An American Theocracy?

[Mark]

An American Theocracy? – A Discussion of Peikoff’s Prediction in The DIM Hypothesis
by Ed Powell.

Ed shows where Peikoff went wrong and why.

 

[Mark]

Peikoff predicts that the current D2 (very conceptually disintegrated) culture will change into an M2 (very conceptually misintegrated) culture within a few years, and that this M2 culture will be based on “religious-fascist-totalitarianism.”

Ed Powell argues the following:

A transition from D2 to something else, such as M2, has never before occurred in history.

The environmental movement is M2 rather than D2 (there are some D2 fellow travelers).

Christianity in the West – both the U.S. and Europe – is waning not waxing, and it is not M2.  In order to argue otherwise Peikoff, instead of looking at actual Christians, relies on New York intellectuals who don’t know what they’re talking about.

In the last 35 years the Christian Right has accomplished nothing politically.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, Mark said:

In order to argue otherwise Peikoff, instead of looking at actual Christians, relies on New York intellectuals who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Mark,

I've found this to be a generalized habit in O-Land. It's easier to deduce reality from a principle (whether the principle is correct or incorrect) than it is to look at reality--actually observe--and derive principles from it.

I've seen too many people in O-Land who think Rand did all the deriving of fundamental principles that anyone could ever need.

In my view, Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis suffers from precisely this problem. He derives reality from it, that is, he derives what reality should be according to his system of sorting so he can keep keep and ignore the different aspects reality he looks at. Then he can make a judgment and feel correct.

The problem is, ignored reality might go away in one's mind, but it doesn't go away in reality. Other people see it.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The DIM Hypothesis struck me as an attempt to reduce thinking to the equivalent of inputting data (as into a computer) and getting one conclusion or an ersatz attempt to introduce (ersatz) scientific if not mathematical thinking into the philosophical realm. So I have been continually uninterested.

Rand was an absolutist and would-be Objectivists back in the day liked to go around saying, "Absolutely!"

If someone would only give me a good reason to read Peikoff's book, I'd be happy to be corrected.

--Brant

Absolutely!

[Brant Gaede]

9 hours ago, Mark said:

Christianity in the West – both the U.S. and Europe – is waning not waxing, and it is not M2.  In order to argue otherwise Peikoff, instead of looking at actual Christians, relies on New York intellectuals who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Is "New York intellectuals" code for "New York Jews"?

--Brant

John Wayne once referred to Ed Asner as a "New York actor" so Asner tossed him something as for him to catch and Wayne lunged for it but the item was tossed short so Wayne stopped messing with him

[Peter]

On 4/27/2017 at 9:39 AM, Brant Gaede said:

--Brant

John Wayne once referred to Ed Asner as a "New York actor" so Asner tossed him something as for him to catch and Wayne lunged for it but the item was tossed short so Wayne stopped messing with him

Glad you are gone Ed Asner. You were an evil, evil man.

From “Useful Idiots.” Hollywood’s “resident Communist”. . . . Just a few items from that list. In the 1980s he joined groups that provided aid and comfort to Communist guerrillas in Central America. In 1984 he sponsored the annual banquet of the Labor Research Association, a Communist Party front organization that compiled statistics for use by unions and activists. In 2002 he signed a statement formulated by a leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party that accused George W. Bush of repression and imperialism.

From time to time, Asner has managed to combine acting with activism. While playing Karl Marx in a 2010 Los Angeles stage production, he explained to a reporter that he’d been cast in the part because “I’m always thought of in Hollywood and surrounding environs as the resident communist.” (Imagine what it takes to be the “resident communist” in Hollywood!)

Years earlier, in 1983, Asner appeared in Sidney Lumet’s film Daniel, based on E. L. Doctorow’s novel about a young man whose parents – based on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – were executed many years earlier for being Soviet atom spies. The movie, which was scripted by Doctorow, was widely, and properly, panned as a piece of clumsy propaganda: while celebrating the purported nobility and idealism of the radical 1930s activist milieu that shaped the Rosenberg’s’ values, it delicately skirting the evil reality of Stalinism and the issue of treason.

Asner’s belief in the film and its Soviet-friendly message, however, was demonstrated three years ago by his sponsorship of a screening of it that was co-presented by the Communist Party and held at a Party-operated venue in Los Angeles. At the screening, which was dedicated to the memory of the Rosenbergs, Asner gave a speech in which he accused the Rosenbergs’ prosecutors of anti-Semitism, drew a moral equivalency between the Rosenbergs’ trial and Stalin’s show trials, and criticized the “antipathy in this country for people of differing opinions.” As we’ll see tomorrow, however, Asner has shown great understanding for the brutal treatment of “people of different opinions” in another country – namely, Cuba . . . .