If there was any one person that I still feel funny about linking to, it’s Jonah Goldberg. When I was still “Left of Center”, I despised the man. However, once I switched my moderate “Right of center” position, I began to see that Mr. Goldberg was a bit more right about liberalism, than I thought.
Goldberg makes the following observation:
Here’s a really perfectly distilled bit of stereotypical idiocy about the threat from the oogy-boogy-gun-loving-Right by Sara Robinson of the Campaign for America’s Future . It’s funny how I thought it was cribbed from David Neiwert and all of his campus coffeehouse philosophizing and — lo and behold — on page two the author reveals she is a colleague of Neiwert’s. It’s tiresome overheated nonsense that actually fits the us vs. them paranoia she ascribes to the Right better than most of the stuff you’ll ever find on the Right.
Do go follow the link, it is a very interesting read. I didn’t read it all myself. I couldn’t stomach the bile that comes out of the far left this early in the morning. Even I have limits. Even Goldberg’s readers were not very pleased with it either. Yes, I know, Goldberg is a Neo-Conservative; but he makes some very valid points about the left. Especially when it comes to tolerance, it seems that the Liberals of today are much less tolerate on dissenting opinions than they used to be; especially during this time of Obama’s Hope and Change mantra.
Wait a minute. MODERATE? You? Pat, you are about as moderate as sand paper.
Gods man, you are so illustrative of the human condition. The illusions and conceits we carry about ourselves. You make me laugh because I see it in myself too. I spend half my time being a Native American spiritualist which in terms of the Constitutionalist movement has just a couple itty-bitty contradictions in it. Like the former was almost eradicated by the latter.
Right now I’m in this email interchange with a bunch of traditional Mohawks in Canada and we’re ranking on the leftists and this is seriously funny. How they take a bit from Hindu, a bit from Muslim, a bit from Africa and a bit from Native America and they roll it all up in a ball until it’s just a wad of confusion and they call it a belief system. And wherever this “philosophy” is lacking, they just make it up! Viola! And how when they show up on the res and take off their clothes and keep everybody up all night with their insane drums and it just makes the elders have heart-attacks because “contemporary traditional” native American is extremely modest in appearance and deportment. I just have to laugh sometimes.
It may in fact be that we are created in God’s own image because we have this incredible need to EXPLAIN EVERYTHING even if we don’t understand. In fact, the less we understand, the more we try to explain it. I think the scientists got us into this one. Has anyone ever thought to identify science as a religion or cult?
Just one page I’d share from the native book to all people is that there’s a certain comfort level or appreciation for mysteries like the Divine Mystery. And there’s some awareness of certain things just being out of our purview like it’s just none of our business. But that’s just us and what do we know? We’re just survivors of a genocide. If we were so big and powerful and we know everything, why couldn’t we even save our children and women? Our medicine chiefs can make it rain upon request and bring the lighting down from the sky but I guess the machine was out of order on the day we were attacked. “Sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service, please try your call again later”.
Everything happens for a reason, I was told. But it’s possible that reason is “for no reason” or “just because”. What if when we get to the next place with great enthusiasm and prostrate ourselves before the Holy One and ask that great question we’ve all had in our hearts, what if we finally get to ask him WHY? and He says “because I felt like it, that’s why”?
What if we say Holy One, we’ve kept your 10 Commandments and he says “come again?” We’ll say Holy One, the 10 Commandments you wrote on stone for us, look we have them right here, here are the stones” and He says “oh yeah, I remember that. I forgot all about that. I wrote that when I was on the potty one day and it got lost amongst my papers and I haven’t thought about it since”.
That would just be intolerable to us people of faith, wouldn’t it? Our whole presumption is WE MATTER. That the Holy One CARES ABOUT US or at least RECOGNIZES US or that somehow we are important. We. Little ol’ us. Important to an eternal, omniscient and omnipotent being. Perhaps. But seen in this light, doesn’t it seem just a bit unlikely? What use could we be to Him when He is so very great and we are so very small?
Maybe we are important to God in the way toy cars are important and cherished by a child but put away and forgotten one day or worse, simply given away to a younger God? For that matter, how can we be sure it’s been the same God all this time? Maybe God has a relief-pitcher? Maybe genocide happens due to confusion in the shift change. Maybe God looks at Somalia and then looks at His relief pitcher and says “oh dip man, I thought you were taking care of that”.
Why is it that God needs humans to constantly run around, generation after generation to tell us He loves us? If the truth needs constant, dogmatic repetition and reinforcement, is it the truth?
If you could speak the language of the trees (which we still can) and you walked up and asked “do you ever doubt the nature of existence?” I think the trees would say “gee, we’ve never thought of it like that. We’re trees.” Maybe if we took our time and laid the whole thing out for them they’d say “ok, I understand now and it certainly sounds like it sucks for you”.
Now I know this sounds like blasphemy but my personal feeling is the Holy One has a sense of humor because we do. The closet answer to WHY I have got is that if I was omniscient and omnipotent, if I knew everything that ever was or everything that was ever going to be, the one thing I’d want is something new. A genuine surprise. Something to make me say “wow, what the heck is that?”
So maybe God created us to be little surprise engines. Little unpredictability engines. Something to wake up for and wonder “what are they up to now?” Maybe we’re supposed to be cliff-hangers and God just can’t wait till tomorrow to see what happens next and he says “maybe I shouldn’t have created them to sleep”.
It’s pretty obvious that most of the scenarios I’ve laid out are farcical but then HOW DO WE KNOW? We spend much time running around explaining things to ourselves and each other, but how the heck are we supposed to know? So we wrap it up in a ball and explain it away by calling it “faith”. Which could mean that we honestly believe that He put the truth in our hearts or it could mean “I’ve decided not to change my opinion and nothing you can say will make any difference”.
At least you, oh Paleo Pat, have the courage to say that you’ve changed your attitudes and opinions over time. I’m sure that as a leftist, you were militantly and ardently convinced of your rectitude just as you are now as a rightist. Two completely different attitudes can exist in a single life. And why stop at two at that rate?
Why are we so apparently conflicted?
Wells, this is one occasion I might share some truth in. We are at the very least this way because. Because we are. This much seems clear to me.
That was probably more than you or anyone wanted to hear so Pat and anybody else who reads this, I wish you a good day. Don’t let me shake your faith. Your life is just the same as it was before you read this.
OR IS IT?
(insert Twilight Zone music here)
Ummm.. Okay.
I tend to think that I’m a bit more moderate, than say, maybe… Michelle Malkin?
It really depends on the issue. Socially, I tend to be a bit more Moderate. As I reject the social Conservatism of the far right.
Fiscally, I tend to be a hard right. Freedom wise, I’m strictly libertarian. Keep the Government out of my personal life, please and don’t tax me in to oblivion either.
Again, it depends on the issue. This is why I resist the labels, because I don’t like being painted with a broad brush.
Hopefully, that makes some sort of sense.
Makes perfect sense to me. I don’t see Michelle Malkin as right-wing or conservative atall, I see her as an idiot. Libertarianism was once explained to me as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal”. Not a bad summation as far as one-liners go. But labels can be handy. I use “Constitutionalist” to label “us” because every time I say “us” or “we”, somebody asks the perfectly logical question “what do you mean we? I only see one of you standing there in front of me” so out come the labels. But it does make us sound more unified and homogeneous than we really are. We’re about as homogeneous as a zoo. But this isn’t unique to us.
I once read Abby Hoffman as saying “we couldn’t agree on where to have lunch”.
So here we are in agreement about rejecting the social conservativism of what you call the far right (we are the far right IMO) when up walks Pastor Chuck Baldwin. Definitely hide the booze and the porno mags for the Chuckster hasn’t a liberal bone in his body.