In the end, philosophy offers the means of separating the workable from the absurd -- logic. It is worth reminding ourselves that Plato said of his Academy: let none enter but those who have mastered geometry. That was the geometry of Euclid, a geometry that depended upon logic that demonstrated much counter-intuitive knowledge was undeniable truth. Euclidean geometry and its descendants are the first introduction of high-school students to formal logic as necessary for proofs. Even today it is high-school geometry that separates the future college kids from everyone else, likely because it introduces formal logic essential to advanced thought in anything. Shapes? Geometry is still fascinating, but one would not be hurt too badly in most of life if one believed that bigger triangles have bigger angles than little triangles. (The angles of a 3-4-5 triangle are exactly the same as those of a 51-68-85 triangle, thank you).

Philosophers as different as Lukacs and Ortega y Gassett may disagree on the core of political reality (Marxism vs. romantic conservatism), but they agree on the same iron laws of logic to establish the reliability of a line of reasoning, and they recognize objective reality (typically, statistical evidence) as the test of truth. A really-bad philosophical construction, let us say racial bigotry (and modern antisemitism is racist in practice), fails because it is easy to pick apart for its shabby logic as well as consequences that become increasingly absurd. An anti-black racist can easily use Mike Tyson as an example of all that he finds wrong with black people... but ignores Neil de Grasse Tyson, who does have five things in common with Mike Tyson: masculinity, having made much money, the same surname, being black, and being from and living in the Greater NYC area.

It is impossible to prove one's core values. Believe certain things, and one is an Islamic fundamentalist. Believe some other things, and one is a Marxist. I am evidently neither, and I need not go into the details. People can look at what I post and glean my core values. We all have reality to hammer away at stupidity; we may simply disagree on how to use it.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I think the term you are looking for is: Logical Insanity. See its cousin: M.A.D.

~Chas'88

I think he means thinking "the ends justify the means" which violates the second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

Originally Posted by apollonian

Observe now Obama, a gross usurper, not even "natural-born,".

Are your referring to the fact that Obama has a foreign-born parent? This is not unprecedented. Herbert Hoover had a Canadian-born mother. Woodrow Wilson's mother was English. Chester Arthur and James Buchanan both had Irish fathers. Thomas Jefferson's mother was born in England, and Andrew Jackson's parents were both born in Ireland.

Or are you a birther?

"The West" as such is in it's last, deconstructive stage. Those of us who find ourselves not part of the emerging creole majority (by fate and chance of birth, not choice) --- who instead find ourselves tied to tribal Europe and it's problems, must look for new options.

The West itself via imperial overreach is becoming something non-Western. In the USA, something creolized with African and Latino cultures plus other ingredients. In France and the UK, something Arabized and Africanized, with Pakistani-Muslim input in Britain.

Those in the West who have not mixed into this metamorphosing culture are already the odd man out. Affirmative Action will gain momentum over time, as it has in South Africa, and will continue so long as socioeconomic differences between different skin color "races"/quasi-castes persists.

Some whites will choose to engage the new creole culture and become part of it. Probably getting rich and powerful and somewhat mixed over time. This is the "easy path" of least resistance in our dominant global post-colonial epoch/zeitgeist.

Other whites will elect to engage a more difficult existential task. Related to the Shoah, the Holocaust---the criminal policy crystallized in the mind and actions of the part-Jewish National Socialist Reinhard Heydrich. The confused, aggressive mischling, the ashamed mamzer who was the poster child of the Nordic physical/character ideal of the abortive SS state in Eastern Europe.

His actions were connected to the local aspirations of an age and entire Volksgemeinschaft (national community) that did not want to mix under the tutelage of Bolshevism and was existentially warring against another more ancient belief system that long ago had rejected mixture with non-kin (Judaism) and practiced communal self protection against hostile outsiders since ancient times.

This is an existential breach. The Original Sin of our epoch, it can be frankly said. It has a quasi-religious character, which means it belongs to the realm of the sacred. The existential realm beyond ordinary activity -- the domain of sin and redemption. Atonement, at-one-ment means a synthesis of conflicting elements. Since most of the SS and Bolshevists and their Jewish and Christian victims are dead or well past marriage age---this crime of the fathers passes down to the next generations. The young, who are connected to this existential problem by ancestry and history.

Atonement means reconciliation through unity. Joining together in works and binding existential deeds, which means collective sacrifices in response to outside dangers -- and procreation. Generation of children whose ancestry ties them to both sides that were opposed. With ancestral and cultural ties binding the two sides together and overcoming the flaws and deficiencies of their parents---moral and physical.

That's the task. Nothing else will suffice for this Darwinian/existential problem of two tribes that have refused to mix and instead fought to stay separate from the mixed multitudes of the nations (hagoyyim)--- and those who opt to "play pretend" and hide in the obscurity of Galut to avoid this key issue will be lost among the mixed multitudes of the post-colonial West.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

In the end, philosophy offers the means of separating the workable from the absurd -- logic. It is worth reminding ourselves that Plato said of his Academy: let none enter but those who have mastered geometry. That was the geometry of Euclid, a geometry that depended upon logic that demonstrated much counter-intuitive knowledge was undeniable truth. Euclidean geometry and its descendants are the first introduction of high-school students to formal logic as necessary for proofs. Even today it is high-school geometry that separates the future college kids from everyone else, likely because it introduces formal logic essential to advanced thought in anything.

It does nothing of the sort. Many high school geometry courses don't even do formal proofs anymore.

Shapes? Geometry is still fascinating, but one would not be hurt too badly in most of life if one believed that bigger triangles have bigger angles than little triangles. (The angles of a 3-4-5 triangle are exactly the same as those of a 51-68-85 triangle, thank you).

Philosophers as different as Lukacs and Ortega y Gassett may disagree on the core of political reality (Marxism vs. romantic conservatism), but they agree on the same iron laws of logic to establish the reliability of a line of reasoning, and they recognize objective reality (typically, statistical evidence) as the test of truth. A really-bad philosophical construction, let us say racial bigotry (and modern antisemitism is racist in practice), fails because it is easy to pick apart for its shabby logic as well as consequences that become increasingly absurd. An anti-black racist can easily use Mike Tyson as an example of all that he finds wrong with black people... but ignores Neil de Grasse Tyson, who does have five things in common with Mike Tyson: masculinity, having made much money, the same surname, being black, and being from and living in the Greater NYC area.

It is impossible to prove one's core values. Believe certain things, and one is an Islamic fundamentalist. Believe some other things, and one is a Marxist. I am evidently neither, and I need not go into the details. People can look at what I post and glean my core values. We all have reality to hammer away at stupidity; we may simply disagree on how to use it.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

It does nothing of the sort. Many high school geometry courses don't even do formal proofs anymore.

Geometry. Like symmetry. On the moral / ethical plane, this means that rules claimed by one side apply equally to the other side. Of course, geometry requires visibility - no non-Euclidian hidden dimensions. Clear and simple rules, for all to see.

No star chambers, no hidden hand, no darkness. Everything in the unconcealment of the clearing. Like a ray of sunlight opening up on a mountain peak, for all to see. Aletheia, Truth.

Hm. Your whole construct of "Platonists vs Aristotelians" is totally abstract. How do you objectively determine which camp a person is even in.

As far as tribe mixing. The Jewish people have hardly mixed at all in 3000 years, and even their worst modern enemies in Europe (the National Socialists) believed they were a superior race, albeit one in a Darwinian struggle for dominance with the non-Jewish Germanics. The big difference is in the ethos. Some people make really good attorneys, physicians, mathematicians, analysts, etc. And some people make really good fighters (like the Prussians). Both might be capable of advanced cultivation and technology (especially if they work together instead of stupidly/pointlessly acting against each other).

One could argue that National Socialism was like a mirror of political Zionism. Both are partly secular and partly religious (the NS had their own strange but very modern form of quasi religion). But both focused on joining together as a newly unified people and protecting their kinfolk - because both believed they had a divine/evolutionary mission connected to unique moral qualities embodied in their collective ethos.

Even Herzl thought the Jewish people would get a strange kind of help. Some disaffected Prussian guy named Kingscourt pops up in Altneuland, his novel about Zionism.

For the West at large, mixture and Creolization are just the reality. If you object to it, you need more than a 'tude. You need a strategy. A collective strategy that doesn't involve hurting the Jewish people. Their doctrine says they are protected. Maybe others are also protected in a similar way too for synergistic/complementary reasons. Harming people like that is an existential mistake. A Darwinian mistake that tends to backfire in a bad way.

Originally Posted by Anc' Mariner

That's the task. Nothing else will suffice for this Darwinian/existential problem of two tribes that have refused to mix and instead fought to stay separate from the mixed multitudes of the nations (hagoyyim)--- and those who opt to "play pretend" and hide in the obscurity of Galut to avoid this key issue will be lost among the mixed multitudes of the post-colonial West.

Exactly so.

If I read you right, you are suggesting that the Nazis, and by extension other white suprematists or racial purists, are just like their principle victims, the Jews (or at any rate the pure Zionists), in that they want to stay separate from this creolization and mixing of races going on, but that this is doomed to fail in a time of increasing mixing in the wake of colonialization in these last days of "Western" civilization. Our task in these times is to atone for these attempted separations and dominations, and thus be more united.

Originally Posted by apollonian

Obama is not "natural-born" as required by Constitution--that means his parents were not both full citizens of USA at time of birth--it also requires he be born in USA--and this is in accord w. understanding of nat. born at time of Const., esp. Emmerich de Vattel.

Likelihood is Obama's father was really F.M. Davis, but in that case, Obama would have been committing fraud in that way.

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. His mother was an American (Stanley Ann Dunham), which is good enough, and that his father was a British subject at the time of the current President's birth has no bearing on his citizenship.

Enough said. One parent is enough, so long as that parent achieves or maintains US citizenship. So far as is known, Stanley Ann Dunham never renounced her US citizenship.

Originally Posted by apollonian

Obama is not "natural-born" as required by Constitution--that means his parents were not both full citizens of USA at time of birth.

The constitution does not stipulate a requirement that the president's parents both be citizens of the United States at the time of birth. It simply says "natural born" and provides no definition of what that might mean. The most logical definition is that the president must have been a citizen of the United States for his entire life, that is born a citizen. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, which at that time was a state and so he was born a citizen.

Originally Posted by apollonian

Sorry Mike: but the clear and un-disputed understanding of "nat. born" is (a) in the country, (b) to parents who are full citizens, period. And the authority is E. de Vattel who was the active authority at time of founders.

You have a link? What has the Supreme Court ruled on this matter?

Originally Posted by apollonian

pbrower2a: no offense, but I can tell here, already, u're most likely raging, screaming homosexual, and I find ur sort isn't really susceptive of reason; u merely lecture as if to intimidate everyone else, though I see u're valued, "senior" member here w. thousands of postings.

But since we see u like to bloviate, maybe u can take up for JDW and tell us about fourth turning--I'm interested in that, for sure.

Raging? Screaming? No way!

How did you come up with the idea that I am a homosexual -- and how is that even relevant? One can be for gay rights out of a moral conviction, just as one could be for civil rights for Southern blacks without being black.

In view of your acceptance of discreditable crank theories (and Holocaust denial is as cranky as things can get, but denial of the US citizenship of Barack Obama is also cranky, but much more commonplace) you have little standing. Sure, you can put some big words together and talk down to people. There are people with more intellectual authority than I have (I have only a Bachelor's degree), but as a rule they do not talk down to me. I had an experience with people trying to talk down to me -- members of the LaRouche cult who tried to convince me that the British Royal Family wee kingpins in the international trade in illicit drugs.

I have taught, and in my experience one is far more effective when one can show respect to the pupil. The teacher-student relationship is an intent to raise the position of the student, whether in kindergarten or deep into grad school. To be sure I have tried to intimidate a student, but such has always been in the wake of severe misconduct that undercut such authority as I had, especially if the student has done something close to getting him referred to the principal's office. After such an incident I have usually kissed up to what remained of the class. One bad student who not only refused to do the assignment but then smarted off about it, and 24 good ones doing a boring exercise in a 7th-grade English class? After referring the one bad student I praised the rest of the class, and I one student who told me that what I had just done was 'mean' that I appreciated her concern for the expelled student's welfare.

Because you get one of the salient events of the last 4T (the Holocaust) completely wrong, you have no standing with which to discuss the theory. You try to put yourself into some impressive categories, much unlike me. Yours include "crank" and "bigot", neither of which gets much respect here. The Holocaust is a consequence of a 4T gone catastrophically badly. Maybe you would like to explain why such horrors as the Holocaust and the Holodomor are most likely to happen in a 4T -- and not in a conformist 1T likely to repress or smooth difference, a culturally-splintering 2T in which tolerance for difference peaks, or a disorganized 3T.

Combine fear, absolute power, secrecy, a tendency to treat any envied group as pariahs, economic despair, and despotic government and maximal horrors are possible. Such is possible in a 4T in response to political, economic, and cultural failure. Maybe you need to the failure of the Weimar Republic.

Originally Posted by apollonian

By golly, but this is brilliant dicta by u, pbrower2a, as usual--but . . . do u have any reasoning, or perhaps citations to back it up? Don't u unnastan' what "natural born" means and is supposed to mean? Don't u think the commander-in-chief ought to have un-questionable, un-questioned loyalty, just for the morale of the troops and people? Don't u realize that under the law of UK, Obama is also citizen of UK, since that was citizenship of his supposed daddy-o? Why were Obama's b. records in Kenya removed? In what hospital in Hawaii was Obama born?--do u happen to know?

It has been settled.

Further, what do u think of his Indonesian step-daddy-o who adopted him?--wasn't Obama's citizenship alienated then?

Good for him. But such did not contradict the future President's "natural citizenship".

Do u think Obama ought to divulge his records, seeing as how it's privilege to be Pres.?--or do u think it's his right to keep such info fm the people he serves? Don't u think people have "standing" in Fed. court to sue to have these records public? What do u think about Obama's forged b. cert.?--is it ok for the Pres. to commit fraud, or should he be subject to laws like anyone else?

The records are available in Honolulu, Hawaii.

As James Randi puts it,

EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY PROOF

You show yours. No, keep your zipper up. Do you think that that excites me? I'm not gay!

Originally Posted by apollonian

Obama is not "natural-born" as required by Constitution--that means his parents were not both full citizens of USA at time of birth--it also requires he be born in USA--and this is in accord w. understanding of nat. born at time of Const., esp. Emmerich de Vattel.

Likelihood is Obama's father was really F.M. Davis, but in that case, Obama would have been committing fraud in that way.

Are you sure that YOU are natural born? You seem very unnatural to me Are you from another planet, or just another time?

Y'all, ignore the troll.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Exactly so.

If I read you right, you are suggesting that the Nazis, and by extension other white suprematists or racial purists, are just like their principle victims, the Jews (or at any rate the pure Zionists), in that they want to stay separate from this creolization and mixing of races going on, but that this is doomed to fail in a time of increasing mixing in the wake of colonialization in these last days of "Western" civilization. Our task in these times is to atone for these attempted separations and dominations, and thus be more united.

If you think that's the answer, the it's easy. Find yourself a guy or gal from outside your tribe (no, I don't mean personal religious beliefs - I mean biology) and get to procreatin'.

If that isn't happening, eventually people start to ask why the words and deeds aren't adding up to a coherent program. Words and deeds. "Guess who's coming to dinner (with your eligible young bachelor/bachelorette son or daughter)?" That's the biological moment of truth.

Otherwise, it would be asymmetrical to require from others what you don't require of yourself. Call it the Euclid Test of evolutionary ethics.

Or the expanded Euclid test could be: Don't require of others on their own turf what you don't require of your tribe on your home turf.

Or, if nobody has a right to home turf where they set their own rules, then let's just call the world a big libertarian free for all where only the individual and subjective pleasure and utility matters and the collective life of the genos counts for nil. Where nobody can feel safe to secure a future for their children and grandchildren as part of a continued cultural stream linked by shared communal life and ancestry.

Either it is or it isn't morally correct to dissolve or replace another culture (including replacement through mixture) to suit a political agenda. But if it is deemed morally acceptable, then that would nullify the enduring principles established at Nuremberg, and erase the lessons of the 20th century. I don't think the zeitgeist permits that.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I think he means thinking "the ends justify the means" which violates the second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

This is not about choosing advancement versus choosing atonement, but about focusing on one versus the other. For advancement to work, there has to be a good moral foundation. (Note that I am using the term morals in a neutral manner. Everyone has them, by some definition. Yours appear to be stated in the above quote.) Likewise, for atonement to work, there has to be a good understanding of consequences.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Y'all, ignore the troll.

Sadly, I think this dude is a True Believer, not a troll.

Originally Posted by JDW

This is not about choosing advancement versus choosing atonement, but about focusing on one versus the other. For advancement to work, there has to be a good moral foundation. (Note that I am using the term morals in a neutral manner. Everyone has them, by some definition. Yours appear to be stated in the above quote.) Likewise, for atonement to work, there has to be a good understanding of consequences.

From my Millie prespective, right now there seems to, at the moment, to be a split between Millies with a classical liberal/Individualist ethic and Millies with a ecological/communitarian ethic. Though the individualist Millies are not all Right-Libertarians, there are plenty of individualist Millies who are Left-Libertarian and identify as "progressives" or "liberals" despite the differences in basic ethical principals between them and us "communitarian" progressives.

This seems to match to the Orange and Green worldviews in Spiral Dynamics:

Orange: Right-Libertarian individualists
Transitional Orange-Green: Left-Libertarian individualists
Green: eco-communitarians.

Originally Posted by apollonian

Absolutely, I'm serious Christian who believes in TRUTH (Christ) above all other ideals/premises as means to Godly happiness (Gosp. JOHN 14:6), and note I give premises for conclusions and informative citations and ref.s, thank u very much.

LOL, you hate Jews yet your Lord and Savior was a Jew. Your hatefulness and bigotry is 100% un-Christian. If Jesus came back today you would be the guys harassing him as a dirty liberal hippie.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Y'all, ignore the troll.

I don't think he's a troll; he's a member of the T4T lunatic club

(I know, some people think I'm a member too..... I wasn't going to mention that.... )

Originally Posted by Odin

From my Millie prespective, right now there seems to, at the moment, to be a split between Millies with a classical liberal/Individualist ethic and Millies with a ecological/communitarian ethic. Though the individualist Millies are not all Right-Libertarians, there are plenty of individualist Millies who are Left-Libertarian and identify as "progressives" or "liberals" despite the differences in basic ethical principals between them and us "communitarian" progressives.

This seems to match to the Orange and Green worldviews in Spiral Dynamics:

Orange: Right-Libertarian individualists
Transitional Orange-Green: Left-Libertarian individualists
Green: eco-communitarians.

Invading my turf again, are ya?

Millie materialists, get off my spiritual lawn

http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html

Originally Posted by Odin

From my Millie prespective, right now there seems to, at the moment, to be a split between Millies with a classical liberal/Individualist ethic and Millies with a ecological/communitarian ethic. Though the individualist Millies are not all Right-Libertarians, there are plenty of individualist Millies who are Left-Libertarian and identify as "progressives" or "liberals" despite the differences in basic ethical principals between them and us "communitarian" progressives.

This seems to match to the Orange and Green worldviews in Spiral Dynamics:

Orange: Right-Libertarian individualists
Transitional Orange-Green: Left-Libertarian individualists
Green: eco-communitarians.

That's interesting, Odin, because what you are describing is intellectual diversity but moral conformity. Contrast that with the GIs, whom it could be argued had intellectual conformity but moral diversity. (Clearly, the Republican generation had it.)

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I don't think he's a troll; he's a member of the T4T lunatic club

(I know, some people think I'm a member too..... I wasn't going to mention that.... )

Bwahaha :-) Nah Eric, I dig ur POV. Apollonian is just regurgitating some cultural muck from the last few turnings. Cleaning out the good old saecular gutters in a way. Can be kathartic but a little messy.

Anyway I'm hoping some Elders of Zion care enough about their grandkids to think about how we might find new, creative chances for healing. With deeds and real sacrifices----you might be surprised who is willing to make them. As far as young Jewish people go, well----the future needs good, capable people with a feeling for community.

What comes naturally for some people (patience, kindness, humor) others have to strive for or find an outer "religious" framework to get their heads around. Just one of the limitations of the nations. Some people are lucky enough to have a temple inside ---- others of us spend our whole lives searching for it as something a little beyond the social horizon. Just a little out of reach.

Originally Posted by apollonian

"Cultural muck"? I consider my conclusions to be quite logical, so if u find some error, u need to make a case, etc.

Oh come on. The Protocols? Srsly? If you want coherent anti-Semitism, try Kevin MacDonald. I have some basic problems with his concepts, but at least he makes a more or less coherent argument.

Or read the world's first and greatest anti-Semite. Hint: he's the main character in the Five Books of Moses. The guy who came out of the sea. He pretty much said: you peeps need to get your act together. I don't care how smart or rich you think you are, because this is a has been society. The burning bush is the Etz haChayim. It represents the world and the nations. You need a future, and it's not in Egypt.