By the way, a quick comment on Bob’s observation, “A society which is only held together by an opinion cannot have freedom of opinion.”

Am I alone in noticing that the Ron Paul Campaign seems to have literally had the lights turned off, overnight, quickly, quietly, and silently?

Am I alone in noticing that Libertarian Ideals ran into *SOMETHING* that just hit the “OFF” switch?

Am I alone in noticing that the foundation of what could have been to the future what the Goldwater Campaign was to the Reagan Revolution seems to have been suddenly, dramatically, short-circuited?

AFKAN

Precisely.

This is why bitching about newspaper crap in general, “Well, the Mantra is in there IMPLIED” — is like Paul trying to dodge the race issue in a cloud of Libertarian verbiage and patriotism.

As AFKAN says, that crap was out of date in 1981, a quarter of a century ago.

I got ONE url out of the url request below, I don’t why copying and pasting is such an imposition. That one was a BUGS person bitching about Jena, which any SFer could have done.

Well, I’m used to plugging on by myself, so I’ll keep it up.

At least your comments HERE are getting better.

My ambition is make myself superfluous.

Compare the comments this time with those a couple of years ago, and you will see my success. Two years ago I would have put abut all of them on the front page, but what was then outstanding is now normal her.

Our comments used to consist of observations from the newspapers. Someone wanted to voice an opinion so he would have if he had never been here, so he would mention us but go ahead with what he had to say. Now you are looking at the world from a Mantra point of view.

Instead of our discussions here providing an opportunity to voice a standard opinion, you are allowing the world to provide examples of our thinking. After all, if the world does not provide examples of our thinking, as does the Obama candidacy, then our thinking is irrelevant.
So while SF was saying, “OH, GOD, the blacks are taking over,” we saw we had predicted the Obamas a long time ago.

The world provides us with damned few surprises. Which is why our thinking is effective. If someone is constantly surprised he is in no position to provide leadership or deal with the future.

But I still have to provide almost all of Roman spears: “”A nation based on a proposition cannot allow people to be free to discuss their own propositions.” “EVERY white country and ONLY white countries,” “blaming everything on white people is white supremacy.”

This is EXTREMELY advanced work. Trying to get one’s explanations down to a single page is graduate-level, but thinking and rethinking a point down until it is a sentence means an understanding of the real world which few ever achieve.

Simmons’s “shriek and retreat conservatism” is this most advanced kind of work. His identification of “Buckleyesque” this time is major league.

Our seminar is paying off. Too bad there is only one real graduate seminar on the planet.