He understood the pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.Interesting that he said "domino effect" while speaking at Ave Maria University and saying that Satan has reached into academia and the church. Ave Maria University was founded with the fortune that Tom Monaghan made selling Domino Pizza. Exactly how deep does this Satanic plot go? All the way back to Ypsilanti in 1960 when Tom and his brother bought that small pizza store. I have lived in Ypsilanti. I know Ypsilanti. I have seen the mark of the devil in Ypsilanti. The Domino's Pizza logo has 3 dots. They were going to add dots for each store that they opened, but they stopped at 3, the number of stores they had in 1969, when the logo was designed. The company headquarters is in Ann Arbor, the location of the University of Michigan, where I arrived in 1969. Was the Devil digging his hoofs into academia, beginning right there and then? I'm no expert at numerology, but I can't help noticing that if you take the 1 in 1969, grip it tightly, and knock the two 9s over, you get 666.
And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.
And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church.
But here's where my blood ran cold. I said "Oh, Lord!" out loud. (Causing Meade to say: "Lord? The Dark Lord?!") I was reading on in the above-linked Wikipedia article on Domino's Pizza, and I came to this:
In 1998, after 38 years of ownership, Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan announced his retirement and sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital, Inc. for about $1 billion and ceased being involved in day-to-day operations of the company.Bain Capital! The bane of our existence!
To say that something or someone is "the bane of my existence" means that the person or thing is a constant irritant or source of misery. As a cliché, "bane of my existence" has lost its edge to a large degree over the years...Connect the dots, people! The dots. Not just the 3 dots in the Domino's Pizza logo. There were many more dots, but they withheld them from the logo. They didn't want you to see that many dots. You must struggle to see the dots before you can even hope to connect them. Bain/Bane Capital is reaching everywhere, into our pizza, into our university. It was Bain's billion that built Ave Maria University where Santorum came to deliver his warning about Satan in academia. And now we have the 2 men left standing. Santorum, who is warning us, and Romney — r omney/r money/our money — who is the Bain/Bane of our existence. We've lost Cain — Cain ≠ Bain — a man — her man — who rose like Ave Maria, out of pizza. But it was Godfather Pizza. God the Father's pizza, not the Satanic 3-dots pizza.
But "bane" was once a very serious word. The Old English "bana" meant literally "slayer" in the sense we now use "killer" or "murderer." Early on, the English "bane" was also used in the more general sense of "cause of death," and by the 14th century "bane" was used in the specialized sense of "poison," a sense which lives on in the names of various poisonous plants such as "henbane" and "wolfbane."
Connect the dots! Find all the dots and connect them, lest Satan's already successful plot further succeed, perhaps vaulting the baneful Romney to the Presidency! But, oh, you say, Althouse is herself an academic. She is swollen with the pride of smart people, and therefore vulnerable to Satan's depredations, pleased to offer up something new and different, tantalizing us with new truths, denying the existence of truth, playing with truth because she's so smart.
Close the box — that 3-dot box — on the melted cheesy atrocity. Move along, smart people. There's nothing see here. Look, over there. It's Mitt, that terribly handsome man. Hail, President Romney!
Posts
82 comments:
needs a Carol Herman tag.
Priest: I can beat you at dominos
Congre: No you can't beat us at dominos
Brilliant analysis.
Abso lutely brilliant! I am amazed that it has taken so long for someone to see what Rick has been trying to tell us all along. Perry tried, with Jefress's help, to warn us, but we didn't take him seriously enough. Santorum has finally gotten the message out.
Althouse, I love you.
Bad etymology, Althouse, I'm afraid. When I see the word "Bain", I understand the French meaning of the word bath. Bain Capital took dirty undercapitalized firms, sullied by mismanagement, and by bathing them in the waters of restructuring removed their excrescences and made them sparkle in their purity. Or something.
Daisy fleabane
Very humorous. If Romney should win the nomination, the left will go crazy with "Bain controls my brain" conspiracy paranoia. Hilarious.
Way to take a common methaphor too far, Ann. The satire is cute, and of course the funny thing about it is the idea that if you believe in Satan, you are gullible enough to believe such outlandish conspiracies, which is why in academia it is usually safer to claim to believe in nothing than to believe in anything - if you make a claim of belief in anything you open yourself up to this kind of sophomoric ridicule.
Most people do not have the fortitude to be ridiculed.
The worst part is, there are people who would read this post and say, "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense! How come I never saw it before?"
The founder of Pizza Hut was ambassador to The Netherlands during the Bush 1 presidency. There's connection.
...and the adrenaline (or caffine) is flowing here, as well. Fun read!
There's a difference between a chain of reasoning based on how temptation works and what motivates humans to do evil and associations based on similarity of words or numbers.
Get real, Alt.
You missed your calling Professor.
You needed to play on Gary North's team.
wv: captcha has changed and I no longer know which I can ignore. But I could read them all.
Opps.
Retry: The founder of Pizza Hut was ambassador to The Netherlands during the Bush 1 presidency. There's got to be a connection.
Professor, it's time again to be exposed to the moral clarity of thy youth.
I abjure thee, heretic, watch and learn!
LOL
You left out number 9... number 9... number 9
Turn that upside down and what do you get? Cain the not-Bain was warning us too, just like John Lennon did...
We were supposed to understand that Obama wasn't saying alarming things, that was just the normal way lawyers talk. To an extent that's probably true. But Santorum talking about Satan to that audience is doing the same thing. If his own understanding is literal or metaphorical, his audience is going to receive it as metaphorical, most of them. Warning of the danger of pride in your own accomplishments, believing themselves wise, becoming fools. I'm assuming he goes on to say the same thing about the church & Satan and he's certainly not a " Whore of Babylon" sort.
The Pizza & Bain stuff is sort of funny.
If a mere tenth as much of analysis was devoted to the presidential race in '08, Althouse wouldn't have voted for Obama.
The error of that choice would have been readily apparent.
Would this mean that Bain Capital is run by satan too?
Having suffered through the higher levels of academia, I have to say I disagree with the estimable Althouse's sarcastic take on this. Santorum is not entirely incorrect; academics are full of themselves, particularly in the humanities.
I've sat through classes where progressives shrilly claim racism, sexism, homophobia just because you don't agree with their radical views. Students sit captured, afraid to speak and, if they do, to suffer the consequences of bad grades for disagreement.
The universities are a frightful mess, whether you believe in a Satan or not. I can't say Santorum's my guy, but he's right that the hand that's rocking the academic cradle is ruling the world.
Witness Occupy.
"The worst part is, there are people who would read this post and say, "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense! How come I never saw it before?""
Yes, exactly, Rush Limbaugh was talking about something like that the other day, when he did some radio joke thing about Satan years ago, and NONE of his listeners understood it was a joke:
"So while it's playing and I'm laughing myself silly, I look across the glass to Kitty O'Neal, who's the call screener, and she's got a look of panic on her face, and she buzzes me on the intercom and says, "They believe it." The people calling wanted to go on the air and ask me if there were any more Satanic messages in other Slim Whitman songs, that they had other Slim Whitman albums. So I had to make an adjustment on the fly. I thought I was gonna be getting phone calls from people, "This was really funny, why, you pulled a good one." Ninety-nine percent of the calls believed it so I had to talk to people. I took some calls and a guy said, "I have every Slim Whitman record, what should I do?""
"Professor, it's time again to be exposed to the moral clarity of thy youth."
Ha ha. Wow. Thanks.
The weird thing is... that devil looks a lot like Meade!
Three dots! The Holy Trinity (One God existing as three, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit)- but Mormons do not believe in the Trinity (the three are separate Gods), so that is the reason that Bain/Bane (the Devil made me do it!) assumed control of Domino's (from the latin, dominatus-i -rule, mastery, tyranny, domination) in order to squelch the God of the Gentiles.
There is just no limits as to where the symbolism in this tale can take us!
Ann's post is exactly the sort of prideful, sarcastic distraction from true danger Satan himself would employ.
This is one of Althouse's better satirical and insightful writings and a good example of how Satan has infiltrated academia. Of course another example of Satan's work on the other side of campus is the research by the likes of Michael Gould, or David Beebe who discover and develop new treatments for heart and cancer disease.
Excellent analysis!
Can you explain "Gates of Eden"?
I'm hoping this is satire. Reading it reminded why I hated textual analysis so much.
And why I've embraced qualitative analysis. If you can't measure it, I don't care.
Once Ann gets into the definition of bane, she loses the narrative.
The next step is to take that word slayer and ask who does it anymore.
The Mob, of course, and who is the most famous mobster?
Tony Soprano!
You mean...?
No!!!!!!!!
Tony Soprano was inspired by the exploits of...
Willard Milton Romney!!!!
Ann Althouse said...
I said "Oh, Lord!" out loud. (Causing Meade to say: "Lord? The Dark Lord?!")
The weird thing is... that devil looks a lot like Meade!
You guys must have some really weird pillow talk.
Lame, lame, lame. Even as mockery, but especially as an example of how religious folks think, that's really pathetic.
Don't get me wrong - I understand how conspiracy folks think as well - but to put Santorum in that category is patently dishonest.
I've told you, Ann - you don't do religion/spirituality well - which is why I'm amazed you teach a course in it, whether the class includes the constitution or not. You're waaay to into post-modernism to be of any good as an educator on the subject.
It's reported Rick Santorum's wife said her husband's rise is "God's will." Are you going to eventually torture that to death as well? Or admit you've heard such language before and been moved by it? Then why treat it like you've just heard it for the first time? Oh yeah:
You ARE in academia, and DO think you're smart because of it, despite evidence to the contrary.
Me? I'm glad I'm just an atheist - not proud, mind you, like gays or blacks usually claim for their self-esteem - but just glad:
I don't have to lie to score points on anything.
My favorite part is where you take the 1 and hit the 9s to tip them over to become 6s.
That's the sort of twisting numerologists do necessary to work backward from conclusion to premise, from results to causes. The clue is usually multiplying arbitrary items or adding them together.
Santorum is on to something and he developed his idea of personifying evil. The evil and the danger he sees of replacing God with self. That is a valid point of view shared by many.
Dazzled by their own brilliance they can see nothing brighter. Amazed by their own science they see nothing beyond it. They are the top of everything that is. The evolved top. The top of everything that ever was.
And that's where the projected numerological satire that has nothing at all to do with Santorum's personification of evil begins.
Love the satire. Love it. But I'm loving it while knowing it has nothing to do with Santorum.
If you look at this picture of a pizza I bought at our local Domino's, you'll see an obvious connection between Domino's and the devil. For one thing, it looks like Hell.
Satan's influence on academia is self-evident. Just look at the horrid academics, such as yourself and Instapundit, who blog.
"I've told you, Ann - you don't do religion/spirituality well - which is why I'm amazed you teach a course in it, whether the class includes the constitution or not."
The class is about the way the religion clauses in the Constitution are interpreted and applied. It doesn't matter what people believe, and treating all religions equally (and non-religion equally) is a central constitutional value. It's not about judging the truth or the good sense of religious beliefs. It's about understanding and protecting freedom. As with free speech, you can believe/express what you want, but there's a limit to freedom, notably when you harm other people.
"It's reported Rick Santorum's wife said her husband's rise is "God's will." "
Reading that, for the first time, I noticed the homophone: "God swill."
Reading that, for the first time, I noticed the homophone: "God swill."
congrats. give yourself a gold pentagram.
"God swill?" Really? How very 1980s Derrida of you. Academia really is a bubble of irrelevancy.
I always thought "The Devil came from Kansas."
But "Where he went to I don't know.."
**"Where he went to I can't say.."
(What happens when one trusts ones geezer memory..)
"It's reported Rick Santorum's wife said her husband's rise is "God's will." "
I can't be the onry one who thought of the obvious off-corol election joke.
I denounce myself.
I bet a lot of academics are thrilled to death that Santorum perceives them as dark, satanic figures. This is bracing. Their secret fear was that people considered them dull, ineffectual, and pedantic. Not so. Santorum's got them pegged. Genius masterminds who, while not plotting to gain tenure and reserved parking, are scheming to present long dissertations on the etymology of the word bane.
"Exactly how deep does this Satanic plot go?"
Since we're on all about pizzas here, perhaps only as "deep" as a Deep-dish Pizza can get, eh, Ann?
Ann, that's pretty funny.
Wasn't there some way to sneak Mike Illitch into that tangled web of conspiracy, Satanic influence, money, politics, and University life?
Illitch is that other big-name-pizza-guy from Southeast Michigan.
Of course, Illitch spends more money on sports than on University endowments or politics, so it might be kind of hard.
"If you look at this picture of a pizza I bought at our local Domino's, you'll see an obvious connection between Domino's and the devil. For one thing, it looks like Hell."
Domino's pizza may be bad, but hey, you get two!
I always thought "The Devil came from Kansas."
Well, at some point, The Devil went down to Georgia (He was looking for a soul to steal).
Newt Gingrich is from Georgia. Coincidence?
Is Carol Herman really Althouse?
Rosemary's Vitae!
But, oh, you say, Althouse is herself an academic. She is swollen with the pride of smart people
-why?
Santorum is not entirely incorrect; academics are full of themselves, particularly in the humanities.
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, to reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven.
We may with more successful hope resolve to wage by force or guile eternal War, irreconcileable, to our grand Foe, Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy, sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heaven.
Ann,
Sometimes you try so hard to be clever and end up sounding incoherent. This incoherent ramble attempting to mock Santorum fails because the objective proof is everywhere.
What percentage of academics are lefty? It's been documented over and over that it's well above 90%. You think people like Ward Churchill and Naom Chomsky can actually exist in a place that isn't overwhelmingly infected by anti-American leftists? Obama is the culmination of the Fatal Conceit that is the leftist mind. A Fatal Conceit, not just kept alive in academia, but taught as if it's the only rational way to arrange the world.
Ann Althouse,
The class is about the way the religion clauses in the Constitution are interpreted and applied. It doesn't matter what people believe, and treating all religions equally (and non-religion equally) is a central constitutional value. It's not about judging the truth or the good sense of religious beliefs. It's about understanding and protecting freedom. As with free speech, you can believe/express what you want, but there's a limit to freedom, notably when you harm other people.
That's a relief, in a way, though I can't see how you teach something you only understand half of.
Also, why I treat all religions/spiritual pursuits equally, there's no way to equate them with atheism because atheism isn't a "belief" but the normal state of existence - despite how many "believe" otherwise. You wouldn't say a hypochondriac (with the "belief" they need constant medial attention) and someone who is not are the same - regarding freedom - would you? A doctor of mental health wouldn't, so why does the constitution? This goes to religious tolerance:
If the hypochondriac's problem isn't addressed as such (as religions/spiritual pursuits aren't) are they not harming me - by boxing me in with their delusions - for life?
So, today, couldn't it be said the constitution is flawed?
My position is a simple one:
Religion is a historical fact. It existed, but the proof of God's power - being reduced from opening the Red Sea to Jesus appearing on toast - is gone, so the "belief" it inspired - and their constitutional protections - are outdated. And to insist we continue with both IS causing harm. For instance:
A 1-year old baby drowned yesterday in a baptismal pool.
The way I see it, the constitution bears as much blame as the believers who thought the ritual was necessary - for not protecting that child from religion.
Or am I missing something, Oh Great Constitutional Scholar?
By the way, "Domino's" is from the Latin Dominus (and Domini, Dominum), meaning "Lord," as in Dominus Iesus (Lord Jesus) or Credo in unum Dominum Iesum Christum (I believe in One Lord Jesus Christ) or Dominus vobiscum (The Lord be with you). (And as derived from Domus, meaning house.)
And, yes, Monahan did intend a Trinitarian meaning for the three dots.
X ,
congrats. give yourself a gold pentagram.
Now THAT'S funny!!!
To me, Santorum's speech sounds a lot like things C. S. Lewis was saying in The Screwtape Letters.
@Crack Here's a case that's in the casebook I use in my class that I think you would find to be the sort of thing you tend to write about.
Actually, here's the casebook.
If you want to understand the subject of religion and the Constitution, it's pretty much all there.
Ann,
I'm reading it, but can you answer my question, from a constitutional standpoint?
@Bender Thanks.
That reminds me, from my student days at Michigan, circa 1970... we used to shun Domino's Pizza because it was owned by a religious right-winger.
jesus H. Christ - $157 bucks!
And people wonder why I didn't finish college,...
The class is about the way the religion clauses in the Constitution are interpreted and applied.
Of course, to do that accurately (assuming that one actually care about an accurate interpretation, rather than treating the text as malleable and changable to mean whatever the hell you want it to mean merely to justify despotism and oppression while maintaining the pretense of respecting the rule of law), one must have a full and proper knowledge and understanding of why the religion clauses were written, as well as why people came across the ocean to this continent in the first place.
Why, for example, groups of people crossed the ocean on ships named "Dove" and "Ark," risking death to settle in a place they named "St. Mary," before establishing an entire colony named after her, all in order live their faith in freedom after fleeing the religious oppression of an English government that sought to control their lives and violate their conscience.
If one wanted to know the why of the religion clauses, you'd think that they would make an effort to know, for example, the very celebrated history of Henry VIII, a totalitarian thug who seized church assets, outlawed Catholicism and Protestantism alike, and demanded that all acknowledge him as the religious leader of the entire country, as well as demanding that people acknowledge as true the complete fiction concerning his marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Steve Koch said...
Is Carol Herman really Althouse?
You really shouldn't say things like that.
Satan's bride is not mocked.
"I'm reading it, but can you answer my question, from a constitutional standpoint?"
I took your questions to be rhetorical.
Obviously, if people are mistreating their children (or others), they are subject to the same laws that apply to everyone else. People do bad things and good things because they believe religious ideas and nonreligious ideas. There's no need to discriminate against religion in order to protect others from being harmed. Look at the actions.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: "it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order."
As for ignorance about science, make general rules that require children to be educated, outlaw dangerous practices, etc. etc. You do not have to get down into the level of what people believe and target certain beliefs for persecution. That is not the American system. That's what our forefathers came here to get away from, and the effort has been to avoid slipping back into it.
And atheists have done their share of persecuting people. It's not like atheism is salvation.
I agree with you that some of the worst things people have done have been for religion, and religion is especially dangerous because people can believe they are above the law and that their reward is in the afterlife. But some of the best things people have ever done are because of religion. There are great acts of courage and charity that have sprung from religion, and believing in something greater than yourself -- even if you are wrong -- can have a powerful good effect.
@Bender Why don't you buy the casebook I use and check to see whether the things you think are important are in that book?
Santorum said: "We are put on this earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the earth."
What I'm seeing: "We are put on this earth as creatures of God to have domin[o's pizza] over the earth.
religion is especially dangerous because people can believe they are above the law
I'll not speak for all of religion, but that certainly is completely backwards for most all of the three major religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
In all three cases, they see the law as supreme. But the difference is that they actually believe in law being the law, those unalterable objective truths. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all subscribe to mankind being subject to the law, not the masters of it.
It is secularist government which believes itself above the law, which believes man to be above law, that man is supreme to law, that man can create "law" to be whatever he wants it to be, rather than being bound by any idea of objective truth.
Government wishes to decree that those with a certain skin color are not "persons," but are reducible to chattel, then that is "law." Government wishes to decree that Jews are untermenschen, then that is the law, and anything that they might do to them is entirely "lawful."
But this is not law. This is not law in the true sense of law. An unjust "law" is no law at all. Such is merely the arbitrary dictates of men who believe they can legislate truth. Such might have the force of law, but it is not law. There is a higher law, which being objective truth that is common to all and knowable to all by right reason, is applicable to all. If not, then we owe those Germans we hanged at Nuremberg an apology because everything they did was legal under German law, and we ought immediately submit ourselves to Queen Elizabeth as our sovereign because the very founding of this nation was upon the principle that there is a higher law, a truer law, than the law of mere men.
The weird thing is... that devil looks a lot like Meade!
It's the eyebrows I tell you.
There used to be this guy--probably the only guy--who drove the street sweeping machine in Middleton when I was a kid. He had these arched eyebrows & very tanned skin, close cropped hair--almost shaved head--& impish ears. Whenever he drove by in his big red swooshing machine he'd grin at me. I thought for sure he was the devil.
While you're dealing with all those dots, you might want to begin with microdot. The rest will fall into place not long after.
"It's been documented over and over that it's well above 90%."
Department-dependent. The departments that tend to deal in subjects that are rooted in (and very much constrained by) the real world rather than the way the world should be (by someone's reckoning) tend to be more balanced.
"Satan's bride is not mocked."
Meade plays in the NHL? Plays right wing, I'll bet.
religion is especially dangerous because people can believe they are above the law
Yeah, that goddamn Rev Martin Luther King! Who the hell did he think he was thinking that his faith told him he could disobey duly enacted laws in the South?
You just can't get these goddamn Christians to see reason, I tell ya!
Ann,
You didn't address the question - you've focused on the kid's death - and I'm not talking about discrimination:
I said the religious tolerance clause is flawed because it protects what is harmful to me - religion itself.
It's not like atheism is salvation.
Again, you're looking at it all wrong: An atheist doesn't hold a belief any more than you can say a bird does. And I not only don't look to it for "salvation" but can't, any more than I could my black skin. But I'm penalized for both.
What good religion has done is beside the point. As the old saying goes, good men will do good things, and bad men will do bad, but you need religion to make good men do bad.
And that's a form of harm I think the constitution is supposed to protect us from.
"As the old saying goes, good men will do good things, and bad men will do bad, but you need religion to make good men do bad."
No. You just need ideology, which comes in every shape imaginable.
The dreaded clutter has spread to the posts themselves.
Aside from the religious pov, I don't see the humor in Santorum's initial point about 'Satan' infecting the educational elite.
Social issues have been framed in these sorts of terms for 100's of years, but now I'm supposed to laugh and point and try and make sure everyone else is laughing too, simply because an idea is being framed in religious terms?
I'll admit I got lost with the whole Domino's thing, and didn't take the time to parse out who said what (and who was making fun of what someone else said) so I can't comment on that.
Overall, the post read like the sort of clumsy, self-satisfied 'satire' intellectuals pat themselves on the back for all the time.
Satan or no, the idea that a strongly nihilist, animist and anti-American sentiment is being pushed as normal to the captive audiences of higher education is to me self-evident. I don't see this as something to be laughed off.
And I still prefer Romney as a candidate, anyways, so I don't need some snarky know-it-all to try and ridicule his opponent. Irritating.
Yeah, that goddamn Rev Martin Luther King! Who the hell did he think he was thinking that his faith told him he could disobey duly enacted laws in the South?
Just because something can have good effects doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.
Take alcohol, for example.
Those aren't DOTS on the dominoes. They're called pips.
@Crack An atheist does have a belief: that there is no God. And people have done terrible things believing that.
It's not just neutrality. Neutrality would be setting the subject of God to the side and doing something within human reach. Alexander Pope said it best:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
You have a fervor and a mission about your atheism.
Ann,
NONE of Rush's listeners knew it was a joke? Absolutely not a single one?
Ann Althouse,
@Crack An atheist does have a belief: that there is no God. And people have done terrible things believing that.
Semantics. I don't "believe" it - I accept it. And, as far as I know, no one has ever killed defending the premise as others do for their "belief" in religion. That's a major difference.
It's not just neutrality. Neutrality would be setting the subject of God to the side and doing something within human reach.
"Setting the subject of God to the side,..." Ha! You're funny. I just ended a job, today, that featured an angry guy I had to work in close quarters with who played Christian Rock all day (and got angrier at the suggestion there might be another radio station somewhere on the dial) kept a bible in our company truck for deciding important matters, and was just as likely to answer a work-related question with "we'll let God handle it" as "because I'm a friend of Jesus." He'd been there for years, so what chance do you think I had of "doing something within human reach" - you know, like trying to have a career there?
I lost this job for having a bad attitude and, basically, no longer showing up for work.
You have a fervor and a mission about your atheism.
I do not - I have a fervor and mission about freedom. And not just of my person but - as Ted "Black Lightning" Patrick foretold - of my mind.
If there's one thing that horrifying experience with my wife taught me, over all the others, it's that I'm now waiting for events to catch up with what I've learned. And they do every day. Her exact words were:
We're in the hospitals - we're getting legit - you'd better "get it" before it's too late!
That's a very real warning, Ann, but one that few are taking seriously. Consider this post by one of this nation's leading cancer surgeons on the infiltration of his profession. Or this one by the late, great Jef Raskin, who created and led the Macintosh project at Apple Computer.
We're not all crazy. And I don't have to do anything:
You are going to discover I'm right.
Crack, I'm strongly opposed to the corruption of medicine with unscientific beliefs and methods and I've been clear about that many times on the blog.. I choose news stories on that subject to blog about frequently, so I don't know why you keep acting like I am blind to the problem. I had a terrible problem myself with a close family member relying on homeopathy. I don't think its charming or harmless.
THANKS FOR POSTING THIS!
We've been all over this as well on Common Cents...
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
Ann Althouse,
Crack, I'm strongly opposed to the corruption of medicine with unscientific beliefs and methods and I've been clear about that many times on the blog.. I choose news stories on that subject to blog about frequently, so I don't know why you keep acting like I am blind to the problem. I had a terrible problem myself with a close family member relying on homeopathy. I don't think its charming or harmless.
I'm sorry to hear about you family member. You could've said something sooner, y'know?
I don't think many people are blind to the problem. I stated here how amazing it is everyone talks about it without anything serious happening to address it.
What I do think is few are aware of the scope of the problem - how it spreads through society and corrupts even the best of intentions. Even Dr. Sharpe, who I linked to before, is very aware of the problem, and says;
Dealing with alternative medicine means exposing its scams, frauds, pseudoscience, delusion, and its shear muddle headed thinking.
Dealing with does not mean a softly softly, co-operative approach. It is not our ethical duty to trade with snake oil purveyors!
Even such a great and knowledgeable man as this is drawn to ask:
Having established the terminology, we can look at SCAM in a broad sense. It now encompasses such a wide range of activities an all encompassing view is difficult, or even impossible. Also, SCAM permeates not just medical life, but political and social life as well. It gradually infiltrates mainstream society, in a manner mysterious to many of us. How is this happening?
This I know, and, apparently, I am one of the very few who do. And what I say is pooh-poohed as the ravings of a divorced man, rather than the insights of a man who was married to a cultist who killed, and was able to read and understand all of her diaries, writings, recordings, books - everything - and then reconstruct and comprehend it as a believer does. I know what they know. I see as they see. Their symbols, where they gather, pass on information, make connections - all of it. And everyone dismisses it over the word "cult." Well, here's Dr. Sharpe again:
Many popular SCAMs have been started by an individual who has had some blinding thought or revelation. A Eureka moment.
Hahnemann and homoeopathy, Palmer and chiropractic, Peczely and iridology, Fitzgerald and reflexology, Bach and flower remedies. Or a more recent example Andrew Weil and stoned thinking.
Some essential truth has been revealed to an individual. Not by a rational process of inquiry and investigation, but by some sort of quasi religious or spiritual experience.
This results in what can reasonably be referred to as a cult, rather than a scientifically proven method of medicine.
I knew that long before I ever became aware of him. I know all of it. This is a problem that can be dealt with, but it requires we get back to being who we are/were as Americans, and start admitting things we deny are true.
Like there are cults, they are active, and they must be stopped - even if it means being the kind of people Boomers swore they'd never become and doing things we're told are wrong to do. We have to be assholes in the face of this.
The Macho Response.
When you close your eyes, do the dots circle around your head?
Ann, your line is from that Neil Young song: "Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them..."
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