Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 30, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 30, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1
I started this program knowing that KEOS is very Liberal. I didn't care, because the people here at KEOS are sane by my standards. The Management Team meetings are a classic case of democracy in action. I understood the motivations of the people involved. I could see that the people here are committed to excellence, so I could ignore that their politics makes no sense to me.
I did not start this program to convert you to my way of looking at things. I started this program because I am tired unto death that the Left and the Right are yelling past each other. Watch any of the talk shows. Do you see these people talking to each other? No, you see them trying to count coup. Neither side is budging an inch. Neither side is listening to the other side and considering the other side's arguments. That's crazy to me.
I am trying to change the paradigm of social activism. The Left has failed in its goal of bringing social justice to this country. The poor are still about 20% of the population. I want social change. I want poverty to go down. I want to use the Internet to marshal resources to help in that project.
Last week I tried to show you that the Left and the Right see things differently based on the definition of the symbols that they hold dear. I tried to make some points that because our definitions of symbols ARE different we are not understanding each other. The political discourse between the Left and the Right has broken down. Both sides are frustrated. When I started this program, I thought that I get could someone to acknowledge that the Left and the Right have to work to make this country a better place. The problem as I see it is that the leadership of the Left has gone crazy by the standards of the Right. Just as the leadership of the Light has determined that the Right has gone crazy.
Think really hard about this. How can you have a debate with a person you think is crazy? You can't. The Right makes its points and the Left makes their points and each side ignores the other side's arguments.
I perceive that I am but a voice calling to you from the velvet black across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension.
For most of the shows I have done, I have started the program with a phrase something like that. What does it mean exactly? Do you care? Interesting question that. What I am saying by that sentence is that what you perceive me to have said may NOT be what I really said, because you have different definitions of the symbols I am using and you assume I am saying something I am not.
If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? This question was posed hundreds of years ago. Not until the last 100 years could we answer it effectively. If a tree falls, it creates a sound wave, it disturbs the air as it plummets to the ground. It disturbs the ground when it hits causing shock waves to emanate from it landing. It thus follows that a sound was produced... but was it heard? The physical world does not care whether it was heard, it just producing the sound and you have to decide to hear it... by being there or accepting that the sound was produced.
Now... Suppose neither YOU nor I were there when the tree fell. Did the tree make a sound? Of course it made a sound. That's silly. Go check it out. When a tree falls it creates a spherical pressure wave that we as humans recognize as sound. In addition, when the ground vibrates after the tree hits, the air is disturbed and another sound may be produced, albeit a very low frequency sound that most humans CANNOT hear. BUT a sound IS produced.
As I said, suppose neither you nor I were there when the tree fell. I tell you that a tree fell, because I have it on reliable sources that the tree fell. If you at that point say that I am wrong because I am on the Right and disregard my assertion that a tree indeed fell, I get frustrated, because you have disregarded what I have said based on political grounds. No skin off my nose, a tree falling in the forest, not my business whether you believe that a tree fell or not. My problem would come about were you to say that even if there were a tree that fell in the forest, there was no sound. In other words that you disagreed that the physical fact that trees falling in the forest make sounds, I would have to assume you were crazy. Think about this. It is one thing if you disregard the fact that a tree fell in the forest, because you distrust me and my sources, it is quite another for you to say that trees in general do not produce sounds when they fall in the forest.
A symbol has a name, it has a definition and it has substance. If it has no substance, then it has no validity for me. The French have come up with what is called postmodernist thought. Under postmodernist thought, all symbols can be redefined to anything you want them to and they are then true regardless of whether there is any substance to symbol. Ah, but what is substance? The postmodernist thought says that substance does not exist.
I know, I know, I know, you are thinking I'm talking crazy. Hey, these are the thoughts of the French, what do you expect?
Anyway, what I am getting at is that to me the facts underlying a symbol MUST match its definition, otherwise it has no validity. Postmodernist thought disagrees.
For a symbol to have substance, the definition has to match the facts on the ground. If the facts in the real world do NOT match the definition, then by my standards the symbol has no validity. Let me state that a different way, a symbol has to have an effect in the world that matches its definition before the symbol is valid. If the definition says that a symbol represents a concept, event or characteristic and that concept, event or characteristic does NOT exist in the real world, then the symbol is invalid.
Now, I am going to go over last week's program in more detail.
The Statue of Liberty is a symbol. It represents to most Americans Liberty and a promise of a good life. That is what the poem by Emma Lazurus about the Statue of Liber states. Yet the Statue of Liberty has physical substance. It has concrete, steel and bronze. It also has substance in that the promise of the Statue of Liberty, its definition is also true. Immigrants coming to this country find liberty and a chance of a good life. A good portion of the Left say that this symbol is a lie. Their position is that because America does not provide a good life for ALL immigrants, then it is a lie.
Do I say that YOU personally believe that? NO, I do not. I simply state as fact that the people on the three web sites: moveon.org, dailykos and democratic underground by and large believe that the symbol of the Statue of Liberty is a lie. I am stating as a fact that the three web sites I mentioned are the activists on the Left and the center of the Democratic Party. They present the face of the movement of the Left. Here is what I am getting at with the tree example above. Political discourse has gotten so screwed up, you CANNOT and will not go and check this out those sites. You will not believe that I am telling the truth. Your symbol for someone like me on the Right is that ANYTHING I say is a lie, so why bother? Your mind simply filters out my assertions and causes you to believe that I am bashing the Left.
I had a woman call me up and ask whether it was necessary to do all this bashing. The answer is that yes, it is necessary, because I was trying to alert you to the fact that the leaders of the Left have taken an extremist view of how the historic symbols of our country are defined. In short they have redefined the definition of the symbols and that is dangerous, because the leaders of the Left are using postmodernist thought to do the redefinition. There is no substance under the new symbols.
Let me try again. It is obvious to any thinking person that hard working immigrants from a Third World country can enter the middle class in one generation and that their kids can enter the upper tiers of our society by getting a college degree. Anyone who says different is insane by my standards. YET it is a fact that many on moveon.org, dailykos and democratic underground say that immigrants are victims and can never truly get a good life in this country. Instead of celebrating the majority who achieve the middle class in one generation, they bemoan the failure of the minority and make the generalization that ALL immigrants fail. Again, if you are on the Left, you cannot believe me, because I am on the Right and I have said something that you do not want to believe. Going out on the Internet and verifying what I have said would cause you pain, because you would have to admit that the symbol you associate with the Right may not be true. The symbol the Left has of the Right is that we lie and all of our information is a lie, so we can be ignored.
Here is what else I am trying to get at. The United States has become so wealthy that the elites of the Left on the three web sites I have mentioned believe that Liberty is a given. We have been free from want and tyranny for so long that many believe that Liberty is without cost, or it is a cost borne by the government. Every time the Left is confronted with a lessening of their Liberty, they assume that we are on the edge of a Fascist state.
Look, let me give you the example of the Dixie Chicks. One of the girls in that band while they were in London apologized for coming from Texas and made some disparaging remarks about George Bush. The entire Left was horrified when the Dixie Chicks caught flak for those statements. Why? Because the Left's symbol for George Bush is defined as someone evil, How could anyone criticize the Dixie Chicks for saying that? What's more the Left defined this criticism as censorship. The Left in fact defined the symbol called censorship to mean anyone expressing dissenting views and causing someone on the Left to feel uncomfortable. Censorship does not mean that. Censorship is where you cannot get your views heard. It does NOT mean that you get your views heard without dissent. You see the Dixie Chicks got to vent their frustration with their fans in all the magazines. Their baffled question was, "Why are our fans getting upset with us for stating a fact?" It had never occurred to them that someone might disagree and be willing to criticize them. Again, you don't believe me.
A symbol called censorship was redefined to mean something it did not. The Right looked at that and laughed, because that was a stupid redefinition. If the Dixie Chicks are screaming from every newspaper and magazine, how could they possibly be censored? If someone on the Left has a right of freedom of speech then someone on the Right also has freedom of speech. If your free speech hurts me and I say something back that hurts you, tough. Either we both have freedom of speech or neither one of us has freedom of speech.
The correct solution to this is not where you shut me up or I shut you up, it is that we debate the topic. The Dixie Chicks were not willing to debate, because they had defined the symbol of George Bush as evil, thus there could be no debate. To them, anyone who said that George Bush was not evil was and is crazy by their standards.
As I said at the top of the program, the Left and the Right are not debating. The Left has defined symbols as absolutes and refuses to actually bring forth arguments based on logic and rigor. To the Right that seems so strange.
The insight I wanted to impart to you in this segment is that if you are on the Left OR the Right, you cannot easily go out and verify that what I am saying is true, because the ideological barrier in your mind causes you to disregard what I am saying and assume either that I am lying or that I am attempting to bash you. The very idea that you would go out to moveon.org, dailykos or democratic underground and spend some time going through their postings would be too alien to your way of thinking. Why do it? Obviously I am lying. Yeah, yeah, the people on the Right should take my word, but I don't believe that either. Of course if you were on the Left, it wouldn't occur to you to think that I am trying to bridge the gap between the two warring factions.
Now, let's look at the White House. To the rest of the world the definition of the symbol called the White House is power. To most Americans, the White House is a muddy symbol. I mean, the White House as a symbol has so many definitions that it really has no ONE definition as a symbol. When the White House was built, it was supposed to be a statement to the world that we had a palace like all the other real nations had. Yes, indeed, we were as good as any other nation even though we had this weird form of government that no one else had. When the British burned the White House in the War of 1812, they thought they could erase that symbol and show us we were being presumptuous. The White House was in essence a lie that became the truth. When the White House was finished in 1800 we were NOT a great nation. We did NOT have that much power. We said something to the world... that we aspired to be a great power. Now the symbol and the substance of the White House are the truth. We are a great power. We are the greatest nation in the history of the world. There has never been anything like the United States, since the last Ice Age. Egypt was just as powerful in the Middle East at one time. China and India were as powerful in their areas, but no nation in the history of the world has been as powerful as we are in EVERY region of the world.
At this point in time, the American people look at the White House and see... the White House, a self-defining symbol. It doesn't really signify any one thing. You look at the Statue of Liberty and, again, you have memories and feelings which boil down to Liberty and a chance of a good life. When you view the White House, do you see the presumption associated with this presidential palace?
From being a presumptuous palace, the White House has become a symbol of our power. Everyone around the world knows that the White House symbolizes real power. When the Statue of Liberty was built it was stating the truth and by my standards the promise of the Statue of Liberty has remained true. When the White House was built, it was a building to make us feel less inadequate when compared to all the older nations. Now, here's where it gets funny. All the palaces that existed in 1800 look quaint, if not silly next to the White House, because they are symbols of past glory. I don't think there is a single palace from that time anywhere on the planet where the palace signifies the power of the nation that hosts it.
I know this entire discourse is freaking you out, but I wanted to make the point that the symbols from our past have been degraded by re-interpretation and it irritates me. The Statue of Liberty does not shine as brightly because too many people think our country is not a land of opportunity. Too many people have decided that liberty does not need protecting because it's a given. Tell that to people in the Sudan. Liberty is not a given. Too many people see the White House as a symbol of imperialist over-reach. Not just because the symbol called George Bush sits in the symbol called the White House. No, the leadership of the Left has been attempting to re-define the White House as a symbol of evil.
You may assume that I am bashing you, that I am showing disrespect for your beliefs. What I am trying to say is that the re-definitions the leadership of the Left have done are without substance. How can the White House as a symbol for our power be defined as a force for evil in the world? In order for that to be true, we as a people would have to have been actively seeking to subjugate people. When has that happened? Again, the leadership of the Left has defined the symbol called subjugation to mean something that it does not. If we are an imperialist nation, then why are we not ruling the peoples of the world? Why are they not sending us tribute? Why are all these other nations competing successfully with us in the marketplace of globalization? That is why the Right laughs at the Left all the time. The symbols you throw out at us on the Right make no sense to us, because they are without substance by our standards.
Again, a symbol has a name, it has a definition and it has substance. For a symbol to have substance, it must have a definition that matches what exists in reality.
I started this program knowing that KEOS is very Liberal. I didn't care, because the people here at KEOS are sane by my standards. The Management Team meetings are a classic case of democracy in action. I understood the motivations of the people involved. I could see that the people here are committed to excellence, so I could ignore that their politics makes no sense to me.
I did not start this program to convert you to my way of looking at things. I started this program because I am tired unto death that the Left and the Right are yelling past each other. Watch any of the talk shows. Do you see these people talking to each other? No, you see them trying to count coup. Neither side is budging an inch. Neither side is listening to the other side and considering the other side's arguments. That's crazy to me.
I am trying to change the paradigm of social activism. The Left has failed in its goal of bringing social justice to this country. The poor are still about 20% of the population. I want social change. I want poverty to go down. I want to use the Internet to marshal resources to help in that project.
Last week I tried to show you that the Left and the Right see things differently based on the definition of the symbols that they hold dear. I tried to make some points that because our definitions of symbols ARE different we are not understanding each other. The political discourse between the Left and the Right has broken down. Both sides are frustrated. When I started this program, I thought that I get could someone to acknowledge that the Left and the Right have to work to make this country a better place. The problem as I see it is that the leadership of the Left has gone crazy by the standards of the Right. Just as the leadership of the Light has determined that the Right has gone crazy.
Think really hard about this. How can you have a debate with a person you think is crazy? You can't. The Right makes its points and the Left makes their points and each side ignores the other side's arguments.
I perceive that I am but a voice calling to you from the velvet black across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension.
For most of the shows I have done, I have started the program with a phrase something like that. What does it mean exactly? Do you care? Interesting question that. What I am saying by that sentence is that what you perceive me to have said may NOT be what I really said, because you have different definitions of the symbols I am using and you assume I am saying something I am not.
If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? This question was posed hundreds of years ago. Not until the last 100 years could we answer it effectively. If a tree falls, it creates a sound wave, it disturbs the air as it plummets to the ground. It disturbs the ground when it hits causing shock waves to emanate from it landing. It thus follows that a sound was produced... but was it heard? The physical world does not care whether it was heard, it just producing the sound and you have to decide to hear it... by being there or accepting that the sound was produced.
Now... Suppose neither YOU nor I were there when the tree fell. Did the tree make a sound? Of course it made a sound. That's silly. Go check it out. When a tree falls it creates a spherical pressure wave that we as humans recognize as sound. In addition, when the ground vibrates after the tree hits, the air is disturbed and another sound may be produced, albeit a very low frequency sound that most humans CANNOT hear. BUT a sound IS produced.
As I said, suppose neither you nor I were there when the tree fell. I tell you that a tree fell, because I have it on reliable sources that the tree fell. If you at that point say that I am wrong because I am on the Right and disregard my assertion that a tree indeed fell, I get frustrated, because you have disregarded what I have said based on political grounds. No skin off my nose, a tree falling in the forest, not my business whether you believe that a tree fell or not. My problem would come about were you to say that even if there were a tree that fell in the forest, there was no sound. In other words that you disagreed that the physical fact that trees falling in the forest make sounds, I would have to assume you were crazy. Think about this. It is one thing if you disregard the fact that a tree fell in the forest, because you distrust me and my sources, it is quite another for you to say that trees in general do not produce sounds when they fall in the forest.
A symbol has a name, it has a definition and it has substance. If it has no substance, then it has no validity for me. The French have come up with what is called postmodernist thought. Under postmodernist thought, all symbols can be redefined to anything you want them to and they are then true regardless of whether there is any substance to symbol. Ah, but what is substance? The postmodernist thought says that substance does not exist.
I know, I know, I know, you are thinking I'm talking crazy. Hey, these are the thoughts of the French, what do you expect?
Anyway, what I am getting at is that to me the facts underlying a symbol MUST match its definition, otherwise it has no validity. Postmodernist thought disagrees.
For a symbol to have substance, the definition has to match the facts on the ground. If the facts in the real world do NOT match the definition, then by my standards the symbol has no validity. Let me state that a different way, a symbol has to have an effect in the world that matches its definition before the symbol is valid. If the definition says that a symbol represents a concept, event or characteristic and that concept, event or characteristic does NOT exist in the real world, then the symbol is invalid.
Now, I am going to go over last week's program in more detail.
The Statue of Liberty is a symbol. It represents to most Americans Liberty and a promise of a good life. That is what the poem by Emma Lazurus about the Statue of Liber states. Yet the Statue of Liberty has physical substance. It has concrete, steel and bronze. It also has substance in that the promise of the Statue of Liberty, its definition is also true. Immigrants coming to this country find liberty and a chance of a good life. A good portion of the Left say that this symbol is a lie. Their position is that because America does not provide a good life for ALL immigrants, then it is a lie.
Do I say that YOU personally believe that? NO, I do not. I simply state as fact that the people on the three web sites: moveon.org, dailykos and democratic underground by and large believe that the symbol of the Statue of Liberty is a lie. I am stating as a fact that the three web sites I mentioned are the activists on the Left and the center of the Democratic Party. They present the face of the movement of the Left. Here is what I am getting at with the tree example above. Political discourse has gotten so screwed up, you CANNOT and will not go and check this out those sites. You will not believe that I am telling the truth. Your symbol for someone like me on the Right is that ANYTHING I say is a lie, so why bother? Your mind simply filters out my assertions and causes you to believe that I am bashing the Left.
I had a woman call me up and ask whether it was necessary to do all this bashing. The answer is that yes, it is necessary, because I was trying to alert you to the fact that the leaders of the Left have taken an extremist view of how the historic symbols of our country are defined. In short they have redefined the definition of the symbols and that is dangerous, because the leaders of the Left are using postmodernist thought to do the redefinition. There is no substance under the new symbols.
Let me try again. It is obvious to any thinking person that hard working immigrants from a Third World country can enter the middle class in one generation and that their kids can enter the upper tiers of our society by getting a college degree. Anyone who says different is insane by my standards. YET it is a fact that many on moveon.org, dailykos and democratic underground say that immigrants are victims and can never truly get a good life in this country. Instead of celebrating the majority who achieve the middle class in one generation, they bemoan the failure of the minority and make the generalization that ALL immigrants fail. Again, if you are on the Left, you cannot believe me, because I am on the Right and I have said something that you do not want to believe. Going out on the Internet and verifying what I have said would cause you pain, because you would have to admit that the symbol you associate with the Right may not be true. The symbol the Left has of the Right is that we lie and all of our information is a lie, so we can be ignored.
Here is what else I am trying to get at. The United States has become so wealthy that the elites of the Left on the three web sites I have mentioned believe that Liberty is a given. We have been free from want and tyranny for so long that many believe that Liberty is without cost, or it is a cost borne by the government. Every time the Left is confronted with a lessening of their Liberty, they assume that we are on the edge of a Fascist state.
Look, let me give you the example of the Dixie Chicks. One of the girls in that band while they were in London apologized for coming from Texas and made some disparaging remarks about George Bush. The entire Left was horrified when the Dixie Chicks caught flak for those statements. Why? Because the Left's symbol for George Bush is defined as someone evil, How could anyone criticize the Dixie Chicks for saying that? What's more the Left defined this criticism as censorship. The Left in fact defined the symbol called censorship to mean anyone expressing dissenting views and causing someone on the Left to feel uncomfortable. Censorship does not mean that. Censorship is where you cannot get your views heard. It does NOT mean that you get your views heard without dissent. You see the Dixie Chicks got to vent their frustration with their fans in all the magazines. Their baffled question was, "Why are our fans getting upset with us for stating a fact?" It had never occurred to them that someone might disagree and be willing to criticize them. Again, you don't believe me.
A symbol called censorship was redefined to mean something it did not. The Right looked at that and laughed, because that was a stupid redefinition. If the Dixie Chicks are screaming from every newspaper and magazine, how could they possibly be censored? If someone on the Left has a right of freedom of speech then someone on the Right also has freedom of speech. If your free speech hurts me and I say something back that hurts you, tough. Either we both have freedom of speech or neither one of us has freedom of speech.
The correct solution to this is not where you shut me up or I shut you up, it is that we debate the topic. The Dixie Chicks were not willing to debate, because they had defined the symbol of George Bush as evil, thus there could be no debate. To them, anyone who said that George Bush was not evil was and is crazy by their standards.
As I said at the top of the program, the Left and the Right are not debating. The Left has defined symbols as absolutes and refuses to actually bring forth arguments based on logic and rigor. To the Right that seems so strange.
The insight I wanted to impart to you in this segment is that if you are on the Left OR the Right, you cannot easily go out and verify that what I am saying is true, because the ideological barrier in your mind causes you to disregard what I am saying and assume either that I am lying or that I am attempting to bash you. The very idea that you would go out to moveon.org, dailykos or democratic underground and spend some time going through their postings would be too alien to your way of thinking. Why do it? Obviously I am lying. Yeah, yeah, the people on the Right should take my word, but I don't believe that either. Of course if you were on the Left, it wouldn't occur to you to think that I am trying to bridge the gap between the two warring factions.
Now, let's look at the White House. To the rest of the world the definition of the symbol called the White House is power. To most Americans, the White House is a muddy symbol. I mean, the White House as a symbol has so many definitions that it really has no ONE definition as a symbol. When the White House was built, it was supposed to be a statement to the world that we had a palace like all the other real nations had. Yes, indeed, we were as good as any other nation even though we had this weird form of government that no one else had. When the British burned the White House in the War of 1812, they thought they could erase that symbol and show us we were being presumptuous. The White House was in essence a lie that became the truth. When the White House was finished in 1800 we were NOT a great nation. We did NOT have that much power. We said something to the world... that we aspired to be a great power. Now the symbol and the substance of the White House are the truth. We are a great power. We are the greatest nation in the history of the world. There has never been anything like the United States, since the last Ice Age. Egypt was just as powerful in the Middle East at one time. China and India were as powerful in their areas, but no nation in the history of the world has been as powerful as we are in EVERY region of the world.
At this point in time, the American people look at the White House and see... the White House, a self-defining symbol. It doesn't really signify any one thing. You look at the Statue of Liberty and, again, you have memories and feelings which boil down to Liberty and a chance of a good life. When you view the White House, do you see the presumption associated with this presidential palace?
From being a presumptuous palace, the White House has become a symbol of our power. Everyone around the world knows that the White House symbolizes real power. When the Statue of Liberty was built it was stating the truth and by my standards the promise of the Statue of Liberty has remained true. When the White House was built, it was a building to make us feel less inadequate when compared to all the older nations. Now, here's where it gets funny. All the palaces that existed in 1800 look quaint, if not silly next to the White House, because they are symbols of past glory. I don't think there is a single palace from that time anywhere on the planet where the palace signifies the power of the nation that hosts it.
I know this entire discourse is freaking you out, but I wanted to make the point that the symbols from our past have been degraded by re-interpretation and it irritates me. The Statue of Liberty does not shine as brightly because too many people think our country is not a land of opportunity. Too many people have decided that liberty does not need protecting because it's a given. Tell that to people in the Sudan. Liberty is not a given. Too many people see the White House as a symbol of imperialist over-reach. Not just because the symbol called George Bush sits in the symbol called the White House. No, the leadership of the Left has been attempting to re-define the White House as a symbol of evil.
You may assume that I am bashing you, that I am showing disrespect for your beliefs. What I am trying to say is that the re-definitions the leadership of the Left have done are without substance. How can the White House as a symbol for our power be defined as a force for evil in the world? In order for that to be true, we as a people would have to have been actively seeking to subjugate people. When has that happened? Again, the leadership of the Left has defined the symbol called subjugation to mean something that it does not. If we are an imperialist nation, then why are we not ruling the peoples of the world? Why are they not sending us tribute? Why are all these other nations competing successfully with us in the marketplace of globalization? That is why the Right laughs at the Left all the time. The symbols you throw out at us on the Right make no sense to us, because they are without substance by our standards.
Again, a symbol has a name, it has a definition and it has substance. For a symbol to have substance, it must have a definition that matches what exists in reality.
posted by aRandomTexan at
7:37 PM
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