right?
Oh, I was into it, yeah. I think we all were. It was an extension of adolescence. Of baseball cards or something. All of my friends had closets—all you'd see was Nike orange from all the bos. And I had 'em all. I think there was a Golden Age of it. There was the Air Max 360. There was the moment when they would put out all these great Air Max 90s. And I think what happened was that, for me and all my friends, it was supposed to make a market, but the market never got made. It was like, "These are limited edition. I'm gonna buy 'em for $85 and maybe I can weed and seed and sell them for $210 two years from now." But the market never got made and people just looked around and went, Well, this is actually costing a lot of money.
"I'm in way deeper than $85 now."
Yeah, you end up going, There's gotta be something else out there. But what was cool about the sneaker thing is it got people into physical product.
Right. Sneakers are the gateway. So how much of that stuff do you still have?
I've given a lot of stuff away. I speak for a lot of former sneakerheads who are like, "I can't start an eBay company to sell sneakers that are $25." So you end up giving them to people who are your size. There are a couple of really cool things that I still have. Anything that's a collab: Futura has done it, Kaws has done it. Those things are interesting to hold onto. All of the Hiroshi Fujiwara Fragment stuff; anything that has that Harajuku vibe I think I've held on to. But there was a time when they were coming out with a bunch of different colorways and naming it after what the colors represented. When you start getting into Air Max '95 Bacon and Eggs, you're like... Alright.
But it got me, and it got everyone I know, into the idea of the pursuit of physical product. Like, how many Drake records are there? The answer is as many as you want. In the face of this digital turnout of things, you go, "I want to have something that not everybody has. I want something that differentiates me."
Do you currently collect anything that you can't wear?
You know, there are certain things that I have in my collection that I would like to wear—I mean in my mind's eye, where I'm a lot of things that I can't be in real life. And there have probably been times where I've gone too far into the ambition of it rather than what the authentic vibe should be.
Oh, do you mean wearing something that you can't quite pull off?
Yeah. So I have a lot of old robes. A lot of Tibetan robes, and it'll end up in People magazine that I was wearing a bathrobe. And it's like, "Well, actually it's a totally hand-painted, natural dye... It's made with real indigo and crushed up ladybugs!" So yeah, sometimes you'll buy something because there's something that strikes you about it, and you'll hang it up and you'll go, "I don't know how yet, but someday..." And either times change or you see—this is very important, and I'm not afraid to admit this—you see someone else you look up to contextualize it in a way that allows you to find your way into wearing it. All of fashion is completely, one-thousand-percent context-based.
Yeah, absolutely. If you go to Japan—Japan has these guys, some of them are designers, some of them are artists, and you see how they implement it, and what their point of reference is. I've never stolen somebody's fashion, but I've stolen people's points of reference.
That's all we ever do.
Here's a case in point: If your only reference to baggy jeans is Marky Mark or Kris Kross, then you won't want to wear them. But if your reference is like miners from the '40s—you look at a picture of people who were working around World War II and they're using rope to hold their jeans on because they didn't have a bunch of sizes back then—then you get into workwear. If that's your point of reference and you have a good song playing? That might just fuse into your brain.
So that's all it is for me. It's so much fun to collect points of reference, and pay homage or tribute to them, or bite a little bit. Who cares? You're allowed to bite, you know? What took me years to figure out is how to tailor it—no pun intended—to who I am, so you're not just walking around, like, displaying clothes on yourself.
So you're doing more than just walking around in someone else's context.
Yeah, you develop your own rules. Like, I've got a rule: You only get a certain amount of flair points, and you can't spend too many points on one outfit.
Do you have an actual number of points you stick to?
No, but I'll make it up! So if you're gonna wear a hat—which you absolutely can—that's most of your flair points.
You blew a big part of your budget right there.
Big part of your budget on your hat. Or if you're just gonna wear jeans and a T-shirt, you can go nuts with the boots. And if you want to wear a white T-shirt and blue jeans, you can wear whatever you want over it—you can wear the weirdest Tibetan robe over it. That's your show-off moment.
Who knows, maybe a few necklii...
That's right. A couple of necklii? Great. It just takes a while to fine-tune your ambition with the authenticity. I'll see somebody wearing a hat, and I know it's the closest thing they can find to the hat they have in their mind, and that's fine. Because I know it's a journey to the hat. You have to learn what's out there. It was a journey to my hat, and now I know the name of every crease you can get in a hat. I know every type of silhouette.
Do you mean like every hat style from rodeo styles to workwear styles?
Yeah. You know, whether it's a Montana peak or whatever.
What are you currently wearing?
You know, I watched Rio Grande—no, it was Rio Bravo, which is a different movie than Rio Grande, but they both have John Wayne in them... Anyway, John Wayne is wearing this cavalry hat that was just so badass. So I go, I want to wear that. So I had a copy of that hat made, and it just looks like the kind of hat you would drink water out of.
It's been really fun going through Western movies and finding all the different ways you can wear a hat. I don't do it as much as I used to, because I feel like I've completed the journey. You know, I got made fun of for the hat for a long time. And now I see a lot of people going for the hat. A lot of people.
What's your reaction when you're ahead of the curve on something and you take shit for it?
Oh, I don't care. I don't care at all. There are a lot of stylish people who haven't branded themselves as such. There are a lot of secret style junkies out there, and I just haven't had the discussion with my publicist where I said, "Make me the best dressed." And a lot of times I'm not the best dressed. Look at it like this: A lot of the best tattoo artists have some fucked up arms because they try stuff out on themselves.
Right. Their knees—any place where they can tattoo themselves has some crazy shit going on.
So I try stuff out on myself. And the thing about wearing a Tibetan robe on an airplane is that you can use it for like six different things.
So a Tibetan robe is functional?
You can use it as a background to take pictures of things for Instagram. You can use it as a blanket. You can use it as a tent. I've watched movies under it on the airplane—it's breathable! You can use it as a paparazzi shield. Maybe you get made fun of in People, but who knows who Hiroki Nakamura is that reads People magazine? Then there's one or two people who jump into the comments and go, "No, actually that's Visvim. That's really hard to come by. That represents a lot of hard work by artisans in Japan."
If style is about sending out coded signals, I guess the _People _readership is not who you're sending your signals to.
That's right. And this is some shit: Something you learn when you grow up is that everybody who is the "worst dressed" is actually not the worst dressed. They're just trying to accelerate a little bit. People aren't idiots. They're not like, "I think I want to wear this dumb thing to the Oscars." They're worst dressed because they're outside of the norm. Then you get to be 27-years-old or something and you go, "Oh, worst dressed just means ambitious."
To understand your style transformation and how you got to Tibetan robes, there are some points from your recent biography that I'd like for us to try to connect. I'm going to list them: Career hiatus, throat injury, Laurel Canyon, Bozeman, Born and Raised, Visvim, Japan, indigo, crushed-up ladybugs...
I'm probably still trying to connect those myself. Well, I'm a big follower and collector of Visvim.
Did it start with the shoes?
No, it was actually the opposite, because they didn't start making the shoes in size 12 until 2008 or 2009. You know, looking back on it—and, by the way, all that is completely authentic, it's not me sitting in a boardroom—I think part of the idea was hiding out. Sometimes, if you don't see the person you recognize in the mirror, then you're free from your own punishment. It's hard to explain. You're free from your own criticism. If you don't recognize the person you see in the mirror, then you're free from self-persecution.
It's almost like a witness relocation program for yourself. Women do it, men do it. You have a change in your life, or a change in your philosophy, a change in your lifestyle, you have a loss, or you have heartache, so you go blonde or you grow a beard or you do both. Sometimes in life you just don't want to be recognizable to yourself. A lot of people get fucked up for that reason. I was drinking—I was drinking a whole hell of a lot. I was heavy, and layers favor the heavy man. I hope that ends up on top of a photo: "Layers favor the heavy man." [Laughs.]
That's helpful GQ style advice right there.
Well, wearing layers is sort of like—just trying to get out of it by way of subterfuge. And then you get healthy again, and you put on your white tee and jeans and you're like bam_!_
So I think I was hiding out from myself. I was hiding out from what I felt like was a whole lot of pigeon-holing. And it's also the way I would do anything: [Collecting Visvim] became a pursuit. And it's bribery—it's self-bribery. A lot of times I don't want to get on an airplane unless there's something in it for me. And sometimes the only thing is the sort of intellectual or aesthetic adventure, and that's what gets me on the airplane. I said this quote one time: "Don't pack for where you're going, pack for who you want to be when you get there." So it's like, Okay, we'll do this flight in the '40s. We'll dress up. Or, we're gonna go to New York and do Spartan Pack: Just the perfect A-2 Bomber jacket, a bunch of different colored T-shirts, a couple different pairs of jeans, and some boots. And the rest of it we're gonna fill in with personality.
Certain people seem to have an almost spiritual response to Visvim—as though the clothes are more than just inanimate objects. Is that part of what draws you to the brand?
I think so. There's no other brand like it. It's fashion, but it's not. It's "street fashion," but it's not. These pieces transcend fashion or even clothing sometimes. It's what you might call an emotional connection with something material, you know? Like, I found the luckiest build of an A-2 bomber that Hiroki made for me. I'm holding it right now.
What do you mean by luckiest?
You get the right pieces of leather that work together, you know what I mean? It's just perfect. I wrote my name on the tag. I've never written my name on the tag. It's one of those jackets that stands up on it's own, and I want to live inside it. I want to hide under it and sleep in it. It's just a jacket, right? But no, it's not just a jacket, because if you took it everywhere you went, it could be part of your story.
And a leather jacket really is a second skin. That hide was alive for real at one point.
I've brought jackets on trips as a companion. You wake up in the morning in some city you don't-know-slash-don't-want-to-be-in, you throw on your watch and jacket and you go, "Alright, here we go." Me and my jacket have seen some weird shit.
And I think Hiroki has created stuff with a depth to it. He's just trying to make the very best of each thing. What I'm doing is trying to find each piece that sends the other pieces like it away. It really is like playing with your toys when you're a kid. You're just trying to complete something. You're going, "I want the closet that is timeless and bulletproof." Because, look, life can be very boring. This is just another way to add another little vibration. A little hum that goes under all of it that makes it a little more interesting. That's all.
Okay, hear me out on this one: This being GQ, we do have a resident Visvim head. So earlier I said to him, "I'm talking to John Mayer today. What should I ask him?" And he said, "I heard he has two of everything from Visvim—one that he wears, and one on ice. And the stuff that's on ice is in a storage space in Florida."
_[Laughs.] _Um, I don't have two of every piece. I have a very healthy representation of each season. There are certain things that I think are so incredible, and that I don't believe are gonna be made again, so I like to have a couple versions of them. I've been known to keep things on ice, and there's a rather extensive collection in a storage space that's not in Florida. It's in California.
Let the record show: Not in Florida. So one more question—What's the story behind the look you wore for the Paradise Valley album cover?
Hiroki styled that. I forgot to put him in the credits. He was in LA at the time, and he brought a bunch of stuff with him and put it together. I think I was protected in a sense by the fact that he styled it. I also believe that when you're taking a picture, you can be hyper-styled. I don't think I would've ever walked around like that, but I think if you're taking a picture you can be more theatrical and more artistic. And I feel like that's a little honor to have a Hiroki-Nakamura-styled photo. That was his blanket, my hat, my dog...
"Dog, model's own."
That's right: Dog appears courtesy of dog.
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More Islamic Death Threats in Europe: Dutch MP Targeted Twice
by Pete Hoekstra
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18516/wilders-islamic-death-threats
Geert Wilders has dedicated his life to supporting freedom of speech and religious tolerance...
What seems to have earned him these death threats is his unrelenting passion for freedom. To others, it seems, this commitment, is not a plus. Radical cleric Muhammad Abdullah Ahsan, for instance, recently proclaimed: "The rascals like Geert Wilders can't be stopped by mere condemnation. He must be handed over to Muslims for public execution to ensure world peace."
"It is no use threatening me, Muslims in Pakistan, Netherlands or anywhere else. Fatwas won't stop me.... Freedom is my ideology. And no one will stop me." — Geert Wilders, Twitter, April 15, 2022.
"An Imam who wants a politician dead is—however reprehensible—allowed to say so." — Geert Wilders, NIS News Bulletin. March 15, 2005.
Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe." — Geert Wilders, speech in the Dutch Parliament, September 6, 2007.
"There is no such thing as 'moderate Islam'. As Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said the other day, and I quote, 'There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it."' — Geert Wilders, speech in the Dutch Parliament, September 6, 2007.
"We must never give a free hand to those who want to subjugate us." — Geert Wilders, Middle East Online, May 31, 2011.
"'I feel that the more Islam that we get in our societies the less freedom we get.' He opened the press conference with a quote from George Orwell's preface to Animal Farm: 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear'". — Margaret Davis, quoting Geert Wilders, in The Independent, October 16, 2009.
The American version [of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth, the US Disinformation Governance Board] is to be headed by a supposed "expert" on disinformation, Nina Jankowicz, who already has a record of unexpertly dismissing Hunter Biden's easily verifiable laptop as a "Trump Campaign product;" supporting the notoriously false "Steele Dossier;" saying on National Public Radio: "I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms," and, while discussing "online abuse" against women, she actually recommended deploying the police...
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power.... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker." — Frederick Douglass, freed slave, December 9, 1860.
Freedom of speech in free nations should supersede imposing even more limitations on freedom.
As the powers that be continue clamping down on the free speech we all should cherish, we must recognize the value and strength that people like Wilders, and even those who burn flags, bring to the public square. We may or may not agree with their views, but should recognize that through their freedom of expression they enrich the debate and discourse. They make us stronger, not weaker.
Geert Wilders, a Dutch Member of Parliament, has dedicated his life to supporting freedom of speech and religious tolerance... What seems to have earned him these death threats is his unrelenting passion for freedom. Pictured: Wilders speaks to the media outside the Dutch Parliament on March 22, 2021. (Photo by Phil Nijhuis/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
Last month, a Dutch Member of Parliament, Geert Wilders -- the leader of the Party for Freedom, which is the largest opposition party in the Netherlands' Parliament -- received two fatwas. Fatwas, officially, are Islamic religious opinions; they sometimes contain calls, however, to kill whomever might be considered insufficiently supportive of Islam or its prophet, Mohammad.
Wilders has dedicated his life to supporting freedom of speech and religious tolerance, and pointing out problems in radical, violent Islamist extremism. Because of this, he has been the target of frequent death threats by Islamist leaders. There are many who appear to prefer religious conformity, restricted speech and often the death penalty for what they might consider blasphemy.
As for this author, born in the Netherlands, it was always a particular pleasure for many years, while serving as a member of the US Congress, to meet with political visitors from the Netherlands to the US. A special one, with whom I often met, is Wilders.
Another radical Islamist leader, Saad Hussain Rizvi Sahib, according to an online post, "issued a fatwa against the Arrogant [sic] Greet [sic] Wilders, to Kill [sic] him and he ordered Ummat-a-Muslima to spread this message to Muslims of Haaland and kill him as soon as possible."
In response to these latest threats, Wilders tweeted: "It is no use threatening me, Muslims in Pakistan, Netherlands or anywhere else. Fatwas won't stop me..... Freedom is my ideology. And no one will stop me."
After years of countless threats, Wilders, since 2004, has been forced to live with around-the-clock security, generously provided by the Dutch government. "It is a situation," he has said, "that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy". "I am in prison," he has said privately; "they are walking around free."
"An Imam," Wilders has noted, "who wants a politician dead is—however reprehensible—allowed to say so."
Wilders' first alleged "offense," in 2004, was to have been part of a team that created a ten-minute film, Submission, produced and directed by Theo van Gogh, to dramatize the abuse of Muslim women that sometimes takes place based on three Quranic suras: 4:34, 2:222 and 24:2.
Film critic Phill Hall wrote:
"'Submission' was bold in openly questioning misogyny and a culture of violence against women because of Koranic interpretations. The questions raised in the film deserve to be asked: is it divine will to assault or kill women? Is there holiness in holding women at substandard levels, denying them the right to free will and independent thought? And ultimately, how can such a mindframe exist in the 21st century?"
After Submission (the English for the word "Islam") was released, a 26 year old Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, Mohammad Bouyeri, murdered van Gogh by shooting him and slitting his throat. Bouyeri later told a Dutch court, "If I ever get free, I would do it again." Papers on a knife stuck in van Gogh's body warned that Wilders, among others, would be next. Since then, for 18 years, Wilders has had constantly to move from one safe house to another, unable to live in his own home or with the freedom to go out alone in public. His life, every minute, is in extreme danger.
Wilders, nonetheless, sees the personal sacrifice as the price to be paid to advocate for a free society and free speech, saying:
"[T]he point is, if you really speak out in favour of freedom, let alone if you use the freedom of speech. ... [a]nd why Islam (I'm not talking about the people, but the ideology of Islam) why they are not free. ... [y]ou either get fatwas as I got; you are taken to court by people who hate your guts. You are silenced in parliament...."
Free speech, he comments, is "absolute for the people who talk according to the wishes of the elite that are in charge. But if you diverge from that, it's very relative, it's non-existent."
Wilders is indeed extremely outspoken. To the Dutch Parliament, he said, "Islam, is the Trojan Horse in Europe, and, "there is no such thing as 'moderate Islam'. As Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said the other day, and I quote, 'There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it.'"
In New York, after the 9/11 attacks, he said, "We must never give a free hand to those who want to subjugate us."
In London, he said, "I feel that the more Islam that we get in our societies the less freedom we get [and quoting George Orwell]: 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear'".
Yet, despite years of death threats and a lifestyle no one would want, he remains a passionate advocate for free speech. This conviction -- aligned with America's First Amendment and dating back to our founding fathers, flies in the face of today's trends in the West where "cancel culture" runs rampant and people try to silence those with whom they disagree.
Here in the US, you were not allowed to talk freely about the very real possibility that the Covid virus, which has killed more than six million people worldwide, may have escaped from a Chinese laboratory; and you were blocked from making any statements about treatments for Covid that were not approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You also could not, in the middle of a national campaign for the presidency, talk about Hunter Biden's laptop computer, filled with potentially damaging evidence that voters might find useful as they assessed which candidate to vote for.
The most recent assault on freedom of speech in the US now comes from the Department of Homeland Security, which is armed: the Disinformation Governance Board. According to its website, it supposedly "protects free speech." The great American public, evidently sensing something awry, immediately renamed it "The Ministry of Truth" after the government's propaganda center in George Orwell's novel, 1984.
The American version is to be headed by a supposed "expert" on disinformation, Nina Jankowicz, who already has a record of unexpertly dismissing Hunter Biden's easily verifiable laptop as a "Trump Campaign product;" supporting the notoriously false "Steele Dossier;" saying on National Public Radio: "I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms," and, while discussing "online abuse" against women, she actually recommended deploying the police:
"We need to at least upskill police officers and local law enforcement to deal with these things and perhaps start some collaboration... Online, that just doesn't exist yet. So I'm hopeful for that architecture to come into play."
The historian Robert Spencer commented:
"'[D]isinformation' and 'hate' re entirely subjective categories, based on the point of view of the person who is doing the evaluating.... [and] who gets to decide what 'hate speech' is? Nina Jankowicz, apparently."
As the freed slave Frederick Douglass said in 1860:
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power.... Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money."
Who really believes that the rhetoric of Wilders -- or just about all of us, for that matter -- would ever pass the scrutiny of the new Orwellian-sounding federal Disinformation Governance Board? Certainly not those who embrace free speech. In my years in Congress there were frequent votes about flag desecration, well-intended attempts by colleagues to ban defiling the American flag. I love our flag as much as anyone can, but voted every time against making flag desecration a crime. Freedom of speech in free nations should supersede imposing even more limitations on freedom.
As Wilders receives still new fatwas, we would do well recognize the price that he and others have paid for expressing their points of view. As the powers that be continue clamping down on the free speech we all should cherish, we must recognize the value and strength that people like Wilders, and even those who burn flags, bring to the public square. We may or may not agree with their views, but should recognize that through their freedom of expression they enrich the debate and discourse. They make us stronger, not weaker.
Peter Hoekstra was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the second district of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Center for Security Policy Board of Advisors.
Recent Articles by Pete Hoekstra
Destroying American Democracy - An Inside Job, 2023-01-15
More Foreign Policy Confusion, 2023-01-08
America's 'Acute' Foreign Policy Disarray, 2022-10-26
The Need for Real Leadership: The Cost of Not Supporting Ukraine, 2022-10-16
Washington's Double Legal Standards, 2022-10-10
Hamish MacDonald • May 12, 2022 at 07:33
The article on Islam is timely, given recent comment by Joe Biden on the subject of multi-culture and recent debacle concerning the wall in the South of the U.S. built by Donald Trump administration. Ted Cruz's vocal disgust and criticism of this particularly with children and cruelty towards them seems to be ignored by Biden. Clearly Biden is adopting an attitude towards lowering the entry level to allow even more Muslims to enter the U.S.
Peter Hoektra is well placed to offer advice as former U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. Hopefully this debate will go one step further.
Geert Wilders is certainly a modern day hero on the subject of both Islam and free speech in the European union which sadly is pro-choice -which means it discourages family building, the vital necessity to lift the birthrate-not one European country has a birthrate of 2 or more, while Afghanistan (now with Taliban re-introducing head & face covering for women) has a birthrate of 4.0.
Small minded politicians, aided by small minded media, not to forget church also in need of an education, lower the effective reply so sorely needed to support Geert Wilders' views. The stats are all there.
A good idea of historical display of what Islam will do is also given by Dr Bill Warner, "why we are afraid". The terrorist is precisely that, brainwashed into terrorising and seducing youth into less than subtle ways of eliminating all opposition.
If Russian Kalashnikovs are used by Muslims to effectively destroy police in order to re-introduce Sharia law, in Spain, then its time to take a cold hard view of what comes next.
Wilders' reply to the inept politicians (the name Biden comes to mind), is a breath of fresh air.
ACT by Brigitte Gabriel powers on regardless, and America has hope at least with such folk.
But ultimately it will come down to the wire: Birthrate.
Think tanks are desperately needed (like Gatestone) to find ways of raising non-Muslim birthrate.
S Hamish MacDonald • May 13, 2022 at 09:23
Without saying it, the Supreme Court understands that women must not abort their babies. Islam is here in a big way and no one from that culture would ever abort a fetus. Among Jews and Christians, a husband and wife need 4 children to maintain the birthrate. The answer to sustaining the current culture is quickly becoming impossible.
af • May 11, 2022 at 11:43
There is no one else in the US or Western Europe who is fit to shine this man's shoes.
Raj • May 11, 2022 at 08:37
Sharia law has no place in a modern democratic society. It Is an affront and incursion upon liberal principles. Slavery is the highest form of savagery, should we be reduced to living a life with the threat and constant fear of offending those who wish to enslave us? No! For this is an aberration against the sanctity of human life that set's us apart from the animals. God is not interested in sheep, no more than sheep are interested in God!
Morris Givner • May 11, 2022 at 08:29
The Gatestone Institute is one of the very few publications in the world that believe in freedom of the press and freedom of expression. In Canada, the mainstream publications and the electronic media do not accept and do not report any opinion or news item that is not mainstream in thinking. The Canadian media cater to their advertisers and refuse to publish any news or opinion that might offend any religious or ethnic group. In reporting war news, the Canadian media cherry pick the news items to report so that readers and listeners will follow and support the policies of the federal government in power. Canada's human rights commissions are publicly funded and penalize those who want to criticize the behaviour or actions of a particular ethnic or religious group. Critics have to fund their own lawyers whereas the supporters of a particular religion or ethnic group get a free ride from the publicly funded human rights commission. This reality suppresses freedom of speech and expression in Canada. Another consequence of this policy,one has no outlet to criticize war policies generally and war itself particularly. On Remembrance Day, war is glorified but the true costs of war in deaths and injuries or the profiteers of war are never mentioned in the media.
Hamish MacDonald Morris Givner • May 12, 2022 at 07:36
If it wasn't for the Canadian mainstream media fabricating a huge lie about the levels of cod in the cod industry, the cod might have survived - unlike Norway which took precautions to keep cod levels at a reasonable level.
cammo99 • May 11, 2022 at 06:29
The Europeans should follow Obama-Biden example and go along with the notion any criticism of Islam or a Muslim is Islamophobia, then they could pretend these attacks have nothing to do with Islam and can blame the evil influences of capitalism and nations with greater freedoms and secularism (On a narrow band width defined by party loyalty.) for all of it.
Bikinis not Burkas cammo99 • May 12, 2022 at 03:21
Well said, young fellow!
Jeff Page • May 11, 2022 at 06:08
No one will ever shut me up and any number of "fatwas" issued against me will make any difference, I will never bow to Islamic pressure or be subjugated in any way by Muslims. Here in Europe many millions of Muslims were welcomed (Merkel in particular has messed up Europe) they were helped to settle into their new homes in Europe at taxpayer expense. But all over Europe, the biggest mistake was putting the migrants all in one area. Integration never happened, the laws and cultural practices and attitudes towards women were never made clear to Muslims. As a result, this was the cause of confusion and many females were sexually attacked, some on the streets of towns and cities. Grooming gangs where men of the Islamic faith target girls as young as 11 sprang up all over the place in Europe.
The population would, according to their leaders, have to accept this happening. Which suited the Muslims as they simply carried on knowing that police and other authorities were in effect giving them a free pass to do so! Geert Wilders and many more like him alerted us all to what was happening and to the fact that governments across Europe refused to put an end to the barbaric practices. Western leaders have all been complicit in clamping down on any person or organisation that mentions anything bad about Islam. They are terrified, but at the same time really don't care about the underlying intent of Islam to gain domination over those who opened their arms and welcomed them. Western politicians are dimwits and don't deserve to be in high office, collectively they are condemning us all to live in an Islamist-controlled hell hole if they don't buck their ideas up!!!
What constitutes an attack on Islam according to the Imams? They oppose even the suggestion non-Muslims would pray on the Temple Mount or even appear to be praying. Is it naivety or are they following what is considered abusive religious practices, because I know in the USA we have a similar problem where a coach took a knee at the 50 yd line not to protest racism and black deaths but to pray. And of all the airlines, Lufthansa took people off their flight who "looked" Jewish or had Jewish names. Is that racial profiling when their appearance is dictated by religious beliefs? For over a century, the Temple Mount has been the scene of mob violence emanating outwards on the mere suggestion and most often lies of the Mosque being defiled. Did someone not Muslim pray there?
Jeff Page cammo99 • May 12, 2022 at 04:32
cammo99, you have to remember that Lufthansa is a German airline. Need I say more after Merkel was opening up Europe to millions of Muslim migrants?


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Who is my neighbour?
St Monica's parish church in Flixton, Greater Manchester, who have been sponsoring a Syrian refugee family for almost a year, were featured on BBC Radio 2's programme Who is My Neighbour?
The Rev Kate is invited into the home of a refugee family who tell her how they had to flee Syria when the civil war started. After four years in a refugee camp in Lebanon, Samir and his young family were eventually granted permission to settle in the UK last year. The church community that helped Samir and his family tell Kate why they believe that neighbourly values extend to those in other parts of the world too.
You can listen to the interview here (about 51 minutes in).
Image Credit: BBC Radio 2. (Image from iplayer)


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The Music Man takes the spotlight
Senior Aaron Terhune, playing the role of Harold Hill, offers to give music lessons to Winthrop Paroo, played by IMS student Bobby Lewis (right). Terhune is talking directly to junior Erin Klubek, playing Mrs. Paroo.
Jonathan Rodewald
Filed under Entertainment
The Iola High School theater cast and crew will be presenting "The Music Man" on Thursday, April 6, and Friday, April 7, at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. The show begins at 7:00 p.m. both nights and general admission costs $5. USD 257 students are free.
"The hardest part about the show has been everyone memorizing their lines," senior Aaron Terhune, playing lead role of Harold Hill, says. "The kids will really love the singing and dancing in the show."
Tags: Bowlus Fine Arts Center, Iola High School, Klubek, Lewis, Terhune, The Music Man, USD 257


Showing autospores. Collected by Jo Wilbraham, Thursley Common, Kent, UK. 15 Nov 2017. © C.F.Carter(chris.carter'at'6cvw.freeuk.com.
Glen Lethnot, Angus, Scotland. In Sphagnum.. 26 Aug 2009. © C.F.Carter(chris.carter@6cvw.freeuk.com).
Published in: [Wittrock, V.B. & Nordstedt, C.F.O.] (1879). Literatur-öfversigt [Literature review]. Algae aquae dulcis exsiccatae praecipue Scandinavicae quas adjectis algis marinis chlorophyllaceis et phycochromaceis.... Botaniska Notiser 1879(1): 20-27.
The type species (holotype) of the genus Oocystis is Oocystis naegelii A.Braun.
Adjective (Latin), alone, by itself, solitary (Stearn 1973).
Type locality: Sweden: Källstorp (Silva 1996-to date).
Stenclová, L., Fucíková, K., Kastovsky, J. & Pazoutová, M. (2017). Molecular and morphological delimitation and generic classification of the family Oocystaceae (Trebouxiophyceae, Chlorophyta). Journal of Phycology 53(6): 1263-1282.
Ramos, G.J.P., Bicudo, C.E. de M. & Moura, C.W. do N. (2015). Trebouxiophyceae (Chlorophyta) from Marimbus Wetlands, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil. Iheringia Série Botanica 70(1): 57-72.
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Home Airline News Etihad Airways takes up option on two freighters
Etihad Airways takes up option on two freighters
james.graham@azurainternational.com
Etihad Airways announced yesterday at the Dubai Air Show 2015 it will take delivery of two Boeing 777 Freighter aircraft.
The decision to exercise the option on the freighter conversions, which were part of the carrier's $67 billion mixed fleet order for 199 aircraft in 2013, was unveiled on the opening day of the event.
The additional aircraft, valued at $637 million at list prices, are due for delivery next year. They will be part of Etihad Cargo, the airline's freighter arm, which currently operates three Boeing 777Fs, three Boeing 747 Freighters and four Airbus A330 Freighters.
Etihad Cargo serves 11 freighter destinations worldwide from its Abu Dhabi hub and has bellyhold capacity on Etihad Airways' fleet of 109 passenger aircraft.
Etihad Airways president and chief executive officer (CEO), James Hogan, says: "Etihad Airways is delighted to exercise options for two freighters that will join our fleet next year, demonstrating our confidence and commitment to our partners at Boeing and to the global freight market.
"As we continue growing our freighter fleet and network, together with our partners we are able to provide a comprehensive, extensive and compelling global offering for the benefit of our customers."
"We value our partnership with Etihad Airways and are honoured they continue to place their trust in our products," says Ray Conner, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
"The Boeing 777 Freighter, the world's longest twin-engine freighter, continues to have unmatched efficiency which translates into significant savings for our customers."
Etihad Cargo is an integral part of Etihad Airways' business worth over $1 billion last year with 568,000 tonnes of freight carried, up 17 per cent on 2013.
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Q: NB-IoT signal quality query (operator independent) I'm currently developing an NB-IoT application using Quectel's BC66, however, I'm still trying to decide what operator to use.
After a successful connection, I can use the command AT+CSQ or AT+CESQ to find signal quality.
But all this is assuming I have an operator X SIM card.
After the NPSS/NSSS block up to the PDNConnectionRequest, we have at least 9 transactions between the UE and eNB according to this.
During all these transactions, an operator is still not decided, is it possible to check signal quality at this stage? The alternative would be to have 3 SIM cards and test the connection with each one, one at a time. (We have 3 operators with NB-IoT service available)
I've been searching for this everywhere with no results yet...

A: After asking Quectel, found out this is not possible.
To check signal quality you need a valid connection with the operator.
Either we have a SIM card from each operator and check signal quality using those or we need a SIM card that supports multi-operator (didn't even knew those existed)

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