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Can you give us some examples of "shallow materialist decadence" that somehow relates to libertarian isolationism? And, for that matter, some examples of "historical amnesia" that in any way relates to the same?

Coggins7 wrote:

Except moderation in religion is frowned upon in the scriptures. Lukewarm members are supposed to be spewed out. Come to think of it, one of the charges against my ancestor FG Williams was that he was "lukewarm."

Moderation and being "lukewarm" have nothing to do with each other. Lukewarmness means tepid; it means that ones convictions, beliefs, or claimed principles are mealy, half baked, and rubbery, like Paine's "sunshine soldier". Moderation does not mean one cannot have total commitment and conviction, it means only that one does not push his principles beyond appropriate bounds. For example, the Word of Wisdom doesn't mean that one must be a vegetarian, not eat white sugar or candy, or that one assumes that his entire spiritual walk is fundamentally mediated by diet. I've met people who think in this way, and that is "extreme", meaning not that one does not commit to principle, but that one drives certain principles into self contradiction or banality. Another example is pacifism. All true Christians are against war, but the belief that Christianity implies pacifism, ie., the refusal to defend oneself or others from violence regardless of consequence, is not. This is why pacifism, as in the run up to WWII, always goes hand in hand with aggression. Pacifism, to take a term from the addiction literature, is an enabler to aggression. The principle of non-violence, or of being, as a general principle, against it, turns on itself and becomes evil when taken to an extreme.

Runtu wrote:I note that you denounce DeMan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, among others. Have you read any of their stuff? Just curious. Derrida I find insufferable. It's telling that Gayatri Spivak's foreword to "Of Grammatology" is more lucid and useful than the book itself.

Coggins7 wrote:

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Did you finish the book? Or did you read it? Anyways, the point is that, as you yourself have indicated, that you "subsist" on a "steady and consistent diet and collection of conservative and Libertarian writings." So, you don't really *read* stuff that runs contrary to your thickheaded beliefs, you "finish" it. You are probably too old to change, Loran. You will go to your grave as a hardheaded, conspiracy-minded, far-right-wing, uneducated rube who happened to be into booze, fusion music, and karate. No one will ever see you as a serious thinker, because you are too freighted with that "steady and consistent diet" which you are incapable of criticizing. You have, in effect, brainwashed yourself. In the end, I guess you can find comfort in the fact that the Internet provides ample outlet for your Gomer Pyle-esque pseudo-intellectualism. I actually pity you in the fact that you will probably never feel validated as an "intellectually and philosophically serious" person. You will always be the butt of a very sad joke.




This is just a fine and dandy resting of my case for Mr. Scratch. He appears not to have actually read many of the posts I've written over some months--even the one's he cuts and pastes to support his, what are at all events, bigoted ravings.


What, pray tell, is it that you think I'm bigoted against, Loran? Your hick-ism? Your racism?

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Keep in mind: Scratch is a leftist;



No, I'm not a leftist, Loran.

And this is why I keep pounding you. You claim to want "philosophically and intellectually serious" conversation, but how is that possible when you trot out this howl of "your a leftist!" and then dispense with your usual barrage of clichéd stereotypes? You're going to have to let go of that rhetorical tactic, Loran.

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as such, his entire world view is, (and most of my conversations with him demonsttrate( primarily emotion based. Political and social leftism is one great public moral breast beating session combined with the anethemization of anyone who dares dissent from the dictates of the righteous. You will notice that Scratch doesn't allow me to speak for myself as to my own educational background or intellectual habits, but prefers to spin his own version from whole cloth.



No, I don't. I rely on the information which you yourself have provided, Mr. Pyle. It is *you* who "spins" everything. You trot out your label of "leftist," and that's it.

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So be it. Rational discourse with this individual has always been virtually impossible and still is.



And yet you keep engaging in it!

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I find it interesting that he pounds his chest regarding his own alleged intellectual gravitas while labelling me a hick, yet while I have read and am familiar with his intellectual icons, he has never read William Buckley, one of the major conservative intellectual leaders of the last century.



So what? Why should I care? Because you of all people, said so? I think not.

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He has also clearly never read Horowitz, and is utterly ignorant of his history and activities (calling David Horowitz a racist is positively side splitting.



I don't think I was the one calling him that... Didn't we come to that conclusion on the basis of a piece released by the anti-defamation league?

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Scratch clearly has no living idea of how this makes him look).



Sort of like how you were unaware how you're use of those FBI stats made you look like a raging, Confederate-flag-waving racist?

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He apparently has never read Von Mises, Heyek, Hazlitt, or Friedman. Has he read the work of Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, George Will, Charles Murray, John Q. Wilson, Marvin Olasky, Stephan Hayward, Victor Davis Hansen, Russel Kirk, Richard Pipes,



Do you mean Daniel Pipes?

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Robert Conquest, Peter Collier, or any of a large number of conservative and libertarian intellectuals, scholars, and academics? Does he read National Review, Commentary, or Policy Review, or peruse the writings of scholars at think tanks such as Hudson, Heritage, Claremont, and AEI?

I think I know the answer to these questions. So while I consume classic liberal texts like The Greening of America and Teaching As A Subversive Activity, Scratch assiduously avoids Buckley. While I read books of Marxist economic theory, Scratch assiduously avoids Reisman or Gilder. And who's the hick again?



You are the hick, Loran. This is all you've got. You cannot hold your own in any way other than to scream "You're a LIBERAL!" I have kicked your butt so many times that I have lost count.

Incidentally, this thread's topic is the SCMC. How did you respond the charges that the SCMC is an unethical and disquieting aspect of the LDS Church? By claiming that criticism of it has its basis in liberal paranoia, of course.

You keep saying, "Move along. Nothing to see here." When are you going to follow your own advice, Gomer?

Mister Scratch wrote:

Runtu wrote:I note that you denounce DeMan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, among others. Have you read any of their stuff? Just curious. Derrida I find insufferable. It's telling that Gayatri Spivak's foreword to "Of Grammatology" is more lucid and useful than the book itself.

And even that is a stretch.

Enough with the political blather from Loran.

Liz---if he cannot maintain the maturity necessary for topicality, please move the thread to the Off-Topic Forum, where, thanks to him, it has begun to go already.

Funny how I've read most of the folks you cited earlier. I used to read The Corner every morning, and I still like Victor Davis Hanson. I don't have as much time these days, and my interest in politics has faded a little.

I note that you denounce DeMan, Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault, among others. Have you read any of their stuff? Just curious. Derrida I find insufferable. It's telling that Gayatri Spivak's foreword to "Of Grammatology" is more lucid and useful than the book itself. I have to admit to being partial to DeMan (one of my professors referred to "DeManiacal deconstruction") and Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge is pretty good stuff. "A Lover's Discourse" is beautifully written and quite thought-provoking. Have you read Hayden White's "Metahistory"? That's another of my favorites. And I'm still a fan of Thomas Kuhn, though it seems less fashionable to say so these days.

Coggins7 wrote:Yes, I have read Derrida and Foucault (as well as other less known such theorists--Douglas Kellner at UCLA is one of my favorites and has tons of stuff on his personal webpage) and I plan to do much more of that as I find time in between my other reading. To me, Deconstruction and Post-Modernism are rather the final outrage of what the Left has sought to do (and has always sought to do) to language and the artifacts of culture: politicize them and turn them into weapons of cultural and political warfare. Foucault is indeed a lucid and sophisticated writer, but much of his Marxian influenced theoretical structure is bunk. That's a matter of philosophical difference, not dislike of his prose style.

Deconstruction and its children turned literary studies and history into an intellectual ghetto as well as a playground for academic ideologues (but at the end of the day, French philosophy as a whole is an intellectual ghetto, so this one major branch bears no surprising fruit).

You may be surprised to learn that I think some of Deconstruction's and Post-Modernism's insights into culture and literary production contain grains of truth. I do not agree with the overall ideological uses to which those insights have been put, however, nor to the overall theoretical framework in which those insights are embedded.