Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Blog hiatus

Sorta. I am not going to post again until I have finished my review of Tragic Legacy. I took a break from it for the last week and a half, and now I'm ready (I think) to return to it to finish it. So the next post I put up will be that. Best case scenario, it's up sometime tomorrow. But given my history, there's no telling when I'll actually be done.

So here's a dump from my notes to keep you occupied until I post again:

- I have had this in my bookmarks for some time waiting for an opportunity to incorporate it into a post. That hasn't happened yet, so I'll just provide the link - The Howling Wilderness of Pseudoconservatism by Werther.

-A quote from What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman

Taken outside the singular context of U.S. politics ... the insistence that "Democrat" equals "liberal" grows even more problematic. The entire context of American politics exists on a spectrum that is itself well to the right of that in most industrialized democracies. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton was probably further to the right than most ruling West European conservatives, such as Germany's Helmut Kohl and France's Jaques Chirac. Indeed, virtually the entire axis of political conversation in the United States takes place on ideological ground that would be considered conservative in just about every nation in democratic Western Europe.
- "Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

- "... one of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." - Bill Moyers

- "It is an easy step from restraining the press to making it place the worst actions of government in so favorable a light that we may groan under tyranny and oppresion without knowing from whence it comes." - "Cincinnatus, Nov. 2, 1787

- "When I get new information I change my position. What sir, do you do with new information?" - John Maynard Keynes

- "Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception." - Zygmunt Bauman

- "If a branch of science like evolutionary theory is a tenet of religion, then the definition of religion is so sweeping that virtually everything is a religion, rendering the word meaningless." - Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters

- " He laid aside his pen only to die" - obituary of Alfred Russel Wallace

- "America is full of good people, but something dark is loose. There's a free floating anxiety that easily metastasizes into paranoia and hatred for the same enemies always targeted by authoritarian populist movements - homosexuals, urbanites, foreigners, intellectuals, and religous minorities. Rationallity is losing its hold; empirical evidence is discounted as the product of a secular worldview or a scheming liberal elite." - Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming

- "Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N" click to be angred/frustrated.

- "Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty" - Simone Weil

- "One of the most striking tenets of the inner life of a crowd is the feeling of being persecuted, a peculiar angry sensitiveness and irritability directed against those it has once and forever nominated as enemies. These can behave in an manner, harsh or conciliatory, cold or sympathetic, severe or mild - whatever they do will be ineterpreted as springing from an unmistakable malevolence, a premediated intention to destroy the crowd, openly or by stealth." - Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power

- "Extremists never begin as extremists. They become extremists gradually. They move gingerly foward in an open society. They advance only so far as they fail to meet resistance. And no society is immune from this moral catastrophe." - Chris Hedges, American Fascists

- "Sometimes I wish God would give me a Holy Ghost machine gun. I'd blow your head off!" Benny Hinn

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

- "Extremists never begin as extremists. They become extremists gradually. They move gingerly foward in an open society. They advance only so far as they fail to meet resistance. And no society is immune from this moral catastrophe." nice words.Thanks.