- Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
- Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
- Unite humanity with a living new language.
- Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
- Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
- Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
- Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
- Balance personal rights with social duties.
- Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
- Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature
A flat stone in the ground... lists as its sponsors "A small group of Americans who seek the age of reason."... According to [Robert C. Christian, the pseudonym of the man who arranged the payments], this was by design: he once said "The group feels by having our identity remain secret, it will not distract from the monument and its meaning."
I happen to think he was right on the money. If the monument was known to have been erected by a particular group, it would be easy to dismiss it as "Oh, just more of that nonsense from so-and-so."...
From the linked webpage, we are sent to this update, calling attention to this clip from the John Oliver TV show "Last Week Tonight," where "Robert Christian" is said to be Dr. Herbert Kersten:
Skeptoid comments:
What John Oliver was reporting was that in 2015, a documentary came out: Dark Clouds Over Elberton: The True Story of the Georgia Guidestones, made by a small group of evangelical Christians intent on revealing what they believed would be some occult truth behind the Guidestones. They tracked down [the banker] Wyatt Martin.
According to a member of the crew who immediately terminated his involvement, the filmmakers tricked Martin, who had always kept his promise to never reveal the man's identity. Martin was quite elderly and was recovering from a recent stroke, and they took advantage to film a return mailing address on an envelope that he clearly did not want to share with them. It led to Herbert Hinzie Kersten (1920-2005), an Iowa doctor — and there was enough other corroborating information to establish that Dr. Kersten was indeed the creator of the Guidestones. The evidence presented in the film truly does leave no room for reasonable doubt.
Kersten had written pressing for population control, and had a reputation in his town for speaking openly about white supremacy — "racist to his fingertips," according to a local historian interviewed in the movie — and had published letters in newspapers praising the views of neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klansman David Duke. Thus, the true motivation for the Guidestones' advocacy of population control is now established as having been a fundamentally racist one, as many have long suspected.
FOOTNOTE: Would you, like Newsweek, say "The Georgia Guidestones... was demolished" or would you prefer "The Georgia Guidestones... were demolished"?
I agree with Newsweek, since "The Georgia Guidestones" is the name of a single monument that just happens to have a title that is written in the plural.
It's like the way you'd say — to grab the first example that pops into my head — "The Last Days of Pompeii" was an 1834 novel that was made into a TV miniseries in 1984:
पोस्ट्स
८८ टिप्पण्या:
I’d never heard of them until yesterday and reading about the engravings; I’m glad it lived up to its final belief.
There is only one question, one important question that needs answering:
What is in the time capsule?
Runnerup question:
What are they going to do with it? Leave it there?
It sounds like Herbert Hinzie Kersten could have been a soulmate of Margaret Sanger.
To whoever bombed it, would you be so kind as to blow up Denver International's demon horse statue next? Holy Mary the jolly rancher cherry flavored pole-dancing mother of God does that thing need to go. The guidestones, to my knowledge never killed anyone, but that horse...
P.s. while you're at it please also blow up the morlocks living under the airfield. Everyone has had it up to here with the kidnapped children.
According to Google .. What is the racial makeup of Elberton Georgia?
Black or African American: 51.77% White: 41.62% Other race: 5.25% Two or more races: 0.83%
No wonder this bastard wanted to remain anonymous. I hope if he approached anybody in Iowa with this piece of trash they had the good sense to tell him he could put those stones where the sun don't shine.
I'd say,
"The Georgia Guidestones sculpture was demolished"
it's not a monument, it's not an artifact, it's a racist work of sculpture; like Stone Mountain
"Kersten had written pressing for population control, and had a reputation in his town for speaking openly about white supremacy — "racist to his fingertips," according to a local historian interviewed in the movie — and had published letters in newspapers praising the views of neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klansman David Duke. Thus, the true motivation for the Guidestones' advocacy of population control is now established as having been a fundamentally racist one, as many have long suspected."
Racism and population control joined at the hip...what a concept. Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes beat him to it, though.
and the first one is blatantly evil, once you penetrate the euphemism "Maintain":
Don't worry, Althouse; I'm sure 'maintain' was meant to represent'abortion'. There. That's not evil, now is it?
And now we know why many ancient monuments exist today only as ruins: The people of the day considered the creators to be Froot Loops and smashed them to bits. Statue and monument destruction has been all the rage since 2020.
I'm personally looking for someone to construct a giant golden statue of Donald Trump, akin to the giant golden buddhas placed all over Asia. It might even use the fat "baby Trump" balloon as a model. Then I'll take bets on how long before it gets destroyed.
I agree with Newsweek because we're talking about Georgia.
It's like the way you'd say - to grab the first example that pops into my head - "Them boobas (pause) was huge," not "Those boobs were huge."
Not to let Bob Boyd kidnap the thread, but
Isn't it "Them Hooters was Huge?"
I thought Big is the word for boobs, as in: "Them was some BIG boobs!
“Maintain at 500 million” means first depopulating down to that level. This a whole lot more than racism and abortion. This is like the Noah’s Ark of humanity. Then the lucky survivors get bred like livestock to improve fitness and diversity?
More Cancel Culture. Oh the humanity. They are coming for you next. Be afraid... very afraid... and send money.
@RideSpaceMountain: "To whoever bombed it, would you be so kind as to blow up Denver International's demon horse statue next? Holy Mary the jolly rancher cherry flavored pole-dancing mother of God does that thing need to go. The guidestones, to my knowledge never killed anyone, but that horse..."
How about the "sculpture" in the Seattle-Tacoma airport that consists of ladders going to the ceiling with glass wings that resemble a smashed ceiling. Many people think it's a construction zone, or it could be a destroyed monument too.
Scroll down to "Wings of Transition" by Norie Sato
http://www.suncountryview.com/virtual-airport-art-walk-seattle-tacoma-international-airport/
The first one may be the only blatantly evil principle, but the only ones that are not evil in practical effect are anathema to the overall theme of the installation. (I.e., 7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials is impossible to implement in concert with the others, like 2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity or 8. Balance personal rights with social duties.)
Whether you despise it because it's evil or because it's incoherent, its loss is hardly a loss. No wonder this clown wanted to remain anonymous.
RideSpaceMountain said...To whoever bombed it, would you be so kind as to blow up Denver International's demon horse statue next?
I thought that horse statue was just a weird shout out to the Denver Broncos.
@RideSpaceMountain I love the DIA Devil Horse. It always gave my kids something to look forward to when we had to drive so far to pick a visiting family member up from the airport. It truly is bizarre.
Never heard of the guidestones until yesterday too. Doesn't seem as fun as the Devil Horse.
The monument itself wasn't racist and didn't have a racist message but it turns out the (formerly-anonymous) guy who funded it *was* racist and therefore the monument must be interpreted and understood as racist and therefore subject to extra-legal destruction--do I have that correct?
The Professor's usual take on this kind of thing is from the art/artist/interpretation angle, which could be interesting here. My reaction is more to note that we're past the "it's ok for a mob to tear down *bad* statues phase and have moved on to the "it's terrific when people use explosives to attack monuments/symbols they find offensive."
I'm excited to see where it goes from here! Officially it's a big-time federal crime to use explosives in the commission of a crime, but we all know if the cause is just it's not really a big deal.
There were at least 4 billion humans in 1980.
And Ozymandias should have put Principle 11 on the sculpture: Don’t destroy this sculpture.
Well this is the ultimate manifestation of the Streisand Effect, isn't it? Practically nobody had heard of the GG prior to yesterday.
The Denver Stallion will remain rampant, eyes blazing red, and has already become a favorite item to sightsee as one enters or leaves the airport. Seeing the reactions of first-time viewers is especially fun.
The giant peach in Gaffney, SC, might serve as an example. It was also derided when initially created from a water tower, but has become a landmark on I-85 over the past decades. I recall hearing Ralph Nader speak at my small SC undergrad college, and the first words out of his mouth were, "Did you all know there is a GIANT PEACH along the highway on the drive down here?"
Having read the text of the stones, I am unimpressed. Where is the recipe for human success, or at least for good homemade bread?
I am glad its gone after just learning of its existence, but if it had been impossible to learn who commissioned it, and so his Ukrainian style white nationalism had remained unknown, could the monument have been determined to be racist? It's like that novel, "The education of Little Tree," it was a widely admired novel until it turned out it was written by a white supremacist. I guess that critics were afraid that the writer was smarter than they were and could find ways to slip his white supremacism past them to infect the novel's readers.
What was the warning we took from the Bronze Age Collapse? I would say "eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." and "Watch out for the Sea People!" Oh, yeah, and "Human sacrifices won't stop an earthquake volcano one two punch!"
They forgot #9, The Soup Bone's famous "Don't Scratch Those Chicken Pox".
I read that Ted Turner may have been involved with the Guidestones.
At a minimum, he is a one-world gov't, population control fellow traveler.
To quote Ted:
"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."
You guys are funny. "It's hardly a loss."
What's the principle at work here--what's the implied rule? If some monument/art/property is distasteful to you then it's ok to destroy it? Or only if the "you" is a sufficiently-large number of people (of the *correct* people, the John Oliver-approved people)?
In Atlanta (about a 2hr drive from Elberton) street racing vandals left skidmarks on the "pride" rainbow crosswalks the city paid $200k to install and that was investigated by local, state, and federal agencies.
When the "lion of the confederacy" monument in (city-owned) Oakland cemetery was repeatedly attacked & had to be moved no one investigated anything.
Seems like another one of those "rule of law" issues that keep popping up. Is it legal to destroy monuments you dislike? The law as written says it's not. Does that law apply to everyone? I'm not much of an art critic myself but there are a few public installations I don't particularly like--would everyone shrug and say "no great loss" if those were destroyed with explosives one of these mornings?
Justice has that blindfold on but I guess she takes a peek to see what kind of politics the offender has or maybe what kind of message the monument in question had.
Be careful what standards you promote!
They'll Georgia Guidestone you and then say they're all brave.
In a sane world (i.e. not this one) the two airport statues would have sealed the fate of 'public' art. I just hope not a nickel of federal money went into either project and only the Colorado and Washington taxpayers got stuck with the bill. Otherwise I'll have to fell guilty about helping foist them on the traveling public.
So sad. Very. But we all like iconoclasam these days.
I had a more in depth observation about how many of these diminish the value and uniqueness of the individual, but I can't get to that until I ask the bigger question.
What is tempered reason? What exactly are we supposed to temper reason with?
Sounds like Bernie Sanders was the author. Or maybe Margaret Sanger but she was dead in 1980.
Meade said...They'll Georgia Guidestone you and then say they're all brave.
Given the enthusiasm of ostentatious attacks on the dead (for their backwards, awful, terrible no-good beliefs) maybe more fitting is
They'll stone you when you're set down in your grave
Isn't it "Them Hooters was Huge?"
That would be crass.
Yesterday there was surveillance footage released of the explosion that blew the Guidestones up. That was released quickly.
But no footage has been released of anyone planting the explosives.
Maybe it was the J6 Pipe Bomber that is so elusive to the FBI. He's still on the loose.
Or maybe it was the Supreme Court leaker.
@Gusty Winds
It is a shoutout to the Broncos. And a murderer...
The "high places" are being obliterated. Day by day, everyone.
My first guess on who the anonymous donor was would be Ted Turner
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (requesting help) released video showing a car driving toward the monument and another of the monument exploding...quite good angles.
But none of people walking toward the monument or placing explosives even though they should have been visible.
Seems very odd they wouldn't show the perps...
Just to add some flavor to this story: there is, or was, a sizeable contingent of right-aligned crazies (including former gov candidate Kandiss Taylor) who've long hated the Guidestones and said they were part of some satanic or one world government plot--I think they were one of Alex Jones' bugaboos.
It wasn't until fairly recently that the identity of the guy who financed the installation was confirmed and publicized (by John Oliver, mainly) and the left-aligned folks decided the Guidestones were horribly racist.
If they had been blown up prior to Oliver's report and some Alex Jones/Q/whoever group took responsibility would the people laughing now have instead used that as proof of a troubling trend in violent extremism, a worrying sign of the danger of misinformation, and an alarming example of the threat posed by far-right groups willing to act as vigilantes and cause destruction to further their sinister agenda?
tim in vermont said...
if it had been impossible to learn who commissioned it..,
could the monument have been determined to be racist?
The part about the extermination of more than 90% shows it's anti one race, at least: the Human race
I still can do long division by hand.
So, 500MM worthies divided by the world's current population of 7.800MM (more or less) is 6.5% (est.), meaning 93.5% of us are considered excess (by the guiding lights of our betters).
And to those betters, I say, "You first."
“To whoever bombed it, would you be so kind as to blow up Denver International's demon horse statue next? Holy Mary the jolly rancher cherry flavored pole-dancing mother of God does that thing need to go. The guidestones, to my knowledge never killed anyone, but that horse...”
At first, I was bothered by the eyes. Then I got used to them, and kinda enjoy them. But don’t mention Jolly Rancher candy, in polite company, esp on the west side of the Denver Metro Area. The original factory was in western Wheatridge, either on Indiana, Kipling, or maybe even McIntire, just a bit north of 44th Ave (and Clear Creek). Went on several field trips there growing up (we lived maybe 5 miles south of there). And then one day, the factory was gone, and they were making the stuff in someplace like Hershey PA, a thousand miles from the nearest real rancher. Cultural Appropriation, if I have ever seen it. (Doing more research, Jolly Rancher was sold to Beatrice Foods in 1966, when I was in HS, moved to Hershey a couple decades later, was manufactured in multiple plants, including Hershey, PA, but now just in Quebec Canada, and the Wheatridge plant that we had visited on field trips was shut down in 2002).
No. 1 + No. 8 = Logan's Run.
In all the news stories of this event - not a single media report shows a photograph or video of the allegedly destroyed stones.
I find that very interesting.
*That* was a tourist attraction? How pathetic.
My theory on the destruction of the stones is this:
Fourth of July is a big, big holiday celebration in northeast Georgia. Everyone sets off their own fireworks and parties for about four days. I suspect that a group of good ole boys starting drinking around Thursday evening and at some point the subject of the stones came up in the conversation. Probably in conjunction with blowing things up and how much fireworks/tannerite/dynamite it would take to take down the stones. Everyone in Elbert County owes their livelihood to the granite business and almost everyone has access to dynamite.
So, after a few days of drinking and talking while refining their plan, they decided to blow up the stones. However, they knew that cameras were on site so it would be hard to do without getting caught on camera. So, someone had the great idea to take it down from afar and they used a 50 cal to do it. They figured early Wednesday would probably be a time when everyone was pretty laid back recovering from the weekend and no one would notice any covert action. They could set the gun up in a tree line several hundred yards from the stones and "ka-boom", the deed is done.
The locals hated the stones and have been wanting them gone ever since they first appeared in the county but I don't think the perps really cared about the message on the stones. They just wanted to blow something up and stayed just drunk enough over the holiday weekend to follow through with their scheming.
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss, and when.
Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on hold.
Be comforted that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
and despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not,
The Universe is laughing behind your back.
I did a bit of research on Kersten because of the obvious eugenic overtones to his alleged ideas. Kersten was following the ideas of McFarlane Burnet, an Australian biologist who developed many of the primary ideas in the field of immunology and won a Nobel prize. Toward the end of his career he published a book called The Endurance of Life which openly promotes eugenics. I say openly - The book states that positive eugenics, using social forces to assist a "good" group to increase its numbers, is not possible in his own time but in a million years it may be.
I believe that Kersten and McFarlane Burnet were, like Shockley, what might be called "wild-type" eugenicists, i.e., they were not in the American or English Eugenics societies. Those societies demanded a certain discipline from their members. Intellectual diversity was encouraged; shooting off your mouth was not.
And so, speculating, it might be that under this monument was a greeting by Kersten to a future society in which eugenics had blossomed. And it might be that that eugenically-oriented society is imagined to have wiped out the genetically-based poor and criminal groups [which in Georgia at the time the book was written were often thought to in a majority in one race.] Moreover, the book itself actually states that perhaps 90% of young men are potential violent criminals and the book focuses on the need for creating a group of young men who are not aggressive. And finally the book argues that conservation may become a religion replacing the Christian. So if Kersten put up the stones and was following McFarland Burnet's ideas it easy to see why in our time the stones might come down.
And go back up again, too. Depending on what page of the book you were reading.
The book in online at Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/enduranceoflifei00burn/page/222/mode/2up
This link goes to the last pages of the book where the eugenic statements are clearest. The book can only be "borrowed" for an hour at a time by members of the Archive. Membership is just a matter of registering.
I am hoping maybe they will auction off shards and pieces of GC. Would be neato having a souvenir, same as berlin wall scraps or cobble stones from old european streets. It's always fun when the thing ends in a bang and you get a piece of the action.
I want to know which eight languages were chosen. But I don't want to catch something from Newsweek.
Anyone know?
@cfs
"So, someone had the great idea to take it down from afar and they used a 50 cal to do it."
There's only one problem, that would be a big - emphasis on big - AL/AN binary charge. Putting on my CWEAT hat for a second, I would say probably 10lbs minimum would necessary, and more if you could get away with it. This assumes a bin-ex of course.
Seeing the video of the detonation last night I'm thinking it wasn't one. My senses tell me ANFO or (considering all the racing cars) PLX (Picatinny Liquid Explosive- nitrometh/AN).
We're talking about 5-10,000lb granite slabs. That would've been a HUGE binary.
It was a great place to eat mushrooms. Or so I’ve been told.
DIA. That airport has some wild crazy stuff going on, but the horse…does anybody ever consider a certain football team that plays nearby? Oh yeah, and those murals!
The award-winning Benjamin Hooks Central Library of the Memphis Public Libraries has concrete panels and pillars in front with a hodgepodge of texts in different languages, formulae, music, and maps to represent human knowledge and aspiration.
One of the more centrally located quotes is, "Workers of the world, unite!" You can imagine the howls that provoked when they opened about 1996.
Makes me wonder how the Atheists in Foxholes Monument fairs. I'll check and report back.
I've lived in the Atlanta metro area for 16 years and I'd never heard of the Guidestones until clips from Atlanta news outlets started showing up on my You Tube feed on Wednesday.
No disrespect to Elbert County, but I have no idea why that location would have been chosen. Is there a gateway for Zuul nearby?
gspencer said...
I still can do long division by hand.
So, 500MM worthies divided by the world's current population of 7.800MM (more or less) is 6.5% (est.), meaning 93.5% of us are considered excess (by the guiding lights of our betters).
BUT they put it up in the 1980's when the population of earth was ~4.5 billion
so, ~4,500,000,000 * 0.10=~ 450,000,000
Blogger Narr said...
I want to know which eight languages were chosen. But I don't want to catch something from Newsweek.
these languages were English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.
Wish I’da read the comments before mentioning the horse.
The use of "maintain" instead of "reduce" suggests that the "5 million" was supposed to be "5 billion." Either the writer was hopelessly innumerate or the stonemason ran out of space for all those zeroes.
Environmentalism, diversity [dogma], social justice, human rites, planned populationhood are elements of an ancient atheistic faith, progressive religion, and liberal ideology directed with the reason of mortal gods and goddesses, experts.
"Seeing the video of the detonation last night I'm thinking it wasn't one. My senses tell me ANFO or (considering all the racing cars) PLX (Picatinny Liquid Explosive- nitrometh/AN)."
++++
I hadn't thought of something such as that. It's possible.
I still think it strange that they have released no video of anyone approaching the stones and placing something there at the site. If they have such video you would think they would have released it and asked for assistance from the public in identifying people involved. So, I'm trying to figure out a way it could have been done remotely without having to be actually on the property.
Covering the tracks, perhaps. Demos-cracy is aborted in darkness, at the twilight fringe.
RideSpaceMountain said..Seeing the video of the detonation last night I'm thinking it wasn't one. My senses tell me ANFO or (considering all the racing cars) PLX (Picatinny Liquid Explosive- nitrometh/AN).
Wouldn't PLX or ANFO require a blasting cap or primary HE charge to set them off? Where do people get caps or other initiators? Anybody can buy a bunch of diesel or Top Fuel but how're they setting them off?
"It suggests forced abortion but also forced pregnancy and childbirth. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers could object intensely."
Given the context of the first rule, I think this supposition is just wrong in half- definitely suggests forced abortion/permanent birth control, but the latter seems a stretch. Probably more like, eugenics- you only get to procreate if you meet certain standards.
All in all, I have always thought these rules were written by a hard-core environmentalist, and I have always thought it was probably Ted Turner who set up the monuments.
The stones were engraved with 10 principles (in 8 languages), and the first one is blatantly evil, once you penetrate the euphemism "Maintain":
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
A reduction in population means an increase in capital and resources for those left alive, enabling significant advances:
“The Black Death of 1347-51 was one of the worst pandemics in Europe’s history. It decimated the population, killing roughly half of all people living.... The Black Death is often credited with catapulting the medieval world into the Renaissance. It is thought to have inspired the cultural, technological, and scientific innovations by which this period is typically defined.”
In any case I’m pretty sure humanity is going to be maintained under 500,000,000,000, and nature’s way of doing it, when comes to that, won’t be pleasant.
@HoodlumDoodlum
"Wouldn't PLX or ANFO require a blasting cap or primary HE charge to set them off? Where do people get caps or other initiators? Anybody can buy a bunch of diesel or Top Fuel but how're they setting them off?"
Cap yes, but not necessarily a booster. PLX doesn't need a booster, ANFO depends. It really depends on what primary you're using, some need a booster, some don't. Some don't even need a cap.
And regarding caps and other detonators...people make them. We dealt with all kinds of homemade caps in Iraq made of HG-fulminate, PETN or HMTD. It's really not that hard.
Damn. Never got down to see it. For those interested in Stonehenge I recommend Mike Pitts’ “How to build Stonehenge.” An extraordinary book about the stunning achievement of Stonehenge built with many stones brought all the way from Wales.
@cfs
"I still think it strange that they have released no video of anyone approaching the stones and placing something there at the site. If they have such video you would think they would have released it and asked for assistance from the public in identifying people involved. So, I'm trying to figure out a way it could have been done remotely without having to be actually on the property."
A few possibilities. The cameras are motion or otherwise action-activated. Not hard to defeat if that's the case. Better possibility, they have video of the car and people but there's nothing to identify about them except the make of the vehicle. 3rd, the explosive was placed at a different time or disguised as something innocuous.
Remote initiation isn't hard either. All they'd need a is an older Nokia and saved videos from Liveleak to figure out how to electrically trigger the charge.
HoodlumDoodlum said...You guys are funny. "It's hardly a loss."
What's the principle at work here--what's the implied rule? If some monument/art/property is distasteful to you then it's ok to destroy it?
You might want to think a bit on what is meant by "a loss" or "not a loss"
Was it a loss, did society have any reason to care, when I broke up my front walk so that I could put in a different one? My old front walk was lost, but that doesn't make it a loss. When people say something (a monument in this case) is a loss, they mean a loss to society. If society does not care or benefit from it, then its loss is not a loss.
Video of the car has been released, so it was emplaced traditionally after all...
"HoodlumDoodlum said...
"Wouldn't PLX or ANFO require a blasting cap or primary HE charge to set them off? Where do people get caps or other initiators? Anybody can buy a bunch of diesel or Top Fuel but how're they setting them off?"
_______________
This is granite country. Everyone in the county is connected to the quarry business and knows someone that has the blasting caps or primary HE charges to set them off. Obtaining the necessary items wouldn't be a problem. Unlocked sheds all over the county probably has what is needed.
tim maguire said...If society does not care or benefit from it, then its loss is not a loss.
And I'd say you might want to think a bit about the morality undergirding that sentiment.
Who gets to decide whether society (however that's defined!) benefits from something?
Society doesn't benefit from it/them therefore the destruction isn't really a loss--how convincing must that idea, phrased as self-evident, have been to followers of Mao, or Stalin, or revolutionaries of one stripe or another! How antithetical to the idea that the destruction of any human thing--any person, work of art, etc--is a diminishment to mankind!
There's art I dislike, and that I could probably get many people to agree is bad, but on that basis would our destroying it mean "society" has suffered no loss? The French mobs who ransacked cathedrals in the 1790's thought that way, certainly. But possibly I'm getting carried away.
Anyway maybe it's the conservative streak in me but I'd prefer it if people were more humble about their ability to know, or willingness to judge, what (and who!) is beneficial to society.
RideSpaceMountain said...And regarding caps and other detonators...people make them. We dealt with all kinds of homemade caps in Iraq made of HG-fulminate, PETN or HMTD. It's really not that hard
I'll take your word for it--I guess if a guy's not worried about making and running around with TATP not much is gonna scare him. I'll leave it to the pros!
Between 1880 and 1920, eugenics was the ruling principle among most leaders and intellectuals, with the odd exception of Catholics such as Chesterton. It was most vigorously embraced by socialists and communists, but capitalists and nascent industrialists embraced it too. Extreme poverty and starvation were also common: for those lacking a religious restriction, eugenics was seen as necessary in an increasingly urban world.
They're not quite the same thing, but there are also boulders in North Georgia with symbols etched into them. Ancient Indian petroglyph boulders. University of Georgia "acquired" a famous one from a man I know. It disappeared from his yard and showed up outside their Archeology building. When I asked to see their Archeology Department's acquisition papers, they told me they'd get right back to us. Never did. Is there any honor in academia? Any?
I read those 10 principles, and then I start singing "You are a child....of the Universe..."
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Straight out of Plato, like Roe v. Wade.
It went up in 1980, financed by someone who worked through a banker who was sworn to protect his anonymity.
Harry Blackmun!
Or Warren Buffett, maybe.
HoodlumDoodlum said...
I'll take your word for it--I guess if a guy's not worried about making and running around with TATP not much is gonna scare him. I'll leave it to the pros
some people do NOT seem worried about fire discipline
Protip: KEEP your magazine AWAY from your rocket launch sites
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature
I think some of those principles made it into Planned Parenthood v. Casey
I'd have to read it again to check.
No way I'm reading it again!
p.s. My favorite line from David Mamet's State and Main: "Why don't you sue me in the World Court."
Somebody paid the property taxes for 40 years. Who?
Somebody owns the land. Who?
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Thanks for the language list, gilbar. Pretty multicultural!
The "Atheists in Foxholes" monument and memorial seems to be OK.
I just noticed that the FFRF (which helped fundraise) is in Madison WI.
Maybe the warning from the Bronze Age would be “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
Is it legal to destroy monuments you dislike? The law as written says it's not. Does that law apply to everyone?
No. We've learned that the last couple years.
So, pardon me if I'm having trouble getting worked up over this.
Nebraska, on the other hand, has Carhenge. Althouse and Meade must see it when they come visit Nebraska.
https://carhenge.com/
Hilarious.
I think I first heard about these 20 years ago. Evangelical types didn't like it, so naturally liberals were all for them.
But it was put up by a virulent white supremacist?
Chef's kiss.
As monuments go, it wasn't much, and things are torn down everyday. It's also true that it was on public land and subject to public decision about whether it should stay up. But what about the sense of wonder? Finding this crazy thing and wondering where it came from and who made it and what the hell it is. I can understand that people don't want public monuments that don't reflect their values, whether it's statues of Confederate generals and Indian fighters, or these Ten Commandments of ecofascist globalism, or just the Ten Commandments, but "Keep America Weird" isn't without appeal either.
wonder how strong "safety reasons" need to be
What if safety wasn't the reason? It didn't look to be very compromised. One piece was obviously broken off the capstone. I was expecting them to bolster it up and leave it.
But a former military guy who has a very good blog pointed something out. The camera didn't show anyone setting the charge. He pointed out that maybe the reason they scooped the whole thing up was to get rid of evidence that the way it was done was a RPG. Rocket Propelled Grenade.. If it was just some angry rednekk dudes,someone had to be on camera to set the charge. It's not There. It would probably create quite a stir if they left them standing and someone found evidence of some sort of tank bustin armament in the sleepy little town..
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