Geo-strategic issues

In WJM’s still very active Subjectivism privilege thread — and in response to my citing Plato’s warning on radical relativist amorality, factionalism and nihilism in The Laws Bk X, CF has recently gloated (cf 417): “Frankly, I am glad that the type of prurient, judgemental morality that you worship [–> yes, we catch the implicit, Lewontin-style a priori,  self-referentially incoherent and amoral evo mat scientism based atheism and/or fellow traveller ideologies] is dying out.” This tellingly echoes a recent blog post by Harvard Law professor Victor Mark Tushnet** on the legal exploitation of claimed victory in the culture wars: >>The culture wars are over; they lost, we won. Remember, they [= conservatives] were the ones who characterized constitutional disputes as Read More ›

Overnight CF and Aleta threw down a gauntlet in WJM’s thread on subjectivism: CF, 148 : >>KairosFocus: “CF, again you are asserting when something you have consistently refused to address is on the table.” [CF:] the fact that you disagree with how I have repeatedly addressed the issue does not mean that I have “consistently refused to address” it.>> Aleta,149 : >>Re 148: what he means is that you consistently refuse to agree with him.>> Of course, the truth is, CF and others of like ilk have consistently side-stepped dealing with evidence that there are self-evident moral truths (07 is still missing in action . . . ), that we are under moral governance, and that this directly impinges on Read More ›

Following up from the FTR on the lesson of the failure of democracy in Athens, I have found a powerful 26-lecture series by Rufus Fears . . . a man imbued with the spirit of history; one that will well and long repay the time invested to view it and to ponder and discuss it. Perhaps the most subtly powerful is this, No. 20, on the Trial of Socrates 399 BC (an indictment of Athens’ democracy — with sobering implications for our own): [youtube 7Ra9nA6F8tI] Going back to the Peloponnesian war, 16, 17, 18 and 19 are collectively devastating and point sobering fingers to Alcibiades (nor does Nicias come off well) while showing up the Spartan Lysander as a stunning Read More ›

As I have pondered the current exchanges at UD and wider circumstances and trends with our civilisation, I have been reminded of the local prolonged volcano eruption triggered disaster and crisis that is now of over twenty years standing. Yesterday, I put up this visualisation of what I am thinking about — prolonged crisis with double, linked slippery slopes: Here, I see how a window of opportunity for sound change can narrow down to a dangerous ridge line with two slippery slopes, where divide and domineer tactics can trigger falling down BOTH escarpments in a mutual ruin of polarisation and folly. At the same time, I think of Tsubakurodake ridge, Japan, with a ridge-line trail (as we can see). What Read More ›

In recent days, WJM put up a post on the end or reasonable discussion that soon turned into sharp exchanges on hot-button issues, especially the homosexualisation of marriage. (For months there has been a lot of baiting in and around UD to pull us into a debate on such.) An underlying factor in such is that we need to recognise not only the danger of a march of folly over a cliff: and the potential for a modern, electronic media version of Plato’s Cave manipulative shadow shows confused for reality: as well as the warning in Acts 27 that gives us a real-world case study on the dangers of manipulated democracy leading to shipwreck: but we should also take into Read More ›

The developing pattern of terrorist attacks in the West continues. Looks like a bombing at an airport and a metro station in Brussels after a terrorist mastermind was captured Friday last. It seems so far, 26 dead, dozens wounded. The airport bombing may be a suicide bombing. Sky News, live: [youtube y60wDzZt8yg] Heads up. END