The following excerpt is from a letter to Sylvia Austin, dated July 9, 1946, in Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 287:
There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man's soul, and the salvation of one's soul as one's first concern and highest goal; this means -- one's ego and the integrity of one's ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one's soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one's soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one's soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one's soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one's soul to the souls of others.
This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men's natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man's soul).
New readers may enjoy my "campaign diary" from last year, when we attempted to send our fabulous Ted to congress.
Did we? Nah.
Ted has just submitted this wonderful rant to the Greenville News. And it may well be published after scouring and disemboweling it real good first.
This is the unedited version:
I can understand you Republicans are upset. You've lost the Presidency. You've lost Congress. Your plan to stomp vassal democracy into the Middle East has put a black man with a Moslem name in the White House. So that didn’t work out. But don't despair, Republicans, because believe it or not the Democratic leadership can be just as incompetent and bloodthirsty as yours!
Oh sure, people accuse Bush of jumping into "another Vietnam", but remember LBJ jumped into the actual Vietnam! And before that the Democrats lost the White House jumping into Korea! All you have to do to win the next election is keep the Democrats in the bloodshower. Yes, this will involve continued needless death and destruction on a massive scale, but this is no time to shrink from sacrifice, especially of others.
You know the drill- Support The Troops, Terror Terror Terror, Fear Fear Fear! You can of course count on the Democratic leadership to back you on this, some cynically doing the military-industrial math and others, to be fair, sincerely cowed. The rest you can threaten in the bathroom. For insurance get Obama to bomb Iran, and you’ll naturally want to keep him gutting the Constitution, killing Pakistanis, and heeling behind Israel. A losing percentage of disenchanted but otherwise Democratic voters can be expected to not follow their nonleadership and stay at home or vote other, while your own core base can as usual be maintained by simple bellowing. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Enjoy!
When is the next campaign, Ted? I suggest running as a Libertarian instead of a Democrat here in the hyper-conservative upstate.
That might give em a good run for their money.
I'm ready to leaflet those parking lots again, man! Just say the word.
Everyone's feeling pretty
It's hotter than July
Though the world's full of problems
They couldn't touch us even if they tried
The American right-wing is having a meltdown. Their carefully-constructed pretense of patriotism-at-all-costs, is crumbling right before our eyes. Politico reports:
Screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops, congressmen fearful for their safety — welcome to the new town-hall-style meeting, the once-staid forum that is rapidly turning into a house of horrors for members of Congress.
On the eve of the August recess, members are reporting meetings that have gone terribly awry, marked by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior. In at least one case, a congressman has stopped holding town hall events because the situation has spiraled so far out of control.
“I had felt they would be pointless,” Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) told POLITICO, referring to his recent decision to temporarily suspend the events in his Long Island district. “There is no point in meeting with my constituents and [to] listen to them and have them listen to you if what is basically an unruly mob prevents you from having an intelligent conversation.”
In Bishop’s case, his decision came on the heels of a June 22 event he held in Setauket, N.Y., in which protesters dominated the meeting by shouting criticisms at the congressman for his positions on energy policy, health care and the bailout of the auto industry.
Within an hour of the disruption, police were called in to escort the 59-year-old Democrat — who has held more than 100 town hall meetings since he was elected in 2002 — to his car safely.
“I have no problem with someone disagreeing with positions I hold,” Bishop said, noting that, for the time being, he was using other platforms to communicate with his constituents. “But I also believe no one is served if you can’t talk through differences.”
Bishop isn’t the only one confronted by boiling anger and rising incivility. At a health care town hall event in Syracuse, N.Y., earlier this month, police were called in to restore order, and at least one heckler was taken away by local police. Close to 100 sign-carrying protesters greeted Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) at a late June community college small-business development forum in Panama City, Fla. Last week, Danville, Va., anti-tax tea party activists claimed they were “refused an opportunity” to ask Rep. Thomas Perriello (D-Va.) a question at a town hall event and instructed by a plainclothes police officer to leave the property after they attempted to hold up protest signs.
Why is no one calling these trouble-makers insurrectionists, wingnuts and psychos, as lefties have always been called?
Time to call them what they are: dangerous, anti-American wackos.
*Trying to get a ballpark figure for an appropriate amount of weight gain during pregnancy from the internet is not a good idea.
Take all of the crazy, interfering, I-know-better-than-you stuff that gets directed at pregnant women.
Take all of the crazy, interfering, I-know-better-than-you stuff that gets thrown around about weight and health issues.
Combine.
Or hit yourself in the head with a brick a few times. It's faster, and just as informative.
* Moods are not unstable. Moods are turned up to eleven.
Instead of "cranky" I was achieving "kill it and devour its heart that its lifeblood might sustain my offspring."
Instead of "I don't want to deal with this" I was achieving "I need to go live in a cave and contemplate the hopelessness of human interaction."
* Childbirth classes with any sort of natural bent will spend at least a quarter of the time in class talking about how to protect yourself from hospitals.
This is epically fucked up. Completely, totally, epically fucked up. Legalhusband and I would leave our childbirth class every time, exchange glances, and then he'd say, "I'm so glad we're not planning on a hospital birth. I'm so glad we don't have to go through that."
They will lie. They will not talk about the risks of epidurals. They will insist on putting an IV shunt into your vein "just in case" and not mention that it's possible to refuse. They will pressure. This is why people hire doulas - when they can afford them - to help protect their families from the crushing stress and pressure. This is insane.
Ohhhh, hell yes it is.
Awesome writing and women's truth, read it all!
~*~
They want us to join their fighting
But our answer today
Is to let all our worries
Like the breeze through our fingers slip away
And while reading, always keep in mind John Scalzi's Law of Internet Invocation:If you name them, they will come.
So yeah, the Libertarians are present and accounted for.
~*~
Old railroad trestle is from West Greenville County, SC.
One of my least favorite subjects, one that makes me want to scurry away and hide, was addressed in a round-about way earlier this month, on a vibrant and interesting Quaker blog: Anti-Christianity and where it comes from.
Usually, it comes from us. (The Christians, I mean.)
She also poses this as a generational question, which is fascinating, also:
What do Friends have to teach me about how to deal with people at Quaker gatherings who are openly hostile to christians? I've encountered some of it in the most liberal Quaker gatherings I've been to. It's not ok. I know that some liberal Friends groups in their lack of openness attract some people who are really spiritually wounded.
How do we make such people welcome and address their fears whilst at the same time not tolerating hatred of Christ or people who follow him? It's not a loving favour to indulge the spiritually wounded. Our indulgence of each other is spiritually dangerous and I believe I have seen it pretty much kill the spirit of a Meeting. How do we challenge wounded people to heal?
I care about this because it's not just about sucking up the persecution. It's about whether liberal Quakers get to keep a whole load of smart committed highly motivated christian young folks who may already be bored to tears with boomer wooliness. This is a key issue for people in liberal meeting to address. I think lack of toleration for open hostility to Christ needs to be the very least we can expect, otherwise what on earth are we doing?
Her post was the catalyst for a thoughtful discussion about WHY people are hostile to Christianity in the first place. And yeah, I already know why, but I always force myself to read the gory details.
Betsy Blake comments:
Alice, it is soothing to me, to hear you address this. I have done intensive Quaker intervisitation work for 14+ years. I am a Jesus-loving FUM Quaker. I identify with traditional Christian language. I didn't learn until college (at a liberal Quaker school), that even if you have the best of intentions and are as grounded in love as one can be, it still hurts people just to say the very words that are associated with this past hurt. This in turn can trigger swift attack.
I really, really, struggle with this.
Yes, me too. And I identify as a dissenting Catholic, not even one of the cool-liberal hippie Quakers.
Blake adds:
My question is--do people WANT to be healed?
Hmmm. Good one.
I often believe they do not.
Bill Samuel, another commenter:
Some meetings seem full of sick people not wanting to get well. Healthy people are viewed as sick. What happens when good Christians stay in such meetings? Well, a variety of things, but one thing I've noticed is that they tend to take on some of the illness. I'm not sure it's healthy to stay.
Does it have to be like this? The faith community I'm in now (I resigned from a liberal Friends meeting in 2005) also attracts lots of people who didn't fit in typical evangelical, Catholic, or whatever churches. But our community focuses on discovering what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, not on rejecting Christ because others have distorted him badly.
And then there was this comment, from Algirdas Davidavicius:
I guess on the level of interpersonal relationships with such "hostile" people one good Christian Friend can always keep in mind, that the hostility in question is not because Christ nor His message, but because some painful, rejecting experience these people or their important ones once have from institutionalized, formalized or self-proclaimed "christians", hence they are making this projective, negative blanket-statement, discounting everything "christian". This is not problem, solution is always to listen and inquire directly persons experiences, feelings behind those "anti-" statements, which are only kinda cries for positive affirmation and, actually, truly christian acceptance of anyone as possessing indelible "that of God in us".
Hold Thee in Light -- Algis, Lithuania (Eastern Europe)
I'll try, man, and thanks for that reminder. I needed it, today.
~*~
Yall knew I couldn't get through a post this size without AZALEAS, right? :)
I guess I didn't fully realize that his entire nose was GONE.
GONE, a hole in the center. (He was wearing a prosthetic nose.) Didn't any surgeons wonder if he was able to give "informed consent" for that? Evil, money-grubbing greedheads; I guess if he wanted to destroy his nose, they were glad to do it for a hefty fee.
Likewise, the pharmacy bill totaling (!) over $100,000 in a year's time. Holy shit, people.
This brings to mind an AA discussion, back in the day...John Belushi died about 6 weeks into my sobriety, and I owe him for that. John Belushi died for my sins, right about the same time I was starting to dangerously waver and reconsider the whole sobriety enterprise. And then he died, and I thought, ohhhhh.
The AA-meeting question after his death: Is it worse to be a rich addict or a poor addict?
Everyone agreed: A rich one.
Sycophants, groupies, hangers-on and various assortments of fellow-travelers and dealers, will fuck you up. By contrast, when you're a poor addict, people rapidly desert you in droves. You are out in the cold and you have no choice but to clean up. No job, no money, no lovers, no place to go. There it is, cold hard reality, staring you in face. All your goofy, drug-addled ideas (like destroying your nose) can never really come to fruition. They become the stuff of mindless junkie-talk, pipe dreams and nonsense-blather.
And a good thing too, or you might have had the power and money to do something insane, like destroy your nose.
Left: Ron Paul at his Greenville campaign HQ, yesterday. All photos by Steven Vaughan. (steve@stevevaughan.com)
Ron Paul's rally was held in front of his campaign headquarters, and the crowd was fairly impressive. For a GOP candidate, his supporters are pretty diverse--a good mix of mountain hippies, southern maverick types, wacky homeschoolers and diehard Republicans, all applauding madly for Ron. I interpret a lot of the enthusiastic support for Ron Paul as strong antiwar sentiment, and that is heartening.
At one point, he pledged to protect the health supplement industry, which is my business after all, and I applauded, too.
Other things he said, I did not applaud.
A recent discussion at Renegade Evolution's blog was particularly enlightening. The discussion was primarily between Kumogakure (who calls himself a Men's Rights Activist) and Anthony Kennerson, although others also participated.
Sorry, K, but there are just too many things about Ron Paul that I just can't gloss by enough to support him, even with his opposition to the Neo-CONS.
1) His ancient pro-Great Depression economic policies (generally reduced to bringing back the gold standard and reducing everything to the level of small town economics);
2) His just-as-ancient social policies (not only the aformentioned by Ren anti-choice positions on reproductive freedom for women, but the fact that he rolls with the crowd from Stormfront and the Militiamen); and
3) The fact that although he is critical of the warmongering of the Bush clan and their Democratic enablers, he could just as rapidly endorse ending it all with the One Big Bang...ala, nuclear weapons.
There are enough right-wing populists here already; and quite a few of them happen to be Democrats. Pardon me while I hold out for a genuine progressive populist who won't sell poor folk (especially poor folk of color) down the river.
yeah, what AK said wrt Ron Paul, and more besides which i don't have time to get into now. he's not a friend. I think a lot of people just like the idea of a third party outsider, like Perot.
Indeed, it is worth noting that Ron Paul is not in favor of gay marriage. It is also worth noting that he was unreservedly anti-abortion during the rally yesterday. Kumogakure replies:
As for the abortion thang, while RP is against it (as I am), he has said that this issue is one that belongs to the States, which I can live with.
Let the people decide on a State by State basis, and let the best side win!
Oy...there was a discussion of this on Pandagon yesterday. If you leave as important a decision as abortion up to the states to decide, then you are essentially screwing over any woman who lives in a 'conservative' state--you're screwing over most of the middle of the country, the people who would have the biggest tendency to be poorer, and in a position where they could not go out-of-state for an abortion. If abortion is legal throughout the country, then it can be decided upon by each individual woman whenever she might have the need to decide.
Interesting that a self-styled libertarian wants to EXPAND government authority when it comes to women's wombs. Isn't that something of a contradiction?
Kumogakure continues:
1) Being a Finance/Economics guy by education and profession, RP's gold standard ideas are actually beneficial for quite a few reasons, long and short term.
Feel free to visit my blogspot for the detailed financial analysis. As it stands now, the U.S. is already insolvent, and the threat of massive financial turmoil is quite real.
On top of that, the current fiat money regime we have now is pretty "old skool," not to mention that the Federal Reserve was created, under false pretenses, by wealthy Wall Street and London bankers, to suck the wealth right out of the pockets of the everyday guy and gal.
2) While it is true that some of the White Supremacist crowd rolls with RP, that doesn't bother me (as a black man) because, when one looks at their claims in detail (not the I'm better than you because I'm white thang, which is absurd), I can understand why they would support him.
There are very real policies and agreements that the U.S. has made that run all over the constitutional rights of folks, which is one of the reasons why I became a Mens Rights Activist in the first place.
3) Actually, RP is very much against attacking other nations, but he is for defending our borders proper. I don't know about you, but I think it's time for us to stop policing the globe. Don't confuse national defense with militarism.
Anything is possible, but the chance that RP launches a nuclear strike against some-young-country is a pretty remote.
Well, that's a relief! Kumogakure continues:
Under a fascist/totalitarian regime (which is where we are going; google "nspd 51"), neither you nor I will have any opportunity to debate the issues, as they will be decided from on high, by our future Philosopher Kings who will decide what is best for everyone. Believe you me, that's not my style.
You might not agree with my positions, but I will not impose my will upon you. I believe that everyone, man, woman AND child, has equal rights AND responsibilities, not special rights and privileges.
Anthony replies:
Sorry, but some fundamental human rights simply should NOT be left to individual states to determine for us. That's how slavery and Jim Crow and lynching and back-alley abortions were able to take shape. Some folks simply aren't wealthy enough to move to states with more progressive laws....and why should they be left to suffer??
The fundamental difference between you and I, K, is that you fundamentally reject the role of government as a social good to level the playing field; while I totally accept and expect government -- whether of the state, local, or federal level -- to be used as a tool for counterbalancing private, unchecked power. I may not like what government does on a lot of issues, but I fear far more what the lack of countervailing power against private privilege and power has done to both the underprivileged and the planet. Government can't and shouldn't do everything, of course, but it can do a lot of good...and people not of privilege have as much a right to expect government to resolve their claims as the wealthy do.
As for Ron Paul: say what you like about the benefits of the "gold standard," but it was and remains a relic of a time that has long since been bypassed by technology and more humanistic policies.
And...it does not even bother you as a Black man that Paul favors the very people who would effectively terminate your and my very existence as Black people??? Because you "understand" why such people support him??? WOW...then you are even more elitist and reactionary than I ever expected. Paul's reputation as a racist and a xenophobe is well documented; and no blurbing of House speeches will change that fact.
As disaffected I am with the Democrats and their tepid, craven pseudo-liberalism, rest assured that I will NEVER, EVER endorse his kind of right-wing libertarianism...or ANY Republican, for that matter.
But, it's your choice, and while I am totally in the opposite direction politically as you are, I recognize and accept your right to disagree with me as strongly as I do with you.
If there were black folks at the Ron Paul rally, I didn't see them.
The following excerpt is from a letter to Sylvia Austin, dated July 9, 1946, in Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 287:
