I have read several books on Zen and some from ancient philosophers like Epictetus. I know the theory of releasing petty annoyances, letting them blow through you like wind through an open window. Otherwise, you become Neal Rauhauser, utterly obsessed with every wrong or perceived wrong and willing to dedicate all of your being to making your tormentors pay, pay, pay!
Okay, here they are.
1. Last Friday when I left my motel room to return home after a week's work, I forgot to pack three good business shirts, and left them in the drawer of my room. I called, they said they would keep them safe for me until I returned the following Monday. Now they are saying they can't find them, and the maids (who stole them) say they haven't seen them either. I generally leave a tip for the maid on checkout day, but no more tips for thieves. I hope Jose or Jesus (pronounced "Hey Zeus") enjoys the shirts.
2. Lawrence Auster is one of my favorite online writers and we agree closely on many things, except for one subject near and dear to my heart, the Southern Confederacy for which my ancestors fought 147 years ago. Last week Auster wrote that the Confederates "brought war on themselves" and repeated other simplistic Yankee propaganda that would insult the intelligence of a boll weevil. I struggled with the idea of writing a blistering rebuttal, but in the end refrained. Larry is seriously ill with pancreatic cancer and winning an argument with him seems rather unimportant in light of that.
With that said, I will assume the Lotus position and begin my mantra. On second thought, I think I'll watch television instead.
Friday November 22nd – Open Thread
1 hour ago
21 comments:
also considered writing to L. Auster on the same point. And, I also decided not to bother as he is so ill. God only knows why he still is blogging. Bless him.
I have appreciated the Irony of his constant railing over the savage nature of the Blacks, now being regnant in the current USA and his dismissal of the Confederacy and any memory of the Confederacy. Yet, the old South sure had developed methods to CONTROL the negro: the lash, segregation, slavery, work-gangs, and Manila rope.
American I fear will eventually return to using Southern methods to control them in the future as Biological Science will show that the Blacks are the way they are due to their GENETIC nature and no amount of "education" or affirmative action can up-lift them.
Once science shows their NATURE is innate and not malleable, popular opinion will ask for a solution. I suggest that America will take a lesson from the British of centuries ago and use TRANSPORTATION to remove difficult Blacks from its midst as it is cost effective compared to the use of prisons. Thrashing as well as other swift corporal punishments used as a deterrent will return. Hanging, even public hanging, will re-enter the public mind and the public square. I also expect that welfare will be given only under chemical sterilization ( or surgical ) de facto implementation.
BTW, I have no connection with the South, Old or New.
Dan Kurt
Dan, I don't recommend bringing back the lash, slavery, work gangs or ropes. My sentiments for the Confederacy is that of my homeland, my country, probably lost forever to the sweep of time. My love for the Confederacy is not borne of race hatred, as many suppose (probably from watching too much television). It is borne of patriotism, sentimentality, self-identity and family bonds.
However, a frank discussion about the problems of black violence and black dysfunction is badly needed and way overdue. Yes, we do need to find a way to ameliorate the situation. Telling the truth about the existence of the problem and its causes (mostly I.Q. and genetics) might lead to some workable solutions. Lawrence Auster is telling the unvarnished truth now, and for that we can be grateful.
To claim that the Confederacy was not based largely on slavery is akin to claiming that Nazi Germany was not based on anti-Semitism (and no I am not claiming that the South was similar to Germany).
Travis, your comment is too vague and simplistic to shed any light. Any analogy with Nazis is best used when considering that both the Nazis and the Northern Yankees believed they had the right to invade and conquer other peoples through force of arms and bend those people to their will by sheer force. And no, they didn't do it because they cared about the slaves.
Read "Why the Civil War Was Not About Slavery" at this link:
http://saberpoint.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-civil-war-was-not-about-slavery.html
By 1861 slavery was only around in the South and some border states such as Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland. The Ordinance of Secession of South Carolina (December 1860) mentioned slavery 14 times. When Major General Pat Cleburne (killed at Franklin in Hood's imbecilic frontal assault on 11/30/1864) proposed in January 1864 that the South address its manpower shortages by enlisting blacks as soldiers while offering them their freedom - it raised a sh*t storm in Richmond and doomed any chance the best division commander in the Army of Tennessee would ever have to be promoted to corps commander. But yeah, the Civil War had nothing at all to do with slavery.
David Duke is that you?
"However, a frank discussion about the problems of black violence"
That I agree with. Sadly it will have to be courageous blacks who initiate it.
However do not indulge racialists and eugenicists. Talking abut one races "GENETIC nature" has a distinctly Julius Streicher "Der Sturmer" smell to it.
Go drink some more Yankee Koolaid, Travis. The North didn't invade the South and make war on women and children and perpetrate crimes against humanity in order to "free the slaves." They did it because Lincoln didn't want the South to secede and lose him his tax base. Slavery was a major reason for secession, and not the only one, BUT the main reason for the war was that the North refused to allow the South to go in peace and govern itself.
If the South had seceded over gay marriage, socialized health care or preserving the habitat of the Mountain Fratillery butterfly, the North would have invaded with the same ferocity and for the same reason: they liked milking the South of its livelihood and would not allow the South to have free ports and free trade, which would have been financially ruinous to Northern industries and Northern parasitism. Slavery was a major cause of secession, but secession was the cause of the war, and thus there is no moral glory for Yankees or robes of righteousness in which they may robe themselves.
Travis, truth is truth, and genetics plays an important part. Truth cannot be suppressed because it isn't considered polite. The average IQ of blacks is 85, substantially below that of any other racial group. I wish it weren't true, but it is a scientific fact. I hope that future generations will devise some genetic engineering or gene splicing or SOMETHING to end the problem. Denial, however, won't help.
Keep thinking that Stogie. Also keep thinking there was something noble in throwing away your best blood in assaults like that at Franklin.
And for the record I actually am a native of Marshall Texas and had a family member on my mothers side who fought in Granbury's Texas brigade in Cleburne's division. By the way your homeland is the United States of America whether you want to accept it or not. It is like me calling the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem my homeland because I had some Crusader ancestors. "Calling fellow citizens today "Yankees" wow that is really forward thinking in 2012.
That sort of attitude (which is still thankfully a minority one in the Republican Party) is why we have little appeal to youth and no longer win national elections.
Go tell Allen West that he is genetically inferior.
Wow, we have something in common. My father was born in Granbury, named after General Granbury who died at the Battle of Franklin. As for my homeland, the South is a country within a country (and always has been). I see it more like Latvia during its absorption by the Soviet Union, or Tibet by China, or Scotland by Great Britain. Glad to know you agree that it is forward thinking to identify Yankees.
Travis, it's apparent that critical thinking is not your forte. The fact of IQ variance by race is not my "attitude," it is a scientific fact. I love Allen West, but the variance of IQ within a population is a Bell Curve (just like the book), and West obviously falls on the high side of the spectrum. Everyone is an individual, and should be considered on his own merits, talents and attitudes, and neither praised nor condemned for his belonging to any ethnic group. That's why I have never supported a return to segregation nor assigning different classes to citizens of the US.
Dan,
You are NOT a Conservative. You are a Leftists. The whole Blacks have lower IQ has to do they have higher percentage of poverty and live in areas that have a crappy education situation. I bet you Allen West has a higher IQ than some inbred White Trash like you.
Biological Supremacy is a Leftist concept. You are a follower of Marx and Hitler.
No, critical thinking as well as reason and rationality is my forte (love the use of French words) . Snark and put downs seem to be yours, but it's your sandbox.
Many Blacks have higher IQ and are more decent people than White Trash Nazi scum like you. Blacks tend to live in areas that have Crappy Education system. Your argument is the same your Nazis ideological brothers said the same about the Jews.
You are no Rightwing. You are a follower of Karl Marx.
Ah Voltron, when someone is losing an argument, they tend to get very insulting. I am not remotely a Nazi, and crappy education systems are not the problem with black dysfunction and an inability to compete intellectually with whites, Asians, Hispanics or Jews. My beliefs about black IQ are not ideological, they are objective and based on scientific fact. I simply have a willingness to face unpleasant truths. It was an unwillingness to face these truths that caused decades of busing, forced integration of schools, affirmative action laws and other monstrous governmental programs that exacerbated race relations and made things substantially worse.
Tell you what, prove me wrong. Conduct standard IQ tests on a statistical sample of whites, blacks, hispanics, Asians and Jews. Then have those tests summarized and compiled by objective statisticians and let me know what you find. I'd be truly happy if you proved me wrong.
Travis, if you don't know the definition of "average" then I would say your thinking skills aren't as sharp as you think. If I seem snarky it's because I am impatient with illogical and irrational argument.
Actually you are good at setting up strawmen instead of addressing someones point of view that differs with yours.
After nearly a century and a half in which the national culture, the media, and the educational establishment have institutionalized the northern version of the events leading up to the 1861-65 war, the war itself, and the so-called Reconstruction (i.e., military occupation), it is almost impossible to have a rational and reasonably objective discussion of it.
My own feeling, for what it's worth, is that the south was largely responsible for the secession through its determination to extend slavery to the new states as the country moved west. I can wish that they had been more conciliatory on the point. But maybe no compromise was possible because the abolitionists would have rejected it. The abolitionists had a valid moral position, but also a fanatical determination to end slavery by any means regardless of the consequences.
There were economic issues behind the north's stance which I admit I don't fully understand, but I suspect they were not uplifting and would not have made for good slogans. The slavery question was a godsend for northern manufacturers and politicians, enabling them to turn their own interests into a heart-stirring crusade.
The south had just as much right to secede from the union as the colonies did to declare their independence of Britain. Lincoln and the northern states had no justification for four years of aggression against those whom they insisted were their countrymen, whether wanted to be or not. The union was not "saved": the south was simply destroyed, humanly, economically, and culturally, and treated as a defeated power.
Travis, I have set up no straw men, and it is obvious that you don't know what a "straw man argument" is.
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