We Will Not Cave

  James Madison, speaking to Joseph Jones November 28, 1780,” asked “would it not be as well to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks themselves, as to make them instruments for enlisting white soldiers?   It would certainly be more consonant to the principles liberty which ought never to be lost sight of in a contest for liberty” Alan Gilbert writes, “Madison had long feared black revolt as the Revolution’s Achilles heel” Madison proposed the intermingling black soldiers with majority white soldiers to keep the blacks from revolting.   Legislature came against Madison’s proposal.   It is unjust to free slaves to sacrifice the property of some at the demise for the profit of other slave owners. See, for the white man, it was thought that it would be unjust sacrificing the property of some for the exoneration of the other slaveholders. So putting a slave in a battle that would have him (sic) killed is worse than beating him (sic) each day to get sufficient work done. Jones wr

  Purloined wrinkles pressed from your face, taken away by pictures, going backward in time, you were a delightful young man, but what happened to you? Insanity plea, set you free, you couldn’t accept responsibilities, the motion of lips, mustache twists, smile to frown, suit to gown, how you made it, rejoice, resound, if your name isn’t Ezra Pound, I do not know just who I’ve found, suspenders hang from waste to ground, pristine fingernails and sunken face with heavy frown, face was once perfectly round. Now elongated with a frown, I didn’t know that your name wasn’t Ezra Pound. On the street corner holding up a lamp stand, your glorious self hovers a foot above the ground.   Chipping into your pot, your music makes no sound, I soon realize, you are Ezra Pound. Every face is God’s face from what I can see, with pinstriped pants and unbuttoned sleeves.

The mark of the Beast, they are heating the iron; their plan is to mark us.   To brand us into the next burning, they push us with their words. Onward Christian soldier, following with slave morality, our caustic blonde bodies fall in line, like sheep.   If you have not had the mark yet, run and hide.   Fly away, flee.   They plan to shave us, to brand us, to make us. They will use the venom of words to punctuate our every move.   Flesh peeling, piles, kneeling.   Leveling the blow the master sets forth his hierarchy, based not on empathy or symphony.   The sin will be that we cannot breathe amidst the terror they bring upon us. The treading on leads to hallucination; that carries forth the many-hued nations.   The kaleidoscopic view, the ribbon, the rainbow, the dew. Feeding on grass like sheep, we’re the Last. Pray, prey, you victim, you slain.   My God, where are you, the ache, the pain? Lashes, cracks, and essence proves the noble will not win, but be dashed into the dirt, weighing

  As an “anthropologist with a deep historical and ethnographic understanding of the politics of colonialism and development in Indonesia, (Tania) Li shows how successive incarnations of a liberal ‘ will to improve ’ failed to account for the messy realities of landlessness, disease, exploitation and other structures of law and force, and were subsequently confounded when populations failed to improve. Li argues that such accommodations to hegemonic orderings of the world, as revealed in Johannesburg’s City Development Strategies, emerge whenever the concepts of improvement, even ones that profess to be critical, are 'rendered technical' through programs that seek to ‘translate messy conjunctures into linear narratives of problems, interventions and beneficial results’” In this portion of the text out of Rankin’s article on reflexive relationality and accountability she delivers a strong message for the outcomes-oriented approaches of the liberal technician who seeks to alle

 I am burned out on theology, philosophy, critical thought, and politics.  Wish I could blog about dogs OR narwhals without discussing Friedrich Nietzsche.  Someone give me a simple thing to blog about; is there anything simple?

 So entire police force resigns when a town manager is hired.   The new town manager is black.  It is a shame that the police resigned.  If the only reason for the resignations is that the person is black, then it is a shame and disgrace to all people of color and white.  Is there more to the story than what is being told?  Was there a political agenda that the new town manager ascribed to which was objectionable?  Was the town manager supportive of the police? Simply put, it was racist to resign .  But it may have been political as well. I am tired of the extremism of the left and the reactionary behavior from the right.  Please, someone, tell me the story as they understand it.  I am unwilling to dig to find the truth of the matter; reporting and the media make me sick.  I do not support racist agendas , or agendas that do not support the police. What a mess there must be in that town.

  Theology can make a person nauseated, just ask SØren Kierkegaard. However, I must touch on the subject in terms of how it returns to postcoloniality and the making of public policy.     There are those who say there is no God.   I think it is a bit presumptuous to follow that conclusion. There is no strong evidence against their being God, either as first cause or creator of beings who can be conscious of themselves. God is by definition unspeakable and Christ the image of the unseen God, if you have any question. But, Christianity has taken a beating throughout the years and especially in the 21 st century, dominated by supposed critical thought. College folk and those on the street are speaking ill of Christianity, seeing it as the dooming factor of negative thought that “still haunts the world, even in the posttruth age.” I am sorry that they (sic) feel that way. Christianity, along with other religions, is seen as irrational at its core.   The only basis on which to act any part

  If you want to hear the type of lecture that  is given at the academy about religion, in this case, Christianity, direct yourself to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdt0GBQu6SY …. My friend Dr. Eagleton, as he calls himself, speaks about the fair view of Christianity and not the foul response to the Faith. In this lecture, Eagleton manages to insult everyone except, of course, Marx and also Nietzsche.   Eagleton speaks of the haberdashery of Freud’s thought and manages to throw in the glamorous, doubly inviting French term “jouissance”   It will be up to you to look this up in the work of Jacques Lacan to get my drift. Among the insults given out, there are included even criticisms and insults to Christ as well.   Eagleton, the purveyor of truth that he is, cleverly judges that the world did not end as Christ “thought it would,” making Christ a “poor historian” Wouldn’t you like to smack his pompous face while listening to his majesty Terry speak this way of Christ.   You know, I t

In 2010 Katharine N. Rankin cites that “(Ananya) Roy situates the onus for an ethics of postcoloniality on planning professionals and others empowered with the task of organizing space. She calls for a rejection of the seductive allure of liberal benevolence in favor of a ‘rearrangement of desire’ - a critical reflection on planners’ location(s) in the rubrics of imperial power that might inspire a ‘consciousness of crisis’” In this space is where people exist with the protections they get from emotional, physical, and economic harm.  The allure mentioned is based on the kindness expressed by non-comparative policies of equity and inclusion, for example. This “benevolence” is not good enough of ethics to live with and does not do enough to rearrange peoples’ desires effectively and truly include people emotionally, physically, or economically.  “Rearrangement of desire” leans us toward a position whereby all peoples get equity in their desire for all things, material and nonmaterial.

  According to Vox, “Francis has gained a reputation for being relatable, approachable, and down-to-earth. Some have called Francis “The People's Pope,”   and the “Pope of the 99 percent.”  Time  named him their Person of the year in 2013, as did LGBT-interest magazine The Advocate.   ‘In a matter of months,’ read the  Time  profile, ‘Francis has elevated the healing mission of the church — the church as servant and comforter of hurting people in an often harsh world — above the doctrinal police work so important to his recent predecessors” I am sorry folks but the 99 percent of the people are not LGBT-nor do they read The Advocate. As far as the world being harsh, it has actually been awfully accommodating to many varieties of people.   People of difference have been included with equity built into many of the systems we plug ourselves into, including media, entertainment, and industry. Inclusion and equity are on the rise and were definitely cow-towed to by business and governmen

  In 2010 Katharine N. Rankin, about the practice of theory and policy-making, “identifies four theoretical concepts that planning needs to recognize and engage in order to strengthen both its critical and normative orientations: the structures of imperialism, agency and resistance among the ‘beneficiaries’ of planning action, the subjectivity of planers the conditions of collective action. (Rankin) argues that, cumulatively, these concepts can inform ethics of accountability that encompasses both postcolonial critique and a ‘reflexive relationality’” but Rankin begins with “In her important essay ‘Praxis in the time of empire’, Ananya Roy (2006) calls for planning theory confront imperialism and colonialism as the constitutive ‘present history’ of planning and to substitute a liberal 'responsibility for' others with a postcolonial ‘accountability’” For many decades there has been an army of theorists and philosophers who have fought (argued) against imperialism, who might be r

How can such a small people group take over the minds of the world?  There are “thousands” of certain people compared to every “one” identified person in a certain category. The numbers above may have changed over the time it took for the language to change to some politically correct version. This is the case mostly because there are people in the schools (K-12 and BS-PhD) who are creating and shaping identities. Small children, young people, and adults with vapid identities are influenced by the bigger forces of the political/media machine.  Since the personal is political, there have been influxes into the political arena of people with certain identities and those who will fight politically for these people. I will continue to use the word people because that is what I mean.  I am not demeaning anyone in any way. People are people, and that is it. How can the few dominate the many? Well, there is money in the game.  Politicians are being bought, and some are bullied; other factors

  There is a growing sense of entitlement worldwide, expressly because of Marxist rhetoric. Terry Eagleton says “Communism, precisely because everyone would be encouraged to develop their individual talents, would be a great deal more diffuse, diverse and unpredictable” this is simply speculative and a projection of Eagleton’s belief system around the nature of what would be a society of excellence. The world has witnessed the murder of millions in the Stalinist regime, and there are other examples of such persecution and murder in communist countries throughout history. The Great Depression led to a rush of revolutions.   In the  years that followed, supposed middle-class rule was plagued with instability.   Needless to say, there were still struggles for freedom from the communist-authoritarian rule. Eagleton’s speech-acts encourage an entitlement mentality.  Eagleton also says, “In class society, the free self-development of the few is bought at the cost of the shackling of the ma

Is anyone out there, just to hear your nemesis’s prayer?   I have wondered, daydreamed, been curious if an Other could be possible.   It does not seem likely by all my reasoning  or calculations.   David Hume said once that “reason is and always will be the slave of the passions.”   Those objects in the world or entities conjured up into the atmosphere remind us that we are alone.   If we take Hume seriously it will be in many cases that one could say those entities are a product of our passions, but really all that exist are impressions, not even data.   We would be hard pressed to conjugate our passions into a sensible (i.e reasonable) linear framework.   That might result a very immense conundrum. Can my passions be reliable enough to sense an Other.   There are forces that we realize are greater than ourselves: wind, the ocean, rivers, and others.     Sentient life almost always seems to be a force beyond my speculation.   I have always been interested in the subjectivity of others

 According to A. El Younss, for Irshad Manji, “it is high time dissent in face of societal norms entered the mainstream vocabulary and public discourse in Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries. She calls on both Muslims and non-Muslims—liberal or other—to speak up more against such injustices and not be constrained by political correctness and cultural sensitivity” Manji has written about the Qur’an from a ”higher critical method” and shown the Qur’an the kind of treatment that “scholars” have shown the Christian Bible for the last two centuries.  Manji actually argues that the Qur’an has contradictions in it, and this claim has been particularly unsettling to many Muslims, to say the least.   This critical method is applied to major religious texts, which seems to be the way of learning theology in the academy worldwide.  Another trend is critiquing fringe religious groups, designating them as cults.  One such group, with some 5,000 followers, is referred to as the Twelve Trib

  Daniel Groody states “the theme of movement and migration are interwoven into the fabric of our relationship with God” and “the scriptures reveal to us a God who migrates to God’s people, eliciting a response of faith and a homeward journey” Let’s be clear now, immigration is not migration, and illegal immigration is not migration. A Leftist would have you believe differently. Do not cave to their language and games with semantics. We absolutely have a crisis in the world with people emigrating from some countries to others. We all must be careful about the language that we use to describe realities of everyday life and politically charged situations.   Do not cave to the mainstream.   Hang-on and pray.   In an attempt to be nice about theology and justice Don McLellan attempts to “explore what I (he) regard as three essential elements in atonement theology: justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation”   In terms of who should forgive (black/white, North/South etc…) whom, should t

 Anyone who has been in higher education since the 1980s has seen critical race theory and critical race gender theory on the horizon of the public specter. The origins of these theories potentially go back into the 1960s and that they have been used in the public school systems in the last 4 years should come as no surprise. Ibram Kinde, black lives matter, and the lgbtqia carry agendas that flow from Marxist ideology.  Though these would appear to be a great threat to liberal free market tradition, the larger and stronger theoretical positions come from postcolonial philosophy.   Critical race theory has its place, though using the word "place" is tendentious, in the development of sound historical method.  Clearly racism and slavery when understood correctly can demonstrate how our society benefited from the labor of people of color particularly black slaves and laborers.  One mustn't forget the way that native Americans were cheated out of their land and labor.  Hence

 Many Liberals confess that they do random acts of kindness and encourage others to do the same.  That is a preposterous series of things to do because there is no intentionality to it. It is a vapid attempt to replicate religious principles passed down for thousands of years.  The fruit of the Spirit of God include: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  Acts of kindness done arbitrarily or randomly might affect someone's life and be the operative term in a senseless act.  The more deliberate acts and qualities of the Spirit bring about many more positive, helpful outcomes.   Consider too the things that have brought us to the point of randomly acting ethically for fear that we might insult someone's scruples.  The things to avoid in this life that will help bring about the fruit of the Spirit are sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, div

  Vredenburg, Kapitan, Spry, and Kemper have written about today’s marketplace and the woke culture. They state that “In today’s marketplace, consumers want brands to take a stand on socio-political issues. When brands match activist messaging, purpose, and values with prosocial corporate practices they engage in authentic brand activism, creating the most potential for social change and largest gains in brand equity”   Equity and inclusiveness are part of the corporate world and governmental agencies.   Hospitals designate the gender and preferred pronouns in medical records in order to be inclusive.   Corporations have trainings in the area. A lot of the time these trainings focus on “whiteness”; who has it and how to shed it. Companies are out these days to end white supremacy, not just reduce it.   White supremacy has come to encapsulate all and many forms of whiteness, whether one is intentionally claiming white supremacy or one is resisting a perceived attack on their very person

  Vredenburg, Kapitan, Spry, and Kemper have written about today’s marketplace and the woke culture. They state that “In today’s marketplace, consumers want brands to take a stand on socio-political issues. When brands match activist messaging, purpose, and values with prosocial corporate practices they engage in authentic brand activism, creating the most potential for social change and largest gains in brand equity”   Equity and inclusiveness are part of the corporate world and governmental agencies.   Hospitals designate the gender and preferred pronouns in medical records in order to be inclusive.   Corporations have trainings in the area. A lot of the time these trainings focus on “whiteness”; who has it and how to shed it. Companies are out these days to end white supremacy, not just reduce it.   White supremacy has come to encapsulate all and many forms of whiteness, whether one is intentionally claiming white supremacy or one is resisting a perceived attack on their very person

  A study done in 2017 called The “Woke” Generation? Millennial Attitudes on Race in the US investigated opinions of Millennials and their attitudes about whether protest, governmental intervention, or self-help is needed for different racial groups should have problems addressed. The questions were like this “ Beyond organizing and voting, we were interested in how respondents feel about government policies meant to improve the social and economic conditions of both African Americans and Latinxs in the United States” “Should the government make special effort to improve the social and economic position of African Americans or should they help themselves?”   The data received by the study indicated “a plurality of white Millennials (24%) say that African Americans should help themselves” AND “It is only when African Americans are the target for assistance from the government that white Millennials make ‘help themselves’ the more cited response” For you white folks out there, it may

Carmela Murdocca “Supreme Court of Canada in the 2012 decision of R v Ipeelee, in which the Court stated: ‘When sentencing an aboriginal offender … courts must take judicial notice of such matters as the history of colonialism, displacement, and residential schools and how that history continues to translate into lower economic educational attainment, lower incomes, higher unemployment, higher rates of substance abuse and suicide, and, of course, higher levels of incarceration for aboriginal people’” This is the type of justice that is being considered in some parts of the world, without getting into a particular case looking at the idea of reparational justice will be considered. Some white people ask, “what does slavery and discrimination have to do with me?” and “I am not discriminatory and I am not a slave owner” BUT this is not about you! THIS is about the years, decades, and centuries of poverty and over-representation in prisons and the like which are iterations of postcolonial

 A ccording to Nir Eisikovits “tensions between peace and justice (are) typical of transitional settings” This is the typical state of affairs after periods of unrest or war in regions of the world. My intuition is that postcolonial philosophy would consider this “tension” as a result of the iterations of slavery and racial hierarchy.   The invention of race, a colonial event, was a process that worked its way into our parlance and consideration over time.   Colonizers label people as barbaric, uncivilized, and primitive, who differ from them.         Nir Eisikovits speaks of this recipe   “In consolidated democracies, such tensions can be alleviated by legal institutions and traditions that embody conclusions about how to manage the requisite tradeoffs between justice and social utility (these include a constitution, a body of accepted constitutional jurisprudence, a respected high court with powers of judicial review, etc.) AND “the very point of the transitional period is to set

  On a good note, Karl Marx was optimistic.   On another note, Marx seemed to be, in Terry Eagleton’s eyes, somewhat of a humanist.   According to Eagleton “If history has been so bloody, it is not because most human ( sic ) beings are wicked. It is because of the material pressures to which they have been submitted” In religious traditions humxn nature is sinful (Christianity) for example, or self-seeking (Buddhism) as another example. Marx seems to think humxns are not derelict in any way but that the material world drives them to such woes as class designation, perhaps the faultiest thinking Marx, and Eagleton, could think of from among humxn things humxns were pushed into, after all. Unfortunately, this does not leave responsibility squarely on anyone’s shoulders. Instead, it is a kind of the devil made me do it situation. The material forces that drive humxns into capitalism and class designations are what makes a commodity of work and the commoditization of persons.   The questio

  Terry Eagleton writes the following passage:   “In Marx’s view, socialism would thus constitute a far more pluralistic order than the one we have now. In class society, the free self-development of the few is bought at the cost of the shackling of the many, who then come to share much the same monotonous narrative. Communism, precisely because everyone would be encouraged to develop their individual talents, would be a great deal more diffuse, diverse and unpredictable. It would be more like a modernist novel than a realist one. Critics of Marx may scorn this as a fantasy. But they cannot complain at the same time that Marx’s preferred social order looks much like the one in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four ” "A virulent form of utopianism has indeed afflicted the modern age, but its name is not Marxism. It is the crazed notion that a single global system known as the free market can impose itself on the most diverse cultures and economies and cure all their ills.”  

Ilan Pappé presents the following perspective by discussing Zionism within the structures of socialist and anticolonialist positions. Pappé writes in strong language that “Zionism was a colonialist movement that penetrated the Palestinian homeland by force, with the wish to colonize the country and with possible expansionist ambitions to penetrate the heart of the Arab world” Now, Israel, as seen from a nationalist reference, is understood as a blessed nation, chosen by Adonai Elohim to rule the land of its inheritance, this is quite the Zionist position.  The land is very central to the people of Israel. The kingdom of Israel or the Kingdom of Heaven Malkut Shamayim is truly a land for the Israelites. Now consider Zion (the land of Israel) as being stolen in the name of some capricious G-d named YHWH.   To consider the Zionist position a colonialist position is only so for those who are pro-Arab, or Palestinian.   The conservative Christians (so-called nationalists)  have also promo

  According to Rancière, the “affirmation of ‘objective givens’ handled by the ‘experts in power’ is precisely the negation of the political; it defines what I (Rancière) have proposed to call ‘the police.’” So any task in meeting the needs or rights of the people is done by outsiders, experts, or rather the “police.” Nothing that is done for the people (needs or rights considered) can meet the expectations of all, except in some nonexistent utopia. Polity is taken care of by the police accordingly. Any power capable of defining the consensus of the people is considered the expert in power, by Rancière.   Therefore, that is such power called “the police.”   Rancière expresses the nature of police in his sense of the term by saying that “ Policing is not so much the ‘disciplining’ of bodies as a rule governing their appearing , a configuration of occupations and the properties of the spaces where these occupations are distributed ” The first time through this way of envisioning the wor