And speaking of The Grand Inquisitor (which I often do) – note what’s been happening in Seattle and LA
What is the Seattle City Council contemplating these days? This:
In October, the Seattle City Council floated legislation to provide an exemption from prosecution for misdemeanor crimes for any citizen who suffers from poverty, homelessness, addiction, or mental illness. Under the proposed ordinance, courts would have to dismiss all so-called “crimes of poverty”—which, according to the city’s former public-safety advisor, would cover more than 90 percent of all misdemeanor cases citywide. In effect, the legislation would create a new class of “untouchables,” protected from consequences by the city’s powerbrokers.
This is the latest and most brazen effort in the city’s campaign to establish what might be called a “reverse hierarchy of oppression.” The underlying theory is that society has condemned the lower class to a life of poverty and stigma, which leads to addiction, madness, and indigence. The poor, in the logic of Seattle’s progressive elites, are thus forced to commit crimes—including violent crimes—to secure their very existence. Therefore, as society is the perpetrator of this inequality, the crimes of the poor must be forgiven. The crimes are transformed into an expression of social justice.
It hasn’t passed – yet. But it’s emblematic of the type of thinking that’s become standard from the leftists who run deep blue cities such as Seattle and who are trying to run the country.
Los Angeles’ new DA George Gascon seems to be aiming for something similar. Take a look, and pay special attention to the section headed “Misdemeanor Case Management.” It’s the opposite of the “broken windows” concept, on steroids.
Although these policies constitute a big change, the concept is not exactly new, however. It’s old.
Recently I happen to have been reading the excerpt from Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” in this old post of mine, and I came across the following (to refresh your memory, the speaker here is Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, who in the novel The Brothers Karamazov is addressing Jesus, who has returned to earth):
Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee–a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel…
…It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name.
That was published in 1879-1880. And Rudyard Kipling wrote this in 1919, after the First World War:
…And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Daniel Greenfield accurately describes the ghastly Gascon (at Frontpage) as “the pro-crime DA of George Soros.” Aside from all his countless misdeeds in the financial markets over the years, and his granting massive amounts to BLM and other such radicals over the last several years, Soros has succeeded in numerous cities all across the nation (from SF to Philly) in placing irresponsible and extremist leftists in charge of not enforcing the law to the detriment of the local citizens.
Who will be the next Durkan of Seattle? I’m pretty sure they will find someone worse to “serve” the inhabitants; inhabitants need not be citizens nor necessarily residents.
There is a very interesting old SF story, which is sort of an intergalactic take on ‘The Grand Inquisitor.’ The protagonist is an Knight Inquisitor, whose mission is to travel to various planets and stamp out outbreaks of heresy.
The story is online here:
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-way-of-cross-and-dragon/
The author is George RR Martin, better known for Hunger Games and such.
Who will be the next Durkan of Seattle?
om: I’m still wondering who will be the next Duke of Earl…
________________________________
And when I hold you
You’ll be my Duchess
Duchess of Earl
We’ll walk through my Duke-dom
And a paradise we will share
Yes, a-I, oh, I’m gonna love you
Oh, oh, nothing can stop me, now
Cause I’m The Duke of Earl
So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
–Gene Chandler, “The Duke of Earl
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Uht69h8Is
Neo writes:
“In October, the Seattle City Council floated legislation to provide an exemption from prosecution for misdemeanor crimes for any citizen who suffers from poverty, homelessness, addiction, or mental illness.”
On the face of it, everyone who lives in Seattle qualifies for exemption from poverty. I mean, who but the mentally ill would live in Seattle any more? Ipso facto.
I always had trouble with “The Grand Inquisitor” when it came to the bread. I have my problems with Gandhi too, but I can’t get past his quote:
______________________________________
…how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day. To them God can only appear as bread and butter.
–https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/01/29/hungry/
I lived in a suburb of Seattle for about 20 years.
You will be hard pressed to find anywhere on earth folks that are as naive, and yes, politically stupid; they literally live (in their heads) in a self made, goody-goody, fantasy world where everybody is inherently good and all bad things are independent of ones personal decisions. Where “bad” people are coerced to engage in criminal activity because of societal inequities.
They embrace without question every left wing shibboleth you can imagine and even those you can’t.
As an example, an acquaintance of mine , who lives in a Seattle suburb , told me that the BLM “occupation” of the Capitol Hill area (CHOP or CHAZ) was peaceful and orderly until it was hijacked by ANTIFA. She actually believed this crap; the magnitude of her stupidity and naivete is beyond any ability I have to describe
In the Fremont District of Seattle, their stands a statue of Lenin; it has been there many years and there is no fear that it will be destroyed by any demonstrators.
Of course, the hundreds of thousands (millions? ) that died as a result of Lenin’s policies matters not at all.
If Mayor Durkan chooses not to run for mayor again, you can bet the next mayor will be even further left than she.
There has been some effort, albeit never getting past the talking stage, that those counties of Eastern Washington (i.e., east of the Cascade Mountains) should “secede” from Washington State and form a new state (ditto for Eastern Oregon). The eastern counties of Wa. and Or. are fairly conservative.
The population concentration west of the Cascades (e,g. Seattle, Olympia, Everett, Bellingham, ) is such that the leftists there basically set the policy for the entire state.
This is similar to the situation in the states of NY , ILL., Pa, etc, in which the densely populated cities – all hard core leftist – exert an inordinate influence upon state policies (as well as national elections).
I guess you would have to ask the Mayflower passengers who survived the first winter that question. But maybe they had more on their minds than just “God” per se. Maybe freedom was part of it.
Now, if people have freedom, and the right to own, use, and keep property, and still find themselves preoccupied with “bread”, then there is probably no cure for them, nor any acceptable solution regarding the inhabiting of a shared political political space.
Speaking of “hunger”, I have seen billboards appealing for donations to fight hunger in the United States. Yet: ” In all, more than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese” , to quote the first thing that pops up on Google.
Even “67.4” % of those 400% under the poverty level, are overweight or obese.
An unsatisfied appetite for bread, is not the problem of the client class. It is a lack of appetite for something quite different.
I have a 1st degree relation in Seattle. Her reaction to events this summer was perfectly feckless. She owns a house there. I’m sorry she didn’t sell it last year.
Again, George Soros couldn’t buy DAs if you didn’t have mediaswine covering for his minions and voters with a cud chewing indifference to anything going on outside their own skins. It’s just indicative of decadence.
DNW: Are you under the impression that there are no hungry and starving people in the world?
I remember reading an article from England, where a rural resident had been burglarized as well as had home invasions where he gad been home and assaulted. His calls to the police meant a 30 minute to an hour response.
The police knew who had committed the lawlessness, but declined arrest or prosecution due to their ages and minimized the offenses.
One day, the homeowner used a shotgun during an invasion and one young man was killed. The homeowner was charged with murder and was probably convicted.
Of course, the prosecutor said he shouldn’t have taken the law into his own hands. But the police and prosecutor never used the law to begin with so the criminals became more brazen in their acts.
The man who died, his family cried about what a good son he was, never hurt a soul, didn’t deserve to die and the homeowner was the one at fault in the whole situation.
When the people feel they are not protected, they will take it upon themselves to protect their lives, families and property. Anarchy will not be tolerated for long.
It is a loss of belief in God period. I am reading right now “The Death of God” by A N Wilson how in the 18th century the Intellectual class lost their faith. I am about 1/3 of the way through it. Essentially religion replaced belief and had no defense against Kant, Hegel and Marx. And Victorian factories were indeed hell holes which lead to the Chartist movement.
But man is made of three parts spirit, soul and body. Science can only answer or satisfy the latter two and man needs his spiritual needs met. Freud’s and Jung’s super ego doesn’t do the trick.
As C K Chesterson said “If you don’t believe something, you will believe in anything.”
So with the French Revolution onward starting with Robespierre “Cult of the Supreme Being”, to prophet Marx, to Lenin worship, Stalin worship, Hitler worship, Mussolini adoration, Mao worship, Ho Ching Ming deification and Kim family deity pantheon, atheists without belief in an absolute God that they will have to answer to put their faith into something. Now the Western culture has Gaia worship as it’s higher being. It is all so predictable.
C S Lewis “Screwtape Letters” is a good analysis of the faithless man along with “Mere Christianity”. He is one of the best apologists for Christianity there is. If you want to see a world without Christianity just look to North Korea. The HBO series “Rome” does a mild depiction of the world before Jesus. I cast those worlds aside and will fight to maintain this one.
huxley:
50% of the Pilgrims did not survive the first winter yet they appeared to have kept faith. People do that sometimes.
DNW, om: I know about the Pilgrims. However, presumably they were reasonably well-fed until they took a chance on the New World and had a bad first year of it. (Some of which they brought upon themselves by attempting communal economics, as I recall the story.)
But the hunger, suffering and starvation Gandhi was observing strikes me as another ball game. If the Pilgrims had been through generations of such hunger, they might have been waiting for God to appear in the form of bread and butter too.
It will most definitely be worse for Seattle without Durkan. She qualifies as moderate in Seattle. Teresa Mosquida will be way way worse if elected. Amazon will be gone in a couple years and that will be a massive hole in revenue and leave a staggering amount of empty commercial real estate.
High tech Detroit.
I am under the impression that the billboards were advertising for donations for fellow hungry Americans, that could not have been straightforward appeals based on the implied premises.
DNW:
However, I was quoting Gandhi, who was not driving past 21st C American billboards. I was confused that you shifted the discussion to obese people.
huxley:
Sorry but the Pilgrims didn’t take that path, not even to the point of making a golden cow from butter. Is that Wisconsin or Minnesota state fair tradition? 🙂
huxley, please do not burden us with the consequences of the sick, sorry results of the caste system of India, entirely self-imposed and justified by a strange form of faith. It is fading only very slowly.
A true story: an early British governor-general of India banned the burning of funeral floats of dead men on the Ganges, their living wives involuntarily burned with them. When Hindu overlords complained this was their custom, he replied that he would honor their custom, as they must then honor the British custom: death by hanging for murder of these women.
The custom ceased forthwith.
Cicero:
I know that story too. Please spare me any further advice.
huxley:
Gandhi favored Adolph too, so spare us the Saint Mahatma?
Cicero:
I still admire Gandhi in some ways; just as I admire Christians in some ways.
_________________________________________________
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
–Romans 3:23
_________________________________________________
I’ll post as I please. If you don’t like what I write, don’t read what I write.
If you don’t want people to respond to what you write, don’t write? Sensitive much?
Sorry, huxley, but we have a two-way street here, your self-righteousness notwithstanding. I will read and comment with the liberty Neo has provided us all.
I am so very pleased that you still “admire Christians in some ways”. What about Christianity itself?
Ghandi was great, a great con man, admired Adolf, and was OK with the death of millions of fellow Indians as a result of their partition migrations, but refused to kill any insect. Admire him as you please.
Here are some lovely quotes about Christ from Neem Karoli Baba, whom some of you may recall as Ram Dass’s guru from “Be Here Now”:
_________________________________________________
[Christ] was one with all beings and He had great love for
all in the world. He was one with God.
You must accept the teachings of Christ and follow them.
Christ said to be like a little child–never think or speak
anything that could harm anyone.
He was crucified so that His spirit could spread throughout
the world. He sacrificed His body for the Dharma. He never
died, He never died. He is Atman [the soul], living in the
hearts of all.
–Ram Dass, “Miracle of Love” p. 353
_________________________________________________
Neem Karoli Baba was a remarkable Hindu saint who died in 1973. His teachings helped hold the door open for me to Christianity.
There are no saints designated as such in Hinduism to my knowledge, but here is something from Wiki on Neem Karoli Baba:
“Steve Jobs, along with his friend Dan Kottke, traveled to India in April 1974 to study Hinduism and Indian spirituality; they planned also to meet Neem Karoli Baba, but arrived to find the guru had died the previous September. Hollywood actress Julia Roberts was also influenced by Neem Karoli Baba. A picture of him drew Roberts to Hinduism. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of facebook, influenced by Steve Jobs, visited Neem Karoli Baba’s (Maharajji) ashram in Kainchi. Larry Brilliant took Google’s Larry Page and Jeffrey Skoll, co-founder of eBay, on the pilgrimage.”
So you are in fine company.
Hi Huxley. You mentioned that with regard to the give us bread rather than liberty quote, that you had always had a [ apparently generalized] problem with the phrase. You then quoted Gandhi as a kind of rejoinder to the text Neo had presented from Grand Inquisitor.
Fair enough.
I then in response to the general thrust of your observation, but while remaining within the American context in which Neo framed its application, remarked first upon the Pilgrims, and then upon the irony of billboards soliciting donations to fight hunger among Americans in this land of the obese.
In recently past years, though not this one yet, I have seen the same appeal claiming that some ridiculous number i.e., 15% or 25% of American children go to bed hungry every night. Unless they are referring to the child’s uncontrollable craving for chocolate bars, or more likely implying that their fat drug addled parents are starving them deliberately or negligently, this is impossible.
And if they are being starved by their own parent’s negligence or indifference, the problem is not the unavailability of food sources for these households, but the goddamned malevolent miscreants who theoretically head them.
“…how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day. To them God can only appear as bread and butter.”
I’ve been on numerous mission trips to poor regions in Central and South American and have had the opportunity to meet and talk to lots of people who have had to “go without two meals a day.” I can assure you that many of them have a faith in God that myself and most other Christians in this country could never match.
om – I know for a fact that the butter cow is an Ohio State Fair staple.
The Grand Inquisitor certainly saw what was going to happen to churches (and I think the dynamic in liberal synagogues has been similar).
DNW,
I have searched for a definition of “client classes,” but cannot find one that fits your use (they all concern electronics). I think I’ve heard the term before used in a similar manner as you do in your comment, but I’m not sure what it means and am hoping to expand my vocabulary. Is it from a particular literary work? The way you use it I assume it refers to people receiving government payments?
DMW, Cicero: I am not the subject here. There’s an online maxim which applies:
Address the comment, not the commenter.
I also live in a (far northern) suburb of Seattle.
To put some numbers on John Tyler’s lament: It used to be said that you could see the votes to carry the state from the top of the Space Needle. That’s only minor hyperbole…the three big counties of the metro area (King, Pierce, Snohomish) had 52% of the statewide vote in 2020. Add Kitsap and Thurston (as logical extensions of the metro area) and you’re up to 60%. Poor Garfield County (in SE Washington…0.04% of statewide vote) doesn’t stand much chance.
Seattle has always been left, but pre-2000 was sane. What changed (outside of the national trend)? High tech importing workers from places like CA, and immigration. 16% of King County (and I suspect higher in Seattle proper) are foreign born. “Dissolving the people and electing another” indeed.
Rufus T. Firefly on December 8, 2020 at 7:56 pm said:
The history of the late Roman Republic … the paid followers, flunkies and economic dependents of powerful Senators and politicians were called clients.
Geez, Huxley.
You were addressing me, so I addressed you back.
I don’t believe I was making you the issue. You wondered why I referenced fat Americans, and I explained it to you.
No reason to be annoyed.
Rufus,
Possibly this work : https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/history-of-rome_michael-grant/396527/item/1974087/?
I made the term “client class” up out of the term for relatively servile clients in the Roman sense, and a term from categorical logic.
It seemed apt. No doubt others in the last couple of decades have invented it independently.
“Organisms of the left” though, I take full blame for; as I do the appellations “morally deconstructed appetite entities”, and “the behaviorally incontinent”, all of which have proved irritating to more temperate commenters, I am sorry to say. LOL
I tracked down the article containing the Gandhi quote. He was visiting England and addressing an English audience about strikes. The article is long. Here is the relevant portion with I hope enough of the context:
_____________________________________________
You have three million unemployed, but we have nearly three hunched million unemployed for half the year. Your average unemployment dole is 70 shillings. Our average income is 7 shillings and six pence a month. That operative was right in saying that he was failing in his own estimation.
I do believe it is a debasing thing for a human being to remain idle and to live on doles. Whilst conducting a strike I would not brook the strikers remaining idle for a single day and got them to break the stones or carry sand and work in public streets asking my own co-workers to join them in that work.
Imagine, therefore, what a calamity it must be to have 300 million unemployed, several millions becoming degraded everyday for want of employment, devoid of self respect, devoid of faith in God. I dare not take before them the message of God. I may as well place before the dog over there the message of God as before those hungry millions who have no lustre in their eyes and whose only God is their bread.
I can take before them a message of God only by taking the message of sacred work before them. It is good enough to talk of God whilst we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to a nicer luncheon, but how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day.
To them God can only appear as bread and butter. Well, the peasants of India were getting their bread from their soil. I offered them the spinning wheel in order that they may get butter, and if I appear to-day before the British public in my loin–cloth it is because I have come as the sole representative of those half-starved, half-naked dumb millions.
We have prayed that we may bask in the presence of God’s sunshine. I tell you it is impossible to do so whilst millions are knocking at your door. Even in your misery you are comparatively happy. I do not grudge that happiness.
–M. Gandhi (1931)
It seems to me Gandhi is addressing those who are well-fed, concerning the plight of those far less fortunate and hungry.
He is not saying it is impossible to have faith without bread, but to consider the needs of those who don’t have faith or bread.
Christ offered spiritual nourishment, but he had much to say, nonetheless, about feeding the hungry with physical food. The following well-known passage from James has a similar message IMO to Gandhi’s:
___________________________________________________
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
–James 2:14-18
Two posts I’ve written on Gandhi can be found here and here.
With all due respect to Dostoevsky, I’m confident that in a actual debate between the ‘Grand Inquisitor’ and Jesus, the Christ would leave the Grand Inquisitor speechless. Just as he did the Pharisees and Sanhedrin. Satan is not going to win a debate with a living God, which BTW… Jesus ‘returning’ would confirm.
Of course, Dostoevsky is opining about mankind’s fallen nature. Being typically Russian, he views the glass as half empty and fails to give equal weight to it also being half full.
If mankind’s nature consisted solely or even mostly of a willingness to trade its soul for bread, civilization which rests upon cooperation could never have arisen, much less repeatedly done so. Christianity could never have spread across the world. The Declaration never have been written. Nor millions of men have been willing to die so that liberty’s flame would not be put out.
WWII demonstrated that there is no depravity too low to which humanity cannot sink.
Yet millions have also demonstrated Christ’s dictum; “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”.
That is the primary motivation for soldiers who find themselves in combat and, good cops live that truth every day.
Humanity’s ‘glass’ is both half empty and half full.
Regarding clients during the Roman period it is prevalent throughout society even today. If you look at the BBC “Poldark” series they treat that subject quite well during the Georgian period. The novels are better. “Belgravia” is also another good example.
Note how when there is a change in leadership in Ottoman times there would be a wholesale clearing of the Viziers and Harems. It was a tactic for an Ottoman to kill any male relationship so a challenge to his rule will not arise. The spoils system in the U.S. up until the Civil Service act. Watch the Daniel Day Lewis film “Lincoln” to get a visual impact. Jackson cleaned out the government when he took over. I wish Trump could do the same. He attempt at the Schedule F is a good start.
Regarding Gandhi he was a weird duck. He slept nude with young girls but didn’t engage in sexual congress. He was very involved with his and others body functions. Quite a contrast with the movie hagiology in “Gandhi”. I read it in the book “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and is struggle with India” Joseph Lelyveld 2011.
Great Britain over several centuries gave a great deal to India, culturally, economically, educationally and politically, but the Indians then and only until recently were stuck rigidly in the caste system with no way up and out. It was a huge social pyramid, with Untouchables in their many millions stuck in the lowest caste, living off what we would consider inedible garbage, but still making babies. Early malnutrition causes lower IQs, perpetuating the lowest caste.
The Brahmins, at the top, were the John Kerry – Michael Bloomberg caste. There was no noblesse oblige, no sharing, no care for the common man. Hinduism is the perpetual recycling of souls: one life as a cow, next life as a June Bug, etc., etc.
Ghandi, speaking to Brits in the Depression in 1931, chastising them for being well-fed, concludes as huxley quotes, “Even in your misery you are comparatively happy. I do not grudge that happiness.” That last line is, in my eyes, a patent lie.
How were the relative handful of Brits to help feed the starving multi-millions of India whose social structure held them in deprivation?
Recall that India was an ardently socialist country for decades after independence, and has only turned the corner in the last 20 years, albeit slowly.
And while we are on Ghandi, it is well to remember that his thought on European Jews was to go quietly to their Nazi-ordered deaths without resistance. From the Times of Israel, “His position on Jews has been characterized as passivity bordering on cowardice; when asked what the Jews should do when they were taken to concentration camps, he said they should go willingly”.
I live in Thurston County, Washington. That’s Olympia and environs…about 60 miles south of Seattle and 30 miles south of Tacoma. I know both Seattle and Tacoma quite well
I’ll echo everything JohnTyler and Soviet said. Over my adult life, I have lived in seven cities in five different states: every single one was majority Democrat. Yet none had a populace as naive and childishly idealistic as Seattle. When I first heard about CHAZ/CHOP, my initial reaction was “that took longer than I expected.”
I have only lived here for seven years, but my wife is native born and raised (albeit with a seven year hiatus in NYC). She often talks about how dramatically Seattle and the Eastside have changed since the tech boom. As Soviet said, before around the turn of the century, Seattle was liberal, but sane. Leftists and cranks certainly existed, but they were largely confined to Cap Hill. Today, the city is an exemplar of a left-wing dream, akin to San Francisco, but with more rain: an ever growing population of nouveau riche techies obsessed with trendy values and radical chic, a shrinking middle class, and an exploding homeless population. The Eastside suburbs, once only slightly left leaning, are home to a growing number of highly skilled foreign born immigrants (again, often in tech), and mostly left leaning. Boeing still is a major presence, lending a more blue collar vibe to the south suburbs.
Pierce County is much more balanced, at least for now. Tacoma is pretty Democrat, but not as lopsided as Seattle, and much more realistic and moderate (my wife often says Tacoma today is like Seattle in the 80s). The rest of the county has many pockets of conservatism (Gig Harbor and Puyallup in particular) and the strong military presence from Lewis-McChord adds to the political diversity. Pierce County has a Republican chief executive and had a great sheriff until he retired three months ago.
The military presence spills over into Thurston County, in particular Lacey. But Olympia is filled with unionized state workers, aging hippies, young hippies, a massive homeless population, and Evergreen State College. Need I say more?
I am Spartacus:
Yep. Gandhi was a complicated fellow. And it’s no trouble to enumerate a list of complicated Christians too.
Complicated? Any man who advised that Jews go willingly to the ovens was not a ‘complicated’ man. But a man who had lost his moral compass. The very first inalienable right is the right to life. As absent life, there are no rights. For Ghandi to then agitate for Indian self-determination, while implying that Jews had no right to life is hypocrisy of the highest order. Antisemitism is the most likely motivation for such an obvious hypocrisy.
That Dostoevsky quote is amazing!
I really need to read that book (short story? story within a book?)!
Seattle, Portland, Baltimore et al are proofs in the making of Robert Heinlein’s observation; “Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Whether through skyrocketing crime, jihadist violence, communist purges or vigilante justice… rejection of reality will eventually extract its price.
DNW,
Thanks for the explanation!
GB, do you have a link or reference to the various Heinlein quotes you provide? While I read his SF as a boy, I was not astute enough to pull any particular social commentary out of it beyond good fictional stories. Thus I have never explored his more direct and candid social and political commentary (beyond what you have supplied at Neo’s blog).
Possibly related: some time back I saw an adage along the lines of “don’t say or act in ways purposefully intended to offend; and in turn don’t be overly sensitive to being offended”. For some reason I thought that also came from Heinlein but my attempts to find the original quotation and its author proved fruitless. Does that perchance also ring a bell with you?
Gandhi recognized that civil disobedience would only work in a ANGLO Western society with a strong Christian ethos. And I stress the Anglo part. He played that to the max and it worked. There is a short story about India trying civil disobedience if there was a Nazi takeover and it didn’t end well (The Last Article – Harry Turtledove). When I lived in Poland there were many plaques commemorating how many Poles were selected and shot when a German was killed by the resistance. You can say the same with the communists too. From Katyn forest, gulags, Cultural Revolution and the killing fields of Cambodia. Lenin was a huge proponent of terror as a weapon and never recanted of that. It is not a bug of communism but a feature.
The followers of the various and sundry “isms” of the 20th and 21st centuries have no use for Christianity or Judeo/Christian moral restraints. As you noted Gandhi was fortunate to fight for the independence of India with Great Britain as his foe and not Imperial Japan. India had a whole army of useful idiots that fought with the Japanese against Great Britain IIRC.
Re SCOTUS-Texas Equal Protection case, 13 states plus TX have now signed on. Up to 14, now.
SOURCE tweet via Tracy Beanz, uncoverdc.com
For I Am Spartacus:
I have heard those same stories first-hand from my desi in-laws whose families go back to their very beginnings in India, generation upon generation. Real cultural appropriation is reducing multiple and entire complex cultures to a few cherry picked quotes and phrases that sound good, and if they are out of original context, all the better. Your average white progressive positively EXCELS at this. It’s what the original American gurus did in the 1960s, even.
Suffice it to say, people that actually lived through Ghandi and partitioning have pretty mixed feelings about him, particularly with underage girls (rape and incest are still cultural problems over there of some significance) they have not deified him like we in the West, at least not those old enough to remember, and their kids don’t learn history anymore, either.
Gandhi’s comments in the 1930s would lead one to think that India’s problems and poverty were the direct result of British rule, and that self-rule would solve the problems. That wasn’t generally true, of course. I noted when I lived in India that really old temples were only found in South India, where the Mughal rule had not demolished them all. The British, with all their flaws, were better masters than the Mughals. At a dinner one time I had a conversation with a high-caste woman. She said, “The British raped us,” but then pointed out, of her own volition, that without the British, India would never have become a country.
Indian leadership, post-independence, was dominated by British-educated socialists. This did little to improve the lot of India’s huge poor population. Like the British, the BJP has its flaws, but it has made some progress against the grinding poverty.
I’m nuts. Therefore, hand it over.
I rabidus. Unde super illud tradere,
The Californication of America is in full coup d’etat mode.
Unfortunately, the suspension or lack of legitimate policing leads to vigilantism. Street gang justice and prison gangs are good examples. How long until some people begin handing out justice on their own? Will we see people who commit “misdemeanors” hanging or gunned down. That will be a disaster.
They’re also trying the same BS in Texas.
“In Texas, State Representative Terry Meza (D-Irving) has introduced HB196. Her bill would repeal the state’s “castle doctrine.” This doctrine allows a homeowner to use deadly force against an armed intruder who breaks into his home.
Now listen to what she has to say…
“I’m not saying that stealing is okay,” Meza explained. “All I’m saying is that it doesn’t warrant a death penalty. Thieves only carry weapons for self-protection and to provide the householder an incentive to cooperate. They just want to get their loot and get away. When the resident tries to resist is when people get hurt. If only one side is armed fewer people will be killed.”
Meza was quick to reassure that her bill “would not totally prevent homeowners from defending themselves.
Under the new law the homeowner’s obligation is to flee the home at the first sign of intrusion. If fleeing is not possible he must cooperate with the intruder. But if violence breaks out it is the homeowner’s responsibility to make sure no one gets hurt. The best way to achieve this is to use the minimum non-lethal force possible because intruders will be able to sue for any injuries they receive at the hands of the homeowner.”
“In most instances the thief needs the money more than the homeowner does,” Meza reasoned. “The homeowner’s insurance we reimburse his losses. On balance, the transfer of property is likely to lead to a more equitable distribution of wealth. If my bill can help make this transfer a peaceful one so much the better.”
https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB196/2021?fbclid=IwAR0KbtQkn-g7x0YQzA3UJmj62DjKf9EaC9X5NcH51ip-LF_Gv0lGalI6qfE
Maybe Terry Meza can expand her legal mind to cover rape as well. It is, after all, just the redistribution of precious bodily fluids or something.
All Commies Are Bastards.
John,
Is that really, real? I have followed and read the link and still cannot believe it.
If it is, and I don’t trust the tabket I am using, then that is one of the more stunning things I have read in years, and it nearly exceeds my own powers of parody.
The only thing I can think of that is more extreme, and something I mockingly suggested the left might pursue some years ago (and paralleling Om’s sarcastic take), is the negation of the principle that one has the right to bodily integrity and to refuse undesired sexual congress. This, on the putative basis of human solidarity, social ownership of the body, and compensatory social “justice”.
There were a couple of law journal articles at the time delving into the question as to whether compelled marriage might not fit in with the general principles of social justice totalitarianism, but that was speculative.
Now, it appears that the mainstream left is so morally insane as to be beyond parody. They have joined the 1960’s Reds of the Bill Ayers and German revolutionary kind. Soon they will be again demanding, this time more broadly, as they once were in their own communes, that you and your children submit to sodomy under the same pretext.
Refusal of the privileged to embrace and accept penetration, is violence … or something …
This has become an anthropological, not an ideological or political dispute.
Actually, all the homeowners have to do is say “No” since it is all about consent or the lack of consent that defines what is criminal or not.
Now if the party pursuing resource redistribution says “No” to the property “owner’s” refusal give up the spoils of injustice there may be a problem of competing interests, but social justice must in the end prevail. The property “owner” might be permitted to gift the individual seeking resource redistribution with a bit of lead or tungsten (green option) in the lower limbs or knees (avoid the femoral artery or the naughty bits of course).
Just thinking like a Terry (lie back and think of social justice).
DNW “Is that really, real?”
Yes I’m afraid it is.
Terry Meza
https://capitol.texas.gov/Members/MemberInfo.aspx?Leg=86&Chamber=H&Code=A3455
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Meza
https://mobile.twitter.com/TerryforTexas/status/1329504824879173634?
https://twitter.com/TerryforTexas/status/1329504827928358912
https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB196/id/2214951
…a very worrying piece of legislation was introduced by Irving State Representative Terry Meza. HB 196 seeks to repeal the Castle Doctrine, preventing a homeowner from using firearms to defend their property.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/new-bill-would-require-texans-to-retreat-from-attack-ban-deadly-force-to-protect-property/
However, a very worrying piece of legislation was introduced by Irving State Representative Terry Meza. HB 196 seeks to repeal the Castle Doctrine, preventing a homeowner from using firearms to defend their property.
She believes that homeowners are too eager to pull the trigger when facing armed home invaders.
“I’m not condoning stealing, it is against the law,” Meza says, “but it’s not an offense that is punishable by death.”
https://www.lsgr.live/post/tx-rep-terry-meza-files-bill-making-it-illegal-to-defend-your-home-with-a-firearm
Not to worry. Texas is peopled by Mexicanos, legal and illegal, as well as law-and-order whites. Neither of these will allow break-ins and home robberies. Meza’s bill will not go anywhere except in the trash can.
There is a serious thought disorder amongst us, though. It is fatal, hopefully just to those afflicted.
It is more than a thought disorder. It’s mind control by Satans. Plural, as it is a title not a person or name.
The Western beliefs overlayed on Ghandi is armchair quarterbacking.
Essentially, humans know what Ghandi accomplished. The West only overcame totalitarian powers using active violence. India, chose a different path. The West, due to cultural arrogance, believe their way is the best or only way.
But that is not demonstrated or proven by the facts. in 2020, people use the Ghandi method and not the Western blitzkrieg or war method.