My English Diet
I have eaten more packaged sandwiches since September than I had in the preceding 45 years.
Popular posts from this blog
"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness
By
gcallah
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I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
Libertarians, My Libertarians!
By
gcallah
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Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
I found this very humorous; however, I can't help but think that part of the reason many people make fun of Paul has to do with his non-interventionist foreign policy, attack on the Federal Reserve, and to a degree his opposition to expansion of the police state.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching this video, I became a bit annoyed (aside from finding this funny); I think because making fun of Paul for his views as if they're 'crazy' seems, in my opinion, to be ridiculous in light of the fact that what passes for 'normal' US Gov. policy to me seems to be what is truly crazy.
I think it is possible that many became upset about saying, "Ron Paul can't win, etc", because, even though they possibly knew this deep down, it was felt that to say that, would be a sign of complete resignation. After all, why go through all one goes through to support a cause if you believe that you are going to fail; it seems as if it would be used by the media to say, "He's says he can't win; his supporters do, so, we'll ignore him even more." This can give rise to an attitude of defiant resistance, and absolute disregard for the attacks of everything against you. But, in a reactive emotional sense, feeling you've been pushed in the mud all the time, always attacked, and even after getting into the double-digits, being attacked more, people just become stubborn.
At some point, many people make the decision that they would rather maintain the illusion, than give into an bad reality. Because, to say evil has won, to many, seems as if you are giving in.
Not saying you are bad, Dr. Callahan, for posting this, or making any attacks on you. But, as someone who supported Ron Paul both in 2008 and 2012, I think, in retrospect, this was part o the reason. If the neo-con opponent, establishmentarian, etc, etc, just laughs at you, ridicules you, and says very condescending things to you, at some point you just go in the exact opposite direction. And, in a certain sense, because so many of Paul's supporters absolutely believed he could win (unlikely as that was), they worked very, very hard, and, amazingly, they contributed to him doing far better this time around than he did last.
That's just my thoughts.