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Thursday, April 06, 2006

Questions For My Father

I wish my father were alive. There's a lot I'd like to ask him.

I'd like to ask him if he doubted what he was doing back when I was in fifth grade, and he made us read a book about the Ku Klux Klan and how it nearly took over NJ politics. I'd like to ask him if he hesitated or had second thoughts when we learned about the Holocaust in school, and at home he taught us about the shiploads of Jews that were turned away from our shores. We learned about the Nuremberg laws at school, and at home he told us about the American eugenics movement and how the Nuremberg laws were, in part, based on those laws. That's the truth.

We learned about the wonders of science and the merits of rationalism in school, and at home he taught us about American science in the 20's and the 30's, and how all the progressive institutions of higher learning in America admired the Nazis. Nazis were celebrated quietly at Harvard and Yale in the 30's. That's the truth. The American medical establishment was supportive not just of sterilization of the "unfit", but also of euthanasia of the feebleminded or ill. The Nuremberg trials stopped that, for a time. Rationalism and science, he taught us, did not stop Yale and Harvard from discriminating against Jewish applicants after WWII.

In school we learned about the Tuskegee experiment, and at home he taught us about the US military conducting experiments on its own soldiers in the 50's. I have since found confirmation of that. In school we learned about the horrors of communism and at home he told us stories about people living in dumps in the 30's.

I guess you could say that there was no room for complacency in my father's household. His standard nighttime relaxation reading consisted of books with more equations in them than words. He taught me to revere the power of mathematics and to understand how incredibly easy it was to lie with statistics. It was a shock to me when I discovered the political Chomsky, because the Chomsky I knew was the Chomsky of information theory. He taught us scientific method, and to laugh at scientific lunacy, and how to tell the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific myth.

A functional culture needs various strands of tradition and inquiry to support itself. None of those strands can afford to let their own traditions harden into myths and truisms. To remain alive they have to function and retest themselves. In the end that was what my father's questions were all about. Is that true? Does that make sense? Does what you say match what you are doing? Have you been driven into a false position? Do you know why you say that?

Like I wrote at the beginning, I still have a lot of questions I'd like to ask my father. They tell me that before he died he said that western civilization was falling, but that there was no place left to run. I think I know why he felt that way. You only have to read the major scientific journals of today to understand that science is politicized and that the scientific establishment in the US is more corrupt than science under Hitler ever was. Our journalists are heedless, corrupt to their very core, don't know the truth from a fiction (read this, if you dare) and are possessed with a salvationist fervor rooted in nihilism. What they think they can accomplish is beyond me, and definitely beyond them. Every cause they take up is aimed at no purpose and at no actual goal. Our judges are so clever that that they have discovered that the words of the laws and the constitution mean nothing. Most of the mainline Protestant churches are corrupt and are also politicized; they are desperately trying to be anything but Christian. The church of good intentions is not going to survive for long.

What I'd really like to ask him is if he sees what I see. Because I see the turning of the tide in the US and Australia. The US population seems to ignore the idiotic scientific lunatics of doom. The younger generation seems to be immune to the shibboleths of the day. The Catholic church has suddenly sucked in a giant breath of faith and appears to be willing to go to the barricades and down in flames for its faith. Taken as a whole, the US armed forces are a group of incredibly courageous people who actually believe in and put into practice principles like honor and self-sacrifice. Naturally they are hated for it. The Jews are still standing around being stubbornly Jewish, and now some sort of new Great Awakening seems to have escaped the standard Protestant denominations and is seeking to ally itself with the biblical tradition.

I think Shrinkwrapped is right. Europe is doomed. If that is so, then we are forced to figure out how to survive as a culture while nearly isolated in the world. Perhaps that's the reason for the US public's unquestionable desire to create an island fortress. I doubt we can do it, but anything is worth a try. The first step would be to develop two functional political parties. We're going to have to figure out how to hold a real debate about real public policy issues once more. We don't have twenty years to fool around on this one. Our environmental laws, for example, have operated to prevent us from building new energy plants or manufacturing facilities. Those must be changed in order for us to even begin to seek energy independence. The 70's are going to have to finally end or we will.


Comments:
IF Europe is doomed then we will go with them. We are Europe West. Our values, culture, past, and present are all linked. It is true that if they don't turn their population plunge around that they will become Muslim, but if our biggest trading partner goes tube city we will be ruined.
 
Howard - that's what I'm scared of. I don't think most of Europe has the moxie to make it. The eastern European countries do, but they are the old Ostmark, and never have been able to stand alone. They fall when NATO falls.

Howard, all that most of Europe now stands for is the proposition that a fantasy can be made real purely by insisting on its reality.

The culture war, to the extent that it exists in this country, is the war between the new Euro-effete and the older yeomanry upon which western civilization now and has always stood.
 
Dymphna, we are reliving the 30's. We most definitely are. Economically and politically, we are.

I am heartsick too.
 
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