Blake's courage stunned Amazon's predatory water rats

This quote from the story, I found rather stunning:

"All will be charged with "latrocinio", or armed robbery followed by murder. Latrocinio usually attracts jail terms of 18 years..."

But then again, I'm "evil" in the eyes of many: I'm a conservative.

Marc---

I?d be interested in knowing your precise definitions of ?conservative? and ?bigot.? I?d liked to know if conservatives know what IS was, because most of the bigots I know only know what WAS is. When Hillary IS president, will all the conservatives still be worrying about what IS was? Did Bill?s blow job in the Oval Office bother you more or less than George?s lip job with your new taxes.

It?s all attitude.

When George W IS finally finished mumbling his way through the Oval Office, will we be better off or worse off than we are today? My guess IS that we will be so bad off that the liberals will run Hillary in 2008? Now that IS a thought worth praying over. Makes you want to disappear into the corn fields, doesn?t it, Mr. Lamb?

There are conflicting ATTITUDES, Croaker.

Main Entry: big?ot
Pronunciation: 'bi-g&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, hypocrite, bigot
Date: 1661
: a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices

Michael Lind is my perfect example of such.

The following statement by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN is a fine example of Carteresque liberalism (that always creates 'malaise'):

"Imagine if tomorrow President Bush asked all Americans to turn down their home thermostats to 65 degrees so America would not be so much of a hostage to Middle East oil? Trust me, every American would turn down the thermostat to 65 degrees. Liberating us from the grip of OPEC would be our Victory Garden."

Hence, liberals see danger wherein conservatives do not, and likewise conservatives see danger wherein liberals do not.

To wit:

Mr. Clinton chasing skirts, when he should have been (seriously, not just 'wagging the dog') chasing a man that would kill over 4000 Americans.

Mr. Clinton lied to a grand jury and to a federal judge. For that he was impeached. But a certain GI, from the greatest pork-state in the Union, like David of old, gave him a pass. :smile:

I did not.

It brings to mind C.S. Lewis's book, The Abolition of Man. Lewis writes: "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

Peace, bro.
Marc S. Lamb



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc S. Lamb on 2001-12-12 07:28 ]</font>

The best that could be said of Ronald "Dutch" Reagan is that he appealed to our better selves.

The best that could be said of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton is that he appealed to our worse selves.

IMHO, anyway. :smile:

Thanks, Marc, I needed all of that. Well said, too. That's why Hillary would make a good president, especially right now--she knows a beast when she sees one.

Was it Hemmingway who said: "There's only one beast in the bullfight arena--the crowd."?

Ok, then I still don't get it... Not only did she marry one, she stays married to one... and seems happy about it too. Is she attracted to beasts? Perhaps her and Usama would get along too well. Would this be good for America?

Or are you really just thankful that you'll most likely be dead by the time she yanks the the country for another joy ride through beastville?


p.s. Gary Condit has just filed to run for re-election. Would you advise folks down there to vote for him? Would you campaign for him? Vigorously? If not, why not? And how come Maureen Dowd got all bent out of shape when the D.C. police pooh poohed a missing intern? Didn't she, and NOW, show the D.C. police what they thought about hanky-panky between powerful pols and young interns? How come everybody gets it anyway they like except conservatives and cops? Guess we still be 3T, huh? :smile:

Get out of the corn field, Marc, you're going against the grain.

Baaaaa! :smile:

On 2001-12-12 11:37, Croaker'39 wrote:

That's why Hillary would make a good president, especially right now--she knows a beast when she sees one.

Yes, but she only gets a fleeting glimpse of it in the split second before the mirror breaks.

That?s very unkind, Stonewall. Ask not for whom the mirror reflects?

I predict a woman will ascend to the Oval Office in 2009, and she won?t be a Republican. Hillary?s one of a few with the moxie to preside over the Second Constitutional Congress. That?s when things get more like a 4T.

Will she knit by hubby's side while chatting by the fireside radio, ala our former Mrs. Gray Chump?

Or will 'baking cookies' be the more post-modern form of female hoodwinkery?

Hummm, to bake, or not to bake? That is the question! :lol:

On 2001-12-12 18:15, Marc S. Lamb wrote:

Will she knit by hubby's side while chatting by the fireside radio, ala our former Mrs. Gray Chump?

She is too imperious to give a hoot about radio addresses heard only by a few folks aged 75 and up -- the cost/benefit utility is not there. Think television. How about that all networks simultaneously interrupt their football games (think "Heidi") and Charlie's Angels' reruns and whatever and cut to a still shot of the Kremlin? Add in some somber music and leave this image and "accompaniment" on every channel all day long in line with the old Soviet policy regarding deaths of leaders. Then at some point in the evening, she can come on in all her glory and address the proletariat, enlighten us with her pravda, and tell us of the great successes of the latest Five-Year Plan. Imagine this occurring every week. Now THAT sounds more like Hillary.

I have read Professor Fogel's book and have written a review of it and have submitted the review to the American Historical Review. As time goes on I will offer some of my thoughts on the text. First of all he probably either hasn't come across S&H or didn't see there importance in cyclical studies. He is clearly in debt to McLoughlan and Anthony Wallace. It is interesting what he has to say about the Third Great Awakening. His data supports my contention that the dates of the Third Great Awakening are 1893 to 1912. Of course Mike Alexander had come to a similar conclusion some time back. Of greater significance is his decription of the period of the "high" between the Wars of National Unification Crisis and the 3rdGA. Mike Alexander, Dave Krein and I have long contended that there was no "Civil War Anomoly" and that there indeed was a 19th century crisis when a hero generation came of age. The problem we have had was dating the end of the crisis. Mike and Dave see 1877 as the end while I have held out for 1871. This would make the Wars of National Unification Crisis be either 20 years 1857-1877 (Krein and Alexander) or 15 years 1857-1871 (Me). Of course the dates I give for the Gilded High would be the 22 years between 1871 and 1893 while Krein and Alexander would submit a 17 year high 1877-1893. Since the three of us are of the opinion that turnings are determined by the interplay material causes at the infrastructural and structural level of culture, we agree that population and technolgy are central in explaining the mehanisms for turnings. I have always maintained that the shrort crisis 1857-1871 was driven by the massive immigration of Germans and Irish to the US that began during the 1830's but that was curtailed during the crisis. To quote Fogel, "Between 1845 and 1854, immigration, mainly from Ireland and Germany, was so heavy that the total number of immigrants entering the country during these years exceeded the combined population of nine of the sixteen Northern states as reoorted in the 1850 census." ( p.61) I also had difficulty with a short high following the crisis. I suggested that the deaths caused by the war plus the impact of the second fossil fuel revolution would necessarily make the high longer than the crisis. Hence my 15 year crisis 1857-1871 followed by a 22 year long Gilded High 1871-1893 as opposed to Krein and Alexander's 20 year crisis 1857-1877 followed by a 17 year high 1877-1893. If it could be shown that population was indeed smaller after the crisis then I would have evidence that would justify my longer high. Fogel provides such data. He states on page 142 " More puzzling are the decades of sharp decline in height and life expectancy,some of which occurred during eras of udeniably vigorous economic growth." He was describing the "puzzle" found presented in his Figure 4.1 on page 141. The two graphs measure height and life expectancy, he shows in Figure 4.1 "...that Americans achieved World War II heights by the middle of the eighteenth century...." Also the same graph shows that Americans also achieved WW II levels of life expectancy by the middle of the eighteenth century. Fogel also shows how both height and life expectany began to decline after 1790 and that the low point in both height and life expectancy was reached between 1871 and 1893. DMMcG

An important quote from Fogel on methodology, "Although developed by different sets of scholars, Great Awakening and realignment constructs overlap. Great Awakening and realignment constructs have been fashioned primarily by intellectual, religious, and political historians whose evidence is primarily qualitative (newspaper stories, church records,sermons, political and religious tracts, theological essays, congressional debates, party platforms, autobiographies, letters, diaries, and oral histories). These scholars are more empirical than theoretical. By contrast, the realignment model has been fashioned primarily by political scientists and historians, who make extnsive use of social science theories and quantitative evidence. Much of this work higes on statistical analysis of popular voting behavior at local and national levels. Patterns of votes in Congress and in state legislatures on a wide variety of issues have been extensively analyzed. For the period since World War II, much use has been made of surveys of attitudes among various sectors of the electorate. Not only do these constructs reinforce each other, but the synergism of different types of evidence and the analytic techniques employed in developing them enhances explanatory power. Together, Great Awakening and realignment constructs provide a revealing analysis of religious-political cycles in American life." People who have been reading the postings on the "material cause" thread in the "beyond america" forum will realize that my approach tends toward the qualitative kind while Dave Krein and Mike Alexander tend toward the quantitative kind. S&H to their credit have used both. DMMcG

One of the many interesting things that Fogel considers in his book is something he calls "technophysio evolution." On page 74 he says, "The theory technophysio evolution rests on the proposition that, during the past three hundred years, particularly during the last century, human beings have gained an unprecidented control over their environment--a degree of control so great that it sets them apart not only from all other species but also from all previous generations of Homo sapiens. This has enabled Homo sapiens to increase its body size by over 50 percent, to increase its average longevity by more than 100 percent, and to improve greatly the robustness and capacity of vital organ systems." This, of course, is a major causal factor in the foreshortening of the saeculum since the technological Revolution of the Hanoverian High ca. 1701-1727 and the coming of age of the city of London. DMMcG

"This has enabled Homo sapiens to increase its body size by over 50 percent, to increase its average longevity by more than 100 percent, and to improve greatly the robustness and capacity of vital organ systems." This, of course, is a major causal factor in the foreshortening of the saeculum..." --DMMcG

Ok, but why, in layman's terms, Mr. McGuiness, is this so? In my pea-size brain, the very opposite should be happening. Why do I think this? Because the S&H model is driven by archetypes. Four archetypes to be precise; not five, not six, but four. And the four archetypes interacting create a climate much like the four seasons.

But, if what you claim is true, then an Artist archetype (the shadow of the Civic), due to longivety, is going to be very much a player in winter. How can this be? How can a society create a new covenant with so many in positions of power that like the old one just fine, Mr. McGuiness? Excuse me, but this seems silly to me, and completely invalidates the "four-stroke" S&H theory.

A prime example of the folly of such thinking is the headline "Jeffords changed history"
Mr Carl Leubsdorf, of the The Dallas Morning News, writes; "But it is clear that the Vermont lawmaker's decision last spring to abandon the Republican Party and give Democrats control of the Senate was one of the year's most significant political events. It may rank second only to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in terms of its impact on U.S. domestic and international policy."

Now daggone it, Jimmy Jeffords is a Silent. Yet here we are, supposedly in a fourth turn, and a Silent switching parties is being noted as nearly the equal to the trigger event itself? This can't be! Not if S&H are even remotely right.

And when one ponders the fact that over 35% of the national leadership positions in this country are filled with guys like Jimmy Jeffords?

Well, maybe Mr. Krein was right. Maybe it means a mild winter ahead.

But I rather think of it wishful thinking. :???:

p.s. I am looking forward to reading your review of Professor Fogel's book that you have submitted the American Historical Review, Mr. McGuiness. Could you let us know when it's published? Or even, perhaps, provide a link to it now?



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc S. Lamb on 2002-01-20 18:02 ]</font>

Professor Fogel has written an extremely elegant and important work. To my mind it is most simply expressed in his presentation of the struggle he describes as fundamentalism vs modernism not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. His theory not only explains the current state of affairs with our "war on terrorism,"(macrocosmic) but also the outcome of the election of 2000 (microcosmic). The "war on terrorism" (is it a war or a "police action?") is "modernism," that is, advanced military thechnology and advanced "free enterprise" economics, versus "fundamentalism," of the Islamic variety. (macrocosmic) The election of 2000 divided the nation into Urban "blue zones," and rural "red zones," that is to say, "blue zones" of local and federal "big government" (as archetypified in urban sociopathologies like welfare programs championed by the "Social Gospelers" and "Muckrakers" of the 3rd GA ), and "blue zones" of county government and that "old tyme religion" (as archetypified in things like the "video cults." that would have been admired by the likes of Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday and William Jennings Bryan of the 3rd GA). Of even more interest is how the struggle between modernism and fundamentalism has alternately fluctuated between victories for fundamentalism and victories for modernism from at least the Hussite Awakening 1415-1447 through the New Age Awakening 1964-1984. According to Fogel, we can say that the victory of the New Age Awakening (4th GA) will probably go to the fundamentalists. This victory will probalistically coalese during a 5th GA. We say this since the victory in the 3rdGA (Unitarian) was won by modernism. The victory of the 2nd GA (Transcendental) was won by fundamentalism. The victory of 1st GA (Methodist) was won by modernism. The victory of the Presbyterian Awakening was won by fundamentalism. The victory of the Lutheran Aakening was won won by modernism. And the victory of the Hussite Awakening was won by fundamentalism. (more later) Copyright DMMcG

"The victory of the Presbyterian Awakening was won by fundamentalism"

I don't think so, Mr. McGuiness.

How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church


Thanks for addressing my question though.






<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc S. Lamb on 2002-01-28 13:54 ]</font>

Mr. Murray Rothbard makes the argument that the Third Awakening was a "pietist" attack on credal religions such as Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism to enhance the State's power (often on Prussian academic lines) to prepare the way for the END. This was twinned with the de-Christianizing of Religion with the Social Gospel and making an efficient government the Higher Power.


Does Fogel go over this? Or, is his an evolution of Awakenigs, each to a Higher Plane (A Progress)?

On 2002-01-28 12:29, DMMcG wrote:
(macrocosmic) The election of 2000 divided the nation into Urban "blue zones," and rural "red zones," that is to say, "blue zones" of local and federal "big government" (as archetypified in urban sociopathologies like welfare programs championed by the "Social Gospelers" and "Muckrakers" of the 3rd GA ), and "blue zones" of county government and that "old tyme religion" (as archetypified in things like the "video cults." that would have been admired by the likes of Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday and William Jennings Bryan of the 3rd GA).

These Awakenings always give off the same smell ...modernism and fundamentalism both have the scent of a sulferous enthusiasm.

On 2002-01-28 13:52, Marc S. Lamb wrote:

"The victory of the Presbyterian Awakening was won by fundamentalism"

I don't think so, Mr. McGuiness.

How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church


Thanks for addressing my question though.






<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc S. Lamb on 2002-01-28 13:54 ]</font>

I'm puzzled by two things.

First, Dr. McGuiness, I didn't see a direct answer to Mr. Lamb's questions on how the saeculum can shorten if people are living longer and how you can have a Crisis when so many persons in positions of power are Silents. I've started to wonder the same thing and would like your take on it. :???:

Second to Mr. Lamb -- wasn't Dr. McGuiness refering to the Awakening that occurred during the early part of the 19th Century, where the values were affirmed by the Civil War Crisis? I don't have time to read through every citation people post or read that whole report on the Presbyterian Church, but a quick overlook gave me the impression that they were discussing a change that happened between the Civil War and the Great Depression. That would include the Missionary Awakening (around the turn of the last Century), which Dr. McGuiness cites as being progressive, when the mainline Protestant churches became more like Unitarians.

Dr. McGuiness, did I interpret this correctly?

Virgil, as to your first point; Fogel does not specifically mention your good point on pietism v Lutheranism/RCism (BTW would you say more on the subject?). However, in my review I discuss a similar development within the Roman Catholic Church in America during the 3rd GA. My information primarily comes from a book written by Robert Cross in 1958 entitled "The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism in America." You might be interested to know that one of the key Cathoic leaders in the liberal or modernist camp was none other than John Ireland, Archbishop of St.Paul MN. You know the one that the boulevard connecting the Minnesota State capitol and the Cathedral of St. Paul is named after! Yes, on your second point, both modernism and fundamentalism represent the ideological extremes of their movements and enthusiasts of either stripe seek to destroy the other. DMMcG

Susan, You are right, I did not give a direct answer to Mr. Lamb on the question of turning length. Mike Alexander and I have been "talking" about this question off and on for quite a while now in the "Material Cause" thread under "Beyond America." The simple premise is this: lengths of turnings are population driven--fewer people=longer turnings--more peope=shorter turnings. In my own research, I have seen this process at work on several occassions. The two most dramatic instances, in addition to our present situation, of this phenomena occuring were during the periods of 14th century European History and 19th and 20th centuries Euro-American History. At the close of Orientalization III, during the Avignon Awakening ca. 1305-1328, Europe was reaching that point in its cultural evolution that Anthroplogists call "impaction." Impaction is reached in a cultural system when technologies of subsistence and population density has reached a "critical mass." This is the "Malthusian Dilemma." During the Valois Unraveling ca.1328-1348 turning length had been shortened to near modern levels to about twenty years. During this unraveling, as a result of famines caused by Europe's "little ice age," European population dropped by 10%. As a result of this population decline, the length of the following crisis turning returned to a pre-modern length of thirty years i.e.1348-1378. However, during the thirty year long Bubonic Crisis, Europe's population dropped by thirty to fifty per cent! The following Florentine High reached the impressive length of thiry seven years from 1378 to 1415. Since 1415 population in Europe and America has steadily risen and turning lengths have shortened. This foreshortening process reached current levels with the onset of the first fossil fuel revolution of the Bonaparte High ca. 1801-1819. Since 1801, turnings have reached an average length of around eighteen years. DMMcG

On 2002-01-29 10:40, DMMcG wrote:
Susan, You are right, I did not give a direct answer to Mr. Lamb on the question of turning length. ......

Name is "Jenny" but thanks for the response. :smile:

Marc, the Presbyterian Awakening to which I referred began, following Fogel, McGloughlan, Wallace, and S&H, during the Bourbon High ca. 1594-1625 and would have extended through the Salem Crisis ca.1676-1702. The 3rdGA began during the Hohenzollern High 1871-1893 and ended with the New Deal Crisis ca.1929-1945. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jenny, I apologise for my "senior moment." DMMcG