Budarick says,

“NOT SPAM

NOT SPAM

Bob, you are being too lenient with me.

But i am glad that you can see beyond the words i make.

That tells me that here is a man who has been around
who in any data-gathering work he may have to do,
is not going to get derailed by some imprecision
of language usage his target makes.

Now if i were the normal scumbag i would say,
“Oh i was just testing you Bob”.

Well i was NOT testing you.

No, i believe Hitler wanted to transcend “politics”
but he realized he had to fully understand it first.

He had to understand how it works.

I am a bit worried in that he probably did NOT understand it.

Because if you understand politcs you don’t enter that domain.

Joe is clapping now!

But Hitler was not your normal liberal hippy artist idealist.

He attempted the impossible.

For this reason he was deemed mad!

I believe it is fruitful to analyse his work from that perspective.

PGB. ”

MY REPLY:

Lenient?

ME?

Not bloody likely!

You are in the midst of a thought process. I want to see how you come out.

Don’t give me “I believe it is fruitful to analyse his work from that perspective.” I want to see what YOU come up with.

Lenient, hell! Where the hell are you going? And if you don’t know, say so! Hints won’t do it in Bob’s Seminar!

You have left yourself utterly open. You have not retreated behind Joe’s Tough Guy crap. Damn, you’re GOOD! You made ME think.

I don’t want to put you on the spot. But do you have more?

Hitler was so ALONE! One man can’t work everything out. I think he was wrong on some obvious things that I know. I think his devotion to dictatorship was part of his time. But I am part of MY time. I am alone, too.

Why in heaven’s name did he turn to Goering instead of Hess, the man who helped him every inch of the way?

Joe keeps telling me I am attempting the impossible.

Am I nuts?

No doubt about it, I AM nuts. But take a look at what normal has come to, and you may have a new appreciation of us nutcases. Revolution is never practical. Joe is right. Revolution never succeeds. It has been said before: treason never triumphs, because if it is victorious it is not treason. So the Virginian Washington was called rebel, but he ended up a patriot, while the rebel Robert E. Lee, another Virginian, was a traitor.

Joe talks in tautologies.

Damn it, Budarick, where do we go from here?

Elizabeth says,

“NO SPAM

I’ve noticed a profound difference between myself and most of the
people in my age bracket: because neither of my parents were
adults or even teenagers during World War II, I didn’t get
conditioned from birth with the same assumptions they
were — the ones about the sanctity of Israel, the
greatness of the U.N., and so forth.

While most of my elementary and high school classmates’
parents were “making the world safe for democracy,”
my parents were learning their multiplication tables
and how to use long division

Comment by Elizabeth”

MY REPLY:

Elizabeth keeps talking about how bad her parens were, but here she praises them. There is, for what my opinion is worth, no contradiction here. My father was a disaster. But he had an understanding of reality I stand by to this day.

There is nothing more understandable than for a human being to concentrate entirely on what was done TO THEM. Nothing is more understandable, nothing is more forgivable. If your interest is only what is understandable and forgiveable, analysis ends right there.

Elizabeth is not satisfied by that. I am not satisfied by that.

Gosh, isn’t it wonderful that someone can suffer endlessly from the failures of one’s parents and still understand some solid virtues that they had?

Well, if your final goal is to be “objective” the answer is “YES, you are a paragon of impartiality!”

And if your final goal in life is to praised as a paragon of impartiality, you have achieved Nirvana.

Can you really imagine that Bob or Elizabeth would consider this paragon of impartiality to MATTER?

Get serious!

I think this is the reason actors are leftists. They believe that reality is drama. Like the Greatest Generation they say, “You haven’t EXPERIENCED that!” Reality to them is something called Real Pain or Real Combat.

To Elizabeth and me, reality if simply what IS. Most of reality is NOT dramatic. To Elizabeth and me, however much we may state what hurt us, it is INSULTING to say that what hurt us is our REALITY. Our experiences of being hurt may be something others do not credit sufficiently. They may need to understand it.

But does that mean that we, like Hollywood actors, think that pain is the same thing as truth?

No way.

Joe says,

“Happens to be that I am a fanatic also when it comes to freedom of speech. I believe you are too because I expected you to kick me off your blog quite awhile ago. I have to give you top respect for permitting people to “speak” on your blog. The past 3 or 4 pieces have been very informative. ”

MY REPLY:

I read every comment over and over AFTER I approve it. But if somebody has

NO SPAM.

NO SPAM.

I don’t even bother to read it BEFORE approving it.

When you write

NO SPAM.

NO SPAM.

It means that you are a member of this seminar and you said something. Today a grad student is just an undergrad who has to make a B. I keep talking about what a real seminar WAS. If you WERE inthe seminar it was not up to the Old Prof to decide whether what you said made sense or not.

Joe, you are a smart old bastard and I am a smart old bastard. You have something to say and I have something to say.

I am the Old Prof. That means I LEAD. But I don’t TEACH.

In a truly intellectual situation, one LECTURES the undergrads. They are undergraduates.

But if I, as a professor, give someone a DEGREE, they are supposed to fall into a different category. The whole point of giving them a degree is supposed to he that I put them in a different category.

The word Doctor, as you damend well know, comes from Latin doceo, docere which means TEACH.

A doctor teaches the undergrads. But REAL seminars are in a category the modern “Doctor” cannot understand. The modern “Doctor” is a Wordist. He helps you to repeat the Final Truth and you help him repeat the Truth.

There is no difference inthis process between a teacher and a grad and a neophyte. You are all together in trying to learn to repeat the word of the True Faith.

So the concept of someone who is not trying to repeat the True Faith, but who is trying to explore truth, no matter where it leads, is totally alien.

Ayn Rand gave is the Truth, Karl Marx gave us the Truth. William Buckley and the Pope give us the Truth.

Bit what if you are l ooking for what is simply true?

To get back to your point, a good solid Wordist Doctor, a good sound Wordist teacher, would correct your deviation from the Truth. That is his job.

I don’t believe in any Truth.

Ole Bob USES you. Bob really couldn’t care less about what you consider Truth. To me, the idea that some BOOK needs to be studied endlessly is, to use a word you hate, just plain silly.

If you think that is very tolerant of me, please continue to do so. I don’t think I am being tolerant. I just want to stop being silly and make myself a part of a group that is using its frontal lobe. This is not idealistic.

I cannot anything more BORING than using my brain to learn to repeat something some clown who wrote a book said. I want to THINK. As a social animal, I need some others to stop drooling and repeating the Old Testament or Mein Kampf and SAY SOMETHING.

For social animal with a huge frontal lobe, listening to people repeat crap doesn’t just make me feel lonely, it makes me DESPERATE.

So in contrast to what is normally called Idealism, my motives may seem a bit selfish. An “Idealist” is someone who is fanatical about a BOOK.

Joe, I USE you. In the seminar you make me THINK. If you are practical, you will get a lot from this nut Whitaker because he’s very smart and has things to say you can benefit from. That’s YOUR problem.

What really scares me is BOREDOM.

All I ask is that you don’t BORE me. How does that fit on the ego scale?

I think I’m bragging, big time. Demanding that you don’t BORE me takes more ego on my part than lecturing does. If you say something I don’t like, I assume that Ole Bob can handle it. Tell me that doesn’t involve a strong ego!

Budarick climbed all over me. But with my iron ego, I figured that I, the Heroic Bob Whitaker, could handle any point he hit me with. If I couldn’t, then my Hero, Bob Whitaker, had better start learning HOW.

My seminar group is a bunch of iron wills. If the average professor had them in his class he would panic.

I am not your average professor.

I don’t want anybody here who would not cause the average professor to dirty his trousers.

Can you imagine how anybody could make a bigger brag than I just made?

Can you imagine anyone making a bigger brag about you, my collection of nutcase, than I just made?

You fit right in, Joe.

That last sentence should make you ashamed of yourself. That last sentence should make any member of this seminar think twice about being here.

But it won’t.

We are either absolutely superior or absolutely out of it.

You know where I put my chips.