Random Reflection On Tolerance

In our intellectually and morally lazy times, virtues such honesty, chastity, piety, frugality, modesty, industry, fidelity, and the like are passé. The only thing remaining as a purported virtue is "tolerance," which is the refusal to question or criticize what anyone else is doing so long as it causes no immediate or visible harm. Since tolerance is the only virtue, intolerance is the only vice, and anyone guilty of it is banned from receiving tolerance from others.

This vapid code of ethics -- which amounts to little more than "do what though wilt" -- suffers from at least two serious problems.

First is paradox. The "tolerant" cohort admits there indeed is something it will not tolerate, and it causes no immediate or visible harm: a mindset. A man who is perfectly peaceful nevertheless cannot be tolerated if his thinking isn't right. That's quite an exception, one that swallows the rule, and it puts us back at square one, i.e., arguing over what should or should not be tolerated even if it causes no immediate or visible harm.

Second is the myopic concept of harm. There are plenty of ways to tear society down other than murder and mayhem; those ways can often be slow and imperceptible yet deadly and insidious, like a leak of radon gas or an advance of creeping mold. A healthy society does not tolerate activity that allows for such things to gain entry, regardless of whether their effects are immediate or distant. But that sort of thinking counters the mantra of tolerance -- perhaps the most noxious invasion of them all.

Brief Reflection On Trump Versus Sanders

A great deal of scorn and outrage have been directed at Donald Trump for, among other things, proposing to clamp down on immigration. Yet there is no such vitriol directed at Bernie Sanders, a person who espouses an ideology (socialism) that is a proven disaster and murdered hundreds of millions of people during the past century. A candidate professing to be a socialist should be condemned just as readily as a candidate professing Nazism, which itself is a form of socialism. Yet in modern America, the socialist is praised while the candidate proposing ideas with a solid foundation in the American experience is attacked.

And people wonder why I've checked out of this system.

The Oregon Ordeal

The gathering in Oregon of a citizen militia to protest the imprisonment of some ranchers strikes me as rather interesting, and I say that regardless of the merits of the underlying dispute. For one, it demonstrates that there remain at least some Americans who are prepared to think and act against what they perceive as government injustice, which is encouraging. For another, though, it demonstrates that most Americans are mindless sheep -- the widespread scorn and ridicule directed at the protesters dwarfs any such criticism of government when it illegally invades sovereign nations, murders civilians, gropes and spies on us, pushes the country toward economic ruin, robs from Peter to pay Paul, or engages in any number of other outrages. When freedom is stolen, it can be recaptured. When it is voluntarily surrendered, it is gone for good.  

Obama Goes After Guns

And breaks the supreme law of the land in doing so, first by exercising power never delegated by the states to the federal government, and second by exercising legislative power delegated only to Congress.

A law-abiding citizen has no duty to comply with an outlaw initiative such as this. If anything, a law-abiding citizen has a duty not to comply. When government breaks the law, obedience to government makes you an accomplice, period.

Bill Cosby And The Race Card

I should have expected something like this:

Comedian Eddie Griffin has said the Bill Cosby rape allegations are part of a conspiracy to bring down successful black men. During a recent interview published on Wednesday with website VladTV, Griffin speaks on the accusations against Cosby and said that 'there is a systematic effort to destroy every black male entertainer's image.' 'They want us all to have an asterisk by our name,' he said.

. . .

Griffin also referenced other examples including the 2003 rape allegations against Kobe Bryant and the child molestation allegations against Michael Jackson, according to the Daily Caller. 

One of the biggest obstacles confronting blacks (and any other demographic that paints itself as "oppressed") is not a nefarious conspiracy to bring them down. It's their own reflexive whining in the face of hardship or criticism, a tiresome sort of behavior that does not breed respect. Bill Cosby made his own bed and has to sleep in it, as did Kobe Bryant when he jumped a groupie's bones and Michael Jackson did when he got far too intimate with children. But perhaps it's irresistible to cry foul when considering the immense governmental and social weight behind every picayune grievance. All the more reason for me to steer clear of most people and never employ anyone; since I'm the designated bad guy, a mere harsh word or glance could invite charges of racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or anything else the whiners infesting modern society might dream up. But let me guess . . . my chosen path of least resistance is itself oppressive.