In HP and the Goblet of Fire, --spoiler, btw--while Harry and Cedric are in the maze, Harry rescues Cedric from being enveloped by the roots. In the interest of good sportsmanship and friendship, he and Cedric both touch the Cup together. Which transports them into Voldemort's realm and where Cedric is killed.
Had Harry selfishly left Cedric in the maze --and fired off a warning flare, as he did for Fleur-- and taken the Cup by himself, Cedric would not have been murdered.
Doing good things doesn't always produce good things as a result.
----
Friday, May 31, 2013
UnPC thought for the morning
People who wish to ignore demographics as the foundation of society are living in a dream or a trance. The lie of America as a "creedal" society where race, ethnicity, religion and culture...and gender, Ex Cathedra would add..mean nothing is part of what has brought this once-great nation to its present pathetic state.
For example. Let the American electorate be a group of 25 native adult White males. Then let us add in 25 native teenagers of both sexes and call the whole group of 50 "the American electorate." You can see the look of horror on people's faces when they imagine that hormone-addled, immature teenagers are now a political power.
One of the oddities of our regime is that while no one questions the exclusion of the young from politics, --and indeed, it is mandated by the Constitution--any other grounds are seen as heinous. Even the notion that the President must be a natural born citizen is looked upon with embarrassment.
Now take 25 native adult White males and add, oh, 6 Somalis, 2 Israelis, 4 Arabs, 10 Mexicans and 3 Hmong (of mixed genders) and let's call that group of 50 "the American electorate."
My current thought is that "democracy" only makes sense if the demographic which exercises it makes sense.
And you can imagine what sense the above demographics make.
---
For example. Let the American electorate be a group of 25 native adult White males. Then let us add in 25 native teenagers of both sexes and call the whole group of 50 "the American electorate." You can see the look of horror on people's faces when they imagine that hormone-addled, immature teenagers are now a political power.
One of the oddities of our regime is that while no one questions the exclusion of the young from politics, --and indeed, it is mandated by the Constitution--any other grounds are seen as heinous. Even the notion that the President must be a natural born citizen is looked upon with embarrassment.
Now take 25 native adult White males and add, oh, 6 Somalis, 2 Israelis, 4 Arabs, 10 Mexicans and 3 Hmong (of mixed genders) and let's call that group of 50 "the American electorate."
My current thought is that "democracy" only makes sense if the demographic which exercises it makes sense.
And you can imagine what sense the above demographics make.
---
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Simple pleasures
A beautiful day, sunny and temperate, now a bright clear evening. Discovered that my loose change jar had three times more money in it than I thought.
Chicken wings baking in the oven --sesame oil, cumin, hot sauce-- with blue cheese dressing waiting. A bottle of Cabernet. A Harry Potter movie. Vanilla yogurt for dessert. A cigar later, if I'm in the mood, and a glass of brandy.
Not bad.
My friend VB dropped by, with his wolf-dog Molli, and chocolate chip cookies.
And then much later, B called from Manchester to say hi.
As I said, not bad.
--
Chicken wings baking in the oven --sesame oil, cumin, hot sauce-- with blue cheese dressing waiting. A bottle of Cabernet. A Harry Potter movie. Vanilla yogurt for dessert. A cigar later, if I'm in the mood, and a glass of brandy.
Not bad.
My friend VB dropped by, with his wolf-dog Molli, and chocolate chip cookies.
And then much later, B called from Manchester to say hi.
As I said, not bad.
--
A turning point
I recall how stunned I was to read sections of this book one afternoon while browsing through a local Barnes and Noble. It seemed so transgressive in that ultra-liberal environment.
When I looked at the backleaf and found that the author --whom I'd never heard of-- was a Black man, I was surprised to hear these ideas from such a guy, and also surmised that this was why he had not been taken out and shot. I later learned that he had been a Marxist who'd been cured of that disease by working one summer for the Federal government and learning firsthand what a governmentally administered economy really looked like.
What he regards as axiomatic common sense remains, as he noted, politically controversial:
1. The impossible is not going to be achieved.
2. It is a waste of precious resources to try to achieve it.
3. The devastating costs and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account.
As he says, the people who hold the vision of cosmic justice benefit far more from holding it --at least in their own eyes--than the people ever do whom it is supposed to benefit.
I still have the book. It crystallized a lot of my inchoate discontents and turned me fast and furiously to the Right. I later read his trilogy on culture seen through the lenses of race, migration and conquest. That, I fear, sealed my fate.
Thomas Sowell | Speech "The Quest for Cosmic Justice":
proponents of "social justice" are unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice.
Bingo.
--
Good line from Dr Sowell during a question period, when someone asks him his opinion of X. "Compared to what?"
'via Blog this'
Negative retrojection again
This technical term is one of my own invention.
It means going back in time, imaginatively, and removing an element in a scenario and then calculating the alternate outcome and assessing the differences between the actual and the alternative.
I use it in therapy, too. After hearing a patient recount an unhappy story, I often ask, If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently? Sometimes that can help a man see how he contributes to his own troubles.
So here's an application of NR to American history. Not the first time I have indulged in this procedure. A question:
I am not foolish enough to believe that the tragedy inherent in the human condition can be avoided. But even if you hold to the tragic or the constrained view of life --as conservatives should do-- not all tragedies are created equal. Some are worse than others.
It will not surprise readers of Ex Cathedra that I choose the day in 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia.
My choice, I think, needs little explanation.
What, I wonder, would be yours?
---
It means going back in time, imaginatively, and removing an element in a scenario and then calculating the alternate outcome and assessing the differences between the actual and the alternative.
I use it in therapy, too. After hearing a patient recount an unhappy story, I often ask, If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently? Sometimes that can help a man see how he contributes to his own troubles.
So here's an application of NR to American history. Not the first time I have indulged in this procedure. A question:
If you could change one action, one element, one choice, one moment of American history, which one would it be? And why?
I am not foolish enough to believe that the tragedy inherent in the human condition can be avoided. But even if you hold to the tragic or the constrained view of life --as conservatives should do-- not all tragedies are created equal. Some are worse than others.
It will not surprise readers of Ex Cathedra that I choose the day in 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia.
My choice, I think, needs little explanation.
What, I wonder, would be yours?
---
Supreme among the Supremes
Antonin Scalia is no friend of us guys who like guys. No law says he has to be. But he is the least silly of that whole bunch. The man knows what a limit is. In this day and age, a rare virtue.
I had no idea that the Supreme Court had defined the essence of golf...
This day in Supreme Court essentialism | Power Line:
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Tonto's Razor
MAD magazine, a childhood favorite of mine. (B still has a subscription). The setup: The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by a huge tribe of attacking Indians. The Rangers says, "I think we're in trouble." Tonto's comeback, "Whadda ya mean 'we', White man?"
Race is genetic, to be sure. And has much to do with skin color and facial structure. But that's not all it is. It's also historical and political, cultural, contextual. Just ask the Lone Ranger. As I wondered in my previous post, even if it is socially constructed --which it partially is--, what part of human life and experience is not socially constructed?
So: Who's White?
Whereas it was once the vogue to try to be included in that exclusive apex group, now that Whites have turned into The Most Foolish People On The Planet, the excluding is nowadays often a self-exclusion.
I'll spare you the trouble of thinking this through and explain to you that Whites are Caucasian humans who can't deny that they are White. Now that Whiteness has become a stigma, I count you as White if no one would believe you if you denied it. You can call my approach Tonto's Razor.
Genetically, if you're a SubSaharan African or a Melanesian or an Australian aboriginal or a Dravidian, you're definitely not White. Ask Obama. You might get yelled at by your peers for acting White if you speak standard English or get good grades in school, but the accusation only proves the point that you're Negroid/ish. If you're of the Mongoloid folks of Asia and the Pacific Islands, again, not White. No question. No one would accuse you of it. Same thing for the Northeast Asian diaspora known as the aboriginals of the New World. Sioux or Aztec, you're not White.
So that leaves the Caucasoids, the non Negroid and the non Mongoloid peoples. I think it's pretty clear here, if you combine genetics and cultural history and politics. The only people who cannot deny their heinous Whiteness are the peoples of European Christendom.
If your haplogroup derives from Europe, west of the Urals to the Atlantic, north of the Mediterranean, then your ancestors were very likely at one time Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. European + Christian = White. I would include Georgians and Armenians here, for genetic and cultural/historical reasons, even if their countries lie, according to some, in Asia. In some places the Europe/Asia geographical boundary is fuzzy.
The other Caucasian peoples, the non-European ones --whom I call the Bronzes, even if they're pale Chechens-- stem from western Asia, Siberia or north Africa (eg, Berbers). They are definitely not Negroid and not Mongoloid. But these Caucasians can all credibly deny being White because they were not part of EuroChristendom and are mostly Muslim or Hindu: Arabs, the Turkic peoples of Turkey and the Stans, the Persians and Afghans, the Aryan Indians and Pakistanis, etc. (And Gypsies. Even though they've lived in Europe for over 1000 years, genetics has shown the "Roma" to be Indian untouchables.)
Only one group, to my knowledge, is sorta on the fence about this. The iffy group, for me, is Ashkenazi Jewish (and perhaps/probably the Sephardi). As I said once before, in a race riot, Harry Birnbaum would be in just as much trouble as Ex Cathedra. We look no more different --being both Caucasian-- than I do from a southern Italian. But in addition to the Jewish haplogroup and homeland being in western Asia, Jews have always seen themselves as both special (banning intermarriage with goyim) and as outsiders in Europe. And often very much treated as such. Yet if Israel isn't a Western country, what is it? And since their emancipation, Jewish participation in Euro culture has been massive. So here it's not so clear. Jews: White, or Bronze? Maybe a rabbi could figure it out.
White was once the club to belong to. Those who could, passed. Now, as Tonto reminded us, it's the Pack of Evil Bad Guys. The whole world continues to imitate us even as they resent us. Beyonce may dye her hair blond, (even lighten her skin) but you better not call dat sistah White.
Race is genetic, to be sure. And has much to do with skin color and facial structure. But that's not all it is. It's also historical and political, cultural, contextual. Just ask the Lone Ranger. As I wondered in my previous post, even if it is socially constructed --which it partially is--, what part of human life and experience is not socially constructed?
So: Who's White?
Whereas it was once the vogue to try to be included in that exclusive apex group, now that Whites have turned into The Most Foolish People On The Planet, the excluding is nowadays often a self-exclusion.
I'll spare you the trouble of thinking this through and explain to you that Whites are Caucasian humans who can't deny that they are White. Now that Whiteness has become a stigma, I count you as White if no one would believe you if you denied it. You can call my approach Tonto's Razor.
Genetically, if you're a SubSaharan African or a Melanesian or an Australian aboriginal or a Dravidian, you're definitely not White. Ask Obama. You might get yelled at by your peers for acting White if you speak standard English or get good grades in school, but the accusation only proves the point that you're Negroid/ish. If you're of the Mongoloid folks of Asia and the Pacific Islands, again, not White. No question. No one would accuse you of it. Same thing for the Northeast Asian diaspora known as the aboriginals of the New World. Sioux or Aztec, you're not White.
So that leaves the Caucasoids, the non Negroid and the non Mongoloid peoples. I think it's pretty clear here, if you combine genetics and cultural history and politics. The only people who cannot deny their heinous Whiteness are the peoples of European Christendom.
If your haplogroup derives from Europe, west of the Urals to the Atlantic, north of the Mediterranean, then your ancestors were very likely at one time Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. European + Christian = White. I would include Georgians and Armenians here, for genetic and cultural/historical reasons, even if their countries lie, according to some, in Asia. In some places the Europe/Asia geographical boundary is fuzzy.
Christian Caucasians from Europe = Whites
The other Caucasian peoples, the non-European ones --whom I call the Bronzes, even if they're pale Chechens-- stem from western Asia, Siberia or north Africa (eg, Berbers). They are definitely not Negroid and not Mongoloid. But these Caucasians can all credibly deny being White because they were not part of EuroChristendom and are mostly Muslim or Hindu: Arabs, the Turkic peoples of Turkey and the Stans, the Persians and Afghans, the Aryan Indians and Pakistanis, etc. (And Gypsies. Even though they've lived in Europe for over 1000 years, genetics has shown the "Roma" to be Indian untouchables.)
Only one group, to my knowledge, is sorta on the fence about this. The iffy group, for me, is Ashkenazi Jewish (and perhaps/probably the Sephardi). As I said once before, in a race riot, Harry Birnbaum would be in just as much trouble as Ex Cathedra. We look no more different --being both Caucasian-- than I do from a southern Italian. But in addition to the Jewish haplogroup and homeland being in western Asia, Jews have always seen themselves as both special (banning intermarriage with goyim) and as outsiders in Europe. And often very much treated as such. Yet if Israel isn't a Western country, what is it? And since their emancipation, Jewish participation in Euro culture has been massive. So here it's not so clear. Jews: White, or Bronze? Maybe a rabbi could figure it out.
2015 Update. I have since decided that while Ashkenazi Jews function as Whites, (and can try to distance themselves from that when its suits their interests) their homeland is outside Europe, in West Asia, and so they belong to the AfroAsian Caucasian group, the Bronzes. When, in the current state of things in Europe, with Muslim violence against them rising, they ask, "Is it time to go home?", they give the thing away. Europe is not home. As their own Passover prayer says: Next year, in Jerusalem!
White was once the club to belong to. Those who could, passed. Now, as Tonto reminded us, it's the Pack of Evil Bad Guys. The whole world continues to imitate us even as they resent us. Beyonce may dye her hair blond, (even lighten her skin) but you better not call dat sistah White.
The (de)construction trades
Social construct is one of the code phrases of the post-modern Left. It is either explicitly or implicitly preceded by the words "merely a". When sex, as in male or female gender, is called a social construct, the purpose of calling it that is to validate --actually, to mandate-- alterations in it. After all, what is merely socially constructed can obviously be socially de-constructed. Right?
I wonder, though, in this frame, what human phenomena are not socially constructed?
The other oddity is that culture --which is obviously socially constructed-- is considered inviolable and sacrosanct...as long as the culture is not White Western. In which case it is merely an oppressive system of power relations crying out for de-construction.
One of the other fun things about this worldview is that race is considered both sacred and fixed and at the same time a deceptive social construction that does not really exist. When it serves an anti-White agenda, race is a fiction. But if, suppose, Ex Cathedra, in transgender fashion, decided to socially reconstruct his race...well, come on. Are you crazy?
As I move farther and farther way from liberalism --first and briefly, libertarian, then a dozen years or so of American style conservatism and lately, what I can only call a kind of reactionary stance-- the entire edifice seems like the walls of an insane asylum.
---
I wonder, though, in this frame, what human phenomena are not socially constructed?
The other oddity is that culture --which is obviously socially constructed-- is considered inviolable and sacrosanct...as long as the culture is not White Western. In which case it is merely an oppressive system of power relations crying out for de-construction.
One of the other fun things about this worldview is that race is considered both sacred and fixed and at the same time a deceptive social construction that does not really exist. When it serves an anti-White agenda, race is a fiction. But if, suppose, Ex Cathedra, in transgender fashion, decided to socially reconstruct his race...well, come on. Are you crazy?
As I move farther and farther way from liberalism --first and briefly, libertarian, then a dozen years or so of American style conservatism and lately, what I can only call a kind of reactionary stance-- the entire edifice seems like the walls of an insane asylum.
---
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
