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2006-07-18 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by tipper 2006-07-18 00:24|| || Front Page|| [11130 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 We're not merely "forgetful." We've constructed a fantasy past in which primitive societies lived in peace and security with nary a fear that their crops would be stolen or their children enslaved. War has been the natural condition of mankind for thousands of years, and our civilization is a very fragile exception to that. What does it say about us that so many of our elites believe exactly the opposite -- that we are a monstrous violent rupture with our primitive pacifist ancestors? It's never a good idea to put reality up for grabs. You can bet your highest-denomination axe on that.

Amen. Kool Aid is de rigeur in so many circles. The more effete the elite, the more charming and blameless the barbarian.

Posted by flyover 2006-07-18 01:14|| 2006-07-18 01:14|| Front Page Top

#2 he's a very good writer!

Posted by 2b 2006-07-18 02:12|| 2006-07-18 02:12|| Front Page Top

#3 but not as good as ~~Mickey~~
Fred! :-)

Posted by 2b 2006-07-18 02:17|| 2006-07-18 02:17|| Front Page Top

#4 It is often the poisonous notion of those who are not self-made successes in an American thread enlightenment society that because they did not succeed by the "bootstrap" method, the method and the society that spawned it are the problem, and that a return to some imagined past when everyone was magically happy would solve all of their problems.

This leads to two equally poisonous conclusions. For the much of the idle or inherited wealthy limousine type liberals, transnationalism and socialism and distrust of entrepreneurship. For those who lack the intellect/skills/work ethic to advance, redistribution of wealth and government guaranteed income security for all, and distrust of entrepreneurship.

The latter would also include much of our education industry, professors who see as unjust any society that would reward a shoe store manager with more money (and therefore status, in a capitalist society) than a "lofty" professor who is so very, very smart and has spent so many years at study.

ITHO, the problem can never be within themselves. It can't be that they missed the zeitgeist of market economics, or simply have no skills to reach the apex in a capitalist society, or that, knowing the pay scale going in, they are foolish enough to think it will magically change once there. No, it must ALWAYS be the fault of others, and, ultimately, our very system of economics and governance itself.

The paradox is that in any stone or early bronze technological society this type of grousing would probably get them killed, possibly eaten.

We should never forget the Tasaday hoax, where an invented gentle group of gentle primitives made it all the way to the cover of National Geographic before it was discovered that the "professors" who "discovered" them had made their very existence up in order to say,"See, see, this is what humanity is REALLY like without nasty evil Western civilization. These clowns later admitted that they did this because they couldn't find any examples of people living with that level of technology who weren't violent and that this didn't sit well with their cherished ideas about the "noble savage."

All very pathological.

Posted by no mo uro 2006-07-18 05:56|| 2006-07-18 05:56|| Front Page Top

#5 Excellent comment, no mo uro.

Posted by phil_b">phil_b 2006-07-18 06:01|| http://autonomousoperation.blogspot.com/]">[http://autonomousoperation.blogspot.com/] 2006-07-18 06:01|| Front Page Top

#6 ...If you can, find the book 'War' by Canadian writer Gwynne Dyer. Dyer is just shy of a barking moonbat, and his conclusions can be summed up by saying, "Only the UN can save us" - but he does an incredible job in showing how we've been at war with each other for a few millenia and damned little is going to change that.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2006-07-18 06:31|| 2006-07-18 06:31|| Front Page Top

#7 Well said, indeed, no mo uro.

Posted by flyover 2006-07-18 07:22|| 2006-07-18 07:22|| Front Page Top

#8 I've said it before -- I'm amazed at how deeply this myth has sunk into our culture. My own dad thought the Brits introduced scalping into North America -- and he probably still does, despite my pointing out skulls from the 1300s, found in North Dakota, that show signs of being scalped.

Those skulls, by the way, were found in a mass grave containing everyone from a village except the young girls.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2006-07-18 07:45|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-07-18 07:45|| Front Page Top

#9 I read Spengler's review of Wade's book a week ago. I immediately thought of the trolls who come here to accuse the average Rantburger of being genocidal fantasists. It is only the attitude of us and those like us that keeps civilization from sinking into genocidal savagery. It has a cost, but so does everything. (I'd much rather pay that cost than sacrificing my family and friends to the suicidal pacifist nightmare.) And that goes back to my contention that the reason most liberals are liberals is because they cannot understand mathematical concepts like trade-off analysis, standard deviation, and compound interest. Everything gets grouped into poles (war bad, peace good) and a narrative gets constructed to explain it all. Very much in line with no more uro's excellent analysis.

RC: For better or worse I don't read much Sci Fi these days, but years before 9/11, there was a short story in the Man-Kzin War series that postulated a great conspiracy to purge the historical record of all reference to war. By the time of the story (200 years in the future?), the narrative was that all major war had ended by the time of the Rennaissance, the V-2 rockets were weather rockets, and the United Nations had abolished all residual violence. Researchers who uncovered the truth were lablelled "military fantasists," brainwashed and sent off to labor camps as part of a Mars terraforming porject.

Posted by 11A5S 2006-07-18 08:22|| 2006-07-18 08:22|| Front Page Top

#10 The Apache threat thus loomed on the northern Piman horizon at the same time that Jesuit missionaries reached them from the south. When Father Kino set up shop at Cosari in 1687 hostile Apache hosts were already just over the horizon. During the 1690's the experienced warriors of the Piman Sobaipuri groups living along the eastern frontiers of northern Pimería handily defeated the first Apache probes (Bolton 1948:I:179-181). The first Athapascans came into Pima borderlands as reinforcements of Jano, Jócome and Suma war parties. These were relatively small Indian groups inhabiting the territory between the New Mexico trail in Chihuahua and the Spanish settlements in Sonora (Wyllys 1931:138 and Bolton 1943:I:181). They may have been Opata in language or they may 172have been Lagunero or a southwestward extension of the very small language groups of Texas. They were almost certainly not Athapascan speaking Indians. They fought their northern Piman enemies in the aboriginal style as late as 1698 (Bolton 1948:I:179-180). That is, they came openly and challenged the Sobaipuris to battle. The Sobaipuris chose ten men to oppose a picked ten composed partly of Jócomes, partly of Janos and partly of Apaches-probably true southern Athapascans. These ten picked men on each side fought and when the Pimans won the enemy broke and with the victors in hot pursuit. That was apparently the last battle the Apaches fought according to aboriginal Jócome-Jano-Suna rules. Thereafter, the battle conditioned southern Athapascans seem to have taken over direction of even combined war parties, and changed tactics from the aboriginal style of warfare they had been forced to abandon generations earlier in order to survive. After 1698 the Apaches, deprived of their Jano and Jócome and Suma allies, resorted to ambushes, sneak attacks, raids on fields and horse herds, and kidnapping, avoiding frontal assault or defense whenever possible.
http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/tubac/cpt6-D2.htm

Not a lot of 'white men' involved in these things. The 'white man' guilt program brought to you by the usual suspects. Why didn't the plains indians take advantage of the American Civil War to push back the white man? Because they were too busy hammering each other. Remember though, for the [neo-marxist] lefties, its not about facts, its about feelings.

Posted by Thrainter Hupinenter1535 2006-07-18 09:19|| 2006-07-18 09:19|| Front Page Top

#11 the reason most liberals are liberals is because they cannot understand mathematical concepts like trade-off analysis, standard deviation, and compound interest. Everything gets grouped into poles (war bad, peace good) and a narrative gets constructed to explain it all. Very much in line with no more uro's excellent analysis.

Excellent comments all! It's a subject I'm fascinated with. One thought .... I know from personal experience that it is not that they "can not understand" but simply they group into poles and construct a narrative and refuse to understand.

For most of the rabid liberals I know, they are perfectly capable of understanding compound interest etc. Most are very intelligent. It's that once the narrative is constructed, they are unwilling to to understand those principals and they use their wit to come up with word games to explain them away.

I'd go further - and I have a pretty good sample group to choose from - that for the Koskiddie types and the University types and the aging liberal types and the rabid liberal types are expressing an an insecurity/superiority complex that carried forward from childhood. Ask them (but not outright of course, you need to go in the back door on this) and they will tell you. The cheerleaders were mean to them, they were horribly teased as children because of glasses or some physical deformity - or any other issue that causes children to be teased, too short, too tall, too fat, etc. But the difference is that they are smart - not stupid - and they know they are just as good as... nay better.. than those teasing them. So they know they are smarter or somehow better than those bullying them, but they don't have the social skills to deal with the teasing so they feel angry and helpless throughout their childhood. This carries to adulthood and so they latch onto the liberal narrative that they are superior by accepting a set of beliefs. They are better and smarter than you, ya see, because the media says so. The powers that control our culture say so. These same people would change their beliefs on a dime tomorrow if suddenly the powers that be told them that the cool, smart people believe in X and all of the "other stupid people" believe in Y. Bascially they are scared cowards who hide behind bullies to make themselves feel ok.

Posted by 2b 2006-07-18 10:01|| 2006-07-18 10:01|| Front Page Top

#12 Very true, 2b. The worst of the lot aren't the ones who hide behind the bullies. The very worst are the ones like Krugman or Chomsky, who once free of the violence of the schoolground, become intellectual bullies themselves. In the context of a civilization, when there is no longer any threat of barbarians burning your crops or killing you and enslaving your kids, they often rise to power. Somewhere along the way, they become so enamored of their own words, so convinced of the power of their "narrative," that they become convinced that their cleverness can defeat bararians with swords. Sometimes they do. But in the end the barbarian always wins.

I have come to learn that the healthy skepticism that Americans have for intellectuals is well founded. Some would call it anti-intellectualism. I consider it to be a very useful check that prevents America from being run by ENArques.

I think that I had the potential once to become a Krugman or a Chomsky. Due to some choices I made and the strong hand of the Salesian order, I went in a different direction. But I understand the dynamic of which you write very well.

Posted by 11A5S 2006-07-18 11:52|| 2006-07-18 11:52|| Front Page Top

#13 That's too complex. Most liberals (esp. the social libs) are physical cowards. They flinched as children to bullies, as young adults to those more agressive, and in the present against evil. And they expect you to do the same.

Posted by ed 2006-07-18 11:57|| 2006-07-18 11:57|| Front Page Top

#14 And I also see physical cowardice in much of the upper class, whether Democrat or Republican. It's a consequence of leading sheltered lives and as young adults, not ever having to put their comfort or safety on the line.

Posted by ed 2006-07-18 12:02|| 2006-07-18 12:02|| Front Page Top

#15 well said, 115AS! Better than I could have ever hoped to express it myself.

And they expect you to do the same. You are right too ed, but instead of physical intimidation, Krugman and Co. learned that they could use their words as clubs. They bully with their ability to swing words and make people duck. That's why they revere Chomsky so much.

Posted by 2b 2006-07-18 12:14|| 2006-07-18 12:14|| Front Page Top

#16 It's a consequence of leading sheltered lives and as young adults, not ever having to put their comfort or safety on the line.

That's what makes them feel comfortable to make such stupid, self-destructive bullying statements. As soon as they truly feel threatened they will be the first to demand that the military remove all constraints and immediately defend them without any regard to moral equivalence or any other such nonsense.

Posted by 2b 2006-07-18 12:21|| 2006-07-18 12:21|| Front Page Top

#17 If you've been to a high school reunion, did it strike you that the smartest kids had gotten the Ph.D.'s and college teaching positions? Not at mine. They went to the professional schools and the next rung on the intellectual ladder went the academic route. I think that's a reflection of their intellectual insecurity.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-07-18 12:35|| 2006-07-18 12:35|| Front Page Top

#18 Except for two, the top kids in my high school class (1979 woo hoo!) went into teaching, mostly as professors. Of those two, he became a CPA at one of the Big 7 firms after dropping out of Harvard Law, and she became a housewife and museum docent (putting that Masters in anthropology to good use). Of course, a lot of us were the children of university professors, which may have had something to do with it. A bunch of our top quartile went into medicine or became professional classic musicians.

And for the record, I am under 5' tall, got braces and glasses the same week at the beginning of fourth grade (which in my innocence I took as proof that my parents loved me), and have been sheltered from hardship and mean people my entire life (or perhaps I just didn't notice)... yet I was drawn to Rantburg. Environment is not destiny, thank goodness.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-07-18 15:39|| 2006-07-18 15:39|| Front Page Top

#19 lol! TW I'm sure you bloomed later in life :-)

The point is not that they have some sort of insecurity or that the cheerleaders are mean to them, everyone has a THEY WERE MEAN TO ME story and insecurities about their physical condition - no matter how good they look. But what separates them was their inability to handle it socially and/or get over it later in life. You look back at your time with braces and glasses time with humor and fondness - they look back with lingering pain.

Try it sometime. Like I said, don't ask directly, but if you get to know a rabid liberal, eventually they will share with your their tale of childhood injustice and they will still be nursing the anger and hurt.

Posted by 2b 2006-07-18 15:48|| 2006-07-18 15:48|| Front Page Top

#20 One of the problems is the savages tend to have no written history while the civilized states have lots and lots of documents about their wars. Makes it easier to fill the void with bull$hit.

Posted by rjschwarz 2006-07-18 16:19|| 2006-07-18 16:19|| Front Page Top

#21 Re: degrees, I think it's a mistake to overgeneralize on this, from the boomers onward. Lots of people are changing fields and/or taking degrees throughout life and sometimes changing careers along the way.

A good example is my friend Ann. After her Navy Commander / PhD husband settled in a 4 yr assignment for once and her kids were all in school, she went back for her master's and PhD. This was in the late 80s, early 90s when everyone was focused on making money and many people yawned at her dissertation topic: Just War theory in the Arab tradition and its modern use.

Looks rather relevant since 9/11. She's a professor now back in their home state.

Now I don't know Ann's class ranking in high school, but I think it was rather high. Her husband was at the top of his class pretty much all the way through school.

Just sayin' .....

Posted by no name, just sheepskins 2006-07-18 16:35|| 2006-07-18 16:35|| Front Page Top

#22 This could use a picture of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. As the wiz said,"You don't need a brain, you need a diploma".

Posted by BrerRabbit 2006-07-18 17:05|| 2006-07-18 17:05|| Front Page Top

11:16 Muzakki
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