Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 3
We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.
All right. What's all that have to do with anything you might ask? Everyone knows that things have changed since World War II. I mean, our society has become more nuanced. The certainties of yesterday have been swept away by a gnawing fear that nothing is as it seems.
The basis of our society up until the 1960's was that we would debate an issue and then determine from the debate what the truth of the topic was and then go forward based on the acceptance of that understanding of that what that truth was. The reason we did that was that conventional wisdom allowed us to avoid getting hurt. Starting about the 1960's it was found that you could believe the stupidest, most idiotic things in the world and still not have to suffer for your beliefs. I am not talking about religious beliefs. I am talking about beliefs as to what works in fixing problems in society.
Right now we have implemented policies that do not work, but for one reason or another we cannot stop doing them. Let me go over three of them. Minimum wage, social security and abortion.
The minimum wage is a bad idea. It penalizes people at the bottom of our society. It encourages an underclass. The reason it does that is that the first job a person has is supposed to teach them three things: Arrive on time, have a positive attitude and accept supervision. The higher the minimum wage the older a person at the bottom of the social system is before they get that first job. If we had a zero minimum wage, then teenagers could work for a few dollars per hour and early on learn these lessons. The thinking on the Left is that people stay at minimum wage jobs all their life, so they NEED a higher starting salary. That is a stupid idea. It doesn't work. Unskilled labor is not a uniform class of people. By having a high minimum wage, the most skilled person gets first crack at a minimum wage job. The less skilled person is aced out. As time passes, the less skilled person gets aced out over and over again and cannot increase their skill base. The goal of the minimum wage was said to help the abjectly poor instead it hurts the bottom 80% of the poor and helps the top 20% of the poor.
Social Security funded using taxes is a stupid idea. When Social Security was founded, it allowed an income transfer between those who worked and those who did not. According to the law it is not a pension plan. I know, you have been told over and over that social security is a pension plan. It is not. When Social Security was originated, there were no mutual funds, nor private pension plans. Now there are. Why is the government involved in a program that could be done by the private sector?
Abortion was supposed to free women and make them equal to men. Instead abortion has made women little more than sex objects. Why should a man marry when he can have all the benefits of marriage without any of the responsibilities of marriage? As I said a while back, there is a case before the federal courts that attempts to free a man from his obligation to support a child he has fathered on a woman. The goal is to have a way for a man to repudiate a baby before the baby is born. If the man repudiates the baby, then he is freed of all obligation to provide child support for 18 or so years. The guy in the suit makes the case that he had no control over the woman's decision to have the baby. He had told her that he wanted no babies. She had told him that she was sterile. If the man has no control over the child he fathers, why should he be forced to pay for that child's upkeep. Men and women are different. Saying anything else is silly. They cannot be made to have the exact same goals and aspiration for a good life. Abortion has failed to achieve the goal of freeing women. Yet the Left is so wedded to abortion, there can be no compromises on a right that accomplishes none of the goals it set out to accomplish. Why do we still have it?
Again, the 1960's was turning point in our country's history, because we adopted a set of views that decoupled cause and effect. You listen to my assessments of those three public policies and you are on the Left, you cannot possibly believe what I have said is true, because you know I am either lying OR I am insane OR I am an evil bastard.
I'm reading a book on post-modernist thought. The main idea I have gleaned so far is that Truth cannot be discerned under post-modernist thought. Or rather there is no such thing a shared Truth. Because everyone comes to their readings of a given event with preconceived notions, then there are as many truths as there are people looking at an event. What that means is that we as a people have constructed subsets of Reality. The Left and the Right in this country no longer view the world the same way. The underlying premises of Reality cannot be agreed upon, therefore each side perceives that the other side is morally bereft or insane.
Think about this a minute. If you want to believe that Communism is more moral than Capitalism, you can. If all your friends agree with that premise, then it is true. If you refuse to accept any outside evidence, then it remains true. The problem arises when you personally go to implement a set of policies based on Communist ideology and they don't work in real life. Here's the final step you can take. You can ignore your personal experience and still believe that Communism will get better results than Capitalism. Since we live in a Capitalist society, you would have the luxury of believing that Communism can work better than Capitalism no matter how awful it gets for the average citizen of the polity that implemented socialist/Communist policies.
I draw your attention to New Orleans. The city before Hurricane Katrina was a cess pool. It had been under Democratic Party control for over 60 years and should according to theory have been a very good place to live. Yet, just like France, New Orleans had high unemployment, a shrinking economy and vast underclass. Again, if you are a Progressive, you can easily ignore this observed fact for any reason you choose to have, because it does not affect you directly.
Right now we have in the United States two or more views about how the world should work and there is no way to resolve the dispute, because post-modernist thought says that there is no need to do so. I just find that whole concept to be insane, because there should be some way for both sides in an argument about public policy to come to some agreement as to which side is correct. Here's the kicker, because neither side will accept the data from the other side both sides can believe they are right.
What I was trying to get at by giving those two examples of pacifism was to show that by my standards Desmond Doss' assessment of reality was correct. He perceived the evil in the world and tried to do something about it. By my standards he did.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams have no idea what Reality is. They refuse to accept that the Irreconcilables are evil and must be stopped. Because they have imbibed post-modernist thought, people like the Christian Peacemaker Teams can easily ignore all information that does not agree with their beliefs. They can make the case that their beliefs are equivalent to Desmond Doss' beliefs even though they are not. Why?... Because there are no adverse consequences. Even Tom Fox's death was not enough for the Christian Peacemaker Teams to acknowledge that they might be mistaken. I know, that seems kind of strange for me to say that the death of Tom Fox was not an adverse consequence. Here's what I am trying to get at. When these people in the Christian Peacemaker Teams congregate with their friends and colleagues and loved ones, is anyone going to voice the idea that the Irreconcilables are evil? Nope. Is anyone going to say that the members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams are doing something evil by supporting the Irreconcilables? Nope. Will the funding for the Christian Peacemaker Teams be affected by their views of the "root causes" of the Iraqi War? Nope. Therefore as far as members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams are concerned, there are no real consequences. Only if they got some negative feedback from their friends and associates and acquaintances could they change their way of looking at the world. None of that will happen, so they do not have to change their opinion or the way they look at the world. Among their friends and acquaintances, the three freed hostages will be hailed as heroes. By my standards, the Christian Peacemaker Teams do not deserve to be called heroes. They have accomplished nothing except made themselves feel morally superior to everyone else amid the accolades of their friends and acquaintances.
Ah, well. I know you do not want to face the possibility that people like the Christian Peacemaker Teams are at best what Stalin called "useful idiots", but you might at least give it some thought.
Segment 3
We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.
All right. What's all that have to do with anything you might ask? Everyone knows that things have changed since World War II. I mean, our society has become more nuanced. The certainties of yesterday have been swept away by a gnawing fear that nothing is as it seems.
The basis of our society up until the 1960's was that we would debate an issue and then determine from the debate what the truth of the topic was and then go forward based on the acceptance of that understanding of that what that truth was. The reason we did that was that conventional wisdom allowed us to avoid getting hurt. Starting about the 1960's it was found that you could believe the stupidest, most idiotic things in the world and still not have to suffer for your beliefs. I am not talking about religious beliefs. I am talking about beliefs as to what works in fixing problems in society.
Right now we have implemented policies that do not work, but for one reason or another we cannot stop doing them. Let me go over three of them. Minimum wage, social security and abortion.
The minimum wage is a bad idea. It penalizes people at the bottom of our society. It encourages an underclass. The reason it does that is that the first job a person has is supposed to teach them three things: Arrive on time, have a positive attitude and accept supervision. The higher the minimum wage the older a person at the bottom of the social system is before they get that first job. If we had a zero minimum wage, then teenagers could work for a few dollars per hour and early on learn these lessons. The thinking on the Left is that people stay at minimum wage jobs all their life, so they NEED a higher starting salary. That is a stupid idea. It doesn't work. Unskilled labor is not a uniform class of people. By having a high minimum wage, the most skilled person gets first crack at a minimum wage job. The less skilled person is aced out. As time passes, the less skilled person gets aced out over and over again and cannot increase their skill base. The goal of the minimum wage was said to help the abjectly poor instead it hurts the bottom 80% of the poor and helps the top 20% of the poor.
Social Security funded using taxes is a stupid idea. When Social Security was founded, it allowed an income transfer between those who worked and those who did not. According to the law it is not a pension plan. I know, you have been told over and over that social security is a pension plan. It is not. When Social Security was originated, there were no mutual funds, nor private pension plans. Now there are. Why is the government involved in a program that could be done by the private sector?
Abortion was supposed to free women and make them equal to men. Instead abortion has made women little more than sex objects. Why should a man marry when he can have all the benefits of marriage without any of the responsibilities of marriage? As I said a while back, there is a case before the federal courts that attempts to free a man from his obligation to support a child he has fathered on a woman. The goal is to have a way for a man to repudiate a baby before the baby is born. If the man repudiates the baby, then he is freed of all obligation to provide child support for 18 or so years. The guy in the suit makes the case that he had no control over the woman's decision to have the baby. He had told her that he wanted no babies. She had told him that she was sterile. If the man has no control over the child he fathers, why should he be forced to pay for that child's upkeep. Men and women are different. Saying anything else is silly. They cannot be made to have the exact same goals and aspiration for a good life. Abortion has failed to achieve the goal of freeing women. Yet the Left is so wedded to abortion, there can be no compromises on a right that accomplishes none of the goals it set out to accomplish. Why do we still have it?
Again, the 1960's was turning point in our country's history, because we adopted a set of views that decoupled cause and effect. You listen to my assessments of those three public policies and you are on the Left, you cannot possibly believe what I have said is true, because you know I am either lying OR I am insane OR I am an evil bastard.
I'm reading a book on post-modernist thought. The main idea I have gleaned so far is that Truth cannot be discerned under post-modernist thought. Or rather there is no such thing a shared Truth. Because everyone comes to their readings of a given event with preconceived notions, then there are as many truths as there are people looking at an event. What that means is that we as a people have constructed subsets of Reality. The Left and the Right in this country no longer view the world the same way. The underlying premises of Reality cannot be agreed upon, therefore each side perceives that the other side is morally bereft or insane.
Think about this a minute. If you want to believe that Communism is more moral than Capitalism, you can. If all your friends agree with that premise, then it is true. If you refuse to accept any outside evidence, then it remains true. The problem arises when you personally go to implement a set of policies based on Communist ideology and they don't work in real life. Here's the final step you can take. You can ignore your personal experience and still believe that Communism will get better results than Capitalism. Since we live in a Capitalist society, you would have the luxury of believing that Communism can work better than Capitalism no matter how awful it gets for the average citizen of the polity that implemented socialist/Communist policies.
I draw your attention to New Orleans. The city before Hurricane Katrina was a cess pool. It had been under Democratic Party control for over 60 years and should according to theory have been a very good place to live. Yet, just like France, New Orleans had high unemployment, a shrinking economy and vast underclass. Again, if you are a Progressive, you can easily ignore this observed fact for any reason you choose to have, because it does not affect you directly.
Right now we have in the United States two or more views about how the world should work and there is no way to resolve the dispute, because post-modernist thought says that there is no need to do so. I just find that whole concept to be insane, because there should be some way for both sides in an argument about public policy to come to some agreement as to which side is correct. Here's the kicker, because neither side will accept the data from the other side both sides can believe they are right.
What I was trying to get at by giving those two examples of pacifism was to show that by my standards Desmond Doss' assessment of reality was correct. He perceived the evil in the world and tried to do something about it. By my standards he did.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams have no idea what Reality is. They refuse to accept that the Irreconcilables are evil and must be stopped. Because they have imbibed post-modernist thought, people like the Christian Peacemaker Teams can easily ignore all information that does not agree with their beliefs. They can make the case that their beliefs are equivalent to Desmond Doss' beliefs even though they are not. Why?... Because there are no adverse consequences. Even Tom Fox's death was not enough for the Christian Peacemaker Teams to acknowledge that they might be mistaken. I know, that seems kind of strange for me to say that the death of Tom Fox was not an adverse consequence. Here's what I am trying to get at. When these people in the Christian Peacemaker Teams congregate with their friends and colleagues and loved ones, is anyone going to voice the idea that the Irreconcilables are evil? Nope. Is anyone going to say that the members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams are doing something evil by supporting the Irreconcilables? Nope. Will the funding for the Christian Peacemaker Teams be affected by their views of the "root causes" of the Iraqi War? Nope. Therefore as far as members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams are concerned, there are no real consequences. Only if they got some negative feedback from their friends and associates and acquaintances could they change their way of looking at the world. None of that will happen, so they do not have to change their opinion or the way they look at the world. Among their friends and acquaintances, the three freed hostages will be hailed as heroes. By my standards, the Christian Peacemaker Teams do not deserve to be called heroes. They have accomplished nothing except made themselves feel morally superior to everyone else amid the accolades of their friends and acquaintances.
Ah, well. I know you do not want to face the possibility that people like the Christian Peacemaker Teams are at best what Stalin called "useful idiots", but you might at least give it some thought.
posted by aRandomTexan at
6:04 PM
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