Category: Society

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Pay Attention: Our Society Has Already Failed The Test Once….

Jerry Pournelle:

“What is so Special about the 30 Year Mortgage” by Peter Williams in today’s [Feb 1, 2011] Wall Street Journal dispels some myths and raises interesting questions. The United States has for a long time encouraged people to buy their homes. This is a good idea: rule by the middle class, ‘those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation’ (Aristotle) requires that there be a middle class, and that they have property. Alas, the implementation did not leave them much of a property stake. People who owe more than the property is worth not only do not own property, but have a strong motive to shed themselves of the very idea that they ever owned it. The long time mortgages with low down payments do not build property ownerships.

Now, our home is paid for. Was a fifteen year mortgage to begin with, and we had EVERY intention of making it wholly ours from the beginning. Paid it off early. And when we bought, we bought a home that was less than we could have gotten, deliberately. Indeed, we’ve mostly, for quite some time now, made it a practice, in general, to live under our means, providing a greater cushion for emergencies and potential income losses or other changes of circumstances.

Major purchases, other than this house–cars, appliances, electronics, whatever: saved for and paid for in cash or cash equivalent (check or debit card).

“[T]he goods of fortune in moderation” is key to a solid middle class, and a solid middle class is even key to long-term wealth for the putative upper class, for without such a middle class, the means to assure long-term wealth become shaky in a republic. Of course, our republic is trending toward an oligarchy (rule by an elite) with a veneer of democracy (rule by mob), and the oligarchs seem to have little interest in even their own grandchildren’s future, “planning” ahead only so far as their next short-term “killing”.

Well, as usual I’ve wandered off the reservation a bit. *heh* Pournelle’s original comment, and his recommended reading material (I fixed his link to point to a non-registration reproduction of the article) are worth reading.

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Classicism Redux

A post by Layla spurred a recollection of something I wrote (for the nth time *heh*) back in 2006:

One of the primary reasons I am a fan of Classical (and even much classical *heh*) music is not just because the music is complex, beautiful and compelling but because it is the expression of a particular ethos which our society sorely lacks.

Aside from technical matters of form, the Principles of Classicism as found in Classical Music were

  • balance
  • clarity
  • accessibility
  • expressiveness
  • edification

Although two of these principles are still found in abundance in contemporary music (though not in contemporary “serious” or “academic” music, IMO) it is the lack of the others, especially the last, that has seriously harmful effects upon our society.

Keep in mind that the Principles of Classicism can be found in Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” as easily as in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It’s not the genre but the genuine artistry and teleos that makes the difference.

When the only principles of an “artist’s” presentation (I won’t call the presentation Layla displayed music or even the “artist” an artist, without the denigrating quotation marks) are expressiveness and accessibility and the presentation itself lacks any real art, all it usually has going for it is just groping for the groin. It’s not even as useful as fecal matter, as fecal matter can at least be useful in compost.

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For Your Child’s Classroom?

Or grandchild’s classroom or bedroom. Sweet dreams!

Thugs Standing Around: making citizens into subjects of the “feddle gummint” bureaucrappy.

Update: And no, the apocryphal (? Who knows? Could be real, you know.) book referred to in the graphic is not so far-fetched:

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Work Ethic? Notsomuch

Check the screencap of an email from ZDNet. Some lazy, subliterate moron couldn’t even bother to transcribe the actual article’s headline:

That someone got paid for “work” like that is evidence of incompetent supervision and a lazy, unethical worker. That “hypocracy” isn’t even a typo. No one who can’t even use (or is too lazy to use) a spell checker should accept payment for “work” like that… or be offered any. And yet, this is but one of many, many examples of such things. (And do NOT let me get started on “celebrity–or even local yokel–newsreaders’ constant misuse of words. Put ’em in bags and throw ’em into a swiftly moving river… )

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Never Forget

I’d like to see an electronic billboard playing this 24x7x365(.25) on a jumbo screen across the street from the site of the proposed Jihadist’s Cordoba House Victory Mosque in NYC:

Heck, I’d like to see it playing, along with an appropriate semi-permanent text message*, beside it on all sides of the proposed Jihadist’s Cordoba House Victory Mosque.

*For example, something like this:

Text could be varied by season. For example, during the Islamic new year, which celebrates Mohamed’s hijra (establishment of his warlord power in Medina), it could read,

“Happy Butcher of Medina Celebration, Pigdog Jihadists” or other epigram appropriate to the season that celebrates Mohamed’s massacre of 900 Banu Qurayzah Jewish men, the plundering of their goods, and the rape and enslavement of their women and children.

Update:

“A cult is any group uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members. The group forms an elitist totalitarian society. The group founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable, has charismatic and narcissistic behavior issues. The group believes ‘the end justifies the means’ in order to solicit funds and recruit people. The group wealth does not benefit its members or society. Islam and their Allah is not a religion but no more than a cult political organization used to control their members to achieve worldwide conquest.”–John Tydlaska Jr. via Facebook.

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Words of Wisdom–Obviously NOT From a Congrescritter

Obviously, Jerry Pournelle will not be welcome in D.C. with commonsense thoughts like this:

We can legitimately argue over the desirability of government building programs and whether all that ought to be left to the market; but it seems to me that if government is going to borrow money and spend it, the end result ought to be something useful, not just spent money… Just spending borrowed money doesn’t seem to work well.

It certainly doesn’t for private citizens. It may well make sense for a man who has landed a job as a carpenter to borrow money to buy his basic tool kit, or even to buy a car for transportation to and from work. It makes little to no sense to borrow money to take a trip across country for vacation and relaxation, or to buy frivolities. Everyone knows this, or certainly used to. Apparently the government doesn’t really know it. And now we borrow money to fund entitlements, to build demonstration projects, local museums that no one is going to visit, increase salaries of government workers and to hire new government workers whose funding will then fall on the local community, and other such horrors. Spending borrowed money without a very specific [and useful to the general public–ed] purpose is nonsense.

Of course, “common sense” is anathema to the ignorant, preening, over-credentialed ruling class. “Ignorant”? What, aren’t they mostly products of “elite” colleges and universities? Yep, for the most part they are, and that’s one of the linchpins of their unassailable ignorance and institutionalized stupidity. I’m not by any means anti-intellectual; I highly approve of thoughtful consideration of issues and genuinely intellectual pursuits that enlighten, broaden horizons and improve the conditions of those who pursue them, as well as benefit society at large. But. That sort of intellectual behavior is the antithesis of what goes on in most colleges and universities nowadays–and especially “elite” schools.

Any soi disant Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakery “intellectuals” want to argue the point with me? Hmmm? See my Comments Policy for fair warning.

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Misplaced Attentions

Doug Wilson reminds us what we get when we place our attentions on the wrong things and listen to the wrong people:

We do not look to the modernists for anything but stainless steel despair. Bigger, faster, shinier! And we do not look to the pomos* for anything but bootless confusions. When you finally get that quorum of clowns, you are going to have a circus. What did you expect?

*”pomos” are, of course, postmodernists, that gaggle of geese to whom meaning is “just semantics“. *gag-spit*

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Locusts* Gone…

…I feel as though they’ve stripped me bare, though. But while I’ve been “gone”, it seems the words of Qohelet have been validated once again.

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

The Dhimmicraps and Repugnican’ts are still useless, toxic oxygen sinks. The Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind still has the majority of the electorate–illiterate/subliterate, lazy, self-enstupiated American Sheeple–under its sway. “Atlas” still sleeps. And so it goes.

I’m just glad I have such an optimistic outlook on life.

*No, for the literally-minded, not these actual critters. It just seemed that way.