FROM JOE | 2006-07-15
Not Spam. OK. You win. I've had enough. I have never been anywhere, to any website, to any anyplace where I have heard the word "silly" used as often as it is used on this blog. Maybe it's a term used primarily in the South. Maybe not. I don't know. But I think it is overused here. Let's just take a definition of "silly" from my old 1967 dictionary: lacking good sense, foolish, stupid. Calling someone or something "silly" seems to me to be a value judgment. Fair enough. Sounds almost like a smear tactic. To avoid serious argumentation I'll just call you "silly." That's not my style. I'd rather deal with evidence. That is my style.
Everybody believes something. Jesus said, "all things are possible to him that believeth." I never try to upstage Jesus. That's a personal thing. But those Bible Belt Believers that you spoke of believed something. It's not hard to tell a true believer from a phoney. Just look at the life of the person, know what a Christian is supposed to be and take it from there.
There is no private reality. There is just reality. OK, sometimes it's with a capital R if you like it that way. If the believers just mentioned are wrong in their belief it does not follow that they are stupid, foolish or lack good sense. In my opinion. Anybody can be wrong. Anybody can make a mistake. In fact, I don't know anybody who hasn't made many mistakes. I don't call them foolish or stupid or silly or lacking good sense. Unless, of course, they make the same mistake repeatedly.
There are many believers who say they believe who really don't believe at all. They just say they believe and figure that's the only requirement. Then they'll rubber stamp the killing of anybody they think should be murdered. I hold these people in contempt because they are liars from the word go. Oh, yes, that's right they're willing to steal too. From anybody they can as often as they can. Then they'll tell you they're believers. That's not all of them but that's a good quantity of them. As James Dean once said to the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor as he was telling how beautiful she was, "and you know it too."
There is no "final reality." There is just reality. No private reality. Not your reality and my reality. Just reality.
I don't want to live in the world that professors rule. Professors are some of the biggest horses asses I have met in my life. Once again, not all of them fall into this category. Some are outstanding. Like Kevin MacDonald for instance.
Sorry. Materialists are part of Reality. They are part of the part that Reality declares falsehood. Hey, that sounded pretty good, didn't it? Heh! Heh! Heh! Have another drink.
Comment by joe rorke —
MY REPLY:
I don't look in dictionaries for the meaning of words. And it never bothers me in the slightest that I am being repeititive. When anyone is pretentious, when he keeps tryuing to make his opinions sound sophisticated, I point out, over and over and over and over again that he is just being silly.
You want me to stop using the word "silly." Believe me, THEY want me to stop using the word silly. You want to return to a world of Objective Reality, where everyone can be accused, if you look at it in sophisticated terms, of being "silly." Every respectable conservative honors your point of view.
I don't.
When a person says that socialism works, he is being an ass. When someone says he is libertarian and if he took over America and made it libertarian and opened the borders to Mexicans and Indians, it would REMAIN a libertarian society, he is droolingly silly. You want me to change the word. Buckley wants me to change the word. I am not ABOUT to change the word.
If you believe the universe is fundamentally different from what I believe it is, that is a POINT OF VIEW. But if you keep telling me that diversity works, you are being a silly ass. A person who insists that something works that doesn't work there is simply no word to describe him except being silly.
You said, " If the believers just mentioned are wrong in their belief it does not follow that they are stupid, foolish or lack good sense. In my opinion. Anybody can be wrong." That is what Buckley says. But Orwell pointed out that the essence of truth is saying that two plue two is simply four. If you say that two plus two is not four, that is not an alternative opinion.
If you insist two plus two is five, you are reduced to enforcing it by law and terror. You are saying that two plus two is five is an alternative opinion. Two plus two is five is not an alternative opinion.
There is one thing I had in common with the Communists. They always understood that this was a battle to the death. They always knew how to exploit a Buckley or a Kennedy who took them seriously. It was only when Solzhenitsyn was saying that no one took Marxism seriously except Western professors that Communism started coming apart.
I was deeply honored when Bill Rusher told me that at a weekly editorial meeting, someone told William Buckley, "You've got Solzhetisyn and Whitaker after you." Can you IMAGINE the joy of being put in that league? But both Solzhenitsyn and Whitaker had condemned his taking Soviet Marxism as an alternative "point of view."
If a person can be just plain silly over and over and over, I can call him silly over and over and over.
Evil is evil. Silly is silly. Anyone who thinks a person who denies reality is not being a silly ass is a silly ass.