Dereke says,

“To be honest Bob I am 26. I just rounded down to make it simple.”

“Whoever orchestrated WWII did a good job. I grew up guilty for a holocaust I didn’t particiapte in. Collecetive guilt, as I understaind it, is the work of communistis. I thought that was what my forefathers fought against – not for. ”

What Derek said was that he had been LISTENING to this crap for twenty years. Assuming he did not have a radio plugged in his ear when he was born, it would take at least six years for him to become aware of what the buzz was.

On the other hand, if I had known that I was not talking to a twenty-year-old, but to a decrepit old man of twenty-six, I would not have bothered.

So let’s blame my calling Derek a twenty-year-old on him.

Shame on you Derek!

As for collective guilt, remember that long before its bastard Communism came into existence, the church taught that every infant deserves eternal agony because of some sin its first ancestors committed.

Collective guilt is a disease that many have exploited.

Collective guilt is a DISEASE. We need to root it out and destroy it the way we went after plague and smallpox.

In reply to my piece on how I had lost all the old blogs, Bruce writes:

“Perhaps you can recover some of your old blogs using the internet wayback machine at www.archive.org. ”

Comment by Bruce
“If you were referring to http://whitakeronline.org/blog.htm and http://whitakeronline.org/blog_May-2004.htm, they still work for me.”

Comment by Bruce

Bruce, I have this problem: often people can explain to me exactly where things are and I can’t find them.

This should embarrass me, but I ran out of embarrassment decades ago. Now I just ask for help.

James Kelso told me that my blogs were NOT lost. He and my old team are consulting about it.

What I am doing must be worthwhile. When I get into situations like this, the Bruces and the Kelsos and my old team rush in to help.

Remember, all this, whitakeronline and then my blog, are all MY product. I keep wondering if I am saying things you want to hear or just what I want to say. So I need the reassurance.

But I am the one who keeps pushing moral courage. I have to keep to keep going even when I feel I am going it alone. But the fact that good people charging in to help is a needed relief.

I have seen far too many bitter old right-wingers end up bitching to themselves, and I don’t want to join them.

Back to the problem at hand.

I will try the addresses Bruce gave me. Assuming they still don’t work for me, how far do they go? Are they up to date?

Every time I need a piece from the old WOL archives, it has disappeared completely. Most of them are still there, but the same rule works for me that works for everybody else: the ones I need are the ones that are missing.

I have a strong suspicion that everything I am saying here is something that happens to you all the time.

Aonymous says,

“About four hundred years ago, an anonymous theologian published an article arguing that mankind will receive another divine revelation sometime before the year 3120. He reasoned that by that time, the Resurrection of Christ itself will have taken place so long ago that mankind will have completely forgotten about it, thus necessitating a new miracle.”

Comment by Anonymous

I keep explaining that everybody forgets everything. The stuff that everybody is frantically e-mailing each other about will be forgotten tomorrow. It is SO nice to hear that somebody four centuries ago poined out that if Jesus Christ came back to earth on Judgement Day it would be front page news, but people wouldn’t take all that long to forget it.

As I said, in the middle of all the waves of news about the first Iraq War and Clinton sex scandals and the second Iraq War and the meat shortage and all the rest, this country almmost had an instant revolution when Ross Perot first said he would be willing to run for president.

What happened was that everybody e-mailed each other about how Perot was a nut and all the rest. The fact that a major part of the system almost went down was instantly forgotten.

Everybody forgot the Perot phenomenon and talked about Perot himself.

I have my eyes on the phenomenon. It completely contradicts everything everybody says about the Immovable Establishment.

In the midst of my earnest efforts to remind people of this, Anonymous points out that someone pointed out four centuries ago that Judgement Day itself would be soon forgotten.

I got a much-needed laugh out of that.

I am going to get to the rest of hte earlier comments, but Derek commented on “December 7” from a young man’s point of view, so I want to get to that today.

Derek says,

“Wow. I am a young person so I have only had to hear 20 years of it. My grandfather fought in Okinawa and got two purple hearts. I don’t think that he ever would have wanted to go if he had known what the consequences were.”

“Do you have as much disdain for WWI? It was always my thought that WWI caused WWII.”

“JFK was another one I had to hear about. The old “Ask not what your country can do for you” crap got real old growing up. I thought that we weren’t supposed to have an allegiance to our government – they were to have one to us. Thank God JFK JR. was a real screw-up politically or else my generation would have had another guy’s ego to burden us for the rest of our lives.”

Comment by Derek

World War I did to Europe what World War II did to America. America did almost no fighting in WW I because Europe was so exhausted by then that the massive industrial might of America ended teh war within months of hte time we got there in late 1918.

American industry in 1917 was larger than Germany, France and Britain combined.

So there wasn’t much OF World War I over here. But the amount of oppression the Federal Government managed to impose in that small period is frightening.

But there was a REACTION to THAT oppression. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a return to “Normalcy” that had many meanings but the important one here is that, year after year after World War I, people marvelled at what we had fallen for in the war hysteria.

But the war hysteria os World War II lasted for years, and we celebrate it every year. Being totally sheepish in World War II is still celebrated as the ultimate patriotism.

Charles Lindbergh and others are still in the Memory Hole of history. They thought that the whole approach was wrong. And no punishment for them, even after their death, is never enough.

I do not underestimate where a man can be at age twenty. If I were talking to the twenty-year-old Bob Whitaker, I would have a lot to learn from him. His attitudes were my attitudes. I could give him facts I have learned, experiences I have had.

I could give a twenty-year-old Bob Whitaker TOOLS that I have. But I would have to convince him they were tools he could USE.

The World War I generation came home and took their country back over. The World War II Generation brought their obedience back here with them.

The World War I generation came back as Americans.

The group that calls itself The Greatest Generation came back as slaves who were were determined to teach slavery to our people.

Since it is traditional for an old Southern man to refer to a girl as “Sugar,” the title is appropriate.

We will now leave the Women’s Libbers to their conniption in the next room and procede to the SUBSTANCE of what Sheri said.

To make it easy for me, let’s say that what I have done so far for Sheri and Anonymous is addressthe FORM of what they said. I wanted to make a critical point that I am not out to cow Sheri or to make Anonymous recant.

These are critical points if this blog is to do its job.

Nobody in our sociey seems to have noticed that “leadership” today really means just cowing people or winning teh argument. That is the animal level. That’s what animals do to get tehir status inthe herd or pack, they cow and they back down opposition.

Bob’s Blog practices discrimination. It is for humans only.

So now to substance.

Shari says,

“Most people I know are white and they don’t know anything about a “manichean worship of sterility.” They just beleive in being nice. They don’t know that there is even a threat. They just don’t know that nice isn’t the same thing as good, which is stronger stuff,much stronger. But then I don’t travel in big shot political circles. Shari ”
Comment by lemon

“Nice is not the same thing as good, which is stronger stuff, much stronger stuff.”

That is a book in one sentence. And to me, brevity is soul of wit. Brevity is what I work hard to try to achieve. When someone achieves it, I want to frame it and put it on the wall. As a writer, that is my idea of a work of art.

I keep empahsizing that what we are looking for is ideas that are SIMPLE but not EASY.

When an Inquisitor or a Puritan says being right is much, much stronger stuff than being nice, he is not saying what Shari is saying.

In fact, the Inquisitors and Puritans gave us what passes for leadership today. They totally forget The Golden Rule and go for what they have decided is Right.

And neither the Inquisitor nor the Puritan can deal with a human being who can THINK. And most people don’t like to think, so they prefer that.

What Shari is saying is that being good requires one to take a stand that that person sees as fulfilling the Golden Rule. You can’t just sit back and say, “Well, they TOLD me what is good for people.” You have to have MORAL courage.

You have to bet on the unknown. Nobody really KNOWS how other people would LIKE to be treated. I could make The Golden Rule easy if I just made everybody put the same amount of sugar in their food as I like on mine.

But what I want peole to do is give ME the sugar bowl.

But what if they like an amount of sugar I do not think is good for them?

What if I am sure that, if they got used to a different amount of sugar they would actually like it better? It’s not so simple.

A libertarian can make it easy. he can just say, “Damn my opinion. Just give everybody a sugar bowl.”

Generally I agree. But if that person is a diabetic and am sure he is not being rational, I will fight to keep hiim OUT of the sugar bowl.

And the world is more complicated than sugar bowls.

No, Sheri says, you can’t even depend on your bishop or your policeman to give you the final word. The Golden Rule is the final word.

That is mental work and moral courage to back it up. That is a willingness to have people be mad at you. That is a willingness not to be nice.

Shari just gave us something better than a book on morality in a single sentence.