Bill Whittle: "Denial Is Rank Cowardice, It Always Is,..."

It's All Backwards (Because They're Backwards)

Remember a while back, when the NewAgers were saying that anyone "negative" - meaning anyone who didn't agree with their nonsense - was bad for their health?

Well, it's funny, but now it's turning out that all that negative stuff was just what was needed to get at the truth about what's been hurting the rest of us.

This is a fact, so pay attention to it - these cultists were not just wrong, but liars who have been trying to undermine our view of the entire planet they've claimed they were trying to save:

Unlike what NewAgers have said, the weather's NOT getting weirder from global warming/climate change:

You need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.

As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict.

Unlike what NewAgers have said, multiculturalism is a failure.

Unlike what NewAgers have said, political correctness is harmful.

And we hope every NewAger is suffering massively because of it.

NewAge In California: This Is NOT A Philosophy

Victor Davis Hanson is continuing to call this the NewAge, without actually saying the word "NewAge". Today's target is one we've nailed on countless occasions - California:

The state's problems involve a larger "California philosophy" that is relatively new in its history; one that now curbs production but not consumption, and worries more about passing laws than how to pay for them.

California uses more gasoline than any other state and has the most voracious appetite for electricity. But Californians also enact the most obstacles to producing their own sources of oil, natural gas and nuclear power. State referenda and the legislature have made it the hardest state in the nation to raise taxes and the easiest to pass costly new laws.

The state's mineral and timber industries are nearly moribund. At a time of skyrocketing food prices, more than a quarter-million acres of some of the wealthiest agricultural land in California's Central Valley lie idle due to court-driven irrigation cutoffs - costing thousands of jobs and robbing the state of millions of dollars in revenue.

Home prices stay prohibitive along the upscale coastal corridor from San Francisco to San Diego, even as millions of acres of open spaces there remain off limits for new housing construction.

Most refined Californians who regulate how the state's natural resources are used live on the coast far away from - and do not always understand - those earthier people who struggle to develop them.

California does not ask its millions of foreign immigrants to come with legal status, speak English or arrive with high school diplomas, but then is confused when its entitlement and legal costs skyrocket. Billions of dollars in remittances are sent from California to Mexico - but without the state being curious whether some of the remitters are on some sort of state-funded public assistance.

If the professor studied NewAge he'd know what that "larger 'California philosophy' that is relatively new in its history" was.

Oh well, at least he got the "new" part right.

Oooh Whee: We Do Think We Smell A Fire!

Must be all those history books everybody's so busy burning,...might've gotten out of control.

Comedy Is Not Pretty (To Ugly Progressives)

"Remember when the Left was all in favor of free speech, no matter how offensive, in the belief that clarity emerged from conflict, that sunlight was the best disinfectant, and that brotherhood was possible only after we cleared away the barriers that divided us, instead of re-erecting them in the name of such contemporary shibboleths as 'diversity?' Believe it or not, there was such a time."

-- Michael Walsh, continuing to make me feel smarter than everyone around me - except, of course, for Michael Walsh and Lenny Bruce - because, like them, I'll take a post-racial "nigger" over a contemporary "n-word" anyday, as a most welcome return to form for America, and Big Journalism.

News You Can Use: Here Come The Warm Jets

"Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can't—or won't. The answer to the second question is: Because we can."

-- Christopher Hitchens, noticing the latest result of Our Multi-Culti-Politically Correct NewAge Ying/Yang Culture of Crazy - you know, how we're trying so hard to be friends with everybody, in wartime, only to realize *BAM* we're being played for fools - mostly it's that those Americans who have been apparently accepting of collective self-punishment, for whatever imaginary crime any overseas lamer wants to blame us for, are also now being revealed as having been long ago rendered incapable of conceiving or creating anything more compelling, in response to a threat from the "Old World", than repeatedly being busted after any known incident, angrily hitting themselves over the head with a Slate.

That Moment When A Monster Stops To "Think"

"I was thinking the other day when I read that Nidal Hasan had told colleagues that he was 'Muslim first, American second,' that Hasan had that exactly right. If any Jew or Christian would put his national identity over his religious identity, he is an idolater and should repent. I pray that I will in all times and at every opportunity choose fidelity to God over fidelity to nation. The thing is, as a Christian, one has pretty much never had to make that choice. I do not worry, and indeed honor, the Muslim soldier who places God above country -- but only as long as there is no serious conflict between serving both. If he believes that serving God precludes him from serving his country in the military, that is a very, very big problem.

If we ever get to the place where serious Christians have to choose between serving God and serving the nation -- as German Christians had to choose in the Nazi years -- America is over ... unless, of course, the church becomes co-opted by nationalism, as the Nazis managed to do in their day. I don't think it would be all that difficult to do today, I'm sorry to say. But give it time. The country may well be changing in ways that will make it harder and harder for even halfway serious Christians to identify with the regime. What then for Christians in America? And: is this 'diversity is our strength' mantra really a tacit admission that diversity -- insofar as it implies that what divides us should be more important than what unites us -- is feared as our weakness?"

-- Rod Dreher, getting so "wooly in the head" - while discussing the pros and cons of NewAge multiculturalism - that he should be damned to forever sporting an afro, on Belief.net.

Listen Up: We'll Lie Down When We're Dead

"The superficial fluffily benign language of multiculturalism that comes so naturally to our rulers provides a lot of cover for the shriveling of free speech.... "

-- Mark Steyn, sporting the garments of Captain Obvious - please, someone, tell me something I don't already know or haven't already covered - as NewAge continues to make headway in Canada, shocking The National Review.

Listen, people: I dare you to watch this Christian video from the past (70's? Early 80s?) and tell me you don't hear the Maharishi's NewAge cultists using same "harmless", and seemingly-meaningless, language ("We're taking an 'integrated' approach") that's popular for railroading thought today. How did that happen? How did the lying ideas and phrases of a bunch of fruitcakes - who are out to control the planet and believe they can fly - become the language of the mainstream? In light of the results, as outlined by Mark Steyn above, I think it's the most important question worth asking, especially because anyone older than me isn't going to like the answer - or that answer being revealed. Here's a hint:

Man, those Boomers sure do love to meditate, and anything that smacks of being Eastern, don't they?

And BTW:

The language, seen in the art above, is paraphrasing Karl Marx. My point? Unless you're aware of what they're doing to you, these losers have got you coming-and-going, nodding at anything they say.

It's time for America's solipsism to end. Barack Obama is Oprah's boy from Chicago - and right now they've got the upper hand - so let's agree it's time to play politics with them The Chicago Way:



That's The Macho Response.

Know When Rules Are Made To Be Broken

"To understand the mindset of the politically correct, there are a few rules of racial relations that you need to know. These rules establish the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism:

1. If a person is a member of a group guilty of past racial oppression, that person has no moral standing in relation to anyone in any group that’s ever been a victim of that oppression.

2. A member of an oppressor group is always assumed to be guilty in relation to a member of a victim group.

3. An oppressor can only avoid presumed guilt by making a display of his or her sympathy for the oppressed.

4. Members of victim groups can lose their moral standing by expressing a preference for individual rights as opposed to group rights.

5. Advocating on behalf of a victim makes one almost as unassailable as being that victim.

6. Coming to the defense of an oppressor is even more repugnant than being that oppressor.

By the rules of the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism, when a member of a victim group is the actual victim in a real-world encounter, it’s an example of oppression. But when an oppressor becomes a victim in real life, that’s just karma, man."

-- Evan Coyne Maloney, conservative filmmaker and social critic, grabbing the NewAge flag there at the end ("that’s just karma, man") since, whether he knows it or not, the concepts of Multiculturalism and karma - as he's expressed them here - are both main tenets of NewAge and, as it's currently conceived, Big Government.

What Obama And Gates Don't Understand Yet

The only way to get enlightenment is to speak with someone who is truly enlightened,...but, unfortunately, since we Mr. Know-It-Alls will probably not be P.C. about dissing the imbecilic cultural ideas, and institutions, the majority (including the questioner) holds dear - like thinking jawing about race will eliminate race, or NewAge nonsense can make sense - the response will probably be that which I receive daily on TMR:

Anger and/or sarcasm.

So, simply put, just like the only way to get enlightenment is to speak with someone who is truly enlightened, the only way to stay stupid is to insist on staying stupid - because of how the answers are handed to you. Are you listening Mr. President? Professor Gates? Anybody?

Fact: The Old White Guys Did Us A Lot Of Good

"This culture of repudiation has transmitted itself, through the media and the schools, across the spiritual terrain of Western civilization, leaving behind it a sense of emptiness and defeat, a sense that nothing is left to believe in or endorse, save only the freedom to believe. And a belief in the freedom to believe is neither a belief nor a freedom. It encourages hesitation in the place of conviction and timidity in the place of choice.

What, then, should our stance be in this existential confrontation? I think we should emphasize the very great virtues and achievements that we have built on our legacy of tolerance and show a willingness to criticize and amend all the vices to which it has also given undue space. We should resurrect Locke’s distinction between liberty and license and make it absolutely clear to our children that liberty is a form of order, not a license for anarchy and self-indulgence. We should cease to mock the things that mattered to our parents and grandparents, and we should be proud of what they achieved. This is not arrogance but a just recognition of our privileges.

We should also drop all the multicultural waffling that has so confused public life in the West and reaffirm the core idea of social membership in the Western tradition, which is the idea of citizenship. By sending out the message that we believe in what we have, are prepared to share it, but are not prepared to see it destroyed, we do the only thing that we can do to defuse the current conflict. Because forgiveness is at the heart of our culture, this message ought surely to be enough, even if we proclaim it in a spirit of irony."

-- Roger Scruton - who I have edited, ruthlessly, and with apologies - though we agree on many things, in the City Journal.

He Was Even Too Scared To Say What They Are

Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States Wednesday as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing unresolved racial issues.

In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," said Holder, nation's first black attorney general.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but "we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."

He urged people of all races to use Black History Month as a chance for frank talk about racial matters.

-- The Associated Press

To prove we're braver than most - and purely in an effort to help - TMR will now step up to the plate and say the first problem of race in America is this:

People like Eric Holder won't shut up.

Thank you, thank you. Send money.

Cultism: It's Not Safe At The Movies Anymore

A friend took us to see the cult movie "Quantum of Solace" yesterday at a $1.25 cinema. He actually was more interested in showing us a $1.25 movie theatre than the $1.25 movie, but to see one we had to endure the other, so this is what Hollywood's cultists gave us for our buck twenty five:

An opening chase scene that, of course, was completely incoherent.

A plot that, of course, was completely incoherent as well - even though a good story well told is why normal people go to the movies in the first place.

A lecture on the supposed state of the environment that, of course, was clear-as-a-bell.

An unchallenged and flat-out lie that, of course, "the world is running out of oil."

A white American who's weird, and sadistic, paired with a black American who's torn because, of course, he cares so-damn-much and his higher sense of moral values are so much more attuned to the reality of international affairs - even though most blacks I know can't find their beloved Africa unless it's on a t-shirt.

Suffering Bolivian peasants with, of course, absolutely no say in what happens in their lives.

Another incoherent fight scene, this time between a 110 lb. woman and a sadistic military man three times her size, where she not only wins but, of course, does so as a result of kicking him in the balls. (Damn: a trained killer, and rapist, fell for that one again! Amazing!)

Plus, right after we see that Bond (in another totally incoherent fight scene) can single-handedly destroy four very macho and well-trained security agents - while they've got him under watch and trapped in an elevator - once he's in the open, of course, he finds it almost impossible to dispatch one lone European metrosexual.

And let's not forget this was another one of those lousy Hollywood "entertainments" that, of course, was hailed as a breakthrough 007 movie, in every way, as well as a true must-see event.

Our conclusion:

This was a stupid cult movie that wasn't even worth 125 pennies - and, of course, we probably wouldn't have been half as disgusted with it if that's exactly what we could have paid with. Well, that and a bucket of spit.

You cultists (both in Hollywood and in the viewing audience) should be ashamed of what you're doing to Art. The filmmakers for producing such crap and the viewers for believing it's coming out this way by accident. You're all a bunch of lamers as far as TMR's concerned.

If This Isn't A HUGE Problem Then Nothing Is

"It’s too bad that the people who run mentor programs are often so steeped in bad social theory, nonjudgmentalism, and 'cultural sensitivity' that they discourage volunteers from teaching their mentees how to move up in America."

-- Naomi Schaefer Riley, who TMR couldn't agree with more - please, please, please show me how it's done! - in the City Journal.

Happiness (To Those Who Cannot Think)

"The key to understanding the tragedy that was Jonestown lies in the oratory skills of the Peoples Temple founder, Jim Jones.

...Like all powerful speakers, Jones' greatest asset was his ability to determine what listeners wanted to hear and give it to them in simple language that appealed to them on an almost instinctual level.

'He was very charismatic, very charismatic,' said Leslie Wilson, who survived that fateful day in Jonestown by walking away from the settlement before the cyanide that killed more than 900 Peoples Temple members was distributed. She was one of 33 people who began the day in Jonestown and lived to tell the tale.

'He could quote scripture and turn around and preach socialism,' she said. 'He appealed to anyone on any level at any time.'

Jones further enraptured crowds with faith healings -- laying hands on disabled or sick people who would miraculously be cured of any ailments. Though insiders later revealed that these healings were staged, Jones' mastery of word and presentation left few in attendance with any doubts about his abilities.

He also indoctrinated many young, idealistic liberal white people in progressive 1970s California with the themes of socialism, equality and political activism. And he justified his brand of socialism with the Bible for those recruited from more conservative religious factions, who might have found such left-wing ideas tough to swallow.

'The only ethic by which we can lift mankind today is some form of socialism,' he said in another 1972 sermon. 'There's a smattering of it in the, in the New Testament. It's very evidently clear on the day of Pentecost that they that believed were together and had all things common.'

Socialism, he said, is 'older than the Bible by far.'

He also used a 'divide and conquer' method among his followers.

'What Jones did was try to break all ties that were not to him,' said former believer Vernon Gosney. 'Transfer all that loyalty, all that bonding to him. And so families were broken apart. Relationships were divided.'

Such divisions caused family members to spy and report on one another, or friends to turn in friends for various transgressions.

Jones furthered the poisonous atmosphere among his followers by encouraging physical fighting to either solve problems or administer punishment. Audiotapes of such sessions reveal Jones laughing, apparently entertained.

Jones' mastery of the spoken word also enabled his many sexual exploits with both female and male followers. Jones deftly justified his actions to his followers by saying that what he did to them was actually for their own benefit, or the benefit of making the church a stronger, tighter-knit organization.

He preached that many of his male followers were in denial about their homosexuality, conditioning those followers to accept him if he approached with a sexual advance.

And he defused any accusations of sexual perversion on his part by claiming that he gained no personal pleasure from his acts, which he called a 'great sacrifice.'

'And if the leader is attracted to you, then somehow that cultivates,' Jones said during a temple meeting in 1978. 'Well, you ought to know I'm attracted to you, I'm ready to die for every one of you, so that means I'm attracted to you. You follow what I'm saying? I'm attracted to all of you. How much more attraction can you have than to be ready to have your eyes plucked out?'"

-- David M. Matthews, in the religious cult story that covers almost all the political issues of this "spiritual" NewAge, for CNN.com.

The Teachers, The Teachings, And The Tedium

These are three deleted scenes from the film "Indoctrinate U" that should get everyone to thinking about the Obama campaign's reliance on young people to get him elected: who have they been learning from? What have they been learning? And what happens if anyone questions what they've been learning? Watch and find out:

I Can "Hope" He Will "Believe" He Can "Change"

Let's take, say, Obama. Just how ethically impaired is he? It's a little difficult to say when one is immersed in an ideology that has its own ethical norms. For example, in Obama's world, infanticide is permissible, even a sacred right. Furthermore, it would seem that he has an ironclad defense, since his ideology also values multiculturalism, which means that there are no objective values that can be judged from outside the culture in question. Therefore, from 'within' Obama's ethical system, murdering a baby who is 'accidentally' born alive is not problematic.

Likewise, if we surrender in Iraq and genocide ensues, it is 'not our problem,' since Obama is for peace. People who are against peace are bad, whether it is people who want to commit genocide or people who want to stop them from doing so.

With multiculturalism, it goes without saying that one cannot say 'you shall have no other gods before me.' Rather, this is inverted to say 'you shall have all other gods coequal or even above me, since I'm such a demanding and judgmental tyrant. In fact, the more the merrier.' Nor can you have an injunction against bearing false witness, since multiculturalism and deconstruction insist that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that truth is a function of power. Of course, this only proves that the left is power mad, but you're not supposed to notice that.”

-- Gagdad Bob, stupidly deciding to conduct a psychological evaluation of NewAge Liberalism (as though it will help) for One Cosmos