Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance … Israel showed Iran it could take out the very anti-missile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.
It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99 percent of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets … Moreover, it was reported that more than 50% of Iran’s roughly 115-120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.
Iran must now fear that if it launched two or three nuclear missiles, there would be overwhelming odds that they would either fail at launch, go awry in the air, implode inside Iran, be taken down over Arab territory by Israel’s allies or be knocked down by the tripartite Israel anti-missile defense system.
And they will conclude that Israel has more effective allies than Iran and that their own ballistic missiles may be more suicidal than homicidal.
I think that Iranian mullahs are already in the suicidal camp.
Much better than I expected. Avoided the besetting sin of such conversations, which is that science usually approaches this question by defining the desired results into being. You make up a definition that you can easily measure and – presto – the measurements confirm the desired conclusion.
I’m a bit more libertarian than conservative, which makes me a free speech absolutist. Time to start throwing a few of these people in jail.
Videos are circulating on social media of huge crowds of Ukrainian men – 300 according to some sources
Europe must have a different definition of “huge” than America or Merriam-Webster. Heck, “300” is a movie about an extremely small force. Ditto on the Heck, “300” isn’t even a small mob in America.
Fascinating video. Thanks.
@ Chuck, 10:44am:
What would chairs look like if our knees bent the other way?
Scientism: “The idea that science and science alone can give us answers about our reality.”
No. It’s that science can provide evidence or at the bare minimum, a logical rationale based on the world around us.
Eeyore: You make up a definition that you can easily measure and – presto – the measurements confirm the desired conclusion.
Perhaps you could provide an example where that was done.
about the top end of a shambling rally with a band playing,
speaking of, our roaming coma, is on with howard stern, who once was the voice of the people, now he’s more like david bowie’s character, in man who fell to the moon,
the Kyev Post is a peculiar publication, as are almost every one in this Minitrue aspiring world, Stephen McIntyre used it as a source in the Privat bank scandal, peculiarly they denied their own reporting around 2019 when Ciaremella and Vindman started their little dance courtesy of the deep state, One does feel like Winston Smith trying to establish the verities of the Day
Mike Plaiss, I am also a free-speech absolutist. So, I think expressions of opinion I find repulsive should be permitted for students and professors. This is ALL opinions. Academic institutions have been, for years, suppressing speech from economic and religious conservatives while allowing, or requiring, leftist speech. That’s the first problem. The second, with these encampments and other large gatherings, is that universities are allowing situations in which students and staff in general are impeded from going about their normal work, and some students and staff (those who disagree) are subjected to harassment and threats and sometimes physical violence. Protests which do not unduly disrupt campus life, yes; disruptive and violent demonstrations, no.
I do think that foreign students who publicly express support for terrorist organizations should be expelled and deported.
Montesquieu’s interest in this diversity, Mansfield suggests, has to do with the need of the philosopher for something against which to bend the effort of his thinking. If it is possible to reason about laws, then it is possible to have self-understanding. The laws stand between us and nature and thus are both structure and cause. Second, Montesquieu saw that Machiavelli paid a remarkable price for his success, the abandonment of soul; he himself does not quite return to the ancient inquiries into soul as the correlative of laws, the way in which it is possible for a human being to be human, but he moves insistently in that direction. Laws are freedom inasmuch as it is available to a community, but soul is freedom for the individual. Mansfield has much to say about Montesquieu’s ambivalence on this matter, or his attempt to keep both ancient and modern options open—this somehow is freedom for Montesquieu himself, as a conspirator in the great modern enterprise, but one with his own reservations and therefore his own thoughts about how to proceed. This philosophic freedom is concealed by an elaborate rhetoric; Montesquieu offers the comprehensive wisdom of a learned man, but on the other hand writes often like a diplomat, so that it is not clear what he is asserting, or how strongly, how often he modifies stated principles, and by the end of it all, every party can interpret the treaty as they please. This is his gentlemanliness, which allows for a very probing but tentative investigation of the possibility of mixing the freedom of the mind with the modern science of nature.
I finished listening. By far, the least I’ve ever heard Jordan Peterson speak during an interview, so compelling is this man’s story/information.
Ill Macchia, made his career serving unscrupulous patrons like the older Borgia, he was a fixer much like Cromwell, then the Medicis came into power, and he sought their patronage, it’s easy to lose their souls in said endeavours, John Guy, the iconoclastic English historian who has taken a pick axe to the sainted Elizabeth (the first one) takes
some perspective unraveling Henry Tudors actions against Anne Boleyn, and the motivations behind them, in his recent work
Hunting the Falcon, she was too adept in rallying her supporters against a cruel sovereign
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83814831-hunting-the-falcon
a modern version might be a stephanopoli, or any of the current drones who will tell any lie in service of the regime, Ill Macchia didn’t like strong courageous women who didn’t heed his advice, like the Duchess of Imola and Forli, it took some 400 years for Elizabeth Lew to unravel the legend he painted of her, and Dorothy Dunnett has incorporated into her work
An anti-Israeli protester has sparked horror after being photographed at George Washington University with a sign calling for the “final solution,” the Nazi plan to exterminate all Jews. The unidentified man was seen mingling among students on the Washington, DC, campus carrying a huge Palestinian flag — and the sign with the expression Adolf Hitler used to sum up his plan for the “annihilation of the Jews.” The image quickly sparked outrage from many shocked at a term used during the Holocaust. “The parallels between this movement and actual Nazism is real and scary,” one X user wrote.
Scientism: “The idea that science and science alone can give us answers about our reality.”
No… that’s atheism
Scientism is excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge
Materialism, scientific socialism is what your getting at..
Scientific socialism refers to a method for understanding and predicting social, economic and material phenomena
Anyone w understanding could see what was wrong with that.
Curious that hitchens n boghosian are realizing that religion has great benefit.. Hitchens in not realizing our natural behavior was not natural
And big b realizing it inoculated the public from its own inanities and insanities
But if the bothered to read the greats
Gk chesterson said if you didn’t believe in God you could believe in anything (paraphrased)
Ref “Does a Soul Have an Afterlife?” Have read that in ancient times/history China & India held *HUGE* debates – comparable to a Super Bowl or World Cup (tho probably not as large, but as important – ?). It was long ago ‘n I never saved the link. There was a story to it that I have also forgotten.
Went ‘sOmEtHiNg’ like this – Debate had been held in China, India had won once again, and two Chinese monks were discussing the loss.
A brief discussion, but the last line of the exchange was – ah, the Hindu Mind.
IMHO, Western = complicated & Eastern = simplicity.
Very interesting read sdferr. Thanks for posting. I read a book in college specifically on the philosophers of the French Enlightenment. Montesquieu was clearly out of place, in a good way, or so it seemed to me. He sounded like an American. It was through that channel that I went on to discover Edmund Burke. I have thought for thirty years now that the western world would have avoided most of its problems if it just would have listened to those two guys – Burke and Montesquieu.
Yesterday, SCOTUS held oral arguments in the Presidential immunity case of Trump.
Davis expects either a narrow 5-4 decision, or else a 6-3 result. The path to getting there may well remand the case back to Appeals Court and Marxist Judge Chutkin to hold an evidentiary hearing and decide to parse official acts precedent from unofficial acts, before deciding the issues.
In the latter case, a final decision will not come before election. This half of this episode benefits from reporter Julie Kelly’s concert details, too. Exposing the scams.
Davis maintains that the Supremes are on to the LawFare weaponising game the Biden WH is running on the nation, and they are not amused. And they will counter it.
He rightly expects that the D far Left will next focus on reforming and packing SCOTUS. They will not give up.
PS, the abusive overreach in political prosecutions against MAGA on J6 wll also force DOJ stand down, both guests think. Massive win coming, one way or another.
but they listened to Rousseau and his step children, Sartre and Derrida, not to mention Foucault, exactly the wrong building blocs, Aron was probably closest to Montesquieu, in general philosophy, Hollebecq, the infant terrible materialist who is largely a classical liberal, was abandoned in the wasteland,there really is no space for an iconoclast philosopher, in the current political system,
much of the West is similarly encumbered in semiotic amber sadly, you must hate your country and all it’s traditions, otherwise you are some kind of Putin stooge
The writers of The Federalist Papers read Montesquieu and cite to him occasionally, perhaps more frequently than any other political philosopher– though silence on this or that authority doesn’t mean they weren’t paying attention to those about whom they chose to remain silent. We, I think, can thank them for that, while rueing and bemoaning our own loss of that great instrument which they fashioned and bequeathed to us.
My views entirely:
Conservatism’s ‘Three-Legged Stool’ Has No Legs Left
[T]he conservative movement as its currently constituted has stood athwart history yelling stop, and history has ignored it. Conservatism , , , has not only failed to conserve anything, it has also turned out to be a shell game. Republicans would raise money on promises to repeal Obamacare or restrict abortion or secure the border, but never follow through once in power. They would rail against fiscal profligacy but always end up passing massive budgets with no real reforms or cuts. A strong foreign policy now looks more like a corporate welfare program for Pentagon contractors in a world that’s anything but peaceful.
. . . . [W]e are in a life-or-death struggle against the left, and the left is playing by a different set of rules. If the right agrees as a matter of principle that it will not wield government power to achieve its preferred outcomes, but the left vows to use the government whenever and however it can, then the left is going to win every time. And that is exactly what has happened.
…. [W]e we need to recognize that the conservative movement has failed. It is dead; we have seen it die. The fusionism of the Cold War era, when libertarians and social conservatives made common cause against communism, is finished. So too is the GOP establishment whose first priority was always corporate welfare at the expense of everything else.
….[W]e we have to stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives and start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power from the left — and use it.
I recall a primary source study of the early Republic to 1820, concerning legal and political subjects, found that after John Locke, Montesquieu was the most cited authority. Blackstone was third….IIRC.
Karmi:
Not to worry then. A mere 300 will not clog the grinder and bring it to a grinding halt. Most will never see the alleged enemy, but when they have firearm and ammo in hand, the true enemy will be in close proximity – a golden opportunity.
Banned Lizard:
Did you catch the number of Russians who fled Russia when Putin reinvaded Ukraine? That was *HUGE*.
I don’t think the Russia Doves know what a Meat Grinder is – Russian Style 😉
well when we pay for the party, the ones who decide to leave matter, we pay both sides by letting them sell russian oil who the indians sell to us, on discount,
Therefore shall I eagerly purchase said petroleum products. But which brave testosterone-laden men of the West shall step forward to serve the needs of the many abandoned Russian and Ukrainian maidens?
Oh wait. It seems the West is in such a low-T state that our own are left wanting.
Boned Looser kind of forgets who turns the crank and invented the meat grinder, his man Vlad.
But don’t worry Boned Looser, Vladdy is only grinding 900 Russians a week in the latest reports (RUSSI IIRC). So at that rate Vladdy can keep his meat grinder going for a long, long time?
Has Boned Looser ever noticed that Vladdy has turned all of Ukraine into one free frire zone? Talk about a meat head grinder.
Boned Looser:
Projection again?
TMI on T levels.
The concept of the immortal soul is antithetical to Christian philosophy, yet most Christians believe in it. Christianity believes in Resurrection. Also this: when God made man, he infused a body with the spirit of life. In Judaism, a body infused with spirit is a soul. Once fused, they are inseperable. So, in that sense, Christianity does believe in a form of the Immortal Soul, but it’s nothing like what eastern philosophy teaches. Freeing your soul from your body is meaningless.
On the eve of battle, sharing the Blood and Body of Christ is customary. I know, these seem like wine and matzoh, but the priesthood is on a roll… Onward to the grinder!
*screams, mangling and grinding sounds*
The concept of the immortal soul is antithetical to Christian philosophy, yet most Christians believe in it.
Alan+Colbo:
Really? I think you need to … flesh … that claim out, so to speak.
yes I don’t really agree on that point, in fact the soul is the only really permanent things, ‘everything else falls away’ now the disposition of the soul whether in heaven, limbo, or hell, is a different questions, this is why attachment to the material in all its forms can be so dangerous,
Red Army troops called the 15-month series of battles in the Rzhev area (January 1942-March 1943) Rzhevskaya myasorubka, the “Rzhev Meatgrinder,” alternately Rzhevskaya boynya, the “Rzhev Slaughterhouse.” The latter is also the title of a very good book on the subject by a Russian historian, translated into English.
The Red Army suffered a staggering 2,300,000 casuaties, including an estimated 393,000 killed (a conservative figure). Now THAT’S a meagrinder.
Soviet casualties in the Rzhev Slaughterhouse — KIA, WIA, MIA, and captured — were far greater than German total loses in the Battle of Stalingrad, which took place in the same time period.
Aron was probably closest to Montesquieu
There are a bunch of French Aron’s out there, but the man we want is Raymond Aron. A friend gave me a collection of Aron’s essays and I was stunned. “This guy is French?!”
_________________________________
Aron is best known for his 1955 book “The Opium of the Intellectuals,” the title of which inverts Karl Marx’s claim that religion was the opium of the people; he argues that Marxism was the opium of the intellectuals in post-war France. In the book, Aron chastised French intellectuals for what he described as their harsh criticism of capitalism and democracy and their simultaneous defense of the actions of the communist governments of the East.
Critic Roger Kimball suggests that Opium is “a seminal book of the twentieth century”.
yes that one, instead the French drank of Beauvoir and Sartre, I tried to read the Mandarins in translation, but I gave that up, as a quixotic exercise, Camus because of his growing up as a Pied Noir, settler in Algeria, probably had a better grasp on things,
Foucault who somehow found a kindred spirit in the Ayatollah, despite he would have been stoned if they had ever met, for his libertine ways, Derrida dismissal of Truth as an objective was also troublesome,
…despite [Foucault] would have been stoned if [he and the Ayatollah] had ever met…
Why not? Foucault was paid in hashish for debating Chomsky. 🙂 It’s an amusing story.
_____________________________________
For Chomsky, human nature is rooted in universal grammar, and his belief that humans are “hard-wired” to learn language. Foucault argued, as he always has, that universal human nature is a crock of shit. But many fans don’t know of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans before and during the debate. Namely, that Foucault was paid in hash and harassed to wear a wig during the debate.
James Miller notes in “The Passion of Michel Foucault,” the anarchist Dutch host, Fons Elders, wanted to jazz things up a bit. So, aside from offering Foucault hashish for part of his payment, Elders tried repeatedly to get Foucault to wear a bright red wig while debating Chomsky. Throughout the debate “Elders kept poking Foucault under the table, pointing to the red wig on his lap, and whispering, ‘put it on, put it on.’” Foucault ignored him, robbing posterity of the memory, and the Foucault-Chomsky debate remains wig-less.
As for the “large chunk of hashish,” that he received as partial payment, Foucault brought it back home where he and “his Parisian friends would jokingly refer to [it] as ‘Chomsky Hash.’”
Chomsky has since been a vocal critic of Foucault. In one instance, in a 2011 Q&A Chomsky attacked Foucault’s work on “regimes of truth” and argued that Foucault “wildly exaggerates.”
His impression of the 1971 debate isn’t much better, Miller notes. “[Foucault] struck my as completely amoral,” said Chomsky. “I’d never met anyone who was so totally amoral.”
I can’t quite explain how pleased I am with this result. They so deserved each other.
Chomsky, Foucault
Foucault, Chomsky
Let’s call the whole thing off!
It was the 70s, man.
Thanks huxley. I think I have my next nonfiction read. I’d been on the hunt.
And by the way, in reading the Wikipedia page huxley linked to, there is this:
The saying “Better be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron” became popular among French intellectuals.
Doesn’t this really just say it all?
Meanwhile, how NPR devolved into the abomination it is today is of little interest to many of us. But for those with an academic interest, former NPR panelist Rod Thomson describes three stages culminating in the network becoming irredeemable.
What needs to be done is obvious, but the congressional Dem+RINO coalition year after year keeps making sure it never happens.
IrishOtter49:
A short video for others who may never have heard of it.
Never heard of Rzhev Meat Grinder? Here is why… – Military History Not Visualized
and
Rzhev Slaughterhouse – Battles of the Rzhev Salient (1942-1943) – Militaary History Not Visualized
While our eternal nature is accepted, the resurrection of our bodies is foundational to Christianity.
Paul makes this point in his first letter to the Corinthians, where a controversy had arisen about the resurrection.
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain…..For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 1 Corinthians 15: 16-20
Then later in the letter, he describes the nature of these resurrected bodies.
Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength.
They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.
————————
For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.
Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:
“Death is swallowed up in victory”
So, what is a “spiritual body”? Jesus, who spent time among his followers certainly had a body that was recognizable– who ate with his disciples– yet could transcend this dimension.
Does this spiritual “reality” exist in other dimensions mingled with ours but impenetrable to us, while accessible from these other places?
om:
Thanks. Good cites. Note: in the Red Army’s “Operation Mars” alone, a sub-battle of the Rzhev series of battles, planned and directed by Zhukov, the Soviets lost more men and equipment than the Germans did at Stalingrad. It was, as David Glantz observed, “Zhukov’s worst defeat,” and for that reason the Soviet Union suppressed information about it for the next 50 years. What it shows is that the Battle of Stalingrad was not decisive, not the turning point of the war the Soviets claimed it was. The Soviets suffered the equivalent of two or even three “Stalingrads” in the Rzhev slaughterhouse. The war was far from over when Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad, and it was by no means a given that the Soviets would prevail. Which is why Stalin continued, through 1943 and into 1944, to send out peace feelers through neutral channels to see if a negotiated settlement of the conflict with Germany was possible — independent of what the Western Allies were doing. The Soviets were at pains to suppress reports and information about their efforts in this regard. They were willing to sell out the Western Allies if was within their interests to do so. Paul Johnson writes about this in “Modern Times,”
1) VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Iran’s Nightmares – snippets:
2) Smart condoms At Last – the ‘Smart Pre-erection Condom’!!! – Fun Facts: Criminals don’t use condoms
I think that Iranian mullahs are already in the suicidal camp.
Much better than I expected. Avoided the besetting sin of such conversations, which is that science usually approaches this question by defining the desired results into being. You make up a definition that you can easily measure and – presto – the measurements confirm the desired conclusion.
I’m a bit more libertarian than conservative, which makes me a free speech absolutist. Time to start throwing a few of these people in jail.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/zionists-dont-deserve-to-live-meet-the-leader-of-columbia-universitys-anti-israel-encampment
Where does your lap go when you stand up?
Love Moreland. I’ve read all his books. An inspirational theologian.
Relatedly: Thomas Ligotti is Satan incarnate. Discuss.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/26/pedro-sanchez-possible-resignation
I am only 22 minutes into this interview but know it is a “must-listen” for its first-hand account.
https://youtu.be/I5VPFw0vI6U?si=rysEJq6RBnehncfY
Who iz really in charge in iran its the iranian revolutionary guard not the mullah they are the praetorian guard
Apropos: After they’ve been dragged back and fed to the meat grinder, will the souls of Ukrainian men aged 18-60 have an afterlife?
Ukrainian Men Abroad Protest Consular Service Suspension
Europe must have a different definition of “huge” than America or Merriam-Webster. Heck, “300” is a movie about an extremely small force. Ditto on the Heck, “300” isn’t even a small mob in America.
Fascinating video. Thanks.
@ Chuck, 10:44am:
What would chairs look like if our knees bent the other way?
Scientism: “The idea that science and science alone can give us answers about our reality.”
No. It’s that science can provide evidence or at the bare minimum, a logical rationale based on the world around us.
Eeyore:
You make up a definition that you can easily measure and – presto – the measurements confirm the desired conclusion.
Perhaps you could provide an example where that was done.
about the top end of a shambling rally with a band playing,
speaking of, our roaming coma, is on with howard stern, who once was the voice of the people, now he’s more like david bowie’s character, in man who fell to the moon,
the Kyev Post is a peculiar publication, as are almost every one in this Minitrue aspiring world, Stephen McIntyre used it as a source in the Privat bank scandal, peculiarly they denied their own reporting around 2019 when Ciaremella and Vindman started their little dance courtesy of the deep state, One does feel like Winston Smith trying to establish the verities of the Day
Mike Plaiss, I am also a free-speech absolutist. So, I think expressions of opinion I find repulsive should be permitted for students and professors. This is ALL opinions. Academic institutions have been, for years, suppressing speech from economic and religious conservatives while allowing, or requiring, leftist speech. That’s the first problem. The second, with these encampments and other large gatherings, is that universities are allowing situations in which students and staff in general are impeded from going about their normal work, and some students and staff (those who disagree) are subjected to harassment and threats and sometimes physical violence. Protests which do not unduly disrupt campus life, yes; disruptive and violent demonstrations, no.
I do think that foreign students who publicly express support for terrorist organizations should be expelled and deported.
Titus Techera, a review of Harvey Mansfield’s recent book “Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World“: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KR46VK7BGJPXJ6INTWDH/full?target=10.1080/10457097.2024.2344417
I finished listening. By far, the least I’ve ever heard Jordan Peterson speak during an interview, so compelling is this man’s story/information.
https://youtu.be/I5VPFw0vI6U?si=rysEJq6RBnehncfY
Ill Macchia, made his career serving unscrupulous patrons like the older Borgia, he was a fixer much like Cromwell, then the Medicis came into power, and he sought their patronage, it’s easy to lose their souls in said endeavours, John Guy, the iconoclastic English historian who has taken a pick axe to the sainted Elizabeth (the first one) takes
some perspective unraveling Henry Tudors actions against Anne Boleyn, and the motivations behind them, in his recent work
Hunting the Falcon, she was too adept in rallying her supporters against a cruel sovereign
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83814831-hunting-the-falcon
a modern version might be a stephanopoli, or any of the current drones who will tell any lie in service of the regime, Ill Macchia didn’t like strong courageous women who didn’t heed his advice, like the Duchess of Imola and Forli, it took some 400 years for Elizabeth Lew to unravel the legend he painted of her, and Dorothy Dunnett has incorporated into her work
Blinken: Evidence China Trying to Interfere In Elections – PUH-LEEEEEEZE!?!
An anti-Israeli protester has sparked horror after being photographed at George Washington University with a sign calling for the “final solution,” the Nazi plan to exterminate all Jews. The unidentified man was seen mingling among students on the Washington, DC, campus carrying a huge Palestinian flag — and the sign with the expression Adolf Hitler used to sum up his plan for the “annihilation of the Jews.” The image quickly sparked outrage from many shocked at a term used during the Holocaust. “The parallels between this movement and actual Nazism is real and scary,” one X user wrote.
Scientism: “The idea that science and science alone can give us answers about our reality.”
No… that’s atheism
Scientism is excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge
Materialism, scientific socialism is what your getting at..
Scientific socialism refers to a method for understanding and predicting social, economic and material phenomena
Anyone w understanding could see what was wrong with that.
Curious that hitchens n boghosian are realizing that religion has great benefit.. Hitchens in not realizing our natural behavior was not natural
And big b realizing it inoculated the public from its own inanities and insanities
But if the bothered to read the greats
Gk chesterson said if you didn’t believe in God you could believe in anything (paraphrased)
Ref “Does a Soul Have an Afterlife?” Have read that in ancient times/history China & India held *HUGE* debates – comparable to a Super Bowl or World Cup (tho probably not as large, but as important – ?). It was long ago ‘n I never saved the link. There was a story to it that I have also forgotten.
Went ‘sOmEtHiNg’ like this – Debate had been held in China, India had won once again, and two Chinese monks were discussing the loss.
A brief discussion, but the last line of the exchange was – ah, the Hindu Mind.
IMHO, Western = complicated & Eastern = simplicity.
Very interesting read sdferr. Thanks for posting. I read a book in college specifically on the philosophers of the French Enlightenment. Montesquieu was clearly out of place, in a good way, or so it seemed to me. He sounded like an American. It was through that channel that I went on to discover Edmund Burke. I have thought for thirty years now that the western world would have avoided most of its problems if it just would have listened to those two guys – Burke and Montesquieu.
Yesterday, SCOTUS held oral arguments in the Presidential immunity case of Trump.
Mike Davis sees a massively important win on Bannon’s Warroom coming, SEE 7-12m.
https://warroom.org/episode-3565-scotus-defends-maga-on-immunity-hearing/
Davis expects either a narrow 5-4 decision, or else a 6-3 result. The path to getting there may well remand the case back to Appeals Court and Marxist Judge Chutkin to hold an evidentiary hearing and decide to parse official acts precedent from unofficial acts, before deciding the issues.
In the latter case, a final decision will not come before election. This half of this episode benefits from reporter Julie Kelly’s concert details, too. Exposing the scams.
Davis maintains that the Supremes are on to the LawFare weaponising game the Biden WH is running on the nation, and they are not amused. And they will counter it.
He rightly expects that the D far Left will next focus on reforming and packing SCOTUS. They will not give up.
PS, the abusive overreach in political prosecutions against MAGA on J6 wll also force DOJ stand down, both guests think. Massive win coming, one way or another.
but they listened to Rousseau and his step children, Sartre and Derrida, not to mention Foucault, exactly the wrong building blocs, Aron was probably closest to Montesquieu, in general philosophy, Hollebecq, the infant terrible materialist who is largely a classical liberal, was abandoned in the wasteland,there really is no space for an iconoclast philosopher, in the current political system,
much of the West is similarly encumbered in semiotic amber sadly, you must hate your country and all it’s traditions, otherwise you are some kind of Putin stooge
The writers of The Federalist Papers read Montesquieu and cite to him occasionally, perhaps more frequently than any other political philosopher– though silence on this or that authority doesn’t mean they weren’t paying attention to those about whom they chose to remain silent. We, I think, can thank them for that, while rueing and bemoaning our own loss of that great instrument which they fashioned and bequeathed to us.
My views entirely:
Conservatism’s ‘Three-Legged Stool’ Has No Legs Left
https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/26/conservatisms-three-legged-stool-has-no-legs-left/
[T]he conservative movement as its currently constituted has stood athwart history yelling stop, and history has ignored it. Conservatism , , , has not only failed to conserve anything, it has also turned out to be a shell game. Republicans would raise money on promises to repeal Obamacare or restrict abortion or secure the border, but never follow through once in power. They would rail against fiscal profligacy but always end up passing massive budgets with no real reforms or cuts. A strong foreign policy now looks more like a corporate welfare program for Pentagon contractors in a world that’s anything but peaceful.
. . . . [W]e are in a life-or-death struggle against the left, and the left is playing by a different set of rules. If the right agrees as a matter of principle that it will not wield government power to achieve its preferred outcomes, but the left vows to use the government whenever and however it can, then the left is going to win every time. And that is exactly what has happened.
…. [W]e we need to recognize that the conservative movement has failed. It is dead; we have seen it die. The fusionism of the Cold War era, when libertarians and social conservatives made common cause against communism, is finished. So too is the GOP establishment whose first priority was always corporate welfare at the expense of everything else.
….[W]e we have to stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives and start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power from the left — and use it.
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-american-sunlight-project-a-new
Re IrishOtter: Damn straight!
sdferr : YES!
I recall a primary source study of the early Republic to 1820, concerning legal and political subjects, found that after John Locke, Montesquieu was the most cited authority. Blackstone was third….IIRC.
Karmi:
Not to worry then. A mere 300 will not clog the grinder and bring it to a grinding halt. Most will never see the alleged enemy, but when they have firearm and ammo in hand, the true enemy will be in close proximity – a golden opportunity.
Banned Lizard:
Did you catch the number of Russians who fled Russia when Putin reinvaded Ukraine? That was *HUGE*.
I don’t think the Russia Doves know what a Meat Grinder is – Russian Style 😉
well when we pay for the party, the ones who decide to leave matter, we pay both sides by letting them sell russian oil who the indians sell to us, on discount,
Therefore shall I eagerly purchase said petroleum products. But which brave testosterone-laden men of the West shall step forward to serve the needs of the many abandoned Russian and Ukrainian maidens?
Oh wait. It seems the West is in such a low-T state that our own are left wanting.
Boned Looser kind of forgets who turns the crank and invented the meat grinder, his man Vlad.
But don’t worry Boned Looser, Vladdy is only grinding 900 Russians a week in the latest reports (RUSSI IIRC). So at that rate Vladdy can keep his meat grinder going for a long, long time?
Has Boned Looser ever noticed that Vladdy has turned all of Ukraine into one free frire zone? Talk about a meat head grinder.
Boned Looser:
Projection again?
TMI on T levels.
The concept of the immortal soul is antithetical to Christian philosophy, yet most Christians believe in it. Christianity believes in Resurrection. Also this: when God made man, he infused a body with the spirit of life. In Judaism, a body infused with spirit is a soul. Once fused, they are inseperable. So, in that sense, Christianity does believe in a form of the Immortal Soul, but it’s nothing like what eastern philosophy teaches. Freeing your soul from your body is meaningless.
Aan+Colbo:
Just do a Brave search such as
https://search.brave.com/search?q=Reseruction+for+the+body+and+Soul+in+Christianity&source=desktop
and you will find that you are mistaken.
Not the first rodeo.
On the eve of battle, sharing the Blood and Body of Christ is customary. I know, these seem like wine and matzoh, but the priesthood is on a roll… Onward to the grinder!
*screams, mangling and grinding sounds*
The concept of the immortal soul is antithetical to Christian philosophy, yet most Christians believe in it.
Alan+Colbo:
Really? I think you need to … flesh … that claim out, so to speak.
yes I don’t really agree on that point, in fact the soul is the only really permanent things, ‘everything else falls away’ now the disposition of the soul whether in heaven, limbo, or hell, is a different questions, this is why attachment to the material in all its forms can be so dangerous,
Red Army troops called the 15-month series of battles in the Rzhev area (January 1942-March 1943) Rzhevskaya myasorubka, the “Rzhev Meatgrinder,” alternately Rzhevskaya boynya, the “Rzhev Slaughterhouse.” The latter is also the title of a very good book on the subject by a Russian historian, translated into English.
The Red Army suffered a staggering 2,300,000 casuaties, including an estimated 393,000 killed (a conservative figure). Now THAT’S a meagrinder.
Soviet casualties in the Rzhev Slaughterhouse — KIA, WIA, MIA, and captured — were far greater than German total loses in the Battle of Stalingrad, which took place in the same time period.
Aron was probably closest to Montesquieu
There are a bunch of French Aron’s out there, but the man we want is Raymond Aron. A friend gave me a collection of Aron’s essays and I was stunned. “This guy is French?!”
_________________________________
Aron is best known for his 1955 book “The Opium of the Intellectuals,” the title of which inverts Karl Marx’s claim that religion was the opium of the people; he argues that Marxism was the opium of the intellectuals in post-war France. In the book, Aron chastised French intellectuals for what he described as their harsh criticism of capitalism and democracy and their simultaneous defense of the actions of the communist governments of the East.
Critic Roger Kimball suggests that Opium is “a seminal book of the twentieth century”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Aron
yes that one, instead the French drank of Beauvoir and Sartre, I tried to read the Mandarins in translation, but I gave that up, as a quixotic exercise, Camus because of his growing up as a Pied Noir, settler in Algeria, probably had a better grasp on things,
Foucault who somehow found a kindred spirit in the Ayatollah, despite he would have been stoned if they had ever met, for his libertine ways, Derrida dismissal of Truth as an objective was also troublesome,
https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/04/26/report-steven-spielberg-involved-strategically-in-biden-campaign-convention-planning/
…despite [Foucault] would have been stoned if [he and the Ayatollah] had ever met…
Why not? Foucault was paid in hashish for debating Chomsky. 🙂 It’s an amusing story.
_____________________________________
For Chomsky, human nature is rooted in universal grammar, and his belief that humans are “hard-wired” to learn language. Foucault argued, as he always has, that universal human nature is a crock of shit. But many fans don’t know of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans before and during the debate. Namely, that Foucault was paid in hash and harassed to wear a wig during the debate.
James Miller notes in “The Passion of Michel Foucault,” the anarchist Dutch host, Fons Elders, wanted to jazz things up a bit. So, aside from offering Foucault hashish for part of his payment, Elders tried repeatedly to get Foucault to wear a bright red wig while debating Chomsky. Throughout the debate “Elders kept poking Foucault under the table, pointing to the red wig on his lap, and whispering, ‘put it on, put it on.’” Foucault ignored him, robbing posterity of the memory, and the Foucault-Chomsky debate remains wig-less.
As for the “large chunk of hashish,” that he received as partial payment, Foucault brought it back home where he and “his Parisian friends would jokingly refer to [it] as ‘Chomsky Hash.’”
Chomsky has since been a vocal critic of Foucault. In one instance, in a 2011 Q&A Chomsky attacked Foucault’s work on “regimes of truth” and argued that Foucault “wildly exaggerates.”
His impression of the 1971 debate isn’t much better, Miller notes. “[Foucault] struck my as completely amoral,” said Chomsky. “I’d never met anyone who was so totally amoral.”
https://www.critical-theory.com/that-time-foucault-got-paid-in-hash-to-debate-noam-chomsky/
_____________________________________
I can’t quite explain how pleased I am with this result. They so deserved each other.
Chomsky, Foucault
Foucault, Chomsky
Let’s call the whole thing off!
It was the 70s, man.
Thanks huxley. I think I have my next nonfiction read. I’d been on the hunt.
And by the way, in reading the Wikipedia page huxley linked to, there is this:
The saying “Better be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron” became popular among French intellectuals.
Doesn’t this really just say it all?
Meanwhile, how NPR devolved into the abomination it is today is of little interest to many of us. But for those with an academic interest, former NPR panelist Rod Thomson describes three stages culminating in the network becoming irredeemable.
What needs to be done is obvious, but the congressional Dem+RINO coalition year after year keeps making sure it never happens.
IrishOtter49:
A short video for others who may never have heard of it.
Never heard of Rzhev Meat Grinder? Here is why… – Military History Not Visualized
and
Rzhev Slaughterhouse – Battles of the Rzhev Salient (1942-1943) – Militaary History Not Visualized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-E9ZsactbM
While our eternal nature is accepted, the resurrection of our bodies is foundational to Christianity.
Paul makes this point in his first letter to the Corinthians, where a controversy had arisen about the resurrection.
Then later in the letter, he describes the nature of these resurrected bodies.
So, what is a “spiritual body”? Jesus, who spent time among his followers certainly had a body that was recognizable– who ate with his disciples– yet could transcend this dimension.
Does this spiritual “reality” exist in other dimensions mingled with ours but impenetrable to us, while accessible from these other places?
om:
Thanks. Good cites. Note: in the Red Army’s “Operation Mars” alone, a sub-battle of the Rzhev series of battles, planned and directed by Zhukov, the Soviets lost more men and equipment than the Germans did at Stalingrad. It was, as David Glantz observed, “Zhukov’s worst defeat,” and for that reason the Soviet Union suppressed information about it for the next 50 years. What it shows is that the Battle of Stalingrad was not decisive, not the turning point of the war the Soviets claimed it was. The Soviets suffered the equivalent of two or even three “Stalingrads” in the Rzhev slaughterhouse. The war was far from over when Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad, and it was by no means a given that the Soviets would prevail. Which is why Stalin continued, through 1943 and into 1944, to send out peace feelers through neutral channels to see if a negotiated settlement of the conflict with Germany was possible — independent of what the Western Allies were doing. The Soviets were at pains to suppress reports and information about their efforts in this regard. They were willing to sell out the Western Allies if was within their interests to do so. Paul Johnson writes about this in “Modern Times,”
“I’m a professor!”
Yes you are, which makes you even more repugnant than the clueless children you are leading to the deepest depths of hell.
As Daniel Greenfield says, They’re Protesting for Genocide, Not Against Genocide.
This story is dated two days ago, but I think it hasn’t been shared here.
HEADLINE “ The Biden administration is behind an ICC plan to arrest senior Israeli officials” American Thinker ^ Andrea Widburg
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/report_the_biden_administration_is_behind_an_icc_plan_to_arrest_senior_israeli_officials.html
Report of the plan comes from an unconfirmed but reliable source via Caroline Glick.
The enemies of civilisation never sleep.