Post-modernist fallacy number 13 is in: the Master of the Universe!

Today I can proudly announce that we have found our post-modern fallacy (PMF) number 13! A lucky number and so central to our research into the fatal pseudo-philosophy of relativism.

Have you ever wondered about the ego inflation going on in the bl*#%y blegosphere and elsewhere in the post-modern world? Antwerp's city poet Ramsey Nasr once remarked of Dutch young men that they are arrogant little blighters whom somehow have learnt they are important (or words to that effect). Now we know why (and it isn't just their mothers that are to blame, and it surely isn't just Dutch young men! Here goes:

13. Relativist pseudo-philosophy causes ego-centrism and pompousness

It's the fallacy that denies objective truth that lurks at the very bottom of the fatal mistake (I should have known!). A young lay philosopher The Barefoot Bum summed it up as follows:

"Statements about ethics have an absolute truth-value if and only if they are stated relative to some subjective entity or property. 'Killing people for fun is wrong,' has no truth-value. 'The Barefoot Bum violently disapproves of killing people for fun.' does have truth-value (as is in fact true)."

It's the error of which Albert Einstein famously said, "do you really think the world isn't there when you aren't looking at it?". Antony Rizzi has devoted an entire book to the subject, Science before Science, a guide to thinking in the 21st century. The problem with modern science is that students don't do proper natural philosophy - think it beneath them, and for Middle Agers, Aquinas (St Thomas, a Scholastic and only one of the finest minds in history) and such - hence the basic errors and the laughable results in theoretical physics, that comes up with an unlimited amounts of parallel universes and what else have you (two membranes, I believe?).

Now that we know where that self-importance and ego-centrism stems from - each person literally the Master of the Universe - we can concentrate on two remaining mysteries: on the one hand what is with the present obsession with the trivial, and on the other the habitual and disproportionate terms of force directed at all and sundry.

When I started out with this blog I had one huge question mark: whatever has gotten into people these days. But bit by bit I find the answers to my query - thirteen of them to date - and all can be traced back to the relativist blunder as per above. George Weigel often states that ideas have consequences: well, here's your proof if there ever was one!

A small thing, huge consequences.

The Meta-Poll and the Division of Church and State

Regular readers know how charmed the undersigned is by polls and surveys: not! But now there's the BBC World Islam-West relations survey that polled people in 27 countries and it might actually be considered a valid one since those questioned may actually influence the outcome on the ground.

Its most significant find was that an average οf 56% see that common ground between the Muslim and the Western world, could be found. That's a majority, but let's be honest, not one that could bear the epithet overwhelming, but still - let's call it realistic.

There's hardly a news outlet of any description that doesn't carry the results. So I thought to conduct a meta-survey of my own in an understated sort of way: a little poll of polls. I took five articles from different parts of the world and tried to see what stands out. No scientific conclusions of course and I don't propose to repeat their findings, so the links are included:

1. The original BBC World article ("Poll sees hope in West-Islam ties");
2. Today's Zaman from Turkey ("Global Public rejects 'clash of civilizations');
3. Gulf News ("Majority do not believe world is locked in a 'clash of civilizations');
4. The Muslim News from London (West, Islam tensions caused by 'political power', says poll");
5. Canada.com ("Many blame Islamic-Western tensions on 'intolerant minorities', poll finds").

I use the term positive where it means that common ground can be found. If a violent conflict is seen as inevitable, I use the term negative.

1. The original BBC World article breaks down 12 countries surveyed, but surprisingly has no interest in Egypt. It singles out Nigeria as an ominous example, theatre of frequent clashes of civilization. The figures for that country break down as follows: 56% see religion as the source of tensions, but still as much as 53% are positive, while 37% are negative.

2. The Turkish paper is the only one that breaks down the positive stand in Christians (51%) and Muslims (55%). Of the European countries surveyed it only finds Germany and Russia of enough interest to list. It also mentions Nigeria (see 1. for figures). It lists the U.S., but not the U.K., France and Canada.

3. Gulf News gives no breakdown at all and concentrates on the averages: 56% positive, 28% negative, 52% blame politics and 29% point the finger at religion.

4. Muslim News from London is a little more specific: it lists Lebanon, the U.S., the U.K., the Catholic bulwark Italy, multicultural flagship Canada, France, and Mexico as the positive outsider (69%). It also goes heavily down on the averages: 55% of Muslims surveyed blame politics, of the negatives 35% are Muslim while 27% is Christian. Religion is blamed by 26% and 58% point the finger at violent minorities.

5. The only thing that really stands out is that Canada is cooking the books in Nigeria: while the original poll says that 53% surveyed see common ground, Canada.com maintains that 63% say an accord can be reached (about what?!).

While the German Government is subsidizing English language 'high culture' website Signandsight for the express purpose of 'countering' the dominance of American influence of their own language, and hired a French editor to do so (oh, grow up!), the vilified right-wing transatlantic press is busy writing the finest articles on Islam that I've seen in a long time. While Europe is passively contemplating its own slow suicide by multiculturalism through fruitless debate based on personal opinion, America is analyzing the problem and is trying to solve it in a realistic fashion.

It may be anathema for those that seek a solution in an idealistic nowhere land, but Townhall.com's columnist Frank Pastore in a two part article "Islam is not the Enemy" (parts I and II) in part I sums it up as follows:

"Lastly, of the many things it means to be an American, it certainly means that you will fight for the political right of your neighbor to be theologically wrong–that’s the Constitution. An American believes that you can be any religion–or no religion–that you choose, as long as you don’t try to legitimize an immoral act in the name of your religion, such as polygamy, temple prostitution, or illicit drug use. Our Founders believed it best to be a Christian people with a secular form of government, and this hybrid is in large part evidence of the genius of this experiment in self-government. It is a testimony of our greatness that we would fight to protect the right of Muslims to worship freely in America. Let’s make the distinction from now on: We are not at war with Islam, but at war with radicals doing evil in the name of Islam."

Pascal Bruckner in his polemic "Enlightenment: Fundamentalism or Racism of the Anti-racists", a peculiar title if you don't know that multiculturalists see all that isn't relativist as fundamentalism, acknowledges that "secularism was written into the Gospels". Indeed: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s", Jesus Christ is quoted as saying. This has given rise in the very early Middle Ages to the Division of Church (Pope) and State (Emperor). It is a very interesting subject about which misunderstandings and confusion galore! I'd be grateful for any contributions of people in the know. At some point I propose to do a series of posts on the subject in an effort to establish some clarity.

In fact secularism can only have flourished in the Christian culture. In a recent Dutch study about the contemporary state of belief the conclusion is made that "... only a culture (the Christian) that makes such a division in domains (religion and state) ... can construct a word for such a notion (religion) [1]." In other words, other cultures do not know such a division, and secularism couldn't have come to fruition in any other culture.

Those who value the secular, the cherished neutral state: laïcité, Radical Enlightenment, a culture of life, had better come to value and defend Christianity. And this is why - in spite of it sounding perhaps crude or impolite to non-Christians, and multicultis whose only belief is their own fallacy - Frank Pastore is spot on when he states that: "our Founders believed it best to be a Christian people with a secular form of government" and that Christian morality needs to set the norm as the sole guarantor of peace and space for all.

The second piece of insight is an article that has come my way by means of an unlikely place, a digital 'cowboy' in the American Midwest operating a blog called 'Barking Moonbat Early Warning System', a political and literary gem! In a post "Islam Divided" he's relaying us an article "Sunni vs. Shi'a: It's not all Islam" by Ralph Peters, a former CIA intelligence analyst, from which I'll give you one paragraph as a night cap:

"We’re a fringe player in multiple zero-sum struggles: Persian Zoroastrianism in Muslim garb vs. Bedouin fascism; multiple insurgencies within the Sunni global campaign to re-establish the Caliphate; an interfaith competition to jump-start an apocalypse; an old ethnic struggle between Persians and Arabs; and a distinctly Zoroastrian struggle between good and evil (alert the White House)."

Clean Monday News Items

Although I'm preparing a major piece with astonishing revelations on the favorite subject, today Ash Monday (in Greek Clean Monday, Kathara Devtera) some noteworthy news items. First, what happened to Geert Wilders, the Freedom Party's M.P. in the Dutch Parliament? Well, never a dull moment, as they say.

For starters he's doubting if he should go on a Parliamentary 'fact-finding mission' to Pakistan and Afghanistan shortly. He's already on 24/7 police protection and he just hurled a major insult at the Prophet, hypothetically advocating deportation accompanied by tar and feathers treatment. Since this is punishable by death in Pakistan it is perhaps to be recommended to either stay at home or consider a trip to the sea-side instead.

Before he does so, it is to be decided if he should perhaps retract the whole blasphemous thing, including his words regarding the Koran, of which he said that half should be trashed before it becomes a respectable book. The Saudi government is 'unofficially' demanding a retraction and an apology to the ummah. I wouldn't go to Pakistan, if I were Geert. Doing so would be wreckless.

Equal rights for all ... except for Dutch municipal registry officials, if the Amsterdam 'gay community' gets their way. Not content with getting the preposterous concept of same sex marriage generally accepted, the Amsterdam Pink Action Group (or whatever the name of this little pressure society is) is insisting that present freedom of conscience of marriage officials - having the right to refuse marrying gay couples should they wish so - should be abolished. Mind you, they're still able to marry, only the proceedings will be done by an official who has no scruples in that regard. The 'gay community' however is as persistent as ever and is of the opinion, if there are officials with uncalled for discriminatory pangs of the conscience, they should go find themselves another job.

Expatica is reporting that "in the first nine months of last year almost 100,000 people left the Netherlands to settle elsewhere, 12,000 more than the same period in 2005... About half of the emigrants were Dutch natives ... if the trend continues, more than 130,000 people will have left the country by the end of this year.

Lebanon's Daily Star is reporting that British Anti-Terror Law also protects tyrants and dictators. Seems to me lawmakers are increasingly less able to do so. Loopholes and unintended effects abound!

The same paper also assures us that spring is in the air: The Taliban have deployed 10,000 fighters for a spring offensive of "bloody attacks" against foreign troops in Afghanistan, a rebel commander said on Friday.

Ending with some good news for the day! There are signs the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe is starting to show cracks as last! But it isn't a painless process ... Inflation has hit 1600 percent and "discontent is very high up to mid-level officers. They do not earn enough to buy basic groceries. They are suffering the hardships all of us suffer now, yet they are the ones Mugabe depends upon to be ruthless in putting down any opposition. It adds up to trouble for Mugabe."

Leviathan (II)

~ Continued from Part I ~

Today we're sustaining second instalments on two outstanding issues.
- For starters a follow-up on Thursday's sorry state of affairs in the Dutch Parliament.
- And Germany's magazine Die Zeit [1] has a commentary by Thomas Assheuer to Pascal Bruckner's polemic in defense of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Enlightenment: Fundamentalism or Racism of the Anti-racists", a peculiar title if you don't know that multi-culturalists see all that isn't relativist as fundamentalism; yesterday the focus was on Christianity, today it's the Enlightenment ideologies that are the culprits.

I don't have access to the original commentary in Die Zeit, so I'll have to build a refute on the basis of Signandsight's gist of it: the commentary starts with a rather empty qualification, calling Bruckner's article a 'breathless invective'. It's a wonder why they don't leave bitching to those who know how to apply it artfully!.

Having that out of they way, we get to substance of sorts with Assheuer's rather enigmatic conclusion that Bruckner is 'off target':
"... in the field of theory, multi-culturalism was the attempt to undo the Gordian knot of how a society ... treat(s) people who interpret these liberties as an attack on their religion. That is the question of questions." What? In Canada, in 1971?

Well, in the meantime we know the answer to the question of questions, which in fact should be reading "How do we deal with people in our midst that are out to destroy us from within?" I do understand reality on the ground is very disappointing to nice, liberal people who only want the best for everybody, but what can you do? Maybe it's time to start learning how to deal with reality ... In the meantime - it may be Signandsight's translation that's at fault here - but I don't see how Mr Assheuer's comment in any way refutes or even touches Bruckner's points.

Back to the Dutch Parliament, for which a very strong stomach is required indeed. Well, the jury is in. Today there's an avalanche of reactions of feckless peawits shouting 'Discrimination', missing the point altogether. Others seem to be having a vague inkling about what it is they're trying to accomplish - a perfectly legitimate query to be remedied by an Act of Parliament - but they're simply incapable of pinning it down, all fuzzed up as they are by the opposition interpreting their attempt in terms of emotion: "not very nice eh, calling people's loyalty into question", feigning shock and indignation over so much rudeness and ill will.

God give me strength! To think that people have given their lives to make this possible! In May it'll be one year since I emigrated and nobody in Holland as yet has even the beginnings of an inkling there's something wrong in the State of Malcontent. Of course it's relativism in action: there is no truth, only opinion and if you have an opinion that's considered unpleasant, you are at fault for not changing it to a more agreeable one: fact is confused with persons is confused with opinion is confused with bad manners!

Yesterday's developments can be comprised as follows:

- The Moroccan would-be junior Minister ascertains us of his loyalty till death do us part, after which he wants to be interred in heavy Dutch clay soil: that should convince us he's no 007 in His Majesty's Secret Service for the African dessert Kingdom.

- The Turkish junior Minister in spe can hardly wait to put her maiden policy in action, granting a general amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants to be set loose on the continent, and says to have no intention of jilting the Turkish passport since she isn't doing anything illegal ... you know. Indeed the ditched Act should have seen to that! Oh, have I mentioned her intended place of business? At the Justice Department, top floor ... not the basement day care center!

In the meantime it transpired that the Speaker has no good excuse at all for declaring a member's Motion out of the order! She acted on her own initiative and out of politically correct indignation: and that, as they say, is that - none of her esteemed colleagues gets insulted on her watch! Case closed.

Of course there are academic relativist experts being unearthed who see no problem at all with Ministers and Secretaries carrying passports of foreign powers, but Maastricht University Professor Tak tells Elsevier Magazine that the matter should have been dealt with a long time ago. Unlike others, he does see risks involved. "National security is at risk - to my generation that grew up closer to World War II it is perhaps a more sensitive issue, but yes there is a risk and the point is, are we willing to take it? The Speaker has no business declaring the Wilders party's Motion out of the order. No matter what your take is on that party, from my expertise and perspective it is sheer necessity to debate the matter. But then that party, which has nine seats in Parliament and represents half a million voters is being told to shut up! Totally undemocratic. Pressure must be exerted on the Turkish and Moroccan governments [2] that force descendants of former citizens to automatically retain the parents' nationality. I ask you, is that acceptable? They want to keep their citizens without accepting the responsibility. It's undermining the principle of reciprocity and it is simply anti-social."

Elsevier confirm my suspicions that - having learnt nothing of the cold-shouldering of Pim Fortuyn (whose party has been decimated in the November elections) - we have all the makings here of a new cordon sanitaire, this time of Wilders' party. Next elections he may well double his seats! Hey, what's that squeak I hear? Oh, it's Leviathan [3] - ready for hatching ...

Leviathan (I)

In The Netherlands Freedom's Party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders is this week once again at the centre of things. Not content with 24/7 personal protection and escaping last week's suicide attack, he caused great uproar this morning in Parliament by his endeavour to table a Motion calling for the newly formed cabinet to delay instating two junior Ministers of Turkish and Moroccan descent, pending parliamentary acceptance of an act initiated by the previous Cabinet against Government Ministers carrying dual nationality.

The new left-leaning House is likely to vote the proposal down. But the Parliamentary dust-up either highlights just how monstrously our anti-democratic Leviathan has already fledged, or that there could be some obscure piece of parliamentary procedure by which the Speaker is entitled to retaliate if the integrity of members is put in question.

Earlier this week Wilders hit the press, venting the opinion that if the Prophet Mohammed were living in the Netherlands today, he would have to be deported from the country. And if Muslims want to stay in the Netherlands, they must tear up and throw away half the Koran. Nasr Joemann, secretary for the Contact Organisation for Muslims and Government, said he planned to raise the 'demonizing' of Islam with the new Cabinet. While calling it counter-productive, he said nevertheless not wanting to react to the content, as it cannot be taken seriously.

While the botched suicide attack on Wilders lays bare the security risk of radical - or not yet so radical - Muslims in the military one wonders if Government Ministers with dual citizenship, albeit junior ones, aren't potentially an even bigger hazard to national security. The November election campaign showed just how far the Turkish government is willing to go to influence matters abroad. Reason for Wilders to table the motion that he did.

But the Socialist House Speaker has declared it out of the order. M.P.s sharply criticized it, upon which the Speaker took the decision that outraged Wilders, calling into doubt her impartiality as a Speaker. The two would-be junior Ministers are technically still M.P.s and as such are under oath and above suspicion of any disloyalty.

Apart from being in itself significant that a people's representative's motion is trashed by the Speaker, it could also be the start of a so-called cordon sanitaire against Wilders by the new centre-left House. The political isolation of an anti-immigration party has been done very unsuccessfully for years to a Flemish separatist party.

~ Continued in Part II ~

Doing Philosophy

The co-bloggers at Doing Philosophy have a special exercise in logic for us today.

A failed state, on a world-wide scale (II)

The point Pascal Bruckner is making in his article "Enlightenment: Fundamentalism or Racism of the Anti-racists" is actually shocking in its clarity: multi-culti advocates propagate legal Apartheid, display a neo-colonial attitude towards 'the natives':

"We bear the burdens of liberty, of self-invention, of sexual equality; you have the joys of archaism, of abuse as ancestral custom, of sacred prescriptions, forced marriage, the headscarf and polygamy. The members of these minorities are put under a preservation order, protected from the fanaticism of the Enlightenment and the "calamities" of progress."

What's lost on Bruckner is that multi-culturalism is a branch of relativism: the pseudo-philosophy that denies objective truth! He seems to labour under the impression that multi-culturalists are presenting us with a solid message: their point is however, is that there is no point! He's not alone in this. Many commentators still take relativism seriously as an ideology and as a consequence loose sight of its inherent fallacies. And as its still considered a progressive idea, they presuppose kinship to Liberalism, while - as we shall see - it is totalitarianism's ugly little cousin.

Bruckner does expose the symptoms of the relativist error, the inherent paradoxymora [2]: " This is the paradox of multi-culturalism: it accords the same treatment to all communities, but not to the people who form them, denying them the freedom to liberate themselves from their own traditions. Instead: recognition of the group, oppression of the individual ... Multi-culturalism is a racism of the anti-racists: it chains people to their roots ... Yet this segregation has the full backing of Europe's most prominent progressives!" (my emphasis).

I was just going to pencil this paradox in as error number 13 on my list of Post-Modernist Fallacies, the PMF, when I realised this isn't a paradox at all! One of the aims of multi-culturalism is peaceful cohabitation of different groups on the same territory. Multi-culturalism isn't concerned with individual rights, on the contrary! Its premise is the submission of the individual to the group. It has no place for dissidents! Hence the irritation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an icon of individualism. Multi-culturalism's totalitarian and dictatorial character is merely shining through here!

Bruckner goes on to denounce the Anglo-Saxon form of multi-culturalism (U.K. variety), a social model based on communitarianism and separatism, that "on the government's own avowal ... doesn't work ... many people scoffed at French authoritarianism when parliament voted to forbid women and young girls from wearing headscarves in (public areas) ... yet now political leaders in Great Britain, The Netherlands and Germany, shocked by the spread of hijab and burqa, are considering passing laws against them."

With typical French assertiveness Bruckner goes on to propagate the superiority of the French model of laïcité, whereby the entire public domain is 'neutralized' of religious expressions, even to the point where jewelry can become an offensive item. It doesn't particularly breed tolerance or understanding of 'the other' either! And he doesn't seem willing to explain the random and widespread violence, and the states within the state, that exist in the French banlieues.

Our French commentator doesn't think much of the Dutch system either; nor does he display much understanding of it: "Thus ... (the) mayor of Amsterdam ... demands that one accept "the conscious discrimination of women by certain groups of orthodox Muslims" on the basis that we need a 'new glue' to 'hold society together'. In the name of social cohesion, we are invited to give our roaring applause for the intolerance that these groups show for our laws".

One wonders why the Dutch system, whereby the government guarantees freedom of conscience and faith - and religions and secular ideologies have a limited form of 'sovereignty within their particular circle' worked so well for Christians, Jews, and the various seculars, but doesn't for Muslims? The answer seems to lie in their 'too much otherness', the incompatibility of our values and their inherent intolerance of infidels (in practice, all that isn't Islam).

Considering Bruckner's rubbishing of "our Jihad collaborators [sic] on the extreme left as on the right: at the time of the Muhammad cartoon affair last year, deputies of the UMP proposed to institute blasphemy laws that would have taken us back to the Ancien Regime", he does seem to be a staunch atheist who wouldn't be having trouble leaving his rosary at home.

Neither does he realize, that the supposed secular neutrality can easily develop into an oppressive dictatorship as well! The dominant feature in today's Radical Liberalism is that it sees itself as the single guarantor of freedom for all, and considers all theism as its opposite and the surest way to obscurantism and oppression in the name of God. Bruckner displays the same attitude, but he is willing to acknowledge that "secularism ... is written into the Gospels".

Pascal Bruckner is in favour of fostering an enlightened European Islam along the lines of Vatican II, provided we speak to the right audience; not "styling the fundamentalists as friends of tolerance, while in fact they practise dissimulation and use the left or the intelligentsia to make their moves for them, sparing themselves the challenge of secularism."

The author leaves us to ponder the words of Kant, and a word of warning from his side that I can heartily ratify: "Kant defined the Enlightenment with the motto: Sapere aude - dare to know. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today's directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!" Amen.

A failed state, on a world-wide scale (I)

America, be prepared! Here comes a woman that doesn't even know how to spell compromise ... and cares even less. Not if it means selling out to blood-thirsty Islamists, their immature appeasers or multi-culti advocates. While Ayaan Hirsi Ali's latest book, an auto-biography titled "Infidel" hits the shelves and the mainstream media start sharpening their pencils, on the other side of the pond, polemics in Europe's salons of 'high culture', are still raging. The previous two posts dealt with just one of the contributors to that debate, Professor Paul Cliteur who defends Hirsi Ali's position and counters by attacking the 'preposterous consequences' that the post-modernist solution to avoid a major clash, would have.

Another proponent of Ayaan's tenets is the French writer Pascal Bruckner. In an article dated 24th January he is defending her against the attacks and condemnations of the multicultural apostles, Ian Buruma who is "embarrassed" by her attacks on the Koran and denies her the right to quote Voltaire, and Timothy Garten Ash who doesn't stop at old-fashioned machismo and talks the little woman down, accusing her of being "irresponsible" as well as being "counterproductive".

Indeed, the latter prefers appeasement and poshly advocates a state of semi-autonomy for the natives. Bruckner accuses them both of "chaining people to their roots"; in fact committing a latter day version of racism, Apartheid even and of promoting a contemporary version of colonialism: a very insightful perspective indeed.

To put it succinctly, Bruckner writes, and I have to agree with him wholeheartedly on this one: "There's no denying that the enemies of freedom come from free societies, from a slice of the enlightened elite who deny the benefits of democratic rights to the rest of humanity ...".
I don't propose to take you very far into the polemics. Anyone interested can read the articles for themselves. I do want to draw attention to a few new perspectives on the discourse, as well as comment on those points that have become so fashionable over the last few years that we hardly notice their eccentricity anymore, a sign of just how pervasive and dangerous these social experiments are. In the meantime they have reached the status in the European Union, of all but the officially prescribed policy for all member states.

Unlike above critics Ayaan indeed "never transgresses the domain of reason". This is in which she differs, and what infuriates the loyal defenders of Islam so much! No matter how many insults and threats are being thrown at her, she always remains outwardly calm and refuses to be pushed off course, pairing arguments and trains of logic with good, solid rationality. She does so with unusual modesty, ever allowing her opponents their say - not that that is always done in the best of tastes.

Just how "vulnerable" Islam is, I will not comment on. As we have seen at Dr Pat's, as long as people can "pretend that the objects of their hate are the real cause of any problem, they don't have to deal with the external reality (of the Islamo-Nazist terror), or face the truth about their own unacknowledged and pathological internal reality." But sometimes you have to admire the capacity of turning the tables.

The values of the Enlightenment - or, for that matter any other idea or faith that prides itself on representing objective truth - are irrelevant to the knights of multi-culturalism: which is why they see no problem in telling anyone to shut up (as today, Australia's Prime Minister John Howard)! And since at the core of their sophistry lurks an oxymoron, logic and rationality are seen as irrelevant: that is why they can deride religion and denounce the "evils of the Enlightenment, capitalism, colonialism, totalitarianism" without offering a viable alternative, except what basically amounts to a world in which anarchy and tribal warfare with the neighbours will be the norm: welcome to the multi-culti world of Hobbes of Balkan and Somali infamy: a failed state on a world-wide scale.

In passing Bruckner provides us with an informative piece of background into the origins of multi-culturalism [1]. But regretfully he follows in the post-modern tradition of master deconstructionist Derrida in explaining the world through linguistics, clarifying the distance taken from 'the natives' by etymologically breaking down the word respect. This method is deserving to be confined to eternity once and for all, as it bears all the hallmarks of reading tea leaves: it defies logic!

To be continued.

Relativist Fundamentalism, What's Next? (II)

Relativism maintains to offer a solution to what it sees as the problem: the tendency of people to kill each other. The basic thought is that they do so, because their beliefs and ideologies clash, be they religious or secular isms. The solution they are offering is that "minorities (in Western societies) should live according to their own customs (a Leftist pet policy that was widely practised and since discredited in The Netherlands), and - insofar as national culture is at variance with non-Western ideas - the national culture should adapt itself to new conditions", and "refrain from criticism"! I ask you, that's the multi-cultural contribution to world peace: refrain from criticism!

That criticism isn't at the root of Islamist terrorism may be obvious, but Cliteur is offering evidence in the fact that two soft-spoken Amsterdam city politicians who have avoided criticism ad nauseam, need 24/7 police protection. Multi-culturals draw the wrong conclusion and because of it, they don't benefit from the lessons on offer from appeasing Adolf Hitler before WWII: that you shouldn't appease bullies and that you cannot negotiate with someone who is out to destroy you. But that is just one of the dangers.

Cliteur is worried that it makes Western societies easy prey for the ideology of radical Islamism and that it would be a suicidal position. There's that too.

The barbaric necessity of sanitizing the entire Western legacy so as not to give offence, would constitute a mere inconvenience in comparison with what would follow. And it's a process that is already well under way - primarily as evidenced by ludicrous examples of political correctness: to mind comes the abolition of A.D. in favor of C.E., the removal of national flags and other visual expressions of national identity, calls for the French version of laïcité that foresees in the 'neutralization' of the entire public domain, etc., etc.

Much worse is the tenet that "the West is denied the right to defend itself", which is simply immoral!

Replacing universal human rights and other Western values with what Cliteur calls the "glorification of otherness" - whatever that may be - is another mere detail that would set civilization back some two millennia.

The real horror is the madhouse that awaits us once humanity has lost its sense of objective reality, another ongoing project! We ain't seen nothing yet!

Cliteur aptly debunks relativism's inherent fallacy to equate the most impossible entities with each other, simply because they carry the same adjective or adverb, or have some other feature in common (Christianity with cannibalism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali with the murderer of her associate, etc.). It is an offence against reason only forgivable, if made by véry young children.

The relativist world view is an irresponsible intellectual immaturity: while its tenet contains two oxymora, it is riddled with paradoxes and its undesirable outcomes can be predicted by a well-trained primate, they would nevertheless have us transform the world into one big post-modern lab test - and to hell with the consequences!

And then to think there are people - intellectuals, politicians - that take this sad piece of pernicious sophistry seriously and give it respectability! The best that can be said about defeatism-turned-respectable-policy is that the misguided objective may be to avert confrontation, but thereby denying a chance of mature debate and undermining tolerance as what it still supposes to mean: respecting and allowing another person's opinion.

Cliteur says that the consequences of multi-culturalism as proposed would be preposterous: that is why relativism and its derivatives aren't solutions at all but red herrings; and dangerous fallacies at that! In fact, while Muslims are experiencing noisy and at times lethal grow up pains and the whole of Westerns civilization is looking that way, the real enemy within sits here at the heart of our societies, chipping away at all we hold dear, as we shall see in the next post.

Relativist Fundamentalism, What's Next? (I)

Today's post is devoted to the challenge of analyzing Professor Paul Cliteur's article Falling Prey to Relativism. With it, he really puts the culture-clashers on notice. Inter alia, what I said about the spinal problem, still stands.

The point that he's making, is that the post-modern relativistic position makes Western societies an easy prey for the ideology of radical Islamism. Digest that for a second, if you will! Well, he is right and it is stating the obvious with feeling for under-statement. But one or two other reasons could be added in re of the dangers of the pseudo-philosophy of high fashion.

As the conclusion must be that relativism (and all its derivatives) is another fruit of the Enlightenment, it again goes to show that the revolution eats its own children. Post-modernity has now turned against Liberalism - as it must, for every truth is one too many for relativism. As Cliteur points out:

"For multiculturalists, European civilization has been fundamentally on the wrong track since the Enlightenment. The Holocaust, Nazism, communism, slavery (Ed. !) - these are seen not as deviations from the generally benign development of Western culture but as inevitable products [sic] of the European mind, which is inherently oppressive."

We are reminded of young Dev's representative of the Union for the Suppression of the Metaphysical: "The inherent violence of the Catholic position is really no different from Islam's!"

As relativism inevitably must turn against Liberalism, so it must turn against any other ideology and belief system, against universal values such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and all the other things we hold dear, simply because these imply truths and objective values that it denies.

What an awful disappointment this must be for the subscribers of The Euston Manifesto, but they could have known! The Left may be fond of adopting relativist and multi-cultural notions, they are hence informed that to the post-moderns, they are just another fundamentalist ism with blood on its hands, deserving to be relativized out of existence. Relativism is nobody's friend or ally!

The attraction of cultural relativism to the Left is, that it provides a convenient "intellectual" basis for Bush-bashing, thereby taking it at last beyond the realm of the school-yard. Cliteur states that to multi-culturalists "it is preposterous and a manifestation of cultural arrogance [sic] ... to invade foreign countries to export democracy and other Western ideals; it is likewise ridiculous to expect that religious and ethnic minorities in Western societies should be expected to adopt these ideas and integrate into liberal democracy".

The conclusion is of course that relativism is incompatible with anything human beings can ever think up. Relativist proponent Stuart Sim, Professor Critical Theory in the Dept. of English Studies at the University of Sunderland (U.K.), goes just one step further. He makes a vain effort at sublimation, calling relativism, radical skepticism, which sounds a lot more scientific than *#@k Bush! That may convince some he's a relativist, but make no mistake, he's a fire breathing fundamentalist. To Professor Sim Anything That Is Not Relativist, is Fundamentalist.

To be continued.

Eurabia: a conspiracy theory?

In re of yesterday's blog I must say of those Dutch politicians - and I don't remember at this stage who they were - that used the term "multi-cultural society" as a definition of a society with more than one culture - pretending there are no pernicious ideologies at the bottom of the phenomenon - are either liars and demagogues, or ignoramuses. In either case, it's an outrage! And it feeds stories as the following.

No sooner had I published the post, or I stumbled upon the long rumoured conspiracy theory of Eurabia. I don't subscribe to these stories, but there may be something in it, in so far that the European Union is running towards its completion as far as member states is concerned; it cannot hurt to explore possibilities, as is indeed being done towards the east with Ukraine and Georgia.

Then there are the customs and excise agreements that the E.U. has always had with various non-members in the vicinity, amongst them Morocco, Turkey and Israel.

Also Europe has of course already a very substantial Muslim population with monetary and legal implications for the countries of origin. That set of circumstances give rise to various taxation and insurance covenants and agreements.

And then there's the matter of development funds and cooperation, which may be at the root of this story about Italy's Health Cooperation, as mentioned in the post in The Brussels Journal.

It is perhaps significant that Robert Kagan in his book Of Paradise and Power, America and Europe in the New World Order quotes from Everts' Unilaterial America , Lightweight Europe as follows: "The 'essence' of the European Union is all about subjecting inter-state relations to the rule of law and Europe's experience of successful multilateral governance has, in turn, produced an ambition to convert the world. Europe "has a role to play in the world's 'governance'", says Prodi, a role based on replicating the European experience on a global scale. In Europe "the rule of law has replaced the crude interplay of power ... power politics have lost their influence". And by "making a success of integration we are demonstrating to the world that it is possible to create a method for peace". Aforementioned Prodi is of course present Italian Prime Minister and the former President of the Commission, also referred to in The Brussels Journal article.

Hurray! A Veritable Treasure Trove of Sheer Relativist Madness

We don't know anything, do we? Total empathy would make life in Europe impossible, but sometimes I can understand the mind-set of those Americans that see the government as the enemy.

When I first returned to The Netherlands from Greece in 1989 it was silently rumoured that - we live in a multi-cultural society, don't we? My conclusion was that must have happened gradually in my absence, while I was dancing the bouzouki with a Greek dude who didn't know how to spell women's lib. I took multi-culturalism to mean what most people believed it meant, being nice and tolerant to immigrants and buy an occasional Turkish loaf in the old quarter from time to time.

In the course of the happy nineties multi-culturalism developed into a real policy and got official status. Laws were introduced and regulations appeared. Being nice and tolerant to immigrants was no longer a form of politeness, but an imperative. Politicians surfaced to tell those that dissented that they had no choice, as the multi-cultural society simply was "a fact"; so they had better deal with their negative attitude and get used it.

I don't think anybody was ever asked permission despite the country being a free democracy, or that a referendum was put to the vote "Do you want to transform your country into a multi-cultural laboratory? Yes/No, strike what's not applicable". It just happened and nobody was ever told what the consequences would be, besides having to be nice and tolerant, and hire foreign if you want to be seen as an ethical employer.

The problem is, like immigrants, multi-culturalism doesn't come alone, but brings an entire family of pseudo-philosophies and destructive world views. Because, if you really want to be nice to immigrants - even if they murder loud-mouthed intellectual liberals, or threaten them to the point of them being taken into protracted protective custody - you really need to become a cultural relativist as well.

One who jumped the public discourse entirely after the ritual slaughter of Theo van Gogh, was the Liberal philosopher Professor Paul Cliteur, who has since re-merged with a article Falling Prey to Relativism. I condemned him for being spineless, but he may have known what I at the time was still blissfully unaware of, namely that a discussion with relativist multi-culturalists on the one hand, and a bunch of unhinged radical Muslims on the other, doesn't get you anywhere, intellectually speaking.

By the time I made the return journey to Greece in the spring of last year - between the aforementioned, and the majority of expletives hurling barbarians that don't know any better for their lack of a proper education - they had transformed the country into a living hell. As far as I can see from a distance, little has changed.

The readership can look forward to a series of posts on this subject, as I have just unearthed a veritable treasure trove of sheer relativist madness to dissect. By the way, for some time now I've been sitting on a really, really nasty picture ... I mean, they hardly come any more gruesome: do you want to see it?

Happiness isn't blogging

Once upon a time, before political correctness and sobbing over black babies became the norm at the BBC, I had the pleasure to watch a documentary they produced about the state of happiness. The notes I made at the time, read as follows:

- Happiness within a community can be measured by the level of mutual trust;
- The sum is made up of what's known as social capital;
- Social capital is what binds people within a group and builds bridges between groups;
- What fosters happiness is: rights and responsibilities, codes of conduct and shared values;
- Impediments are: personal isolation and prolonged individual activities.

Francis Fukuyama in his book The Great Disruption. Human nature and the reconstruction of social order takes a short cut and says, mutual trust is a by-product of shared values and shared moral behavior.

What follows is that social activities like scouting, bingo and the right to do volunteer community work enhance happiness. As do good manners, team sports and assimilation.

What makes us unhappy is protracted queueing, watching television and doing yoga. As well as crime, playing tennis (always found it highly suspect) and joining the blegosphere.

I somehow knew it was a mistake.

A Papist Revival in the Secular Heartland

I thought it would be a nice idea to do a post from time to time with a digest of news from the Low Countries. That is, if there is anything remarkable to share. On the whole the media there express the same obsession with trivia as the rest of the MSM in the Western world. Anybody with good suggestions where that sociological phenomenon may be coming from, I'd be grateful if you let me know. If I may venture a guess: might it be another consequence of the relativistic world view that is common among the journalists; one that denies the existence of objective news, and considers it impolite and unfashionable to foist a personal opinion on others? Unless it happens to be the Bush Lied, Children Died repetitions, of which by now everybody has become sick and tired. What rests, is the trivial.

But in The Netherlands there are one or two things that stand out. For one, a new government is on the verge of hatching, one that will include a small but tenacious Bible-based party (with a left-leaning interpretation of same).

There's more. The Netherlands is a self-appointed "guide-land". There's no good translation, but the word means to convey something like "an international socio-economic trend setter", or something such. This is an illusion, since the Dutch haven't produced an original thought between them since Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536 Anno Domini), the scholar who ruined Greek pronunciation.

The Batavian tribes-men and woman are born conformists and as such faithful followers of fashion (often with dire results), rather then avant-gardists. But they have something else what every international marketeer can attest to: as children of Calvin they know instinctively that fashions are fickle and aren't likely to stand the test of time: they see the relativity of it, if you will. As a consequence they are always open to trash the old and go for some new product or service.

But this time the shoe is on the other foot and we are having a real papist revival on our hands! And that in a country where even the vicars are self-confessed atheists. A Protestant newspaper on 2nd February reported on a recent book presentation by a Catholic umbrella organization, of a tome called "Onderstroom" (Under-current) in which seven young Catholics give "an open and personal testimony of their faith" [1]. Noteworthy in the report is the "coming out" language that is being used - the need to openly come out of the closet - which just shows how oppressive anti-theism has become.

Striking was the repeated call for more inspiration in respect of the tradition and the faith. "The time has come to snatch something back of what we have shamelessly let go", said the chairman of the Scientific Council for Government Policy, a public think tank that recently published a surprising report [2] about the state of religion in The Netherlands. He added: "The rise of Islam forces Christians to express their belief more clearly and with more fire".

Americans in the midst of their culture war might be pleased to know that Dr Antoine Bodar pleaded to start the days on Catholic schools with the sign of the cross or a short prayer. He warned not to confuse openness [3] with a diluted identity. Dr Bodar is critical of the tendency highlighted in the report, to be religious without necessarily carrying a membership card of the Church.

During the last decades there has been a tendency in the Church to adapt to post-modernity and changing life-styles by conforming the liturgy to tastes, instead of the faithfull following the Church as a source of religious leadership. This started in the seventies of the last century with the so-called beat Mass, a sad effort to get the first post WWII generation out of the cafeterias, back into the Church. It never worked.

But if signs are not deceiving us, if not for anything else, it seems we may have to thank Islam for the tentative beginnings of a Christian revival. There's a call for a sharper contrast and a clearer, stricter morality. Well, it stands to reason: it has become so murky of late it's become hard to distinguish reality from the daemons it has created.

Against a Dictatorship of Relativism

Yesterday I promised you evidence that Ann Coulter was right and that Relativism - like its parent, Liberalism - is a real faith with missionaries and all, putting Jehovah's Witnesses to shame when it comes to proselytising.

The other day I stumbled upon a blog that, for the title "Against a Dictatorship of Relativism" could have been my own. It is however published by an young man of Indian descent who studies Medicine in South Carolina. After serious investigation and study - not just a bit of browsing between the covers of Das Kapital, or virtually hanging out a bit on The Daily Dross - but real, dedicated study of the kind that takes time and effort, he decided to convert to Catholicism!

His serious attitude is borne out by his brushing up on Sanskrit (the Indian version of Latin) and re-reading the Bhagavad Gita and parts of other tough Hindu Scripture. He is proud to state that he studied Hinduism of course, his own culture and source of a religious belief system that developed over millennia. He rightly states that it has given the world a lot to be proud of. Dev is living testimony to PMF number 2. Down-talking is degrading and PMF number 4. Goodness is unlimited!

Then he turned to the Bible and read Christian apologetics. As usual he made some work of it. His decision to convert didn't come overnight. He ads: "I can't count how many books and articles I read each week. But for some reason, I kept coming back to the Catholic claims. They made the most sense, and they were the most intellectually satisfying. One day I had to tell myself: Dev, you now believe everything that the Catholic Church claims to be true. If you don't go join the Church, you'll be a hypocrite. So I joined!". Good for Dev! In a rather touching account he states he hopes to be psychiatrist one day.

At this point it becomes Sunday morning and enter the relativist version of the Jehovah's Witnesses. "Drrrring", goes the bell.
- "Good morning, Sir, I am from the Union for the Suppression of the Metaphysical and would like to bring you the good news of the coming of Enlightened man as God. Sir, I see you are of Indian descent and have converted to Catholicism. Very interesting, as is your sign here stating that you are against the dictatorship of relativism. But really, relativism is the only way that makes any sense. Consider this: I don't know you, but I could get an idea who you are. I'm sure your friends and family also have an idea who you are. But yet we may have made different images of you. This is how people also get different ideas about God and who the @&*ck is the Pope to think that he knows for all and eternity? I could understand you if you said you were a Catholic but weren't so sure about it. The inherent violence of the Catholic position is really no different from Islam's."
- "Well, you really seem to be convinced of the truth of your case, but thank you, you just made my point about relativism. But now I'd like to go and attend Mass if you don't mind. Your foot, please, could you remove it, please? Thank you ... foot please, toes ..."
- "A relatively good day to you too, Sir".

And so we see that the pseudo-philosophy that denies the existence of truth is soliciting converts to the truth that says there is no truth. Some of the adherents obviously seem to have deluded themselves into thinking they've found a profound piece of truth in relativism ... at which point I feel a bit of a headache coming on ... I'm off to bed with an aspirin.

Relativism on the Couch with Dr Pat (III)

In an aside Dr Pat states - and this is a serious, but well-known allegation - that "academics of the left are desperate to "prove" these assertions and give them a scientific seal of approval ...".

This has been going on for years, while the political and ideological elites bend and relativize any given that happens to be in their way. If the outcome is made to fit the theory, it is obvious we can no longer speak of scientific method. But this is what is brought up as the summit of reason, man as his own New God against the dark forces of religion and faith that are out to stop his further advancement as Enlightenment's supremo in his tracks. As adding insult to injury society is paying for the very "scientific research" that seeks to undermine it. It's like the Chinese communist party sending the family of the people's enemy the bill for the bullet.

But back to the couch: we pick up Dr Pat's narrative in her post on the 29th January where she states, she is often reminded of her paranoid patients, who are effortlessly able to dismiss or explain away the facts that don't fit their conspiracy theories: "If you get too assertive in pointing out ... (the) facts, you find yourself ... fully integrated into the theory. For the paranoid, the case is closed ... The political left has been utilizing the same psychological strategies ... all combined to dissuade those on the political left from pursuing a course of intellectual honesty and/or emotional insight".

Tough stuff, but it does explain some of the fallacies we talked about here in the PMF-list and it rings an entire carillon of alarm bells: the immaturity, the confusion of reality with myth (PMF #6. Confusing fact with opinion), the "frustration" of the impossibility to "debate or argue" a subject (PMF #9. The Intolerance of tolerance and why it is no longer fun to have a debate), reality and truth are merely subjective constructs anyway (this is relativism's most important dogma and core-belief), "any evidence you present ... is some one's "opinion" and ... their opinions are as good as anyone else's ... such a position should logically disqualify their position to begin with, but of course, it doesn't ... they will then usually proceed directly to the usual ad hominem attacks. Q.E.D." [sic] (this is of course Greg Koukl's Passive-Assertive Tolerance Trick). It is striking indeed how philosophical analyses and psychology come independently to the same conclusion!

Dr Pat's analysis comes full circle with the assertion that "their (other) myths about the Iraq war ... have become inextricably entwined and inseparable from their most sacred ideological beliefs ... of the evil of George Bush, Republicans and America ... to acknowledge even the slightest possibility that ... (they) are warped would threaten their entire ideology - and thus the image of themselves ... as caring and compassionate ... in contrast to the members of the political right who are always described as "hate-filled";

and

"when the consequences of confronting truth and reality are personally unpleasant ... exactly what psychological denial seeks to avoid ... as long as they can hate and vilify George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and all those evil Republicans and Lieberman Democrats out there; and as long as they can pretend that the objects of their hate are the real cause of any problem; then they don't have to deal with the external reality of Islamofascist terror, or face the truth about their own unacknowledged and pathological internal reality. They can continue to cling to the holy, neo socialist faith, newly risen from the ashes of the 20th century; and delude themselves into thinking that they are wonderful, caring, loving and reality-based people".

Fear is a powerful mover, and this is what terrorists are playing on. But here's the good news: fear is subjective! The classical Greek hero Theseus and other ancients of our culture we are so keen on to throw away, have taught us that the only way to deal with fear, is to pump up courage, confront it head on, and nuke it. These are times that we have nothing to fear, but fear itself [3]... so take position in front of a large mirror, stick your thumbs in your ears, while waiving your fingers forward and backward and start jumping up and down in a steady cadence, yelling BBBBRRRRrrrrrrr!!! as loud as you can, to the bogeyman ...

Those of you with a strong stomach that care to know how the patient is reacting to all this analyzing of Dr Pat's, feast your eyes and ears on the comment section of said post of the 29th January!

In the next post we shall see how Ann Coulter gets her way and Relativism, like Liberalism, proves to be a real, Godless faith with missionaries and all, putting Jehovah's Witnesses to shame when it comes to proselytizing (which I would advice against doing in some cultures that relativists hold to be identical to the West's).

Relativism on the Couch with Dr Pat (II)

Dr Sanity is the blog alias of psychologist Pat Santy M.D. of AnnArbor, Michigan, who sees it as her duty to analyse these unhinged expressions of post-modernism from her professional angle - and she does so brilliantly. Her blog doesn't provide permalinks, so it takes a bit of scrolling from the top.

In an insightful article she looks into the psychology that's driving the Left. After months of studying the situation with sheer stupefaction my simplistic lay conclusion was, that they are scared out of their wits by the decibel producing and bomb-hurling Islamo-Nazis whom they don't dare to cross, while conservatives, Republicans and the faithfull (Muslims exempted due aforementioned reasons) serve as easy projections of that fear. This is largely borne out by Dr Pat's analysis.

What stands out first of all - at least, that would be my wake-up call - if you catch yourself wholeheartedly and profoundly hating someone you don't even know personally, this should be telling you something! By associative thought the first realisation should be: "Wow, wasn't that Jesus Christ the cleverest dude to get to the moral core ever so pointedly and concise, when he taught you shouldn't be holding a grudge [1]! First of all, you don't get into a vicious circle of vengeance and revenge of Middle Eastern infamy, and you don't get consumed by hatred which in the end always turns inward and destroys you. The second thought should be: "Why am I hating this person, (or group of persons, or school of thought,) so much?".

Dr Pat's answer is: "You do, because your subconscious refuses to become aware of a disagreeable reality; it turns its back on it and in imagination reverses the unwelcome facts; to be in touch with reality requires cognitive effort a.k.a. thinking - and it must assert itself over powerful emotions instead of drawing away from the real world to a place more comfortable to inner reality".

The good docter also details how you determine what is actualy true, and what is myth or delusion. First you have to become aware that reality objectively exists outside of a person's or group's ideology c.q. opinion. This is a profound piece of information for relativists, who do not believe in objective truth or reality at all. So there you go: the basis for the delusion is at the core of the pseudo-philosophy of relativism itself and we can add to our PMF list [2]:

#12. Relativism leads to serious psychological pathology, confusing mature adaptation to a changing reality, with myth and self-delusion.

Townhall.com columnist Jeff Emanuel today in an article "Terrorism Deniers: Like Holocaust Deniers, only, like, Way Cooler" details the lengths and depths some go to, so as to maintain the self-delusion and deny the unpleasant reality and the powerful emotions they cannot deal with.

To be continued.

Relativism on the Couch with Dr Pat (I)

In these pages I've often expressed bewilderment over what's gotten into some people - since roughly - the turn of the millennium. On really bad days you start to distrust even your own sanity, if you know what I mean.

Radicalized Muslims stand out as one such group, if only by the amount of decibels they produce over matters, other people don't even come out of their chairs over. Adherents to post-modern pseudo-philosophies like relativism (including its derivatives, such as multi-culturalism, deconstructionism, reductionism, nihilism, subjectivism, etc.) are another such group, taking dizzying heights in the distortion of reality and the denial of truth.

This group is mostly concentrated on the Leftist side of the political spectrum - more's the pity if they happen to be ruling your country, or even your continent! But it is primarily the Leftist Elite (a.k.a. The Intelligentsia) that actively promote these pernicious ideas out of a habitual wish to destroy the West. After communism and so many varieties of socialism - all of them failing, ask Hugo Chavez, who's going to give it just one more go), they thought up this creepy piece of fuzzy sophistry to undermine sane civilization, as tradition prescribes it: a curse disguised as humanity's Mister Nice Guy.

The lucky convergence with others on the scene that harbour the same wish, albeit with opposite ultimate objectives (theocracy) and coming from the opposite ideological angle (religion), gives way to particularly revolting displays of cooperation. But since the end justifies the means, principles as well as consistency need to be set aside sometimes, but this is done merrily and abundantly, all in a good cause.

Relativism and its derivatives meanwhile permeate almost the entire capillary system of society, in such a creepy way that by now it is the subconscious practice and thought process of just about anyone under a certain age, left, right and centre. The only way to rid ourselves of it, is to make it conscious and deal with it, if at all possible, nuclearly.

Last week - that is, after we stopped wondering if the law of nature perhaps allows spontaneous time-travel after all - we could feast our eyes on real live hippy grannies and granddads, complete with grizzly beards, placards, peace signs and other bric-a-brac of the period, filling America's streets in protest of The War - this time happily for those of us that are musically gifted - in a country the name of which they can actually pronounce, given they suppress the inclination to substitute the ee for an aï.

At such times you just wish you had taken that abbreviated course in psychology after all, or had put more time, effort and/or money into the subject. But now there's help at hand, from Dr Sanity.

To be continued.