New statistical studies come out all the time .and while they are selectively financed and selectively quoted, a statistical study can convey a new set of facts.
This is unique to Western Civilization. What crippled us was our devotion to old books, the thing that was called the Renaissance.
At Oxford and Cambridge in the Middle Ages, the only question as to fact was “WHO said it?” As Joe Sobran said in his Foreword to my last book, every scholar in those schools at that time believed that men had one more tooth than women.
No peasant believed that. With two gums, where would you PUT an extra tooth? They come in pairs, upper and lower. Scholars laughed indulgently at this ignorance. The peasants had not read Aristotle.
No amount of tooth counting could contradict the Ancient Wisdom.
In 1700 medicine consisted of Galen and Hypocrites, and it was WRONG. In that one field, ALL the old “knowledge” was destroyed, in the teeth of the medical establishment, because information was more available, and no amount of Authority was able to stop the growing realization that that Renaissance crap didn’t WORK.
In an early Whitaker Online I gave a lengthy quote from Louis XIV’s physician, Pierre Borel, which I had from a 1928 History of Medicine. No one was interested and I can’t find it now. It was an attack, in the seventeenth century, for a germ theory of disease.
First of all, no one is aware that there WAS a germ theory of disease before Lister and Koch looked into their microscopes. Secondly, this long quote listed about a dozen German doctors, as examples, not as a full list, of the ignorant peasant-doctors who put forward the germ theory of syphilis.
The doctor’s big line was that, “They quote no AUTHORITY.”
So this showed that the germ theory of disease was widespread outside the Universities, and it showed how a fact was only Authority.
Not one single person commented on it or got the point. So I didn’t repeat it. Same as my radio shows and every other thing I tried. It had nothing to do with Iraq or a great speech by one of our leaders who has been losing for fifty years.
The Classical Civilization that was supposed to have brought us ape-like Northern Europeans into the human race would stop a battle to look at chicken gizzards. Their biggest industry was the Oracle at Delphi who said things that sounded obscure but were actually meaningless.
What they said had to be true, because the Oracle was the Authority. If you didn’t get it, that was YOUR fault.
If I were an official Oracle, I could answer your question with “All horses are pink” and Scholars would find some way later to show how they could see I was, in hindsight, right.
Does this sound familiar to you?
#1 by Dave on 10/06/2010 - 5:30 pm
Leaders extract clarity from confusing situations.
That is the job definition of a leader and the job usually doesn’t pay. Robert Whitaker is more aware of this fact than most.
What if the “clarity” extracted is not accurate (in accord with reality)?
It is not “clarity”at all is it?
That is why there are so few real leaders in the world, but we have charlatans aplenty.
Any talisman will do. Any. And that pretty much sums up our politics.
Nonwhites confuse form with function: College degrees make you intelligent. Driving a powerful car makes you successful. Knowing what the recognized authorities said makes you educated. Living in a white neighborhood makes you equal. And on and on and on.
But the anti-white white Establishment does the same thing. It confuses form with function. All the mainstream political parties do is engage in cat chasing its tail competitions in the “my taboos are superior to yours” game. And then they treasonously pocket cash after selling their own people out. In most instances, they don’t even realize they are doing it.