Anyone can tell you a great deal about how the world fifty years ago was different from today, but it is not possible to accurately describe the world fifty years from now.
A newspaper from fifty years ago is a curiosity. A newspaper from fifty years in the future would be worth billions if not trillions of dollars.
To “progress” has a specific meaning. It is the movement from where you have been to where you are going, from Point A to Point B. When you say you are “progressing” it means you know exactly where you are headed. If political “progressives” knew that they would own the stock market.
Octogenarian Le Pen just got sent to prison for three months for saying that the Nazi Occupation, which he lived through, wasn’t all that bad. I just pointed out that children in occupied countries didn’t starve under the Nazi Occupation the way they did after it. Maurice Chevalier chose to stay in France after the Nazis took over. Elie Wiesel could have left the Nazis when the Soviet Liberators showed up, but he chose to go west with the Germans.
But I am sure William Buckley is ecstatic, just as he was over David Irving’s six-year sentence for researching the subject and concluding that hundreds of thousands rather than millions of Jews died under the Nazis. Buckley would like an established Catholic Church in America, but he will settle for that of Political Correctness.
And that, of course, is why no one laughs out loud at the idea that there are people who can perfectly predict the future. Which is exactly what the term “progressive” means.
Under an established religion, the future will be what the priests WANT it to be. No matter how often they are wrong, this proposition still holds for anyone who wants to stay out of jail.
#1 by Dave on 02/11/2008 - 5:23 pm
There are certain things about the future that are “no brainers”. For example, it is easy to be relatively certain that electron computing will disappear, just as in the late 19th century it would have been easy to predict something else would replace the gramophone.
Also, it is easy to predict that materials will continue to get lighter and stronger and that everything will become more energy efficient.
This is the long-term 2% rate of real capital accretion that has now been going on for centuries. That is all it really is.
But what also does not change is the public’s utter blindness about the real meaning of their times, something that is always overestimated.
That’s why Catholics like William F. Buckley can actually con himself into believing that “nations” such as Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia will ever be anything but vast Indian reservations in perpetual squalor. His Catholic faith compels him to believe that somehow something like gambling casinos run by white men will pull them out of that. To Catholics it’s God’s plan. It has to happen.
That is how utterly absurd these “optimists” are.
Also, I often wonder about the prospects of a society where 90 million people can be conned into watching 4 hours of nonstop commercials on TV with a few random snippets of something purporting to be a football game sewn in, and believe a “Super-Bowl” has entertained them.
It makes me think there is no governor on human behavior and perceptions at all and that people can be conditioned to anything whatsoever, without limitation. It’s scary and in fact it is more “Nazi” than any portrayal of “Nazi” Hollywood has ever turned out, all the more terrible because it is real. Let Buckley contemplate that one.
But here’s a fact the William F. Buckley’s will never owe up to: The real bottleneck in any society is that there are too few people with any brains.
It is so far heretical to cop to that, you aren’t even permitted an out through the route of becoming a sophisticate. Instead, you are only allowed to forebode on “end of the world” type topics like the “world is running out of commodities”, a perennial favorite of academics.
This favors the Catholic Church because it makes these academics corkscrewed eyed fruitcakes and eligible for priestly counseling.
And do the Catholics ever like raw material for counseling. It is hard to beat that racket, it really is. That’s why the Catholics put so much effort in assuring a superabundance of impoverished colored people and other sundry indigenous types in every habitable space on earth. Shit hole squalor is truly one of the Catholic Church’s fortes and a lot of American policy is based upon the goal of supporting shit hole squalor and universalizing it in accordance with the goals of the Catholic Church.
That’s because politicians and priests tend to share the same goals, that’s all there is to it.
#2 by Simmons on 02/11/2008 - 5:49 pm
Frankly I’m disapointed in this and a million other respectable conservative opinion essays I have ever read. These crackpots call themselves god and we quibble the details, typical finish the liberal’s sentences conservatism, ho hum. There Bob I finished your idea, thank me later.
#3 by backbaygrouch4 on 02/13/2008 - 6:46 am
It is hard to know where to begin when staring at the towering stupidity of Dave’s ignorant hatred. He conflates William Buckley with Catholicism. Dumb. He appears to think that the leftist academy is Catholic. It is as anti-Catholic as he is. Uninformed. His economic argument is so inchoate that it resembles the overflow from a drool cup, which it may well be. One suspects he is the abused parishioner of an exceptionally stupid Baptist preacher. To place that in context, remember that among Baptist ministers, a 68 IQ is deemed genius level. If Dave is a snake handler I apologize to Baptists. My mother was one before she converted. She was a very Baptist Catholic.
The point is this, Whites need to stick together, But if one wants to sling it out, one should expect to get it thrown back.
Pope Benedict is laying the intellectual groundwork for reviving and defending White Europe. No Protestant clergyman can match his endeavors in this that I am aware of. They are everything that Dave despises. However, man does need a spiritual anchor. Religion is that anchor. Our movement will need many ships. Let us not tangle our anchors.
#4 by Prometheus on 02/15/2008 - 3:37 am
I’m rebellious because I choose not to be a ‘progressive’.
#5 by mderpelding on 02/16/2008 - 12:11 am
Just what or where is a self described “progressive”
progressing to?
What exactly is meant by the term “progressive”?
Does it denote directed action?
For instance, the other day I woke up and went to the Waffle House for breakfast.
Wasn’t that a “progressive” activity?
Wasn’t some sort of “progress” accomplished by my actions?
Or are only certain actions worthy of the moniker “progressive”?
Maybe I should have carried a placard proclaiming my undying support for starving Animists in Africa while I ate my breakfast. I’m quite sure that the collective shout “Kumbaya” by my fellows having bacon and hashbrowns with me would have increased our sensitivities.
Would that action have allowed me to be defined as a progressive?