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Yep, yep, yep. And I have been in that “marched out the door with HR” situation more than once, so I really do feel your pain on that one. One time, the person who marched me out the door was my immediate supervisor, and she had a big grin on her face. Shortly thereafter, she got the same treatment.
There is none. It might as well be “The Christian Case for Sharia” . . .
Epic rant. Loved every word. I got sick of the GOP chattering class after 2012. I’m even sicker of them now. I was more than a little upset with those in 2016 who didn’t want Hillary but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump. You can hold yourself above the fray when it involves petty bickering – not when it is life or death. Agree with every word about Biden. Trump’s boasting may be distasteful and tiresome but Biden is a flat out liar. On everything.
If Trump wins again it will be a second example of confirmatory evidence that Murray Rothbard was right. The cause of liberty, justice, freedom, truth, and virtue, all of which are abstract ideas, can be won if and only if those who believe in them turn to pragmatically populist messages, and recruit the concretist-thinking victims of elitist oppression like Jeff by abandoning all appeals to abstract ideas, and simply showing them how they are being concretely abused by the intellectual elite who abstractly hate all liberal ideas.
I can’t tell if this is bitter sarcasm or agree that maybe abstract reasoning for the purpose of abstract thinking was a bad idea.
Abstractions are only a good insomuch as they bring about positive/good solutions to the concrete world.
Agreeing that the abstract emotion of “anger” is bad thing to hold onto is only useful insomuch as it reduces murder rates. Changing hearts and minds should come with concrete change.
If the abstract ideals are bring about bad concrete fruit, then there is something wrong with the abstract ideas. Not something wrong with reality.
This is a fundamental truth that concretists don’t understand about abstract ideas.
I’m delighted to see it in writing, and especially to see it written by someone I’d erroneously assumed to be a dyed-in-the-wool concretist.
A correct abstract idea absolutely determines every aspect of reality that it covers. Therefore, if someone puts forth an abstract idea that is not consistent with reality, there isn’t something wrong with reality, and what is more, there isn’t something wrong with his thinking abstractly (which is the only way of thinking rationally) as the concretists always claim.
It is that his abstract thinking was flawed. His concrete conclusion was wrong because one or more of (a) his abstract premise, (b) his concrete premise, or (c) his logic was incorrect.
The result of not remembering that Human Nature Never Changes.
Ha ha. I AM pretty close to full on concrete, but not due to a lack of abstract thought.
I do think abstractly, but high school beat the value of it out of me with really ridiculous abstract questions whose answers seemed too obvious to merit more than 1 sentence (and I needed 500 words).
Let’s go with well blended. I push back on you a lot because i think you can tend to be a bit too abstract.
I didn’t understand this.
(If I thought you was one of thems, it wouldn’t bother me so much; I don’t understand anything that them others say. But I’ve always assumed that you was one of us’ns. The abstract tribe, I mean.
There is hope for you, Stina. It is clear that high school almost succeeded in beating it out of you, but yet there is a smoldering ember of abstractness burning secretly in your heart. If I think of it, I shall try to fan this flame in future Conversations. If I forget this important mission, please remind me; I was always the absent-minded professor, and in the last two decades have gotten even more forgetty.
I took it is a crack, but I’m not oppressed by these elites (hell with my education I’m considered “elite”), I’m done with the purity of principles needing to be the argument versus, I don’t know, putting principle into action.
No it’s a matter of the thought leaders/elite are 1) not buying what they selling and 2) abandon the tribe for being tribal, as if leading us to water and being mad we want to drink
I’m in deepest darkest blue Los Angeles. You hear the faux “I’m a social liberal but economic conservative” line all the time. It’s of course not true because to fund the social programs, you need to raise taxes. Thought leaders bought this, stating the real problem was the moral majority types were keeping us from selling our message to young people. Then with Mitt it was the class problem which turned into a race problem and not being able to talk to common people. Now the problem is we don’t go to cities, and yet, in addition to Republican leadership not stumping here for a guy like Joe Collins (running against Maxine), the thought leaders will retweet something but not come out here and make a speech about how this is an example of what we want.
What are Republicans going to say, that they’ll turn the city around by eliminating city union jobs, enacting school choice and pissing off teachers unions and de-regulating utilities and eliminating bureaucratic red tape…all of which pays for the social programs/unions. All whilst being called racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, classist, etc. Cutting social programs for economic fiscal responsibility?
Most of my friends leaving for Texas (Austin, of course, not “Racist parts”) is for the cheaper living tax wise, but they hope to flip it blue. I’m not sure “proof the principles work” is enough.
We need to speak to the youth but here comes people calling those trying Candace Owens a grifter. How about you help her instead. Are there grifters? Sure (Jacob Wohl). But even Ben Shapiro screwed up when he was younger
It’s not all about “making your case” you also 1) have to put those principles in action and 2) tear down the barriers that prevent them from being getting through and our elites want to eliminate the voices that are uncouth. You improve reception to the product by showing the product works, and our elites are too busy trying to get rid of salesmen they don’t like that are overdelivering with a weak hand.
Protect the other areas from the dark blue cities, eventually the cities will kill themselves and only then will they be willing to listen.
Even with not talking about social programs, but the social licentiousness, it doesn’t work. When people are in turmoil, they get government involved. Just what kind of stable life is a mom of multi-fathered brats going to have? And heaven forbid she can’t afford the birth control cuz she needs to feed them and she gets knocked up again?
Just what, exactly, is that going to get us?
More government? Free birth control and government subsidized abortion.
If you have the majority of people engaging in social pathologies that lead to ruin, you get more people voting for more government. It’s why social liberalism and fiscal conservatism do not fit together in their most pure of abstractions.
You cannot advocate purely for social liberalism and expect pure fiscal conservatism on the flipside.
Abstract ideas determine reality? You have it completely backwards.
Abstractions are useful if they can be tested and reality is always much more complex than abstractions. Abstractions are a means of simplifying so reality can be dealt with. There is no way for an abstraction to deal with every aspect of reality because not every aspect of reality is known a priori.
That is great. Wrong, but very catchy. Good job.
If he wins, Biden wants to shut down the online sale of guns and ammunition. This is my livelihood, so there is no way, NO WAY, I can ever support him.
Being the one marched out sounds a little more stressful to me.
You have chosen truth over facts. You and the Marxists will be very happy together.
This is why need genetic engineering and sex robots.
No.
That is a ridiculous conclusion that deifies man and his inventions.
I think most Republicans are underestimating what a Biden win means. Sure he’s inept and will be replaced sooner or later in his first four years, but these Democrats won’t go away in 4 or 8 years. They might be replaced by Republicans or some other party, but the Federal Government will be so entrenched that it won’t go away until centralization and bureaucratic stagnation gives rise to an ever narrowing body of folks who run things into the ground. In the mean time what will the Chinese do? We can’t be sure. Too many people are underestimating what it means to have half of the income of this massive economy going to government where professional bureaucrats make the rules, i.e. laws that they then follow until they change them. All levels, of course, but government deeply shaped by giant trading companies. Many will want to return to some sort of status quo anti, but we’ve passed that option if we fail to make major changes in the next four years.
I do think many of these columnists “still have any morality.” Their arguments are legitimate. Why sneer at their concerns? The fracturing of the right is the worst aspect of the Trump era, hands down. Whether the president prevails or Biden toddles past the finish line first, we need all our troops aiming in the same direction.
Let’s emulate Lincoln and put malice aside.
The only thing I’d add about the lying is not only did good ol’ Joe call his opponents racist and sexist but he literally lied about the poor man who was in the accident where Joe’s first wife and his daughter died. Gosh I think everyone was sympathetic enough about that tragic circumstance but then you have to lie about the poor man who was involved and was not at fault. Shame, shame, shame.
It is, but by then I had so much seniority (and was a sucker in that I never said “no”) that I’d be consulted on who we could go without. Until I went to the next firm, where one day you were talking to someone and the next you found out the entire department had been let go because it was the 15th and they didn’t want to pay then for another cycle.
Wonderful post.
So the Conservative Case for Joe Biden:
That’s a stab at the conservative case for Biden. Other ideas welcome.
I am not deifing anything. I am limiting the traits and conditions that breed poverty. I am recognizing that man is so fallen he needs sexual outlets and that the low I.Q. and the unfit among us need their genetic deficiencies ameliorated.
In other words, I want sex robots and genetic engineering because people are terrible.
That’s kinda unfair. There were think-tank people with ideas and policies to replace the ACA. They were ignored by Republican Congress-critters.
Except that might mean that the 0.1% or less of elites, need to get on the right track of what’s actually made some differences, not that the 99.9% need to follow the elites right off a cliff.
re the Abstract vs the Concrete: reification is the fallacy of misplace concreteness, of treating the abstraction as if it were the real thing. People operating under this fallacy fail to realize the all abstractions have limitations, and that there may be other, more useful, abstractions which could be applied to the same set of phenomena.
An example: the corporate strategy consultant with a recent MBA for whom the position of a company or business unit on the 4-box BCG matrix (cows, dogs, question marks, stars) is more ‘real’ than the actual characteristics of that business.
This was poor grammar on my part, the morality part was only about the Lincoln Project