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Sorry about the silence folks. No excuse other than more important things are getting in the way. I’ll be back soon, if not full force, at least enough to report on the holidays, (Christmas, Channukah, New Year) and thoughts thereof.

By the way, if you’re in Fort Lauderdale, or plan to be here during Christmas, there WILL be Christmas-day services at Calvary Chapel. Pastor Bob figured that although most people would be with their family (and would probably have attended one of the 9 services in 5 days before Christmas), some may not have family to go to. For them, he decided to open the church doors for a 10:15 service on Sunday, Christmas Morning. I won’t be there (I wish I could be; I’ll be in Tampa), but if you’re in the area, drop by Christmas morning and say hello. (Or drop by to one of the three Saturday services and enjoy some good ol’ fashioned worship.) Someone you yet don’t know might need you.

Of course, if you’re not in the area and wish to check out services anyway, you can always watch online. I’m not sure if the Sunday Christmas services will be Internetelevised. If you go to their page, http://www.calvaryftl.org, and look at the top banner it’ll tell you whether they’re internetelevising services. No message, no service. Still check out the Active Word page to download some of the services in MP3 form.

Here are the service times over the next few days:

• Dec 21: 6:30pm, 8:30pm
• Dec 22: 7:30pm
• Dec 23: 7:30pm
• Dec 24: 4:30pm, 6:30pm, 8:30pm, 11:00pm
• Dec 25: 10:15am

A few weeks ago I started hearing about a new proposal making its way through congress. It seems that information somehow got out regarding the existence of secret CIA facilities outside the U.S which employ the use of government sanctioned torture techniques to gather intelligence from suspected enemies of the state. The proposal, sponsored by Senator John McCain (R, Arizona), would make it illegal for the United States to use torture as a method of extracting information.

(It should be noted that John McCain is a heavily decorated war veteran who was a POW during the Vietnam conflict. During that time, he was subjected to torture and knows first hand its effects on the torturer, the tortured, and — most importantly to this debate — its effectiveness when it comes to information gathering.)

The bill has been strongly opposed by some on “The Hill” (Washington D.C.), including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, their reason being that our intelligence officers need to be able to use “all available techniques” and weapons in their arsenal in order to keep our country safe from terrorists and enemy nations.

Here then do we meet our moral quandary: do we, as a nation, condone the use of torture as a method of extracting information from detainees, or do we shun the practice for the sake of taking the moral high-ground. If torture is effective, then why worry about morality? After all, isn’t it more moral to do torture those who may be hiding information from us for the sake of the safety and security of the rest of us?

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I stumbled upon a couple of rather interesting statements today, both of which involved 19th century paradigmic shifts within governmental and sociological ideologies towards the humanistic ideal of man’s ability to act as (or become) a benevolent being. The first statement comes from an article, involving the prohibition and criminalization of certain drugs (emphasis added):

From http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/levine.secret.html

In many countries, popular support for drug prohibition also has been rooted in the uniquely 20th-century faith in the capacity of the state to penetrate and benevolently control many aspects of daily life for the “common good.” The hope of global drug prohibition, of the people who created the system, was the hope of using the powers of a nearly omnipotent state to do good and suppress evil. This romantic vision itself was very much part of a distinctly 20th century utopian hope or dream. Unlike, say, the “founding fathers” who wrote the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and unlike many political movements in the 19th century, in the 20th century liberals, conservatives, fascists, communists, socialists, populists, right-wingers and left-wingers usually shared this romantic vision of the benevolent state. Twentieth-century political movements disagreed violently about how the state should be used. Drug prohibition was one of the few things they could all agree upon. Drug prohibition was part of what I think it is appropriate to call the 20th century’s “romance with the state.”

Of course the easy thing to say about this particular statement would be that this view on how the “founding fathers” saw governments (as opposed to how the way it was viewed by some in the later part of the 19th and throughout subsequent centuries) is that this is “obviously” an extremely Libertarian viewpoint, as evidenced by not only the ideas at hand, but also the wording used. And of course, to most of us it could go without saying that this statement could be made with the subject at had aside. However, to do either would give credibility to the quoted statement: my choice of wording and automatic dismissal of the subject at hand (that being the prohibition and criminalization of drugs by a humanist moralist government) as being, presumably, a repudiation of the idea that prohibition is a good thing, thereby labeling me as both a member of one of those in a “romance with the state,” and consequently identifying me as being at odds with the governmental views of our nation’s forefathers.

(As a side note, it’s funny that I should see this today. Last night I was at a pizzeria with The Wife, and playing on the television was a documentary on the formation of Las Vegas as a place where underworld activities of the organized crime of the time, such as gambling and prostitution, not only came into full light as legal and legitimate businesses, but how the city thrived because of it. Libertarianism at work? Perhaps. But if Las Vegas is the end result of Libertarianism, then why would anyone want to be a Libertarian? Then again, it could be argued that since Las Vegas is essentially an area with a large concentration of the criminal enterprises which were before then in other places, it stands to follow that this type of environment is not the necessary end-result of Libertarian policies. I’ll stop here because, frankly, I don’t wish to pursue this subject any further.)

The second statement came from a discussion regarding eugenics, and the aborting of early-detected Down Syndrome fetuses (fetii?).

From http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001694.html

But late in the nineteenth century a subtle shift began to occur. The view that a human being had a natural right to live began to erode under the corrosive ideals of the eugenics movement.

As physicians, scientists, and other elites began to determine what qualities of life made life worth living, it became a humanitarian duty to end the lives of those who didn’t possess the necessary traits. “Chloroform unfit children,” said the famed Scopes trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, “show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit to live.”

At the root of the idea of the benevolence of government is the humanist idea that man is neither good nor evil, and that given our level of enlightenment, the wisdom and benevolence of man in deciding the necessary components of a life worth living are something we’re endowed with. (If one works under the presumption that there is no absolute truth, no “higher power” to which we should answer to other than the future of our species, then this seems like a perfectly logical conclusion to follow.) As such, in this day and age, we can require more of a life worth living than Socrates’ simple statement of “An unexamined life is a life not worth living.” It is at this point that we begin to see the real consequences of the objectification of the human by extreme liberal ideology: the demotion from divinely-inspired creation to fortunate mistake of universal evolution*. As such, not only do we lower ourselves to the status of mere animals, but also create a new cast-system where the most eugenically fit of us become like unto gods. (A lot of extrapolation there, and I may follow that through by posting the set of arguments leading to that conclusion sometime in the future.) As such, this top class, which acts like Huxley’s Alpha-class citizens in Brave New World begins making decisions about who within the lower classes has the right to live and who doesn’t. Without having absolute wisdom, or at the very least strict purity of mind and complete separation from worldly attachments in addition to pure compassion, absolute power can – to use the cliché – corrupt absolutely.

* Note: Whether the demotion is warranted or not is of no particular consequence, nor shall I judge it within this post.

Maybe that’s why Communism, Socialism, and most Liberal ideologies for that matter, don’t work: they don’t account for human failings, such as the lust for money, power, greed, and self-above-others preservation, requiring instead the equivalent of a Buddha, or a god-like figure for that matter, to ensure justice and good. While the aforementioned failings are all controllable and overcome-able within the individual, they are not so when dealing with masses. So long as people still lust and desire, systems like this will never work. Here is where Democracies and Republics get their proven advantages: they rely on the balancing of power between various entities, the many, and the one, taking into consideration all forms of human failings and ideological contradictions.

I could take this line of thought much further, but I feel this breadcrumb is enough to start more than a few threads of thought.

You have the right to stay silent. Should you wave that right, if you’re an idiot, everything you say can and will be used against you in accord of all…

Idiocy. Unfortunately, it’s everywhere. You see it on television, you hear it on the radio, and you probably bump into more than a few living examples of it on a daily basis. But what exactly is idiocy, and how does it differ from ignorance, or for that matter stupidity?

Not knowing that you don’t know about something, or simply not knowing about something, is generally known as “ignorance.” I’m ignorant about diesel fuel, for example. In fact, it wasn’t until today that I realized how ignorant I was of it, knowing nothing more than “it exists, it’s $.16 cheaper at the pump, and the pumps are usually off in their own island somewhere.”

Now, I don’t plan to find out more about diesel fuel because, frankly, I don’t have a need for it; I don’t drive a diesel-powered car, or truck, and I’m not in the fuel industry. I am ignorant of it, though now a bit less ignorant than before. I openly admit this, and am not ashamed.

If I however, in my current state, decided to start arguing with someone who is in the fuel industry, and questioning their knowledge and authority regarding diesel, that would make my ignorance into aggravated ignorance, also known as stupidity.

Now, one level above that is pre-meditated and flaunted aggravated ignorance. That’s when I would, instead of simply arguing a point, begin to insult the fuel expert about how diesel is really only useful for lawn mowers, and that my regular-gasoline Honda Civic could outstrip any diesel vehicle on the road. Also that diesel vehicles might as well be toys because they’re not real cars. This form of pre-meditated aggravated ignorance, especially when I flaunt it as such, is usually known as idiocy.

Sadly examples of idiocy are seen all the time, everywhere. When someone says “well, books don’t have all the answers,” and you know this person’s idea of heavy reading is the comic pages, or “you’re stupid if you think the economy needs X, and only Charles Manson would vote for that guy” and you realize this person knows nothing about economics, and even less about your candidate, then this qualifies as idiocy.

Now, people have the right to be idiots about anything they want to be idiots about. Most idiots usualy are. But remember that “Freedom of Speech” is not “Freedom from Consequence.” I don’t have to accept your idiotic ideas, simply because “well that’s what I think and that’s that.” If you tell me there’s no God, and you’ve spent more time on your Madden 2006 game than in a theology book, then your opinion is worthless, and your flaunting of that opinion makes it open season on you for people who do know a thing or two about theology. In short, flaunting your ignorace deserves my doing something about it. Although I’ll likely not change your idiotic ways, you just declared it open season on you, and sooner or later, the hunters willcome.

Remember, you have the right to be an idiot, just as I have the right to make fun of you for it.

Of course, you should never try to fight with a pig; you both get dirty, and the pig loves it. Unless you’re just egging him on for your own entertainment. That, however, is a dangerous line because when you get in an argument with an idiot, people will usually be unable to tell the difference.

I was at the gym today, doing an easy (read: stationary bike) workout in light of a recent back injury I apparently sustained this past Friday. Seeing as I’ve been taking it easy for the past few days due to the injury, and in light of the fact that I didn’t engage in much business activity this evening for the same reason, I decided to pick something up to read for the sole purpose of intellectual stimulation. (I’m sure you’ve noticed the difference in my writing style. This is what happens when I let my mind take a leave from the mundane things, such as technical knowledge and even people skills, and let it explore the more esoteric reaches of its interests.)

After a quick glance through my book collection I decided to pick up my copy of Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes. (Note to Junior: I read a few chapters of the Gita this afternoon. I’ll likely have some questions in the future, as I study it further.) Interestingly enough, I also picked up my MP3 player (iRiver H320) and started to listen to the soundtrack for The Matrix: Reloaded. This is especially fitting, since the more I watch The Matrix the more I am enthralled by the philosophical and theological overtones of the film. Though at first I saw only a few recognizable threads, now I can’t watch the film without analyzing the interplay between the various philosophical sources the film draws upon. I have been especially attracted by the interplay between the Socratic and Cartesian quests for the meaning of freedom and the knowledge of what is real. (Although I don’t generally suppose that there is a supreme being dictating our existence by some nefarious means, whereby it deceives us into believing that what we see is real, the question of what we define as “real” is another question entirely, one which, as the Buddha proves, is more pertinent than what we first believe it to be.)

As I read Descartes’ meditations, I began to wonder about something that, although I have before thought of, I have never really given much mind to:

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