Softheaded Socialism - Seattle Style

Racism: The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society. Cultural Racism: Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers. Seattle Public Schools

Karl Popper -

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.

H. L. Mencken -

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Norman Mailer -

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

Samuel Adams -

If you love wealth better than Liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of Freedom, go home from us in peace, We ask not of your counsels or arms, Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you, May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Marcus Tullius Cicero -

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

Ray Kurzweil -

We're entering an age of acceleration. The models underlying society at every level, which are largely based on a linear model of change, are going to have to be redefined. Because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today's rate of progress; organizations have to be able to redefine themselves at a faster and faster pace.

R.A. Heinlein -

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck."

On cognitive dissonance

When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn't seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn't executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as "escalation of failure".) - Steven Den Beste

The Law of the Conservation of Stupidity

Stupidity is never eliminated, it merely changes form and location. -Unknown

Oftentimes

things make much more sense if you keep reminding yourself that half of the population is below average intelligence.

It occurs to me-

Journalists are often nothing more than professional voyeurs who have the unfortunate tendency of bragging about their moral lapses in public.

-Julianne Loesch Wiley

"Funny how I went straight from left wing to right wing without ever once passing through a phase where I trusted the government." Link

— Alexis de Tocqueville

It is surely no exaggeration to say that a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.

C.S. Lewis on Hell

"[where] everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." -from The Screwtape Letters

—George Reisman

Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one — even the staunchest supporters of science and technology — had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them, is forecast the weather! — for the next one hundred years... —George Reisman, The Toxicity of Environmentalism

- Vladimir Ilich Lenin

"Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial, destroy their ruggedness. Get control of all means of publicity and thereby: Get the peoples' mind off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays, and other trivialities. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance. Destroy the peoples faith in their natural leaders by holding up the latter to ridicule, contempt and obloquy. Always preach true democracy but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible. Encourage government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce fear with rising prices, inflation and general discontent. Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders and foster a soft and lenient attitude on the part of government towards such disorders. By specious argument cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety, continence, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless."

From Theodore Dalrymple :

"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." Link

Words to Live by 2

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." Winston Churchill

Words to live by

"Never argue with an idiot, he will bring you down to his level and beat you with experience" Anyonymous