Curt Doolittle

Form: Quote Commentary

  • Mike Renzulli Makes The The Libertarian Case For Gingrich

    He frames the argument as pragmatic:

    In Eastern and Western philosophy there are two forces usually at work against one another which (it is assumed) helps bring balance to the world. In Asian philosophy it is the conflict between Yin and Yang. In Christianity the conflict is between the ideas of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo while in secular philosophy the conflict is between the outlook of Aristotle and Plato. In her book The Future and it’s Enemies, Virginia Postrel outlines the conflict between the dynamists and the statists. Dynamists embace a world of choice and competition which includes economic prosperity, technological progress and cultural innovation. Statists, on the other hand, envision a society that upholds the status quo, while embracing the values of a simpler past and authoritarian rule. …

    The fact remains that Western civilization is embroiled in a struggle for it’s very survival against enemies (Islam and the left) openly hostile to secularism and capitalism along with the freedoms open societies embrace. Israel, for example, is surrounded by theocratic dictatorships, and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and their leftists allies work diligently to undermine her in the court of public opinion. Their delegitimization campaign is only part of an effort that will result in a second Holocaust of the country’s Jewish population while obliterating the only country in the Middle East that is a prosperous, secular island of sanity which makes Islamist countries look bad. With Israel gone it will give Islamists will have less of a hurdle to convince their followers to join them in their quest to destroy Western infidels since by doing will have a far off faceless enemy to demonize.

    via Libertarian Republican: The Libertarian case for Gingrich.

    And because of these factors, he recommends Gingrich. Sure I would love to see Ron Paul in office. But having disbanded much of his campaign yesterday, I don’t see it as possible. Even if he were elected, the president’s power to enact policy is severely limited by the bureaucracy, by process, by the courts, by lobbyists, and by the other two houses of government. What I do believe, is that libertarian ideals are not achievable without the western tradition. And that tradition is under attack by the Left and by Islam. And that our chances of defending ourselves are decreasing by the day. I don’t know if Gingrich is electable. But I would vote for Gingrich just to have him debate Obama and destroy him every time. I usually try to stay away from promoting candidates, and I stick with policy and strategy under the assumption that the marginal difference between them is limited. But I am very afraid of another Obama presidency. And I’m afraid for my civilization. And I’m not afraid of maintaining libertarian ideals if we retain our civilization.

  • Mike Renzulli Makes The The Libertarian Case For Gingrich

    He frames the argument as pragmatic:

    In Eastern and Western philosophy there are two forces usually at work against one another which (it is assumed) helps bring balance to the world. In Asian philosophy it is the conflict between Yin and Yang. In Christianity the conflict is between the ideas of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo while in secular philosophy the conflict is between the outlook of Aristotle and Plato. In her book The Future and it’s Enemies, Virginia Postrel outlines the conflict between the dynamists and the statists. Dynamists embace a world of choice and competition which includes economic prosperity, technological progress and cultural innovation. Statists, on the other hand, envision a society that upholds the status quo, while embracing the values of a simpler past and authoritarian rule. …

    The fact remains that Western civilization is embroiled in a struggle for it’s very survival against enemies (Islam and the left) openly hostile to secularism and capitalism along with the freedoms open societies embrace. Israel, for example, is surrounded by theocratic dictatorships, and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and their leftists allies work diligently to undermine her in the court of public opinion. Their delegitimization campaign is only part of an effort that will result in a second Holocaust of the country’s Jewish population while obliterating the only country in the Middle East that is a prosperous, secular island of sanity which makes Islamist countries look bad. With Israel gone it will give Islamists will have less of a hurdle to convince their followers to join them in their quest to destroy Western infidels since by doing will have a far off faceless enemy to demonize.

    via Libertarian Republican: The Libertarian case for Gingrich.

    And because of these factors, he recommends Gingrich. Sure I would love to see Ron Paul in office. But having disbanded much of his campaign yesterday, I don’t see it as possible. Even if he were elected, the president’s power to enact policy is severely limited by the bureaucracy, by process, by the courts, by lobbyists, and by the other two houses of government. What I do believe, is that libertarian ideals are not achievable without the western tradition. And that tradition is under attack by the Left and by Islam. And that our chances of defending ourselves are decreasing by the day. I don’t know if Gingrich is electable. But I would vote for Gingrich just to have him debate Obama and destroy him every time. I usually try to stay away from promoting candidates, and I stick with policy and strategy under the assumption that the marginal difference between them is limited. But I am very afraid of another Obama presidency. And I’m afraid for my civilization. And I’m not afraid of maintaining libertarian ideals if we retain our civilization.

  • OUR REGALIA IS OUR IDENTITY “Our Regalia is our identity. Our everyday clothing

    OUR REGALIA IS OUR IDENTITY

    “Our Regalia is our identity. Our everyday clothing is our costume. The costume we wear to avoid standing out in the marketplace. The marketplace that requires we conform. ” – BadEagle.

    Where is my SCA gear anyway?

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-10 14:47:00 UTC

  • The Conservative Strategy

    “The conservative strategy is to starve the beast as the only hope of preserving their freedom and their culture. In that context, their approach is entirely rational: in the battle between the public intellectual who would undermine their culture, and the entrepreneur who would preserve it, they are funding the entrepreneur. It is an entirely rational strategy. It is absolutely straightforward. Just as it is rational that Schumpeterian public intellectuals seek to fund the state.” VERSUS 1) Bankrupt the state before it can bankrupt us, versus bankrupt the entrepreneurs so that we have all political power. 2) Society as a collection of competing groups with different interests where the government is a referee and property rights the rules, versus society as an extension of the family wherein interests are assumed to be homogenous. 3) The constrained vision of human ability where society is fragile, everything is scarce, and change should be organic because of inescapable human hubris, versus the unconstrained vision of human ability where society i stable, everything is plentiful, and change should be directed and consensual, and problems are always solvable. 4) The feminine social order where the purpose of society is to produce as many children as possible, consume as much as possible, and provide the safest most nurturing world for all, versus the masculine social order where the purpose of society is to constrain the worst, concentrate resources in the best, and produce individual excellences. These are simply facts. Sowell was correct in stating the difference between the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. He was insufficient in that the purpose of the social orders is secured by masculine and feminine biological preferences writ large. Nor was he, or anyone else, clear that the source of western innovation was the manorial system’s evolutionary ability to suppress the birth rates of the lower classes and in doing so create a more intelligent society capable of greater progress.

  • The Conservative Strategy

    “The conservative strategy is to starve the beast as the only hope of preserving their freedom and their culture. In that context, their approach is entirely rational: in the battle between the public intellectual who would undermine their culture, and the entrepreneur who would preserve it, they are funding the entrepreneur. It is an entirely rational strategy. It is absolutely straightforward. Just as it is rational that Schumpeterian public intellectuals seek to fund the state.” VERSUS 1) Bankrupt the state before it can bankrupt us, versus bankrupt the entrepreneurs so that we have all political power. 2) Society as a collection of competing groups with different interests where the government is a referee and property rights the rules, versus society as an extension of the family wherein interests are assumed to be homogenous. 3) The constrained vision of human ability where society is fragile, everything is scarce, and change should be organic because of inescapable human hubris, versus the unconstrained vision of human ability where society i stable, everything is plentiful, and change should be directed and consensual, and problems are always solvable. 4) The feminine social order where the purpose of society is to produce as many children as possible, consume as much as possible, and provide the safest most nurturing world for all, versus the masculine social order where the purpose of society is to constrain the worst, concentrate resources in the best, and produce individual excellences. These are simply facts. Sowell was correct in stating the difference between the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. He was insufficient in that the purpose of the social orders is secured by masculine and feminine biological preferences writ large. Nor was he, or anyone else, clear that the source of western innovation was the manorial system’s evolutionary ability to suppress the birth rates of the lower classes and in doing so create a more intelligent society capable of greater progress.

  • HUMANITIES AND NORMS “The norms promoted by prestigious humanities departments a

    HUMANITIES AND NORMS

    “The norms promoted by prestigious humanities departments are unpalatable when not couched in euphemism, and shielded by status-affirming organizational structures.” – Anon.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-08 08:28:00 UTC

  • THE CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY “The conservative strategy is to starve the beast as t

    THE CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY

    “The conservative strategy is to starve the beast as the only hope of preserving their freedom and their culture. In that context, their approach is entirely rational: in the battle between the public intellectual who would undermine their culture, and the entrepreneur who would preserve it, they are funding the entrepreneur. It is an entirely rational strategy. It is absolutely straightforward. Just as it is rational that Schumpeterian public intellectuals seek to fund the state.”

    Bankrupt the state before it can bankrupt us, versus bankrupt the entrepreneurs so that we have all political power.

    Society as a collection of competing groups with different interests where the government is a referee and property rights the rules, versus society as an extension of the family wherein interests are assumed to be homogenous.

    The constrained vision of human ability where society is fragile, everything is scarce, and change should be organic because of inescapable human hubris, versus the unconstrained vision of human ability where society i stable, everything is plentiful, and change should be directed and consensual, and problems are always solvable.

    The feminine social order where the purpose of society is to produce as many children as possible, consume as much as possible, and provide the safest most nurturing world for all, versus the masculine social order where the purpose of society is to constrain the worst, concentrate resources in the best, and produce individual excellences.

    These are simply facts. Sowell was correct in stating the difference between the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. He was insufficient in that the purpose of the social orders is secured by masculine and feminine biological preferences writ large. Nor was he, or anyone else, clear that the source of western innovation was the manorial system’s evolutionary ability to suppress the birth rates of the lower classes and in doing so create a more intelligent society capable of greater progress.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-08 04:30:00 UTC

  • sentimental and pragmatic criticism of libertarians. Although I tend to apprecia

    http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/machete-libertarianism-media-misinformationGood sentimental and pragmatic criticism of libertarians. Although I tend to appreciate the diversity of libertarian rhetoric and see the practical value in having an ideologically intolerant wing of the movement.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-07 02:20:00 UTC

  • The American Conservative: A Phony Case On Iran?

    via The American Conservative » Netanyahu Calls the Shots.

    We are seeing something awful unfolding before our very eyes – an essentially phony case for going to war being driven by a foreign country and its domestic lobby with the political class too terrified to say no and a complicit media beating the drum.

    Philip

    You’ve well argued the standard criticism. However, the practical reality is that the risk to Israel is simply too high that after an election that Obama may win, the next four year window is too tempting for Iran, and too threatening to israel. It’s a practical decision for them. There is nothing irrational about their actions.

    That the intelligence agencies argue that no decision has been made is an argument that I have trouble comprehending as rational. That they have conducted a multi-decade program of enablement is evidence enough. That the elimination of israel is a stated objective, and the laurels that will christen Islam’s leading state is enough of an objective for any political leadership.

    Iran has long desired to become the core state of post-ottoman islam, and has the population, military and economy to do it. A syrian, iraqi, irania, afghani, pakistani islamic block cum-civilization with two nuclear armed states given their internal fragility is strategically irrational for the USA to tolerate without total energy independence, and some evidence of a developing middle class that will engage in and have an interest in, the international system of specialization and trade.

    Moral arguments are nonsense in the face of strategic threats.

  • at Paul Gottfried from a different perspective, and finding good ideas there

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/03/05/a-little-appreciation-for-paul-gottfried/Looking at Paul Gottfried from a different perspective, and finding good ideas there.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-05 12:28:00 UTC