tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27761548011026359522024-02-07T11:14:03.680-08:00 The Middleton MareThe pedigree of the Middleton Mare is reputedly not thoroughbredThe Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-71932320381718091722019-06-22T06:18:00.005-07:002019-06-22T06:18:53.491-07:00The Precariat Cocktail<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As long as they continue to drive the precarious class out of Hackney, Manchester or Walthamstow, the more they'll espouse socialism and an increasingly abstract ecology, global warming, because they are globalist in their self concern. The ultimate abstract: problem is not us, not here: its global . </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They do this because they have to demonise and blame someone else for their own avarice. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Its not just simple double speak hypocrisy, it is an attempt at exempting themselves and a </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">refusal </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">to acknowledge</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> their own responsibility. They want to be protected from the wrath due their mendacity </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">by pointing the finger away from themselves. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is where an overcrowded immigrant underclass is useful: they can finger, blame and denigrate the large lumpen Precrariat between themselves and the migrants at the entry, bottom level. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the situation worsens for everyone other than themselves, </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">their falsehood becomes more glaring and visible, until comes the inevitable tipping point.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-32047878216225806302018-09-15T05:01:00.001-07:002018-09-15T05:01:33.981-07:00Left ill of dead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Benn’s beliefs were poisonous, Crow was a Luddite. The Left would have crippled Britain and the Right should say so<br /><br />‘A magnificent writer, speaker and campaigner, with a strong record of public service,” said the Prime Minister on the death of Tony Benn, a deluded leftwinger who spent much of his life and endless guile working to turn Labour into some kind of East European socialist party.<br /><br />But in old age, apparently, a national treasure. “An extraordinary orator, and principled man,” tweets the Tory Chairman, of the notorious old twister; “a man of deep socialist principle,” gushes the Commons Speaker. How long before even Arthur Scargill is obituarised as some kind of saint?<br /><br />There is more to this nonsense than an old-fashioned reluctance to speak ill of the dead. Socialists, I sense, are credited with principle and public-spiritedness almost by default.<br /><br />Bob Crow, the Luddite RMT union boss who died the same week as Benn, was promptly soft-soaped with posthumous platitude: apparently he was “a fighter and a man of character” whose loss was “tragic”, according to Boris Johnson. Did Enoch Powell get this treatment from old enemies? Why do we who are not of the Left collude in rebranding hard-left bruisers and Marxist nutters as patriotic poppets? These rascals seldom return the compliment. Here’s how Boris Johnson’s “fighter and man of character” mourned another fighter: “I won’t shed one tear over her death . . . as far as I’m concerned she can rot in Hell,” said Bob Crow when Margaret Thatcher died.<br /><br />I confess to slight stirrings of respect for the unsentimentality of the Left: not for Crow’s stupid opinion or Benn’s poisonous beliefs, but for their refusal to dissemble about people they thought bad for our country. Given their beliefs they were right to hate Margaret Thatcher. She would have hated them; in death as well as in life.<br /><br />But enough of two wrongheaded men who would have dragged Britain on to the rocks if they could. They achieved nothing. The waters will now close over their heads. The more interesting question is why so many moderate Britons are reluctant to say what we really think about the dead icons of the Left?<br /><br />We allow good manners to contribute to the mythologising of individuals who do big, bad things, hurt others, and leave our country worse than they found it. Most Conservatives felt uncomfortable at the Daily Mail’s attack on Ed Miliband’s Marxist late father, Ralph, for (as the paper alleged) “hating Britain”; but how much discomfort do the Left feel when writers in the Daily Mirror or The Guardian heap abuse of an often unashamedly personal nature on the memory of Margaret Thatcher, Sir Keith Joseph and other heroes of the Right?<br /><br />Public figures should be publicly judged for the good or ill they do. Respect for a politician’s strength and stamina, love of opera, personal courtesy or kindness to small animals, should not smother one’s judgment of how his or her life scores on the only balance sheet that counts — the public good.<br /><br />In world history many deluded leaders have been distinguished by their physical or moral courage, undoubtedly believing that they were serving those they led; and courage and courtesy are human qualities that can be displayed in the most appalling causes. Those on the Left have never shrunk from this truth; they don’t see politics as a game; they feel no sportsmanship towards those they think a danger to their version of progress.<br /><br />The rest of us should learn from them. During the last century we have let a sort of lazy generosity lead to the lionising of figures of the British Left whose aims we did not support then and would not support now. Our country would be in better shape today if they had never lived, and we know it; but we murmur “hear, hear” when their names are praised.<br /><br />We couldn’t begin to justify such sanctimonious cant, but we suppose it good form not to deride the Left’s kindly version of its own heroes’ lives. In failing to challenge these uncritical legacies, we’ve allowed myths to take shape that make a sensible reading of history harder to explain to younger generations.<br /><br />Take Labour’s postwar Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. In the Commons, David Cameron has compared him with Margaret Thatcher as one of the four postwar prime ministers (said Mr Cameron) who “made the weather”. Heaven help us — Joe Stalin made the weather. Norman Tebbit, echoing Cameron in the House of Lords, praised Attlee and Thatcher as two prime ministers who “actually changed the country and did so in the way they wanted to change it”. And didn’t Pol Pot?<br /><br />Attlee’s takeover of the coal and steel industries began a series of nationalisations that pointed postwar economic policy in wholly the wrong direction and helped to cripple our recovery. The entire economic philosophy of those who are (we coo) big figures in the history of British socialism has been abandoned as disastrous. So what’s all this guff about the great Clem Attlee?<br /><br />The slow-burn catastrophe of putting health into the hands of a central state monolith was one of 20th century Britain’s most far-reaching mistakes. Do we find it hard to come to terms with the mistake because of misplaced deference to the “nobility” of their venture.<br /><br />Well here’s the nobility of the Labour minister who brought it in, Aneurin Bevan, talking about the Tories: “We want the complete political extinction of the Tory party . . . So far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin.”<br /><br />Demythologising the leaders of the Left in Britain since 1945 would be a useful first step towards thinking straight about modern political history.<br /><br />Forgive Michael Foot his duffle coat, but not the way that he set his face against the reform of trade union legislation and undermined Labour’s brave moderates. Tony Benn was only latterly a favourite socialist uncle: more importantly he was a poisonous force for insanity in his party. Anthony Crosland is lauded as an intellectual: he was a destroyer of our education system. Just because death or old age has drawn their teeth, why hold back from putting the boot in to these people’s malignant legacy?<br /><br />“As the Lady sees it,” the late Ian Gow (Margaret Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary) once told me, “when you’re crocodile-hunting and you’ve got the reptile beached on a sandbank, you don’t help it back into the deep. You stick the knife in.”<br /><br />The prophets of 20th-century socialism are beached. Stick in the knife.</span></div>
The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-19757713431823508782017-09-30T13:57:00.000-07:002017-09-30T14:23:24.752-07:00Gnostic Cult<div class="m_-5927868262298946074p1" style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="il">Gnosticism</span> is the de facto state religion of the United States.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1">Gnosticism defined<span class="m_-5927868262298946074Apple-converted-space"> a</span></span>ll matter as a prison, suppressing your spirit,<span class="m_-5927868262298946074Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">that includes nature, who they class as the "beast". <span class="m_-5927868262298946074Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">(New Testament rightly classes man as the beast)</span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">All 'Religious fundamentalism' is <span class="il">gnostic (protestant & islamic fundamentalism specifically)</span>. </span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So are all conspiracy theories and deconstructionist philosophy. <span class="m_-5927868262298946074Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Gnosticism proclaims every construct as an obstruction to the soul, all physical, human or natural design as a "body" that constricts </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222;">The philosophy behind every orgy is also that of the jihadi suicide martyr, freeing the spirit by the violent destruction of 'the lie' of matter. </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">('Zeitgeist', the film is a </span><span class="il" style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">gnostic</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> viewpoint, it seems unaware of this however) </span></div>
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="il">Gnosticism</span> posits the duality of nature and spirit, believing physical incarnation to be a cosmic error*, a failed experiment, like the dinosaurs.<span class="m_-5927868262298946074Apple-converted-space"> </span>(It has a dislike of reptiles and nature in general). </span></span><br />
<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">*(caused by "demiurges" and "archons")</span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Although reptiles are non-hierarchical and orgiastic, us mammals are not, we </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">retain the old "reptilian brain" for atavistic purposes.</span></div>
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222;">The Revelation of St. John contains the cryptic lines "..the word made flesh..the flesh made word".</span><span class="m_-5927868262298946074Apple-converted-space" style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">This signifies an awareness of binary dualism, positing the a triune concept of trinity as escape from the bicameral or 'bipolar' way of thinking.</span><span class="m_-5927868262298946074Apple-converted-space" style="color: #222222;"> </span><span class="il" style="color: #222222;">Gnosticism </span><span style="color: #222222;">causes the very thing it criticises, like the myth of Sisyphus it is schizophrenic.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Regarding the relation of mammon to gnosticism, see this excellent book:</span><br />
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<span class="m_-5927868262298946074s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="http://www.ljfrank.com/archives/1217" target="_blank">NPJ Book Review – The Money Cult, Capitalism, Christianity and the Unmaking of the American Dream by Chris Lehman</a></span></span></span><br />
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-7009127192557950372017-09-08T06:25:00.002-07:002017-09-08T06:25:35.213-07:00Why be Anarchist-Monarchist<span style="font-size: large;">Monarchist:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Because, by having a (non-political) Monarch we can respect, we are freed to be properly disrespectful towards politicians, while remaining loyal to our country. Without a monarch, loyalty can demand political submission.</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Also, the British monarch is like the king on a chessboard. <i>He cannot attack</i>. But by occupying his square he prevents others from doing so – politicians who long for the supremacy that monarchs have, who yearn to be escorted by booted cavalry and greeted with trumpets, and who want us to respect them even when they don’t deserve it. Especially when they don’t deserve it. </span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">It’s not an accident that most of the longest-lasting free, law-governed countries in the world are constitutional monarchies. Yet we seem keen to throw this advantage away, because we no longer know who we are or how we came to be so free and happy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span>The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-54699474933369700072017-08-24T01:31:00.003-07:002017-08-24T03:11:05.657-07:00Christology versus Prophetology<br />
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<a href="http://archbishopcranmer.com/problem-muslim-problem/">From Archbishop Cranmer's Blog</a>:<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;">"</span><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "roboto slab";">Now is not the time for knee-jerk journalism stoking anti-Muslim sentiment: the solutions to these societal tensions are to be found in the pursuit of theology; in robust comparative religion; in the fearless pursuit of Christology versus</span><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "roboto slab";"> </span><a href="http://archbishopcranmer.com/we-need-a-prophetology-to-dispel-the-myths-of-islam/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Prophetology</a><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "roboto slab";">. As the Rev’d Dr Gavin Ashenden wrote a few months ago, ‘</span><a href="http://archbishopcranmer.com/need-talk-jesus-mohammed-christianity-islam/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #009bff; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We need to talk more about Jesus and Mohammed and less about Christianity and Islam</a><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "roboto slab";">‘. The divine mission is to witness to God’s truth, not to denigrate any of those who are made in His image.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And we certainly don’t need to convey to all Muslims that their existence or mere presence is a ‘problem’, for that way lies the validation of hatred, prejudice and faith suppression. If the problem was Jews and their Torah yesterday, and it’s the Muslims and their Qur’an today, why not Christians and their Bible tomorrow? The potential for all people of faith to be cast as outsiders or ‘others’ is ever-present. The ever-enlightened liberal-secular inquisition must forever deal with the ‘problem’ of religion, for we have all been judged and found wanting."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe there's no "Muslim problem." Instead, perhaps, it's a "Christendom problem." An orthodox christian, rather than a protestant, confident in his faith and culture, would not have permitted either the socio-cultural conditions (i.e., multi-culturalism and Western self-flagellation) or policy decisions (i.e., importing large numbers of persons from a culture that has been both competitive and combative with the host country culture for the past 1400 years)</span></span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> .</span><br />
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<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span>The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-78242728011927569852017-05-20T09:18:00.002-07:002017-09-08T06:26:39.676-07:00The Great Lie Of The Left<div class="gmail_default" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: georgia, serif;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">he great lie of the left is that they are speaking for 'us', meaning the majority, the 'ordinary' person. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same spin was used by Mussolini, and Trump. When the right say this, they are also pretending. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">The right just</span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">pretends in "we"<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>a lot<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>less often<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other nonsense of the left now is the old notion that we'd all be better off by taxing the rich. </span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">By this they now mean the uber-rich, oligarchs and multinationals. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">here are at least 3 flaws in this:</span><span style="color: black; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b></span></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> Already offshore, & will move even more "offshore" if threatened by tax.</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The rich are better left alone by the threat of tax, as they were in the past when they </span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">felt much more <b style="color: #222222; white-space: normal;"><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">obligated </span></b>than now to benefit the country personally with endowments,</span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"> buildings and institutes. They are simply less likely to do this with the state positioning themselves</span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as the benefactors of the people, by taxing these people. People simply feel less obligated to </span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">personally help the homeless when the state claims to have relieved our conscience of our surrounding society.</span></b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The idea shown of terrorised future of failed states with obscene Oligarchies are actually countries who </span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">had statist, socialist regimes (All of the Eastern bloc, Russia, most of Africa, most of Asia, most of South America...). </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> That is not </span></span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">the situation in Europe or the U.S. where Capitalism was not banned. However damage has been done by</span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years of statist measures, producing a class of protectionist oligarchs in its wake. </span></b></span></li>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">B</span>ecause most people in Europe and North America haven't lived in</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">the Eastern bloc, Russia, Africa, Asia, or South America, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">they don't see the damage done to these societies by past </span></span></b></span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">Socialism/Communism.</span> </span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">They just assume the relative American</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">recent U.S. involvement in some of these places is solely to blame, or if not, it is the legacy the old European Empire. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The U.S. has undoubtedly been ruthlessly opportunistic; </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">this is because these opportunities were afforded by corrupt regimes and their attendant Oligarchs, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">enabled by devastation </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">wrought by Marxist regimes*. The Left in Europe don't see this is, don't see that if their anti-capitalism had any</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #222222;">fruition whatsoever, it </span>would</span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> disable the ability to fund anything for large amounts of people, and also the ability of free speech </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">and any culture of criticism. Meanwhile, they live in a culture where profits are made from books, films, articles, that promote</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> the vast bulk of critical discourse, while they deem any critique of Socialism to be allied with</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">all the evils the world has ever known, and marginalise the relatively few intellectuals with outsider status.</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the war, it was a legitimate position of dissent to deride the western system (although they never derided </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the enlightenment, which is the most likely culprit for 20thC technological wars and the atom bomb). Now it is</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">the reverse, it is a dissenting position to deride the academy, but there is even less freedom to do so than in 1945, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">or even 1922). This is because the academies have been shaped by the biased dialogue of complacent deconstructionism.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Besides the hypocrisy that one of the multinationals is Facebook, which the left </b></span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "youtube noto" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">are addicted to; the other hypocrisy is that a lot of the haute-left use tax avoidance "vehicles"</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">themselves. With one hand they think of nationalising rail, while on the other, disparaging the nation state as a regressive concept. Why not think about nationalising google or facebook ? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: large; font-weight: bold; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><span style="color: #222222; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">This is not an apology for colonialism, but it is curious that genocide was </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">comparatively</span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> rare during colonisation. </span></span></b></span></span><b style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">The genocide of the American Indian was done after a war of "independence".</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">These regimes always excuse themselves by blaming the former colonisers, ignoring the fact </span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">that they choose to model themselves almost entirely on the worst aspects of colonial rule </span><span style="color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;">wherever possible.</span></b></span></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-41960123047631503202017-03-24T01:20:00.003-07:002017-03-24T01:20:30.789-07:00Westminster Bridge, Resignation of the Spirit<div class="gmail_default" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I call it murder. Some might call it an act of terror, others an act of honour against T<i>he Great Satan</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What do you call it ? Corbyn was an I.R.A. sympathiser, he may of considered their </span><span style="font-size: large;">atrocious acts 'the struggle'. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Anyway the latest news was that the assailant was a 'soldier' of I.S.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Let's not wallow in media atrocity blitzkrieg. Because if it wasn't media hyped, these </span><span style="font-size: large;">acts wouldn't have a mandate to continue. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Although this is distinctly a negative dialectic; we are still looking at religious behaviour, </span><span style="font-size: large;">albeit perverted and on the gnostic end of the spectrum, purity through fire, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">and all </span><span style="font-size: large;">that Cathar-sis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Martyrdom is inspired by the relics of saints.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The appetite for this news encourages a media which, hot</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">as freshly pressed print - </span><span style="font-size: large;">renews, inspires more mad ganja & puritan ideology-fuelled men to commit such obscene acts of 'honour'. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But one cannot entirely blame the media. Because it is a personal shopper choice to consume films and video games involving ever increasingly high body counts, which then encourages more production of such 'media'. If some don't seems to have appetite for such filth, and thats maybe down to the happy fact our parents weren't 'bottom feeders'. The 'buck' has to stop with us individually, using </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">our God given freedom of choice, or free will. The fatalistic or deterministic view is a 'realist' view that what <i>occurs</i> is manifest and thus, destined.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Manifest destiny, that whiggish American-founding myth, escalates violence by accepting it firstly as </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">not <i>given</i>, but <i>made, </i>and its why the U.S.A never solves violence in the world, only encourages more of it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: large;">Unfortunately, the Holy Eastern Orthodox Church also has shadows of fatalism in its concept of complete </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia, serif;">submission </span><span style="font-family: georgia, serif;">and devotion to the will of God. In that, essentially people surrender their free will in the face of tragedy </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: large;">and communism. They are all too willing to submit to the blindness of collectivism. Asiatic Resignation, as Waugh called it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The triumph of the west has its locus in Roman Catholicism, not in Lutheran self-will, or Calvinist self reliance, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">which only trusts the self at the expense of everything and everybody else. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The majestic Roman Church got the balance right: trust in God, but don't trust that you won't slink to evil, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">or that 'evil' is only external, or merely someone else's, or natures flaw.</span></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-19768735377781056252017-03-08T18:20:00.001-08:002017-03-08T20:10:46.412-08:00Spinoza Antichrist<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Fichte’s system was the offspring of Kant’s divorce of sensuous from intelligible nature, </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">with the former dictated by necessity, the latter governed by freedom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This was Fichte and Schelling's method </span></span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">of how to separate out the original sin of Calvin's 'total depravity' from <i>ergo</i> and place it</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">firmly in the bosom of nature, and with nature's interlocutor who, for the </span><span style="font-size: large;">philosopher, </span><span style="font-size: large;">is woman. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Their ideal result was the old Cartesian split, word </span><i>against flesh</i><span style="font-size: large;">. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.25999999046325684px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flesh made word; Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings. Always darker, emptier, simpler.</span><br />
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-58133999481280088142017-01-07T00:15:00.004-08:002017-01-07T00:15:54.584-08:00Union Jackass<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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I'm all for a Holy Roman Empire extending from Ireland to Constantinople, </div>
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just as it did before the fall of the east in 1453. The trouble is that </div>
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this empire is unholy, foolish, insane, and <i>reactionary. </i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">For, far from progressive, the union was an attempt to set back the clock to the </span></i></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-10829300898153807822016-12-14T12:01:00.002-08:002016-12-14T15:53:08.035-08:00Hyper normalisation<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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Been reading Dominic Sandbrook, and thinking about Adam Curtis.</div>
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And what has dawned on me is simple. The contrast between</div>
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these two historians is epic. They both make strange connections,</div>
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how the mood created something, or vice versa.</div>
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Curtis paints a grim trajectory, one where evil has origins in this and that,</div>
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and is coming to now overwhelm everything. </div>
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Reminds me of a Jesus quote - that this is nothing new:</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">"And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all </span><i style="color: #001320; font-family: trebuchet, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">these things</i><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> must come to pass, but the end is not yet". (Matthew 24:6)</span></div>
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(Unlikely that Curtis is a christian). </div>
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Curtis's picture is one way of looking over the past, a particular perspective which is horrific. </div>
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If you look for those things, you will have plenty. Suffering and death exists, it is not 'wrong',</div>
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it is the condition on the earth, of life and existence. </div>
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(Revelation says man is 'the beast' meaning he has knowledge and can create more suffering than ordinary nature)</div>
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The trouble with His view and others like it, is that it revels in these misdeeds</div>
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and errors, in 'misery porn' which carries the bitter tinge of nihilism; there is an element</div>
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of cynicism which is something I recognize, because I have wallowed there too. It excuses our own failures.</div>
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On the contrary, Sandbook looks at history culturally, like Kenneth Clarke,<br />
and finds much that is positive to admire. </div>
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It is a trope of the left (Moore, Chomsky, Geldof) to look back only at war and strife and the suffering of others, rather than the achievements of beauty that also exist, that men <i>too </i>have built. Curtis only accepts and accentuates whats</div>
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gone wrong, not affirming any good. While Roger Scruton explores what he thinks is morally awry today by examining the good things from the past - cathedrals, institutions, ethics, religion, and sees much that we can learn. It seems as though Curtis only sees the past as entirely execrable, full of bad turns, all fallacious good intentions gone bad.</div>
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Devil's advocation: </div>
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What is supposedly admirable is that his films compose very succinctly, and poetically </div>
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a nightmare that drips from the news everyday, and blasts it back as a collage which overloads the emotions; which thus draws one to think just what I have thought above, as I tuck into this warm glass of Burgundian Pinot.<br />
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-89327867678145477702016-12-14T11:57:00.001-08:002016-12-14T11:57:27.802-08:00<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"><u>How wide the Safety net ?</u></span></div>
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Liberalism says that we don't have to be responsible for ourselves, </div>
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the state will take care of the future.<div>
Liberal economics says the same: we don't have to apply morals, </div>
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the market will take care of the future.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Following this thought on liberal irresponsibility:</span><br />
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Another radical view came to me, amongst local beggars in my area -<div>
that because of government spending, "we" have the option not to feel any direct obligations if "we" so wish. Because the personal response is abrogated. </div>
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When I hear lefties whinging about Tory cuts, other than the obvious front-brain plea for more welfare for the needy, is also the flipside: that "I" don't want to have to be responsible, </div>
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"I" don't want to see paupery on the streets, "I" would like to see it dealt with by an invisible hand. </div>
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Then I think of how it used to be, and still is, natural for a lot of Cultures to look after their own family members when they get frail and needy, where charity is intrinsically a personal, local issue, dealt with first and foremost on the ground level. The nation state concept, with all its political machinations is clearly the result of replacing church with state; the impersonal in place of the personal; the sophisticated justification for this being that we aren't living in small tribal communities anymore. </div>
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Maybe we should realise that we are not so atomised, that we are still in small tribes (families, colleagues, friends).</div>
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The old Catholic culture here in England provided the solution to this which incorporated the local with a larger narrative. The keyword being culture rather than 'apparatus'.</div>
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Now we have it seems, bad compromise: local government which always defers</div>
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responsibility to big government, and big government which leaves the responsibility</div>
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to charity, church, 'activists' and local government. </div>
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Middle class Metro elites are on the side of big government,</div>
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in that they want paupers swept out of sight, to opt, in the name of 'individuality', to disconnect from obligation (to <i>oblige</i> being too noble), and by reverse extension, also place the obligation for their families on the state, because the state is capable of big collective organisation. </div>
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But despite this being true, it shouldn't extend that they have no obligation other than more taxes, which being abstract, are demonstrably avoidable. The individualist get-out clause; because by the very fact of this abstraction, few can always escape and leave responsibility on those left behind (the basic form of neo-liberal economic competition). </div>
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I contend that theoretical "socialism" is really the freedom to be anti-social (example of Orwellian double-speak) and that it ends up doing the reverse of what it projects: it offloads responsibility to those who can least afford it, freeing 'elites'.</div>
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This is because socialism, or liberalism, is in fact rooted <i>in</i>, and enshrined <i>by,</i> neo-liberal economics (which lest us not forget, is the very system, according to Chomsky, which replaced Catholicism*). The rest is sheer age-old hypocrisy - "I" can own property and have privilege while nominally believing in modified forms of communism which purports to be about sharing all goods and property in common.</div>
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Otherwise known as owning the narrative.</div>
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The justification for this hypocrisy is that other people who do not call themselves socialist are getting away with it, so why shouldn't "I" ?</div>
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Arthur Penty states in an essay in "A challenge to the myth of progress" that "Men who made the accumulation of wealth their primary aim</div>
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in life where looked at askance in the Middle Ages and why trade and commerce where held in lower esteem than agriculture and craftmanship, as they were also in China until relatively recently"</div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-62139502790132765112016-11-07T08:08:00.000-08:002016-11-07T08:08:02.597-08:00Another election special<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>D</b></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">emocracy began with the splitting of one into two.</span><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"> Absolute monarchy was denounced as tyranny and </span><br />
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became a house with two sides.<br /> But this does not negate the fundamental principle of one, or any other<br /> number for that matter. </div>
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Parliamentarianism, or t<span class="m_-2505954077740880984sew64g42hsn5fw8"></span><span class="m_-2505954077740880984sew64g42hsn5fw8"></span>he two party system,<br /> is the very definition of "polarisation".<div>
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The 'center ground' theory, which is the excuse that the </div>
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regulated center. </div>
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This has been proven, not just this time round, to be a lump </div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-61788043847183601032016-10-23T04:53:00.003-07:002016-11-07T08:08:49.040-08:00<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Utopian philosophy of pleasure, often mistakenly called 'Epicurean', </span><span style="font-size: large;">is entirely compatible with Christian teaching since it holds that the wise choose </span><span style="font-size: large;">the higher pleasures of the spirit instead of the lower and temporary pleasures </span><span style="font-size: large;">of the flesh.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-46196818151212113742016-09-30T13:04:00.005-07:002016-10-01T03:05:30.891-07:00Incarnations<div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The ungodly is a desire to be animal, to be without cosmic significance,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">to be <span aria-haspopup="true" class="J-JK9eJ-PJVNOc" data-g-spell-status="3" id=":1ni.1" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1">shorn</span> of 'the soul', to consider that a ghastly hindrance</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">a gauche accoutrement, the revolting baggage of an archetypal insufferable </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">bore, resulting in existential despair not shared with the animal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Its a style choice in a firmament of bewildering choice, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">a preference for the unfettered primitive, without the asphyxiating bonds and oaths</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">of loyalty that <span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">primævalism</span> entails.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is the realm of the <span aria-haspopup="true" class="J-JK9eJ-PJVNOc" data-g-spell-status="3" id=":1ni.3" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1">deracinated</span>, derailed and fundamentally</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">disloyal and atomized. It is on the spectrum of global </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">scoundrel, one who thinks he should answer to nobody, is without</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">history, free of place or community. Their intelligence tells them they are</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">free of agency, but their bounds are the narrative of negation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The only affirmation is a meek acquiescence to power </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">that </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">formally negates, such as hip hop, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">grime, Islam, punk, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">or anti-capitalism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is something snide in this ludicrous, incongruous embrace. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is merely the establishment notion of ownership and incorporation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is the shrewd riposte to a slave rebellion. This isn't speaking</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">truth to power, only acquiescence of power. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The desired result is corporate slave-branding, the humdrum marketplace cynicism</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">of industrial generality. It is appears to be the denouement of a slave-owning mentality.</span></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-44792953138444365992016-09-23T10:09:00.003-07:002016-09-23T10:13:28.570-07:00Demagogues<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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How would an irrational being create anything outside of himself? Irrationality is always bound up with ego and self identification, unlikely to create a cult of an ultimate ancestor figure such as a God, outside of time. </div>
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To propose that an irrational people created this God would be to assume that <i>oneself</i> is thus objectifiably rational and coincidentally, just like the terrific old testament thunder God, judging vast swathes of humankind through <i>all of history</i> as being utterly wrong for worshipping a false idol. </div>
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Atheists and their forerunners, the Deists, far from freeing anyone from idolatry, really believe they themselves embody God, and that there can be no other God possible but themselves.<br />
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From time to time we have also seen such demagogues rise and fall, leading people astray into irresponsibility they feel no subsequent accountability for.</div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-37301755317397044612016-08-25T14:51:00.002-07:002016-09-30T18:06:04.276-07:00<span style="font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Colonial, through and through, but to colonise new parts of one's own brain, rather than</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">finite projections of the subjective business of cartography and the attendant lugubrious</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and sensual conquest of physical space. Pleasures built on the pain of striving -</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To navigate new deltas or rivulets of neural bypass, to light up new networks is the</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">true enlightenment sought by men through the ages. Paradoxically this could be the age of yin, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">of inward turning, as opposed to the choice between extrovert self-obliteration, or</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">raving decadence evidenced in sharp declines in comportment, etiquette, modulation,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">composure, or self restraint in favour of a faux primitive, nouveau-pagan narcissism.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of the unified personality in the soul of the world is the confluence of running</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to the frontier and therewith, the awareness found at the polar edge of total physical</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">liberation in rebellion against the limits of Confucian mastery.</span><br />
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<br />The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-62906861589781200972016-07-22T05:57:00.000-07:002016-10-01T00:54:04.556-07:00Putting all your ego's into one blanket <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The mindset that sees only fear and unknowns, with no ideas</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">other than negatives such as 'the agendas of neo-liberals' </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">provides no soothing balm in stormy seas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Banks are dominating the entire economics</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">of the world like they never have before, with the result small </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">farmers and shopkeepers </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Europe-wide</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> are on the Common </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Agricultural Policy dole or facing </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">penury and the only </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">market outside of </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">stocks in London is </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">increasingly that of inflating</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> it's property prices to Monaco proportions</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The latest news is that The EU wants to merge all </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">from being independent by getting more entangled to</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the central controllers, making it a defacto, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">military dictatorship.*</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No no no to this awful, fear driven idea that together is</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">better, because it really is a bewildered, herd driven Hegemony. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A lot of people find Prison safer because it is controlled,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">regulated, monitored, and policed. This is the ideology of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">'Remainers' I'm afraid. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Prison is better, because the meals are regular while </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>freedom or 'choice' only means the dreaded unknown.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It also means you have to think of an alternative to </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">what has been a century of bad turns (since the launch of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">world war one basically) with the phony exception </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">of the 60's and the 80's-90's which was only, after all, a prosperity</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">predicated on a renewed debt culture which was a game of musical chairs </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ultimately benefiting few, a percentile who</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">work in finance, government, big corps and their salivating hounds, the lawyers;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and those who already have property. But you have to know </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">history to see this. Otherwise, Remain... in prison.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Because you don't know what could of been, in fact, what was.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One only has to look at the coloured photographs Albert</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Kahn produced of Europe on the eve of the first World War.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Think that no-one had to have a 'passport document', only</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a reference letter if you wanted to enter any country by the front door.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzeMrop_u0HN4T35c3dk24eYwIkHzRb3Leo9s2q7lt4ispibI8TITaAI5vwAdqBnaBxaFv3E18JtZALG8zXUreFFg8lnPy18cvgv8mOXrUL-Bmsz9K1i2ei4MW4fekzlsn4qS3TVDcDrc/s1600/ak2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzeMrop_u0HN4T35c3dk24eYwIkHzRb3Leo9s2q7lt4ispibI8TITaAI5vwAdqBnaBxaFv3E18JtZALG8zXUreFFg8lnPy18cvgv8mOXrUL-Bmsz9K1i2ei4MW4fekzlsn4qS3TVDcDrc/s1600/ak2.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We have an opportunity at this centenary of the Somme</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">to repair all the mess that 19thC unification caused for the 20thC. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The EU facilitated agreements, a rapprochement </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">between what was left of devastated countries after </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">WW2. B</span><span style="font-family: "\22 helvetica neue\22 " , "\22 arial\22 " , "\22 helvetica\22 " , sans-serif;">y staying in the dinosaur that the EU has become </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It paradoxically dishonours any of the good, </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">original intentions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">People always make the error of believing that because there were</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">'explosions' of creativity in the 30's or 60's, that this was proof of </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">general cultural progress rather than seeing that these breaths of fresh air</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">were relatively heroic gasps in an otherwise larger fraught culture of decline,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">strife on a dark ocean which was used by its agents </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">to prove and justify </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a 'civilisation' of nihilism, which uses loans to indebt </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">countries to ecosystem annihilation for toxic production consumption and </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">technological war </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">producing impoverished populations who will be ripe </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">for more debt and toxic </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">industrialization. With the only light at the end </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">of the tunnel is to </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">become financial centres which only serve to enrich a</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Marxist-hedonist transhumanist, transgender </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">resist. Inventing agendas, silencing critics and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">opponents, seizing the narrative through </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">mass media </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">('propaganda') and finding scapegoats to </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">blame whoever refutes it is the same way fascism did it in the 1930's.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is asserting a utopia based on 'overcoming' </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the way fascists misused Nietzsche's concept of </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ubermensch. (The superman was one man thinking for himself, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">opposed to 'the rabble'. Superman wasn't a mass movement).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Any return of the death penalty would be used to serve these ends</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and not those of the proponents of the 'traditional morality'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">*</span><span style="color: #505050; font-family: "financierdisplayweb" , serif; font-size: 20px;">The creation of a European army is a long way off, but it is a strategic necessity to implement important steps to pave the way towards it now</span><span style="color: #505050; font-family: "financierdisplayweb" , serif; font-size: 20px;"> -</span></div>
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<span style="color: #505050; font-family: "metricweb" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 600;">Roderich Kiesewetter, Bundestag member </span><a href="https://next.ft.com/content/e90a080e-107b-11e6-91da-096d89bd2173" style="font-family: metricweb, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 600;" target="_blank">Financial Times</a>The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-35996878404426290732016-07-19T01:59:00.001-07:002017-01-07T00:15:00.174-08:00Brexit Planet Dust<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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What has surfaced and come to fore is the old, 1930's idea </div>
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of the "menace of the masses" (Wells, Blooomsbury).</div>
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Disregard of the 'mob' and distrust of democracy.</div>
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The liberals and city sub-elites have revealed their secret: that they hate</div>
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the 'unwashed', and in the name of progress </div>
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look forward, in ocean-liner fashion, to a future</div>
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dripping with thrusting art-deco lines, the way of Mussolini.<br />
These middling men pretend that they</div>
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are on everyones side, but they're on their own.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Its a way for politicians to defer responsibilities to a 'central</span><br />
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thing' which on its top level is closed to the gurning populations of Europe.</div>
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Same reason they need to bring in refugees, so that </div>
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they 'have to make decisions' under duress,</div>
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decisions they don't have to be accountable for, because they've</div>
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got the bottomless excuse of 'the poor'. This also</div>
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provides a great excuse for the non-termination of austerity</div>
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or any other measure for that matter. The same excuses war</div>
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provides. They also have it from previous form, that people shall</div>
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accept austerity/rationing given the 'right reasons' (WW2 Britain)<br />
and that protestations are merely proof of their subservience (Machiavelli).<br />
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The chaos afforded by terrorism is merely more grist for</div>
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their mill. In other words, it is against their interests for</div>
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terror to ever cease. It was not shocking to hear that the regulations</div>
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being discussed at the moment the British referendum results</div>
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came in is if domestic robots would have the rights of persons in the future.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiul0BEh5fyHJNBdjvH_97SXZmOfXLUt_aj2mx5Wf6Zz6A_PTxD1APXF_i-QNwCDI1BiNEBHVmW4xhdNm4d6mUEqdFR2Rf-8xodq2mnUFlnkEhUPgT6GuyUUq7TGO7jsT4D0eyhkvMdkE/s1600/IMG_7363.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiul0BEh5fyHJNBdjvH_97SXZmOfXLUt_aj2mx5Wf6Zz6A_PTxD1APXF_i-QNwCDI1BiNEBHVmW4xhdNm4d6mUEqdFR2Rf-8xodq2mnUFlnkEhUPgT6GuyUUq7TGO7jsT4D0eyhkvMdkE/s400/IMG_7363.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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(Modern Heretic, John Dunn)</div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-43304324100351800702016-07-04T20:16:00.005-07:002016-07-06T14:15:33.274-07:00Unto Whited Sepulchres<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Again, one hears the accusation that this democratic outcome is ungodly for race relations and is, in itself, an encourager of violence and persecutions. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Did the EU also invent racial harmony ? </span><span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Like the infamous English ball-match hooligans, those already with a racialist bent are using this, as they do said ball games, to vent their unresolved frustrations on 'the others'. Here in Hackney we have 're-whitewash gentrification', where black persons feel, rightly so, that they are being bleached out by a banker-funded clique of sacharrine whiteys who just don't jive with the existing ska-dancehall culture. Some of these yuppies had Stay placards in their windows, but all the leftists honks who laid the mat out for them in the first place had RemaIN vulgarising their (mostly Victorian) fenestration (a mix of bien pesant politik and fears their property purchases would become devalued or bad investments - there was not a single Leave poster anywhere). The yuppies drive the shop rents up so everything finally becomes clinically clean, cold & corporate friendly, like Canary wharf and most of the west end. No quirks, no eccentrics, no brick-a-brack, no rastas, no unsteriles.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">The terrible thing about not allowing poor persons is that there is no stability, no congeal, </span><span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">no ferment. Everything is green, raw and cold. If you don't keep dumb, </span><span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">fresh, clean, tidy & sharp, you will be eventually bought out, robbed by taxes, or evicted. Unless, that is, you hold on thru 'til the next nosedive to ghetto junk status.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Not as hard as it seems.. Hard come, easy go. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Culture is a long process, like a fine time-tuned eco-system. But the clean up is known as 'Civilisation' . The last stage before evisceration, extinction and collapse. </span></span><span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;">Also known as 'the bleach'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="color: #3f4549;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">"</span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: 16px;">Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."</span></span><span style="color: #3f4549; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , serif; font-size: 15px;"> - Matthew 23:27</span><br />
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-25921852272678791872016-06-10T00:54:00.000-07:002016-06-10T00:54:30.043-07:00Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet review<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-size: small;">by David Crane</span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">On 31 October 1517, as every child once knew, an obscure German monk nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg’s castle church and so began the Reformation. It would seem that there is no firm evidence that this ever actually happened as myth would have it, but whether Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door or glued them or merely posted them to Germany’s leading churchmen, the Christian world would never be the same again.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><em>Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet</em> is an exploration of a man’s interior life and development and not, as Lyndal Roper insists, either a general history of the Reformation or even of the Lutheran revolution in Wittenberg. She is only too aware of the reductive dangers of shrinking great historical events and theological arguments to the emotional and psychological struggles of an individual. And yet if any man, as her compelling and above all deeply honest biography shows, can shoulder this kind of emphasis — any man, moreover, whose theology seems so direct an emanation of character — it is the charismatic, bruising, paradoxical and appalling Augustinian monk turned renegade, Martin Luther.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">Luther — Luder — was born in Eisleben in northern Germany in 1483, and grew up under the shadow of the Counts of Mansfeld’s castles in the small mining town of the same name. In later life he would always insist on his impeccable peasant origins, but his father was a mining inspector and prominent smelting master and it was in a smoky, slagheap-filled town on the edge of the civilised world that the young Martin grew up.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">The wider context of the adult Luther’s rebellion — the growing anti-clericalism of the late 14th century, the extravagance and exactions of the Renaissance papacy, absenteeism, the shameful ignorance of so many clergy, the scandal of indulgences, the simmering hostility between Rome and Germany — is familiar enough territory, but for Roper it is impossible to understand Luther without understanding this Mansfeld world from which he came. There is a natural tendency in Reformation studies to concentrate on the independent imperial cities of the south, but the ugly, precarious and divided world that helped shape Luther’s passionate, authoritarian, unforgiving, coarsely physical nature was closer to a 15th-century German <em>Deadwood</em> than it was to the humanist culture and civic traditions of Nuremberg.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">Even though Luther remained loyal to his childhood home, there can have been little about it that gave him a very elevated sense of man’s goodness, and nothing that can have inoculated him against the less lovely aspects of St Augustine’s theology when he defied his father to become an Augustinian monk. It might seem odd in retrospect that a man who spent so much of his time railing against monasticism should have joined so austere an order, and yet for whatever reason — and Roper is right to give no pat answer — there was a streak of guilt and self-loathing in Luther that found some perverse balm in the ascetic disciplines and baleful theology of the Observant Augustinians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">In Augustine’s teaching of the utter depravity of man and a strict reading of Paul we have all the ingredients needed for Protestantism; but it is hard not to feel that the Reformation took the direction it did because of Luther’s personality. It was perfectly possible in the early 16th century to square a moderate Augustinian theology with Catholic orthodoxy, but moderation was never part of Luther’s character, and thesis by thesis, crisis by crisis, prayer by prayer, revelation by revelation — it was in the privy tower, on the cloaca, he famously claimed, that the idea of justification by faith alone ‘struck him like a thunderbolt’ — the reformer and the theologian in him came into alignment to produce the Catholic church’s most implacable enemy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">It was this combination of doctrine and character that gave Luther’s assault on the papacy its momentum and destructive power. There was nothing in his attacks on relics or indulgences that was not common enough currency across Europe at the time; but if man could be saved by faith alone and all good works were intrinsically sinful, then the whole penitential edifice of the medieval church — the sale of indulgences, the intercession to Mary and the saints, the cult of relics, the authority of the Pope, the distinct existence of a priestly caste to mediate between man and God — were all so much rubble.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">Given Luther’s temperament, the story was never likely to end there, and perhaps the saddest thing about this book is just how much space it necessarily devotes to his battles with other reformers. There was at least a grim logic to his break with Rome; but could anyone but Luther have found sufficient ground for disagreement with allies, friends and disciples as various as Erasmus, Karlstadt, Bucer and Zwingli to have endangered the very existence of the Reformation in the way he did?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">While there were genuine theological differences with his fellow reformers, particularly over the doctrine of the real presence, the harsher truth seems to be that like Alexander Pope’s Atticus he could ‘bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne’. He talked of conscience when what he meant was <i>his</i> conscience. He preached the transparent truth of scripture and again what he meant was Luther’s interpretation of scripture. Intellectual independence, however sincere, however marginal, was disloyalty; disagreement was betrayal.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">And his polemical skills, his un-rivalled gifts for fighting dirty, his genius — aided and abetted by the ghastly Lucas Cranach — for exploiting the possibilities of the printing press meant that these battles would be fought with an acrimony and violence that would poison denominational debate for another 400 years. Nor was that Luther’s only grim legacy. ‘The Jews,’ he could write, ‘kiss, eat, drink and worship’ the Devil’s excrement. ‘He stuffs and squirts them so full that it overflows and swims out of every place, pure Devil’s filth, yes it tastes so good to their hearts, and they guzzle it like sows.’</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">This was, as Roper insists, no mere relic of Catholic anti-Semitism, but<i> integral</i> to Protestant identity and a Protestant sense of election — and in that lies the problem of writing about Luther. She leaves no room to doubt his towering stature in Reformation history, but only hagiography could leave it at that. In her introduction she says that she is not out to produce a consistent Luther; and she is as good as her word. His life and character were a mass of contradictions, and she ducks none of them. Her Luther is at once the theologian who gave Germany its vernacular Bible and the man whose philosophy of political deference would have dark implications for those living under Nazi rule. Her Luther is the child of Mansfeld who proclaimed the priesthood of all believers, and yet seemed incapable of embracing the social and civic implications of Protestantism.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">He was also the charismatic preacher who proclaimed the liberating power of the gospel and turned on the peasants who took him at his word; the hollow-eyed, celibate ascetic in search of martyrdom who died, fat and married, in his bed; a kind of inverted antinomian, whose conviction of man’s utter sinfulness gave him so curiously relaxed an attitude to human sexuality; the godfather of modern secularism who struggled with the Devil, the university teacher for whom reason was a ‘whore’, the Saxon provincial who changed the world…</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">Not, as Lyndal Roper mildly notes, an easy hero.</span><br />
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-40927669500493378592016-06-08T09:34:00.001-07:002016-06-08T09:38:46.925-07:00Europe, a Prophecy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM-xuDlIKNry0OU48yxwauDOPpHtjuHMuWTOExZ-rmHyyiTlkDf_pbUJOqAz0D04TF9pKpM_As0gZiFtMbnafQ7PB_pxz786HKqDKavsjzNcuhPNtSPQVkIrfPhmP5z8HmTp2XYZlQMXQ/s1600/9cfc985a-f8ec-489c-af1d-eea5d0ae25ba-792x1020.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM-xuDlIKNry0OU48yxwauDOPpHtjuHMuWTOExZ-rmHyyiTlkDf_pbUJOqAz0D04TF9pKpM_As0gZiFtMbnafQ7PB_pxz786HKqDKavsjzNcuhPNtSPQVkIrfPhmP5z8HmTp2XYZlQMXQ/s640/9cfc985a-f8ec-489c-af1d-eea5d0ae25ba-792x1020.jpeg" width="496" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In </span>choosing the 'leave' box, I am acting out of principle. Because I have very little</div>
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understanding or will to read the endless files to gain the knowledge which would </div>
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fructify into understanding.</div>
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The futures unknown baby. Besides being a theme in this ridiculous ballot</div>
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(strange for a government to promise this democratic thing, then to have serious</div>
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remorse about the possible outcome). As usual their confidence was </div>
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in democracy being a bread and circus affair.</div>
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Voting out, and away, because its been a constant theme of mine:</div>
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rejecting lofty claims of enlightenment culture. Because the middle ages </div>
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weren't as barbaric as made out, torture gained new ground with the birth of the 'early modern' age, </div>
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the Tudors, who also invented espionage. From that proceeding to revolutions and ending in technological war, the icing on the cake being Hiroshima.</div>
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The argument for plurality being 'choose corporate' - </div>
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Its logic follows that one must choose the big and </div>
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standardized, <i>the proven</i>. Everything must look the same anywhere. </div>
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Sterilise the petri dish. Its safer, especially when you're old</div>
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and can't abide anything. This is a carrion call</div>
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of the death instinct, <i>thanatos. </i></div>
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William Blake saw the enlightenment for what it was:</div>
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a dulling of perception in favour of the metric reduction of measuring</div>
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things and proclaiming promethean God like wisdom. </div>
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He foresaw what was happening in America and</div>
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France quite early on as not turning out good. </div>
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The french revolution leading immediately to Napoleon and the</div>
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attempt to subjugate all Europe (and Russia) to another Roman styled Empire.</div>
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America, the giant federation which would lead to the catastrophe of </div>
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the American civil war, the largest conflict of the 19th Century, in the land</div>
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of the free. </div>
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This EU is merely the latest incarnation of the pagan Reich concept.</div>
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The now old neo-classical idea that Economics, law and democracy,</div>
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after Athens and the Roman Republic, rather than the medieval, 'backward' superstitions</div>
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of pre-reformation Gothic christianity, will triumph over all irreconcilable differences and</div>
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give us a golden age of arcadian bliss.</div>
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If only we could live like people in a Poussin painting. </div>
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We'd first have to rid ourselves of cars, planes, and death as well. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiMEPnpMp2E9WN_LSWkvRvLPM1eN2fAI_Aldymxw1hjvaE3YpIz9wFeahWW3vYEZK1loirGIAvNtWCvGoV7lixIGwWIcpQc_kJMK_l6Bw2J2PVpjh-e0ByxZ4vjamg2jDsTs2GMQZTgZ4/s1600/GoldCalf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="443" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiMEPnpMp2E9WN_LSWkvRvLPM1eN2fAI_Aldymxw1hjvaE3YpIz9wFeahWW3vYEZK1loirGIAvNtWCvGoV7lixIGwWIcpQc_kJMK_l6Bw2J2PVpjh-e0ByxZ4vjamg2jDsTs2GMQZTgZ4/s640/GoldCalf.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>Blake lllustration:</i></div>
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(<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">Blake loved this image, the frontispiece to 'Europe, a Prophecy', and made several copies.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">The old man is Urizen, in Blake’s mythology the embodiment of reason and law and a repressive, </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">satanic force trying to bring uniformity to mankind. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">(In 'America a Prophecy', Urizen is the evil god who rules during the Enlightenment.) </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">Here he is seen kneeling in a flaming discus surrounded by dark cloud, hand held </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">over a compass, apparently measuring the black void.)</span></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-49565764948385134762016-04-04T10:45:00.002-07:002016-04-14T05:07:31.329-07:00Messianic Jubilaeum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">R</span>eligion is used for ruin and hate and war. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But it isn't a two-step, black & white argument.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is not a simple division of religion on one side, and secular humanism/atheism</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">on the other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the middle is non-puritanical religion. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you look at messianic, apocalyptic sects</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">they are usually puritan whether they be protestant </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">or Islamic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The atheist position is simply one of non-religion, a belief </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">in human goodness (but also a morally ambiguous position) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">but without willing to paying any dues for it, or</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">respecting the historic culture whence those values truly originated. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thereby taking a position merely of observer, of not taking sides,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">unwilling to stand for or against anything, and hence</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">open to the rule by a Cromwellian Commonwealth or a</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wahhabist Caliphate simply because they refuse to defend</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">anything, because believing nothing means standing for </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the position of nothing. This has been the position of Jews</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">since the Babylonian yoke.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Luther, Cromwell, and Osama Bin Laden's Islamic puritans have </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">in common </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">justification </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">of the immanent fulfillment of messianic </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">apocalyptic </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">prophecy. They believe they are</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">undoing the sin of man by annihilating what they deem </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">abominations, which involve division rather than </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">any unity, for they unite only in opposing something. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">They can only stand against, they can never stand for anything.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">They give no choice, unite with them or be at war with them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So compulsion(tyranny), or war can only ensue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nothing is adapted, accepted, incorporated, or added,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the only thing that can happen is that culture, variety, people,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and customs are taken away. The Catholic culture, for all its </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">faults, was often not guilty of this. Rather than simply carrying out a </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">genocide policy as the protestants did in North America and Australia,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">enduring examples of synthesis can be </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">seen everywhere Catholicism </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">went (Mexico, England, South America) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It built on existing traditions and grew its own tradition as a result.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Islam did this up to a point. This is because initially it absorbed and synthesized </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the Judaic Patriarchs and Christian desert-father knowledge, wisdom and traditions and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Greek science, geometry and philosophy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But once it had gained a large cultural ascendancy in its vast expansions </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">after the prophets death, it soon began to stultify and turn to theories of doctrinal purity</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">which eroded its initial revitalizing potency. The minority Shiite represent</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the remnant of the earlier, more tolerant, tradition, while </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the majority, puritan, Sunnis have today seized the narrative. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course Catholicism and Shia have also been guilty of </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">episodes of doctrinal and dogmatic purity resulting in intolerance,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">divisions, bloodshed, hatred and show 'trials'. But these instances</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">are also a result of reaction to the division in their faith, they have the same effect</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">from the same cause, but are not ultimately bound by any orthodoxy to</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">propagate these divisions and contradictions. False doctrines fail and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">they are noted for their intolerance - of organic cultures, of women,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">of hysterical bans on imagery, saints, statuary and ultimately Nature, or</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">mother earth. Shrines and relics, as much as they are derided as</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">wishful thinking, superstitions or idolatry, fill the need for ritual expression and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">calendrical marking of the liturgical year, that is, they follow nature and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the seasons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The puritans were the the self-proclaimed antithesis of the current orthodoxy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Christian puritans frame themselves as Christ against</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">a corrupt priesthood. However, the Judaism that Christ </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">upended against were far more like Puritans themselves than</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the Vatican Papacy. The route post-captivity Judaism</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">had taken was a law-obsessed priesthood, centered on </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">temple culture rather than pastoral, nature-based.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Neo-pagans are really neo-puritans,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">who have a romanticised notion of the purity of nature more </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">than any actual respect for it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Christ fits into this as the incarnate human-God, following </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">other saviours such as Mithras, Demeter (and countless others) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">because he accepts and reveres the ground of nature- <i>this is my blood</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>and body</i> - why he is the <i>Way</i> through it. He never assumes </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">like an Olympian God that he is free from it, commanding </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">from above, and separate from earth, nature or us. He promotes the idea</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">that we are sons of both this world (earth) and the Almighty (the 'father').</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Much of this was adjusted by theologians, </span><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">which led to the reformation led by Augustinian monk turned rogue theologian, Martin </span><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">Luther, and continued by other beneficiaries of monastic educations, notably Zwingli & Calvin, </span><span style="font-family: '"georgia"', '"times new roman"', serif;">and continued by 'philosophers' such as John Locke.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But the reformation was only possible because</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">of the printing press, not because people were freed from tradition</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by some grass-roots, collective enlightenment. This 'enlightenment' came from</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the technology of Gutenberg, which was hardly collective and certainly not</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">a noble or spiritual human development. The technology of Gutenberg is </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">now being superseded in our time by the internet (non-print), showing that,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">far from miraculous, Gutenberg's black-letter movable type was a chimera, different, but not unlike </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the half-animal faun-like idols of the pagans that Moses railed against. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This idolatry of script/font/typeface/<wbr></wbr>calligraphy can be seen </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by the continued sacredotal insistence </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">today of Arabic Abjad script (</span><span dir="rtl" lang="ar" style="background-color: transparent; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;" xml:lang="ar">العَرَبِيَّة</span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">), and the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hebrew alpeh-bet(</span><span style="background-color: #fff0f9; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify; white-space: nowrap;">אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">). The representative of this biblioatry in the west, the inheritor of the German black-letter ("gothic") typeface</span></div>
<a href="http://kyleminor.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/nyt.jpg" style="color: black; font-family: ff-basic-gothic-web-pro-1, ff-basic-gothic-web-pro-2, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><img alt="nyt" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1460" src="http://kyleminor.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/nyt.jpg?w=580&h=85" height="29" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="200" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and the secular, modernist puritan hegemony, of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the Swiss "</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Helvetica</span>"</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> typeface.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-52650712419836701122015-12-06T10:29:00.003-08:002015-12-06T10:36:55.038-08:00De Montfort<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
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<i style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Protestantism</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> is odious because it is primarily political -</span><br />
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its all about movements and election.</div>
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<i>Politics</i> is odious because in its current democratic form it is </div>
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the product of the reformation - this idea that the congregation</div>
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can have as much authority - (an incessant lie, they never </div>
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have authority, can never be <i>given</i> real authority). </div>
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If you try and refute politics, its supporters</div>
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scream back with 'democracy'. Politicians are now the monsters</div>
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democracy initially set out to undermine. They have become</div>
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the powerful and not at all the watchmen of the powerful.</div>
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On the other hand, I believe If men left politics to women to have a go at it,</div>
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then the women would soon give up and return to their natural metier,</div>
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that is, of <i>not</i> forming alliances or gangs ('organization').</div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-30823365370108127802015-11-29T16:28:00.001-08:002016-06-10T01:21:53.215-07:00Apologia 1<div style="margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0.5rem; text-align: left; word-wrap: break-word;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">The paradox is that I reasonably believe that there are things I cannot explain, or understand. It simply </span><span style="font-size: large;">is not reasonable to believe that we can have the answers to every question if only we continue to believe that </span><span style="font-size: large;">rational enquiry will ultimately yield them, that the only thing stopping us is unreasonable people </span><span style="font-size: large;">who have no belief (faith) in reason alone (pure reason). </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because it does appear that reason is only trying to override faith in <i>good</i> with </span><span style="font-size: large;">faith in pure reason. Reason alone isn't providing ultimate solutions or answers to '</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">absolute'</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"> riddles </span><span style="font-size: large;">(so called 'big questions' of life and the universe).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It develops technologies, investigates phenomena, and finds much. Harnessing materials already extant, but </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>not</i> creating anything and everything it merely wishes. </span><span style="font-size: large;">It doesn't follow that reason would then provide the solution to all chimeras if only it could simply be believed in, a counter faith </span><span style="font-size: large;">in place of religious faith. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The only absurd faith is in scientific progress, with it's</span><span style="font-size: large;"> ever receding and expanding horizons. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">God being the eternal good, that good shall supersede evil is ultimately all religious faith actually boasts, what it recognises as <i>salvation</i>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Any power of science doesn't replace or contradict this. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What is unreasonable, is to believe in negating morality because it seems so unnecessary in the </span><span style="font-size: large;">face of a superior, pure, human reason (the rationale denouncing the 'miraculous' and 'superstition', for example) or that, pure reason somehow affirms morality. It definitively has no faith in anything but itself, which it supposes is the supreme good, when it can only be a relative good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The conundrum of evil is that it is not interchangeable with good. If it were, then the question of belief or truth need never arise. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The so-called 'believer in nothing' could never ascertain or judge others, or be accountable for any 'right or wrong', 'left or right', progress or stagnation; life or death would all mean nothing, and more importantly, couldn't be made to mean anything by any logic or philosophy whatsoever. </span></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776154801102635952.post-47981217097984909372015-10-27T01:30:00.003-07:002015-11-20T08:04:25.045-08:00Vino Sacrificio<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ZMN3Hm4uPcqQNOyvbm0vD83aUinHBi8P8r4NPBorv519TaZw5hV3TjRRrxV7-UNtyR6GeK94LCqad20jNwR9WvxYNNYfmbvrk8ZT5IW68TAAJOCAcGxltKO9C7M_ts1TmHG2hTvWZcQ/s1600/dion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ZMN3Hm4uPcqQNOyvbm0vD83aUinHBi8P8r4NPBorv519TaZw5hV3TjRRrxV7-UNtyR6GeK94LCqad20jNwR9WvxYNNYfmbvrk8ZT5IW68TAAJOCAcGxltKO9C7M_ts1TmHG2hTvWZcQ/s320/dion.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Abusing wine is unchristian, for it is meant to be sacrosanct.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is the symbolic blood of Christ.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wine was refined to the giddy heights found in the great vintages</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">by celibate men in holy orders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is wines which underpin, validate and justify the prices</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">commanded by any great restaurant, it gives them the </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">required air of <i>mystique</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But to look at those great pagans, the Greeks -</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">for one to get well-imbibed, or drunk, one must</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">recognise it as is a gateway to the gods; the sacramental</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">element is all implicit in the Eluesian mysteries as in the Eucharist. </span><span style="font-size: large;">There is more etiquette in the </span><span style="font-size: large;">Dionysian realm than there is in normal life. Yet many have seen the image of unrestrained</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">celebrants in Dionysian rites equal to an avenue to publicly de-burden themselves </span><span style="font-size: large;">by way of negative catharsis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">To reduce this to a mere drinking session, or some</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">blunt way to digress from the norm, is a diminishment,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">but also a grave transgression, an ultimate crime against </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">culture, because it is against our shared inheritance. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A selfish act because it disregards that common inheritance, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">or communion.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFjZ1A-BWwWw0TdRFPRFlVX7fdmSd6sD5UhAtagDxTeNfXopwhmdLxF1KGovudX8h4dTli5d7Ma0Z1muDCJ5GvLKlribkUEcDSeOgEfmvsroYrRDApHTOVkYJ7HZUpXgxojBhk_JM7Yk/s1600/eucharist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFjZ1A-BWwWw0TdRFPRFlVX7fdmSd6sD5UhAtagDxTeNfXopwhmdLxF1KGovudX8h4dTli5d7Ma0Z1muDCJ5GvLKlribkUEcDSeOgEfmvsroYrRDApHTOVkYJ7HZUpXgxojBhk_JM7Yk/s320/eucharist.jpg" width="258" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“A great wine is a cultural achievement, not available to Protestants,
atheists or believers in progress, since it depends on the survival of
local gods. One of the greatest goods bestowed on France by the Catholic
Church is to have offered asylum to the battered gods of antiquity, to
have fitted them out with the clothes of saints and martyrs, and to have
cheered them with the drink that they once brought down from heaven to
us all. That, in a nutshell, is why French wines are the best.” - </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/october-9th-2015-2/roger-scruton-my-tribal-religion/" target="_blank">Roger Scruton</a></span></div>
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The Middleton Mare http://www.blogger.com/profile/07147895639001020697noreply@blogger.com0