My Fellow Star Wars Fan*

As the small number of people who watch Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday and the even smaller number of people who watch Bill Moyers on PBS already know, there is a bit of a spat going on between the two. One might suppose that this rather silly business is just a collusive attempt to cannibalize each other’s audience, but I doubt either would care much for that adventure.
To call Chris Wallace a bad journalist, is of course unfair. It would imply that he is a journalist, when he is actually a talk show host. And as talk show hosts go he is pretty good. Bill Moyers however, is a bad journalist. Not because he does not check his sources, but because his sources are irrelevant, because what he writes about is irrelevant. Does anyone care that Karl Rove is an agnostic? Is anyone shocked! SHOKED! That he stitched together a coalition to gain political power and influence? No.
Moyer’s article is not only transparent it is sloppy. Moyer starts by telling us that he and Rove are both from the great state of Texas. Other than that they are both apparently unable to pronounce a long vowel sound at the end of a word I fail to see what this has to do with anything. But Moyer’s purpose here seems to be to establish the pretence that this article is about Rove. If Moyer had wanted us to believe the article was actually about Rove, I am sure he could have come up with something interesting or at least relevant to tell us about him. He did not. Instead Moyer uses Rove in a poorly executed gambit in order to attack his real target, people who believe in God. It is these who bear the brunt of Moyer scorn, since of course they are all just stupid dupes willing to follow anyone who waves a Bible in front of them. Rove on the other hand is not accused of actually believing in an authoritative Creator Who can say “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not”, he is even presumptively awarded the honor of “intellectual honesty”. His only real “sin” it would seem, is associating with those silly Christians.



*This is the only thing that I am aware of that Moyer and I have in common.

The Dawkins Talk Crisis

Richard Dawkins was on television the other night and as usual he was jawing about God again. I suppose this is because he wrote a book recently that has “God” in the title. I read somewhere that Professor Dawkins is a biologist. I must say, why does he not write a book about biology? Then perhaps he could get on the telly and talk about something he might actually know something about. I am sure he could tell us all sorts of fascinating things about amino acids and helixes and chromosomes, and not come anywhere near all the nonsense he becomes entangled in when he talks about God.
To begin with, he says that science is very close to explaining questions of ultimate reality, without the “God hypothesis”. Now even as a scientist Dawkins should know that we are as close to this as we were a hundred years ago or five hundred years ago or three thousand years ago. The fact is, we are living in a bubble which we, for want of a better name, call “the big bang” and there is simply no way for us to scientifically study what is outside this bubble. But even if we could somehow penetrate this finite but unbounded world we find our selves in, we would probably be left with the same dilemma we have had since antiquity, either an infinite regress of finite propositions or a finite regress to an infinite One.
But ontology aside, Dawkins’ bigger problem is ethical. He keeps acting as if there were some objective morality; but (like every atheist I have ever known) he gives no indication as to where this might come from. Naturally the root of any moral paradigm must be its creation myth, since teleology is central to any ethical principle. But Dawkins’ creation myth (if you can call it that) is apparently evolution by natural selection. Now this is not really a creation myth but rather an epic story, which is not to say one cannot draw moral principles from it, it is just that those principles would be somewhat borrowed capital. However, the real problem with the moral principles one might glean from the proposition of evolution through natural selection is, they have very little to do with what Dawkins apparently thinks is rite or wrong.
For example Dawkins apparently thinks there is something wrong with slavery. Now I would like to know how exactly he gets this idea out of natural selection, whose primary ethical principle is, “live long* and procreate”? How is it fundamentally different for me to use a member of my own species** to achieve longevity and progeny than for me to use a member of another species, or an inanimate object for that matter?
He also fusses about proper treatment of the female. Now proper care of the female is important, indeed critical for the fundamental ethic of evolution. But this does not seem to be what Dawkins is referring to. In fact he seems to want to take an evolutionary step backwards, and make our female more like our male.
Finally, just what is Dawkins point? I can understand the theist’s urge to evangelize; after all, if there really is a God, then it follows that we should all strive to be pleasing to Him. But if there is no God, then who really cares?



*Actually living long is wholly relative to procreating.

**Since nature’s sole means of sorting living things is the species, it may seem as though there may be a difference here. But since according to evolution, one species can become many over time, and thus my progeny and my slaves may be of a different species in the future, my chauvinism would still be appropriate.

Socialist or Progressive?

Among a certain political sect it is fashionable to call oneself a progressive. Of course the term “progressive” like the term improvement or advancement is, of itself, rather meaningless. One cannot make abstract progress, there must be a specific proposition, not currently realized, that one is progressing toward.
Now most would identify the position most progressives are progressing toward, as socialism, and I would have to agree with that, but that does not mean that one should identify progressives with socialists.
True socialists are actually rather rare, in fact there are a great many people who claim to be socialist, who in fact are not. A true socialist is some one who follows the principles of socialism to their logical conclusion, and desires that conclusion. Now the fundamental principle of socialism is that an elite (the government) should control and manage all resources, and thus naturally also the life of the individual, including, or rather primarily regarding, procreation (since obviously in any sound economic system involving humans, who ever controls the recesses must control procreation).
The progressive on the other hand, though he likes the socialist’s principle, gets squeamish when it is carried to its logical conclusion.
Of course many who call themselves progressive would probably not balk too much at the idea of a general restriction on the number of children a woman can have. But such would hardly be adequate for responsible socialism, and would really be no better and probably worse than letting women procreate willy-nilly. It could function as somewhat of a clumsy emergency shutoff mechanism, but one could hardly call an automobile operator a good driver, if his sole ability were to hit the breaks.
Making the restriction disproportionate, so that the prime females could have more children than the culls might appear to be progress, but this could still leave the society inadequately, and inappropriately populated if the prime females did not choose to procreate enough.
If the elite (the government) is to be truly responsible it must not merely restrict procreation for the culls, it must compel it for the primes, so that an appropriate population can be achieved. But it is pointless for the prime females to have more children if their mates are culls. So a responsible government must not only dictate how many children a woman has, but also who she marries.
It is this, the logical conclusion of socialism, which the progressive does not like. And that is why he calls himself a progressive. If he were a socialist, he would desire its fullness and nothing less. But where the socialist desires a sound (if fairly abominable) economic system. The progressive desires neither soundness nor stability but merely an endless Zenonean progress towards socialism.
Or perhaps more close to reality, the progressive is looking for a free lunch. He wants resources, but he does not want to pay for them, either by being responsible for them himself, or surrendering that responsibility to another. There is, of course, a way to get a free lunch, and that is to steal it. This is what the progressive truly is, not a respectable advisory like the socialist, but merely a despicable thief. He wishes to steal from both sides and escape before he is caught. If there are any true socialists, they should despise the progressive as much as we do.

Welcome to Reactionary Weekly

Hello every one and welcome to weblog. My name is Al (aka Tpolg) and for the following (or preceding depending on how you look at it) pages I will be your host and guide though the malaise and morass of cyberspace as we strive to…

Umm, Al who are you talking to?

Well, I am not really talking I am typing, and I am typing to all the people who are reading my blog.

But nobody is reading your blog, so is it not a bit embarrassing to be talking to people who are not there?

Yes but the only people who know that I am talking to people who are not there is the people who are not there, and in order for them to know I am talking to them when they are not there, would be for them to be there and not be there at the same time and in the same relationship, which is a rational absurdity. But in any case, log on next week when there will hopefully be something more interesting to read.