Space Patroller

I'll give that the answer it merits.

It seems to me that Relgion and Enviromentalism (maybe a subcategory of Religion) ought have their own fora outside the scope of current events. They have been around for at least 38 years (I mark the beginning of the eco movement at late 1968 with the "naturalism" that became part of the hippie agenda but most persons trace eco to 1971 but still related to the hippies and New Left). How long has Earth Day been around? Ditto religion? Been around since I was a kid (I still have some of the clay tablets that were my report cards from grade school) . And that was before the Internet Beyond that, many of the comments reflect an attitude that Environmentalism is more systemic over time. Actually what the eco's have been saying was, in my long-lost, mis-spent youth, the agenda that went with the crazies on the right "The weather ain't nevvah been right since they put up them there consarn sputinks. [no kiddin' I really heard that back in '59 or '60]" and the like, of whom the liberals liberally- and justafiably made sport.

If one is to reject the Republican'ts out of fear of theocracy then one ought do two things to avoid jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Evaluate Environmentalism and you will find that not only is it a religion in every bad sense of the word but a cult religion. call it Jonestown green. Look at the EPA website and see how they use the terms green and eco. You ought be scared shitless of the Democrats' long term plans. For they will tax you on religious grounds. talk of Green jobs and Green energy. The only green they don't mention is long green. And they pass the collection basket around with armed enforcers. Actually, you should be annoyed with the Repubs and fighting made at the Dems. At least the religion of the Republican'ts has some philosphical value (RM). They might respons to some support in the right direction and biteback if the go in the wrong direction, and aren't a quarter as bad as the active alternative. Also don't forget, for some 35 years, we have been a de facto part of the Right.

From what I've been able to get, both implicitly and explicitly, Reason is the faculty or ability and logic is the tool or process. Whether that faculty includes other processes or tools is not stated one way or the other. It may or may not. Although somewhere on this forum I saw a quote by Rand that linked emotion to Reason. Drl Dean Edell has said that Man is "hardwired to believe in "magic" whilst compaining about "magical thinking". My answer to that is that, in his mind, magic and abstractions are the same. I therefore conclude that Man is hardwired to think in ideas (abstracts of identity) and principles (abstracts of action) Bot to recapitulate; Reason is the faculty, power or ability and logic is the tool and process.

This may be a case of reality having its own way with the Republican'ts. Nature does not tolerate a contradiction. specifically A thing cannot be A and non-A in the same respect at the same time. Before someone tries the wave-particle trick on me. they are not a contradiction in the same respect. each comes from a different respect of propagation. One is the respect of energy, the other is the respect of matter. the "opposition" is complementary, not contradictory. As time goes on. the "moderate Republicans" as they are forced by the Law of Identity to course to port or starboard, by their nature will veer left and toworads the Democrates which is the seat of power of the left. This leaves the Republican Party with a choice that will become clearer and more urgent: Becume Domocrat Lite or carve out its own identity and become more of what it is and stronger in what it is to start with. So this may be a thing over which men argue pointlessly as logic takes its own course (or coarse), in its own way and by its own time. Men will have a choice of riding the current and controlling the boat or be dashed upon the rocks of meaninglessness.

You needn't worry about God v Socialism or the Welfare State of which Socialism is one form. In 2000 Rush Limbaugh read a piece about the Democrats "Taking Back God". Besides which, if you look at the nineteenth century roots of the American Left, you find religion deeply involved. Most of the mainline religions are Left save for some on abortion. Look at the states with the highest Catholic percentage in their populations and see what they are like. Beyond that it is part of the left's identity to worship assiduously at the Green Cathedral. Who do you think brought about the rebirth of Astrology, which in 1965 was relegated to the backward, and the religion of Wicca, which I neaver heard of until the late '70's and I've been usually up on those things since the late 1950's? Someday, they'll get it "right" as far as the brew is concerned. Come that day... What if they start telling folks that John Galt is an atheist? Some 5 years ago liberal comentator Jay Diamond, commentiong on the Right's economic system said it is "...a product of a devout Russian atheist". He tirelessly does yeoman's duty advocationg liberalism on religious grounds. The year I graduated from Providence College, one of my pinball club members said he could convert me to scoialism. I said "Give it your best shot, If I thought it was any good, I'd have stayed with it" His first question was "Are you Christian?" "No" "What are you" "atheist". "Aw, I can't even talk to you [meaning begin the process]". That ended it. In the 1984 timeframe HUMAN EVENTS did a review of a biography of Marx by a minister of some kind saying "Marx was not an atheist but an enemy of God in whom he believed". You may have a choice of religious Right vs the secular AND religious Left. At least one will buy us time. Inn fact, as I point out in Daja [sic; explanation given there] Vu All Over again. there was an alliance between the Objectivists and conservatives from the mid '70's to the mid '80's. In that same post, read the part about Dr Edell's report (the resut of which did not surprise me although for some strange reason he was shocked). Just remember "Give us this day our daily bread" and you know where it falls. You need to worry about God AND Socialism. They're a match made in Heaven.

Do you really think the Three Stooges would have voted for that filibuster? You'd be lucky if you could scrape up 35 Republican'ts for that: On a good day and with Ike for a tailwind. Hell if you look at one of my other posts, you've got Newt Gingrich playing kissy-face with Nancy Pelosi (now there's a thought I don't have the stomach to picture in my mind's eye) on Goebels Warming. The Dems always had the holy grail for that, It's called CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN. It's just a matter of when, not if, They'd push so hard for that, it would be wall-to-wall hit pieces on anyone who even thought about supporting that filibuster. I can assure that those are in the works. Say about July 28, 2010? What it would take to beat that would be mega-Tea Parties once a month for 5 months straight to let the rookie Dems know that if they vote for it. their ass is grass. But that won't happen anytime soon. Care to guess why? "Umh...I can't take a day off from work [even if it is to save a month's pay]". We live in the age of the credit card.

If we must depend on that triumvirate to support the filibuster, I think I'd prefer a quick death than the painful agony that they would inflict on us. Sometimes you have to just bite the bullet and buy the future at the price of the present. At any rate, if it is to have credibility as a pro-liberty, pro-capitalist entity, the GOP has to get off the dime. Besides if the Dems have it all their way, when it goes belly up then how can they blame the Republican'ts? Unless you believe that the economy won't head towards the equator, in which case, it doesn't matter. Also if one is tempted to say that this time is too crucial then we are not just circling the drain, we're halfway down and there is nothing to be done, in which case it doesn't matter, but put your hands behind your head, put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbey.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Now if the GOP could just shed Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, it would go a long way to gaining integrity.

Let us hope that it is. That story ended happily, albeit temporarily and incompletely, with Reagan. Reagan was the best-positioned candidate to embody the "swing to the right". a term from 1968 which during the 1970's Rand identified as a "swing away from statism and toward individual rights". Antoher part of that story was that since the mid-70's there was an allliance of Objectivists and the better elements of the libertarians and consevatives. I mark the beginning of that with a particular event. Prior to c1976 ERGO in it's editors section had in the copyright and permission to use section "Permission not granted to religious conservative publications". around c1976, that codasyl was removed. Even Rand said that she liked Reverend Ike. So there was a closing of ranks. The fact that Rand did not support Reagan in 1980 I regard as an error of judgement more than a lack of principle. She was in her mid-70's. She knew how to navigate but had forgotten how to fly the ship, This was especially stark since she supported Nixon in '72 over McGovern. Yet, in economic terms, the danger she saw in McGovern had been active for a year and a half by election time 1980. If she knew about the de facto alliance, she said nothing. Now, Reagan was not fully integrated but things in his biography point out that he was the sharpest tool in that particular shed and made of the most well-tempered steel. He was soft-spoken and charming, aka the great communicator. and his actions, being (incompletely) pro-captialistic led to the longest period of prosperity in history; about 18 years with a small blip-recession in 1990/1 that Clinto took advantage of ("It's the economy; stupid) but was smart enough to leave mostly alone. Even I, a known atheist, was dubbed by Moe Lauzier, local conservative talk show host as a "Reaganaut" by virtue of my moral absolutism and pro-capitalism stnad.

True but even altruism is not the top of the food chain. Please notice it was the Left that gave us, in the late 60's; the Aquarian Age, the 70's: rebirth of Astrology, wicca and the Third Wave/post industroal society; not to mention the mother of all destructive frauds, the eco-mania that is being used as a flagrum today. and the late 1980's New Age which I characterized as "Aquarian Age meets middle-age". A report read by Dr. Dean Edell showd that significantly more liberals than conservatives believe in ghosts and reincarnation, at the end of which he tipped his hand by saying "it's enough to make you switch parties [Oops! My pink slip is showing]." Now, all that ghosts and spirit stuff is called "metaphysics" and gives philosphy a bad name. Meatphysics; huh? Hmmmm... It looks like to me that this is pointing to the top of the food chain. Egoism requires men to look after their interests. This requires rational thought and self-development. A thinking person will see the mysticism for the buncha bullcrap that it is and the peddlers of this bovine excretia will lose their hold on the populace as they are ID'ed as the phoney baloney frauds that they are. In fact, while altruism is the current higher principle around which the battle is centering. If that fight is won by the good guys, there are two other battlefields left. Epistemology and Metaphysics I believe, Thales, from your handle and avatar, this should play right into your hands.

While there is really not a place for that in politics, since it depends on joint action with others and you must be percieved as rational and reliable and not a kook on some fringe, there is a place for it elsewhere. A "self-syle" is a fictional representation of oneself. A fiction is, according to Aristotle by way of Rand "...the world, not as it is, but as it might and ought to be". Now if you look at me in that light, what you have is an early 1950's "space man". This fits my worldview. Thiese guys were G-men when "creidbility gap" was 16 years away, more like Steve McGarrett. They were moral absolutists, with an inherent belief in the goodness of their civilization, which was implicitly founded on reason. They were a combination of cop, military and special ops guys. It fits my mindset. One of my grad school instructors from th middle 1970's had done a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory on me some two years before I came to that institution. He also did a a psychological interview with me as part of that evaluation. I was so impressed that I made it a point to apply to that college to have him as an instructor; I was not disappointed. That test is score in a bazillion ways. My top personality type was as a computer programmer and Air Force Officer scoring high on the Adventure scale and I was least like a psychologist and "city life". What can I say except that I was a bit of a puzzlement to most of that department (one of my achievements was integrating Statistics with Philosphy). Add to that my big connection with Rand, and given that this was the Psych department, Branden, still somewhat in Rand's shadow and you have something far from mundane. So you see, that fits me. The civilizations these Space Rangers, Space Patrollers and Solar Guardsmen/cadets are the defenders of are scientific utopias. That is not stated, but shown in their technology and attitudes. This was most apparent in Space Patrol since it was targetted at both kids and adults and Ed Kemmer carried the part off brilliantly. His portayal of Buzz Corry was far from the usual wooden character and, just as Harrison Ford mad Han Solo work, Kemmer made Corry far more than the character sheet indicated. In Adolescent Psychology, this is knwn as the Personal Myth. more coreectly personal fiction. When I was 8, being (playing) a cowboy or knight had no meaning to me; they were the past and gone. The spacemen were the future and one the way to becoming real. Superman and super-heroes, aside from the adventure and catologuing the different powers (and please note, they were a product of the left), also had no meaning for me. That was more subtle and took years for me to figure out. What it was to me was the super hero thing was a desire for a rigged game where good automatically wins by some supernatural rather than human attribute. A super hero is not a hero at all since there is no extraordinary effort or risk to his life. The best thing that ever happened to Superman was Kryptonite. Another pattern is the personal fable. As you know, a fable is a tale with a reality-relevent point or "moral of the story", using animals as persons. this personal fiction is the adoption of an animal-self. This is the addition to the ego-inventory of a set o idealized characteristics identified with a particular kind of animal and has been the subject of many pre-Scientific Age stories. Both of these are metaphors for the person. They sit at the surface of the ego and are a summation of the salient characteritics of that person's self-awareness and self-identity cast in comprehensible terms since the internal "language" is electro-molecular occurring in somewhat fixed physical structure. If you look at the work of Ittleson and Proshansky, though they did not make this identification, the metaphor for oneself is part of the Personal Identity Kit. This is a normal and necessary part of the healthy personality. I would further wager that this ties into the sense of life, since it appears to come into being during a time when the person is guided primarily by that. While not a good idea in politics, it is a good idea in personal development. For one thing it links the persona to the esternal world via archtypes, which have both psychological and social origins and meaning.

Thanks BTW: Any O'ists in the Tiverton RI/Fall River MA area that have any meetings of any kind?

Also consider the work of Robert J Bidinotto. he's a good guy through and through, if you take my meaing. I know him from his work at ERGO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bidinotto#External_links In fact, I'm trying to get hold of as many pf the old ERGO'ists as I can and see about an online version of this venerable and very much appreciated publication. Hey, we might as well have some of the GOOD things from the 1970's. I'm looking for Steve Wright, Warren Ross and Erich Veyl as well as any apiring journalists from around here who think they have the write stuff.

Well, nobody's stopping you. Go to it. I had enough trouble putting up what I did. The connection kept coming and going and I had to re-input the title. The last time I just put it in, pasted the material that I had copied and put in a file on my machine to make sure I had it in one piece and ran like hell before the connection went south again. Hence "Daja Vu...". I didn't even take the time to edit it. I took a look at your profile. You could also do "Book'um Danno" with a straight face, too. Maybe it would have done some good If I'd said "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobe" instead of what I kept on saying. "#@^$! you! Woe-Begnoe Essobe!"

And you want a real kick right square in the right one? While the footsoldiers do the hard fighting this is what we get from the GOP* http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/22/lunch...am-for-al-gore/ Who is he trying to pander to? And why? It's like Ayn Rand playing kissy-face with George McGovern in '72 Next time you hear Rush and Hanity talk about how great Newt Gingrich is or some yutz say how he should run for President, remember this. I wouldn't vote for him if he was running against Barney Frank. I'd rather wear a dress to the next meetin of We Hate Transvisties Club It's not half as embarrassing as this horror show. One of our localisms for a situation with all hell breaking loose was "a rape scene" but SELF rape?!!? It's enough to make any sane person campaign for an Obama second term. There's something about 6 inches of cold steel embedded in my spine that just doesn't cut it with me. *Gawdawfully Obsequious Pragmatists

Pat Michaels (Technopolitics. 1996) and Dr. Petr Beckmann (Access to Energy) are both well known to me and this myth was kicked around in REASON. I've been aware of this since 1988 when it started to surface big time. http://cockpit.spacepatrol.us/gw.html Nowever, the Brits have taken the mythology to court to keep it, in the form of Al Gore's schlockumentary out of the educcation system; and successfully getting a ruling that it did not cut the crumpet. This crapola surfaced shortly after a report that connected climate with a 400+ year (in addition to the 11 year) sunspot cycle, c1985. Now what has gone totally unreported was this: after Katrina/Rita, the eco-nuts said of 2006 "It will be worse than 2005 due to global warming". Take a look at the hurricane charts for those two years. Another name is AccuWeather's Joe Bastardi whom the eco-fascists (not my term; their own; See "Warning: Earth Day Ahead" REASON April 1991) have tried to crucify. And yes, I do conclude that this is deliberate since 20 years of failure to prove has not deterred them one whit. They have to make this pay off or the whole Environmentalist movement, having factually struck out consistently for 40 years, is down the toilet and in spectacular fashion.

For those of you who are closet leisure suit-ers who kept your pet rock, but well hidden so that nobody sees it, your time is coming. Have you noticed the use of "eco" like in "eco-friendly" by big business and with a straight face? By 1978, that term had become so synonymouse with wingnut that even the wingnuts avoided it like the other big joke of the disco age; Swine Flu. well guess what's back as if to put the exclamation mark to what the more historically hip among us have suspected but were hoping wasn't true; oink oink. Now to really make you want to break out the mood rings I heard a plug recently for "Survivalist" seeds. Soon, if past is prologue we'll see the barter economy grow and gold will hit $US1400. Holy polyester. Batman! No Robin; it's "We can rebuild him. We can make him better than he was before". But we won't. If you want my body and you think I'm sexy you're three decades gone or so We got Jimmy Carter back up in the White House: C'mon Disco fans let's go. What you called "going galt" I referred to as "Bits and Pieces of Ayn Rand" from an article she referenced in an issue of her Letter. And I let my subscription lapse: Damn! Now you'd think we would have learned the hard lessons from 15% inflation and 21% interest rates and watching gas prices triple in 5 years but I guess every generation has to go through its own douchebag phase. I "supported" Obama so that the sacred American People could get a good look at what once was. I had no idea that he would go so far so fast. A note of caution; we almost did not survive the 70's If we get through this round, maybe we'll get it right and take care of business ("every day. Takin' care of busienss; every way..." sorry, I got carried away). I actually heard Hanity say that capitalism was a result of "liberty and freedom". Ya think? Anyone in the market for a MiniMoog monosynth? Jackson 5 Albums? "I'm at the top of the world, lookin' down on creation...", "You light up my life...", "Feelings; nothing more than feelings". Eww!

I heard this fellow the other day on one of the talk shows. He mentioned two websites he was operating from. One was Heartland and the other was, I think, Science and Public Policy. Not being certain of the second one, I googled Monkton up so I could at least get a reference. Here is the Google page http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&q=lo...;fp=_rpp-4zAm3I You've got the Brits doing yeoman's duty on global warming and the East Asians leading the charge on stem cell research . This is making us look like the Three Stooges

I know that, that's why I said "...unless it's still there when I sober up" Besides do you think "yous're" is my natural way of speechin...hic....speaker...hick...um....having words come outta my yap?

I'll ignore that ad homo..homie... Hamas...Arguent at the Person unless it's still here when I sober up. Do you guys have any idea of how OLD booze jokes are? To paraphrase Jim Rome: They are not a take, they are not fresh and they suck (Wel,l Kelly Clarkson would appreciate them) But by the way yous're bird-doggin' me. yous're either contract killers, have Mark Chapman Syndrome or a wicked crush on me.

I've been up to something for the last half year. When I contacted Kerry O'Quinn about a year ago. I found out he was up to something good. Kerry O'Quinn is an Objectivist and the founding editor of STARLOG and wrote the editorials under the title of "From the Bridge", which was the impetus for: http://cockpit.spacepatrol.us/ what I found out he was up to was trying to produce a movie of ALTHEM, whether or not it will be a TV or theatrical, i don't know. This gave me an idea. Those of you who bother to read me thoroughly know that I have two big things. Space Patrol and Objectivism. One is a beacon from my kind of untopian future and the other is the means to get there. So, I've been trying to interest Mr. O'Quinn in doing new Space Patrol stories. I'm being very delicate with this. It's like trying to bring in a 50 lb Albacore on a 10 lb test line. Why? Aside from the fact that Both Mr. O'Quinn and I were fans of the early 50's "Spaceman" shows, these shows, and Space Patrol in particular, had two qualitites: http://spacepatrol.us/firstpage.html These shows had a very strong sense of life. That sense of life was the sense of life that would take one right to Objectivism. But how come that is important? A sense of life is an implicit mini-philosophy and gets its material into a person subconsciously. Once in place, it points to an explicit philosophy. The scientific utopia that these shows spoke from and Space Patrol in particular, is the natural result of the Objecitivist epistemology. The moral absolutism and heroic image of, particularly Buzz Corry, could have come right from Rand, and much of Rand's style and values point right to that civilization. Now if anyone has the wherewithal to do the production. I would like to interest him or her in that project. I and others like me, have been able to affect things in the real world. http://spacepatrol.us/sp1page.html chronicles on such project also see http://spacepatrolbook.com Here's a chance to not just talk the talk, but to walk the walk as well. This can do more to advance the speead of Obmectivism than a million copies of OPAR or anything we could do here because it shows the values that we hold as active, almost living, things, not just dry academics. We can only teach; this can inspire and it is a part of history so it has an existence of it's own. Need proof of that? See for yourself http://www.mediazilla.spacepatrol.us/kdettv.html How do you think I got here?

What few perosns grasp is that it is very normal to celebrate a great person. Such a person is the physical home of the principles, ideas and spirit that one values. Miss Rand described friendship as "the celebration of one's values in the person of another". That is a vital thing. As true as we hold our ideas, what if we were never to find others who share or understand them? What if what we were getting from the external world was alla time the opposite? Whey this is crucial is that the external world and it's contents are the "given" in the generation of truth. Beyond that, we are hardwired to respond to the human form. Let me tell you. Ayn Rand was quite a person. Dubbed by Cecil B. DeMill "Little Cavier" and quite a spectacular person. In LIFE Magazine's "The Cult [written before "cult" had its sinister meaning] of Angry Ayn Rand" in late '66 or early '67. As far as the personal description of her behavior, you were almost compelled to like her for her spunk and personal style. She came off larger than life. In fact, she comes off the better for the article and far from an angry person (and I read this before I became a fan. In fact when I read in that article about Objectivism, I was under the impression that this was a device to sell her books and I thought "It's kind of overdone but if that's what she wants to do to sell her books, I've got no complaint, but I'm not gonna get fished in. I'm too smart for that". Famous Last Words ). And just try reading her notes or journals or whatever. It'll put you through the wringer. I loved every minute of it. If anyone tells you she lacked depth of understanding of metaphyscis. which I was told by the best: members of the Philosophy department at Providence College, it's because she didn't talk aobut a quarter of what she knew. I'd just like to know where she got it all and where she kept it: you couldn't put that much in one person. I think she had two twin sisters that nobody knew about. Come to think of it, I never saw her and Pallas Athena in the same place at the same time.

Well you can have it all: the president of the Czech Republic is quoted as saying that the Environmentaists are Marxists.

All attempts to alter consiousness directly imply the Primacy of Consciouness by making it the prime motivator of the action. Why would I want to screw around with something in this manner if I didn't think it was proper by reason of being important enough to screw around with in this manner in the first place? And in the process detach it from the real world i.e. existence, the understanding of which is it's main function, which is what this does by focusing consciousness inwards. Now I can't see why, after 1974, by which time we understood the mechanisms, anyone with an Objectivist bone in his body would want to do that. For one thing, there's too much in the real world to engage the mind to leave time for that kind of activity. I am not talking about curiosity here but even once we figured it out, there would be nothing gained from that kind of curiosity since we know that this kind of use of drugs does not enhnance consiouness in any way and often has repercussions later in life: Ever seen what a 50 year old stoner is like? If you're using the stuff regularly, Isn't it most likely that if you have a problem, you'll resort to using it more (don't try and con me; I already know the answer. I didn't spend my life in a wicker basket, I'm from the psychedelic and post-psychedelic era)? Dreaming is not an act of deliberate anything but a by-product of normal sleep. It just seems that people are bound and determined to do this and are torturing Objectivism to justify it. Deliberately altering your consciousness for the sake of altering your consciousness is, in fact, imparing it by taking it away from existence. I can't find anything in Objectivism that says that it is all right to do this and most of what I see in Objectivism tells me that it is wrong to do this. This is not even Epicurean. Epicureanism holds that seeking pleasure is OK if it does not do any harm, This does harm over time.