Archive for August 5th, 2006

Shoefall

Posted by Bob in Coaching Session on 08/05/2006

I remember very well when arguing that there were innate differences in IQ between blacks and whites was considered

not only hopelss, but insane. I was fighting hte Communists when the John Birch Society

insisted that the Communist Conspiracy directed from Moscow was a power beyond my simple

comprehension.

Only a few of us militantly denied it was true and we were denounced as fools.

I remember when Walter Cronkite was God and Dan Rather was His Son.

I remember when Bella Abzug was the Voice of Women. I remember when hippies were the Voice

of Youth.

Back then, a lot of people complained about this, but only a few of us militantly denied it was true. We were denounced as fools.

I remember decades when the Republican Party insisted it should ignore the “Wallace vote”

and concentrate on getting “The Negro Vote.”

Back then, a lot of people complained about this, but only a few of us militantly denied it was true. We were denounced as fools.

I remember the days when “Soylent Green” was an expression of what everybody knew, that

white American were having too many children.

Back then, a lot of people complained about this, but only a few of us militantly denied it was true. We were denounced as fools.

I remember in the 1980s when everybody insisted that the only difference between a baby boy

and baby girls was how they were raised.

Back then, a lot of people complained about this, but only a few of us militantly denied it was true. We were denounced as fools.

Far more important, I clearly remember that these were not academic theories. These were

all absolute realities. Even those who opposed them admitted they were unshakable.

I remember when, to the aveage Southener, New York City was God. Atlanta claimed it was

Little New York.

Back then, a lot of people complained about this, but only a few of us militantly denied it was true. We were denounced as fools.

So here I sit in the midst of today’s Absolute Unchanageable, Unchallengable Realities, waiting for the next shoe to fall.

For fifty years I have listened to Tough, Practical People tell me that the mext shoe cannot

fall.

This is a lonely and tiresome business.

But I am proud to be what I have always been. I am proud to be denounced as a fool, because us fools have been right.

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By the Way …

Posted by Bob in Coaching Session on 08/05/2006

Somebody is going to take seriously my joke below about claiming LibAnon’s joke by putting in “Copyright Robert W. Whitaker, 2006.” Somebodyis going to thing I’m really shrewd.

This beings up the whole question of Intellectual Property.

JRR Tolkine lost the American rights to LOTR because he did not meet the copyright requirements, so people tend to think that is something really hard to figure out here.

If you have an idea, write yourself a letter describing it and, when you receive it back, leave the envelope unopened. You can send yourself a dozen of those and keep them all.

Oops, I have just been talking about PATENT law, not simple copyrights.

Tolkien could have submitted his book for publication in the US and held the copyright on it. A manuscript gives you copyright, @Robert W. Whitaker 2006 be screwed.

I used to instruct contract law. Instead of telling someone you you don’t want someone else to get the idea, write a descritpion of it, make copies, and send a bunch of them to yourself. It never occurred to Tolkien that he had to do anything of the sort. He shouldn’t have HAD to.

In the case of PATENT law, writing the ida and being able to open it in court does not guarantee you exclusive right. But if you are the sort of peson who has to tell your idea to people, you re probablynot going to get exclusive rights anyway. But you can go to court against someone who is the sort of entrepeneur who DOES get a copyright.

He will pay you lots of money and give you opportunties you could not have gotten any other way.

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LibAnon

Posted by Bob in Comment Responses on 08/05/2006

NOT SPAM
NOT SPAM
“a completely outdated Southern obsession called ‘courtesy.’”
My comment isn’t exactly going to be a response either, and it isn’t even an observation. But it might not be entirely beside the point, given the importance that you rightly attach to courtesy.
You were in academic economics, Bob, so you may have already heard this one.
Four economists are attending a symposium: one from America, one from the Soviet Union, one from Poland, and one from Israel.
A journalist walks up to them and asks, “Excuse me, how will rationing affect the price of meat?”
The American replies, “I don’t understand. What is ‘rationing’?”
The Soviet replies, “I don’t understand. What is a ‘price’?”
The Pole replies, “I don’t understand. What is ‘meat’?”
The Israeli replies, “I don’t understand. What is ‘excuse me’?”

Comment by LibAnon

****** No I haven’t heard it before.

****** I am proud to announce that I am now the first person who said it.

****** Copyright Robert W. Whitaker, 2006

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Joe Ororke

Posted by Bob in Comment Responses on 08/05/2006

Think mderpelding’s got you buffaloed, Bob. Must be a professor. Check that piece out a little bit and you’ll find a little crap floating around in there. But he buffaloed you with pieces of crap. “Materialistic Christianity.” Right. It’s kind of funny to see you folding under all this verbal pummeling, Bob. But it’s still your basic professorial crap. You should be able to deal with that. You wrote a book on professorial crapshooters, didn’t you?

Comment by joe rorke

MY OBSERVATION:

You’re damned right that mderpelding hit me sideways. He said so much that I know is true!

When I demanded comments like this LibAnon warned me that I was looking for people on my own intellectual level. He said there weren’t any.

When was the last time YOU got a compliment like that, Joe?

Joe, you are a mean old bastard just like I am. You’ve been through what I’ve been through. You give me hell, and I would be very worried if you didn’t.

But being bufalloed is what I’m LOOKING for. I think the people I want here SHOULD mostly tell me I’m right and admire my courage and perverseness.

You have been advocating Tough Guy surrender since you got here. We are both hard, crusty old men who have been through it all and never surrendered.

The difference is that I’m not a BITTER old warrior the way you are.

Instead of trying to justify the way things are, you say our enemies are beneath contempt. You don’t hide behind the rationalizations of “The Greatest Generation” that JUSTIFIES the disaster we are in the middle of. You get kicked inthe teeth, but, unlike so many bitter old men, you don’t pretend to LIKE it.

Joe Rorke and I have a grand total of ONE disagreement. Joe says I am engaged in nothing but intellectual masterbation and I think I am encouraging the kind of intellectual fighting back that will WIN.

Long live Joe!

Even if he is a dyed-in-the-wool Son of a Bitch.

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Peter Pain

Posted by Bob in Coaching Session, Comment Responses on 08/05/2006

Yes you are right, charity means love. The word was used in the KJV to translate agape. Agape was not ordinary love; as you probably remember it is the boundless love given by God to anyone who needs it whether he deserves it or not. Thus serving free food to the poor is agape is love is charity. Our word charity has loss its main meaning of love as it has come to mean what used to be “alms” for the poor. But if you get a good agape love feast going, you can sure feel the love. But now we usually call that a rip-roaring potluck.

Comment by Pain

MY OBSERVATION:

From now on I may use “MY OBSERVATION” here instead of “MY REPLY.” The reason for this, I am perversely proud to say, is the result of my clinging to a completey outdated Southern obsession called “courtesy.”

A “reply” should be addressed entirely to what YOU say. All of us have had far too much of people pretending to answer the points we took some trouble to formulate while they just ramble on without dealing with anything we actually said.

That’s RUDE.

The fact is that when I deal with a comment, I usually go on and say what it makes me think of. Obviously you wouldn’t be here if you were offended by that, but my sense of courtesty tells me I shouldn’t refer to a wandering off into what you made me think of as a “reply.”

And you shouldn’t allow anyone else to do that, either.

What Pain reminded me of here was a recent get-together of the mainline churches in which they all agreed that the essence of Christianity is taking care of the poor. As a Bible Belter who has the disadvantge of knowing his Bible, I remember the whole context of what Jesus meant when he said, “The poor we have always with us.”

What he said and what he meant was that the ONLY purpose of his mission on earth was to save souls. From the point of view of mainline churches, that is about as bad as you can GET. The whole point of being a MAINLINE church is that you are mainline in our Politically Correct society. This is exactly like RESPECTABLE conservative. Respectable means mainline modern.

I am proud to say that I don’t attract commenters like that. mderpelding and Mark may be totally down on Shari’s ideas, but they are more than willing to share a forum with somebody who HAS ideas. Shari may enrage them, but “mainline religion” SICKENS them. My commenters are the sort of people who can argue with someone who makes us mad, but if somebody buzzard’s meal SICKENS us the way a buzzard’s breakfast does, all we ask is to put as much mileage between us and that buzzard’s tidbits as we can.

Shari puts ALL her chips on salvation. Shari is either RIGHT or WRONG, fashion be damned.

Mainline religion gets together and decides that they don’t want to take an extrmeist position like Shari’s. If they did that, they would be laughed at by all the political commentators and paid intellectuals. So they say, “All right, maybe this whole salvation bit is absurd. But we really do love poor people, and all the Intellectuals have to admit that is a nice thing and it is Socially Relevant.”

What Peter Pain does not mention is what happened AFTER Jesus’s miracle of the loaves and fishes, though it is exactly his point. The day after the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes the crowd grew to enormous size. It grew to enormous size because they wanted MORE loaves and fishes.

At that point Jesus shrugged and walked away. He was deeply disappointed.

To a mainline churchman, this reaction is inomprehensible, which is why it is never mentioned in a mainline church.

After all, as in Peter Pain’s description of the agape, Jesus was providing food for those who needed it. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? According to mainline theology about the New Testament, Jesus was being a really bad sport.

Jesus had this idea that he had not come to earth to die on the cross entirely for the purpose of feeding the poor.

How unprogressive can you get?

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mpelding

Posted by Bob in Comment Responses on 08/05/2006

As I mentioned below, from time to time some disgusted commenter will say Bob’s Blog is just for agreeing with Bob and telling me how right and how great I am.

As I said, if thats is purpose of this Blog, I am plagued by commenterts who simply refuse to get with the program. The latest is mpelding:

NOT SPAM

All right, you do homage to some ancestors who
truly understood Jesus, in your opinion.
What about earlier ancestors, the ones who would
be BURNED ALIVE by their own racial kin if they refused
Christianity or failed to follow it?
Oh, I know, those were “wordists”.
Maybe you and a few others can remove Christ
contextually from the rest of the bible.
Save the “red letters” in the four Gospels
and toss the rest.
Where do you think liberalism comes from?
What preceeds it?
How about the righteousness of the Beatitudes?
Just like a moralizing liberal today.
So a Christian and a liberal get in an argument.
The liberal quotes Jesus.
The Christian rebuts by quoting either
an epistle of Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee,
or the Old Testement, the Sanhedrin.
The Liberal assumes the viewpoint of Jesus.
The Christians assumes the viewpoint of his enemies.

Political correctness is materialistic Christianity.
Or simpler put, political Christianity.
If the world differs from what Christ envisioned,
use political force change it.
Allways the same, making right and wrong based on
abstractions instead of Blood and Soil.
A millenia of racial self destruction,
based on the words of a Jewish carpenter.
“The meek shall inherit the earth”.
Our racial enemies don’t strike me as being too
“meek”.
And they are inheriting the earth.
Quickly, I might add.
Oh no, see Jesus was talking about his fathers
kingdom. Not on the earth in the here and now.
See, there’s this special abstract place where
all TRUE believers will go. That’s the place
that Jesus is talking about.
I’d rather exist in a Valhalla full of my warrior
ancestors than in somekind of erternal heavenly
Vulcan “mind meld” with every savage that accepted
Jesus as his/her personal savior.

Comment by mderpelding —

MY REPLY:

As an expression of meek, mindless agreement agreement, this falls considerably short of perfection. That suits both mepelding and Ole Bob perfectly.

My reply to

“The meek shall inherit the earth”

has always been,

“That’s sure as hell the only way they’re going to get it.”

More than any other writer I know of, I have talked about my ancestors who were burned alive in the name of “Christianity.” I have repeated, ad nauseum, the point that while Jews whine and sob about how badly THEY were treated, the simple fact is that THEY, and THEY alone, were allowed to stay ALIVE and defy “Christianity.”

Jesus never advocated any of this. What we call Christianity is a complete perversion of everything Christ actually said.

Every word mpelding says in his usual short, uncompromising, take-it-or-leave-it sentences is correct.

But let me say it again, ad nauseum magna, that you are not dealing with Objective Truth here. You are dealing with Bob. It is not objective truth but Bob Whitaker the Bible elter who has a soft spot in his heart for Jesus. I am leveling with you.

I am not trying to impress you. I am just one more confused human being.

Enough with the humility! To quote underpelding again, “Victimization does not become you.” He really does need to work on the mindless worship bit.

What mderpelding was talking about with that last quote was my admission that I have a hell of time iwth all this complicated computer business. Al Parker’s excellent suggestion simply involved an assumption that I can handle computers better than I can. So I told him the truth and asked for some help.

That happens to be the truth. If it sounds like I am humilating myself, so be it. I don’t consider this kind of admission to be humiliation. I consider it management, on which I made my living. Management is not victimization, but it IS dependence.

mderpelding is probably right. Jesus was a Wordist, and even if he did have some solid truths to impart, they havebeen so perverted by now that anything decent he said is beyond retrieval by now.

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