IM
(an American citizen with an inquiring mind):
Gadfly, did you hear about Senator
McConnell’s comments about Ashley Judd?
Old
Gadfly: Yes. What did you think about the nature of this
news?
IM: Well, first of all, it did not sound good to
hear someone making judgments about another person. So, emotionally it made me feel contempt for
McConnell and compassion for Judd.
Old
Gadfly: Do you think, not feel, that
your reaction was intended by the report?
IM: Yes, and your question relates to the second
point I wanted to make. The sound bite
that made the news cycle was a form of eavesdropping. Someone was secretly recording the
conversation.
Old
Gadfly: So, how do you react to the
notion of spying on someone else without their knowledge or permission?
IM: It’s unethical, possibly illegal.
Old
Gadfly: Isn’t this practice similar to what
got Nixon in trouble with the Watergate break-in?
IM: Absolutely.
Old
Gadfly: Yet, those on the left who are
outraged at what McConnell said are not concerned with the tactic employed to
get the sound bite.
IM: This is sad, Gadfly. What can be done about it?
Old
Gadfly: Unfortunately, we’re dealing
with religious zealotry, based on secular humanism. According to Nobel laureate Joseph
Schumpeter, Marx is the prophet of this religion.[1] Schumpeter claimed: “The religious quality of Marxism also
explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist toward
opponents. To him, as to any believer in
a Faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin. Dissent is disapproved of not only
intellectually but also morally. There
cannot be any excuse for it once the Message has been revealed.”[2] Two of Marx’s American apostles are Saul Alinsky (recall our
conversation on engineering
public sentiment) and George
Lakoff. Alinsky was more of a
soldier in the crusade to take power away from those who have it to those who did
not. His approach was very similar to Lenin’s
in Russia. Both were community
organizers, agitating masses for the purpose of uniting them for political
power. By the way, community organizing
is the extent of Barack Obama’s professional experience before his meteoric
rise in American politics.
IM: Your points about Marx, Alinsky, Lenin, and
Obama are not trivial. How about Lakoff?
Old
Gadfly: Lakoff is still alive, teaches
our impressionable youth as a professor at UC-Berkeley, and serves as one of
the theologians for Marxist-inspired secular humanism. In our discussion on engineering
public sentiment we mentioned Lakoff’s book, Whose Freedom? The Battle over
America’s Most Important Idea. He
explained why wealth created by individuals belongs to the commonwealth to be
distributed by political elite. Yet, it
was his book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, where
he laid out many of the religion’s doctrines.
Of course, the book was not intended to simply characterize differences
in worldviews. The intent was to explain
why the conservative worldview is wrong and that it is immoral, that is,
sinful.
IM: I skimmed through Lakoff’s Whose Liberty and
noted he considered himself to be a progressive Christian.
Old
Gadfly: Very observant, IM. There is a difference between a progressive
Christian and a Christian progressive.
Remember, we discussed this distinction in our conversation on political
prostitution. A progressive
Christian adjusts religious positions based on a political worldview. A Christian progressive adjusts political positions
based on a religious worldview. This is
why many who claim to be Catholic will vote for a Democrat candidate who
happens to be pro-choice (i.e., in favor of abortion). We’ll get into this subject in more detail in
a future conversation because it deals with the political cooptation of the
Catholic Church based on a concept called social justice.
IM: It’s interesting that the McConnell sound
bite led to a discussion on religion in modern American politics.
Old
Gadfly: Let’s get back to the McConnell
news item. Who broke the news?
IM: I watched the segment on ABC News, and the anchor attributed the source to Mother Jones.
Old
Gadfly: Do you see a pattern?
IM: Let me think about this. . . . Didn’t Mother Jones break the news about Romney’s
47% comment?
Old
Gadfly: Yes. But, I first read about this scandalous
comment in Slate. Keep thinking.
IM: Wasn’t it Mother
Jones that broke the news about Valerie Plame’s CIA cover being violated to
the Chicago reporter Robert Novak?
Old
Gadfly: Possibly. I read about it in The
Nation. Ironically, there was no
real news that Plame was no longer qualified for undercover protection, nor any
interest that Richard
Armitage was the source for Novak.
But, by then there was enough news cycle damage regarding the imagined
crime committed by someone close to Bush, like Karl Rove. The smoking gun nailed Scooter Libby for perjury
because his recollections differed from the late Tim Russert’s. But let’s follow this pattern some more. Do you recall who it was that broke these
three items related to Plame, Romney, and McConnell?
IM: Yes, David Corn.
Old
Gadfly: Corn suffers from what I call
the Judas gene.
IM: That’s an interesting notion, given our religious
analogues.
Old
Gadfly: The difference is that Judas Iscariot
had remorse following his betrayal of Jesus on behalf of reigning elite that
wanted to silence and visibly and brutally torture and execute a person with a competing
worldview. Corn, on the other hand, is
not capable of remorse.
IM: Why do you think he is not capable of
remorse?
Old
Gadfly: If Schumpeter is correct, Corn
and those of his ilk are at the vanguard of “utopia creators.” Here is what Schumpeter argued:
It was not by a slip that an analogy from the world of
religion was permitted to intrude into the title of this chapter. There is more than analogy. In one important sense, Marxism is a
religion. To the believer it presents,
first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are
absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide
to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil
from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. We may specify still further: Marxist socialism also belongs to that
subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave.[3]
IM: Given this logic, Corn is not betraying one
of his own. Yet, his guerilla tactics may
be more consistent with Judas the Maccabean, who ironically fought against paganistic
secularism. So, Corn may in fact be
genetically predisposed to his behavior due to a Judas Maccabean gene, a
modern soldier fighting against a competing religion.
Old
Gadfly: Yes, but the Judas you describe
has been celebrated as a hero throughout history by the likes of Dante in The Divine Comedy and even Shakespeare
in Love’s Labor’s Lost. Corn's behavior is not heroic.
IM: Genes can mutate. So can memes.
Old
Gadfly: That reminds me, do you want to
join me for a brandy while we watch “Planet of the Apes” later this evening? I particularly enjoy the version with Charlton
Heston.
IM: My mind is spinning. Just last week I watched Heston in the movie
version of Irving Stone’s The Agony and
the Ecstasy. So, within the span of
a week, I’ll get to vicariously experience the difference between the
manifestation of individual greatness inspired by faith in a divine entity and the
manifestation of a mediocre collective identity instituted by utopian-inspired,
and somewhat hairy, elite.
Old
Gadfly: We can only speculate the
direction of our evolution.
IM: Amen to that Gadfly. Darwin closed his epoch work, On the Origin of Species, with:
Thus, from the
war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly
follows. There is grandeur in this view
of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone
cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being,
evolved.[4]
Old
Gadfly: So, if the “the Creator” breathed
life in the form of genetic material, then who breaths life in the form of
memetic material?
IM: I think we’ll get a sense for it in tonight’s
movie.
[1] Joseph A. Schumpeter,
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1975; originally published
in 1942).
[2] Ibid, p. 5.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, Second
Edition, (London: John Murray, 1860), p.
490. Accessed at http://darwin-online.org.
uk/contents.html
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